Read Grayfox for Free Online

he’s proved it more’n once.”

Chapter 8 Taking the Oath
    This was one of the main home stations, so it was bigger than most of the smaller swing stations I’d come through.
    The house itself had three rooms. The big room where I sat now had kind of a kitchen at one end with a big wood stove, utensils and pans and cooking stuff hanging from hooks on the wall, and a big rough wood table for eating, with benches on both sides. Then over on the side closer to me there was a big fireplace, some stacks of wood, and a couple chairs, but mostly a lot of supplies scattered around in boxes or crates or on shelves. Nothing was very tidy.
    This station was so far away from everywhere that when a wagon came to outfit it they had to bring enough to last a long time. So there were big barrels of molasses and borax and turpentine and things like that, burlap bags stacked all over the place full of wheat and ground flour and sugar and cornmeal and lots and lots of beans. All the meat was dried, and the fruit, too, on account of the heat—nothing would keep for long out there in the desert. Some slabs of smoked bacon hung on the walls, I found out the next day they had a smokehouse out back and had butchered a hog a couple weeks before. And the shelves held bags of coffee, some tea, honey, and lots of tin containers lining the shelves with other cooking odds and ends, medicines, rubbing alcohol, soap, dishes and pots, and all kinds of things.
    The other two rooms off the main one were bunkrooms. One was Hammerhead’s for himself. The other was bigger, with four or five wooden bunks built against the walls for the riders and Mr. Smith to sleep. That’s where I’d put my things.
    When Mr. Smith and Billy Barnes came in for supper, Hammerhead called me over and introduced me, then we sat down around the rough wood table. Neither of them said hardly a word to me.
    Mr. Smith was maybe five or ten years older than Hammerhead, almost bald and a little fat. His eyes were mean and he never smiled. The few times he spoke, his voice sounded surly.
    And even though Hammerhead told Billy I had come to relieve him of half the riding, Billy didn’t seem any too happy about it. He just looked me up and down with an angry glint in his eye, as if he’d rather I hadn’t come at all.
    Everybody around here seemed angry. Any friendliness there was between them wouldn’t have been enough even to match half a smile from Franklin Royce back home—and that wasn’t much! They grabbed at the food, everyone trying to be first and take the most and the best. As far as pleasant supper conversation goes . . . there wasn’t any!
    When I was done, I excused myself and went out to the stable to see how Gray Thunder was getting on and make sure he had enough feed and water, and to brush and settle him for the night.
    The next morning, like Hammerhead had told me, Billy took me out on the first four miles of my run, showed me the trail up to the top of the ridge east of the station, and pointed out the rest of the way to me, showing me everything on a map I’d be carrying with me.
    He hardly said a word to me all the way out. I’d still not seen him smile once. His eyes had a faraway gaze in them that never went away. I found out later that he was an orphan, like a lot of the riders were. But I didn’t find it out from him. Billy never said a word about himself. Most fellows like him never did. They kept everything inside, and you never had a notion what they was thinking.
    Billy was shorter than me by a couple of inches and probably not a day over eighteen. But one look in his face, and anyone could tell he was a tough customer, just like the stationman had said. I don’t know what he’d done or where he’d come from before the Express opened, but I sure wasn’t about to ask!
    That afternoon, back at the station, Hammerhead went over the map again two or three times with me. Then