Grayfox by Michael Phillips Read Free Book Online Page A

made me think how I’d been around womenfolk a lot of my life—my mother and my sisters and then Almeda—and that maybe, just from watching them, I learned to think different and feel things more than some fellows like Billy Barnes.
    All this started me wondering about myself and if I was the same as Hammerhead and Billy, with a crust growing around myself too. At the time I don’t reckon I saw it as a weakness, though now, looking back, I can see that it’s just about the biggest weakness there is about being a man.
    In fact, I went through a time of trying to be that way myself, because it seemed that was the way men were supposed to be. I talkedhard and tried to make the riders and the stationmen think I was just as tough as any of them. And I guess, too, I figured that was about the only way to get by out there. If those fellows started thinking you were soft, they’d make no end of trouble for you.
    No matter what I started thinking about out on that trail, though, I always came back to Pa. At first I thought he was a little like Billy—tough and not talking too much. And then I began to realize that maybe I had some of that in me, too, and that part of why him and me hadn’t talked much had to do with me, not him.
    One day I was riding along—I think it must have been toward the middle of October, because it was cooler and I felt a bit of a chill in the air. I was thinking about Pa, like I did a lot, and about Hammerhead’s saying that everybody out here was running away from something.
    Suddenly the thought struck me: What if I was running away by joining the Pony Express—just like Pa and Uncle Nick did when they left Bridgeville? What if I was trying to avoid facing what I needed to, just like I always figured Pa’d done?
    I didn’t like thinking that way. But I had left my family behind, just like he did—a family that cared for me and was probably worried about me.
    But no, I thought. My own case was totally different. I was a man now. I had a right to be out on my own. I wasn’t running from anything. I was facing my life on my own. Pa had run away from the trouble facing him. I was not doing that. I wasn’t afraid of danger.
    Then I got to thinking about what it was like, as a kid, back in Bridgeville after Pa had left with Uncle Nick. Word got out that they’d been in a gang and got put in jail and then broke out. And not long after that I started having trouble at school, with other kids calling me names and making fun of me on account of Pa. Ma didn’t believe the rumors, and she told us not to pay no attention to them, neither. But I couldn’t help it.
    And then I started thinking on one particular day back when I was about ten years old. No matter how hard I tried during the years after that, I could not erase the bitter memory of what happened that day. But I never told anyone about it, not even Ma. I kept it inside all these years, trying to make myself forget. But it still seemed as clear as yesterday as I remembered it that day on the Pony Express trail.
    It happened just at the end of a school day. The big bell had just been sounding, and I was thinking of the plans I’d made to take little Tad fishing. He was just such a little tyke and looked up to me almost like I was a man, though I was just a little boy still. I can’t remember why, but I was the last one to leave the classroom. Even the teacher had already left—I thought everyone had. But as I walked out and down the steps, suddenly somebody stuck out a leg and tripped me.
    I tumbled down the last two or three steps, sprawling all over the ground. I wasn’t really injured, though I spilled my slate on the ground and got my face and clothes all dirty. But what really hurt was that a group of three or four other boys were standing nearby, laughing at me, like they’d been waiting around to see it happen. They were several of the boys who were older than