Beyond the Chaparral

JIM ROSSITER LOOKED up as the boy came into the room. He smiled, a half-nostalgic smile, for this boy reminded him of himself…fifteen, no…twenty years ago.

"What is it, Mike?"

The boy's eyes were worried. He hesitated, not wanting to tell what he had to tell, yet knowing with his boyish wisdom that it was better for Rossiter to hear it from him, now.

"Lonnie Parker's back from prison."

Jim Rossiter did not move for a long, long minute. "I see," he said. "Thanks, Mike."

When the boy had gone he got to his feet and walked to the window, watching Mike cross the street. It was not easy to grow up in a western town when one wanted the things Mike Hamlin wanted.

Mike Hamlin did not want to punch cows, to drive a freight wagon or a stage. He did not want to own a ranch or even be the town marshal. Mike was a dreamer, a thinker, a reader. He might be a young Shelley, a potential Calhoun. He was a boy born to thought, and that in a community where all the premiums were paid to action.

Jim Rossiter knew how it was with Mike, for Jim had been through it, too. He had fought this same battle, and had, after a fashion, won.

He had punched cows, all right. And for awhile he had driven a freight wagon. For a time he had been marshal of a trail town, but always with a book in his pocket. First it had been Plutarch—how many times had he read it? Then Plato, Thucydides, Shakespeare, and Shelley. The books had been given to him by a drunken remittance man, and he had passed them along to Mike. A drunken Englishman and Jim Rossiter, bearers of the torch. He smiled wryly at the thought.

But he had won.…He had gone east, had become a lawyer, had practiced there. However, memories of the land he left behind were always with him, the wide vistas, the battlements of the mesas, the vast towers of lonely cloud, the fringing pines…and the desert that gave so richly of its colors and its spaces.

So he had come back.

A scholar and a thinker in a land of action. A dreamer in a place of violence. He had returned because he loved the land. He stayed because he loved Magda Lane. That love, he had found, was one of the few things that gave his life any meaning.

And now Lonnie Parker was back.

Lonnie, who had given so much to Magda when she needed it, so much of gaiety and laughter. Lonnie Parker, who rode like a devil and fought like a madman. Lonnie, who could dance and laugh and be gay, and who was weak—that was Magda's word.

Rossiter, who was wise in the ways of women, knew that weakness had its appeal. There was a penalty for seeming strong, for those whose pride made it necessary to carry on as best they could although often lonely or unhappy. No one realized—few would take the time to look closely enough. The weak needed help…the strong? They needed nothing.

Sometimes it seemed the price of strength was loneliness and unhappiness…and the rewards for weakness were love, tenderness, and compassion.

Now Jim Rossiter stared down the dusty street, saw the bleak faces of the old buildings, lined with the wind etchings of years, saw the far plains and hills beyond, and knew the depths of all that loneliness.

Now that Lonnie was back it would spell the end of everything for him. Yet in a sense it would be a relief. Now the threat was over, the suspense would be gone.

He had never known Lonnie Parker. But he had heard of him. "Lonnie?" they would say, smiling a little. "There's no harm in him. Careless, maybe, but he doesn't mean anything by it."

Rossiter looked around the bare country law office. Three years, and he had come to love it, this quiet place, often too quiet, where he practiced law. He walked back to his desk and sat down. He was supposed to call tonight…should he?

Lonnie was back, and Magda had once told him herself, "I'm not sure, Jim. Perhaps I love him. I…I don't know. I was so alone then, and he understood and he needed me. Maybe that was all it was, but I just don't know."

Jim Rossiter was a tall, quiet man with wide shoulders and narrow hips. He liked people, and he made friends. Returning to the West he had come to this town where he was not known, and had brought a new kind of law with him.

Copyright © 1997 by Louis & Katherine L'Amour Trust