So that when you go in a place where Indians have lived you smell them gone and all the empty pain killer bottles and the flies that buzz do not kill the sweetgrass smell, the smoke smell and that other like a fresh cased marten skin. Nor any jokes about them nor old squaws take that away. Nor the sick sweet smell they get to have. Nor what they did finally. It wasn’t how they ended. They all ended the same. Long time ago good. Now no good.
And about the other. When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first. He could thank his father for that.
“You might not like them,” Nick said to the boy. “But I think you would.”
“And my grandfather lived with them too when he was a boy, didn’t he?”
“Yes. When I asked him what they were like he said that he had many friends among them.”
“Will I ever live with them?”
“I don’t know,” Nick said. “That’s up to you.”
“How old will I be when I get a shotgun and can hunt by myself?”
“Twelve years old if I see you are careful.”
“’I wish I was twelve now.”
“You will be, soon enough.”
“What was my grandfather like? I can’t remember him except that he gave me an air rifle and an American flag when I came over from France that time. What was he like?”
“He’s hard to describe. He was a great hunter and fisherman and he had wonderful eyes.”
“’Was he greater than you?”
“He was a much better shot and his father was a great wing shot too.”
“I’ll bet he wasn’t better than you.”
“Oh, yes he was. He shot very quickly and beautifully. I’d rather see him shoot than any man I ever knew. He was always very disappointed in the way I shot.”
“Why do we never go to pray at the tomb of my grandfather?”
“We live in a different pan of the country. It’s a long way from here.”
“In France that wouldn’t make any difference. In France we’d go. I think I ought to go to pray at the tomb of my grandfather.”
“Sometime we’ll go.”
“I hope we won’t live somewhere so that I can never go to pray at your tomb when you are dead.”
“We’ll have to arrange it.”
“Don’t you think we might all be buried at a convenient place? We could all be buried in France. That would be fine.”
“I don’t want to be buried in France,” Nick said.
“Well, then, we’ll have to get some convenient place in America. Couldn’t we all be buried out at the ranch?”
“That’s an idea.”
“Then I could stop and pray at the tomb of my grandfather on the way to the ranch.”
“You’re awfully practical.”
“Well, I don’t feel good never to have even visited the tomb of my grandfather.”
“We’ll have to go,” Nick said. “I can see we’ll have to go.”
The End
