“The barking has quieted. Maybe it was something else. We need to go in and see,” Jordy said. He stepped back and took her arm and guided her into the house.
When they reached the bedroom door, she saw that Tess had pulled up the sheet to cover Jack to his neck, and he lay on the bed, his body totally still, no more rising and falling of his chest. Thor lay beside him, whimpering, his head resting on Jack’s shoulder.
Tess evidently heard them and turned to face them, composed except for tears rolling slowly down her cheeks. “Jack’s gone. I’m sorry. I thought we had just a bit more time.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
Jordy, Sierra, and Tess sat at the kitchen table discussing arrangements for Jack’s burial. Thor remained in the bedroom with his old comrade. “Jack gave me instructions several years ago,” Jordy said. “He wrote them down, and they should be in the safe at home. I’ll double check, but I remember them well enough. For one thing, he said he did not want an undertaker messing with his body. That means we take the body back to the ranch tonight. Can we use your buckboard, Tess? I don’t want to haul him in the cart, though he would probably have liked the idea.”
“Of course,” Tess said. “If there is anything I can do, please just ask. He will be buried in the ranch cemetery, I assume?”
Jordy was surprised at how calm and detached he felt. He could never love anyone more than he had Jack Wills, but real grief had not hit him, perhaps because there had been those days on the trail to prepare for what he had seen as inevitable. “Yes, he has a section all measured and sketched out for special burials. Jack the planner, you know. I can measure out where he is to be buried. There is a place for Thor on one side, and Rudy next to Thor. He plotted an adjacent area for me and any family I might have, but—this is difficult to talk about, Tess, there is a space on the other side of Jack for you, if you want it.”
“You are serious? I’ve wondered where my remains might end up someday. No children, a brother many miles from here I have virtually lost touch with. Yes, I am making my reservation tonight.” She gave a feeble smile and dabbed tears from her eyes.
Jordy said, “With this heat, he will have to be buried tomorrow. I’m thinking late afternoon to give us time to take care of the details. Jack didn’t want the fuss of a big funeral. Just some of the ranch folks. I’ll see if we can put out some kind of an outdoor supper for the few who would be there. I’m sure Josephina will take charge.”
“Coffin?” Sierra asked.
“Stashed in the barn loft with another for Thor. Oak. Very simple. Jack had Swede build them when he was planning arrangements.”
“Shouldn’t we have at least a simple service with a preacher?” Sierra asked.
“We have a man who works for the freight company and preaches to the Methodists on Sundays, but he’s likely on a run. I suppose I could check.”
“I’ll do it,” Sierra said. “I would take care of the service.”
He looked at her in surprise. “You would?”
“Short and sweet. You said there is a Bible in the library. I’ll put something together.”
Later, Jordy and Sierra shared the seat in the buckboard as Jordy drove Tess’s borrowed horse team and wagon in the moonlight up the sloping road that led to ranch headquarters. They had ridden in silence most of the distance with Jack, now dressed in the nightshirt and carefully wrapped in a blanket by Tess, laid out in the wagon bed, guarded by his faithful Thor.
Sierra broke the quiet. “You weren’t there when Jack spoke. You didn’t hear what he said.”
“No.”
“He asked Tess to marry him. She said ‘yes.’”
“Do you think that was what the rush to get back was all about? He wanted to ask her to marry him?” Jordy asked.
“I do. He knew he was dying. He had something important to finish. They obviously loved each other very much. It is so sad they were denied a married life together.”
“But they had a love and a life for ten or more years that many never experience even with marriage. Let’s be glad for that. I know that’s what Jack would say.”
“You seem so collected, almost businesslike, in dealing with all this.”
He shrugged. “I can’t explain it. Sometimes I think this is all a nightmare that I must get through. I suppose it seems cold.”
“Strange, but not cold. I have heard that with some, grief waits, sometimes a long time. Do you hate me for bringing Jack to this end?”
He looked at her. “Hate you? Never. Dislike you? No. And I do not blame you. We have been through a lot together these past few days. I have no better friend than you. Get the notion out of your head. This was not your fault. Maybe it was just his time. I have heard some folks say that we’ve all got a time on the clock when it’s all over. He could have died sitting in a rocking chair.”
“You don’t believe that?”
“Well, no. I haven’t come around to that way of thinking yet. But nobody knows. Jack often said he was living on bonus time, that he should have died a dozen times over the past fifty years. He claimed he just could not quit challenging the rider of the pale horse. Biblical reference, I think.”
“Death. Book of Revelation.” She placed a hand on his forearm. “We’re almost there. What happens now?”
“Most are still up. I need to go to Rusty Dobbs’s house and give him the news. He will see to a lot of the details, notifying others and getting word to Tige Marshall’s wife, Juana. She
