Pinto Lowery Read online

  “Easy, critters,” Pinto called as he opened the gate and guided the horses toward the barn. In short order he nudged them into stalls and returned, shivering, to the loft.

  The sound of the horses down below was comforting. Before, with just the shrill wind to torment him, Pinto had been particularly downcast. Now he had company of the best kind.

  He dreamed that night of sleek horses and yellow-haired girls. There were no musket balls or cannonades, nor even fierce winds to haunt him. The dream took him far away and left him oddly warm and renewed when dawn showered the barn with golden light next morning.

  “That’s a dream I could’ve had a hair longer,” he mumbled as he struggled into his clothes. The air hung heavy, and the draft creeping through the gaps between the planks tinged it with an icy touch. The horses felt it, too, and they stomped fitfully.

  “Storm’s brewin’,” Pinto announced when he joined the others for breakfast. “Bes’ get ourselves ready for it.”

  “There’s hardly a cloud in the sky,” Truett objected. “A little cold, maybe, but it’s nearly winter, after all.”

  “May not be clouds yet, but dey’ll come along by and by. Mark that fer a fac’.”

  “I feel it, too,” Elsie declared. “We’ll get the shutters up and put by an extra stock of wood. Water, too.”

  “Northers hit quick, too,” Pinto said, turning to the children. “Winnie, no runnin’ down to de creek, hear? You boys keep close by, too. Powerful mean these storms. Freeze a full-grown man solid. Boys, well, hate to think on it.”

  “You heard him, Braxton, Benjamin, Truett? Stay within hollerin’ distance of the house today.”

  “Yes, Ma,” the three of them agreed.

  “Now let’s get my eggs eaten ’fore they’re cold as that wind out there,” Elsie said, grinning.

  “Maybe we can build a snow critter if we get enough powder,” Brax suggested.

  “I don’t expect we’ll have a blizzard,” Elsie replied. But the look in Pinto’s eyes betrayed his fears, and she lost her smile. Thereafter Pinto gobbled down his food only a hair faster than the others did. While Winnie helped her mother clear away the plates, Pinto and Brax started in on the shutters.

  “You chop stove wood,” Pinto told Ben. “Truett, maybe you’d have a try at fillin’ that spare water barrel.”

  “Done in no time,” Truett replied. Ben grabbed an ax and started for the two cottonwoods Pinto had dragged in from the river bottoms the day before. Cottonwoods weren’t much of a staying tree, but they did grow big. There was plenty of wood on them, even if they had a bad habit of burning quick and not so hot as oak.

  Amid the cracking of the ax and the hammering of shutters, the wind was but a distant whine. Even so, it drove icy daggers into Pinto’s exposed hands and face. Little Brax shivered, and his mouth blew fog puffs everytime he breathed.

  “Bes’ get along inside,” Pinto finally ordered when he spied the blue tint of Brax ’s fingers. “Get yerself alongside that fire and warm up.”

  “Shutters aren’t all up,” Brax argued.

  “Ben’ll be along to help,” Pinto replied, pulling the freezing ten-year-old close and rubbing warmth back into his frail body. Pinto then ushered Brax inside the house. Elsie took one look at her youngest boy’s wan face and took charge.

  “Need a hand?” Ben called from the woodpile. He had a good wool coat and sheepskin gloves, so the cold had less of a bite. Pinto nodded, and Ben drove the bit of his ax into the chopping stump and headed over. The two of them hurriedly affixed the remaining shutters and then dashed inside to warm themselves.

  “Brrrr,” Ben said as he kicked off his ice-coated boots.

  Brax helped Pinto over to the hearth and pried a frozen blanket from his shoulders.

  “That settles one matter,” Elsie said, rummaging around in a trunk until she produced a worn woolen coat. “You’ll have this on next time you step outside this house.”

  “Pa’s coat,” Ben mumbled. “You saved it.”

  “When did Ma ever let loose of somethin’ what could be used?” Brax asked, laughing as he started rubbing Pinto’s feet.

  “Be too big,” Winnie judged. “Pinto’s littler’n Pa, except for in the hands.”

  “Feet, too,” Brax added. “Pa ran to small in the foot. Me too.”

  “You run to small in everything, Brax,” Ben noted. “I’ve seen chickens with more skin over their bones.”

  “You ain’t plannin’ to eat me, are you?” Brax asked. “If I was lazy and did no more work’n you did, I’d be plump as Mary Johnson.”

  “Who?” Elsie asked.

  “Girl that tends the mercantile counter in Defiance now,” Ben explained. “Must weigh three hundred pounds. I heard she come from a circus.”

  “That’s unkind, Benjamin,” Elsie scolded. “Winnie, pour off some hot water in a basin so your brothers can wash up for dinner. Braxton, come help set table. Where’s Tru gotten to anyway?”

  “Went off to look over the stock,” Ben explained.

  “He what?” Pinto gasped. “Not out in that?”

  Even though the windows were shuttered and the door bolted, they all knew what was outside. For several minutes delicate flakes of snow had blown under the door. The norther had arrived. Wise County was becoming a world of ice and snow.

  “When did he go, Ben?” Elsie asked, trying to remain calm.

  “After fillin’ the water barrels,” Ben answered. “Hour ago. Maybe two.”

  “He wouldn’t have stayed out in the open,” Elsie argued. “Like as not he’s gone over to the RR with Jared. The two of them are forever up to something.”

  “Sure,” Pinto said, inwardly unconvinced. “Young fool. I warned him, remember?”

  “Yeah, but Tru ain’t much on advice takin’,” Ben observed. “If you was to say the sun rises in the mornin’, he’d tell you it comes up at midnight.”

  “He’s nowhere near that bad,” Elsie insisted. “But he’s bound to feel a switch this time. I won’t have him kill himself short of his fifteenth birthday.”

  She was near crying, Pinto saw, and she might have broken down had not Ben given her a needed hug. She then announced dinner ready. Pinto followed Brax over to the wash basin. After cleaning up, he bowed his head while Elsie said a brief prayer.

  “And Lord, give a look after Truett. He’s rash and more foolish than not, but we love him. He’s a good boy who deserves another chance.”

  She ladled out portions of venison stew then, and Pinto lapped his up hungrily. In spite of the shared concern over Truett, the cold had seemingly hollowed out their stomachs. There wasn’t a hint of anything remaining when they finished.

  “Poor Tru,” Brax said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Missin’ a good dinner’s worse’n a switchin’.”

  “I believe he’s right, ma’am,” Pinto agreed. “Warmed me up proper. Maybe I’ll step out and have a look at de animals now.”

  “Take the coat,” Elsie instructed. “Ben, see if you can fish out those gloves, too.”

  “Tru took ’em, Ma,” Ben explained.

  “Then at least his hands’re warm,” Elsie remarked. “Pinto, you have your look, but don’t linger.”

  “I won’t,” Pinto promised.

  He made, in truth, only the briefest of inspections. The big black and the packhorse were both accustomed to rough life, and the cold was survivable in the barn. The mottled gelding that had served Tru on the long ride to Kansas and old Sugarcane should have done as well, but the poor horse snorted and stomped. Yes, that pony felt the cold.

  At that instant a strange foreboding came over Pinto. He turned away and started toward the house. Snow was beginning to fall by the bucketfuls, and already drifts half a foot high piled up against the northern wall of the house. Through a white mist trotted a horse.

  “Tru’s back!” Ben yelled, rushing out to meet the horse. It wasn’t until Ben led the animal to the barn that Pinto saw the truth. Truett Oakes was nowhere to be found
. His horse had come in alone.

  “No!” Elsie cried when Pinto explained it to her half an hour later in the house. “Not Truett, too! First Tully. Now Tru!”

  “He’s tough, Ma,” Ben argued. “Holed up someplace. Maybe at the RR.”

  “No, he’s hurt ... and alone,” Elsie cried. “I feel it. With this snow he’ll freeze sure.”

  “No, he’s got a good coat and warm gloves,” Pinto reminded her. “Probably he’s found cover. Tied off the horse, but it bein’ a smart critter, horse took off fer home.”

  “Do you really believe he’s all right?” Elsie asked.

  “Don’t see much anything else to think.”

  And yet Truett didn’t return. The storm slackened for a time, and Pinto expected the fourteen-year-old to appear, a trifle shaky and very cold. But Truett remained unaccounted for, and the storm threatened to worsen.

  “What’ll we do?” Elsie asked after a bit.

  “Nothin’ else we can do,” Pinto muttered. “I’m goin’ to find him.”

  “No,” Elsie argued. “You don’t have a clue as to where he went, and ...”

  “I’ll find him,” Pinto assured her. “I got a horse bred on hardship. And a hide tuff as steel.”

  “Be careful,” Elsie urged.

  “Ain’t fer a careful man to do,” Pinto confessed. “Don’t you fret, though. I’ll find him.”

  By the time Pinto had pulled on two extra shirts and Elsie had wrapped his hands in shreds of an old shawl, the snow was coming down in earnest. Worse, the shining surface was iced over and treacherous. Pinto slipped three times on his way to the barn.

  Fool’s errand, he told himself. But one way or another he was bound to locate Truett Oakes.

  He got the black saddled and ready, but once out in the white nightmare, the mustang turned skittish.

  “I know, boy,” Pinto whispered as he managed to climb onto the big horse’s back. “Wouldn’t wish dis storm on a Yankee, but there’s a boy we got to find.”

  And with that said, Pinto gave the animal a light kick. Now the flurries danced in eerie spirals as the wind caught them on their way down. Tracking was nigh impossible. A print left two minutes before was quickly filled with new snow. It was as if an ivory blanket had been draped across the land.

  Pinto headed for the creek. That’s where they’d piled fodder for the cattle, and if Truett had gone to look after the stock, perhaps he’d ridden that way. Then, too, the RR Ranch lay that way. There was the odd chance the boy had set off to locate Jared Richardson.

  Pinto made his way through the drifting snow, searching to the right and then the left. It was a world painted in white mists, though, and even the stark outlines of the trees were now blurred with snow and ice. Whole branches shattered as their ice-filled hollows expanded. The creek bottom sounded like a battlefield.

  He was thirty yards short of the north ford when he spied a dark blotch just shy of the woods. Another man, one less frozen or desperate, would have glanced past it. Pinto turned the black and struggled against the drifts. He reached down and snatched the half-buried object from the snow.

  It was Truett’s brushed leather hat, the one he was so proud of. Likely the boy’d paid too much for it in some Wichita store, but Pinto recalled the swagger that pride put in a young man’s walk when he donned his first real hat.

  Won’t be far, Pinto realized. Truett wouldn’t leave that hat behind. Not if he still had his senses, that is.

  Pinto rested the hat on his saddlehorn and rolled off the saddle. He took care to tie the reins to a willow limb lest the black turn sensible and head homeward. He struggled on ahead through the piled snow, snagging his trousers on hidden briers and gashing his chin on the wicked thorns of a black locust limb. As he reached the shelter of the trees, he bellowed out again and again.

  “Truett! Tru! Where’ve you gotten to, boy?”

  Over and over Pinto called, but there was no response. Finally, near a rocky outcropping, Pinto detected a moan. There was a hint of movement, too, and he hurried in that direction.

  “Lord, you’ve gone and froze yerself,” Pinto gasped. Truett’s dark hair was glazed, and his lower half was buried by a snowdrift. He struggled to move, but his lips were blue and coated with ice. His chest barely moved as he fought to breathe.

  “Don’t you worry yerself,” Pinto said as he broke the boy loose from his ice tomb. Shards of ice cracked and splintered, but Pinto freed the young man nevertheless. The boy’s legs stirred to life, and Pinto managed to shake a word out of Truett amid a convulsive cough.

  “Ma?” Truett whimpered.

  “Waitin’ fer you with a switch,” Pinto said as he rubbed life into the youngster’s arms. “Fine notion, coverin’ up with snow. Good’s a blanket.”

  “I ... got ... lost,” Truett managed.

  “Fool to go ridin’ with a world o’ snow comin’,” Pinto scolded. “Maybe nex’ time you’ll have ears for a warnin’. But bein’ young, I don’t figure to bet money on it. Can’t get tall without doin’ a fool thing or two.”

  Truett didn’t try to respond. A hint of color was returning to his face, though, and as Pinto wiped ice and snow from cheeks and eyebrows, life revisited the boy’s eyes.

  “I, uh, I ...”

  “You save dem words fer later,” Pinto suggested as he bent down and draped Truett over one shoulder. “Got a horse waitin’ to get us home. Now you jus’ shake some life back into you while I do some walkin’.”

  Pinto sagged under the weight at first, but after a few steps Truett seemed no more than a sack of oats. Oh, it was a squirming worm of a sack, to be sure, but what had seemed solid and substantial under his father’s heavy coat now revealed itself as illusion.

  Pinto stumbled through the tangled underbrush to the big black, then managed to help Truett up behind the saddle. Pinto himself untied the reins and mounted with a shudder.

  “Hold on good as you can,” Pinto said as he helped Truett wrap near frozen arms around the waist of his rescuer. “Got no time to fish you out o’ de snow.”

  The stallion then turned and rushed through the heavy snows. The horse sensed Pinto’s urgency, or perhaps just felt the cold as its riders did. Whether it was the one thing or the other, the mustang managed to halve its outbound time.

  Back at the farm, Pinto pulled the horse to a halt. Elsie raced out to take charge of Truett, and Ben grabbed the horse’s reins.

  “Get inside,” Ben ordered, pointing Pinto toward the door. “I’ll get the black into the barn.”

  “Give him a good rub,” Pinto urged. “Some witch hazel’d help. And ...”

  “I know what to do,” Ben answered as he set off with the horse. “You don’t want to cough out the winter, better get on inside.”

  “Yessir,” Pinto replied with a grin. He then stumbled to the door and fell inside the house.

  Chapter 15

  Pinto drifted in and out of a vague sort of consciousness those next three hours. He recalled eager hands leading him to the fire, peeling off his frozen clothes, and rubbing new life into his numb hands and feet. There was a mug of hot broth, too, and little Winnie’s grinning face asking him if he didn’t feel better now he was warmed up.

  It was all a blur. When his eyes finally came into focus and his head cleared, he was lying between two thick quilts alongside a roaring fire.

  “Better?” Ben asked, leaning over and placing a hand on Pinto’s chest. “Fever’s broke at least. Scared us, you know, fallin’ down like you did. Ma thought you rescued Tru only to kill yourself in the bargain. Never saw her so stirred up in my life. She didn’t even yell that much when Pa died!”

  “Truett?” Pinto asked.

  “Oh, he’s soakin’ in a tub. Brax’s watchin’ him. Wouldn’t let Ma near him, sayin’ he was grown now and it wasn’t proper. Who’s he think cut off his shirt and thawed him out, I wonder.”

  “I thank you fer seein’ after my horse, Ben.”

  “Wasn’t so much, seein’ you saved
me a brother. I don’t know who was happier gettin’ home, you, Tru, or that stallion.”

  “Close race, eh?

  “You know it’s gotten worse out there, too. Snow’s seven, eight inches deep. Ma said you figured a blizzard. Weren’t far wrong this time.”

  “No, but I wish I had been.”

  Pinto then took a deep breath and sat up. His hands were wrapped in cotton strips, and he started to peel them.

  “Don’t, Pinto. Ma’s scared of frostbite,” Ben said, shaking his head. “I figured your toes to be in trouble, too, but a little warm water brought back their color just fine.”

  Pinto drew back the quilt and had a look. His legs were swallowed by a pair of Tully Oakes’s old overalls. His bare feet were a trifle paler than normal, but Pinto moved his toes just fine.

  “An old soldier trick,” Pinto told Ben. “Had more’n our share o’ frosbit feet. Had one poor fellow to lose three toes.”

  “Feelin’ up to some supper? Ma put a platter of venison sausage on the sideboard, and she’s keepin’ a pot of coffee hot on the stove. I could slice some bread and make you up somethin’.”

  “In a bit,” Pinto said, nodding in thanks. “Jus’ now I’d rather walk a hair.”

  “Can walk more’n that if you want,” Ben said, laughing. “Your whole self if you want.”

  “Figure I can, do you?”

  “Just as long as it’s inside. Wind’s howlin’ somethin’ fierce outside.”

  “Where’s yer ma gone do?”

  “Worked awful hard gettin’ you and Tru thawed,” Ben explained. “She and Winnie went and took a nap in the back room.”

  “Ain’t it cold in dere, Ben?”

  “They got a fireplace in there, Pinto. I lit the fire myself. It’s warm enough. Want some of that coffee?”

  “Sure,” Pinto agreed, rising to his feet. He followed Ben into the kitchen, then stepped back.

  “Didn’t mean to bother you,” Pinto apologized when he saw Truett. The elder Oakes boy was standing beside an empty tub, pulling on a pair of oversized trousers over flannel drawers. A wool blanket was draped over his bare shoulders, and his hair resembled a bundle of raw cotton dyed walnut brown.