Some Kind of Courage by Dan Gemeinhart

Author:Dan Gemeinhart [Gemeinhart, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2016-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

When morning came the next day, it came early and it came cold. Neither Ah-Kee nor myself felt much like getting up when Mr. Holcomb shook us, but I reckon we both knew it was time. The sun was just glowing over the eastward edge of the mountains when we hit the road with a cold breakfast in our bellies. Jed Holcomb and Ah-Kee and I were walking out of Ellensburg, but not on the road to Yakima that climbed up over the hills. We’d just passed the edge of the town, walking on a two-rut wagon road through a grassy pasture. Our breath puffed out in silver clouds as we walked.

“You’d never catch Campbell on the road,” Mr. Holcomb was saying. “It’s almost all uphill through rough country. It takes you up and around the Teanaway Mountains, see? But,” he went on, “since you boys are traveling light with no gear or horses or such, you can take the direct route. Through the mountains. On the river.”

“On the river, sir?”

“You betcha. It’s a straight shot from Ellensburg to Yakima, right through Yakima Canyon. The river’s quick but not too wild. And I just happen to know where you can get a boat.”

“All right, sir. Well, I sure—” My words stopped in my throat, and I skidded to a stop right there. Ah-Kee, walking along behind me, bumped into my back with an oof.

Mr. Holcomb turned around. “What’s the matter, son?”

“That over there,” I said, pointing at a lonely little bunch of trees off the road a bit. My voice was kind of weak and shaky and not at all like a grown man’s, but I didn’t care. “That’s a cemetery, ain’t it?”

“Why, yes. That’s the traveler’s cemetery. It’s a little one, for homesteaders and such passing through.”

I swallowed. Walking through the morning dark, I hadn’t recognized where we were. Those days a year before had been such a misery that my memories were all fuzzy and patched together. But I recognized the place sure enough now. For the second time in four days, I found the urgency of my mission derailed by an empty cemetery.

“You go on ahead,” I said quiet. “I’ll catch up. I got to pay my respects.”

“You know a person buried over there, son?”

“Yes, sir.” I took a few steps off the road and into the long, waving grass. “I know two.”

I found their graves, and they weren’t no primitive boards like poor Papa’s. They were proper stones, straight and graceful. Engraved, too. Papa’d spent nearly all the money we had left for them.

ADELAIDE JOHNSON, one read. 1860–1889. BELOVED MOTHER AND WIFE.

And next to that one: KATIE ANNE JOHNSON. 1883–1889. PRECIOUS DAUGHTER AND SISTER.

I fell to my knees before them.

My mama, with her story-telling rivers.

And Katie, with her angel-wing snow and campfires in heaven.

I had no words to say to them, as I had for Papa. My sadness here went too deep for that. A flood of memories swelled through me. All the million kindnesses my mama had shown me.

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