Dry Divide by Ralph Moody Page B

sister there’s no reason for you to worry about her. We’ll cover Myron with a blanket and stay away from here till after you’ve gone. In that way the children will never know anything has happened. Where are you going to take them?”
    â€œHome,” she told me. “Paw and my other sister will look after ’em. I’ll be back in not more’n an hour.”
    â€œBefore you come,” I told her, “stop and tell Bones what has happened. He’ll need to know before he makes some phone calls that he was planning to make. And you tell your sister that I’ll stay right here until her crop is harvested.”
    Judy hadn’t looked up at me as we walked from the windmill to the kitchen doorway, but as I took my arm away and she stepped inside, she looked up with her eyes brimming and said, “God bless you, Bud. I’ll never forget you as long as I live.” As if she were ashamed of what she’d said, she ran across the kitchen to the door that still stood ajar at the far side.
    I motioned to the other fellows and started slowly toward the barn. When they caught up with me I told them, “The best thing we can do is to stay out of sight till the children are taken away. I’ll carry a blanket up and cover the body, but we’ll leave it where it is till they’re gone.”
    I’d little more than glanced at Hudson when I went to get Kitten, but when I took the blanket back I could see that Paco had chosen the right words when he’d said, “
Completamente aplastada
.” The chest was crushed almost flat. There was blood around the mouth and nose, and at both sides of the shirt, where broken ribs had cut through the skin. But even though the sun was less than an hour high, the bloodstains were dry. There could be only one answer: when Kitten had taken all the punishment she could stand she’d caught him with the whip wound around his foot, and had thrown herself over backwards before he could jump clear. It could only be that she’d done it almost immediately after he’d ridden her into the pasture, and that it had taken her the rest of the time to drag his body back. I didn’t stop to release the foot from the stirrup, but spread the blanket over saddle and all, then turned back to our camp behind the barn.
    There is seldom any reason to grieve for the dead; only for those who are left behind. And in Hudson’s case there was no reason to grieve for them. I was the only one who could be in any way injured by his death. With him gone, there was no reason for any banker to foreclose a mortgage or put an attachment on the crop, and without them my deal would certainly be as dead as Hudson.
    At our camp I told the other fellows what I thought had happened, and that our deal would be off, then we sat in silence until we heard the old Maxwell backfire as Judy started it and drove away. When I went to the house, I found Doc helping Mrs. Hudson clear one of the front rooms and make up a bed in it. The room was almost barren, its only furniture a packing box with flour sacks tacked around it to make a table, and an old iron bed that sagged deeply in the middle. Doc was at one side and Mrs. Hudson at the other, drawing a patched sheet up over the stained mattress. She looked up as I stepped into the doorway, and said, “You could bring Myron in now; Judy has took the children to my folks.” There was neither grief nor emotion in her voice or face; only a sort of blank confusedness.
    No matter how much a man may have been despised, his remains demand some reverence, so we made a stretcher from two boards, laid the body on it, straightened the legs, folded the hands, and wrapped the blanket from my bed around the whole litter. Then Gus and Lars carried it to the house. Mrs. Hudson stood emotionless while they laid the blanket-shrouded litter on the bed, then Doc put a hand under her elbow and led her to the kitchen, while the rest