The Gift, Part I
A Wagon Train Christmas Story
by Sevenstars
SUMMARY: How a boy gets promoted from "chief pan- and bottle-washer" to "apprentice scout."
In the final-season episode "The Hide Hunters," asked if he's ever thought of settling down in California, Barney says "someday... right now this [being with the wagon train and being accounted one of Chris's men] is what I want to do." Yet only the previous year Chris rebuked him for trying to buy a gun ("little boys don't [wear them]") and insisted that he study his algebra. How and why did Chris and Bill decide he was grown up enough to take a man's role? (It's worth noting that Bill once says to Coop that maybe "we" expected Barney to grow up too soon, which suggests that Coop had something to do with the decision.)
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St. Joseph, Missouri, December, 1877
Something was going on. Barney West was certain of it.
It had begun almost as soon as they got back from California and settled down for the winter. As he'd been doing ever since he took over, Mister Chris had rented a five-room furnished house—a big homey kitchen, comfortable sitting room, and three bedrooms upstairs—for the season, and they'd all gone in together on the rent, which was $33.50 a month, plus $2.25 a week for a housekeeper to come in by the day (Charlie having pointed out that winter was his vacation and Barney's, and he didn't see why, if Coop didn't have to be out on the trail risking his scalp day in and day out, he and Barney had to spend the season cooking and cleaning up for "you ingrates"). Then Coop had decided to go down to Texas and visit his family in Cherokee County over the winter, and since he wanted to get there in time for Christmas, he'd had to make his arrangements in a big hurry—train to St. Louis, river steamer to New Orleans, coastal boat to Galveston and stagecoach from there to Piney Flats. It was right about then that Barney had noticed him in regular hushed conference with the others, particularly Bill and Mister Chris.
He hadn't thought too much of it right at first, partly because he was concentrating on figuring out what to get them all for Christmas; at $7.50 a month his purse was pretty lean, but especially after what had happened when he broke his leg, he felt a need to show them just how grateful he was for their care and concern. It had been the roughest time on the whole trip for him, if not quite for all of them—there'd been that time when Coop had lost his eyesight temporarily, and they'd all thought he was going to have to give up scouting. Then, too, Barney was missing Duke, who'd stayed behind in California, going up to Oak Bluff, in the Fort Willoughby country, where he'd passed about half his boyhood. He was fond of all the men with whom he'd formed a sort of family, but Duke, only twelve years older than himself, had always seemed the most simpatico (as Coop called it) toward a growing boy's concerns. There was a lot of boy in Coop too, when he forgot everything he'd been through—the war, his years as a hired gun—but he was six years older than Duke, and naturally more sober and mature.
But it didn't take long for Barney to realize that Coop's head-to-heads with the others had a way of changing character whenever he got within hearing range. They'd start talking in a more normal tone, usually about something completely inconsequential, and Charlie, if he was in on the exchange, would get a sort of shifty guilty look on his face—he was never good at hiding his feelings. Then a letter with an Oak Bluff postmark came in the mail just before Coop had to leave, and Barney expected that Mister Chris would read it aloud after supper, so they could all know how Duke was making out—but he didn't. Barney asked, and Mister Chris only said, "Oh, Duke just wanted to settle some old business, that's all."
Barney knew that when Mr. Guthrie offered Bill and the others a chance to get even, they'd had to back up the bet with their sign-up bonuses—but since Duke had had to renege on his contract, of course he'd have had to refund the bonus as soon as he could. He could understand that the letter might not have been a real letter at all, just a bank draft or something; he knew Duke was part owner of a ranch up that way, and could probably have gotten a loan on it, or just sold a few cattle. Still, put it together with the way the other four were behaving and it made Barney feel kind of left out of things.
They all went with Coop to the train, and when he shook hands with the scout Barney asked tentatively, "You'll be comin' back in the spring, won't you, Coop?"
Coop tipped his head, a quizzical look on his lean features. "What makes you think I won't be, Barney?"
"I dunno," Barney admitted. "It's just... well, after everything that happened to you this trip..."
"Couple'a big things happened to you too," Coop pointed out, "and you're stayin'."
"That's different," Barney muttered, looking down. "I don't guess I've got a lot of choice."
Coop glanced up, over his head, at Bill and Mister Chris, and Barney could have sworn that something passed between them, but he wasn't sure how to read it; he'd only known Coop about seven or eight months, and Coop was such a good poker player that Barney wasn't sure of all his tells yet. Then he met Barney's eyes again and grinned. "You might have more choices than you think you do, Barney. Just make the right one, okay? I reckon to see you meetin' this train when I get back."
"All abo-o-o-ard!" yelled the conductor, and Coop looked around quickly.
"Gotta go," he said. "Merry Christmas, everybody. See you around March or April." And with that he was gone.
With both the younger men out of the picture, Barney's life suddenly seemed strangely barren. He'd grown up essentially alone, living with his grandmother on a small farm that covered their needs but not much more than that, and even after Virginia was readmitted to the Union, the year he turned nine, free schools weren't numerous, owing in part to an ongoing wrangle about the state's debts. So many rural communities raised what they could for "subscription" schools and let it go at that. Church-affiliated elementaries and private academies plugged the leaks as best they could, but a lot of youngsters in the rural districts, Barney included, attended school sporadically if at all. His grandma had seen to it that he learned to read and write and cipher, and he'd always been bright and curious, seizing willingly on any kind of reading matter that came within reach. But one thing even reading couldn't teach you was how to make friends when there wasn't anyone around, or how to relate to them if there was. If he'd had brothers, or even nearby cousins, it might have been different. Maybe that was why he'd always gotten along so well with Bill and Duke and Coop, because he'd spent most of his young life with grown-ups instead of people his own age. Which, when he thought about it, might be what had led to his ordeal in the Arizona Territory: the teasing of the other boys had been something he just wasn't equipped to cope with, and naturally he'd overreacted to it.
Mister Chris was busy, as he'd been last year, reviewing his journals and assembling them into a coherent memoir. Charlie and their housekeeper, Mrs. Haastensen, were in almost constant conference about Christmas dinner, which Charlie would have to be at least partly responsible for, since Mrs. Haastensen had a husband and six youngsters at home and naturally wanted to spend the holiday with them. As for Bill, he was out more than he was in, and about two weeks before Christmas, he packed a grip and vanished entirely, not telling Barney where he was going. He was gone for ten whole days, and Barney was beginning to think he'd miss the day altogether when he finally blew in along with a bitter blast of snow and wind off the river and the prairies beyond.
"Man," he said as he brushed snow off his shoulders, "it's cold out there! Almost like Donner Pass at its worst."
"I get you a hot cup of coffee, Mister Bill," Mrs. Haasentensen said; being Swedish, her universal remedy for anything was coffee, which all Scandinavians loved and sipped like brandy fanciers savoring fine old brandy.
"Want me to take your satchel upstairs, Bill?" Barney offered.
"No, Barney, that's okay, I want to go up and change anyhow." But Barney, who was becoming almost hypervigilant ever since noticing Coop's odd behavior, caught a quick exchange of significant looks—Bill's was almost a wink—between him and Mister Chris.
"How'd it go, Hawks?" Charlie asked.
"Just fine, Chuck. Worked out just the way I'd hoped it would," Bill said as he shrugged out of his heavy lined saddle coat and hung it up on the hall tree. "You know, I think I'd like to sit down in front of the fire and drink that coffee before I go upstairs. Say, Barney, when's the last time you brought in some wood? It looks like it's makin' up to a pretty good snow."
It wasn't exactly an order, but Barney had grown to know these men well enough to recognize a gentle dismissal when he heard one. "I'll go now," he said quietly. "No need to be blunderin' around in the dark." And he took his jacket down and headed out through the kitchen, passing Mrs. Haastensen and her tray on the way.
He filled the kitchen woodbox, built up a reserve stack on the service porch, and then, after a moment's hesitation, went out to the little barn at the back of the lot. Coop's chestnut, Gambler, snorted a soft greeting as he slid the door to behind him; Coop hadn't been able to take the horse on the train, of course, though he'd put his saddle in a sack to carry with him. Barney sat down on a bale of hay just outside the gelding's stall and rubbed his leg, where the two healed breaks, still fairly fresh, were aching from the change in the weather. Charlie had said he'd probably know about such things for the rest of his life now.
"You know what, Gambler?" Barney asked the horse. "If I didn't think they'd put out a wanted poster on me for horse stealin', I'd put my saddle on you and head down to Texas and join Coop. I feel so left out of things around here lately... even Bill—he's not actin' like himself any more, not toward me, anyhow."
Neither was Coop, before he left, whispered something inside him. What makes you think you'd be any more welcome with him? He's with his kin. You haven't got any. Just a charity case, that's all you are.
"Am not," he said aloud. "I earn my way."
Huh, said the internal traitor. Quarter wages—or less. Coop made four hundred for the season, besides what he won on that tug-of-war. Bill and Mister Chris made even more. And it doesn't change that they're not your kin.
"Never said I was. And it's no fault of theirs. I chose not to stay with my father. He was willing enough to have me, and so was his wife."
You'd never have fit in there. And two Barnaby Juniors in one house would never work out.
"Well, shoot, I know that! Why do you think I left?"
Still, insisted the silent voice, you'd do better almost anywhere else. You can ride. Even a horse wrangler on a ranch or a trail drive gets twenty-five a month—that's more than three times what Mister Chris pays you.
"Not about money," he muttered.
Which brings us right back where we started from. If it's not the money, and it's not that they're not kin, that leaves one thing. Trust. Whatever they've got cooking, they've been at it ever since you got back here, and they're not showin' any sign of bein' about to let you in on it. People in the wagon train business have to trust each other, look out for each other. Even Mister Chris said so.
"I do trust them," Barney insisted.
Trust isn't worth a plugged nickel if it doesn't go both ways.
"Oh, shut up!" Barney yelled in frustration, jumping up and lashing a kick at a convenient water bucket. It rang like a drum and went thumping and clattering down the aisle to land with a bang against the back wall. Gambler jerked against his tether and tried to spin around, and Barney—being a horse-lover like all Virginians—was immediately contrite. "I'm sorry, Gambler. It's nothin' to do with you, and sure not your fault. I didn't mean to scare you..."
He spent the next fifteen minutes soothing the spirited chestnut, who according to Coop had more than a bit of Thoroughbred in him, and finally, figuring that the three men had had time enough to settle whatever was on their minds, went out again—it was snowing for real now, and blowing too; fortunately he could make out the lighted kitchen window even through the curtain of nearly horizontally falling flakes, and that gave him something to orient on—and carried in a load of wood for the sitting-room fireplace. As he'd hoped, Bill had disappeared upstairs, and Mister Chris was looking over his day's work while Charlie got a hot supper together. "Did you send Mrs. Haastensen home?" Barney asked his bearded friend.
"Yeah, thought she'd better go while she could still find her way to the trolley stop and the cars are still runnin'," Charlie agreed. "She said she'd stay if we wanted her to, wouldn't make much difference to a Swede how deep the snow got, but we told her to get goin'."
That made Barney think of his exchange with his inner self in the barn. "You know what, Charlie, I'm not awfully hungry tonight," he said. "I think I'm gonna go turn in early."
Charlie looked around, startled. "Why, Barney, it ain't even seven yet."
Barney shrugged. "I know."
"You ain't comin' down with somethin', are you? Let me see if you got a fever."
Barney ducked out from under his hand. "I'm fine. Just not hungry, that's all."
Charlie gave him that certain look that always made him think of a curious bird. "We've got macaroni and cheese," he wheedled. "Miz Haastensen started it just before she left."
"Thanks just the same," said Barney. " 'Night, Charlie." And he fled up the back stairway before the cook could say anything more.
**WT**
By the time the storm blew itself out, around the next midday, there was a good eight inches of snow on the ground. Barney helped Bill shovel out, and then they made their way downtown (towing a pair of small sleds borrowed from the kids next door) to pick out a Christmas tree and a load of garlands of greenery to decorate the house with. Missouri had been settled largely by Southerners, and they clung to the Virginia tradition of Christmas cheer, including abundant holly and mistletoe, festoons of laurel looped through bannisters, long garlands of smilax studded with red bows festooning windows and fireplaces, and huge bouquets of magnolia leaves, red-berried pyracantha branches, clusters of nandina, and silver bowls of winter camellias and paper-thin white Christmas narcissus gracing tables and sideboards. As a houseful of bachelors, Barney and the three men didn't go quite that far, but they were still, as Charlie insisted, a family, and a family's house should be properly dressed for the holiday.
Three days to Christmas, Barney told himself as he helped Bill nail up garlands, and wondered how his father and stepmother and half-brother were celebrating it, and Coop and his kinfolk, and Duke. Maybe I should think about goin', he mused. I'll be seventeen in less than a month—I'm old enough now to hold down a man's job...
But where would he go, and how would he get there, and what would he live on till he could find that job? It wasn't like out West, where a man could ride from Canada to Mexico and never pay a penny for food and lodging, as long as he just stopped at private houses—riding the grub line, Coop had called it. Barney didn't even have a horse to ride it on—just a saddle and a rifle and a war-bag's worth of clothes. Shouldn't have spent all my money on Christmas presents, he thought rather bitterly.
The next day Charlie invited him along to pick out the goose for Christmas dinner—a turkey didn't make sense for just the four of them, but most of the weight of a goose, Charlie explained, was in the bones, and an eight- or nine-pounder would be enough to just about founder them. And then it was Christmas Eve, and Mrs. Haastensen came in early to do as much of tomorrow's meal ahead as she could, while Barney and Charlie put up the tree and got it decorated. Bill vanished on some mysterious errand around two o'clock, but was back in a couple of hours, and when he came in he told Barney there'd be no need for him to go out and feed Gambler—"Figured since I already had my winter gear on, I might as well stop and do it," he said.
"Okay," said Barney. "Thanks, Bill."
Hawks gave him a penetrating look. "You all right?"
"Sure," Barney replied. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"You just don't sound too full of Christmas spirit, that's all," Bill observed.
"Bill, I'm not six years old," Barney reminded him, with a note of half impatience, half indignation. "It's not like I'm lookin' for Santa Claus to come down the chimney tonight, or anything like that."
Charlie, who was helping Mister Chris mix up a bowlful of hot spiced milk punch, swallowed a snort, and the wagonmaster actually chuckled. "What's funny?" Barney demanded. "You know, a fellow could get to thinkin' there was some kind of plot bein' hatched in this house, the way you've all been actin'."
Bill grinned. "Secrets and Christmastime kind of go together, don't they?"
"I guess," Barney agreed glumly, his flareup of spirit gone as suddenly as it had come.
Bill and Mister Chris traded another of those looks, this one more somber than the ones Barney had seen before. "Barney," Hawks said slowly, "if we've hurt you, or made you feel like you were on the outside of something..."
"It's all right," Barney cut him off. "It doesn't matter, really." He changed the subject. "Wonder what Coop and his family are doin' right now?"
"Probably up to their elbows in a party," said Mister Chris, who had known Coop's father back before the war, when he was surveying along the Texas-Louisiana border. "I imagine his brother Ken and their mother and Uncle Morgan have invited half of Cherokee County to a dance and midnight supper. Being one of the biggest families there, it's a tradition—goes back to Republic days, when Coop's grandfather was the head of the household."
That actually distracted Barney from his own concerns. "Why did Coop ever go into scouting, if his family's that well off?"
"He's always thought it was because he was born under an open sky," the wagonmaster explained. "Under the stars, actually, in his aunt's garden. The others—there were ten of them altogether—made more conventional debuts, and they live the conventional kinds of lives their father expected. And then there was the war, of course, although Ken was in that too."
They ate supper—chicken pot-pie and a white, yellow, and black marble cake, both prepared in advance by Mrs. Haastensen—and then sat around the fire, with the candles lit on the tree, while Mister Chris read aloud about the Cratchits' Christmas dinner and the birth of Jesus and the shepherds coming to see him in the stable. Partway through some carolers made themselves heard in the street outside, and Mister Chris invited them in for punch and ginger-cakes. It all improved Barney's mood a little, but when he went up to bed he was still thinking about Texas.
Christmas morning was cold but clear, and loud with the sound of church bells. They all gathered in the sitting room to distribute presents, with Mister Chris handing them out in rotation, according to seniority. Coop, it turned out, had left a box behind, and in it, among other things, was a bobtailed jacket in the Mexican cut for Barney, and a new Stetson with a crown shaped like Coop's and circled by a decorative band studded with bits of silver. But Barney was half ready to believe the others had entirely forgotten him—until Bill produced a paper-wrapped bundle from the shadows in the corner behind the tree. "Merry Christmas, Barney," he said quietly.
Whatever was in it felt heavy—familiarly so, as if it was something he'd had occasion to handle before. Half eager and half almost afraid, Barney cut the string and tore the paper away. A rich leathery smell joined the perfume of greenery and burning wax tapers as a cutaway holster and gunbelt of plain, suede-finished leather appeared, with a blued-steel, cedar-handled Colt resting in the sheath. Each loop on the belt held a dully gleaming cartridge.
A gun? Barney thought in confusion. A gun and a rig for it, not four months after Mister Chris made me give back the one I bought with my own money?
"It's from Duke and me too," Charlie declared. "Merry Christmas."
"But—" Barney looked up at Mister Chris. "I thought you said that... you said little boys don't—you said..."
"I want to apologize for that, Barney," the man replied quietly. "I did you an injustice. You're not a little boy. No little boy could have walked all the way from Virginia to Sacramento the way you did last year. No little boy could have borne up the way you did when you broke your leg. No little boy would have had the kind of compassion you showed to Zebedee Titus, or been such a good friend to the Vance boy or Mr. Allen's grandson. Many young fellows no older than you are out earning their own way; you know that and so do I. I think, maybe, I was blinded by my own experience. You know I lost a son who'd be only a few years older than you are. I didn't want to lose another one, even if he wasn't really mine, and I thought keeping you from playing a man's part would make that less likely to happen. That wasn't fair. I know that now."
Everything suddenly became clear. "Is this what you've all been whisperin' about ever since we got back from San Francisco?" Barney asked.
"Part of it," Bill told him. "Coop and I realized at just about the same time that you were old enough to be treated like you were growin' up. We talked to Chris about it, and found out he'd been thinkin' along the same lines. I telegraphed Duke, and he agreed and sent something toward it. Coop says that when he comes up in the spring, he'll start teachin' you how to use it. He figures by the time the grass is high enough for us to pull out, you should be on your way to being a fair hand with it."
"And there's more," Charlie added eagerly, "but you need to put your coat on before you can see it."
"He's right," Mister Chris agreed. "You've got the jacket and the hat from Coop, and the gun from Bill and Duke and Charlie, but you haven't had my present yet, and it's not something that fits comfortably under a tree." He looked at Bill. "You did take care of it, didn't you?"
"Got up at five o'clock to make sure of it," Bill replied. "Come on, Barney, get your coat on and we'll go see it."
With Gambler out in the barn needing to be taken care of every day, Barney had worn a regular path through the snow from the rear service porch, but he could see the bigger prints of Bill's boots overlaying his own last tracks, and he'd learned enough from Duke to know that they weren't the prints of just the one trip yesterday afternoon. Charlie insisted on tying a bandanna over his eyes before they opened the barn door, and Barney had to wait till someone lit a lantern; he heard the faint skritch of the match being struck, smelled the burning-cloth odor of the wick as it caught and the warm stench of kerosene. He heard a snort, and the thump of a hoof, and Bill's voice saying, "Easy, boy. Easy. Okay, Charlie," and the blindfold came off.
Cross-tied in the centerway, facing toward the doors, with Barney's own saddle on its back, a new Navajo blanket under the saddle, and a bridle with a beautiful silver-plated bit, was a clean-limbed, bright-eyed pony just about fifteen hands at the shoulder, big buckskin tobiano patches on a white ground, black mane and tail with white streaks in them. Barney stared in disbelief. "Merry Christmas, Barney," Mister Chris said gently.
"Mine?" the boy whispered.
"Yep," said Bill. "I went down to Fort Smith myself to get him. A lot of the rich Indians in the Nations raise horses, and at this time of year they like to sell them close to home. He comes from a plantation outside Tahlequah. Four years old, fully broke to stand tied and to hunt. Did some racing, too, when he was a three-year-old, and won ten times in fourteen starts."
"Here," said Charlie, "give him this, so he'll know you're his friend." He put an apple, quartered and cored, in Barney's hand.
Barney had grown up around horses—not fine young Indian ponies like this one, but his grandmother's buggy mare and their next-door neighbor's family saddlers—and he knew just what to do. He held out his hand, the palm flat, with the apple pieces temptingly arrayed on it. The pony snorted again, throwing his head back a moment, eyes walling a little, and then caught the scent of the fruit and extended his muzzle, nostrils working. "Easy, easy," Barney murmured. "Take it easy, now..."
The pony's warm breath tickled his skin as the curious nose came closer. Then the soft lips touched his palm and a section of apple was delicately nipped off it, the teeth never brushing his flesh. The pony chewed, crunching loudly, then whickered in pleasure and lowered his head for more. Barney stood still, letting the animal get a good noseful of his own scent along with that of the apple. As another piece of fruit disappeared, he carefully reached out with his free hand and began softly stroking the pony's neck. The skin twitched briefly at his touch, but the pony didn't flinch away; he only rolled one eye back to see what was there and went on chewing.
"There's something else that goes with him," Mister Chris said. "A promotion, of sorts. You'll still be expected to help Charlie, but Coop will have the option of taking you up front with him whenever he feels it's best, and when you're with him you'll earn scouting pay."
Barney barely managed not to turn around fast enough to scare the pony. "You mean I'm gonna be a scout?"
"If you want to," Mister Chris agreed. "And if Coop thinks you have what it takes—and that will be his call, not mine."
The pony took the last bit of apple, and Barney hesitated only a moment before hurling himself at the man and throwing both arms around him. "Thank you," he whispered into Mister Chris's shirt, his voice not quite steady. "And you too, Bill," he added, turning to favor Hawks with an embrace of his own.
"What are you gonna call him?" Charlie wanted to know.
Barney pulled back, trying not to be too obvious about the swipe of hand to eye. "You said he came from Tahlequah, Bill?"
"That's right. Capitol of the Cherokee Nation."
"Then that's his name," Barney decided, not having to think more than a moment. "Cherokee."
"Good name," Mister Chris said approvingly. "It suits him. And now," he added, "let's go in and get some breakfast."
Barney barely felt that his feet were touching the ground as he walked back to the house with Bill's hand on his shoulder. A scout. I'm gonna be a scout—a part-time scout—not just a chore boy.
Maybe, if I get good enough, after this coming season I won't be part-time any more.
I'm sure gonna try. I know I can trust Coop to teach me everything he knows. All I have to do is listen and learn.
He suddenly felt very grown up, even though he knew he was still on probation. And very trusted. Mister Chris would never offer scout's pay to a "little boy;" too much depended on what a scout did.
I'm growin' up, and they know it, and they trust me to act like I know it.
Yeah, it was worth all the whispering. Even all the doubt. It sure was.
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Note: Readers curious about my rationale for dating this story as I do are directed to "A Note About Dates" in "The Men of Wagon Train," which you can find on this site.