Both me and Paco had been around enough folks to know they wasn't the same all the time. Some days they was all happy and talkin' and such and other days they was quiet or fretful or even ouchy. Most folks you run into are mostly easy to be around and even though they have them funny days, you know that ain't really the way they are. Generally, if you let them be, they'll go back to bein' how they mostly are.
We didn't know our daddy that long but we come to know him to be funnin' and lovin' and just good. He almost never had them funny days but it come to Paco and me that lately he was different somehow. He still liked to laugh and fun on folks and he loved to hug on me and Paco but you seen him just sittin' and lookin' at nothin' real often and he looked sad or worried or somethin'. Me and Paco talked about it and we even asked our daddy 'cause I remember Uncle Kevin tellin' me when them Indians was here that Daddy had a lot on his mind. Daddy tried to fun about it and said it was nothin' to worry about. He was just gettin' old, he reckoned. Me and Paco didn't think on it too much. He was still our daddy and he was more happy and lovin' than he was sad.
The longer we lived with him, the more me and Paco was comin' to feel part of him. It was more than just the lovin' he give us. He was teachin' us things and talkin' to us about things and he really wanted to know how we thought on things. We was boys, but our daddy knew how to give you the feelin' that you was almost a man and what you thought and what you was, was important.
He could explain things to you good and if he didn't know or if what you wanted to know was still questionin' him, he'd tell you that. He wasn't like some of them school teachers I had in Goodnight. They had to have you thinkin' they knew everything and if you asked somethin' they didn't know, they was mad at you. When we asked a question our daddy didn't know, we'd talk on it and tell our thinkin' and sometimes he'd tell us somethin' to read to see could we figure it out. Like he said, there ain't a answer to everything and I reckon knowin' the answer to some things ain't as much fun as tryin' to find it.
There was one question I had in me that I knew had a answer and my daddy knew it. I was wonderin' why he didn't tell me. I thought on askin' him a whole lot of times, but I was thinkin' he told me once he'd tell me later. I reckoned he'd decide when later was but I was gettin' tired of waitin'.
When there wasn't school, me or Paco sometimes slept over at one of our friends or had a friend sleep over at our house. If Paco slept over with Danny, I usually had Juan sleep over with me. You couldn't hardly sleep over at Juan's house. There wasn't hardly no room.
That question was hard on me one afternoon when Paco and Danny come to ask Daddy could Paco sleep over at Danny's that night. 'Course, Daddy let them and I decided not to go get Juan. I decided that would be a good evenin' for just me and Daddy. I asked did he have anything he had to do that evenin' and he said, "No," so I asked him, could it be just him and me. He smiled real big and give me a hug.
I'm gettin' pretty big and I know lap sittin' is mostly for babies but I don't care. I didn't get none when I was a baby so I'm takin' my share now. I love sittin' on my daddy's lap and you can tell he loves havin' me there. I reckon it's the same with Paco but tonight I was thinkin' mostly of me.
We didn't say nothin' for a while but I knew my daddy was thinkin' somethin'. He'd kind of sigh every so often and then he'd give me a hard hug. I finally asked him, "Daddy, somethin' ain't right. You ain't been the same since them Indians. Ain't you feelin' good?"
He said, "Son, I feel fine but you're right. I do have something on my mind but you're going to have to trust me. What's there isn't a whole thing yet and trying to tell you and Paco only part, I think, will only make you have more questions. Trust me, Sam. For now it's my worry. If it ever starts to affect you or Paco, I promise, I'll tell you."
I didn't like his answer but I knew that was all I was gonna get. I felt some better knowin' he wasn't sick and I had things in my head that was just mine so I reckoned it was fair if my daddy did too. That wasn't what I really wanted to talk about anyway.
"Daddy, when is later gonna come?"
Daddy laughed. "Sam, what on earth kind of question is that?"
"I ain't sure if ...." I remembered I was supposed to talk proper talk to him. You can see how his thinkin' was all taken up because he didn't say anything about my talkin' range talk to him.
"Daddy, I'm not sure if I really asked you this or if I just thought about it so much that I think I asked you but it seems like I asked you once why you didn't tell me you were my daddy when I was livin' in Goodnight. It seems like when I asked you that, you said you'd tell me later."
"I don't remember you asking, son, but if you did, I reckon I know why I didn't tell you. I didn't tell you because I don't know myself. It's like a lot of things we've already talked about. I was never sure I was right in what I was doing about you. I thought about telling you but there always seemed to be a better reason not to tell you than to tell you.
"You know I couldn't prove you were my son and you know your mama would have denied it. It didn't seem to me that you hated your mama but I got to thinking that if you knew who I was and how you could live if she'd let you, you might come to hate her. You had enough fear and sadness. You didn't need hate too.
"Sam, I was proud of you. You were living hard but you were doing it like a man. You taught yourself to face your problems long before most younguns have to. When a child has a responsible parent, it's natural for the child to let their parent take care of problems. If you knew I was your daddy, you might have expected me to take care of your problems. That would have been the normal thing to do. But I wasn't there, Sam. I wouldn't have known what your problems were. You had to take care of them and you did.
"I don't know if those are good reasons or not, but that was my thinking back then. Do you wish I would have told you?"
"Up until right now, I did, but I see your thinkin'. I reckon I'm like you. I don't know what was the right thing to do. I like bein' Sam Flynn so well I was thinkin' I could have had this feelin' all my life but I reckon it isn't knowin' who I am. It's havin' you and bein' close to you that gives me that feelin'. It doesn't matter. Those times are gone. I know who I am and we have each other and we have Paco and I know what your thinkin' was now, so I ain't ... I'm not going to think on it any more.
"Hey, I did pretty good on my talkin', didn't I, Daddy?"
"You did fine, Sam. Both you and Paco are doing very well and I'm not so concerned about your talking range talk any more. You're both gettin' to be regular Grandpa Waltons. You know both ways of talking and you know who to use them on."
He give me another hug and a kiss on the forehead and then he went to tickling me. Before we was done, we was rollin' around on the floor and he was actin' like I was whippin' him. He was lettin' me sit on his chest and hold down his arms and sayin', "It's a awful thing when a man gets whipped in his own house."
I knew I wasn't whippin' him but I was havin' fun playin' like I was and I was lovin' him for lettin' me play that.
I didn't even miss Paco when I was goin' to sleep that night. I knew there would be more questions about me and my daddy as I got bigger but I was satisfied. The last one left over from them Goodnight days was answered.
It was gettin' close to a year since Paco had his arm broke and Daddy told us about that Pinkerton and we still ain't heard nothin'. We asked our daddy about it a lot for a while but we don't hardly do it no more. He gets real ouchy and gives us a snappy answer and that ain't like him and me and Paco don't like it.
Seems like not hearin' nothin's got Daddy some worried but it don't seem to worry Paco none anymore. He told me that he'd decided that, if they found he had another daddy and they made him go to him, he'd just run away and come back to the Bent-Y. He said he figured that if he done that enough, them sheriffs would get tired of sendin' him back and just let him stay. I reckon I didn't worry none on it either but me and Paco did wonder some if not hearin' nothin' had somethin' to do with our daddy's sad.
They let us out of school just before the spring roundup started. The first thing that happened after school was over was, we had a big wedding on the Bent-Y. Miss Tuthill ain't Miss Tuthill no more. Now she's Mrs. Brunson.
She wanted to have her weddin' in St. Louis where her mama and daddy lived and all her friends was but Clay said he was a cowboy and he was gonna stay a cowboy and if he was gonna get married, he was gonna have a cowboy weddin' and you couldn't have no cowboy weddin' in no city as big as St. Louis. Lord, he'd heard there was about as many folks in St. Louis as there was cows on the Bent-Y. How could anybody think of gettin' married with all them folks noisin' around. He knew St. Louis didn't take up near as much space as the Bent-Y and with all them people crowded into that little space, Clay figured they was usin' up all the air. He figured that if he had to go to St. Louis to get married, he'd choke to death. Did Miss Tuthill want to be a widow almost before she was a wife?
Seemed like Miss Tuthill didn't care that much. She had got to lovin' the Bent-Y and was wantin' her mama and daddy to see where she was gonna be livin' the rest of her life anyway.
Weddings ain't much. It wasn't actually on the Bent-Y. It was in that Baptist Church and all that happens is that Brother Freeman does a lot of talkin' and then Clay and Miss Tuthill kiss and that's all there is to it. I think folks wait until they're Clay's old to get married because it takes that long to get up enough nerve to kiss a girl in front of all them people. If you got to kiss a girl with a lot of people watchin', I sure as hell ain't ready to get married yet. I don't even like the idea of kissin' a girl with no one watchin'. I think some of them seventh and eighth graders are practicin' for gettin' married. I know some of them sneak off sometimes and kiss them girls. I seen them, hidin' behind the house horse barn.
For a while, it looked like Mrs. Bronson wasn't gonna be spendin' the rest of her life on the Bent-Y. Clay needed more money since he had a wife to take care of and there wasn't nothin' on the Bent-Y for him right then but cowboyin'. Our daddies didn't want to lose him 'cause he was a real good man but there wasn't no better payin' job for him. Daddy said they thought some about just lettin' him cowboy but payin' him more to hold him until somethin' better come up but they got to thinkin' that wasn't fair to the cowboys who was doin' the same work for less money. Clay started lookin' around for a herd boss job or a foreman's job on other ranches.
Nate's daddy solved the problem. He come to our daddies and said he was gettin' too old for herd bossin'. Could he have the job of bossin' the new Flynn stockyard in Amarillo?
Well, 'course he could and that made a place for Clay. Clay's now the boss of the south herd. Juan's family moved into the Taylor's old house so Señor Pablo ain't gonna have to be buildin' on no new rooms for a while. Since she ain't no teacher no more, we don't have to call her Miss Tuthill or Mrs. Brunson. Her name's Louise but folks just call her Lu. Lu says that she don't reckon Clay will do no buildin' for a while either. By the end of the summer she was gettin' a baby belly like I knew she would but she's tellin' folks not to expect her to fill up that house as fast as Señora Maria did.
It give you almost a scary feelin' when Nate moved off the Bent-Y. He was still some aggravatin' but he was part of my new life, almost part of my family, and him movin' off the Bent- Y was the first thing to change. Me and Paco told Daddy that, and he said them changes come and they hurt some but they all go into makin' a man out of a boy. I reckon everybody wants to grow up but it seemed like Nate movin' away was makin' me do it too fast.
It wasn't as bad as me and Paco was thinkin'. We got used to not havin' Nate around all the time and we seen how parts of our new way of livin' could change but we was still Flynns and we was still bein' loved.
It turned out that in the summer, Nate was on the Bent-Y or the Rolling H more than he was in Amarillo anyway. He hated town livin' and if he wasn't stayin' with us or Virgil, he was stayin' at Ben and Sadie's and when he was stayin' there, he was ridin' to the Bent-Y all the time so it was just like he never moved away. Nate's mama seen he was never gonna make no town boy so when school started again, she let him live with Ben and Sadie. They got a school over by the Rollin' H so we didn't see him so much in the winter.
Them Indians come back for the spring round-up and Qua come with them. He stayed with Paco and me and Daddy brought the day bed up to my room from the sun room for him to sleep on. I wasn't about to sleep by myself all summer.
Them Indians was there about six weeks and Qua surprised me with his English learnin'. I could talk to him good before he left. Me and Paco got so used to him that we were some sad when he went back to the reservation. We was hopin' he would stay on the Bent-Y for schoolin' but he said they got a school on the reservation and he was livin' in a cabin now and anyway, his mama would still decide to die if he didn't go back.
Qua's leavin' was some like Nate's leavin'. You didn't like it but you was still a Flynn and, like our daddy said, you just got to get used to some disappointments.
I don't do it as good as Paco but I learned Indian talk pretty good while Qua and them braves was here. I'm doin' real good on Spanish but I got Paco and Juan to talk that with.
Beside Paco, Juan is my best friend. It ain't only cause we chore together. He just seemed right for me. Danny is Paco's best friend but mostly we're all together anyway. Virgil's kind of lost since Harold went home for the summer. I swear, while school was on, you'd of thought them two was stuck together. They're still goin' back and forth visitin' each other but when Harold ain't here and Virgil ain't at Harold's, I reckon Virgil's best friend is Ho Tau. That's 'cause, even though Virgil's older, he's in the same grade as Ho Tau. Spike's best friend is Jorge, Juan's brother. But them best friends is just for when we ain't all together, which we mostly are. Them littler ones' mamas are gettin' to the place where they let them go off with us but, then, Spike and Jorge and Ho Tau are about as old as we were last summer anyway.
Spike's finally gettin' to do horse work. Him and Jorge work in the same barn as me and Juan and them littler ones are mostly doin' what me and Juan was doin' last summer. Me and Juan are big enough and, Señor Pablo says, responsible enough to work with ranker horses. We only got three grown wranglers in the summer any more and they mostly do blacksmithin'.
Rosie ain't so much a tom boy no more. She's still one of the best riders on the Bent-Y. Really, it's kind of a tie between her and Virgil and Paco and she's still the best baseball player of the younguns. But if we ain't playin' baseball, she hardly plays with us boys at all no more. She spends most of her time with Isabella and Katy now. She's almost twelve and if you look good, you can see she's got them things growin' on her chest. We was askin' Spike about it but he don't know nothin'. He said used to be she didn't care if he seen her with no clothes on but if he happens to walk in on her now, all hell breaks loose. He don't know nothin' about what's growin' on her chest and he don't care. To him, she's gettin' worse than Katy ever was.
I miss Rosie, but things change. Us boys are always findin' new things for havin' fun. Did our daddies know one of them, there'd probably be some sore asses. It's calf chasin'. We got the idea from watchin' them cowboys at spring round up time. You want a calf layin' on his side for brandin' and on his back for cuttin'. Them cowboys plant their feet and twist them calf's necks until they fall over. Some folks call it bulldoggin'.
Our daddies would probably be mad because they think we're too little for that sort of thing and they think we'll get hurt and anyway, they don't want us botherin' them calfs. There ain't no boy on the Bent-Y that disobeys his daddy that much, but when it comes to calf chasin', you got to. It's just too much fun. We try to be careful and not pick no calf that's too big for us but they got to be big enough to give you a fight. You get hurt some but it ain't nothin' but bruises and we're kind of proud of our bruises. Them bunkhouse cowboys say if you ain't got no bruises, you ain't no cowboy.
It takes some explainin', well, I reckon what it takes is some lyin' when it comes to tryin' to explain why we got cow shit all over the bibs of our britches. You can get cow shit on your knees or even on your ass and folks just think that's part of ranchin'. When you get it on your bib from slippin' off that calf's neck and gettin' drug through them piles, you got to think up some stories. I think them mamas and them China ladies who do the washin' are comin' to think there ain't no grass on the Bent-Y range. There's only rocks to trip over.
The closest we ever come to gettin' bad hurt scared the shit out of all of us. You seen I'm tryin' real hard to cut down on my cussin', even when I'm doin' range talk but in order to tell how some things are, you just got to cuss. There ain't no way of tellin' how scared we was but to say, it scared the shit out of us.
We was all payin' attention to the calf we was takin' turns throwin'. We was yellin' when somebody done good and we was laughin' when somebody let the calf get away or got drug through some shit. Spike was hangin' on to one calf's neck and the calf throwed him off right under another steer that was shittin'. You talk about laughin'. He even had some in his hair. We knew we was gonna have to go to the swimmin' hole for that one. Nobody could think up a lie good enough for that.
Jorge's a tough little shit. He don't always get the calf down but he don't get thrown off either. Jorge turns loose when he wants, not when the calf wants him to. Juan says the little bastard would probably hang on clear to Nebraska and if he done that, half the state of Kansas would die from havin' a Texas greaser bein' drug through their state. Juan and Paco and them are still always makin' greaser and white folks jokes and they're funny but they don't let our daddies hear them.
I reckon we was hearin' it a long time before we started listenin' to it - that soft snortin' and low bawlin'. When it come to us what we was hearin', we looked up and about ten yards away was a big old bull who was so mean, the cowboys called him Ivan. Daddy said that he gave that bull that name from a Russian who was one mean son-of-a-bitch. That ain't me cussin' neither. That's just how my daddy said it. Ivan - the bull, not the Russian - had his head down, pawin' the ground and throwin' dust up over his back like them bulls do when they're gettin' ready to fight each other.
We all just stood there. We didn't know what to do. Our horses was too far away and we knew if we ran, that bull would charge and gore somebody.
Nate was there and he hardly never pissed his britches no more but he did that day. Spike was doin' a lot better but he was still one for talkin' when he was excited. When he seen that bull, though, he couldn't think of anything to say, so he cried. So did Ho Tau. I was so scared that I can't remember if I did or not. Juan and Paco didn't cry but that was the first time I ever seen white Mexicans. Virgil's head was jerkin' so bad I thought it was gonna fly off. But, Jorge - he just stood there like he dared that bull to come after him. That boy hardly never shows you nothin' what he's thinkin'.
The bull didn't charge but he kept movin' closer, his head down, pawin' the ground and snortin' and bawlin'. Seemed like there should have been somethin' somebody could do but, if they was like me, nothin' come into their head. All I could think was, "Somebody's gonna die from this."
I still don't know why she done it and I sure can't ask my daddy. All them horses was well trained and they stayed good if we just left them ground-hitched. I think I must have closed my eyes from bein' scared so I didn't see her comin'. When I looked, Hunter was standin' between us boys and that bull, herdin' him - dancin' back and forth in front of him, keepin' him from gettin' to us - without nobody on her back. I'd like to think she knew she was savin' our lives, but could be whoever had her before I got her trained her to be a cuttin' horse, and she was just doin' what she was trained to do. It didn't make no difference why she was doin' it, she was savin' our lives. She stayed there until that bull got tired of tryin' to get around her and wandered off. We all got on our horses and went like hell for home. Spike washed off in the horse tank and told his mama that some of them cowboys throwed him in. It was about two weeks before we went calf-throwin' again' and from then on, we always had somebody watchin' to see if a bull was comin'.
I reckon I better tell you, there's two kinds of cuttin' on a ranch. I already told you about makin' steers out of bull calfs. That's one kind. The kind Hunter done means when you cut a calf or a steer or any of them critters out of the herd. That kind of cuttin' means to separate and keep them from goin' back to the bunch.
Like I said, I don't know why she done it, but I sure was proud of that horse. I like her so good. She likes me too. You can tell 'cause when she sees me comin' she nickers and when I get close to her, she nuzzles me. I slap her on the neck, or sometimes I even hug her, I like her so good. I'm really proud of her for knowin' cuttin' even if she didn't know she was savin' our lives. I really want to tell Daddy but I better not. If he knows what we're doin', he'll make us quit and calf throwin's too much fun. I'll probably get a chance to show him come fall round-up anyway so if I can just keep my head and not tell him from not thinkin', we'll be all right.
One thing about our daddy that ain't changed is his readin'. He still reads to us every night when he's home. I reckon I ought to say that he reads with us. He reads to us some but he has me read about as much as he does. Paco reads almost as good as me now so he does his share too. I know it ain't right to say proud things on yourself but I'm the best boy reader in the school. I know there's some words that my daddy knows that I ain't never heard of so I don't reckon I read as good as Daddy, but I can read every word I ever heard of. I read out loud better even than them eighth graders and, like I said, Paco ain't far behind me. Folks on the Bent-Y just can't get over how fast that boy took to readin'.
I can't even remember all the books we've read but me and Paco like that readin' so good, we do it even when Daddy ain't there. It's gettin' to where, when our daddy comes home from bein' away somewheres, me and Paco are about as excited to see what new books he brought us as we are to see him.
That really ain't true. I still get that bustin'-open feelin' about every time I see my daddy but the best way of knowin' a lot of different things is readin' about them and it's excitin' to see what new stuff we're gonna learn. Some books don't learn you nothin', but they tell you real good stories. I think I like them King Arthur stories best.
I don't know what's the cause of it, but Daddy seems to have a lot of business in Santa Fe lately and he don't hardly never have them just sittin' and lookin' times no more. In fact when he comes back from Santa Fe, he funs on folks more than usual and he's always in a real good mood and Uncle Kevin and Uncle Brian are always funnin' on him about goin' to Santa Fe. I asked him once, "What do the Flynns own in Santa Fe?"
He said, "Nothing - yet."
Well, what the hell does that mean? Are we buyin' somethin' there? If that's what it is, why does he get that silly grin on his face when he says that? When Uncle Kevin's and Uncle Brian's funnin' on him about goin' to Santa Fe his face gets about as red as his hair. Somethin's goin' on, but me and Paco can't think what. It makes us a little mad. First we knew he was keepin' somethin' from us from his sad and now we know it from his embarrass. Like I said before, I reckon he's got the right to have his own thinkin' but we come to be so used to him teachin' us stuff and tellin' us almost everything, it makes you wonder why he ain't tellin' us this. It makes you worry some. You get to thinkin' it's somethin' bad about me or especially Paco. It makes you a little scared and it's bein' scared that makes us mad.
When me and Paco talked about it, it come to us that our mad mostly come from that he was hardly never home no more. If he wasn't in Austin doin' his state senatorin', or in Amarillo doin' Bent-Y business, he was in Santa Fe doin' Lord knows what. Me and Paco sure as hell didn't.
It seemed like that not knowin' went on forever, but lookin' back on it, I reckon it wasn't so long and I reckon our daddy wasn't gone as long as it seemed at the time. When Daddy finally told us, things sort of fell in place. Lookin' back, we could remember that Daddy's sad changed to his embarrass real early last spring and that was the same time he started havin' so much business in Santa Fe. What I'm gonna tell you now come from my Daddy. I didn't see none of it myself but I reckon it's true because my daddy said it.
Daddy said that more than a year ago, he had heard somethin' from our Pinkerton. What he heard was the reason for his sad. Our Pinkerton said that he found out that maybe Paco had some family still livin'. That scared the hell out of Daddy. I already told you how much he'd come to love Paco and Daddy knew that if Paco had folks who wanted him, he'd have to leave him go. That was the reason for his sad and that was the reason he didn't say nothin'. He didn't want Paco and me worryin' none.
Daddy said that all he could think was, "It's going to be just like with Sam. I'm going to have all that love for that boy and I won't be able to have him with me." Daddy said he was thinkin' those things when he got so Irish with those soldiers about how they were doin' Paco and them Indians. You remember, don't you? That was the day Daddy showed us what a really strong man was. That was the day that our daddy let us see all of who he was. That was the day I loved my daddy probably more than I had before or I have since. That was the day our daddy showed us everything a man could be.
From what Daddy said, this is what happened. When our Pinkerton got to San Miguel, everybody in town knew the story. In 1889 the border bandits were just about whipped and San Miguel was the last raid in that part of Arizona that anybody knew about so folks remembered it real good. There were nine houses burned down, ten grown people were killed and seven children were stolen. Four of the children were found and two were known to have died while they were livin' with the bandits. There was only one, a three year old boy named Francisco Domingo Gómez y Medina, whose mama and papa called him Pacito, who could never be accounted for. The Pinkerton found one old man who claimed that he rode with the bandits. Perhaps he was not as old as his hard living made him look, but he was very drunk and the Pinkerton was not sure he could trust his memory. The story he told, however, hardly seemed made up. He said that the boy had lived with the bandits almost two years before they could find a buyer. He was finally sold, not to Apaches, but to a white man who talked funny white man's talk and who ran a medicine show. The Pinkerton checked around, but nobody in the area knew his name or had even heard of such a man.
Among the people killed in San Miguel were Fernando Jesus Gómez, Pacito's papa and Maria Medina, the child's abuela. The Pinkerton was told that Señora Medina's only surviving relative was her daughter, Consuela Gómez y Medina. Her husband and all her other children had been killed in Indian raids or by border bandits. The child, Pacito, represented the last of her line and she worshiped him. She would sit by the hour, rocking him and singing all the old Spanish folk songs. Folks in San Miguel said they could almost still hear her singin' La Paloma, "The Dove," which seemed to be the child's favorite.
Folks in San Miguel said that little boy always had a twinkle in his eye and, even when he was real small, he liked to make folks happy. He knew how to make folks laugh. Both our daddy and the Pinkerton knew for sure who Paco was.
But there was a problem. Consuela Gómez, Pacito's mama, was not in San Miguel the day of the raid. She had gone across the border into Mexico to help her husband's sister who was having a baby. Consuela Gómez returned to San Miguel after the raid. She lived there with friends for about six months, hoping the soldiers, either American or Mexican, or the Arizona Rangers would find her son. Each time a child was brought back and it wasn't Pacito, she grew more and more quiet. Before the raid, she was like Pacito, always happy herself, and always trying to make other folks happy. San Miguel folks said they reckoned she went out of her head with sad. She stopped laughin'. She wouldn't talk to anyone and finally she just left San Miguel.
Folks reckoned she couldn't take all the reminders of her sorrow. She and her husband had not been wealthy but her mother's family, the Medinas, were of noble Spanish blood. They had been very wealthy. Indian raids and border wars had took away a lot of their cattle and their money.
After Consuela's father was killed, her mother had survived on what was left of the dwindling Medina fortune. Fernando Gómez was a talented, hard working silver smith and the family owned their home and some land. The home was, of course, destroyed but Consuela sold the land, took what was left of her mother's money and left. Nobody had seen or heard from her since.
That made a problem for our daddy. He could not prove that Paco was an orphan and, although Grandpa Walton was sympathetic, he could not let Daddy adopt Paco. Grandpa said, "Come on, Shay. You're the boy's guardian. You probably will be until he's grown. It's been more than eight years. Nobody's gonna show up to claim him. He's your son and for all intents and purposes, my grandson. He's ours, Shay. Can't you be satisfied with that?"
No, Daddy couldn't be satisfied with that. He needed that boy and he needed to know that Paco was not going to have to face any more big disappointments. He didn't want Paco hurt any more and he had come to think that he was the only one who could keep the hurt away from Paco. He loved Paco and he wanted - no, he needed Paco for his legal son. When you think on that, you understand why Daddy got so Irish and sad with them soldiers and Indians.
Our daddy kept that Pinkerton busy for almost a year but it seemed like Consuela Gómez had just gone off the whole world. Daddy told us that while all that was happenin' he was thinkin', "How can I tell Paco about his mama when I don't know where she is or even if she's still alive? It will either worry him or raise his hopes and he doesn't need any more of that." Daddy said he couldn't decide whether to tell Paco and me or not. He thought we had a right to know but after thinkin' real hard on it, he decided not to tell us nothin' until he knew somethin' for sure. He said that every time we asked him about that Pinkerton, it hurt him in his chest because he was kind of lyin' to us but he couldn't think of nothin' else to do.
While all this was happenin', me and Paco were gettin' more and more grown up. I was almost thirteen and we reckoned that Paco was too. Since we didn't know when Paco's birthday was, we decided to make his the same day as mine and Daddy give us a big party again. Those parties are somethin'. I never even knew what one was until I come to the Bent-Y and now I been to so many of them I can't remember them all. But parties are fun. This one was real fun. Nate come over from the Rolling H and some of them other herd kids stayed over the week end for the party. Me and Paco and Virgil and Juan and Nate are gettin' to like talkin' to them girls. They're kind of dumb and they're always wantin' to go off somewheres and kiss. If you'd have told me just a half a year ago that I'd ever do that I'd of thought you went out of your head. I ain't sayin' no more but I reckon you still got your head.
When it comes to parties, I reckon me and Paco like Christmas best of all. You get a lot of presents but that ain't why we like it. It's mostly goin' to Aunt Lydia's or Aunt Jenny's and everybody bein' together. You get to eat that real good dinner and you sing them songs and one of them aunts reads that story about Jesus from the Bible and we sing some more and them daddies get to tellin' stories about Christmases when they were young. There just ain't no feelin' like it. What you say about all that?
I'm gettin' to where I ain't at all skittish about Christian things no more. Prayin' and readin' from the Bible don't rile me none now. It come to me soon after I come to know that Aunt Lydia and Aunt Jenny was Christians that that damn preacher man wasn't no Christian. Just sayin' you're a Christian don't make you one. I seen from Aunt Lydia and Aunt Jenny and from goin' to church some with Danny, it ain't what you say, it's what you do that makes you a Christian.
The parties and special times are good but the best times are still when it's just me and Paco and Daddy. Sometimes we don't even talk to each other. Maybe Paco and me are sittin' at that little round table with the lamp on it readin' and Daddy's sittin' in his favorite chair readin' to himself but we're there together. We don't need talkin'. We just need to be near each other.
When school time had come again we got Mr. Phipps for a teacher. He seemed fine at first but pretty soon he was a whole lot fussier than Miss Tuthill ever thought of bein' and I don't think he was as smart as Katy. He don't hardly teach us nothin' cause he's all the time fussin' at us and puttin' people in the corner or duncin' them or makin' us put our heads down on the desk. How the hell can you learn somethin' when you got your eyes buried in your arms? All us younguns was always fussin' to our mamas and daddies about not wantin' to go to school. All them mamas and daddies got together and had a meeting on what the hell was the matter with Mr. Phipps.
I don't know everything that went on in that meeting but the next day Sarah Whitacher was our teacher. Seemed like when them mamas and daddies tried to ask Mr. Phipps what seemed to be the problem, he said all us kids was just dumb range rats and he was sick to his stomach of havin' to teach dirty Mexicans. That shows you how dumb he was. Everybody knows you don't say them kind of things around Seamus Flynn. Daddy told him to be off the place before morning. The last we heard, Mr. Phipps got fired from a school over to Lubbock for slappin' the lady who was the head of the school board.
Sarah's all right but she doesn't have any patience with Virgil. She keeps thinkin' he's lazy but I know he tries and I know that Paco's right about why he can't read. When it comes time to read, he's always thinkin' he can't and while you're thinkin' that, you sure as hell can't be thinkin' about what some word is.
Now that we don't have to put up with Mr. Phipps, school's fine. Since Paco learned his readin' and cipherin' so good, Sarah let him be in the sixth grade with me and that feels good. The only thing wrong is I wish Sarah would leave Virgil the hell alone. Her always fussin' at him ain't makin' him do no better. It's just makin' him more and more nervous. He's even startin' not always bein' able to say the word he wants to say. Sometimes when he tries to talk and he wants to say, "Sam", he goes, "S...S...S...S...Sam," like that. When he does that, Sarah says real cross to him, "Virgil, stop that stuttering!"
One day when she did somethin' like that, Virgil went to cryin' and walked right out of school. Sarah - we're supposed to call her Miss Whitacher in school - tried to stop me, but I just got up and went after him. I didn't know this until later, but when me and Virgil was gone, Paco stayed in school but he got really Irish.
When I found Virgil, he was in the hay mow of the house horse barn. He was cryin'. He said, "Sam, I'm so dumb I think I'm gonna run off to where nobody knows me. I'm too ashamed to live with these people." He just put his head on my shoulder and cried and he was already thirteen.
I said, "Virgil, you ain't dumb. You read a whole lot of things real good. It's just words that give you trouble. You read a trail better than any of us and you can read a horse and tell if it's gonna be rank or crazy. That's all readin'. It's just a different kind. Paco says that you can't read mostly because you think you can't. You think on that. You read some things real good. You're just scared of them words and you're scared you're gonna look dumb. Nobody could read words when he's thinkin', 'If I try to read this, them people are gonna think I'm dumb and laugh at me.' Nobody in this whole world is smart enough to think on two things at the same time. You think on that. I'll tell you one more thing, Virgil. If you want us to, me and Paco will help you some. We're good friends and you don't have to be scared of makin' a mistake when you're with us. I bet if it's just you and me and Paco, you'll read good. Do you want to try it?"
Virgil was still cryin' too hard to think too good on that but at least I finally got it said.
While I was sayin' to Virgil in that hay mow, Paco was really sayin' to Sarah. Like I said, when me and Virgil went runnin' out of the school, Paco got real Irish. He stood up and said, "School's out until I say it ain't and you ain't Miss Whitacher. Goddamit, you're Sarah and god almighty, Sarah, you're dumb as hell doin' Virgil like that. Think on this. If you were give a book to read but had to stand in a corral with a mean, ruttin' bull, how much readin' do you think you'd get done? I'll tell you. You wouldn't read a damn word. You wouldn't be thinkin' about readin'. You'd be thinkin' about if that bull was gonna gore your ass.
"That's what all you damn teachers are doin' to Virgil. He can't think on no words. He's gotta all the time be thinkin', 'Is that damn bull gonna get me?' He's thinkin', 'Am I gonna make a mistake and are all them people gonna laugh at me or is the teacher gonna yell at me or is my sister gonna really get after me because she thinks I'm makin' the family look bad?' Goddamit, Sarah, quit thinkin' about you. Try thinkin' about helpin' Virgil know he can read instead of fussin' at him all the time. I'm sick of it. Miss Tuthill did him that way. That damn Mr. Phipps did him terrible and you - you're his sister and supposed to love him - you're doin' him worse than any of them. Virgil ain't dumb and he ain't lazy. He's scared, goddamit, and as long as you keep him scared he ain't gonna read a goddam word.
"There now, school's back in and the next person that cusses, if Miss Whitacher don't kick your ass, I will."
Sarah didn't get mad and she didn't cry. She thought for a while and then she surprised everybody and said, "Paco, I think you're right. Virgil will not have to read in school until he wants to, but he will read with you and Sam. You and Sam will spend time with Virgil everyday after school. That's your punishment for your outburst and Sam's for leaving school without my permission. ..... And, by-the-way, Paco, thank you."
Virgil's still not the best reader in the school but he's doin' real good. He reads some now in school and he does right good most days. When he's with Paco and me, he does real good. Virgil's even gone to teachin' Harold Colburn and he's doin' some better too. Them two are still real good friends.
Miss Whitacher says that since Virgil reads so good now, our punishment is over and we don't have to spend time readin' with Virgil no more. I told her that Virgil was our friend and that we'd read with him as long as we damn pleased. You see, I still ain't got over all my talkin' back yet. Me and Paco had to sweep out the school and get up early and build the fire for a whole month for that "damn" and it was me that said it. She still made Paco help me because she said she knew he was thinkin' it.
She's all right, that Miss Whitacher. We're learnin' real good this year.
It come time when our daddy had to go back to Austin. I reckon Paco and me don't do Ling Pau like we used to but we still don't like our daddy bein' gone. He still writes to us every day and he still gets some upset if we don't write to him every day. In one of those letters he was sayin' how much he missed us and that to give him somethin' to do, he reckoned he'd go to the Annual Texas Congressional Ball this year.
That kind of ball ain't somethin' you play with. You got to get all dressed up for it like they're gonna put you in your coffin, the way it sounds. The men all have to wear black suits with them fancy string ties and them shirts that have lace on the collar and on the arm cuffs.
When you're there, you dance with them ladies and when you ain't dancin', you stand around and drink whiskey. Me and Paco can't think why our daddy would want to go to somethin' like that but he said in his letter, he's goin' this year. He ain't been for three years and he gets bored of an evenin' when he's in Austin and it hurts him in his chest just sittin' around missin' me and Paco. Daddy said he don't expect to have no good time but at least it will give him somethin' to do. I reckon that makes sense but I'd have to be awful goddam bored before they'd get me in that kind of get-up. Paco says that the only way they'd get him to dress like that was if he was dead.
Daddy didn't tell us this next part in no letter. He didn't tell us at all until we found out what he was all the time doin' in Santa Fe. That night at the ball, one of them times he wasn't dancin' with a lady, he was talkin' to the Territorial Governor of New Mexico and his missis. Daddy said he was just makin' nice with her and he told her what a pretty dress she had on. Did she have to go all the way to San Francisco to get it?
The Governor's missis said, "No, we have an excellent dressmaker who just moved to Santa Fe."
Our daddy told her that he wasn't married but he had two brothers whose wives would love to know a dressmaker who lived that close who did that kind of work. Would the Governor's missis be so kind as to share her name?
The Governor's missis would be delighted to. The dressmaker had a little shop right at the edge of downtown Santa Fe. Her name was Consuela Gómez.
Daddy said he was holdin' a glass of whiskey and when the Governor's missis said that name, Daddy dropped his whiskey. It splashed up all over that Governor's missis' fancy dress.
What do you say when you do somethin' like that? I don't know what my daddy said but I don't reckon he was thinkin' about no lady's dress. He was thinkin' about is that the same Consuela Gómez I've been lookin' for? Is that Paco's mama?
They wasn't even done with the Legislature but Daddy's big grey was in a box car and Daddy was on a train headin' for Amarillo the next mornin'. A day and a half later he had come to where the railroad wasn't done no farther and he was on his grey, ridin' hard for Santa Fe.