Thanks for reading and commenting!
Evergreen - Chapter 14 - final chapter
"Murdoch is gonna kill us," Johnny declared as he packed his saddlebag, taking care not to hurt his fingers.
"I'm gonna kill you myself, if you don't sit down and let me do that," Scott retorted.
"I'm all done, anyway." Johnny looked around the cabin and was suddenly anxious to be out of there and on the road home. He buckled his gun belt around his waist and although it took him some time to get the tine into the hole in the leather, he eventually got the job done. He shrugged on his sheepskin coat and picked up his Stetson. Johnny felt Scott's eyes boring into him the whole time but he didn't look up.
Scott asked, "Are you sure about this?"
Finally turning to his brother, Johnny snapped, "Look, I told you I'm -."
"-fine," Scott finished for him. "I know, you're fine."
Johnny's ill humor faded a little. "I don't know about you, but I'm ready to get out of here, Scott. I know these folks have turned out to be real nice and all, but. . ."
"You're right, brother. Time to go," Scott said as he picked up a bag with some of the medical supplies and the remains of their food. "We're keeping Sergei waiting." After one last look around to make sure they were leaving the cabin the way they'd found it, the brothers headed for the door.
Johnny stopped on the threshold. "Wait! I want to leave some payment. In case the owners come back."
They had asked Sergei about the fate of the Harringtons. All Sergei could tell them was that when he took the family down to the town at the foot of the mountain, both the father and his son, Peter, appeared to be sick with the chuma. Sergei said he'd left the wagon because he couldn't drive it back in the snow, and he'd turned around right away and headed back to Evergreen on foot. He didn't know how they'd fared. His tone suggested he didn't have much expectation of their survival.
Scott pulled some coins out of his pocket and laid them on the counter in the kitchen. He halted at Johnny's side. "Anything else?"
Johnny shook his head. He was sort of sad to leave, and he didn't know why. He had started out hating the cold and the snow, then had enjoyed his time out in the crisp air - for a short while. But being stuck under the freezing stuff had taken all the enjoyment out of the snow, forever. He wouldn't ever return to Evergreen, he was certain.
They went out the front door to where their horses were saddled and ready. Scott took Johnny's saddlebag without asking and tied it on for him. He then secured his bag on the mule that Sergei had packed with gear for their journey.
Sergei was just releasing his wife after a farewell hug. Johnny said to the big man, "Thanks for finishing up the repair on the saddle."
"It was no problem," Petrov said with a shrug. "Idle hands make the Devil happy."
Johnny said with a straight face, "Well, we wouldn't want that to happen, would we?"
Anton ran up with Pistol on his heels. The dog let off a happy bark and jumped up at Scott as if to say good-bye. "Down," commanded both Scott and Sergei at the same time. The men looked at each other and laughed.
Anton had wanted to go along with his father and the Lancers, but was not allowed. Scott leaned over and shook the boy's hand. "It's been a pleasure meeting you, Anton."
"I don't want you to go. I thought we were friends," the boy said mournfully.
"We are friends, but we have family down in the valley, and they miss us. Maybe we'll be back some day." Scott reached into his jacket and withdrew a pocketknife. He gave it to the boy. "This is for you from Johnny and me. We'd like you to have it." The boy looked over his shoulder at his father to make sure it was all right to accept the gift, and his face lit up when Sergei nodded his approval. Over the boy's smiling face, Scott and Sergei exchanged a look of friendship.
Sergei, who had exchanged his heavy winter coat for a leather one, and his fur hat for a battered Stetson, mounted up on a big gray. His wife sniffed and brushed her hair back from her face, prompting Sergei to say with a suppressed smile, "Time to go before my woman begins wailing."
Johnny embraced Mrs. Petrov and she told him in a teary voice, "You need to eat more, Mr. Lancer. You are too skinny by far. I put a bit of food in your pack."
He held the woman close for a moment longer, then held her at arm's length to look into her face. "I saw how much food you packed for us. It's enough to last a month," he said with a smile. When she had helped him shave that morning, he realized he had become fond of her.
She dabbed at the corner of her eye with her apron and shooed him away. "Go on. If you stand around any longer it will be time for our midday meal," she admonished. "Or it will start snowing again."
Johnny resisted the temptation to look up at the sky; he knew there was no sign of a storm coming in, but he didn't want to take any chances. He mounted, then carefully drew on a pair of kidskin gloves that Scott had loaned him and settled his hat on his head. The dog barked up at him and Johnny laughed. "Yeah, bye to you, too, Pistol."
As they rode out, Johnny touched the brim in a salute to Mrs. Petrov. They were almost in the pines when he turned in the saddle and yelled back to her, "Just remember, next time some stranger comes knocking at your door. . ."
"I know," she called to him. "I know, don't shoot at him."
Sergei led the way, the pack mule's rein firmly in his hand. When Scott and Johnny reached the road they reined in their horses and waved at Mrs. Petrov, who stood in front of the cabin, her hand raised in farewell. Anton was at her side, but then he suddenly took off, his dog, Pistol at his side. They ran across the field and through the piney woods, keeping parallel to the road. The dog barked happily, and the boy waved as the Lancers rode away.
When they got into town the miners came out to say a final good-bye. Grigori stuffed a well-wrapped bottle of vodka in Johnny's saddlebag. "So you don't forget us," he said.
Johnny shook his head. "Oh no, I won't ever forget you, friends, or what you did for me."
"Then you raise a drink to us when you get back home," said Kozyawl. "Drink and feel it is warm in your belly."
~ • ~
Sergei escorted the brothers down a trail that was treacherous in places, but he was so familiar with it that they had little trouble. The day was already warming up and all the snow was gone. In fact, it was as if there had never been any snow on the ground at all. The fresh scent of leaves and pine needles wafted from the sun-struck earth. It was a good day to begin their journey home.
Early on the second morning of the trip they saw a wagon drawn by two mules coming up the trail. "It's the Harringtons," Sergei said in surprise. He quickly rode ahead and stopped to talk to the couple. After a brief discussion, he rode back up the incline with the wagon following him.
Mr. Harrington, with his wife perched next to him, drove the sturdy vehicle to where the Lancer brothers waited on horseback, and pulled it over to where the ground was level. He stepped on the brake and greeted Johnny and Scott with a serious nod, then helped his wife down from the high wagon seat.
Scott thought the couple appeared tired but not ill. There was no sign of their child, and he and Johnny exchanged glances; they feared the worst. But once the wagon halted the boy popped up from the back, where it seemed he'd been resting. Apparently Mr. Harrington had not had a severe case of the chuma, and although their son, Peter, was a bit pale, he seemed to be well on the road to recovery.
They all sat down by the side of the road and enjoyed the food that Mrs. Petrov had put together. While they ate Sergei and the Lancers told the Harringtons about everything they had missed up in Evergreen.
Upon hearing how the whole town had come together in order to dig Johnny out, Mr. Harrington looked at his wife and raised his eyebrows. "Funny to think," he said to her, "that we almost didn't come back." He turned to the Lancers and said in a slow drawl, "We think of Evergreen as the kind of town where it's every man out for himself. The mining's good enough if a man ain't afraid of some hard work and we make a good living up there."
"But I told my husband many a time," Mrs. Harrington intervened, "that there's some good in that town. And besides, we have good friends in the Petrovs." Mrs. Harrington looked fondly down at her son, who was still eating a piece of pie. "And Anton and Peter are good friends, aren't you?" The boy nodded, his mouth full of food.
Johnny said, "I think you'll find some changes up there now."
"And if the mining doesn't pan out," Scott interjected, "you can build a distillery. That vodka's got one big kick to it." That elicited some laughter and Scott's remark even brought a smile to Mr. Harrington's face.
After the Lancers thanked the Harringtons for the use of their cabin, Sergei said it was time to be going. He clamped a big hand on Mr. Harrington's shoulder and they shook hands. "After I see these young men down the mountain I'll be heading right back. Probably catch up with you before you reach Evergreen." They said their good-byes and went their separate ways, the Harringtons heading up the trail and the Lancers and their stalwart guide trekking down.
~ • ~
They took it in easy stages and late each afternoon Sergei set up their camp, including a tent for the Lancer men to sleep in. "I've slept outdoors in nights that were so cold my beard hairs snapped off," he said. "But my wife will be very angry with me if you get sick from sleeping outside. So the tent is for you."
Scott helped around the camp and by the second day he felt his strength coming back. The weather was good and the scenery spectacular. Nevertheless, Scott longed to be home, as he knew did Johnny.
As soon as their evening meal was done each evening, Johnny lay down in the tent and pulled his bedroll blanket up over his face. "Just to rest my eyes for a spell," he would say. But he was always out like a light and didn't wake up until the next morning. He seemed to feel the cold more than was usual, and still wore his sheepskin coat when Scott had given his up for being too warm.
After a three-day journey they reached familiar territory. The Lancers halted at the junction of the Modesto and Green River roads, thanked Sergei and insisted they could make it the rest of the way on their own. Although Sergei was torn between continuing on, to finish what he thought of as his duty - getting the Lancers home safe - they knew he was itching to get back to his own home. With the promise they would someday meet again, and that Sergei would bring his family to the Lancer ranch for a visit, the men parted company.
Just as Johnny and Scott urged their horses along the road towards Green River, a rider approached. "Hey," shouted Johnny. "It's Murdoch!"
~ • ~
Johnny lay back on the couch in front of the great room fireplace. "I just can't seem to get warm," he said as he hugged himself.
Scott tossed another log on the roaring fire and waited until the sparks had died down before he settled next to his brother. "If I put any more logs on, the flames will be going right up the chimney," he said half-jokingly.
Murdoch stood at the liquor cabinet and removed the cork from a tall, burlap-wrapped bottle. He sniffed the contents and jerked his head back, a look of surprise on his face. With a shrug he poured three glasses of the clear liquid. He then handed a drink to each of his sons and made a toast. "To having you both back home."
Scott raised his glass in response. "I think you neglected to add, 'in one piece'."
Murdoch sat in his easy chair. "That goes without saying." He took a cautious sip, then another bigger one.
Johnny watched his father from beneath his eyelashes. He had to hand it to the old man, who barely flinched at the harsh taste of the vodka.
Scott, meanwhile, noticed the same thing. Only he was thinking that their father had passed his ability to hide his emotions on to Johnny.
Murdoch looked up to see both of his boys eyeing him. He detected a mixture of amusement and evaluation coming from Scott. As far as Johnny was concerned. . .well, he was a little harder to read but it seemed that his youngest son was offering him silent approval. Perhaps it was because the boy was so tired that he let some of his emotions show through. There was something else though, hiding beneath the surface, and Murdoch couldn't quite discern what Johnny was thinking. He was about to ask what was on his son's mind when Johnny sat up a bit and raised his glass.
Mimicking a Russian accent, Johnny said, "As Grigori says, drink. . . and feel it is warm in your belly."
Murdoch and Scott drank to that sentiment, but Johnny hadn't finished. He looked down at the vodka for a moment then turned serious. "I feel more than warmth in my belly." He raised his head and slowly looked from his father to Scott. "I feel warmth in my heart and I just. . . I want you to know that."
Scott reached over and laid his hand briefly on Johnny's arm. The gesture touched Johnny greatly. He swallowed hard and said in a low voice, "You know, I always expected my life to be cut short. But when I was up there on that mountain, buried under the snow, cut off from everything, from the light, from air to breath. . . that was nothing compared to being cut off from you. My last thoughts, in what I figured was my last moments, were of you, and of what the rest of my life would have been like. . .what I was missing. . . " He stopped and dropped his head while he collected himself.
Scott put an arm around Johnny's shoulder and quietly said, "We know, Johnny. We know."
Murdoch watched his sons, one comforting the other with such tenderness it brought a lump to his throat. When Johnny and Scott were long overdue and hadn't returned from their trip, and he couldn't sit still any longer, Murdoch had ridden out to see if he could locate them. He knew it was a long shot but he had to at least try. He visualized all sorts of scenarios, most of them situations a father should never picture about his sons. But then he'd seen those two riders approaching. He recognized the horses long before he recognized his own sons.
With both young mean wearing few days' growth of beard - Scott with dark circles under his eyes and a look about him that suggested he'd been very sick, and Johnny with scrapes across his face and holding himself in that stiff way that revealed he was hiding some serious pain - Murdoch immediately recognized that they had both survived something quite significant.
He waited until they got home to ask questions, and once Johnny and Scott had bathed, they sat down to dinner and told him about their escapades in a piecemeal fashion. Murdoch knew they were downplaying their experiences in Evergreen, but even so, both of his sons bore the mark of men who had turned a corner. Whatever they had gone through, whatever emotional or physical difficulties they had survived, Scott and Johnny had come out the other side wounded but whole.
Scott took a deep breath, stood, and went over to where they had dumped their saddlebags. He returned to sit once more by Johnny's side and, with a grin, handed him a slightly worse-for-wear fur hat. "I thought you might want this, so I stuffed it in my bag," he said.
Johnny stroked the fur as if the hat was a long-lost pet. He smiled a little, then a bit more. "Thanks, but I hope I don't ever have to wear this again." He looked up at his brother and said, "Thanks, Scott."
"No problem, brother." Scott yawned and slumped back on the soft couch cushions. "It sure it good to be home." Johnny simply nodded.
When it became apparent that Scott and Johnny were dead tired and weren't going to say anything more, Murdoch downed the remainder of his vodka and stood up. "Time for bed," he ordered.
Scott rose and pulled Johnny to his feet. "C'mon, brother. It looks as though it'll take both of us to get you upstairs."
Johnny accepted the support of his father and brother and took a few shambling steps. "I'm fine, you know," he mumbled tiredly.
Scott and Murdoch exchanged glances across Johnny and smiled. Scott simply replied, "Yes, Johnny, we know."
*** the end
Written in April 2009