“We will talk.”
Jack thought that Irish led the horse off with some extra spring in his step. He had a lot of good folks working with him in his businesses. Sure, he would like to help them do better, but he came out best if he gave them the opportunity in Lucky Five ventures.
Rudy was already cooking when Jack returned to the campsite, jabbering like a magpie at poor Bram, who apparently had learned to shut out the noise and was obviously fond of his supervisor and mentor. Jack decided to take a stroll upstream before supper call. He needed some thinking time where he could talk things over in his own head. Besides, he feared that if he sat down now, they would have to retrieve one of the mules to pull him to his feet. Crazy old man. He should have known better than to take off on a fool’s quest like this. He had a notion to turn the party around and head back to the ranch in the morning.
Chapter Eighteen
Sierra was a bit nervous about her grandfather’s request that she join him near the trees south of the Studebaker wagons after supper, but she was glad he was going to break the taciturn silence that had governed whenever he was in her proximity. He was a strange man. He did not talk much, but when he did, everybody listened. Not because they feared him, though. The people who worked for him—no, worked with him—respected him, maybe loved him. They were more like a big family in the camp, bickering sometimes and occasionally disagreeing vociferously, but an attack on one would be an attack on all.
She guessed that Jordy and these people on Jack’s payroll had somehow melded into a family, and she found herself a little jealous and resentful that his blood kin had been denied that relationship. Jordy’s love for the man and the admiration and affection of all those others for Jack Wills made no sense to her. This was not the man her father and grandmother had hated so. Piece by piece, she was putting together someone quite different.
When she approached the trees, she saw Jack sitting on a stump, staring in the direction of the setting sun. Thor, of course, was sprawled on the ground at his friend’s feet.
As she drew nearer, Jack, without turning his head, said, “Pick a stump and have yourself a seat.”
Sierra found a half-dozen choices where travelers had downed good-sized trees years earlier. She claimed the one nearest to Jack some five or six feet distant. He swung around and faced her, leaning forward with forearms resting on his thighs, fingers entwined. His eyes fastened on hers like he was looking for something there. He nodded with what she took as approval of some sort.
“Tell me about J. T.,” he said.
“There is so much. What do you want to know? I’ve told you some things.”
“I want to know him better. What did he look like? I wish I had a picture.”
“At home, I have daguerreotypes taken in his dress Confederate uniform. I think I told you he was a cavalry colonel. If the house is still standing when I get back, I will dig the daguerreotypes out and bring them for you to look at. But he looked a lot like you. His hair was black, starting to get a few strands of white when he was killed. Like you, he wasn’t inclined to hair on his face—no moustache or chin whiskers.”
Jack asked, “Was he short? Tall? His mother’s people were on the short side.”
“Oh, Papa was tall. A little taller than you are. I suppose about Jordy’s height. On the skinny side but muscled in the arms and shoulders,” Sierra said.
“I know he loved horses. He was obviously a hard worker and a man who tried to better himself. Was he a reader?”
Sierra smiled, “Everything he could get his hands on. That is why he insisted I go to school. But we didn’t have any kind of a fancy library. Just books stacked on the floor along one wall of his bedroom. He liked Poe a lot.”
“Depressing stuff but hard to set aside once you start. So your father hated me? I hope he didn’t let that run his life. Hate’s not a good burden to carry. Closes your mind to possibilities.”
“It was always there, but he didn’t talk about it all the time or anything. Just when he got moods, and that wasn’t often. He laughed a lot, enjoyed simple pleasures. His happiest days were when Mama was alive. He loved her more than anything, and she loved him. I never heard a cross word between them. They were like a mule team, always working together to get where they were going.”
“So he had bad times in his life, but he saw good times, too?”
“Oh, yes. He told me more than once that you’ve got to have bad times to know what good times are. Then, it is not so hard to recognize the good times when they visit. Treasure the simple joys, he said.” She nodded toward Thor. “Like a loyal dog at your feet.”
Jack smiled, “J. T. Wills was a wise man.”
Sierra said, “He was. But I have got to know something. You have not directly answered an important question.”
“Try me. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Did you leave Grandma Emily when Papa was one year old?”
“No. I did not know your grandmother was with child when we parted, and I did not leave. I was sent away. It seems likely she did not know she was carrying a child at the time.”
A storm raged in Sierra’s head. Was it possible that her father lived out his life with a false belief? That her beloved Grandma Emily had planted a lie and let it grow unabated? She found herself trembling as she spoke. “Are you saying my
