A Man with a Past by Mary Connealy

FOUR

Falcon climbed off the train in Bear Claw Pass, glad to be on ground that wasn’t rolling.

“Pa, is that you?”

Falcon’s head snapped around. He raised his eyes to meet a brown-headed man an inch or so shorter than him, with eyes that were all too familiar. Even a man without a mirror knew his own eyes when he looked at ’em. They were a strange light brown with stripes of gold.

The man was mighty confused if he thought someone mostly his own age was his pa. “I ain’t no one’s pa, mister.”

“Of course you’re not. You must be Wyatt Hunt. I’m Kevin. Your . . . your . . . your b-brother from Kansas.”

“I ain’t Wyatt Hunt, neither.” Kevin? A brother from Kansas? Falcon hadn’t been told of any brother in Kansas in this mess. “I’m here to meet Wyatt Hunt.”

Kevin stared blankly at him. Falcon narrowed his eyes and repeated, “I’m here to meet Wyatt Hunt, my brother.”

“If Wyatt is your brother, and he’s my brother, then . . .”

A young woman and a younger boy, both blond as sunlight, started talking at Kevin.

Clomping boots on the train station platform accompanied a new voice, one with a strange drawl. “I reckon we’re all three brothers.”

Falcon turned. So did the others.

They faced a tall, lean man with overlong brown hair clamped down with a Stetson.

No sign of Pa in this man—except those same eyes. Ma had called them hazel.

“I’m Wyatt Hunt.” The man with the clomping boots tugged his Stetson as if in greeting, but nothing in his expression was welcoming.

Falcon wasn’t an educated man. No school within walking distance of his cabin. But he wasn’t stupid. He stood right now with the pure truth of his father being more than an abandoning liar. He was also a low-down cheat.

“So y’all need help buryin’ Pa?” Falcon asked. “I’d be glad to tamp down the dirt hard enough to break both his legs.”

———

No help needed for a burying, but Falcon got himself a ride out to the ranch he now owned. A ride with a bossy woman Wyatt had brought along to town, while Kevin got to ride his own horse, just like a real grown-up.

But that bossy woman, he’d heard her called Win. Odd name . . . of course his name was the same as a bird, so he’d probably best not judge. . . . Win had declared there were horses by the dozen at this ranch he’d inherited, and a third of them would be his, so it’d be dumb to buy a horse.

She liked to sass, but he took some satisfaction in seeing she tended to only do it with him when she was out of reach.

He’d never hurt no woman, but this one he didn’t mind scaring a little.

He rode in the back end of the wagon, his satchel, bedroll, and rifle to hand. They traveled through a scattered herd of black cows most all the way out to the Rolling Hills Ranch, and all were part of the Hunt herd. Falcon was figuring out what a ranch was, but it made no sense to him. A man needed one horse. If he was ambitious, he might have a packhorse, too, but Falcon had little enough to pack. Enough cows to give a man meat and milk . . . and all the rest was for show.

A ranch seemed to be some strange possession meant to gather up more money than a man could spend in a lifetime. And that was before arriving at the fancy house, big enough for a family of ten . . . downstairs. Who cut the wood to heat this thing?

There was a large barn no one should need if he had a reasonable number of horses and cows. And other smaller buildings he heard called a bunkhouse and a foreman’s house. A ramrod’s house . . . what in tarnation was a ramrod? It sounded like something a man used to whack pesky intruders over the head.

And that’s where he got told to sleep.

Being told where to ride. Being told he didn’t need his own horse. Now being told where to sleep.

It made him feel like a child. More than that, it told him he wasn’t good enough for their fancy house. Like an unwanted guest. And likely that described him pretty well. Might even be fair.

Didn’t mean he liked it.

He walked into his assigned house and dropped off his bedroll. He took a smaller fur bag out of his satchel, slinging it over his head and across his torso, and headed straight for the hills. He considered asking about a horse, but Wyatt had taken off, and the only people here were as much guests as him.

Didn’t matter. He liked stretching his legs. And those mountains called to him. As he hiked, he headed for the high ground. He wanted to just keep going. Never come back. If he had it to do over, he’d’ve brought his satchel and bedroll along. Now he had ’em to fetch sometime, elsewise he might never have gone back.

He found a likely trail on an uphill slope, leading into thick woods. They called to him like he was a horned owl looking for the treetops. When those trees closed over his head, he felt like he could breathe for the first time since he left the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Oh, it was mighty different. In the mountains back home, everything bloomed. There were flowers everywhere in the spring and summer. For a time, as he walked along, he was homesick enough he couldn’t enjoy this land. He’d come from a cabin set back in a near forest of mountain laurels. His home was on a ridge, and along it strung azaleas and rhododendrons. The trees bloomed as big and beautiful as the bushes. And tucked beneath the bushes were wildflowers in every color and size.

Here in these mountains, it was all leafed-out oaks and maples and cottonwoods. He recognized them. And the pine trees with their clean smell. But there were other trees he didn’t know. Clumps of trees, tall and skinny, with leaves on them that danced in the wind, almost like the whole tree quaked.

He wondered about the animals. He’d heard tell of grizzly bears and elk with huge racks of antlers. And deer, mule deer much bigger than the deer back home.

There were big cats. He had mountain lions back home, but he’d heard these were bigger. Meaner.

He knew people liked to brag up their own land, so he only believed about half of what he’d heard. But he kept his eyes wide open just the same, lest a grizzly taller than a man came roaring at him from the forest.

There were differences aplenty, but he let loose of missing home to take on the exploring. As he did, the new hills and trees eased a lot of his temper. It would be easy to just walk on forever. Find new lands. Find an empty wilderness, build a cabin, and never come back. Never have to face the angry people back at the Rolling Hills Ranch.

Not sure what he’d do, he settled in to walk. He was a long-legged galoot with tireless strength. He could set a fast pace and keep it up for hours. He had his rifle over his shoulder and a pistol on his hip, he wasn’t careless enough to leave them behind. He could live forever out here. He’d hunt up a few rabbits or catch some fish if he found a stream, roast a meal, sleep, then just go on and on, up into the hills.

He could hunt his clothes, bring down a couple of deer, and build a shelter from downed trees and stones. He could live up here for good.

As he walked, he thought of how Kevin had asked, “Pa, is that you?”

It dug at him. It’d always just been him and his ma. Her folks were long gone. Pa had taken off. And they were a long way from neighbors. Ma had never talked much about Pa ’ceptin’ he was dead. Though she had told him he looked like his father.

But then, she’d died before Falcon was full grown. He’d thought little enough of looking like his pa after that. But even before she died, she hadn’t talked of him much. The two of them were busy diggin’ a living out of that hardscrabble mountain dirt. A garden was hard to bring along. They always managed it, but it took both of them working long days to raise and put up enough food for the winter. There wasn’t much time for spinning yarns about a man who’d deserted them.

If a third of this land was his—and who could know where the boundaries lay?—then maybe he could have a stretch up here.

He didn’t see any cows. Would they pasture cattle on a mountainside? They raised cows in the mountains of Tennessee. Not huge herds, but a milk cow or two could live on this rugged land. He wanted to be farther from all of them than this, but it just might work to be up here.

But he had no need of a stretch of land from his pa. The land was his by law, but he had little enough interest in it.

Again, he heard Kevin say, “Pa, is that you?”

It’d struck him. Kevin had for one minute believed he was seeing his father again.

Falcon knew what it was to long for him. To miss a man he could barely remember. To love someone he had just found out was a betrayer and a cheat, a man worthy of hate.

That moment, that tone in Kevin’s voice, was what would keep Falcon here. He found he liked the idea of having a family. Even one as mixed-up as this one.

He’d walk awhile. Maybe even for a few days. But he’d go back after that and sleep in the ramrod’s house. Get to know Kevin and Wyatt. See if there was anything to this family besides anger and betrayal.

But not yet. For now, he walked on and let the mountains and woods call him home.