Saddle Dust

Chapter 15

Casey Long leaned into Steadfast's foaming neck, their sweat mixing together with the dirt. She looked up to the horizon where the sun was beginning its midday peak.
Casey had been passed out on the tack store bench for a full day, waking the next and telling her story. She still didn't know why she had done it, it was dangerous for Mary to know her story. Not because Casey would get killed because of it, it was too late for that, but because Mary was now in the confidence of an outlaw with a price on her head. A price that Casey had been living with for eighteen years.
In the steady, wavering heat and cool breeze, the few clouds above looked like large sky bison lumbering their way across the plains. Dried grasses and sage smattered the packed ground and icy blue mountains sprawled up to the sky and encircled the landscape.
The veins of snow in the mountains reminded Casey of the crisscrossing of cattle trails that had dotted the Texas ranch where she had been raised by the Hartfords, and her mind wandered down these paths for a while.
She was a child again, running from the south pasture to the house, pockets, and fists full of yellow, blue, and purple wildflowers.
Her breath came out from between her grinning lips, the breeze running through her tangled hair, pulling it back to trace the wind. Bare feet hopped the steps of jackrabbits as she moved swiftly between the sagebrush, expertly dodging the small cacti which occasionally sprouted through the cracked ground.
From where she was running, Lily Hartford could see the weather-beaten three-room cabin where she lived with the three ranch hands, her adoptive parents, aunt and uncle, and many siblings.
She could also see the ridge which was a place you "ought to not be" as her momma always said when the skylights were flashing and booming.
She was running down from the direction of the ridge towards the house to show her momma the flowers she had picked for the table and had just been glancing at the far side of the ridge when she had seen, what she thought was one of the ranch hands, sitting tall upon one of the cattle horses and staring directly at her. She had slowed to a trot and then stopped, the dust settling in between her toes.
Although they were about 600 feet apart from each other, Lily felt like his eyes had bored directly into her own. She could almost see their dull hazel grey as clearly as she saw the sky above, unblinking even in the sun. Lily raised one foot to scratch at her calf with one grimy big toe. Her sweaty palms never loosened their grip on the smashed stems of the flowers.
Then the cattle hand did something that neither Lily nor Casey could ever explain. He raised his pistol— she could tell it was empty by the way the barrel twisted in the wind, and pointed it at her. His gloved finger flicked the weightless trigger, the click appearing to sound for miles around.
That click was what had snapped Lily out of her trance and she bolted like a rabbit caught in the lamplight in the vegetable patch at night. She bounded towards the house along a path she had worn over three years of traversing her family's land. Not caring about the cacti which grabbed at her ankles.
She ran into the kitchen where her momma stood with three of her older sisters who were cutting eyes off of potatoes. Lily was sweating and breathing hard and her momma had turned towards her swiftly, ready to scold Lily for skipping out on potato peeling. Her sisters looked angry at Lily making them do her share of the work, but her momma's lips had dropped their accusations when she saw her daughter's confused and frightened face.
"One of the cattlemen pointed his gun at me momma!"
"Was there a snake by your feet? Jim had to do that to one of your brothers when there was a rat snake about to take his toe. I told you not to go barefoot ever."
"No, it was at me, his gun was empty! There wasn't no snake!"
"Wasn't a snake, Lily, wasn't a."
Her momma had corrected her, but even her momma's usually strict rules of conversation were relaxing as Lily's story began to untangle unexpectedly.
"Where were you and where was he? Which cattle hand was it?"
"I was...running back off the ridge an' he was up on the ridge on one of the horses. I...I...think it was Philip maybe? He was so far away...yes...it was Philip, I'm sure."
Her momma looked solemn, lips tensing into a line.
"Well, sit here and help your sisters. You've missed your chores enough, but we'll talk about that later."
Her momma handed Lily a knife to clean the potatoes with and had walked stiffly out of the room to find Papa who was out back of the cabin dragging wire out of the shed for fence repairs. His old white cattle horse was tied up, picking at the grass by his hooves.
Her momma approached him, and began telling the story that Lily had just relayed to her. Poppa had dropped everything and had taken his hat off sitting on the pile of fence wood and burying his head in his hands.

Her momma and papa's words floated back to her through the sun-haze of the horizon. The curious memory that she had thought nothing of for years drifted back to her on the rays.

"Fredrick, you need to talk to Philip. Lily's our daughter, and the story she told was real. There was no devil's trickery in her eyes. When has she ever done anything like this before? She's as honest as honey. Only the grass knows what Philip was thinking, but she might have died."
"I hear what you preach Margaret, but it's near drive season. In one week, the cattle will be on their way to Chicago. I need a man like Philip to head the drive."
"I know, I know...but this is...our daughter. She might not be our blood, but...even the cattle drive's worth her."
"Ok...I'll talk to Philip...I'll...let me just talk to him and see what was going on."
"Thank you, Freddie, thank you."

Papa had talked to Philip who denied any sort of encounter, and the other ranch hands had also denied it, saying that Philip had been at work, training the drive helpers who would be traveling with them to Chicago on the last cattle drive before winter.
Left with no choice, Fredrick and Margaret had agreed to let Philip stay for the drive and the next two seasons, both agreeing that there was no way that the word of twenty of their best men could be any truer in their intent. Not a few weeks later with no other strange encounters, it was decided that Lily should be sent to a school in Philadelphia under the escort of her aunt and uncle who wanted to do business with their sons in the north eastern states.

Casey's eyes glazed over as Steadfast galloped on through the scenery. She was traveling back along the ridge in her mind again. Riding Steadfast and watching Philip standing on the ridge as she— Lily ran towards the house. Casey watched Lily stop and saw the eyes look at her younger self.
The hazel eyes.
Philip on the ridge, Lily running, the eyes.
Philip on the ridge, Lily stopping, the eyes.
Philip, Lily, eyes.
Philip—
Eyes.

The breath knotted in her throat. She twisted Steadfast's neck back, and the horse stopped his gallop immediately. Neither moved a muscle like Philip had dome on the ridge.
Casey and Steadfast moved as one, galloping west. Towards the cabin where she had been raised by the ranch family. Where the man with the broken saddle strap and chestnut horse hopefully still worked and lived.
Her breath still did not come to her. Steadfast breathed for Casey as he galloped faster than he ever had before, back into both of their pasts. Back to the first place Casey had called home.