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.”