A lone figure appeared on the open plain, trudging steadily across the dry, stubbly grass. It was a young woman, perhaps nineteen or twenty years old, carrying a basket that was filled with wildflowers. Her sunbonnet hung down her back, dangling listlessly by it's faded strings, and the sun beat fully down on her white-blond hair. She ignored the heat that shimmered in undulating waves, continuing her unhurried, unflagging venture across the open ground.
Eventually, she came to an old range house, abandoned now for a full decade. The strong, adobe walls still stood as they ever did, though the door was smoke-blackened and hanging off its hinges, and only patches of the roof remained. The windows were empty spaces, gaping blankly at the outside world, their wooden covers long ago burned away. Inside, inches of dust shifted and hissed as the wind blew through the single room before moaning up the chimney and back into the endless sky.
The girl cast a brief glance at the spectral house and quickened her pace, heading for a hill not far away. In the shade of a single oak tree, three crosses rose above the ground, guarding the last resting places of a proud family. The young woman stopped in front of the graves, reading the names carved into two of the wooden crosses: Sam Burton and Neddy Burton. Both died 1879.
Reaching into her basket, she took two flowers and laid one at the base of each marker, bowing her head briefly before turning to the last grave. Tears that had been held at bay for so long welled up in her brown eyes, blurring the name and year carved on the cross: Pacer Burton. 1879.
The girl knelt in the dry dirt, gathering her flowers out of the basket and carefully arranging them on Pacer's grave. She swiped the moisture from her eyes, but as she looked at the name on the cross again, the treacherous tears stung a second time, and she let them come. There was no one around to see and judge her for them, anyway.
Few people ever understood the Burtons, and fewer still could be called amiable with them. She supposed it was easy to see why - with the Kiowa Indians constantly raiding, burning, and killing, it was little wonder the locals cast suspicious glances at Pacer when he came to the crossing, or muttered about Sam when they saw him out driving his cattle. Strangely enough, Neddy caused the least comment, despite the fact that she was the only full-blooded Kiowa of the family. Perhaps it was because she was so good and kind to everyone - or perhaps it was because she was seldom seen. Sam kept his wife away from the people at the crossing as much as he could, fearing they would mistreat her. Neddy had always been sensitive about who she was; her husband, son, and step-son had protected her as much as they could, and except for sideways comments from the most malicious of the townsfolk, she had never suffered much.
No, it was Sam and Pacer who took the brunt of prejudice, with Pacer bearing most of it. Sam was held at fault for marrying a Kiowa squaw, but it was half-breed Pacer that everyone avoided - or targeted, depending on who it was. The people judged him, not by who he was, but by who they thought he should be; as a result, he had very few friends besides his half-brother, Clint. Maybe even just one real friend outside his family.
That friend was Dottie Phillips, the doctor's daughter.
It was a strange friendship, to be sure. Dottie was twelve years younger than the half-Indian, but perhaps that was why their friendship was so genuine. Was it any wonder that Pacer got along so well with a child, unburdened as she was by adult knowledge and prejudice? To young Dottie, the threat of Indian attacks was very real, but even more real was Pacer Burton's kindness to her.
Their unlikely companionship started when she was five years old. Some of Sam Bass's former cohorts were passing through, and when their identities were discovered, Dottie had been taken hostage as a safety pass out of the territory. Of course, once the outlaws had the upper hand, they had withdrawn to the hills and demanded ransom money for her safe return. A search party was organized at the crossing, but it was Pacer who eventually tracked down the badmen and rescued the little girl. Despite her young age at the time, Dottie never forgot the look on the half-breed's face when he saw her there, bound to a tree and surrounded by rough, cruel men.
Nor did she forget how, at the age of seventeen, he killed every one of her captors.
That was the Kiowa in him, she supposed. She could still recall the fire that smoldered in his dark eyes as he carried her back home to her frantic parents. She had been scared as she watched him slay the outlaws with gun and hunting knife, but on the long journey back to the crossing, her fear gradually dwindled before disappearing altogether. That night, she knew; Pacer Burton was her friend.
And she was his. Two years after the outlaw incident, it had been her turn to save the young man's life. During a communal picnic that summer, Dottie and her friends had wandered off to pick berries, and she'd been the one to see him, lying unconscious behind a rock with blood pooling under his head. The other little girls, always scared of the half-Indian boy, begged her to come away and leave him - which is exactly what she did. Dropping her basket of berries, the doctor's daughter took off, running all the way back to the social gathering where she gasped out a plea for help. Neddy Burton was fetched, and she stitched up the laceration on her son's temple before he bled to death. Dottie held his large, brown hand the whole time.
And so it continued, for four years. Nobody but Clint was ever fully aware of her friendship with Pacer, but it was there all the same. They never spent much time together, which was to be expected, but they were almost like each others guardian angels - always watching from a distance.
Only one time since she was five years old had she ever been afraid of him. That memorable day when she was playing with the goat, and Pacer had come and snatched her up, calling her father outside, demanding he go to the Burton place and help Neddy. As the conversation progressed, Dottie began to fear him - this was not the Pacer she knew and loved. This was not her friend. The gun in his hand, his harsh voice... He frightened and confused her.
But she should have known better. When she made it quite plain that she was scared, he whispered in her ear, where none of the adults could hear him.
"You know I won't hurt you, Dottie."
Those were the last words he ever spoke to her. He died four days later, wounded to death by the very Kiowa Indians with whom he had once ridden. He was only twenty one years old. She was nine.
Dottie closed her eyes, bowing her head as the memories ran out and faded. It had been ten years since Pacer died, and though the pain of his passing dulled as she grew, she felt it keenly every time she visited his grave. Guilt weighed heavily on the people at the crossing, those who had abused and alienated the youngest Burton boy, but only Clint and Dottie felt a true sense of loss. Even Roslyn Pierce, one of the few persons who was ever kind to him, was outside the grief that plagued Pacer's only two real friends in the years following his death.
The young woman took a deep, shaky breath, wiping her tears once again and raising her eyes to the vast expanse of blue sky. For a moment, all that could be heard was the wind, rustling in the leaves above her head; then she began to talk quietly.
"I guess it's been a while since I've come to visit you, hasn't it? Almost a year? Yes, that's it. I'm sorry I haven't come, things have been pretty busy. Ros had her baby - the one I told you about last spring - only it wasn't just one, it was twins! Can you believe it?" She smiled slightly, her eyes sliding out of focus momentarily. "You should have seen Clint while Ros was giving birth - he was just about out of his head fretting about her. But she's alright, and so are the twins. It was a boy and a girl, and you know what they named them?" Dottie's eyes strayed to the two graves beside Pacer's. "Sam and Neddy, after your parents. They're beautiful babies, both of them, but heavens! you've never heard such squalling!" She laughed a little, looking back up at the sky, as if she could see her half-Kiowa friend watching her from the clouds. "Their older brother - your namesake, you know - he says they're too noisy and they smell funny. But he's ever so proud of them, and the best brother they could ever hope for. He'll hardly let anyone besides me and Clint and Ros touch them. He guards them like... like you guarded me."
The young woman looked down at her hands, a lump rising in her throat again. She silently twisted her apron between her fingers, fighting the tide of emotion that was rising in her, before looking back up once more.
"Well, I'd better be getting back now; they'll be wondering where I am." She rearranged the flowers on the mound of dirt before rising to her feet and brushing off her dress. "Goodbye, Pacer," she whispered, and then started home, just as the shadows of the hills stretched long across the plain. For a while, her small, straight figure could be seen, set ablaze by the western sun.
Then she disappeared over the rise, and all that was left was an abandoned range house and the wild, lonely wind that curled and sighed around three crosses on the hill.