As Mo’s grave was being closed, Rebecca walked over to her mother’s grave. There was still a mound of freshly turned dirt over it, not yet having settled. She looked at the tombstone.
JANIE JENSEN DAVENPORT
1846–1890
“A fallen flower has returned to the branch”
“I’m going back home, Mama,” Rebecca said quietly. “But I will keep you in my heart, forever.”
She stood there looking down at her mother’s grave for a long moment, then she turned away. When she did, she saw Tom standing about twenty yards behind her.
“Tom!” she called.
Tom turned quickly, and walked away.
November 20
When Rebecca showed up at the holding pens on the day they were to depart Dodge, she saw the men moving through the holding pens, urging the cows through the long chutes to the open ground, where others were bunching them up into one large, manageable herd. Even as they did this, the leadership among the beeves was being established. Animals that had remained docile while in the pen now began to affirm their authority. The cowboys allowed them to do this because they knew that the herd would be led home, not by them, but by the leadership exhibited by the more assertive cattle.
One of the riders inside the pen pushing the cows out was Tom Whitman. Rebecca stared at him, trying to make eye contact, but he was either too busy to notice her, or he was purposely avoiding looking at her.
“You’ll be driving the hoodlum wagon,” Dalton said. “I drove it up here, but with Mo gone now, Clay is a man short, and there’s no way you could actually ride herd.”
Rebecca didn’t tell Dalton that she had ridden as a cowboy with Walter Hannah’s herd when they came up from the Rocking H Ranch. Along the way she had ridden point, swing, and drag. She had cut cows out of the herd, and she had run down cows who had gotten away.
“You aren’t going to have any problem with driving the hoodlum wagon, are you?”
“No. No problem.”
“Good. Maria and Mrs. Jensen are driving the chuck wagon, so you won’t get lost or anything. All you have to do is follow along behind them.”
Rebecca could have told Dalton that she made the trip up here as a cowboy on a cattle drive, and that she wasn’t likely to get lost. But she held her tongue.
After settling accounts with the manager of the holding pens, the trail cattle were brought together into one herd, then pushed down to the bank of the Arkansas River. The stage of water in the Arkansas made it easily fordable, so Clay pushed them on across. There was also a bridge available and the bridge was utilized by the two wagons.
Once safely over the river, they made plans to camp at Crooked Creek, which was just about six miles south of the Arkansas. There, they would organize for the 450-mile drive that lay ahead of them.
“I am the foreman and trail boss,” Clay said. “But I confess that this is new to me in that I haven’t worked Angus cattle before. Duff, you’ve been around them for a long time. How do they trail?”
“We found out when we trailed down to Cheyenne from Sky Meadow that if you bell one of the leaders, we shouldn’t have any trouble,” Duff said. “And as long as we can keep that steer going in the right direction, the others will follow along behind.”
“With Longhorns we could average about fifteen miles a day. How does that track with the Angus?”
“I think we’ll have no trouble in doing that,” Duff said.
“If we can do fifteen miles a day that would put us on track to be back home by the middle of December. But with winter coming on, we may not do that well. Still, I think that’s what we should shoot for. I would like to be back home by Christmas.”
Clay set the watch for the first night, and Sally and Maria served a delicious dinner of fried beef and potatoes.
After dinner, they all sat around the campfire, not only for the warmth but for the camaraderie. Duff played his bagpipes, which was a treat to Clay, Dusty, Dalton, and Maria, who had never heard pipes before. Rebecca had heard them, and enjoyed them immensely. Dusty played the guitar, then both he and Clay prevailed upon Tom to perform.
“What does Tom do?” Smoke asked.
“He calls ’em soliloquies,” Dusty said. “They’re words from plays, but not just any kind of words and not just any kinds of plays. They are the damndest words and plays you ever heard of, just like the ones in them high-falutin’ plays that sometimes comes touring around.”
“That ought to be right up your alley, Falcon,” Smoke said. Then he went on to explain to the others that Falcon’s brother and sister were New York actors.
“Oh, Tom, please do a soliloquy for us,” Sally asked. “Do you know Puck’s soliloquy from Midsummer Night’s Dream? The one that begins, ‘Thou speakest aright, I am that merry wanderer of the night’?”
“I know it,” Tom said.
“When I was teaching school, the children used to love that one,” Sally said. “Please, do it for us.”
“Shall I stand and ham it up? Or sit here and just say it?” Tom asked.
“Oh, you must stand. Look at it this way. You aren’t here on the barren plains of Kansas,” Falcon said. “You are on stage at the Booth Theater in New York. You wouldn’t be sitting cross-legged there, would you?”
Tom smiled, stood up, cleared his throat, then struck a dramatic pose and extending his right arm, palm up, began to speak, rolling his R’s and putting emphasis in just the right places.
Thou speakest aright
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foaclass="underline"
And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.
But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon.
The others around the fire laughed and applauded. Tom took a good-natured and elaborate bow, smiling as he made eye contact with everyone there.
Including Rebecca.
Rebecca held Tom’s eyes for a long moment before she broke away. What did she see in his eyes? Sadness over what might have been between them? Anger at her leaving? Condemnation over how he found her?
It was a long time before Rebecca went to sleep that night. Tom Whitman was less than twenty feet away. What would he do if she moved her bedroll over beside his? Would he welcome her? Would he turn away in disgust?