Grayfox (23 page)

“You got a horse I can buy for this $25?” I asked Hammerhead. “I could give you this money up front and send the rest later.”

“What you want with a horse?”

“Gotta get home,” I answered.

Hawk moved closer.

“You figure it's time, son?” he asked softly, with deep feeling in his voice.

“Yeah. I think I finally figured out what you been trying to get me to see all this time.”

“About your pa?”

I nodded. “And about some things inside
me,
” I said.

“Your eyes are seeing what's inside, huh?”

“Yep. You're the best teacher a fella could have, Hawk.”

“Anybody can teach. It takes someone special to be a learner. Growing doesn't come from teaching, son. Growing comes from learning. Only someone that
wants
to see can learn the best kinds of things. I knew you
wanted
to see—that's why I kept pointing, and kept asking you questions. You're a learner, Zack. That's why you're growing.”

I took in a deep breath. As anxious as I was to see my family again, it sure wasn't going to be easy to leave this man!

“So,” I said, turning again to Hammerhead, “you got a horse a fella could buy?”

“I still got your own horse,” he answered.

“Gray Thunder!” I exclaimed. “You kept him all this time?”

“I had a feeling maybe I hadn't seen the last of you,” he answered with just a hint of a grin.

“Where is he?”

“Well, that's the part you ain't gonna like. He's still back at Flat Bluff.”

“That's fifty miles east.”

“Yep. It'd set you back a couple of days to go fetch him. But he's in good shape. Rode him around myself to give him some exercise, but I ain't let nobody ride him out on the line.”

“I appreciate it. But I don't have the two days it'd take to go get him.”

“You been out in the desert around eight months, and you're worrying about two more days!”

I glanced over at Hawk briefly, then turned back to the stationman.

“When the time comes for a boy to see if he's got the courage to be a man,” I said, “you can't delay it. You gotta go up and face what's in front of you squarely. My time's come. So . . . you got a horse I can buy?”

“I reckon, seeing as how it's you, and considering what you been through, I don't figure Russell, Majors, and Waddell ought to mind too much. Yeah, Hollister, I'll sell you a horse.”

I turned toward Hawk.

“Hawk,” I said, “I'd like you to have my horse. Gray Thunder's his name. He's the best horse I ever had. I want to leave you something that's really part of me.”

Hawk nodded. He understood.

“I'll take good care of him, Grayfox,” he said softly.

I gave the money Hammerhead had given me back to him. Then he took me outside and we picked out a horse that he figured would get me back to California. It took the best part of an hour to get it saddled and for Hammerhead to get me fixed up with grub and water . . . and for me to say my goodbyes.

That last part was hardest of all.

How could I say goodbye to someone like Hawk, who'd changed my way of looking at everything and my whole way of thinking—how could I say goodbye, knowing I might not see him again?

Especially so sudden-like.

I hadn't had the chance to prepare for it, and all of a sudden there we were standing face-to-face, me ready to jump up on the horse Hammerhead was holding and ride away west, and him ready to go back up in the hills . . . alone.

Maybe it was best that way. How do you prepare for a moment like that, anyway?

I stuck out my hand.

Hawk took it and grasped it firmly. He didn't shake it, he just held it firmly and strongly while his eyes looked straight into mine.

We held each other's gaze for a long time. There weren't any words to say. I knew now more than ever why the Paiutes had called him Hawk. His eyes were piercing straight into mine, and I knew he knew everything without me having to say a word.

His eyes were looking
inside,
just like he always taught me to do. Maybe I was learning, because I think I saw deeper into
him,
too, than I ever had before.

His eyes got bright and grew thick with tears, just like the tears that were swimming around in my eyes. I reckon what I saw in that moment, as much as it humbles me to say it, was that Hawk loved me and was gonna miss me as much as I would miss him.

“Well, Grayfox,” he finally said, in a husky voice, “looks to me like you're about to finish earning your name.”

I nodded and blinked a few times. If I tried to say anything, I knew I'd break out crying again. And though I knew Hawk wouldn't think less of me for it, it just didn't seem like the right time.

“Do what you got to do, and then you'll be a man, Zack Hollister,” he said. “I'm right proud of you.”

“Thanks, Hawk,” I said, finally choking the words out. “Thanks for everything.”

“God go with you, son.”

He shook my hand, then let it go.

For another second our eyes held their final embrace. Then I turned and mounted the horse.

“Miracle Springs,” I said down to him. “You can always get in touch with me there . . . or find me, if you get a hankering to see California.”

Hawk laughed. “I just may take you up on that, Grayfox,” he said.

I took the reins in my hands, spun around, dug in my heels, and galloped away. I glanced back for one final wave, then turned again and didn't look back until I was out of sight over the next ridge heading west.

I couldn't have seen him then if I had. My eyes were full of tears again, and I just clung tight with my knees and hoped the horse knew the way well enough to stay on the trail.

The ride back across the desert of the Great Basin was miserably hot and dry, and after the first day or two, I found my pace slowing. 'Course I'd have killed the horse if I hadn't. But also, once my sights were set on home, I became less anxious about hurrying.

There were a lot of things I needed to think about first.

Most of the time I was hardly aware of the country I was riding through. It was hardly boring anymore, now that I knew its secrets, but my mind was so full of different kinds of thoughts that I didn't notice much. It seemed like everything Hawk had told me over the past year made sense in a whole new light. The inner eyes he was always talking about had opened and suddenly a lot of things came clear.

That was another thing he said—that once you make up your mind to
do
something and then follow through and do it, your understanding would follow, but you can't
understand
until you
do
. Now I remembered him saying that, and I was seeing it happen right inside my own brain. The second I set my sights on home, everything started to make sense.

I thought about how Hawk had drawn out Jack Demming that night around the campfire, got him to talking about his father. I saw it all so clearly now, how he wanted me to see that
everyone
has things they can hold against their folks, if that's what they're determined to do. Everybody's got the choice whether to turn grudges into hate, like Demming had, or to turn them the other way, into forgiveness and strength of character . . . like Hawk had.

One of the things I saw had to do with Hawk himself. I saw that a lesser man would probably have tried to get me to stay with him. It was obvious he enjoyed having me there with him. He'd said so more than once. He could have tried to make me even more dissatisfied with home and tried to talk me out of going back and kept me to himself.

But instead of taking advantage of my problems with Pa, Hawk tried to help me work them out. He never tried to make himself
look good in my eyes, but he always tried to make me look at Pa and myself more honestly.

I saw what a sacrificing thing Hawk had done, even when it meant him having to be alone again, by forcing me to face up to my situation and then sending me—almost forcing me in one way of looking at it—to go back home and make it right. When we said goodbye, he didn't even say he'd miss me. He didn't want to do anything to make it harder for me to leave.

One night as I lay down on the hard desert ground by myself, and then as I drifted off to sleep beside the fire I'd made, I dreamed about Hawk. I saw his face smiling at me, almost like he was looking down on me as I lay there.

Remembering it the next day, I realized that Hawk really was one of the best friends I'd ever had
because
of how he made me look at myself and then, when he figured the time was right, pushed me back toward home. He was a real friend because he cared more about me than himself.

I realized a lot of things about Pa too. And probably the strongest realization was the simplest of all—that
I was the son of Drummond Hollister,
and that in a bunch of ways I was who I was because of
him
.

I'd been so quick to criticize him and to think he'd done me wrong in a lot of ways. But I now saw that much of what I valued about myself had come straight from him. I was more like him than I'd ever realized. He'd taught me more than I'd ever been aware.

I'd been so quick to credit Hawk for teaching me so many things—and he had. Yet for years Pa had been quietly building into me too. I'd just been so confused by the brokenness of his mirror that I hadn't let myself see how many good ways he shaped my life and who I was.

For instance, I'd saved Hawk's life—and probably my own too—because I knew how to handle a rifle. When I shot the pistol out of Demming's hand, that was Pa's training coming through. He gave me my first rifle and taught me how to use it.

Here's another thing—I'd gone off to try to find Laughing Waters even after I was safely away from the Paiute camp. I didn't have to do that. I could have just tried to save my own skin instead of risking my life for an Indian girl I'd never seen. And
why
had I gone riding into danger without even thinking twice about it? I'd seen Pa make sacrifices for the rest of us dozens of times without ever thinking
about it. Now I saw that by watching him, some of that same quality had got into me . . . without me even knowing it.

Then I thought about Pa leaving Ma and us kids so many years before, when we still lived in New York. That was something I reckon I was angry with him about all this time. But now I began to realize that maybe Pa had done it
in order to keep the danger away from us
.

If he'd been around men like Buck Krebbs and Jack Demming, it made sense that he'd been trying to protect us from harm by getting as far away as he could. They both tried to follow his trail—and maybe he knew they would. Maybe he knew we would never be safe with him. So he left, as hard as it must've been . . .
for our good
.

It was just exactly what I did to lure Demming away from Laughing Waters—getting him to follow me so the danger wouldn't be so close to her. And all that time, without knowing it, I was following the example of just what Pa had done!

In so many ways, I was just like Pa!

Hawk taught me how to look for things in the desert, how to see what the birds and weather and terrain out there were saying, how to find water. But it was Pa that helped shape me into the person I was. It was Pa who made me the kind of person that
wanted
to look and see and always find more.

Suddenly talk after talk with Pa came back to me, times we'd be together in the mine, and he'd be teaching me things just like Hawk.

“You see there, Zack,” I remembered him saying, “you see where that line of quartz runs out?”

He pointed with his finger down along the wall of the mine, and I followed with my eyes.

“That tells me there's likely more quartz back there behind this wall someplace. Usually when it runs out so sudden like that, it pops back up again. Only trick is knowing where it's gonna do it!”

Then Pa's laugh came back to me, as I remembered him and me leaving the mine that day, his arm slung over my shoulder as we talked back and forth all the way down to the house.

I heard him laughing more and more these days in my memory, and it made me sad to think I'd forgotten how much fun we used to have together. He
had
been a fun pa to be with, to work with, to sweat with . . . until I'd let myself believe the lies and let the anger and independence get hold of me.

I regretted all that now.

Then I remembered something else Pa'd told me, not only that day but lots of times.

“What you gotta realize, son,”
he said,
“is that there's always more gold back inside
this hill. We can't see it . . . but it's
there. The trick is learning to see what most folks
can't—learning to see into the middle of the
mountain . . . learning to sense where the vein is, even though
your eyes can't see it.”

I couldn't believe it! Pa had been teaching me to look
inside
things long before I'd ever met Hawk!

And then I started to realize one more thing about Pa and about how much like him I was. I'd been angry with Pa all this time for leaving his family to go off alone. But what about me? What had I done but
that very thing
? I'd run off too . . . and I didn't have any reason for it other than feeling sorry for myself!

And Pa had eventually taken responsibility back on his shoulders. He faced up to his past mistakes and had admitted everything to Sheriff Rafferty. He was even willing to face going to jail if it came to that. He didn't try to run away from his past and hide from what he'd done. He'd owned up to it all . . . like a man.

He'd shown that greater and deeper kind of bravery, just as Hawk talked about—the willingness to face what was inside himself.

Pa
had
that kind of courage!

Did I have as much courage as my own pa? Like Hawk had forced me to ask: Did I have the guts to take responsibility for what I had done and be fully the man I now saw Pa was?

I was riding west toward California, on my way to find out the answer to that question.