LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Where you goin’?” JoJo asked. “I was only telling you we got enough eggs for breakfast, too.”

      “Good,” Garth replied. “I’ll go relieve the last two cowboys.”

      JoJo mumbled something about being ornery as a snake before saying, “You cain’t even see yet, and no one’s expecting you to take over for them.”

      Garth walked toward his tack. He was ornery some days. It was his nature. He doubted he’d been born that way, but for as long as he could remember, he’d been mad, and that alone was enough to leave a person ornery.

      That didn’t mean he never laughed or had fun. Some of his earliest memories were of the big ships that docked in New York. The sailors were often willing to pay a penny for directions or to have a message delivered, and he and other boys spent a lot of time in that area, earning enough to buy a warm meal now and again. They’d had a lot of fun at the docks, especially teasing the laundrymen who washed the sailors’ clothes. Those men could run, and often chased him and the other boys with hot irons, threatening to turn them in to the officials.

      They had never caught him, or turned him in—that had all been his own doing. His lesson in not thinking things through.

      Garth swung the saddle over one shoulder and grabbed the bridle and blanket with his other hand. Spinning about, he all but ran over Bat. He hated only having one good eye.

      “You want me to fetch you a horse, Boss?” the boy asked.

      “I can do it,” Garth answered.

      “No, he can’t,” JoJo said. “Go get him a mount, Bat.”

      The horses were kept a distance away, between the cattle and the camp. His sight was good enough to walk that far, and good enough to keep an eye on the cows while the others came in to eat. He didn’t tell JoJo that. It would be a waste of breath, as had telling the truth all those years ago.

      His capture, as he’d labeled it, had come about when he’d witnessed a man bludgeon one of those little laundrymen. He’d gone to the authorities and the man was captured, but had claimed the opposite. That Garth had done the bludgeoning. Because he’d been the one with blood on his clothes from dragging the laundryman into the back door of the laundry shop, he was the one arrested. The authorities hadn’t put him in jail, instead he’d been sent off to the Children’s Home at age eleven. The horror stories he’d heard had been true, at least in part. It was a prison for children if there ever had been one.

      His second lesson in not thinking things through came about when he ran away from the orphanage. He hadn’t been an orphan, not then. His mother had worked in a crib close to the docks, but when he got there, she was gone. Turned out, she’d run off with a sailor as soon as she’d heard he’d been taken to the orphanage. As far as he knew, his mother could still be alive, living on some other continent. Gertrude, the woman his mother had shared a crib with had told him to go back to the orphanage, that it was where he belonged, and didn’t waste any time in alerting the authorities. It was only a matter of days before he was hauled back to the Children’s Home.

      He was kept under lock and key, as were most of the others. When given the opportunity to go West on one of the trains, he’d jumped at the chance. And told Bridgette she should, too.

      Unlike him, she’d lived most of her life at the orphanage, and believed her parents were coming back for her, some day. He knew that wouldn’t happen, and had told her so. She didn’t believe him and attempted to run away. Thought she could climb the big oak tree that had branches hanging over the back fence. She’d fallen instead and broken her arm.

      In an attempt to keep her from doing that again, he’d snuck into the office and looked up the information they had on her. He’d found a baptismal record from a church on Staten Island and a note from her mother saying her husband had died and that she was too ill to take care of Bridgette. Another note stated her mother had died a few days later.

      Looking back, Garth figured Bridgette had always known her parents had died, but hadn’t wanted it to be true. Hadn’t wanted to be an orphan. He could relate, and grinned at the memory of sitting beside her beneath the same big oak she’d fallen out of. It had been a cold fall day and the two of them had been assigned to gathering the dead leaves. She’d been mad about him sneaking into the office. Told him he could have gotten caught and then they’d never be able to go West.

      That’s when the waiting had started. For both of them. Over a year of wondering if there would be room on the next train or not. Bridgette had come up with all sorts of wild plans of how they could sneak onto one of the trains, and he’d had to stop each one of them, telling her she had to think things through before jumping into action or she’d break another arm. She’d been frustrated, but conceded—until she’d come up with another harebrained idea that would threaten to get them both in trouble.

      He’d been almost fourteen and she had just turned nine by the time they’d finally boarded a westbound train.

      “Here you go, Boss.”

      Bat’s voice brought Garth’s mind back to the present and his feet to a stop.

      “I know you like this one, Boss,” Bat said. “She’s a good horse, no?”

      “Yes,” Garth answered. The big brown horse had three white socks and was one of the best cattle horses he’d ever ridden. “You know a good horse when you see one, Bat. And you are good with them.” The boy deserved the compliment. After helping JoJo all day including gathering an ongoing supply of firewood, the boy visited the remuda each evening, making sure the mounts had all been taken care of. The job hadn’t been assigned to Bat, he’d just taken it upon himself, and Garth had taken notice of that.

      “I like horses,” Bat said. “Afore my ma died, I had a black-and-white horse all of my own.”

      That was the most the boy had ever said about his past. At least the most Garth had heard. Then again, he’d never asked. He hadn’t this time, either. Bat must have just figured it was time. That’s how it was with orphans. When the time was right, they’d share their past. Usually in bits and pieces.

      “It shows you like them,” Garth said. “I appreciate how well you take care of them.”

      Bat handed over the rope. “I’ll put on his bridle while you saddle him.”

      Garth nodded. Just as he suspected, Bat was done talking about himself. JoJo had never mentioned where he’d found Bat, or how, and Garth hadn’t asked. It hadn’t mattered. Today, with all his own ghosts roaming about in his head, he found himself thankful JoJo had taken Bat in.

      “Unless you cain’t see well enough to put on the saddle,” Bat said. “I can do it if you need.”

      Garth stepped forward and threw the blanket over the horse’s back. “Can’t see well enough.”

      “You cain’t?” Bat asked.

      “I can see well enough,” Garth answered, settling the saddle on the horse. “The word is can’t not cain’t. Cain’t isn’t a word.”

      “It ain’t?”

      Garth grinned and the tightening of the muscles said his face still hurt too bad to go into a lesson right now. The salve JoJo had put on it after scraping off his hide stunk as strongly as it burned. “Run back to camp now,” he said. “I’m sure JoJo has something for you to do. Thanks for gathering my mount.”

      “You betcha, Boss,” Bat answered, already hightailing it toward camp.

      Once he’d tightened the cinch, Garth couldn’t help but press a hand to the side of his face. The swelling didn’t feel like it had increased, but the hurting sure hadn’t eased. Ignoring it seemed his best, and only, choice, so he mounted and headed toward the herd.

      Not in the mood for conversation, he merely gestured for both of the two cowboys riding watch to go to the camp. There were always to be no less than two men with the cattle, but that was his rule,

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