Peter

Peter is Rose Gordon Burbank’s son, a boy whose careful self-presentation and preference for solitary exploration set him apart at the Burbank ranch. He arrives prepared to meet the world on formal terms: his hair is fixed, his shoes are polished, and he wears a tie. Against the ranch’s judgments of him as prissy and unlike a ranch boy, Peter’s reserve is not mere passivity. He watches closely, keeps a consequential encounter to himself, and follows clues across the landscape with patience and purpose.

Identity and First Impressions

When Rose arrives in Herndon to collect him, Peter is already waiting. His hair, arranged with water, has dried; he has polished his shoes and put on a tie. Rose tells him that he has not been eating enough, and he answers with a smile that he eats enough. Their brief exchange presents a mother attentive to his well-being and a son who meets her concern without alarm. Peter’s readiness contrasts with Rose’s unease at being seen in town as Mrs Burbank: she feels like a child pretending to be grown up, while he appears composed and properly dressed.

That composure becomes a target at the ranch. Phil Burbank calls Peter Miss Nancy when speaking about him to the men in the bunkhouse. They laugh, take up the same name among themselves, and watch Peter wander alone along the face of the sagebrush hill. The men regard his cleanliness and lisp as signs that he does not resemble a ranch boy; at breakfast, they communicate their shared mockery with winks. The nickname is thus not an affectionate private joke but a label that recruits the group into judging Peter before they know him.

The Ranch and Its Relationships

Peter does not tell his mother about finding Phil naked while exploring. He assumes Phil has not mentioned the encounter either, and privately recognizes that the silence gives them a kind of bond, even if it is a bond grounded in hatred. His response is strikingly practical: he does not mistake secrecy for affection, but considers that one kind of connection can still be useful. The episode also establishes how much of Peter’s understanding of Phil remains unspoken between them.

George Burbank describes the responsibility he feels as Peter’s stepfather: he believes a stepfather must try harder than a father and that a boy has little reason to like one unless he makes the effort. Peter listens without changing expression. The passage places George’s considerate intentions beside Peter’s reserve, without suggesting that the relationship has already become intimate. Peter’s observations of Rose are more direct. Walking together on the hill, they find bluebells, bitterroots, and cactus flowers; when Rose says that she walks there often, Peter points out that she did not walk much in Beech. His remark shows that he notices the difference between her former life and her present habits, even when she appears to have forgotten it.

Herndon and the Friend He Misses

Peter longs for the orderly room he left in Herndon and for chess with his friend, a tall, lanky, bespectacled boy whose father teaches at the high school. Neither boy had previously had a friend. Their companionship includes uncontrollable laughter, conversations about the possibility of God, and exchanges about the futures they imagine for themselves: Peter plans to become a famous surgeon, while his friend hopes to become a famous professor of English. They jokingly, then seriously, address each other as Doctor and Professor, but reserve those titles for moments when other people are not present. The private names give their friendship a shared language and a space apart from public judgment.

The boys’ knowledge of Herndon extends beyond its respectable daytime appearance. At night they see dark houses lit only in the hall, stores closed except for small bulbs above their cash registers, men using the back stairway to the Red-White-and-Blue Rooms, and the police chief’s patrol car turning onto an unexplained errand. Their most familiar refuge is the railroad station: empty wooden benches, a quiet waiting room, and the telegrapher at work. Lonely himself, the night telegrapher welcomes them to drink the bitter black coffee he makes over a Sterno can. He confides that he is studying Spanish by correspondence and hopes to go to Argentina, where he believes there are opportunities. The boys encourage his ambition. Peter’s longing for this world is therefore not simply a wish to return to a room or a chessboard; it is a longing for a small circle in which unusual people listen to one another and take one another’s plans seriously.

Exploration and the Unspoken Bond

At the ranch, Peter continues to explore, but the landscape gradually becomes more than a place to roam. George acknowledges that Peter has always liked exploring. Peter has also found Phil’s bathing place, an incident he withholds from Rose. At another point, Phil summons him. Peter initially continues toward the cook-shack, then turns and walks over, pausing with his hands in the pockets of his stiff new jeans. He addresses Phil formally as Mr Burbank. Phil rejects that distance and asks to be called Phil, using Pete in return. The exchange records an attempted shift in their terms of address, but it does not erase the antagonism Peter has already identified. His silence and caution persist even as Phil invites a more familiar manner.

Peter’s most sustained exploration follows a line of pale rock piles. He finds one outcropping and then others, each about twenty paces from the next, and understands them as traces of a human plan or ancient ceremony. Darkness and the mountain chill make him turn back before reaching their end. That evening, Phil plays his banjo in his room; Peter recognizes the sound as an invitation to come in and talk, but keeps his discovery secret. He returns early the following day and follows the stones farther. At noon he watches the remaining cattle descend by old paths through the sagebrush, then rides on along the rock markers.

Purpose and Narrative Significance

The stones grow smaller and disappear at the edge of a dry ravine, where flood debris has collected. There Peter finds exactly the dead animal he has been searching for. He considers it fitting that Phil, in a way, has led him to it. The connection is not that Phil has deliberately shown him the animal: Peter’s earlier explorations and Phil’s knowledge of the country have converged in Peter’s reading of the trail. Calmly, Peter looks around, puts on gloves as a surgeon might, dismounts, and begins work. The gesture recalls the future he once described to his friend, but here medical composure is directed toward a dead animal on the ranch rather than imagined in a profession.

Across these episodes, Peter is defined by the contrast between how others classify him and what he actually does. The ranch hands reduce him to a mocking name; George approaches him as a stepfather who must earn affection; and Phil tries to draw him into a more familiar relationship. Peter, meanwhile, preserves his private bond with his friend, notices changes in Rose, keeps his discovery from Phil, and follows the rocks until they lead him to his objective. His quietness does not mean that he is unaware or inactive. The novel makes his attentive silence a source of agency: he can be underestimated in public while privately observing, remembering, and acting with precision.