The Cowboy’s Hidden Agenda

She gave an involuntary shiver. Bronco’s grandmother glanced at her, then, following her gaze, made a sound that reminded Lauren of his dry one-note laugh. “Yeah, that flood come down early this morning. Heard it when I woke up-still dark, but I knew what it was. Took out part of my garden, too. Good half of my peppers and most of the pinto beans.” She shrugged; what, after all, could be done about weather?

Then the old woman surprised Lauren by reaching for her hand, taking it up in fingers as smooth and dry as leather and giving it a gentle squeeze. “Johnny’ll be fine,” she said again, softly. And after a moment added as she went back to her task, “His soul’s troubled, but Frank can help him with that.” His uncle Frank was a shaman, Bronco had told Lauren. He was teaching his son, Roger, to be a shaman, too, which was a process that could take years.

Grandmother Rose glanced up, her bright black eyes almost hidden in the creases of her smile. “It’s not a bad thing, you know, to have a troubled soul. What’s bad is to have no soul to be troubled.” Her eyes shifted once again to her busy hands. “Johnny didn’t have a soul for a long time. His mother took it with her when she left.” Lauren must have made some small sound, because the old woman’s eyes darted back to her, wide open, and now as warm as black fur. Oh, how they reminded Lauren of Bronco’s eyes. “He’s got it back now, though, I can tell,” said Rose. “Maybe you gave it back to him.”

“Oh,” Lauren protested in a crackling voice, “I don’t…” Under the soft cotton dress her heart was thumping, and she no longer felt safe in the summer shed. She felt hot and scared. She’d been feeling scared ever since the realization had come to her, there on the edge of the flood, that she’d been willing and prepared to give up her own life to save Bronco’s.

As if she sensed how Lauren felt, Grandmother Rose veered abruptly away from that subject. At least, it appeared for a moment as if she had.

“Johnny’s mother wasn’t a bad person,” she said in a gossipy way. “She was a sweet girl-a real sweet girl, too kind-hearted for her own good. You ask me, I think she left because she got her heart broke one too many times.” She dropped another twist of metal into the pile that had collected in the dip of her skirts between her knees, then stirred her fingers through them, listening with satisfaction to the jingling sound they made. “She was a teacher, you know. She used to say it broke her heart to see them, those bright beautiful little children, so talented, eager and full of promise, wasted.” She looked at Lauren and now her eyes seemed sad. “So many of our children, you know, they grow up and the alcohol gets them. They get to drinking, get themselves killed on the highway, or they go on the streets and get killed there, like my cousin Lutie’s boy, Daniel. Got knifed in a bar fight in Albuquerque.” She shook her head and went back to cutting and twisting. “Couldn’t take it anymore, Grace couldn’t. She had to leave-went back home. She lived back there in the East, you know.” She looked up suddenly. “You from back East?”

Lauren shook her head. “Iowa.” To her, “east” meant New York, New England.

Grandmother Rose wrinkled her nose and said, “Huh. I was back East once. Long time ago, after my husband, George, got killed in Korea. They gave him a medal, and I had to go back there so the president could give his medal to me. All I remember was a whole bunch of trees. Never saw so many trees. Trees, trees, everywhere you looked. Drive down the road and it was like going down a long green hallway-nothing on either side but trees. Never could figure out which way was which-east, west or whatever-no mountains to guide you by. How a person’s supposed to know which way to go, I’ll never know. Funny thing is-” she paused to toss another jingler onto the pile with a tiny clink “-all those trees, and most of ’em won’t even grow out here at all. I tried it-brought a few home with me, watered ’em, took care of ’em. One or two struggled along for a while, but eventually they all died. But now, some trees, like those willows there-” she pointed up at the greenish-gray thatch overhead “-they grow just about anywhere. You give a willow enough water, it’ll grow wherever you plant it.” Her eyes slid sideways to twinkle at Lauren, and she smiled again in that sly way. “You so tall and slim you remind me of a willow, in a way.”

While Lauren was choking and trying to find an answer to that, Rachel came to the door of the house and called, “Grandmother, how’s Matthew doing? He still sleeping?”

“Like a baby,” Grandmother Rose replied with a cackle of laughter. “He’s such a good baby,” she said to Lauren. “Reminds me a lot of the way Johnny was when he was a baby.” She reached out her hand and again gave Lauren’s a squeeze, but this time it seemed to Lauren there was something urgent about it. “Johnny’s a good man, too. A good man.” She placed a hand on her ample chest. “I know it-in here.” Then she shook her head and added dryly, “Even if he’d like everybody to think he isn’t.”

In the darkness of the sweat lodge Bronco’s mind drifted with the rise and fall of his uncle’s voice singing the traditional songs. He no longer understood the words, but it was his hope, his prayer, that the soothing familiarity of the chants might cover his troubled spirit as the steamy heat enveloped his body, and cleanse it of confusion, doubt and fear as the sweat cleansed his body.

But as the ancient songs filled his ears, it was only im ages of the past that filled his mind, while his path through the present and into the future remained clouded, lost in darkness.

“You look troubled, nephew,” his uncle Frank said to him as they were emerging from their revitalizing dip in the flooding creek. “Your sweat did not restore you to peace and harmony?” He spoke sardonically, smiling a little; he knew very well that it had been many years since Bronco had participated in the traditions of his father’s people.

Bronco’s reply was equally ironic. “Peace and harmony?” he said. “What’s that?”

“Anything I can do to help?” They were walking back toward the brush corral now, leaving Roger to put the lodge to rights.

Bronco threw him a glance. His uncle’s broad face was serene, smooth and unlined-very little there to remind him of the father whose face he could barely recall. He drew a deep breath and was surprised to hear himself say on its exhalation, “I work for the government, Frank. Did you know that? The same government that hunted and slaughtered our ancestors and tried its best to destroy us. I guess…I’m having a little trouble with that.”

“I can understand that,” his uncle said with a hitch of his broad shoulders. After a moment he went on in a conversational tone, “My dad-your Grandpa George-he fought in Korea, did you know that?”

“Yeah,” said Bronco, “I guess I did.”

“Got killed over there. They gave him the Medal of Honor-Mama went back there to Washington, to the White House, to get it, shook hands with the president and everything.”

Bronco nodded; he’d heard the story many times. He thought it might have been one of the factors that had induced the army time and time again to give him yet one more chance.

They paused in the shade of the cottonwoods and looked out across the sun-blasted landscape. After a while his uncle said softly, “This land has seen a lot of changes since it was given to our ancestors by Changing Woman. Yes, people have tried to destroy us. Destroy our ways. But they haven’t succeeded.” He nodded his head toward the summer shed, where the bright dresses of the women stood out like flowers in a shady garden. “Our ways, our traditions, our language still survive. At the same time our people are learning to thrive in the white man’s world. We have our own industries-cattle and lumber, ski resorts and tourism. We have hospitals, stores and computers in our schools. The other stuff-” he hitched his shoulders as if throwing off a burden “-that’s the past. We don’t live in the past. We live in this world. It is this world we must live in harmony with.” He stopped and looked at Bronco with a smile. “That’s how I see it. For what it’s worth-if it helps you any.”

“It does,” said Bronco, and meant it. He gathered his damp hair in his two hands and swiftly twisted it into a knot, then untied the bandanna he’d knotted around his forehead. “Tell you what,” he muttered, embarrassed now, “right now I could use another kind of help.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“I need to borrow your truck for a few days. I’ll reimburse you for it.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Frank, his eyes twinkling as he jerked his head toward the brush corral. “I’ve got a mare comin’ in heat pretty soon. You leave that big red stud here for two-three weeks and you can have my truck-free of charge.”

“Deal,” Bronco said, laughing as they shook on it.

A moment later, though, as Bronco’s gaze drifted once again to the summer shed, his uncle said in a teasing voice, “Son, something tells me the U.S. government’s not the only thing that’s troubling you.”

Bronco’s reply was a gust of dry laughter. What could he say? He didn’t even know what to think about what had happened to him today. His mind had been in a turmoil ever since