On the Island by Iain Crichton Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

horse to a post on the street, and entered the saloon where someone was thumping a piano, and girls in their flounced dresses were dancing or putting their arms around unshaven men. They saw the crooked sheriff in the pay of the saloon-keeper order the cowboy out of town and tell him that his brother had deserved everything he had got. They knew that the cowboy wouldn’t leave, though he pretended to, and when he was ambushed by the saloon-keeper’s employees among the rocks and cactus trees on his way to what had apparently been his brother’s ranch, they knew that he wouldn’t be killed. Imprisoned by the crooked marshal, he broke out, with the help of one of the saloon girls. Framed for a murder which he hadn’t committed, it seemed that at last the forces ranged against him were too strong.
    The ending was all that they could have wished, the cowboy alone against the crooked marshal, the saloon-keeper and two of his men, shooting it out in a barn and finally on the street itself. Then there came the final music on the swell of which the cowboy, tall in the saddle, rode out of town having avenged his brother’s murder. Either of them would have done that for the other and they each thought how they might do it, strong and firm and righteous, guns strapped to their sides, rolling slightly from side to side on their high-heeled boots in Wyoming or Texas.
    They were curiously silent as they walked out of the cinema into the dazzling daylight, passing people on the pavement as if they were still in the Western town, and prepared to see horses being tied to posts and wagons rocking down the street.
    As they walked along to meet their mother, the world was sparkling with images from the film they had just seen. Kenneth had forgotten all about his toy horse and was engaged with larger horses of his imagination. Then from a distance they saw their mother in her black coat waiting patiently on a bench by the sea, her few purchases by her side. Strolling towards her in the Western sun which shone red beyond her above the sea, Iain again experienced the same feeling of sorrow, for his mother looked so subdued and solitary sitting there, not as yet seeing them but gazing out at the water as if she had always been there and would always remain there in the same position. She looked so frail and black and lonely amongst all the passing traffic of the town that he suddenly said in a rough voice to Kenneth, “Come on, she’s expecting us,” and the two of them raced towards their mother who suddenly looked up and saw them and rose from her seat as if transformed.
    â€œYou’ve been a long time,” she said reproachfully.
    â€œThe picture only finished just now,” said Kenneth angrily as if ready to start a quarrel again.
    Iain didn’t say anything. But when later as they were going home on the bus she told him to straighten his tie, he felt bad-tempered as if he didn’t think she had any right to be giving him orders.
    He sat in silence during most of the journey home, thinking of the film and especially of the part where the cowboy had left the town for the last time, and the music had grown louder and louder. In his mind’s eye he watched the horse and rider disappearing over the hill into the distance and wished he could do the same.
    â€œI bought you two chocolate mice,” said his mother later as she was unwrapping her few parcels.
    â€œYou and Kenneth have them,” said Iain, “you have them.” And though he would dearly have liked one of the chocolate mice himself he was happy to watch them eating them, happier than he had been in town. But still, another whole year, and he would go again.

8
    O NE DAY I AIN and Daial went into an empty thatched house that was in the village, the rusty-hinged wooden door creaking as they entered. They stood silently in the main room in which there was an old bench that had fallen over and smelt the tang of musty straw