Wanted

Chapter 7

Sitting in the armchairs in front of the fireplace, the two men were talking about times gone by. Walls was smoking his clay pipe and had offered one to Jeremiah who had declined, as he preferred cigars.

They talked about the place they called 'back home', their childhood and how they ended up in this neck of the woods. They told each other about the adventures they had when they were young men and were glad to admit that compared to that, their present days were agreeably mundane.

They talked about farming and ranching, and Jeremiah realised that he still had an awful lot to learn. Books could only get one that far, he realised as he listened to Walls whose family had been farmers in the Black Forest region in Germany. He had much knowledge to share and was glad to do so.

Jeremiah on the other hand had no experience whatsoever in farming. He had filed the homestead only three years ago, merely as a base for his trapping and hunting activities, with no real interest in farming and settling down permanently. Starting off in a simple dug out, he had been happy with just the log cabin he had managed to finish at the end of his second year on his sizeable plot. 

His Indian friend however had other plans for him and gifted him an unbranded Stallion and four mares, telling him to breed them. Enkoodabooaoo knew his horses but knew he wouldn't get a fair price if he sold them himself. He had won them in poker game, at least that is what he had told Jeremiah. At the time Enkoodabooaoo stayed around for a while, he helped him finish his log cabin and clear some more land to build a coral and a barn, and to grow some crop for feed, grains and straw. They sold the timber to the folks in Salesville and together with some pelts managed to get themselves and their horses through the first winter but now it was time to start sowing some seeds and planting some vegetables. Over the winter months Enkoodabooaoo had shared as much as he could about horses but now he had enough of staying at the same place. He'd agreed to mind the horses while Jeremiah went to the city for supplies but then he wanted to get going again, to roam the mountains as he had always done. He'd be back in fall he told Jeremiah and Jeremiah had a suspicion that his Indian friend liked the idea of having somewhere warm to stay for winter.

Sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, the boy was attentively listening to it all, his little hands combing through Jeremiah's dog's hair, massaging him all over.

They had seen him, and Jeremiah had sent him back to bed several times. He tried to scold him even. Each time the boy scarpered back into the bedroom and hid under the blankets, and even tried to make himself fall asleep but after a while got back up again.

Each time he started off by sitting on the landing watching and listening through the banister, but then after a while, step by step mooched his way downwards returning to the bottom of the stairs where the dog had been impatiently waiting for him. In the end Jeremiah decided he wasn't doing any harm and just left him sitting there until tiredness overcame the child, and he finally fell asleep slumped over with his head resting on his arms a few steps above his seat.

"What are you planning to do with him?" Walls asked, when Jeremiah came back from having carried the sleeping child into his bed. Jeremiah had imagined he would have to wake the boy to get him to walk upstairs but instead found himself troubled by how light the boy was.

"Not sure to be honest. I'd like to find him a home I suppose but I don't know anyone, and I don't want to leave him with just anybody," Jeremiah replied. He told Walls about the auction style spectacle, the blacksmith and the people from the committee in the city in the hope it would soften the Germans heart to take the boy on but it didn't work.

"Sally thought that maybe the pastor in Salesville could help. He does know most families in these parts. Half the time he spends travelling from one homesteads to the next visiting his flock," Walls told Jeremiah.