Redeye by Clyde Edgerton Read Free Book Online Page A

for my first day. He also works for Mr. Merriwether on occasion. I sat on the porch waiting, absorbing through my pores the energy of the wide-open blue sky and the thin Colorado air. God went to majestic geographic lengths in the West that He never attempted in the South. How could I explain other differences? In the South there is a loaming, a gloaming, a loss, a pain that allows us to laugh and scoff at the North. Out here there is no North.
    Sitting beside Bumpy in the wagon, riding to the ranch, I asked him about these people by whom I was about to be employed. I already knew from Aunt Ann that they were serious, good people—Quakers. Bumpy told me about Mr. Merriwether’s quietness, his short stature, his “strutting like a bantam rooster,” and his large library.
    â€œDo you like him?” I asked. I have already come to trust Bumpy. He is a wiry little fellow who blushes quite easily. Aunt Ann confided that he was an abandoned child. Someone left him behind in town when he was little more than a baby boy and he has yet to mention his past to me. Uncle P.J., in addition to feeling sorry for him, decided that he might be a good worker.
    â€œI like him all right. He works hard. He don’t talk too much, and you ain’t supposed to talk when you eat at his table. Have you ever met a Quaker?”
    â€œNo, but I’ve heard that they like to just sit quietly without a preacher during their church services and that they refuse to fight in a war.”
    â€œThey’re different than the Mormons,” says Bumpy.
    â€œI met some very nice Mormon missionaries on the train.”
    â€œThere’s a whole town of them across the river. Beacon City. Some people don’t think they’re so nice. Some people do. They come over from Beacon City and sell things.”
    â€œI hear they’ve been unreasonably persecuted for a long time.”
    A beautiful deer bolted across the road in front of us, then another.
    When we arrived in the yard at the Merriwether Ranch, several friendly dogs rushed out, leapt across an irrigation ditch lined with cottonwoods, and met us. Beneath the tall cottonwoods hung two white rope hammocks and at the end of the line of trees along the irrigation ditch stood two large white tents. Bumpy said visitors to the ranch are not uncommon and often stay in the tents.
    Mrs. Merriwether herself was waiting for us, standing on the porch—a low porch, right on the ground, running the entirelength of the house. She stepped into the yard to greet us. She is a short, round-faced, happy-acting woman who straightaway insisted that I call her Libby.
    Thank goodness Melinda and Elisabeth, with little round faces like their mother’s, are well behaved. They followed us playfully and happily, and I immediately formed an attachment to each of them.
    I met the smiling, rotund Mexican cook, Juanita, who was busy setting the table in the dining room—a quite extraordinary dining room, long and narrow, rather like a large railroad car, with a bench running around most of it, coat pegs on the walls, and shelves with kettles and pots, and four big dark bronze coal oil lamps hanging from the ceiling.
    The cookstove was in the corner, and beside a door leading into what appeared to be an office, a fiddle hung on the wall. “Who plays the fiddle?” I asked.

    In charge of the sprawling Merriwether Ranch is none other than the energetic Quaker and well-rounded (fiddle, archaeology, horse breeding) Abel Merriwether. Merriwether’s family migrated . . .

    â€œMr. Merriwether,” said Libby. “Except only occasionally now. He’s gotten all caught up in exploring the mesa. He’s been drawingthat map there—of the mesa.” A large, detailed map with numbers was on the wall. “But Juanita’s little boy, Jose Hombre, loves to sing and I’m sure you’ll have an opportunity to hear him before long.”
    The dining room windows