Cry, Coyote by Steve Frazee

Author:Steve Frazee [Frazee, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440558337
Publisher: Prologue Books
Published: 1983-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

NOW THE SMASHING HEAT HAD LIFTED FROM THE LAND AND the days had a golden tone. Each morning frost made a silvery glint on the stubble of the hay fields, dying quickly when the sun rose. Light snows had dusted the Sawatch Mountains. To the west, the higher and more forbidding Maderos showed white patches that would be there until late the following summer.

John Sexton was building fences around his haystacks as if the devil were driving him. Cabot grew tired of the work. He said: “I don’t see any sense in this. We’ve got good fences all around the place, so why should every damned little haystack have — ”

“Never mind what you think,” Sexton said. “Keep digging.”

“There’s no sense in it. We don’t need — ”

“You heard what I said!”

From deep-set eyes Cabot threw an appraising study on his father. There was no insolence; there was, instead, a quietness so much like Moira’s expression that it angered Sexton.

“What’s the matter with you lately, Dad?” Cabot asked. “Ever since — ”

“Never mind your ever-sinces! I said to get to work.” All of his sons had stopped working. Sexton glared at them.

“There’s no sense in all these fences,” Cabot insisted.

“Will you stop your damned arguing! When I was your age and sassed my father — ”

“When you were my age,” Cabot said, “you’d been gone from home for two years because you couldn’t get along with your old man. All I’m trying to find out is what’s the use of fencing every stack on the whole place.”

His son was right and Sexton knew it, but the black stubbornness was bearing down again. He said, “I’m telling you for the last time to get to work.”

“Tell me why,” Cabot said, “and then if there’s any sense in it, I’ll do what you say.”

“You’ll do it anyway!”

Cabot drove his bar into the hole he had been digging. He started toward the house. Malcolm and Roman kept looking from him to their father.

“Cabot!” Sexton said, “if you keep walking, see that you wind up clear off the place. I mean it!”

The youth did not break his stride and he did not answer. Even in his anger, Sexton thought: He’s more of a man than a boy. He’s like me when I was his age. To lose him now would be the repeating of a mistake that Sexton himself had made. He started to go after his son and then he stopped.

Moira was the answer. She would calm Cabot down and make him understand; she could always do that with any of the boys. And then when Sexton went to the house for dinner, he would meet Cabot on a man-to-man basis and explain his reasons for the fences.

A short time later, working furiously. Sexton saw his sons staring toward the house. Cabot was riding away. There was a pack behind his saddle. Sexton shot a quick look at Malcolm. “I suppose you’re going to cry.”

“No, he ain’t,” Roman said. “You’re not going to cry, are you, Malcolm?” The two boys took strength from each other.

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