The Word of Walcot

Darkness Trembles 2.1-3 The Word of Walcot

1.

“Shane!  Shane!” the little boy called against the Kansas wind. 

Shane, glanced back from his saddle, beneath his brim, towards the salt-box farm house peppered with swallow’s mud nests.  The eaves were as ubiquitous with them as the seven year old boy who stood in front of the house had freckles. 

It was surreal, Shane thought.  A western, immemorial in the annals of great movies of the previous century, and here he was starting off where it had finished.   Life imitates art. 

He reigned his mare around and trotted back.

“Don’t go Shane.  Please don’t go.”  Tears worked their way down the boy’s cheeks.

“Kid, take care of your momma.  She’s real sick.  I’ll be back, if the Lord wills, middle of the Fall.”

“But Shane!  I can’t do it Shane!  Take me with you.”

“Look, where I am going, well, its no place for anyone decent.  And kid, you got one shot at ‘decent’ and its here.  Your Pop got you and your momma this far and he did it before you were old enough to know what was going on.  He meant for you and her to have a chance and that’s what you got.  He would have seen you make a man before he gave up this earth for the next, but that wasn’t the Lord’s will.  So here, you got to take what your given and learn to do what is right.”  

“Shane, I can’t do it.” The boy’s protests weren’t unfounded, Shane thought. 

“What is right is tough and its not always clean and pretty.  And what is right is that you honor your Pop and your Ma and see that this place makes food.  God will take care of you, and He’ll be here with you when she’s gone.  And that’s what I am.”

He wheeled his stout Quarter-Morgan mix around and gave her a tap to her flank.  She obeyed with out question.

“Shane,” the boy yelled, “I will.  I will do what you said, Shane.  I’ll have food in the Fall, Shane.  I promise!”

Shane smiled, raised his free hand to the sky with a single finger pointed up and then called her to a gallop.

“I know you will boy.  Lord, I know he will.”

2.

Someone once said that in order to understand the world you had to see it from the back of a horse.  Shane always contended that it was the stuff of late nights around campfires and whiskey that let such drawl spill  philosophical epitomes.  But truth be told, nothing was quite like traversing reality in concert with a well trained horse.   And, he thought, so long as he was long for this world he didn’t desire to move through it in any other way.

The early summer had been good to the ground.  Just enough rain for once.  It had been a long few years since they got good rain.  The fields were coming in just above his stirrups.  He halted at the crest of a rise.  Open range.  He panned back and forth.  Looking near and far.  His mare stamped her foot.  He looked down and to the left across an old wheat field to another rise some miles away.  And he saw the thing. 

It was just a ‘T’ from his vantage point.  He leaned over to his girl’s ear and said, “Thank you.  You always know where we’re going girl.”  He said, “Lets get.”  She took up the command and they loped in the direction of the ‘T’.

3.

Shane drew her up short of the destination and scanned the surroundings one more time.   Still a couple miles off from the cross.   He sensed the crawl of eyes upon his neck.   The mare did too.  With out even a flinch from Shane she exploded towards the towering cross. 

A pack of wolves was closing in on them from both flanks.  Shane pulled his battered bugle that was strapped to his neck with one free hand and blew the short blasts for “Incoming” and “Pursued”.  

Two large wolves had set themselves at the head of the circle and were coming direct.  They challenged horse and rider attempting to get them to hesitate left or right just so that the flanking pack could spring and drag them to the ground.  Shane and his horse knew this tactic.  She had a scarred hind quarters and he a tore up forearm to prove it.  He reminded her with another kick and she raised front hooves to striking posture in full gallop.  The first mongrel fell, hoof to head, head to earth.  The second breezed to the right and Shane caught its face with the butt of his rifle.

A return bugle: “Come” and “Will Defend” rang out.

The massive wooden fort gate raised like a portcullis.  Shane ducked, they slid underneath and the gate dropped behind them.

“Thump, thump, thump.”  their lead pursuers did not perceive the quick action of the falling wall of wood. Three dogs  smashed into its thick timber like some Newtonian experiment of mass and force.  Archers from the ports above the entrance quickly killed the dogs who failed to escape into the wild wheat that surrounded the fort.  

Shane patted his mare upon the neck.   Sweat marked her body like battle paint upon an ancient warrior. 

“You did good, girl,” Shane whispered into her ear.

A bright-eyed man greeted him first.  His wrinkled face creased with wisdom and a weathered joy that had seen suffering and yet held out infinite hope.   

“Mr. Walcot,” the old man shouted, “you never cease to amaze me!”

Shane tipped the brim of his hat, still shaking from his rushing escape.

“Why is that Colonel?”

“You  always keep ye’r word, Mr. Walcot.  You always keep ye’r word.”  The Colonel moved up to his flank.

“Sir, I keep it, because He keeps it.” He pointed above them both to the towering cross and slid off his horse.