Chapter 8

Both the darkness and the cold that came with it had settled in when Colt finally lay down beside the fire wind down after the day. They had finished supper and taken care of the dishes and everything else that it left in its wake, and had all gathered up two blankets each and donned their coats in preparation for the cold night ahead of them.

Doc lay to his left, sprawled out like an urchin who had no raising, but was not asleep. The man was the strangest sleeper of anyone Colt had ever known.

Colt glanced across the campfire at Jessie, who sat leaned against the bottom of a tall cactus with a spare blanket behind her back to protect her from an uncomfortable prick or two. She looked content, sitting there bundled up so much that she looked three times her size. A hint of a smile lingered over her lips and her cheeks grew rosy from the heat of the fire.

“Tell us about your home back east, Miss Jessie,” Doc said, moving from his sprawled out state to rest up on his elbow.

Jessie’s eyes lit up as she focused them between the two men. “Oh, it’s the most gorgeous place on earth. What would the world be without South Carolina, that’s what I want to know. There’s no other place that I could rather have been brought up. I live in a two-story plantation home; most of the workers had deserted it to fight in the War years ago and died, so the land lies untouched. The house is white with dark blue shutters. It has a wide front porch with plenty of room for entertaining on cool summer evenings. There’s a lake out behind the house where the prettiest lily pads grow. Some nights I just sit at my window and watch the moon’s reflection ripple in the water. It’s a beautiful sight. I guess you can say that I’m quite proud of where I was raised. It’s like a piece of heaven on earth.”

“Do you have much family?” Doc asked.

Jessie smiled. “I have a brother besides my parents. Jake. He’s a bit protective, but he’s the best brother I could ask for.”

“So I guess he’s probably looking for you,” Colt mentioned.

Jessie nodded. “There’s no doubt of that. He and Daddy won’t rest until they find me… unless they know where I was going when I came out here and won’t expect me back. My fiancé is the Sheriff back in my home town, so he will be looking for me too.”

Some strange feeling came from the deepest part of Colt’s gut, piercing his heart clean through with an emotion he didn’t want to quite label as disappointment, but it was definitely akin to sentiment. Perhaps it was the mention of a fiancé. That word had been making him cringe lately.

“Well, we can wire them when we get to town to let them know where you are,” Doc said.

Colt nodded in agreement. She needed to get back to her family.

“Oh, that would be just splendid. I can’t imagine the tizzy Momma’s got herself worked up into,” Jessie shook her head as she spoke.

After a moment of silence, Jessie looked up at Colt. “So tell me how you got to work at a ranch. Have you lived here all your life?” She asked.

Colt sighed and nodded. “Mostly. My family moved here when I was about three years old. We owned a little spread adjacent to the Dottie Belle, so I grew up with the people around there. When I was twelve, I started working at the ranch as the stable boy. At around fifteen, I convinced Sherman to sign me on as a cowhand. At the same time, my parents had to move up North to take care of my granny. I wasn’t about to leave, so after a few months of constant arguments and a few tears from my mother, I convinced them to let me stay behind. At seventeen, I had impressed Sherman so much that he signed me on as a foreman. I knew pretty much everything there was to know about cattle and how a ranch was run, which was why I was signed on so young. I’ve been doing pretty much the same thing since then,” Colt told her.

She smiled. “Sounds like you really like it here.”

Colt resisted the urge to sigh again and simply nodded. “I used to love it a lot. Lately it seems to have lost its shine for me.”

Her eyebrows drew close together. “I’m sorry.”

Colt shrugged. “I’ll be fine. Just laziness, I guess. Must have a little of adventurer in me from Granny.”

Doc chuckled at that.

“Is she the adventurous type?” Jessie asked.

“Is she ever,” Colt smiled. “Just last week she left the house, planning to go gold mining. She thinks she’s a spring chicken, but I can see that she isn’t up for gold mining her life away.”

Jessie giggled. “I can see her panning by a little creek out in California.”

Colt shook his head. “She’d kill herself.”

He knew that he was going to have to find some way to get the ideas of running off on some adventure out of his grandmother’s head. She was too old to be out and about like she dreamed of doing. Maybe it was easy for him to say, as he as years of living before he turned old, but she might be having a hard time accepting the fact that she was aging. Granny wanted to be young and free like she used to be. Colt imagined that it was hard accepting that she wasn’t able to do what she used to.

He had to find some way of taking that spirit in her and directing it into something that she could do without hurting herself.

*****

“Well, that sounds just wee bit out of tune.“

Jessie winced as guitar music - if one could call it that - filled the air as the wagon rolled down the barely beaten trail the next day. Doc might call himself a musician, but the sound coming from those strings was enough to scare every prairie dog in a five-mile radius scurrying back into their holes for cover.

“Do you need more strings or something? That thing don’t hold a tune worth its weight in dirt anymore,” Colt observed.

“Nah, I’ll fix it in a minute.” Doc thumped on a string repeatedly, twisting the knob at the end of the neck of the instrument until the sound he desired came out.

Jessie decided that there was no worse sound than that of tuning a guitar. The same routine went on for about ten minutes until she feared she would go crazy. Finally, Doc strummed and the guitar let out a perfectly tuned strummed.

Thank you, Jesus.

Doc started singing some old cowboy song that Jessie hadn’t heard of before, revealing a pleasant voice. She leaned her head against the stack of luggage behind her and closed her eyes, allowing the slow tune of the song to relax her. The song ended and Doc started playing notes that she recognized. Amazing Grace.

“Sing the first verse for us, Kidd,” Doc demanded.

Colt shook his head. “I don’t sing, Dawson. Well, not for people, anyway.”

“Come on, Colt.” Doc leaned forward, strumming the first note of the song.

Colt shook his head again. “Nope.”

“Please?” Doc resorted to batting his eyelashes - a slightly frightening tactic.

Colt narrowed his eyes at the man. “That did absolutely nothing to convince me.”

Doc let out a deep breath. “Fine. Miss Jessie and I will sing it. You ready?” He looked at her.

She smiled and nodded.

Together, they sang the first verse of the adored hymn.

“Amazing grace how sweet the sound.

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now I’m found.

Was blind but now I see.”

Doc looked back at Jessie. “You don’t sound half bad, you know.”

Jessie blushed and put her head down at his compliment.

Doc leaned closer to Colt and smiled. “Your turn, Kidd.”

Colt shook his head, keeping his eyes focused on the trail in front of them.

“I think he’s chicken,” Jessie stated.

Doc’s lips formed an O. “What’cha gonna do about that, pard?”

Colt shook his head again.

“Why, he is chicken! Never thought I’d see the day,” Doc teased.

Colt grunted.

Doc then resorted to making chicken sounds. “Pock, pock, pock!”

Jessie laughed at his antics. Colt elbowed Doc in the ribs. “Fine, you idiot.”

Doc looked back and gave Jessie a dramatic wink.

The three of them sang the rest of the hymn, probably all sounding like bellowing cows, but none of them minded. There was no one around to hear them anyway.

At that moment, Jessie felt a friendship begin to form between the three of them. One that was bound to grow stronger as the time passed.

*****

Camp that night was set up as usual, with Doc going off to collect firewood and Colt making sure Jessie was comfortable. The long day had resulted in a bad headache for her, and the boys both went to drastic measures not to make a sound, which she thought was sweet of them. They walked around on their tiptoes, looking more like sneaking thieves rather than two cowboy preparing their bedrolls as Jessie watched them through slits in her eyelids. They thought she was asleep, but she could hear every whispered word they said.

A dried tuft of grass crunched under Doc’s foot.

“Shhh,” Colt put a finger to his lips.

Doc threw his hands in the hair, mouthing something that she couldn’t quite make out.

“You’ll wake the girl up, and she don’t feel good. You know women get cranky when they don’t feel good,” Colt whispered.

“I’m tryin’, Kidd.”

Doc sneaked around another tuft of grass and finally got his bedroll prepared. Once the two of them had laid down, her headache had begun to subside. The warmth from the fire seeped through the blanket around her and the sound of a slight wind blowing lulled her to sleep until her eyes drifted fully closed and sweet darkness enveloped her.

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