At the jail, Sergeant Trevis ushered them into the same small, ugly visiting room, Sammie holding Becky’s hand tight, her own hand cold and tense. Becky hardly noticed the scarred table and two metal chairs. The afternoon heat inside the small room was nearly intolerable, and the street noise added to their stress. Becky sat down with her back to the window. Sammie stood waiting near the door, tense and watchful, listening to footsteps coming down the hall.
Officer Jimson stood behind Morgan, and as her daddy entered, Sammie flew straight into his arms, clinging to him, pushing her face against his chest. Morgan pulled out the empty chair, sat down with Sammie on his lap. He kissed her cheek, buried his face in her pale, clean hair. At the other side of the table Becky sat quietly, trying not to send emotional vibes, wanting to let Sammie have her say without interference or distraction. Even Sergeant Trevis seemed tuned in to Sammie’s urgency, he stood back against the wall, looking at the floor, remaining very still and disconnected as if his attention were miles away.
When at last Sammie pulled away from her daddy’s hug, she took his face in her two small hands, looking deeply at him. Her words startled Becky, they were not what she’d expected. “I dreamed of the cowboy,” Sammie said. “He’s coming, Daddy.”
Becky looked down, trying to hide her frown, her hands clenched out of sight under the table. Whatwas this, what was this about the old man?
“He’s coming now, Daddy, he’s coming here to help you.”
Morgan looked at her, puzzled.
“I knew he’d come,” Sammie said sagely, looking deeply at him. “I dreamed before that he would, I dreamed about the airplane. That’s part of how he’s coming, he was so happy with escaping in the plane. He’s coming, Daddy. But not right away. There will be jail for him, too. I dreamed of prison walls around him, but not here. Far away from here.
“Prison walls around you both,” she said very low, glancing at Sergeant Trevis and then away. “But at first in different places.” She put her arms around Morgan, pressed her forehead against his chest, speaking half muffled against him. “You’ll be in prison, Daddy, a big prison right here near home. But then the cowboy will come there, you’ll be together then. You’ll both be there, inside that high wall. And then, Daddy—then the cowboy will help you.”
She looked at Morgan hard.“You’ll get away from there, Daddy. In the dark night the cowboy will help you get away. Only the cowboy can save you, he’ll help you prove the truth, he will help you, Daddy.”
Morgan looked at Sammie a long time, his expression stern and unchanging, but tears welled in his eyes. When he looked up at Becky, a long look over the child’s head, his gaze was filled with fear, with disbelief, with dismay at the thought of prison.
“How do you know?” Morgan whispered. “How can you know this?” But then from somewhere deep inside, Becky saw his calm certainty rise. She watched Morgan’s faith surface, his faith in Sammie, sure and trusting, his faith in a talent and knowledge that no ordinary human would possess. “How can you know?” he repeated.
“The cowboy,” Sammie said, looking deeply at him. “My dream,my cowboy. My dream told me. The cowboybelongs to us.He doesn’t know that, he doesn’t know about us, not yet. It will be a long time,” she said, “a long journey. I dreamed of snow and prisons and then he is sick, but then he will get better and he will come to us and he will help you.”
Sergeant Trevis seemed to be paying no attention, looking blankly away as if his mind were on something far distant, as he took in Sammie’s whispers.
Again Sammie took Morgan’s face in her hands. “You mustn’t lose hope, Daddy. You must take what comes, until the cowboy is here with us, until he comes to help us.”
Across from them, all Becky could do was wipe away her own tears, rise from her chair, come around the table and put her arms around them, holding them close, holding the two of them close to her, wondering, frightened but strangely hopeful.
32
As the Stearman lifted higher into the night wind, Lee pulled the blanket over his legs, looking down over the lower wing where the pale desert caught the last gleam of light. For a second just below them he saw the gray jogging free, the good gelding ducking his nose and switching his tail, smart and sassy at his own release. He’d have a fine taste of freedom and, when he got thirsty and hungry, he’d head for the one lone ranch off beyond the little dirt strip, he was already moving in that direction. No horseman, seeing the gray, would let him wander. As the plane passed over him he shied, bucked a little, and broke into a gallop.
When Mark banked sharply, lifting toward the mountains heading east, Lee leaned over scanning the foothills, but it was too dark among the massed rocks to see the higher pinnacle where he had buried the money. How long before he’d be back, to dig it up again? And what would happen to him, meantime? He began to worry about someone finding his stash, then he worried about the saddlebags and canvas bags rotting, or pack rats digging in and chewing up the money for nests. Sitting hunched under the blanket in the hopper of the front cockpit, he got himself all worked up worrying, like some little old woman.
Well, hell, the money was safe enough, it wasn’t going anywhere. He was too edgy, he’d been nervous ever since he accidentally killed Zigler. He didn’t like the thoughts he’d had, either, back there in the post office, wanting to hurt that young guard, he didn’t like that it had even crossed his mind to kill him. That young fellow wasn’t Zigler, he didn’t deserve to die, he wasn’t anything like that scum that Lee had wasted.
Mark had said they’d be following the Colorado River most of the way to Vegas but, looking out over the plane’s nose, Lee couldn’t see much but the night closing in on the deeper blackness of the low mountains, just their crowns catching the last gleam of daylight. Soon between the mountains they hit a patch of turbulence, the plane bucking, the wind so cold Lee pulled his jacket collar up, settled deeper in his seat, and pulled the blanket tighter. When he felt a tap on his shoulder, he looked back to see Mark shoving a wadded-up coat at him. He grabbed at it, the wind trying to tear it away. He got it into the cockpit and gladly pulled it on. Soon, bundled in the coat and blanket, he grew warmer—warm all but inside his chest where it felt like his breath had turned to ice. Hunching down in the coat collar like a turtle to warm his breath, he thought about the wagon trains that had crossed the desert and crossed those bare ranges below him, pioneers stubbornly heading west: a trip that took many months, where he and Mark were looking at just over an hour.
Some of the mountains those folks had crossed would take three teams of horses or oxen to pull one wagon up, with everyone pushing from behind. And on the other side, going down, trees had to be cut to use for drags to keep the wagons from getting away, from falling wheel over canvas, dragging their good teams with them. Those men and women, crossing a foreign land hauling their loaded wagons over the frozen mountains, they had had no idea what lay ahead, and they’d had only themselves to rely on. But they kept on, despite starvation, frozen limbs, despite sickness and death, despite the ultimate desperate measures that had kept some of them alive, that had shocked the generations who came after them, had shocked descendants who might not be here at all, if not for what they called, looking back, the most heinous of crimes.
Lee didn’t know how to judge what was not his to judge, all he knew right now was, if it was cold in this open hopper, the winters during those crossings had been a hundred times colder, down there among the wild mountains.
As a kid, growing up in South Dakota, he’d thought there’d never be an end to winter. Every chore seemed twice as hard, his hands froze to any metal he touched, ropes frozen stiff, even the flakes of hay froze hard. Barn doors stuck, latches wouldn’t work, ice had to be broken from water buckets several times a day and at night, too, so the animals could drink. He’d hated winter, andhe’d had a home to live in, they’d had a fire at night to warm them and where his mother cooked, they’d had plenty of food, good beef from their own cattle, grain and root stores, but still he’d grumbled. Grumbled about splitting the firewood, grumbled about dragging hay over the snow to the waiting cattle. He’d even complained when he had to slog through deep snow to the barn to do his chores where he’d be cozy and warm among the warm animals.