Fire on the Mountain Read Online Free PDF

out my blue jeans and the tight cowboy shirt with the diamond-shaped imitation-pearl buttons—a great shirt. The air was chill; I dressed quickly, tugged on my boots, grabbedmy new hat and hobbled out and down the hallway toward the warm glow of the kitchen.
    Lee stood bent over the rumble of fire in the cookstove, stirring a mess of eggs and potatoes in an oversize iron skillet. Flame and smoke leaked out around the edge of the skillet—the stovelid had been shoved aside. The redolence of burning juniper graced the air. Lee heard me approach and greeted me with his white grin, nodding toward the table, where three places had been set. I went first to the sink, turned the tap, and splashed cool water over my face. I dried my face with the fresh towel that hung on a handy nail, combed my hair with my fingers, and was ready.
    “Get your grampaw in here,” Lee said. “We’re ready to eat.”
    I went to the screen door and called the old man. He stood outside on the bare ground below the verandah, talking with Eloy Peralta, two dim figures in the morning dusk. Grandfather dismissed Eloy with a clap on the shoulder and came into the kitchen. We three sat down at the table and ate, by the light of the lamp, the hot and hearty breakfast Lee had made. I was hungry, beautifully hungry, with an appetite I’d almost forgotten I’d ever had.
    “That’s the way to shovel it down,” Lee said, grinning at me enthusiastically. “Look at this boy eat, John. You can always tell a cowboy by the way he eats. If he don’t eat like a wolf there’s something wrong with him.”
    The old man smiled at me. “We’ll keep him.” His huge left hand was clamped around a mug of steaming coffee; I could see the freckles and the red hair on his knuckles.
    “Have some more, Billy.” Lee scraped more of the scrambled eggs and fried potatoes out of the skillet onto my plate. I added a few extra slices of bacon from the second frypan and buttered another slab of bread. “That’s the idea,” Lee said. “Man, if we find that lion today, I sure feel sorry for the lion.”
    “Or suppose he finds the horse before we do,” Grandfather said. “That’s a valuable horse.”
    “Nature’s plan,” I said through a mouthful of food. They watched me eat.
    “Let’s go,” Lee said, as I finished. “I can feel the sun coming up over Texas.” He gulped down the last of his coffee, pushed back his chair and stood up, reaching for his hat. I stood up and reached for my hat and when Lee put his on I put mine on.
    Grandfather unwrapped a cigar. “Be right with you boys. Don’t wait for me.”
    Lee strode outside and I followed. Parked near the verandah was Lee’s enormous custard-colored automobile, gleaming with chrome and glass. He stroked its sleek enamel as we passed. “Some piece of iron, huh Billy?”
    “It’s a nice car, Lee,” I didn’t really pay it much attention; where I came from the streets were more or less solidly paved with these metallic objects and a man on foot could walk across a street only when the machines permitted him to. They were as familiar to me as the feel of soot on cement and the smell of sewer gas. My father leased two new ones every year.
    We walked quietly through the gloom under the shivering leaves of the cottonwoods toward the barn and corral. I saw the green ribbons of dawn stretched out above the purple mesa eastward. A horned owl hooted from the willow thickets. Meadow larks and canyon wrens, invisible but present, sang out clear as angels in the pasture beyond the corral and in the alfalfa field along the wash.
    “Lee,” I said.
    He gripped my arm for a moment. “Let’s not talk about it today, Billy. It’ll be all right. Don’t let it worry you.”
    The screen door clapped shut behind us, a loud noise in the stillness, and glancing back I saw the red coal of the old man’s cigar as he came down the steps of the porch.
    Lee and I entered the barn, felt our way into the tackroom and loaded