is Gideon...Payton. You’re sixteen years old. Ponder it a bit, and you’ll realize that you’ve seen me before.”
That little hesitation before he said “Payton”—what did that mean?
And Gideon did recall a previous encounter, a shadowy glimpse that teased at the edges of his memory but wouldn’t show itself.
“Who are you?” he asked bluntly.
“I call myself Rowdy Rhodes,” the man answered. “And I’m your brother.”
Gideon had known he had brothers, but he hadn’t been able to get much more than that out of his pa. They were all older than he was, but he couldn’t have said how many of them there were, or recited their names with any certainty. Now one of them was sitting right in front of him.
“You call yourself Rowdy Rhodes? If you’re my brother, you ought to be a Payton, not a Rhodes. And what the hell kind of name is Rowdy, anyhow?”
Rhodes chuckled and leaned forward in the saddle, resting one forearm on the pommel. “One that suits me just fine,” he said. “Are you still in school, Gideon?”
Gideon glanced at the letter lying in front of Rose’s gravestone, and wished he hadn’t. Rhodes made him uneasy, with his watchful, knowing eyes, and yet Gideon wanted to know all about him. “I’ll be going away to college, come autumn.” He swallowed. “I mean to be an engineer. Maybe work for the railroad.”
“Now, that’s ironic,” Rhodes said wryly.
Gideon was affronted, though he didn’t know why. Felt like a rooster with its feathers ruffled. “I’m smart,” he said.
“I don’t doubt it,” Rhodes replied. He looked down at Rose’s grave, maybe noticed the letter, and the bottle caps, some of them rusting now, and the ear bobs and bits of frayed ribbon, with all the color weathered out of them. “How come they buried your sister out here, instead of in the churchyard, with the others?”
An old rage, all the worse for being helpless, surged up inside Gideon, stung the back of his throat like gall. “Because Ruby Hollister is her mother,” he said.
Again, Rhodes adjusted his hat. “But not yours.”
Gideon shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. And he waited. If Rhodes was his brother, like he claimed, let him prove it. Let him say Ma’s name.
He did, just as surely as if Gideon had demanded it of him aloud. “Your mother was Miranda Wyatt...Payton.”
There it was again, that little hitch between words, subtle but sharp as a tug on reins already drawn tight.
Gideon wanted to ask about it, but his audacity didn’t stretch quite that far. Rhodes’s manner was kindly enough, yet there was an invisible fence line behind it, enclosing places where it wouldn’t be wise to tread.
“You ever need any help,” Rhodes went on, when Gideon didn’t speak, “you’ll find me boarding at Mrs. Porter’s, over in Stone Creek.”
Gideon nodded. Stone Creek was a fair distance from Flagstaff, and he didn’t own a horse. Still, it was good knowing he could go there and expect some kind of welcome when he arrived.
Rhodes moved to rein his horse away, toward the road.
“Wait!” Gideon heard himself say.
The familiar stranger turned in the saddle, looked down at him.
“How many of you are there? Brothers, I mean?” Gideon blurted.
Rhodes smiled. “Five,” he answered. “Wyatt, Nick, Ethan, Levi and me.”
Gideon drew a step closer. “Are they Paytons?”
The answer was slow in coming. “No,” Rhodes said.
Gideon frowned. It was bad enough that he hadn’t known his own brothers’ Christian names. Now he wasn’t sure he knew who he was, either.
With a nod for a goodbye, Rhodes took to the road headed in the direction of Stone Creek.
Gideon watched him out of sight, half-sick with wondering. Then he bent, picked up the letter from the college in Pennsylvania, the only mail to come that day, and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
Without a fare-thee-well for Rose, he headed for Ruby’s place.
* * *
THE YELLOW DOG LAY in the doorway to Mr. Rhodes’s quarters as though guarding them, looking utterly bereft.
Lark, alone in the house because Mrs. Porter had gone to an all-day meeting at church and Mai Lee was off somewhere with her husband, Hon Sing, set aside the lesson plans she’d been drawing up, in preparation for the week to come, and regarded the animal with compassionate concern.
“He hasn’t left you—your master, I mean,” she told the dog.
Pardner, muzzle resting on his forepaws, gave a tiny whimper.
“Perhaps you’re hungry,” Lark said, getting up from her chair. Mr. Rhodes had given the creature table scraps the night before, with Mrs. Porter’s blessings, and he’d had leftover pancakes and a scrambled egg for breakfast.
While she certainly didn’t have the run of her landlady’s well-stocked larder, Lark had seen the heel of a ham in the pantry earlier, while seeking the tea canister.
But perhaps Mai Lee was saving the bit of ham for her hardworking husband. For all Lark knew, it might be the only thing Hon Sing had to eat.
No, she couldn’t give such a morsel to a dog.
In the end, she cut a slice of bread and buttered it generously, then tore it into smaller pieces. She was approaching Pardner with this sustenance when the kitchen door suddenly swung open and Mr. Rhodes strode in.
Pardner gave an explosive bark of jubilance and nearly trampled Lark in his rush to greet his master.
Mr. Rhodes bent, ruffled the dog’s ears, spoke gently to him and let him out the back door, following in his wake.
Lark, recognizing a prime opportunity to make herself scarce, stood frozen in the middle of Mrs. Porter’s kitchen floor instead, one hand filled with chunks of buttered bread.
Mrs. Porter returned before Mr. Rhodes reappeared, her cheeks pink from the cold and religious conviction. Beaming, she untied the wide black ribbons of her Sunday bonnet. “You missed an excellent sermon,” she told Lark. “All about the tortures of eternal damnation.”
“Sounds delightful,” Lark said mildly and with no trace of sarcasm, depositing Pardner’s refreshments on a chipped saucer and setting it on the floor. Having lived two years under Autry’s roof, she knew the highways and byways of hell, and had no desire to revisit the subject.
Mrs. Porter removed her woolen cloak and hung it on one of several pegs beside the door. “You really should consider the fate of your immortal soul,” she said.
The door opened again, and Pardner bounded in, his master behind
