The Son Read Online Free PDF Page A

frontier. I wondered where they were. I knew I should load all the guns, then remembered I had already done it. A rhyme came into my head, buffalo grip, barlow blade, best damn knife that was ever made . I knew what would happen—the Indians would knock on the door, we would not let them in, and they would try to break in until they got bored. Then they would set fire to the house and shoot us as we came out.
    “Martin?” said my mother.
    “He’s right. There are at least two dozen.”
    “Then it’s whites,” said my sister. “It’s some gang of horse thieves.”
    “No, it’s definitely Indians.”
    I got my rifle and sat down in a corner facing the door. It was shadows and dim red light. I wondered if I would go to hell. My brother was pacing and my mother and sister had sat down on their bed. My mother was brushing my sister’s hair saying, Shush now, Lizzie, everything will be fine. In the dimness their eyes were empty sockets like the buzzards had already found them. I looked the other way.
    “Your rifle has a nipple on it,” I told my brother, “and so do the pistols.”
    He shook his head.
    “If we put up a fight, they might just be happy with the horses.”
    I could tell he didn’t agree but he went to the corner and took up his squirrel gun, feeling the nipple for a percussion cap.
    “I already capped it,” I repeated.
    “Maybe they’ll think we’re not home,” said my sister. She looked to my brother but he said, “They can see we have a fire going, Lizzie.”
    We could hear the Indians clanging things around in my father’s metal shop, talking in low voices. My mother got up and put a chair in front of the door and stood on it. There was another gun port up high and she removed the board and put her face to it: “I only see seven.”
    “There are at least thirty,” I told her.
    “Daddy will be following them,” said my sister. “He’ll know they’re here.”
    “Maybe when he sees the flames,” said my brother.
    “They’re coming.”
    “Get down from there, Mammy.”
    “Not so loud,” said my sister.
    Someone kicked the door and my mother nearly fell off her perch. Salir, salir. There was pounding. Spanish was the language most of the wild tribes spoke, if they spoke anything but Indian. I thought the door might stop a few shots at best and I motioned again for my mother to get down.
    Tenemos hambre. Nos dan los alimentos.
    “That is ridiculous,” said my brother. “Who would believe that?”
    There was a long quiet time and then Mother looked at us and said, in her schoolteacher voice: “Eli and Martin, please put your guns on the floor.” She began to remove the bar from the door and I realized that everything they ever said about women was true—they had no common sense and you could not trust them.
    “Do not open that door, Momma.
    “Grab her,” I told Martin. But he didn’t move. I saw the bar lift and propped the rifle on my knee. The moonlight was coming through the cracks like a white fire but my mother didn’t notice; she set the bar aside like she was welcoming an old friend, like she’d been expecting this from the day we were born.
     
    I T WAS SAID in the newspapers that mothers on the frontier saved their last bullets for their own children, so they would not be taken by the heathens, but you did not hear of anyone doing it. In fact it was the opposite. We all knew I was of prime age—the Indians would want me alive. My brother and sister might have been slightly old, but my sister was pretty and my brother looked younger than he really was. Meanwhile my mother was almost forty. She knew exactly what they would do to her.
    The door flung open and two men tackled her. A third man stood behind them in the doorway, squinting into the darkness of the house.
    When my shot hit, he windmilled an arm and fell backward. The other Indians sprinted out and I yelled for my brother to shut the door but he didn’t move. I ran over to shut it myself but the dead