The Savage Gun by Jory Sherman Read Free Book Online Page B

the wagon and climbed up, sat on the spring seat. It groaned under his weight. He looked up at the trees, the play of light on the pine needles that protruded like viridian tassels, their shades of green changing from light to dark as the other limbs swayed in the breeze. He looked at the eternal mountains that rose snow-peaked in the distance, as if searching for something permanent, some monument to life that could overcome death. The solemn trees stood like silent mourners above the creek, their branches swaying gently, back and forth, as if they were waving farewell to the muted beat of music no human could hear.
    The wagon trundled up the road, jouncing over the ruts. John had helped Ben in the building of it. They had dug trenches along each side to mark the width of the road itself. Ben had cut dynamite sticks in half, placed them four inches apart while John watched the way he did it. Ben placed caps in each stick, burying them in the sawdust laced with nitroglycerin. Then he had cut fuses to length. When Ben lit the fuses, they both had run and hid behind large boulders. When the dynamite blew, rocks and earth hurtled through the air with deadly force, smashing trees, crashing into the rocks where they were concealed. When it was over, they had two drain trenches along either side. And a road. John had been fascinated with dynamite, but had never handled it until Ben thought he was ready. But he had failed to wear gloves and now he had a king-sized headache. His head was throbbing still.
    â€œThere’s a pair of gloves on the floorboards, Johnny, and a knife you can put on your belt.”
    â€œI’m going to cut the dynamite?”
    â€œIf you want to.”
    â€œI do.” John picked up the gloves and slipped them on. They were made of leather, tawny deerhide, and they fit him. He took the gloves off, shoved them in his back pocket, and picked up the knife.
    â€œFound it in the tack room when I was looking for some rope to use when we do the buryin’. Your daddy must have left it there when he was last up to the barn.”
    â€œI recognize it.”
    It was a beautiful skinning knife his father had made back in Arkansas. It had a deer-antler handle that fit his grip perfectly. He had made the blade from an old wagon spring, and drilled through a chunk of brass for the guard that curved up on one side, down on the other, just like an old pirate’s cutlass, or so John imagined. He had always admired the knife and begged his father to make him one just like it. But Dan had never found the time. The scabbard was homemade, too, sewn with sinew, sturdy leather taken from one of their Poland China hogs.
    â€œI don’t have my belt on,” John said, realizing how incongruous it sounded. But just then, everything was incongruous. Everything he saw and felt seemed out of place, of no consequence, slightly off-kilter. He tried to shut out thoughts of the dead lying in the wagon like so many waxen figures under blankets.
    A bald eagle rose in the air from its perch above the creek, the wind catching its pinions and flinging it into an air current that would sail it over the land like an errant kite, the fan of its tail feathers shifting, adjusting to every whispering whiff of breeze, the tips of its wing-feathered fingers grasping for purchase on a ledge of wind.
    The wagon rumbled onto the green meadow that lay at the end of a long valley. On the high end rose a majestic mountain peak, its top clad in ermine-white snow. Tall pines bordered the meadow on both sides and at the top. At the bottom, there was a sloping drop-off that led to the creek below. Hobbled horses, more than a dozen, grazed in various places on the greensward. Some lifted their heads and whinnied at the mules, others switched their tails and shook their heads up and down, tossing their long manes into the wind that blew them into wild fragments that settled back down on their necks. A red-tailed hawk floated above the