MATTHEW TURNED SIX AND GREW AN INCH. HE RANGED THROUGH the sage for a mile in every direction, the coyote at his heels, and ate like there was no tomorrow. Sarah seemed to grow along with her son. As he bloomed in the high desert air, she stood straighter and laughed more often, and her skin took on a warm tone.
Matthew continued to call her Momma, and the delight never palled for her. Often when he would call from another room she would pause before she answered, waiting to hear him shout “Momma!” again. Every night, Sarah read him some of the letters she’d sent him during the long years they’d been apart. Now when she cried over them, the little boy would twine his arms around her neck and pet her cheek until she was comforted.
Coby settled into life at the stop without a hitch, quiet and reserved, with a low-key sense of humor. Sarah, the child, and Karl all provided a sense of home, and he was content to stay.
Karl didn’t seem to age at all; the white streaks at his temples might have been a little wider or the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes a little deeper. Some evenings, when Sarah was busy with her mending and Coby was whittling or playing solitaire by the fire, Karl gave Matthew his lessons, the two of them poring over the books brought from Reno. Karl would sit with his eyeglasses perched on his nose, the boy with his lips moving in painful concentration as they unraveled the mysteries of the alphabet together.
Matthew had an agile mind and learned quickly. His imagination was active, and with Coby, who was almost a boy himself, he would sit spellbound by the hour while Sarah read aloud from A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, and, by spring, The Three Musketeers. Matthew was so open and affectionate, so fearless in his play and cheerful about his chores, that it was a matter of concern when in late spring he grew cranky and sullen.
Sarah dumped the envelope of seeds into her palm and knelt by the neat rows she’d spent the morning hoeing. She’d shoveled manure and chopped straw for the garden and dug it under with a spade, but the desert earth turned up a pale, unpromising dusty brown. She pinched up a few seeds and was sprinkling them carefully along the furrow when her elbow was jostled and she spilled the lot.
“Matthew, that’s the third time you’ve bumped me. Stay back, you’re spoiling the garden.” He moved away a foot or so to crouch like an infant gargoyle on a row she’d already planted. “You’re on my lettuce. All the way back. Over there.” She pointed outside the garden fence. “If you want to watch, you can sit on that barrel. If you want to help, you’re going to have to go to the shed and get another trowel out of the toolbox like I told you.”
The boy watched her with round accusing eyes, his mouth pressed shut.
The anger went out of her for a moment and she dropped her hands in her lap. “What’s the matter with you lately, Mattie? Are you sick? Do you hurt anywhere?” She pulled off a glove and lay her hand on his brow. “You feel all right.” Matthew said nothing; his usually expressive face was still and the skin around his eyes dark and drawn. “You’re going to bed early tonight,” Sarah declared. “You’re so sleepy there’s circles under your eyes.”
“No.”
“Yes,” she insisted. “There’ll be no more about it.”
He didn’t argue but retreated to the barrel at a snail’s pace, scuffing his feet over her neatly turned rows. He sat there, immobile, while she finished the carrots and began on the onions. Moss Face trotted out from under the house to whine and bark for him to come down and play, but when Matthew would only hold him too tight and pet him, he ran off again.
The sun was low in the sky and the afternoon had lost its warmth when Sarah took off her gardening gloves and smock and shook the dirt from her dress. “Half done. I’ll finish tomorrow. Coby and Karl ought to be getting in. We don’t own that many cows. Besides, it’ll be dark soon. Looks like we’ve company coming, too.” She squinted into the slanting light. “Freighters. The front one looks to be Jerome Jannis, doesn’t it?”
Matthew’s sharp eyes fixed on the distance. “It’s Mr. Jannis.”
“Then that must be Charley behind, eating dust. You’d almost think those two were yoked together.” She gathered up her tools. “Hon, would you run these over to the shed and put them away for me? I’d best get supper on the stove.”
An obstinate look came into his eyes and he wouldn’t look at her. Pushing his hands deep in his trouser pockets, he poked the toe of his shoe at an unfortunate beetle crawling by.
Sarah took a deep breath and blew it out through her nose. “Never mind. It’ll be faster to do it myself.” She dumped the trowel and gloves into her smock and gathered up the corners. Matthew ran after he as she hurried to the shed, and hovered by the door, anxious not to lose sight of her. “What’s got into you?” she said as she stumbled over him on her way out. He tagged behind her as she crossed the yard, following so close that he trod on her heels. With an exasperated sigh, she turned on him.
“Go on. Go play with Moss Face, air yourself off. The way you’ve been behaving lately, I can do without your help in the kitchen tonight.” Again the accusing look. “Go on now, you’re moping around. Run around some, maybe you’ll sleep better.” Still he hung about, never out of reach of her skirttail. She looked about for something to occupy him for a while.
“There.” She pointed to the eastern road. Karl and Coby rode half a mile out, coming into the stop from the opposite direction as the freightwagons. Shadows crossed the valley, black fingers reaching over the road and touching the mountains to the east.
“Run and meet Karl and Coby,” Sarah said to her son. “If you ask Karl nice, I bet he’ll give you a ride in.”
Matthew looked down the road. “It’ll be dark.” There was just the beginning of a whine in his voice, and it firmed Sarah’s resolution.
“Not if you run. Scoot!” She swatted his behind and he took off as if all the devils in hell were after him, calling, “Karl! Coby! Karl!” at the top of his lungs before he had run as far as the gate.
The riders and the freightwagons arrived at the stop within minutes of each other, and Karl and Coby helped with the unhitching.
Jerome and Charley had started driving mule and rig over the desert early in the year, and now made a regular run. Round Hole had seen them several times a month since February. Both were in their forties, redfaced, round headed, and thick through the neck and shoulders. Jerome did most of the talking for the two of them; Charley seemed to be happy with the role of straight man and audience. They were immensely strong: one night, on a bet, the two of them had lifted an eight-year-old mule and its rider. They’d turned as blackfaced as storm clouds, and their necks had grown even thicker and redder, but they’d done it.
Matthew hung around the men, getting in the way, until Coby lifted him up onto the boxes in the back of one of the wagons, where he wouldn’t get stepped on. When they started to the house without him, he cried out so frantically that Karl swatted his behind. “Don’t scream like that, Matthew. Not unless you are really hurt. It’s like the little boy who cried ‘Wolf.’ Remember that story? I will always come at a run when you scream, so will your mother and Coby.”
The younger man nodded. “If you’re not in trouble when I get there, you will be when I leave.” Coby smacked his fist into his palm, but there was no malice in it and it helped take the sting out of Karl’s lecture.
Sarah served the after-dinner coffee on the porch. It was a brisk spring night, the air fresh and sweet with the smell of sage, and the sky close with stars. Coby was indoors at the bar, writing a letter to his creditor in Elko. Karl, Jerome, and Charley sat with their chairs tilted back against the side of the house, their ankles propped on the porch rail, all in like postures. The wagoners smoked pipes, the bowls glowing orange when they drew on the tobacco.
Sarah handed the coffee cups to Karl and he passed them to the other men before she sat down on the top step and folded her hands around her own mug.
“Do you want me to get your shawl?” Karl offered.
“No thanks, Karl. I’m fine.”
Jerome winked at the exchange. “You’ll spoil ’er,” he warned. He struck a match on the sole of his partner’s boot and grinned. Screwing up his face, one eye completely closed, he sucked the flame into the pipe. The light showed Matthew hunched, small in the corner, almost under Charley’s chair. He was hugging his knees, listening to the talk. The pointed snout of the coyote protruded from behind him, his neckerchief red in the sudden light.
Sarah’s eye caught her son’s. “Isn’t it time somebody was doing his chores?”
Matthew curled down smaller and busied himself with rescuing the dog’s tail: Moss Face had swished it precariously near the spot where Charley’s chair leg was bound to come crashing down eventually.
“Matthew,” Sarah said in her high-priority tone. “Get those plates scraped. It’ll only take you a minute, and Moss Face would probably appreciate the leavings. Go on now, honey.”
“I want to stay,” Matthew said in a voice meant to be too low to be heard.
“Go on now.”
With agonizing slowness, the child uncurled himself and crawled under the propped-up legs of the men. He crept all the way out, flat on his belly, and lay still, gazing out through the bars into the stars-pricked darkness.
“Matthew, I’m going to get mad in half a minute if you don’t get a move on.” Sarah rapped the wood with her knuckles.
“Mrs. Ebbitt,” Matthew muttered peevishly under his breath.
It was not so low it didn’t reach Karl’s ears, poised as he was above the boy. His chair slammed down and he planted one foot on either side of the prone child. “That does it.” He lifted Matthew and strode into the house.
Sarah maintained her seat on the steps, but winced every time the crack of Karl’s hand on her son’s bare bottom sounded through the open door. Several minutes later, Karl reemerged.
“Did you send him to bed?” she asked.
“No. He’s scraping plates.”
Sarah met and held Karl’s eyes for a moment until, conscious of the wagoners’ attention, she went on to talk of other things.
Later, Karl helped Sarah with the dishes, a habit he maintained despite the ribbing he got. His sleeves rolled up, he scrubbed the bottom of a cast-iron kettle while Sarah dried the crockery and put it away. They had been worrying the subject of Matthew’s sullenness all through the clean-up.
“Where is he?” Karl asked. “Is he still sulking over his spanking?”
Sarah hung a cup on one of the nails over the kitchen counter. “I imagine he’s probably out with Jerome and Charley. Whenever they’re through here lately, he can’t leave them alone. He loves listening to the men. He’s getting to be quite a little man himself. Did you ever notice him copying you? The way you walk? Sometimes he’ll walk beside you all straight and long-stepping, just like you do.”
Karl laughed, pleased. “He’d better not pattern himself on me.”
“Why not? You turned out to be a fine man.”
Karl answered her with a wry smile.
“Speaking of you, tomorrow’s the coach from Bishop. Ross’ll be driving, so you better plan to be somewhere else.”
“I’m tired of leaving you when the old-timers come through.”
“I know. I’m okay here. We’ve got Coby now, and he’s a worker.”
“I’ll go over to Fish Springs Ranch. I’ve been meaning to look at a couple of bulls that Ernie Fex has, anyway. I’ve learned a lot about cattle from Coby and from the books we ordered. I think I know what to look for. I’d like to try to improve our herd. What do you think?”
“It never cost anything to look.” Finished drying, she draped her dishcloth through the oven-door handle. “Do you think he’s coming down with something? He’s a good boy. I don’t know what’s eating at him. I’ve tried to talk to him but he clams up. Two nights this week he woke me, crying-nightmares about the most awful things. Graves opening and the dead bodies coming out. Fever’ll sometimes bring on bad dreams, but he never felt warm or anything.”
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if he outgrows it.” Karl heaved the kettle onto the still-warm stove and swabbed it out with a towel so it wouldn’t rust. “I’d better be getting to bed. Good night.”
Sarah took his hand and laid it against her cheek. The scarred palm was rough and familiar. “Tell Jerome and Charley good night for me. Their beds are made up and there are candles on the bar. And will you send Matthew in? It’s past time he was in bed.”
The porch was bathed in the clear, ghostly glow of a desert moon, just risen, hanging flat and white over the mountains.
“Oooooooo…” A high round sound, eerie in the night. “They claw their way up through the dirt first. Their fingers all cloudy-like from digging. See, they wasn’t buried proper and their chief, he wouldn’t let the medicine man do his mumbo-jumbo over the grave. And so late at night they come pushing up out of the dirt and look for the folks that let them be buried like that without them death rites.”
Jerome sat back in his chair and winked broadly at Charley. Matthew, his eyes seeming to take up all of his face, perched in Karl’s chair, leaning forward.
“What do they do?” Matthew looked nervously into the darkness beyond the porch railing and scrunched unobtrusively closer to Jerome. “When they catch them, I mean.”
Jerome feigned indifference. “Catch who?”
“The people,” Matthew said urgently, “the people that buried them wrong.”
“Oh.” Jerome sucked at his pipe. It was dead. He knocked it on the railing and scraped the bowl with his pocket knife. “That’s the thing, see.” He leaned forward until his face was on a level with the child’s. “They get kind of barmy, being dead and buried like that, and they don’t know who it is has done the actual burying, so when they come looking, it don’t matter who they find. And by this time they don’t see any too good. They’re pretty much moldy and falling part. They go sniffing around outside houses looking for just anybody.”
“I hear they like little boys best,” Charley put in.
“That’s so, I heard that,” Jerome agreed.
By this time, Matthew was crowded so near Jerome he was almost falling off his own chair. “How about people that aren’t Indians?” He glanced fearfully across the black hole of the spring toward the double grave hidden in the high grass.
Jerome saw where he was looking. He sat back, propping his chair against the wall again, and nudged Charley. “White men are even meaner than Indians. Take them two fellas I hear is buried out by the spring. I’m surprised they ain’t dug their way out already, seeing’s they had no proper rites said.”
“Look now.” Charley leaned forward and peered into the dark, pretending to see something. “Look-”
“That will do, Charley.” Karl spoke from the doorway. “You go inside, Matthew. Your mother’s in the kitchen. I’ll be in in a minute.”
Relieved from his awful enthrallment, Matthew sped through the darkened room to his mother.
Karl pulled a chair around and sat down straddling it, his arms crossed on the back. “Have you been telling Matthew ghost stories for a while now?”
“Ooooeee!” Charley laughed. “His eyes get big as a calf’s when Jerome spins one.”
“I’m going to have to ask you not to tell him any more.”
“Come on, Karl,” Jerome said, “all kids like ghost stories. It don’t hurt nothing.”
“Don’t tell him any more.” Karl said firmly. “Don’t tell that boy anything that isn’t true. He likes being with you. He looks up to you. You tell him those stories and he believes them. He’s just a boy, there’s no call to lie to him. He’s been having nightmares. Talk of something else.”
“Hell, Karl, you’re going to let that gal raise up a sissy. Teasing’ll make a man out of him,” Jerome protested.
“I’ve never known fear to make a man out of anyone. I’ve seen it make grown men cry like babies. Don’t lie to the boy.” Karl wished them good night and went inside.
Jerome hawked and spat expertly over the rail. “Jesus! We were just having a little fun with the kid.”
“I, for one, am going to do as he asked,” Charley said. “Karl’s a funny bugger if he gets a hair up his ass over some damn thing or other. Fellow used to drive the stage through here told me he stuffed a greenhorn down the one-holder for kicking his dog.”
Jerome grunted. “Must’ve had more meat on him then; he’s tall, but there ain’t nothing to him.”
“Wiry,” Charley said sagely.
Karl found Sarah and Matthew waiting for him in the kitchen. Matthew was whitefaced and silent, safe on his mother’s lap.
“What is it, Karl?”
“Jerome has been telling him ghost stories.” He sat down across from them. “Come here, Matthew.” Reluctantly the little boy left his mother and came around the end of the table. Karl lifted him onto his bony lap, straddling his knees.
“You mad at me, Karl?” Matthew asked.
“Why would I be mad at you?”
“Because I been scared. Scared of the dark and to be by myself and go in the shed and stuff.”
“No, I’m not mad at you. Everybody gets scared. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I get scared sometimes, and that was one of the scariest stories I’ve heard in a long time. Is that why you wouldn’t tell your mother and me what was wrong? You thought we’d be mad?”
“I was afraid you’d be ashamed of me because I was afraid to go into dark places…like a baby.”
“We’ll never be ashamed of you for being afraid, Matthew. Those stories Jerome and Charley told you aren’t true. Not any of them. Once people are dead, they never come back-maybe because they don’t want to, maybe it’s nicer where they are. I don’t know. But they don’t ever come back. Those two boys buried out by the spring had a proper burial. Your mother read the service from the Bible over their graves. Both of them were good boys-like Coby. Would Coby ever hurt you?”
“No.”
“Neither would these boys. I don’t know what else those two told you, but I’m willing to bet there’s not a grain of truth in it.”
“There’s the ghost of a man drowned in the outhouse that’d pull you down into the hole by your…” He looked at his mother; at six he was well aware of the social restrictions. “…you know.”
“I know,” Karl said. “Beau Van Fleet dug that outhouse two months before your mother leased this place. Nobody has ever died there.”
“People tortured to death by Chief Winnemucca cry at night and look for people to torture.”
“Not true. I doubt Chief Winnemucca ever tortured anybody to death anyway.”
“That’s all,” Matthew said.
“That’s enough.” Karl stood him on the floor between his knees. “Are you still scared?”
“Only a little left-over scared.”
“Can you go wash up and go to bed?”
“I think so.”
“Ask your mother for a candle. If anybody ever tells you anything that scares you again, come and tell your mother or me, and we will tell you if it’s true or not. If not, there’s nothing to be afraid of. All right?” The child nodded. “Now kiss your mother good night and get ready for bed. We’ll look in on you in a few minutes.”
Sarah hugged Matthew tight and kissed him. “Good night, honey. Take this candle, it’s already lit. We’ll be in in a minute.” When he’d gone, she turned, smiling, to Karl. He looked back, strong and square-shouldered, his eyes warm with love for Sarah and her son. “Karl, I think you’ve slept in the tackroom long enough. Come in tonight. Every night.”
He reached for her hand. “Are you sure? People will talk. And not about me, but about you. The gossip could do us harm.”
“I don’t care. I want to be with you in the sight of everybody. Let people talk. I’m tired of hiding and sneaking in our own home.”
Karl spent the night in the main house with Sarah. In the morning the two of them stoically faced down the curious looks and half-heard jokes of the freighters. That afternoon, Karl’s things were moved into the master bedroom with Sarah’s.
Matthew asked why. “To keep a closer eye on you,” his mother told him.
All Colby had to say was, “It’s about time. I’ve been wanting to move into the tackroom for a while now.”
Dizable & Denning couldn’t have cared less; for the first time in years the Round Hole Stop was showing a profit.