• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The boy looked at Terry and seemed to back off, maybe just a couple of inches on the outside, but the way he tensed you knew an iron door slammed shut inside of him.

Max said, “What in the name of George H. Hell you think you’re doing?” Max had no use for Terry—but I’ll tell you about that later.

Terry looked up at Repper and said, “I thought I’d just talk to him.”

Max most probably wanted to kick Terry in the teeth, especially now, worn out from trying on shoes, and on general principle besides. Terry was the kind of boy who never let anything bother him, never raised his voice, and I know for a fact that burned Max, especially when they had differences of opinion, which was about every other time they ran into each other.

Max was near the end of his short-sized temper, but he held on and forced out a laugh to show Terry what he thought of him and said to me, “Pat, I’m going to buy myself a drink.”

I kept just a couple of bottles for customers who didn’t have time to get down to the State House. Serving Max, I watched Terry and the boy.

TERRY WAS SITTING cross-legged in front of him now slipping off the shoe Max had buttoned up. He took another from the pile of shoes and tried it on, the boy letting him, watching curiously, and I could hear Terry saying something in that slow, quiet way he talked. First, I thought it was Spanish, and maybe it was, but the little bit I could hear after that was a low mumble… then bit-off crisp words like sik-isn and nakai-yes and pesh-klitso, though not used together. The kind of talk you hear up at the San Carlos Reservation.

Then Terry leaned close to the boy and for a while I couldn’t see the boy’s face. Terry leaned back and said something else; then he touched the boy’s arm, holding it for a moment, and when he stood up the boy’s eyes followed him and they no longer had that locked iron door behind them.

Terry came over to us and said, “The boy was taken from the Mexican village of Sahuaripa something like three years ago. He was out watching the men herd cattle when a Chiricahua raiding party hit them. They killed the others and carried off the boy.”

Max didn’t speak, so I said, “I thought he was white.”

Terry nodded his head. “His Mexican father told him that his real parents had died when he was a small boy. The Mexican had hired out to them as a guide, but they both died of a fever on the way to wherever they were going. So the Mexican went home to Sahuaripa and took the boy with him. He explained to the boy that he and his wife had never had a child, but they had prayed, and he believed the boy to be God’s answer. They named the boy Regalo.”

Max said, “You expect me to believe that?”

Terry shrugged. “Why shouldn’t you?”

Max just looked at Terry, then grinned and shook his head slowly like saying: You think I was born last week? Terry might have told him what he thought, but Repper stomped out, dragging the boy and his new shoes with him.

I said to Terry, “The boy really tell you that?”

“Sure he did.”

“What about the past three years?”

“He’s been with Chiricahuas. Made blood son of Juh, who’s chief of the whole red she-bang.” Terry said the boy had wandered off on a lone hunt; his horse lamed and he was cutting back home when he came across Max’s place.

“Terry,” I said, “I imagine a boy could learn a lot of mean things from Chiricahuas.”

And Terry said, “That’s why I’m almost tempted to feel sorry for old Max.”

Terry went back to outfitting for his expedition, but now he actually put his list down and asked Deelie to fill it. He didn’t stay more than ten minutes after that, talking to Deelie, telling her what the boy said. And when he was gone I asked Deelie what his big hurry was.

“I never saw a man so eager to get back to a mine camp,” I said.

“Terry’s anxious to make this one pay,” Deelie said. There was a soft smile on her face and she dropped her eyes quick, which was Deelie’s way of telling you she had a secret—though I suspected it was something more