Read Online The Indifference of Tumbleweed by Rebecca Tope - Free Book Online Page B

parents or my grandmother to elaborate the report, knowing Reuben would remain dumb. It did not feel like my place to be doing it.
    â€˜The dog has been absolved,’ Henry told me, still speaking very formally and telling me something that had been clear from the start. Puzzled, I ventured a small smile.
    â€˜That comes as a great relief,’ I said. ‘The dog has no harm in him.’
    â€˜He is expected to serve some useful purpose in the future, the nature of which is unclear to me.’ Henry was watching my face as he spoke, with an intensity that was more of an appeal than a threat. I remembered the searching stirring look that Abel Tennant had used to beguile me, and noted how different the two young men were, and how my response to Henry contained nothing to disturb the flow of my blood. Henry was speaking to me as one sentient being to another, perhaps testing me to see if I were a match for his intellect. His remark contained a wealth of implications that were not lost on me.
    â€˜Can he bring down a buffalo?’ I wondered, with a smile.
    â€˜A calf, perhaps. And since none of us is especially adept with a rifle, it might be safer to leave the work to the dog.’
    It was scarcely possible to envisage the situation where we might be so in need of meat that a dog such as Melchior would be encouraged to bring down a buffalo calf. I suspected and hoped that the hypothesis was nothing more than words. ‘He would need fellows in such a task,’ I said. ‘A pack of hunting dogs, not a single individual who may well have painful associations with the use of his teeth to draw blood.’ I recalled the chipmunk that I had seen Melchior kill some weeks before. ‘Although if he is sufficiently hungry, he might be persuaded perhaps.’
    â€˜I have taken it upon myself to supply him with a few scraps each evening,’ he confessed. ‘He needs to maintain his strength, after all.’
    Jude and Reuben had moved away slightly, plainly uninterested in our exchange, perhaps dimly aware that the words were not for them. Jude’s gaze was on his aunt who had positioned her Dutch oven over the fire, and was dropping corn meal dumplings into it. The setting sun was on her, turning her dark hair to a glossy sheen. Mrs Gordon was considerably younger than her sister, but still at least ten years senior to Jude. If, as was perfectly probable, she found herself a new husband from amongst the men in the train, there was not the slightest idea in my head that it might be her sister’s son. Indeed, such a pairing was most likely forbidden in the church laws.
    I maintained my attention on Henry, who stood squarely before me, perhaps four inches shorter than I was, since I was of a fair height by that time. His head was long and boxy, hair cut short across the top and down the sides, perhaps in an attempt to reduce any appearance of being a child. He had a high brow and clear brown eyes under well-marked brows. He wore a jacket made of a good wool cloth, with deep pockets stuffed so full they dragged the garment down, spoiling its shape. A thickbook protruded from one, the edges of the pages gilded, so they glinted in the sunlight. Henry Bricewood cut a figure far more suited to the streets of a city or the cloisters of a university than the untamed trail that led across the Divide to the remote west.
    For no reason at all, I laughed, perhaps for lack of suitable words, perhaps because there was something sweet and unexpected in this casual little talk about the dog. Something about Henry Bricewood, as I gradually came to know him better, sent worry and work into a distant corner, to be replaced by glimpses of something else. Something attached to words spoken for their own sake, which gave them power to conjure pictures that we could observe together. It confused me, while it yet gave me a sort of reassurance. When I looked from Henry to Jude, I silently allocated them to two distinct