Gabriel's Story by David Anthony Durham Read Free Book Online

had spoken to personally was hanged by a posse from a tree just outside town. Children had collected under the dead man and swung him back and forth by his naked toes. “Somebody must’ve stole his boots. Can you imagine that? Wearing a dead man’s boots?”
    â€œWhat had he done?”
    â€œThe dead fella? Ain’t got the faintest.” James shrugged. “He did something. They always done did something. Cheated or stole, maybe. That’s the way cowboys is when they come to town. Don’t matter whether they’re decent folk or otherwise, they get the stump liquor in them and look to cause a runction.”
    Gabriel thought on this for a moment. “What do you make of them?”
    â€œWho, cowboys and them? They all right, I guess. Least they free to get on their horses and go out riding wherever they please and can’t nobody mess with them cause they mostly do carry a gun.” He wrinkled his forehead here and retraced his logic. “Well, I guess some people can mess with them, cause somebody’s always shooting or hanging somebody, like I said. I don’t know what’s better, to live a cowboy life or a town life or a homesteading life. Not one of them’s easy.”
    They both fell silent, as there seemed little more to say. Gabriel offered James the waterskin. He accepted. After he’d drunk, Gabriel took the skin back and squirted some water on his face, washing off the sweat. He sat still after that and watched his brother, who continued to roam the prairie dog city, searching for some living remnant of its community. When Gabriel spoke, it seemed that something about the boy’s vain search had inspired him. “I was gonna be a doctor before they brought me out here.”
    James looked at him incredulously. “A doctor?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œA
Negro
doctor?”
    â€œThere’s Negro doctors.”
    â€œI know, but—”
    â€œMy daddy was gonna see to it. Told me I could be anything I wanted in this world, now that coloreds were free. Then he died and they brought me out here. That’s the stinking way a life can go.”
    James thought this over for a while. “Well . . .” he said, but he could go no further along those lines. He picked up a piece of grass and ringed his finger with it. “Shit, least you got some kin left. You don’t know what it’s like working for Pinkerd. It’s like being a slave. Worse than that, the things he does . . . I hate him. Honest talking to the Lord above.” James tossed away the piece of grass and pulled up another. Again he twined it between his fingers and wove a ribbon of green jewelry. “I ain’t nary hated a body more.”
    A little later the three boys shared a banquet of bacon sandwiches and hardboiled eggs. James pulled out his novel and tried reading aloud. His grasp of the written word was faltering and imperfect at best, slow and downright discordant more often, and Ben took the novel from him and picked up the story. It was a cheaply written tale, vague in its descriptions of place or history but elaborate in its invocation of shady characters, broad-brimmed hats, and six-shooters. The English immigrant rode a white horse. His hair flowed long and blond beneath his Stetson, and his proud Roman nose had a knack for sniffing out young maidens in distress. Ben read of one such encounter, Richardson tracking a band of ten Mexican
banditos
intent on ravishing a young woman, Miss Delilah Day, golden-haired and fair, who was tied to a tree with rough horsehair
reatas,
her dress already ripped to shreds by the brutes’ daggers. Coming upon the scene, Richardson didn’t pause to ask questions. He blazed in at a full gallop, both pistols aflame as the bullets flew, making fast work of all but two of the
banditos,
leaving them choking on their own blood and filth and vomitus bile—
    â€œIt don’t say that.” James grabbed the