“Thought I’d read something if that’s alright.  It’s out of his notebook.  ‘The West is everything I hoped it would be and more.  It’s taught me something I never learned in school.  You see, for the first time, I can honestly say now I know what it feels like to really be alive.’” 

When Teaspoon finishes speaking, everyone silently files out of the cemetery leaving me behind.  They’ve been giving me looks out of the corners of their eyes, wanting to say something, but not knowing what to say.  In all honesty, I don’t know what I want them to say either.  I’m glad Teaspoon spoke, though.  It was nice to hear someone who knew Ambrose say a few words.  I would have liked to have said something, but so many things are rumbling around inside me right now that I don’t know if I could get them out.

The men are waiting to put the coffin in the ground and I know it’s time to leave, but I don’t know if I can say good-bye.  So I don’t.  I need to say something though, and settle for forcing a few words past the lump in my throat, “So long, Bulldog.”

Slowly walking out of the graveyard, I can’t help but turn to look.  They’re placing him in the ground and I know that’s the end, but I’m just not ready to let go yet.  I just found him.  Just got around to truly getting to know him, and now he’s gone.  It ain’t fair.  He shouldn’t be dead.  He didn’t do anything to anyone.  It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

With one last glance over my shoulder, I see the coffin disappear into the ground.  I know that I can come here anytime I want, but it’s not going to be the same.  I ain’t the kind of person who can come stand in a graveyard and talk to a grave marker.  There aren’t any memories in a cemetery, except the kind I don’t really want to remember.  I put my foot into the stirrup and swing up into the saddle and head for the station.  The others have ridden ahead and I’m grateful for that.  I don’t really want to be around them right now when I know they’re going to try and tell me how sorry they are.

Arriving back at the station, I climb off my horse and tie her to the corral fence.  No need to unsaddle her, I know I’m not going to be stickin’ around any longer than I need to. 

I open the door to the bunkhouse and everyone looks up and silently appraises me.  I can see the sorrow in their eyes.  I know they all miss Ambrose.  He grew on all of us, but there’s no mistaking the unique relationship me and Ambrose had.  They’re all changing out of their suits and putting on their work clothes.  There are still chores to do and rides to take, but that’s not what I’m thinking about.

I gotta get away.  I can’t stay here right now.  His bunk was below mine.  How can I sleep here again tonight knowing he’s not there?  Swiftly I change my clothes, trying not to look at his bunk and the trunk we gave him to put his things in.  I remember the night we got back from St. Jo and I rummaged through it, taking his letters so Kid could read them to me and tell me that I was right about Ambrose.  Instead, Kid said Ambrose agreed with us, that the route shouldn’t be changed.  I felt guilty for going through his things, and I tried to apologize, but Ambrose wasn’t gonna have none of it.  He called me out…

I give my head an angry shake.  I can’t do this yet.  I can’t do this here.  I finish buttoning my shirt and grab a couple more and stuff them in my saddlebag.  Buck stops what he’s doing and looks at me.  I can’t bring myself to meet his gaze, to see the questions in his eyes.  I have to do this and I have to do this now.  By the time I finish putting the last of my things in my bags, the room has gone silent.  The hushed conversations between the others have ceased and I know they’re all watching me.

Slowly at first, but then in a rush before I lose my nerve, I kneel down and open his trunk.  Luckily, what I’m looking for is right on top.  I don’t think I could have pawed through his belongings.  I feel bad enough for doing this as it is.  I grab the small package wrapped in cloth and stuff it in my bag then close the flap.  Standing up, I grasp the top of the lid and start to close it.  It slips out of my hand and lands with a deafening bang in the dead quiet room.  I close my eyes and reach my hand out to steady myself against the bunk.  Memories of another explosion echo through my mind and I can’t let them invade yet.

I grab my bag and without a glance at the others I turn for the door.  I can see them though, from the corners of my eyes.  They’re all watching me, grim expressions tight on their faces.  Cody, always good for a laugh, is standing by his bunk looking like somebody kicked his dog.  Ike and Buck are looking at me apologetically and Kid has the most agonized look on his face, similar to the one I’m sure I had when I shot Jed that day in the livery stable.  Lou, who’s always so small, now seems dwarfed by her oversized shirts and she reaches out hesitantly to touch my arm, but I sidestep quickly out of the way.  I can’t bear to have the others talk to me right now.  I have to go.

Opening the door, I head outside, squinting in the bright sun.  I’m ready to step off the porch and head for my horse when I hear a soft voice from the corner of the porch.  My shoulders drop and I turn to see Teaspoon sitting in one of the chairs, motioning for me to join him.  Warily sitting down, I feel like I’m going to burst out of my skin if I have to be here too much longer.  I have to go.  I have to go now.   Can’t he see that?

“Headin’ out, Jimmy?” he asks, as casually as would ask for the biscuits to be passed.  Today I am in no mood for his unique manner.  I’ve got my saddlebag in my hands; does he think I’m goin’ to muck out the barn?

“Yep,” I say with a clenched jaw.

“I understand your need to go, son.”

Good, then just let me go.  I don’t need your lectures and your stories.  I need to go and do this my own way.  I guess my face conveys my thoughts clearly, because he opens his mouth and then seems to think better of it and closes it with a shake of his head.

“Take what time you need, Jimmy,” he says standing up.  I guess that’s my clue to stand as well and walk with him toward the corral. 

“I know you don’t want to hear a bunch of words from me, but it wasn’t your fault, Jimmy,” he says as we walk.

We reach my horse and wordlessly I attach the bag to my saddle and swing up onto my horse.  I look down at Teaspoon and with a heavy voice finally answer him.  “Yes it is, Teaspoon.”

Then with a vicious kick, I spur Sundance into a gallop out of the yard.  I may not have heard it, but I know Teaspoon stood there until I was no longer in sight and said ‘Ride safe, son.’  I don’t know exactly where I’m going, and I don’t care.  I’m content to just let my horse eat up the miles while guilt and sorrow eat at my heart.

lowly Sundance walks along the trail, and while I know where I’m heading, I don’t want to think too hard about how I got here.  Part of me knew all along this is where I was going, I just didn’t want to admit it.  And now that I’m actually seeing it, it’s bringing everything back with such painful force that I’m tempted to turn my horse around and head somewhere else.  But I can’t do that, and so I keep going.

I stop my mount at the top of the sandy bank and look down.  I can almost imagine I can still see the hoof prints in the soil.  We had to be the only two foolish enough to go down this way, instead of heading back and finding a safer way down.  I know now that Ambrose just wanted to prove to me that he deserved to be on that trip, but at the time I was so angry with him.  I was more worried about the horse than him.  Asking if he was all right seemed more like an afterthought.

Now, I can’t help but have a sad smile on my face as I close my eyes and see Ambrose nudging his horse forward.  He didn’t know how to guide a horse down a path it didn’t want to go, and he paid for it with a bruised shoulder.  And even though I still think it was a foolhardy thing to do, I admire his courage for doing it anyway.  So it’s no surprise, when I nudge my horse and say, “Come on girl, let’s go.”

When I reach the bottom, I climb off my horse and slowly look around.  I pause briefly at the spot where I figure he was laying after he finally rolled to a stop.  It was when he finally stood up, I noticed he was favoring his shoulder slightly, but he didn’t want to tell me and so I didn’t make a mention of it.  But we didn’t go much further that day before I decided it was time to stop and rest the horses, and I can now admit I stopped for him too.  I climb back on my horse, ‘cause we didn’t camp too far from here that night and I want to find that spot.

Once I finally find our campsite, I stop my horse and climb down.  I secure her for the night and slowly prepare a fire and lay my bedroll out.  The light is just starting to fade, and I feel a chill, despite it being a warm day.  I think my eyes are starting to play tricks on me, because there are times when, 
out of the corner of my eye, I think I see Ambrose sitting on his blanket and writing in his journal.  When I turn my head, I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved to find nothing but empty space.

As darkness settles, I sit on my bedroll, leaning up against a fallen tree, and stare into the fire.  I take off my hat and perch it on my knee and run my hands through my hair.  I’m not very hungry, and even if I was, I don’t think I could eat very much.  My stomach has been twisting in knots since Ambrose died, and the thought of food sends it into further revolt.  Instead, I take a piece of beef jerky from my saddlebag and settle in to slowly work over the tough beef throughout the evening.  Taking a bite, I rest the remainder of it on the brim of my hat and clasp my hands behind my head.

The mood fits that night we spent here.  It’s quiet, only the occasional snap of a twig in the fire to punctuate the silence.  That night we didn’t talk very much.  Ambrose spent the evening writing in his journal, and I couldn’t help but silently scoff at him for having his nose constantly buried in a book rather than living life.  And I told him so, that he was living through other people, instead of doing it himself. 

I was so hard on him.  I wish I could take those words back.  If I hadn’t made him feel like he had to prove himself to me, he would have never done the things he did.  Would have never called me out to fight that night at the bunkhouse, wouldn’t have ridden out to the burial ground to join in the fight, would have never been there to push me out of the way of the explosion.  He should have never been there.  He wasn’t ready for a gun battle, though he tried to hide it well.  I should have kept a better eye on him, paid better attention to my surroundings.  If I’d done that, I would have seen the bundle 
of dynamite behind me, and Ambrose wouldn’t have felt he had to push me out of the way.

’m not sure exactly when I fell asleep last night, but I wake up this morning just as the gray light of dawn is starting to show over the tops of the mountains.  Slowly I stretch, my muscles protesting and tightening up in pain from the awkward position I slept in.  I scrub my hands over my face and even though I know I slept, I still feel exhausted.  I know it’s because all night I dreamt of Ambrose and all the awful things I said and did to him.  Every time something good tried to creep in, my brain would chase it out.

The entire night was plagued with fights, harsh words and the battle at the burial ground.  The sound of the dynamite exploding behind me played over and over again in my nightmares.  When the fight was over and the replacement riders rode off, I would turn and look for Ambrose, but I could never find him.  I knew he was there, but I could never see him.

I close my eyes wearily, tears forming in the corners.  My head drops forward and falls into my hands as my arms rest on my legs.  With the heels of my hands pressed into my eyes to stem the tears threatening to fall, bits and pieces of memories start to flit in my brain.  It’s like I’m still dreaming, even though I’m wide-awake.  In my mind I see myself turn and Ambrose is lying on the ground, not moving.  I open my eyes and the feeling fades away, so I quickly close them again.

Slowly the picture comes back, and I can finally remember.  He was lying on the ground, and there was definitely something wrong, though he tried to hide it.  ‘We licked ‘em good,’ I told him when he asked if it was over.  I couldn’t believe that he’d saved my life and I couldn’t wait to get back to the bunkhouse and the celebration we’d have.  That’s when I realized he still wasn’t moving and he said his feet felt funny.  I checked his back and came up with blood on my hands.  His blood.  That shouldn’t have been there, he shouldn’t have been bleeding.

This was Bulldog, he was supposed to be tougher than that.  He walked into the corral with Powder Keg and tried to ride him.  A city slicker who knew nothing at all about horses or how to break a wild one, but he walked in there fearlessly.  Sure the horse almost trampled him, but he still went in there.  That’s when Teaspoon said he was a real bulldog, and he was absolutely right.  It took me a while to see it, but underneath the outward appearance of Ambrose Merriweather, Jr. was the heart of a bulldog.  He wouldn’t give up, he dug in and fought and even though I tried to hide it, I greatly admired him for it.

Pretty soon, Bulldog became his nickname.  That night after our fight outside the bunkhouse and he collapsed, I knew I’d been all wrong about him.  It wasn’t just because Kid read his papers and we found out he agreed with us about the route change.  No, it was because he knew he wasn’t any match for any of us in a fight, and yet he fought anyway.  I felt horrible when I punched him and told him to just stay down, but he got right back and came charging again.  Even though he could barely stand and there was nothing behind his punches, he went down swinging.  After that, he was one of us.  We gave him some of our old clothes, and then we got him a surprise. 

I open my eyes and slowly reach for my saddlebag.  I bring out the package I had taken from his trunk back at the bunkhouse.  Slowly, I unwrap the cloth and find myself staring at the revolver we bought him.  I turn the gun over in my hand so I can see the bulldog we had engraved on the handle.  He was one of us, and this was our way of letting him know.  The slightest hint of a smile starts to cross my face as I remember him showing everyone what I taught him, how to twirl the gun on his finger and place it in his holster.

I run my hands slowly over the gun, letting my fingers trace the bulldog.  A few tears escape, and I wipe them away with the back of my hand.  I know we’re supposed to send Bulldog’s things to his folks, but I hope they understand that I can’t send them this gun.  I doubt they’d have any use for it anyway.  To them it would just be some silly little toy, but to me, it will always be a symbol of my friend. 

“I’m sorry, Bulldog,” I whisper to the dawn. 

In my mind I hear an echo of me saying those words and then Bulldog’s reply, ‘I’m not Jimmy.  I’m not sorry at all.’

I know he wasn’t sorry at all for the way things turned out.  Now, I understand the words Teaspoon read from Bulldog’s journal at the funeral.  In the brief time he was out here, Bulldog really felt that for once he was being himself.  He wasn’t the Harvard boy working for his uncle.  He was his own man, and he enjoyed every minute of it.

Sunlight is starting to flood into this small area more, and it reflects off the barrel of the gun.  I wrap it carefully in the cloth and then place it back in my bag and stand up.  I’m done here.  I am always going to miss Bulldog and I’ll mourn his too short life, but I now know I can remember my friend and the moments we had.

I stand up and gather my belongings and turn to saddle my horse.  When she’s ready to go and the camp sight taken care of, I stand beside her and take one last look at the area.  I smile as images of Bulldog and the ride to St. Joseph fill my mind.  He was always apologizing.  Finally getting irritated 
by it, I told him to knock it off.  Now, I can sense him telling me to do the same.  He’s not sorry, and instead of beating myself up about this, I need to go forward.

I place my foot into the stirrup and swing myself up into the saddle.  Before I turn my horse I say, “No more I’m sorry’s.  Thank you, Bulldog.”

Then gently I turn Sundance’s head towards the direction of the station and give her a nudge in her sides.  I don’t look back, but keep my gaze focused forward.  He will always be a part of me, and now I know I will definitely be a better man for having known the man I will always call Bulldog.