CHAPTER 17
Lee’s Colt
Cobwebs
A Day With Fort
Cricket’s Tin
THE first stars began their dance across the sky and the point where that great expanse met the earth was a glowing blue against a spreading black. Within the barn, in the near stall, Lee kept vigil over a yearling colt. The little thing had been down when they fed that morning and, though he had spunked up some during the day, he now lay on his side with his head on Lee’s lap.
Gideon swallowed hard. He knew what this meant, he knew what was happening. Why had he come out here? He knew better, he did. . . but he knew what was coming.
“Lee?” he said, his voice hushed in the stillness.
“Hey, Gov.”
Gideon handed over some blankets and Cricket’s strong coffee. Silence hung whilst Lee stroked the colt’s neck. What more could be done, had been done.
“It ain’t no good ya know.”
“What’s that, Gov?”
Gideon turned his back to the wall and leaned against it so he would not have to look directly at that colt or Lee.
“Ain’t no good a-stayin’ up all night. I done it afore, but it ain’t no good. That there critter’s gonna do what he’s gonna do with or without ya. Ya un’erstand?”
Lee did understand what Gideon was telling him and that he was trying to be kind. Lee too had been here before, at the deathbed of a beloved horse, knowing there was nothing more he could do but wait.
“I’d feel worse if I didn’t stay,” Lee tried to explain. “Sometimes things happen, and you’re right, there’s nothing we can do to fix it, but we can decide how we’ll react. I can stay here or I can leave. Either way I’m likely losing a good horse, but he won’t go alone. I can do that much. This little fellow, who else does he have?”
Gideon stood there a mite longer, hands crammed in his pockets and his throat feeling mighty tight. When death is standing beside you and you can’t shake him off. . .
Gideon silently pushed away from the wall and took himself outside. He gazed up into that incredible sky and felt himself drawn into its vastness, pulled away as if he and all that wide open space were one and the same and his thoughts no longer raced frantically across his mind, a stampede no rider could turn. His thoughts had become sharp and crystalline, clear as those stars.
Alone he stood in this world. There was nothing he could do about that. But, when the moment had come, when he had the choice to run or stay, he had hunkered down and stayed. Gideon had done that much for him. When the moment had come. . . he had not gone alone.