“Ellie, have you finished packing the last of the things from the living room?” Lou asked carrying a box from the kitchen and setting it near the front door for Jimmy to load into the wagon.
“Just about Momma. There’s just this last box,” Ellie told her, opening the container to see what it contained.
There were about a dozen photographs inside. Some of the people she recognized, like her father, Kid, Grandpa Teaspoon and Uncle Cody. There was even one of Uncle Buck, looking like he’d just sucked on a lemon that it made her laugh.
“What do you have there?” Lou asked coming to stand next to her daughter. “Oh, my! I haven’t seen these in ages. I forgot they were even in that box!”
Ellie handed the box to her mother and they both sat down on wooden crates to go through the photographs.
“Isn’t that you, Momma?” Ellie asked pointing to one of Lou taken when she first started riding for the Pony Express.
“It sure is. My, don’t I look so young? I was just sixteen.” Lou moved onto the next and her breath caught. “Here’s one of your father and Jimmy….” Ellie looked at the photo of her two fathers. She recognized Jimmy because he still looked the same, only older. It was the other man that she only knew from pictures. He had died in a prisoner of war camp during the War Between the States.
While her mother was lost in memories of her own, Ellie pulled another photograph from the box.
The black man in it was someone she had never seen before. She was curious as to who he was; standing there so proud, hand on a whip that hung from his hip.
“Momma, who’s this?” she asked showing her mother the picture.
Lou’s hand flew to her mouth where a smile played upon her lips. “Why, that there is Noah Dixon,” she said. “He was one of the riders with me. Haven’t I ever told you about him?”
Shaking her head, Ellie looked at her mother, waiting to hear about the man in the photograph.
“Oh, you would have loved Noah. He was one of the smartest men I have ever met. Next to your Grandpa Teaspoon that is!” she laughed.
“Noah was a free man in a time when men of his color were usually owned as slaves,” Lou explained. “I don’t think there wasn’t anything Noah didn’t know how to do. And when he cracked that whip of his, why grown men would tremble…
You’ve heard stories about some of the scrapes we used to get into. Well, when we’d all be reaching for our guns, Noah would unsnap his whip and with a flick of his wrist, it would snake out like lightening. He was so fast that sometimes your eye would miss it as it sailed through the air at its target. I never seen him miss either. When that end wrapped around an arm or leg, the fight was over for that man.”
“Why haven’t I ever met him?” Ellie wondered looking at the smiling man with admiration.
Sadness crept into Lou’s voice as she explained. “It was just after your father, Kid and I got married. There was some trouble and Noah ended up getting shot. He didn’t make it. Happening so soon after your Uncle Ike’s death, it really hit the family hard. He was a true friend.”
A tear slowly trickled down Lou’s cheek. She wiped it away absently as she thought about her fallen brother.
Laughing, she pointed to the picture. “See those white trousers? We were always amazed that no matter what we were doing, they never seemed to get dirty. Whether he was on a run, mucking a stall or breaking a horse they seemed to stay clean.
I don’t recall anyone else ever wearing white trousers like Noah. And just look at that smile. When he turned that smile on you, you felt like you were someone special. He had a way of making everyone feel like that…I sure do miss him,” her voice trailed off.
Ellie watched as her mother put the photograph back in the box lovingly and put the top back on it. Taking a deep breath to control her emotions, Lou stood up and smoothed her skirt with a hand.
“We’d better get the rest of these things packed before your father and Uncle Buck return from taking the furniture over to the new house.”
Handing the box of photographs back to her daughter to pack, a smile tickled the corners of Lou’s mouth. “When we get to the new house, we will have to put these pictures out where everyone can see them.”
Seeing the man in the picture with the whip at his side made Ellie think of something that she had seen at Grandpa Teaspoon’s prompting her to ask, “That whip that’s hanging on the wall at Grandpa’s, is that the one in the picture that belonged to Noah?” Ellie asked. For some odd reason, she had never thought to ask Grandpa Teaspoon about it before.
A wagon could be heard stopping at the door, signaling that Jimmy and Buck had returned for the last of their belongings. With a distracted, “Hmmm? Oh, the whip. Yes it is the one on Grandpa’s wall.”
Ellie picked up the box she had just finished packing as Jimmy and Buck entered the house. ‘I think I will have to ask Grandpa about Uncle Noah and his whip next time I’m at his house,’ she promised herself, wanting to know more about the handsome, proud man in the photograph.