Mistletoe Mayhem: Clean Historical Western Cowboy Romance Novel (Dawson Chronicles Book 1) (14 page)

“What I understand is that the government doesn’t want the American public to know what’s really going on over there.  That’s why the newspapers and stuff aren’t allowed to print anything negative about the war,” Sawyer said, his anger rising. 

“Watch it, son.  You might not be in the army, but you’re awfully close to being arrested for sedition,” Ferris said. 

Frankie said, “Sawyer, just do what they want.  It’s not worth going to jail over.”

“It
is
, Mama.  I’m sure in my file somewhere is the real reason I was discharged.  My record is tarnished even though I served with honor and did whatever I was asked to.  More than I was asked to.  I was proud to be fighting for my country and I believed in what I was doing.  No matter what those papers say, I’ll always know the real reason the army kicked me out and that’s hard to deal with.”

Frankie said, “I understand—”

“No, you don’t.  I loved being a soldier and then I got hurt and the whole thing with these pictures happened.  Suddenly I was treated like I was an enemy of my own country and threatened with being court-martialed for treason!” 

To Ferris, he said, “Until those pictures came to light, my record was exemplary, as you know.  You want the pictures, I’ll give the damn things to you.  I risked my life to take them.  I couldn’t help it.  I’m a trained photographer and I wanted to document what was happening to preserve it for history.  I wasn’t gonna do anything with them until long after the war was over.  We have to go to the bank for them.  Let’s go get it over with.”

Sawyer put his coat back on and stood up.  Ferris and the corporal followed suit.

“We’ll bring him back soon, ma’am,” he said to Frankie.

Frankie nodded, folding her arms over her chest. 

Sawyer kissed her cheek.  “It’ll be all right.  I’ll see you soon.”

*****

              A half hour later, Ferris and Sawyer stood in the deposit box room of the Dawson Bank & Trust Co.  The officer looked at each of the pictures Sawyer had managed to send home.

              “I have to say that these are quite compelling.  You obviously have considerable skill and talent,” Ferris said. 

              “Thanks.  I’m so glad you like them.  Are we done here?  I have things to do today,” Sawyer said.

              Ferris said, “You know, for someone in your tenuous position, you sure are cocky.”

              “You got what you want, didn’t you?  I don’t know why you would want to waste any more time with me.”

              “You’re right.  I don’t.  Let’s go,” Ferris said.  “You did the right thing.”

              Sawyer made a derisive noise.  “For who?”

              “Your country,” Ferris replied.

              “That’s your opinion.  I’ll get home on my own,” Sawyer said, exiting the bank, and making his way down the street.

              With regret, Ferris watched him go.  It was a shame that those photos would never see the light of day, simply because they were so good.  He’d been touched by their subject matter and he could imagine how much they’d affect the public, too.  That was the problem.  If they made him feel so much, they would turn public opinion against the war.  He didn’t always like his orders, but he always followed them.  Ferris put the pictures in his pocket, got in his car, and tried to put his regret out of his mind as he and the corporal drove out of town.

              Joey ran into Sawyer, who asked him for a ride home.  He’d been working with a two-year-old Standardbred who needed experience in traffic situations.  He’d planned to drive the horse in and out of town several times.

              “Yeah, I’ll give you a ride.  Who brought you in town?” he asked.

              Sawyer handed Joey his crutches and hopped up into the buggy.  He was getting good at it now.  Taking them back from Joey, he replied, “The army.  They came to tell me that I’ve been formally discharged.”  He hated lying to Joey, but he still wasn’t allowed to talk about the pictures with anyone.  Ferris had made that very clear on the way into Dawson.

              “Oh, jeez.  I’m sorry, buddy.  I know you we’re really hoping to go back,” Joey said.  “They didn’t waste any time makin’ a decision.  I mean, you don’t even have that cast off, let alone know how it’s gonna be once you start walking again.”

              “They don’t want to wait to find out,” Sawyer said.  “So, that’s that.”

              The anger and disappointment in Sawyer’s voice and in his expression made Joey even more sympathetic.  “Well, we knew that it was a good possibility you weren’t going back, but knowing definitely is hard.”

             
Except I already knew it.  I hate not being able to tell people the truth!  I will one day, after the war, but not now.  I’m going to tell the world what they did to me and expose their deceptiveness.  I only wanted to show how brave our men are and how hard they fight.

              “Yeah, it is.  I have no idea what I’m gonna do once my ankle is healed.  The
Dialogue
doesn’t really need any help right now and we have enough ranch hands, too.  This project I’m working on isn’t going to last forever,” Sawyer said. 

He needed something to concentrate on that was positive.  He didn’t want to think about what had just happened too much or he’d go crazy with anger and bitterness.  He was trying to take D.J.’s sound advice about that sort of thing, but he needed a distraction.  Nothing came to mind at the moment.

“I’ll figure something out,” he said.  “So how’s this horse coming along?”

“Well, Borachio here doesn’t like cars, so we have to work on that.  I think I’ll have Devon drive a car alongside him for several miles and see if that helps,” Joey said.  “He can’t go crazy over there for our boys every time a truck or car comes along.”

“That might work.  Which play is his name from?”

Joe loved Shakespeare and named all of their horses after characters from the Bard’s plays if at all possible.

“
Much Ado about Nothing.
  Borachio is a villain and a servant of Don John,” Joey responded.

“Oh, ok.  I haven’t read that one,” Sawyer said.

“Don’t tell Daddy that.  He’ll make you read it and want to know what you think about it.”

Sawyer laughed.  “Yeah, that’s how he got me to read
Macbeth
.”

“He’s tricky, all right.”

All the way home, Sawyer tried to let the whole affair with the army go, but it was difficult.  Once Joey dropped him off, Sawyer decided to go to the barn.  He was sure that his mother had seen Joey bring him home, which would relieve her mind.  He needed a little space to get his emotions under control since he felt like crying and that was something he just didn’t do.

As he hobbled along, petting the horses, Sawyer longed to go for a ride, to just be alone with his horse and wander around the countryside.  He couldn’t saddle a horse and he wouldn’t be able to get his foot in the stirrup anyway.   

“I don’t need a saddle,” he said.

He grabbed a bridle from the tack room and put it on Archer.  The horse followed Sawyer outside to a mounting block as he moved along on his crutches.  Just as he was about to use his crutches to jump up on it, someone shouted, “Hey!  Stop!”

It was Dean and his flinty blue eyes held disapproval.  “Are you tryin’ to kill yourself?”

“I’m fine, Grandpa,” Sawyer said.

“Yeah, sure you are—until you fall off and crack your head open.  You’ll be real fine then,” Dean said.

Sawyer gritted his teeth together for a moment.  “I just need to clear my head and I wanted to go for a ride.  I miss it.”

“I understand, but what are you gonna do when you get down?” Dean asked.  “I’ll help you get on and then get a horse and come with you.”

“No, Grandpa.  I want to be alone.”

“Sawyer, I’m not letting you take off on a horse by yourself.  Now, either you go with me or not at all.  The choice is yours,” Dean said.  He almost smiled at the stubborn set of Sawyer’s jaw.  He’d looked like that when he was little and ticked off about something.

“Fine!  Go with me,” Sawyer said.

“That’s more like it,” Dean said.

After assisting Sawyer onto Archer, Dean quickly saddled a horse and joined him.  Sawyer chose a trail that followed the north pasture fence and then branched out towards the distant mountain ranges.  It eventually led down to the river and wound through a small section of woodland.

Once they reached the woods, Dean asked, “This have anything to do with that army car that came today?”

Sawyer stopped his horse and Dean came up alongside of him and halted.

“Yeah.  I won’t be going back,” Sawyer said.  “Damn it!”

“I’m sorry, son,” Dean said.

“You don’t understand.  It’s not because of the medical stuff, although even without the other issue, I wouldn’t go back, I guess.  I don’t know.”

Dean frowned.  “What are you talking about?  What other issue?”

“I was almost court martialed.  I took a bunch of photographs that I wasn’t supposed to take, only I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to.  They didn’t want them published in the press because everyone would know what it’s really like over there.  They censor everything, Grandpa.  They open letters and stuff that are supposed to be private and all in the name of national security.  They just want everyone to keep supporting the war and if they saw the stuff I photographed, they wouldn’t support it very much,” Sawyer said in a rush. 

Dean had heard rumors about such things.  He’d heard from some people around the area who’d had soldiers come home that none of their letters had reached them.  Now he knew why; the military had kept them because they’d deemed whatever was in them as too sensitive.

“I saw some of those pictures and I know they’re horrible, but I still support what we’re doing.  I wasn’t there, so maybe I would change my mind if I had been,” Dean said.

“I believed in our cause.  I did.  I loved being a soldier even though I was away from everyone.  I liked the actual job, I guess you’d say, and I was good at it.  I probably would have been promoted by the end of this year if I hadn’t been hurt and all of the stuff with those pictures hadn’t come up,” Sawyer said.

“I can see you as a soldier.  I’m sure you were good.  You were trained by some of the best soldiers all of your life,” Dean said.

Sawyer smiled.  “Yeah, I was, and a lot of it came in handy, too.  I was a lot better off than a lot of the city boys, I’ll tell you that.  I helped them out whenever I could.”  He sobered.  “I took those pictures even when I knew it might get me killed.  Bullets were whizzing by me and cannon fire exploding not far from where I was, but I still took those pictures because it’s only right that everyone know what our boys face in the name of freedom, Grandpa.  Someone had to tell their story, you know?  And now the army took all of my pictures and no one will ever see the hell our Doughboys went through to help secure the safety of the whole world.  It makes me feel like all of my work was for nothing, like it didn’t matter.”

Dean’s own anger came to a boil when he saw the sheen of tears in Sawyer’s eyes.  The last time Dean had seen Sawyer cry was when he’d been about six.  Sawyer didn’t cry, so for tears to form in his eyes, told Dean his grandson was deeply hurt. 

“Those were your pictures.  How can they just take them?  You faced death to take them.  It’s not right,” Dean said. 

“That’s why they were here.  They took the ones I had stashed in the bank.  I was gonna publish them after the war was over.  I was stupid and sent a last letter home to Skip telling him not to tell anyone about them and they confiscated it even though I had it in a green envelope.”  Sawyer let out a long string of swearwords, venting his anger and frustration, before he broke down.

Dean put a hand on his shoulder, rubbing and patting it as Sawyer cried.  It wasn’t long until Sawyer composed himself, though.  “You can’t tell anyone about this, Grandpa.  Only my parents and Skip know about it.  I don’t want anyone to get in trouble because they’re overheard talking about it.”

“I understand.  I won’t even say anything to Tessa,” Dean said.

“Thanks.  I hate keeping secrets,” Sawyer said.

“Me, too,” Dean said.  “But you have good reasons for keeping all of this a secret,” Dean said. 

“So now, I’m trying to decide what to do with myself when I’m better.  I need work, but doing what?  I can work stories here and there for the paper, but I need something full-time so I don’t have to register as a vagrant.”

During the war, the Montana Council of Defense had decreed that any man who wasn’t working full-time had to register with the local authorities as a bum or vagrant.  Their sheriff, Mitch Taylor, hated doing this, but he had to make it look good or risk being removed from office and Dawson didn’t want to lose their excellent lawman.  Joe tried to create jobs around town so that men didn’t have to be registered. 

              Dean said, “We could just say that you’re working for us
;  no
; no
one could prove that you aren’t.  It’s a good thing that Switch works a couple of different jobs so that he doesn’t have to register.”

              “Right.  I appreciate the offer, Grandpa, but you don’t need any more ranch hands,” Sawyer said. 

              Dean said, “Well, you’re a photographer, do something with it.  Open a studio or something.”

              “I’ve considered that, but I need startup capital to rent a space in town and I just don’t have it.  I sent some pay home, but it’s not much to live on,” Sawyer said.  “We don’t know how long this war is gonna go on, so I didn’t want to ask Mama and Pa since they’re trying to save money,” Sawyer said.

              Dean said, “What would it take for you to start up?”

              “I don’t know without looking at a shop and seeing what it might cost to renovate it to suit my needs,” Sawyer said.

              Dean said, “You find out and your grandma and I will give you the money to do it.  Don’t argue with me.  Your great grandpa did the same thing for your pa, Aunt Katie, and J.R. when they wanted to start the newspaper.  No reason we can’t do the same for you.”

              Sawyer grinned.  “You would do that?”

              Dean smiled.  “Sawyer, don’t you know that we would give all you kids the moon if we could?  Of course we will.  No sense being well-off if you can’t use it to help your family.”

              Leaning towards Dean’s horse, Sawyer hugged him.  “That’s why you’re one of my heroes.  You’ve always helped anyone whenever you could,” Sawyer said, letting him go.

              Dean grinned at him.  “That’s what family is for.”

              “Let’s go back so I can tell everyone.”

              A gleam entered Dean’s eyes.  “I got a better idea.  Come with me.”