Gabriel's Story by David Anthony Durham Page B

he’d enjoyed in a certain young woman’s arms back in Crownsville. He spoke fondly of her, bucktoothed and ignorant though she was. Marshall asked what qualified Jack to call somebody ignorant. Jack answered that the girl was fresh out from Rhode Island, still spoke with that country’s nasal tones, and had herself a whole set of ideas on the future of this nation and the role of women in it. Rollins said that he’d no use for buckteeth himself but that a big rump did it for him, that or a schoolgirl just budding or a little Mexican
chica
he could horse-mount and beat up a bit. Jack shook his head and tossed his coffee on the fire and said Rollins was a sick son of a bitch right enough.
    Dunlop turned the conversation to other matters. He spoke of the natives and wondered if they’d have troubles passing through the Indian territory. This brought nervous looks from both Gabriel and James. James asked just where was it they were heading, anyway? Laughter all around.
    â€œWhat kind of fool signed up for a hitch without asking where he was going first?” Rollins asked.
    James tried to answer, but his words dribbled away unintelligibly. This brought more laughter.
    Dunlop finally enlightened them. “Texas. The New Cornwall Ranch, just the other side of the Red River. We’ll be there in three weeks or so. Assuming no troubles.” He smiled at the two boys, a crooked smile with a touch of irony in it. “Is that . . . is that what you thought you were getting into?”
    James and Gabriel exchanged glances, each looking to the other as if unsure of what he’d expected. It was James who answered. “Yeah, I reckon. We been meaning to get into the cowboy line.”
    â€œWell, boys, cheer up, then,” Marshall said. “You’ll be in it soon enough, soon enough.” He glanced around at the other men. “In it up to your ears, I reckon.”
    IN THE FIRST WEEK FOLLOWING THE BOY’S DISAPPEARANCE,
his family scoured the countryside for him. The boy’s stepfather
and adopted uncle rode out each day in different directions, leaving the chores of home to the mother and the remaining son. They
searched the streets of Crownsville and learned quickly that another boy had disappeared also and had inspired great wrath in
his former employer. They asked questions of passersby, of persons
both white and black, young and old. Yet they found no answers
and had to report as much each evening to the boy’s mother, who
took the news silently.
    They widened the search, riding east through Solomon and
Junction City and as far as Topeka, and west through Brookville
and Ellsworth. The uncle stayed out the longest, returning home
via sweeping arcs to Waterville in the north, or south as far as
Newton, asking his questions of homesteaders and shopkeepers,
cowboys and sheepherders, sometimes passing the night with
strangers, once sleeping alone on the open prairie. He knew the boy
lived somewhere on this globe and thought that through silence and
solitude he could divine where. He listened and searched his past
conversations with the boy for signs and hints, but still he returned
with no news.
    At home, the younger son struggled to recreate himself in his
brother’s absence. He bowed his head and watched the men ride off
and then went to work. He tried each day to do more and be better
than the day before. If he resented his brother’s departure and the
work it cast on him, he never voiced it. He tended the fields as best
he could on his own, mending the things that broke and caring for
the horse and mule in the evenings. At night, his body ached and
stretched and contorted. He awoke in the mornings as if he’d slept
a month instead of a night and had grown accordingly. And
through it all he sought to comfort his mother. He told her that his
brother would return. Of course he would. He was a hothead. He
was anxious and angry and a dang fool sometimes, but he