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Show in my father's house/ 175 when it is caught in stone and another time to pick a wild-flower and place it behind my ear. Once he crushed a bit of sagebrush between his fingers and let its wild sweetness fill my nostrils. "Daddy, when will we be together again? All the family together, like we were back home?" I asked, looking up at him. "It won't be long, dear. The important thing is that we stay together in our hearts." "But Daddy, I miss you so much," I said, blinking back tears, but they fell anyway, cold on my freckles. "I hardly know what to do." He smiled at me, a strange tight smile he wore often, and squeezed my hand. "You'll do fine, my darling. You'll do fine." In the twilight we drove home, singing songs and talking. "This is your Pinion Pine," my father interrupted, pointing out the car window. When he had headed back to Idaho, Saul shook his head. "Anybody in Nevada knows those trees are Ponderosa Pine," he told me. "It's the Nevada state tree." I stared at Saul curiously, and a little shiver traveled through me, a feeling I would one day call portentous. On another drive, coming back from Wildhorse Reservoir, an animal dashed across the road. "A timber wolf!" my father exclaimed. And later, Saul snickered, "Timber wolves don't come down this low. That was a coyote if I've ever seen one." But he said it only to me and Jake and Danny. When he was with my father or the others, his smouldering eyes spoke for him. |