mason. Something kinda quiet, and impressive…like him.”
Bill pondered for a moment, thinking again of Jack, of the great U.S. warship, of the black Russian Kilo he knew had sunk the Americans. Then he spoke. “Skip, I love it. Jack had fished down there all his life. He would a liked that. Really liked that. Right next to the water. Tell you what. I’ll draft the words, Ray’ll get a photograph, and we’ll have a bronze relief done of him in uniform. Head and shoulders. ’Bout a foot high, above the plaque. Lemme leave the casting and the mason up to you and Ray, can I? Then we’ll get it fixed up, and have a little service out here in the spring. Surprise Mom…get a few of the Navy High Command out. That little glade will be full of sailors and cowboys. When the priest blesses the stone, I guess Jack’s spirit will have come home, from half a world away…at least it will to all of us.”
“Beautiful, Bill. That’s gonna be real nice. And we’ll all be close to the boss every time those goddamned steers stray down by the river.”
“Hey, I’m glad we met up. That gate open at the pens?”
“Yup. I got young Razor right there, ready to close it soon as they go in.”
The three cowboys tightened their grip on the six strays, each man now with a drawn stockwhip. The horses squeezed in tight, edging up to the gateway. Then Skip broke loose, wheeled around, and came in behind fast, with a loud yell and a crack of the whip. The steers never even looked back, just bolted for the safety of the corral. Razor banged the gate shut behind them. “G’job, Skip,” drawled Bill Baldridge.
“Jest about gittin’ the hang of it now.”
And then Bill rode over toward the stables, calling back, “G’bye, boys — till next time, eh?”
“Yes, so long, Bill — don’t let ’em get you down.”
Then, somewhat mischievously, the young master of the big ranch called back, “Water trough’s a little empty.”
“Goddamit, I bin filling it for thirty-five years, I don’t guess any of ’em gonna die of thirst tonight.”
“Guess not. Just wanted to keep you sharp,” shouted Bill, laughing.
“Git owta here, willya?” chuckled the veteran cowboy.
Bill waved back, steered Freddie into the stables, where the fleet-footed Razor was now ready to hose him down, feed and water him. “Thanks, buddy,” said Bill, pressing a twenty-dollar bill into his hand. “Look after him while I’m gone.”
In the next-door stall he could see Jack’s old cow pony, Flint. To Bill he looked a bit forlorn, like everyone else around here. The sadness was everywhere, and Bill walked out into the bright sunset still thinking of Jack, and of the shocking unreasonableness of his death.
Before he showered and changed for dinner with his mother and Ray’s family, he sat briefly at his old schoolboy desk and wrote on an old legal pad the following words:
CAPTAIN JACK ETHAN BALDRIDGE
(1962–2002)
Beloved son of the late Tom Baldridge
and Emily Henderson Baldridge.
Lost at sea in the USS
disaster, July 8. Captain Baldridge,
the Battle Group Operations Officer
on board the aircraft carrier, perished
in the Arabian Gulf along with all 6,021
men of the ship’s company. A fine cattleman,
a brilliant Navy officer, and a great Kansan.
Never Forgotten. By All at the B/B.
Dinner with his family was too sad for levity, and the discussion involved mainly the future of the fifty- thousand-acre Baldridge ranch. Emily Baldridge told Bill that when he returned he would move into the big house as the master of the operation. Ray and his wife and family preferred to remain in the more beautiful, but smaller, six-bedroom River House, a quarter of a mile away, beyond the horse paddocks.
Should Bill return with a wife, Emily would take up residence in the “Boot”—the three-bedroom ranch house across the front lawn, built by Bill’s grandfather, and never fully occupied since he died. The Boot, named because of its shape, was normal in every respect except that it had one huge room with a beamed cathedral ceiling hung with Indian regalia, including a painted kayak suspended from the rafters.
On every wall there were mounted moose heads, bison, even a wildcat. Indian blankets were thrown on the big handmade sofas. Three mighty bearskin rugs covered the polished wooden floor. The yawning stone fireplace made it probably the best room on the property for a winter evening.
Bill always thought it a pity they never used the Boot except for parties. He also thought that if his mother ever moved in, the bison and the wildcat had about ten minutes before she replaced them with paintings of what she would call “a more agreeable ambiance.” Emily herself was already planning a beautiful new house, to be constructed further along the river, for Jack’s widow, Margaret, and the two girls.
Like most Navy wives, Mrs. Jack Baldridge was accustomed to living on either the East Coast or the West Coast. But within hours of the news from the Arabian Gulf, Margaret had expressed a firm wish to bring her family deep into the rural heart of the United States. Deep into the rural heart of the Baldridge family, the closest place in all of the world to the memory of her lost husband.
Emily had been magnificent. She had dispatched two ranch hands and a lawyer to San Diego to supervise an immediate move east for Jack’s family. She had tried to point out that the quiet, secure pace of life out in Burdett might not be quite what Margaret imagined. But Margaret had been insistent that she intended to make a new life here.
Now Emily was preparing to welcome them all, with arms open as wide as the prairie, right into the bosom of the Baldridge cattle empire. They represented a new generation, and they were arriving to perpetuate what was already there. Emily could not resist a feeling of joy beyond her own tears. She adored Margaret, and her granddaughters, and had often been saddened by the fact that they would be too grown up by the time their father was ready to return to the ranch.
Jack’s death had cost them a natural-born leader, and a loving father, but in the eyes of Emily Baldridge, it had also made her family more complete. Tom would have loved that, all of the young Baldridges together at the B/B.
The following days passed quickly, and Bill spent much of them closeted with the family lawyers in Dodge City straightening out the trust in the aftermath of Jack’s death. He toured the ranch a few times with Ray and left written instructions for the accountants to try and buy five hundred acres more down near the creek, further west. There was some unproductive land to the north Ray wanted to sell, but the trust decreed no land could be sold without being replaced. The Baldridge acreage had thus never been reduced in three generations.
On Sunday morning, July 14, rested and dressed again in his newly pressed Naval uniform, Bill headed out to the Cherokee where Ray was waiting. Just as he opened the door, his mother hurried down the veranda steps. “Billy,” she called. “Before you go, just one thing…try to remember…to take care of yourself,” she said, reaching to embrace him.
“Don’t worry,” he reassured her.
Bill had told her nothing of where he was now going, but she was aware of his uneasiness. She sensed something sinister would accompany her last Naval officer, on his last mission, and Emily Baldridge watched in silence as the Cherokee drove out to the prairie in a cloud of dust.
6
Lieutenant commander Baldridge arrived at Boston’s Logan Airport late Sunday afternoon. Outside, the temperature was still 92 degrees under clear skies. He picked up his suitcase, headed for the American Airlines
