Chapter 3

“Rocky, would you show me more about handling my gun?”

“Yeah, Kid, I am. In a gunfight, you may be up against two men instead of just one. Remember you must thumb back the hammer to rotate the cylinder to get to the next live round. You have yourself firing off the first round fine, pulling the gun from your holster, cocking the weapon, depressing the trigger, and bringing the point of the gun onto the target. I can see that you have done that and have it down pat.

“You have fired and hit your target, and the point of your gun is high and off target from the recoil. Bringing your gun down on another target takes more skill while rotating the cylinder by thumbing the hammer to the next round and pulling the trigger. The revolver I have is a single action, meaning you have to cock the gun by using the thumb with your hammer. Your gun is a single action, too, but it feels different, and I’m not entirely familiar with it.

“I know some changes and adjustments to make it easier and faster to shoot and fire. Let me have your gun, and I’ll shoot two rounds, and then I’ll fire mine so you can tell the difference.”

“Where are the other guys? Won’t they want to see this?”

“They went into town. They shouldn’t know how good I am. That will be a good idea, but when you get to shoot, they won’t know how good you are either. A lot of how good they are is brag, and they don’t know how good I am, and I want to keep it that way.”

“Okay, but why are you teaching me and not them?”

“Kid, I believe you are on a mission to right a wrong for the killing of your parents. I will give you a chance at that and keep you alive.”

“Rocky, you are a real friend.”

“Yes. I have taken a liking to you. If I ever had a son, I would want him like you. Enough of that, let me have your gun, and we’ll get on with this.” Rocky was fast, and I could see the difference in his shooting off the two guns. There had to be at least two seconds in him firing off his second shot with his and him firing off mine, as good as he was.

“Well, we will work on you and your gun to get you as good as you can be with that. Maybe we will look for another single action for a spare, and I can do what needs doing with that.”

“I haven’t spent much of my money, you know.”

“I know, but I have quite a bit. Someday, I’ll tell you where I got it.”

Rocky found after a while that he could get off the first round as fast with my single-action gun as he could with his single-action. He seemed to worry more about getting off the second round and said we both would have to work on that.

However, he still worked with me on getting the gun out of its holster, lined up, and firing off the first round. He broke it down into sections where my hand started the downward movement, my finger entered the trigger guard, I pulled the gun and started the upward movement, and I touched off the round to fire the weapon.

He explained many other things that entered into aiming and hitting the mark I was aiming at. “Kid, I have never killed a man, as I have stated before. I’ve shot as many as ten men and hit them in the right shoulder. That most often knocks a man down; if not, it throws him off target. Even if he is swift, my bullet immobilizes his arm, and his gun falls from his hand.

“If your opponent is left-handed, which has happened only once in my lifetime, you aim for his left shoulder. Gunmen aim at the largest target, which is the other man’s body. Either shoulder you aim to hit is a target about six inches wide. If he stands erect, that’s the distance from the edge of him to his neck. If he goes into a crouch, aim lower before releasing the hammer. Theoretically, you have a target six inches wide by sixteen inches vertically.

“Busting up a man’s shoulder, arm, or ribs, you will sleep much better if you are still alive. That’s the code I have lived by and been around for many years. I’d like you to live by the same code, but I guess I have never got into a situation where killing is the only option.”

Rock stared at me to see if I was going to accept this. “Kid, that’s the lesson for today. Go somewhere alone and think about what we have covered.”

It was a great summer as far as I was concerned. I helped with the cattle and could cast a rope and catch one. I worked on my gun handling. I got so far with it and couldn’t see where I was gaining on the speed at hitting anything. I was hitting the mark I had set up and had no trouble with that. “Keep at it, Kid. You never know when a few minutes more of practice will keep you alive.”

I worked in the garden doing a lot of the hoeing. Atea and Karen kept the weeds down. I hoed dirt around the potatoes so they would have loose dirt to expand, as they grew bigger. The squash where I had planted the seeds on the manure pile came up, and I swear we would have a ton by the time the vines died.

We all worked on getting up wood for the winter. The boys had cut several trees just as the leaves came out, and the new leaves drew the sap out so the wood would dry by the time we burned it. Rocky had a one-person crosscut saw.

Atea and I were cutting and loading cart-loads of stove-length chunks a day. Rocky asked the boys to split the blocks. Some were split, but any excuse would bury the axe in the chopping block.

We gathered the heifers, and Rocky and the boys delivered them on September 1. Rocky was gone a week before he returned. I asked, “Where’re the boys?”

“They took off to spend their money. They will be gone for quite a while. You noticed they have been arguing with me lately, right?”

“Yes, and I wondered about that.”

“They may be gone for good. In the past, I gathered them up the same way I gathered you into the ranch. Mike was the first, and that was three years ago last winter. The other two came the next year when I made the first trip to sell the steers. Things have settled down, and they are young, looking for more excitement than there is by staying here.”

“So you’ve been ranching here for five years or so?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Kid, what are your plans for Atea? The sun rises and sets on your butt already, as far as she is concerned. When you get ready to leave, will you walk off and forget her?”

“Rocky, I’ve never had a friend like she is. She’s supposedly half-Indian, but I don’t think of her being one. Her hair is dark brown and much finer than her mother’s. Her eyes are blue, not dark brown like an Indian, either. I’m teaching her to speak English, and I’m progressing. I wish I had some books to go by. She could go to school somewhere, but I don’t see how.”

“She’s too old for first grade, and kids would make fun of her. She probably would want to return to her tepee and hide if we did that to her.”

“I thought of that too, Rocky.”

“Kid, what about you? What do you want out of life?”

“Oh, a life like my Ma and Pa had, but I don’t want mine to end like theirs. I’d be a smith or do as Pa did, making wheels for wagons. I know enough about some of it already to get on as an apprentice to someone. Pa said that was how he started his life’s work.

“It sounds like a plan, Son.” I thought as Rocky turned away that I liked him calling me son. Maybe it was because I was interested in Rocky teaching everything he could about cattle about cattle and guns— or maybe not.

The next day, Rocky said he was going to the larger town about 25 miles from the ranch and might be gone overnight. I told him what I would do, “I’ll ride around the ranch to see if the cattle are straying while you are gone. I’ll put a belly band on the mare so Atea can accompany me.” Rocky nodded his okay.

The mare was used to having Atea on her back and seemed to enjoy not wearing a saddle. I didn’t have one to fit her, anyway. Karen fed us when we returned later that afternoon. All the while, we had been gone, I talked, pointing and naming items in my language. Atea would say what they were in Indian speak. I hoped she remembered what I said better than what I was hearing when she repeated it in Indian speak.

After a bit of time, when she said something, I looked at her and repeated it as a question. I would say Cow, and she would say Cow, and then in Indian, “Wahoo.” I would say, “Wahoo?” She would nod that I said it correctly. Over a few hours, we made a lot of progress. Maybe the pointing helped as well because this was sign language.

I cracked up when I pointed at a squirrel and said cow. Not looking at me, she kept saying wahoo when I said squirrel until I was exasperated, then she laughed and said squirrel in Indian, and then I said squirrel. It passed the time, anyway.

Rocky was gone two nights and came home on the third day. He had a pack rack on behind his saddle. The packages were bulging. “I got some books to teach Atea. It’s been so long since I was in school I don’t remember much about learning. I guess it’s up to you, Kid.

“I got the old Indian a knitted wool hat because winter is coming soon. I also bought Atea a grey wool dress. I described how tall she was, so I thought it would fit. I told the woman when I asked about sizes to get her some under things and that I didn’t know about such things. But she said she would find what I needed.”

“Nothing for Karen?”

Rocky’s face was red. “I wanted her dress to be yellow, but the woman said they didn’t have yellow, so I got her a grey wool one like Atea’s. Both dresses are worn some, but only a little. They are serviceable for one winter and maybe more if packed well during hot weather. She told me that if any wear was left in them, I should bring them back. She never has enough used clothing to sell. Used clothing is a sideline for her. I guess a woman has to go in and have new ones made and fitted.”

“Didn’t you get her some underwear too?”

“The woman said she would find something and wrapped it all up in one bundle. We’ll never know what it will look like, will we? Anyway, I got the books you wanted.”

“I’ll pay, Rocky.”

“No, my treat, you stick with Atea teaching the alphabet and the times tables. Maybe someday she can learn to read. How long did you go to school?”

“I was fourteen when Ma and Pa left for here in the West. I’ve had about eight years of learning. That’s what most people have.”

“I figured so. Anyway, I have a couple of history books for you and one book on maps. Maybe we can figure out where in hell we are in this country.”

“Good, that for you, but that is not a need to know in my mind. I remember all the towns we went through and I know from where I started. I remember the town’s name, so I can find my way back there when I get ready without asking someone. I think I can go to Pa’s ranch without anyone knowing me. I don’t know as I can reclaim it, for it may be listed as abandoned by this time.”

The next day, I took some books over to the tepee, and it was a nice warm day for this time of year. I got everyone outside and we looked in the books. I started showing the pictures they contained.

These were for real young children just ready to begin school. I picked out the pictures of different things they would be familiar with. The images were of a Cow, Cat, Dog, Friends (two children holding hands), Mother, Father, Grandfather, Sister, Brother, Baby, etc.

These were images of items people owned or lived with and those items used in their everyday lives. If I could get them to say the word in English, they could relate it to the image on the page. It was the same as I did with Atea when we covered the Squirrel joking incident.

The History book was full of images. Grandfather was very interested when a chapter touched on people moving West, with images of tepees and Indians with headdresses and feathers. I found it particularly difficult when I started teaching Atea the alphabet. I just had to figure out how to get her to understand it.

I showed her an image of an animal, wrote the letter under it, and showed her the written word in a book that referenced that animal. I would then hand her a different book with the word in it somewhere and indicate that I wanted her to find the word. I often had to use sign language, which I was becoming very adept at. She then found out that it was a story about the animal.

As we progressed, and I was getting her to understand what reading and speaking were all about, I was also slowly learning the Indian language and had to use less sign language to get the concept across.

Guess, how proud I was when I realized that I was a kid of sixteen and she was a girl of ten, and we spoke in each other’s language? Six weeks after some of what I struggled to get across the gap between our two languages, I printed a paragraph about a cow on paper, and she understood what it said. (It was a cow searching for her lost calf).

I wanted Atea to go to school someday. I felt I wasn’t intelligent enough to go far with teaching her lessons so she could go to a public school. In addition, there was the problem of her being half-Indian. Rocky and I discussed this continually. It wasn’t until he and I, when talking about Christmas, that we came up with a fake history for her birth and why she lived with Indians and only knew the Indian Language.

We started with different possibilities, such as her having unknown parents when she was three years old and traveling the Oregon Trail too late in the season. They died during the first snowfall, but Atea survived before she succumbed to the weather. A band of Indian hunters came upon Atea bundled in most of the blankets her dead parents owned wrapped around her.

One of the hunters had a squaw, Karen, who lost her papoose. This hunter had returned to his tepee from hunting, holding the child. He brought none of their identification with him, so Atea’s origin passed into history, which is unknown. Six summers, Karen had Atea in her care and loved the child as her own.

Fine, very dark brown hair and blue eyes meant she was of a different race and not a child of Karen’s. Rocky, living near the Indians, changed all this.

We would tell the world about Atea, if ever noticed, she had features different from those of her Indian mother. As Karen explained while discussing Atea later, this fabrication was close to the truth, and Atea was a full-blooded Caucasian.

Karen was happy when Rocky and his crew decided to take an interest in the pregnant squaw, with one child, about to have a papoose. Rocky had invited the squaw and the old Indian Brave to pitch their tent on the ranch, thinking the old one would soon die. Surprisingly, he didn’t die and soon gained his health back.

I, Matthew Jenkins, was a fifteen-year-old orphan Rocky had gathered in while stopping to camp and given a home with work to pay for his keep.

Over time, everyone could communicate, and Karen said, if possible, that the child she had mothered should someday return to the White world. In the meantime, the two kids, Atea, who is ten now, and I, Matt, who is sixteen, would live as brother and sister.

I hadn’t seen the clothes that Rocky had purchased for Karen and Atea. He gave me the books he had bought and said to begin teaching the child immediately. I knew Rocky had something in mind when he brought the clothes out and gave them to Karen and Atea. September was gone, as was October and November.

“Kid, it is time I told you what my life is. I’m not proud of some of it, but I chose the path I have been on with open eyes. I decided last summer to give up doing what I did for the last dozen years. When I was thirty, I was just a cowpuncher, drifting between jobs. Then, one weekend, I went on a heavy drunk, the usual thing most punchers do.

“I had bedded down in the livery stable Sunday the night before the two men I was drinking with. I was rousted out, still hung over as hell, early as Hell.

“Hey you, Rocky, we bought whisky the last three hours of drinking. We need you to do a job for us, and we figure you owe us.”

“Jesus, I’m hurting so bad I can’t do anything for a while. What time is it?”

“Rocky, daylight, and all the stores are open. We want you to saddle our mounts, lead the horses up the street, and ground hitch them in front of the bank, where they will stand. When we come out of the bank, we’ll mount and ride out. There is a hundred dollars in it for you.”

“You know, Kid, I may have been drunk and hung over, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I figured they might just shoot yours truly to slow a posse down, and I’d be in jail or dead and have no chance of collecting the promised hundred dollars. The younger of the two said they wouldn’t go into the bank until I came out of the stable, leading their horses.

“Rocky, you take at least three minutes to make it up to the bank, and everything will be fine. If you don’t do what we say and I don’t see you come out of here with our mounts, we’ll be back and hunt you down.”

“Kid, there I was between a rock and a hard place. Anyway, I saddled the horses, including my own, and I could see them enter the bank. Pulling the horses up to the bank took just a minute. I dropped the leads and spurred my horse into an ally beside the bank.