CHAPTER 21
Chet stood in his place for a moment after his last shot and stared. He looked beyond the dead man trying to see Jack’s whereabouts, but to no avail. He had disappeared. Keeping Matthew’s gun before him, he moved forward to the motionless man. There was no doubt of the man’s condition with a bullet hole just above his right eye.
Chet placed the gun in his own holster, and breathed a deep breath. Here was a new man that would haunt him. All the adrenaline in his veins still ran thick, and he needed to let it all thin out for a bit. Which he did for a long moment, letting it drain away.
Finally he turned back to Matthew who was now on his feet, but unmoving. Chet just stared at him for a long and hard moment. A black raven flew up from the riverbed and cawed its derision at Matthew.
Matthew felt Chet’s stare beat into him. He could not return the stare for the humility that ran so deeply in his soul. He hung his head in utter dejection. Why God?! he thought to himself. Why not just kill me now and get me out of this misery!
But God did not kill him, though Matthew pleaded within for lightning. Chet, had he been God, would have done so in a heartbeat and with great joy. And if truth be told, if not for Alice, Matthew would have picked up Chet’s gun that he had been laying on and done the job himself.
Finally Chet turned his attention to their horses. They had both trotted off a short distance and were now standing beside one another. Moving in their direction he returned his caustic stare to Matthew.
"Is your basic purpose in this new life of yours out here in the west to kill me!" With more gesticulations, "Can’t you do the simplest things I ask you to do! I told you to go left! Did you go left!?"
Matthew dared not raise his head. He stared at the ground, but now he knew what Chet’s waving arm had meant.
"I done told you to stay put in the trees! You got to go and start stompin’ on all the branches you can get your sorry feet on!"
Matthew looked to his offensive feet.
Without any regard for a chronological recounting of the events, Chet jumped to the horse crash. "Ain’t you learned how to stop a horse yet! Did you think I would be a soft landin’ spot for your fall!"
Chet reached his horse and patted it on the neck and looked it over, running his hand over its legs and across its body. Satisfied, he then gave the same attention to Matthew’s horse.
"You done lamed this horse," said Chet. Matthew saw that the horse was indeed standing tenderly on the front right leg.
It was just one more brick to be hefted onto Matthew’s guilty back. He closed his eyes and shook his head, exhaling a heavy remorse-ridden sigh.
Chet mounted his horse and turned it in the direction they had come. Hearing the movement of Chet’s horse, Matthew opened his eyes and saw Chet starting to ride away. His heart leapt in his chest at the thought of being abandoned, though he knew he couldn’t blame Chet.
"You stay put! Think you can do that?" called Chet over his shoulder. "We’ll be needin’ those other horses now."
Relief, though tempered with shame, entered Matthew’s mind as he watched Chet riding away. Then he heard Chet’s last instruction, "Make your self useful and strip that man of his holster and gun."
Slowly Matthew stooped and picked up Chet’s gun. Turning it over in his hand, his foul mood directed his thoughts about the skill of gunplay and his lack thereof. Having grown up in the city, he had never had a need for the instrument, but in these past two days it had proven to be vital for survival. He knew the secrets of skillful handling were not his. He felt exceptionally naked himself in light of this.
With another heavy sigh he holstered the weapon and turned to his assigned task and spotted Chet’s hat lying in the grass a few feet off. Matthew picked it up and dusted it off with his hand and pondered its owner. This was a man Matthew felt he would never impress.
Walking over to the fallen man, Matthew looked down at the man whose eyelids were half closed over eyes that gazed unflinchingly into nothing. All of this death weighed on his mind and he felt it all so unnecessary. If this man had just left his coach alone, he would be alive today. If he had just never thrown in with that Jack… If he had been willing to work… And a thousand other ifs had brought this man to this final end lying in the dirt having lost his life at the speed of a bullet.
"What’s it like now?" asked Matthew of the dead man as he pictured this man standing before God. There was no triumph or revelry in his voice. In fact Matthew felt a deep pity that gripped his heart. It was true that this man had become his enemy, but this is not what he would have wanted for him. Though Matthew had not pulled any trigger, he felt the heaviness of this death.
Stooping, Matthew unbuckled the man’s holster, and then took up the gun that was still lying near the still hand. He placed the gun in the holster and imitated Chet by wrapping the holster upon itself.
He left the man and went to the fallen horse and saw that a rifle was protruding from beneath the animal. With some effort, he was able to pull it out only to find that the barrel had a significant bend to it. Even his limited knowledge told him it was useless, so he discarded it. Then he stripped the saddlebag from the dead horse’s saddle. Within was some of the money that had been stolen the day before, some jerky, and hard tack.
Turning back to his own horse, Matthew saw that it was gingerly taking a step to reach another morsel of grass to crop. Weariness flooded over Matthew at the sight his horse. It was another glaring example of his ineptitude. He slowly made his way to the poor creature. Upon reaching it he decided that the animal could be relieved of its burden, so he stripped the saddle from the animals back and took it a few yards away and put it on the ground.
He returned to the horse and stroked the horse’s neck. The act of touching the horse started to lighten the heavy load that was strapped to his own back. He moved his hands down the horse’s neck and onto the shoulder. There he could feel a swelling that had developed there. He gave it a gentle press and the horse flinched with a light jerk of its head.
As he moved his hands across the horse’s body something within Matthew sparked to life. He had spent these past two days perched atop this horse. Initially the endeavor had proved to be painful and completely foreign to him, and even now it wasn’t all that much different. Up to this point, this animal was just a horse, but now it was something more. It was as though Matthew had always seen a horse through a fog. He could recognize its shape, and its movements, and its purpose. But in this moment it seemed to step out of this fog and come into full focus.
The beauty of the animal captivated him with each pass of his eye. He saw the noble head and intelligent eye. The graceful arch of the neck and the smooth back. As Matthew looked in a new wonder at this horse, he felt as though he were looking at poetry put to form.
His love for horses was brought to life in these few moments. He stroked the horses neck and back, and scratched behind its ear for some few minutes. All the while the humiliation of the last two days started to melt away.
He turned now to his saddle and went to lean against it. He dug into the saddlebag and found his Bible. He turned it from page to page, reading a verse here and there. He settled in upon Psalm 34. He read how the righteous cry out to God, and how God hears them and delivers them. He reminisced at these words and how, even though he was still in the midst of his troubles, God was proving this so clearly during these past two days. Even in spite of his own bumblings, and in fact, it was in contradiction to his bumblings that God was proving this to him.
Matthew closed his eyes and thanked the Lord for His provisions during these past two days. God had provided Chet, horses, food, and even safety. There was no good reason for him to be alive today, and Matthew’s heart was beginning to overflow with thanks to God.
He returned to the words on the page and read the next verse that spoke of God being close to the brokenhearted. His own heart flew to Alice and he tried to imagine how she was. He knew that she must be living a nightmare. He didn’t even know if she knew that he was alive. The last time she had seen him, he had been shot from the back of a speeding horse.
"Oh, God," Matthew prayed, "Please be with Alice. Comfort her heart and bring reassurance to her. I still plead for her, Lord, that You would take care of her. Protect her during this. And God, please, please, please… help me to get her back."
It took about three-quarters of an hour before Chet returned with the horses. His temper had subsided during his ride to and fro, but he still carried a low opinion of the man he was helping. After cursing for the first half of the trip to retrieve the horses, he finally resolved himself with the situation by asking himself a simple question, What do you expect?
He had pictured the first time he had seen this tenderfoot and how his face had been all a smear with blood and tears. That image in his mind should have told him everything that he could expect from this man.
During his return with the horses his reasoned that he was dealing with a person who had yet to reach any semblance of what was needed of a man to survive in this territory. The best thing, in Chet’s opinion, was for this weak person to return to the city he had come out of and stay there. This land was bound to crush him.
Chet had decided to keep his opinion to himself for the time being, but, as soon as he had rescued the man’s wife, Chet was determined to send this man back to softer city living.
Coming out of the riverbed, he could see off in the distance the lame horse in about the same location as he had left it. It wasn’t until he had closed half the distance, that he picked Matthew’s form sitting on the ground off to the right of the lame horse.
At about the same time, Matthew had noticed the approach of Chet with the two horses in tow. Standing to his feet, Matthew still felt the sting of Chet’s earlier chastisement, and he wasn’t looking forward to their reunion. Chet didn’t have anything more to beat Matthew with, but there was a palpable coldness that emanated from Chet when he stopped his horse and sat it for a moment.
Feeling the chill of it, Matthew attempted to make amends with Chet. "I am sorry." But Chet just sat his horse without responding, so Matthew tried to define just what he was sorry for, "I am sorry for stepping on that branch, and running into you."
"I suppose things happen like that when you ain’t got much of an idea how things work, and all."
Matthew felt his checks flush and he wanted to defend himself, but he knew that it would be worse than an uphill battle to try to prove otherwise. So he pursed his lips in silence instead.
"I see you found my gun and my hat."
Matthew glanced down to the gun in his holster and decided it was best not to enlighten Chet that he had been laying on it after the accident. But he did take it out and offer it to Chet along with the hat that he had set on the saddle’s horn. Chet exchanged guns with Matthew, donned his hat, and immediately set about checking the gun for damage and then reloaded it.
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