Gunsmoke and Trail Dust

by Bliss Lomax

  After dinner, it was his habit to doze for half an hour on the shaded front porch, with the faithful Gyp curled up at his feet. This noon, however, he said he would go back to the store at once, having several prescriptions to compound.

  “Everybody likes to get away from town early,” he said. “I’d let the dishes go, Jude, and give Dora a hand with her packing.”

  “Seems senseless to pack a trunk till she knows for certain she’s going,” Mrs. Stoddard replied. “If Mr. Ringe wants her, the other two are apt to vote no just for meanness.”

  Dan chuckled as he started for the door. “They might at that if they didn’t need a teacher in a hurry. Dora won’t be up there ten minutes.”

  His prediction was borne out, and with something to spare. Despite the bitter enmity the commissioners for the Willow Creek School District bore one another, they could, when necessity demanded, rise above their differences. Webb and Caney studied Eudora furtively as she answered John Ringe’s perfunctory questions. Big John left it to one of the others to indicate what their decision was to be.

  “Wal, Miss Stoddard, you look and sound smart enough to teach a bunch of young uns their three R’s,” Webb spoke up, vaguely embarrassed by his own ignorance. “If you figger you can pound a little plain l’arnin’ into their heads—and I mean pound—I’m for hirin’ you.”

  The big cowman from the Santa Bonita nodded approvingly. “You’re young, Miss Stoddard, and you haven’t any experience, but I think you’ll make out all right if you just take a firm stand with the older boys.” He glanced at Caney. “How do you feel about it?”

  “I’ll go along with you if the young woman understands she ain’t to play no favorites,” said Shad. “I don’t ask no special treatment for my young uns, nor am I goin’ to have the teacher sidin’ ag’in ’em, either.” He fixed his baleful eyes on Eudora. “I want to make it plain to you, Miz Stoddard, that what happens outside the schoolyard ain’t none of yore bizness.”

  Eudora was startled, and frightened too. She saw Webb bristling. One of the strongest arguments her aunt had used against her taking the position was the fact that the feud between the two men had been transmitted to their children, of which no less than six attended the Willow Creek school. Even the little girls fought at every opportunity.

  “Mr. Ringe tells me I must assert my authority; you seem to advise the opposite course, Mr. Caney,” she said, trying to hide her nervousness. “It’s rather confusing. But as for being fair, I shall try to treat all the pupils alike—if that is what you mean.”

  It was only partly what Shad meant. He had always objected to the fact that the school was so situated that only Webb could provide bed and board for the teacher, for which he was reimbursed by the county. But aside from envying him the few dollars he made out of the arrangements, what really rankled in Shad’s heart was the feeling that it gave the Nichols children an advantage over his own.

  “My children was brought up to look out for themselves!” Webb growled. “They don’t need no one takin’ their part!”

  “Let’s get down to business!” big John boomed. “If we’re going to split hairs over where Miss Stoddard’s authority begins and ends, we might as well close the school. It’s a waste of time to try to run it without discipline, and the only way she’s going to get it is for this board to give her its full support.”

  Webb nodded soberly. “I’ll go along with you on that.”

  “So do I!” Shad declared fiercely. “I jest want the school run right!”

  Having reached an accord, however grudgingly, it did not take long to settle the other details. Eudora thanked them and hurried down the stairs. But now that the school was hers, she was filled with misgiving, rather than the expected elation.

  But I can’t back out, she thought. I told Mr. Nichols I’d be ready to leave in an hour. Maybe it won’t be as bad as I think. Her mouth tightened resolutely. I’m not going to let Aunt Jude see I’m upset. She’d worry herself sick!

  Though Mrs. Stoddard accepted her story without questions, she was not completely deceived. Several times Eudora glanced up, as she packed her trunk, to catch her aunt regarding her with an obscure concern.

  “What is it, Auntie?” she was moved to ask. “Why do you look at me like that?”

  Mrs. Stoddard pressed her thin lips together firmly. “I don’t know, Dora,” she declared dubiously. “You’ve got what you wanted, but somehow it strikes me you ain’t as happy about it as you pretend.”

  “You’re mistaken, Aunt Jude!” Eudora insisted. “I’m a little nervous, I guess. But I’ll be all right after a day or two.”

  “Well, I hope so.” The little woman shook her head. “John Ringe knows how to be a gentleman. But those other two—especially that Shad Caney—have got none of what you might call the finer instincts. Did they have words, Dora, and lay the law down to you?”

  “No,” Eudora lied bravely, “they were very considerate. They promised me I would have the full support of the board.”

  “Huh!” Mrs. Stoddard scoffed. “Precious little help you’ll get! It’s too bad the two of them didn’t tear into each other as they usually do. It might have given you some idea of what you’re letting yourself in for.”

  Webb was at the door a few minutes after Eudora had finished packing. He swung the small cowhide trunk over his shoulder and carried it out to his wagon. Eudora, looking very sedate in her little black bonnet, with its white ruching, and the long cape she had brought from Ohio, and Mrs. Stoddard followed him down the walk. The latter carried a shoe box, in which she had packed some cold fried chicken and other delicacies for Eudora’s supper. “You shouldn’t have bothered, Aunt Jude,” the latter protested.

  “It wasn’t any bother, Dora. You’ll be hungry later on. It’ll be nine, ten o’clock before you get there. We’ll just put the box under the seat.”

  Dan came out of the drugstore to see Eudora off. He helped her into the wagon, after she had kissed Mrs. Stoddard and him good-by. Seated beside the towering Webb, she was a diminutive figure.

  “I want you to take good care of her, Webb,” Dan said.

  Webb nodded. “Reckon she won’t have as good as she’s been used to, but we’ll make her as comfortable as we can. Guess we can be movin’.” He slapped the horses across the rump with ends of the reins. “G’dap there, Ben! Whup you, Bess!”

  The wagon rolled away, with Eudora turning on the seat to wave to the old couple until Webb swung into the rutted dirt road that led eastward across the basin to Willow Creek. Eudora lowered her head. Out of the corner of his eye Webb saw her wipe away a tear.

  “Nice folks, the Stoddards,” he said, and then lapsed into a silence that held until Mescal had been left far behind.

  Eudora had never been so far from town before. The tawny ribbon of road wound on endlessly through a land so vast that the jogging gait at which the team traveled seemed to make no impression on distance. Overhead, the sky was a cloudless blue canopy, stretching away to infinity. She gazed at it in awed silence, feeling she was just a mote, swimming in space. Her little worries and concerns fell away from her and seemed to be of no consequence.

  The air was heavy with the pungent fragrance of young sage. Unconsciously, she breathed deep of its clean, invigorating perfume. The westering sun was splashing Monument Butte and the ragged rimrock on Hurricane Ledge with vermilion and gold. Far to the east, the snow-capped peaks of the Desolation Mountains were so dwarfed by distance that they appeared to be only tufts of white cotton.

  Somehow, the magnitude and magnificence of this wild land gave her strength and a strange sense of peace. She stole a glance at Webb, wondering if he still felt the tug of its beauty. He seemed to doze as he drove, but, to her surprise, he said, “It’s even purtier in the mornin’ when the sun is gittin’ up. It’d be a nice country if there was more water. You’ll be needin’ that wrap in another hour; it gits cool in the basin of an evenin’.”

  Eudora mentioned the supper in the shoe box a
nd asked him if he would share it with her.

  “If there’s enough for two, I’d take a bite,” he observed.

  They ate as they drove along. Webb lost some of his taciturnity. “My wife sets a good table,” he volunteered. “Nothin’ fancy, but there’s allus plenty of what there is. She’ll have yore lunch ready for you every mornin’.”

  “The school is some distance away?” Eudora inquired.

  “ ’Bout a mile and half. Just nice walkin’ distance. When the weather gits bad, I’ll git you there and back.”

  She asked about the cabin that was to be her home.

  “It sits across the yard from the house,” Webb told her. “Rheba—that’s my wife—and the girls give it a good cleanin’ last week. I’ll take down the stove for you next month, when the nights git a little warmer. You don’t have to be afraid of nothin’ botherin’ you.”

  It was all very reassuring to Eudora. The sun went down and the purple haze of twilight descended on the basin. It was a magic hour. But the purple faded to a fearsome slate gray and the sagebrush lost its greenish hue and looked dead and ghostly in the afterglow. Whippoorwills sailed over it, with their mournful, monotonous cry. Then, suddenly it was night. Off in the malpais, a coyote yelped disconcertingly. Eudora moved closer to Webb. The world had lost its grandeur and bigness.

  She pulled her cape about her as the night wind sprang up and a chill crept into the air. The team plodded on. At long intervals, a buttery daub of light from a window marked the site of a homesteader’s cabin.

  It was after nine o’clock when they came to a flowing stream. Halfway across, Webb pulled up and let the horses drink.

  “Willow Crick,” he said, breaking a long silence. “She swings back and forth considerable. We’ll cross her three times before we git home. ’Bout eight mile to go.”

  They left the creek and were moving toward the second crossing, when flashes of fire stabbed the blackness in the creek bottom ahead of them and the unmistakable thunder of guns rolled up to their ears. Webb straightened up instantly and tightened his grip on the reins. Eudora huddled close to him and caught his arm.

  “Mr. Nichols, that was gunfire!” she cried, her throat tight with alarm. “There are two more shots!”

  The shooting was farther away now.

  “It’s a gun fight, all right!” Webb got out gruffly. He listened intently, but the night was still again.

  “What does it mean?” Eudora asked in a very small voice. “Are such things a common occurrence out here?”

  “I don’t know what it means,” he answered gruffly. “Whatever it is, it don’t concern you. If you hear or see things you don’t understand, don’t try to find out what they mean. Yore job is to teach school, Miss Stoddard—nothin’ else!”

  Chapter Four

  IN A BIT OF A FIX

  THOUGH THE LONG RIDE had tired her Eudora spent a restless night. The cabin was clean, and if plainly furnished, not too uncomfortable. She could give it a few little touches, she thought, that would make it livable. But it was strange, and the creaking of the roof and rattling of the windows, as well as the night sounds without, kept her wide-eyed and apprehensive. The Nichols’s chickens brought the coyotes in close to the yard. Once, the shrill, hideous yipping seemed to come from just beyond the window at the foot of her bed. She buried her face in the pillow and lay there trembling.

  “This is foolish!” she told herself. “I’ve got to get used to it. No one in Arizona bothers about a coyote.”

  It was such a sound argument that it tended to quiet her fears in that direction. She could find no comparable logic to ease her mind in regard to those blazing guns in the Willow Creek bottoms, however, and it was that sinister and unexplained cracking of rifles in the blackness of the night that was at the bottom of her anxiety and nervousness.

  The shots had been so spaced that she knew instinctively that there had been a fight. She believed Webb had spoken the truth when he said he didn’t know what it meant, or who was a party to it. But the sharpness of the admonition he had given her, and his refusal to say anything further, thereafter, indicated plainly enough that he wasn’t totally in the dark.

  Eudora fell asleep just before dawn, but it seemed she had barely closed her eyes before she heard the younger Nichols children playing in the yard. Shyness, or a parental command, kept them away from the cabin. They trooped in to breakfast before she finished dressing.

  It was a clean blue and white morning, the sun pleasantly warm, the air invigorating. Eudora’s spirits lifted and she smiled ruefully over having spent such an uneasy night.

  “I won’t go to pieces like that again,” she promised herself. “I’m going to love this high country.”

  A line of willows and heavy buckbrush plainly marked the twisting course of Willow Creek. It looked so peaceful in the morning sunshine that she wondered if her imagination hadn’t enlarged on the violence of the clash in the bottoms, the previous evening.

  The road that continued eastward across the basin was just a beaten path through the sagebrush. Eudora’s glance followed it as she started across the yard. In the distance, she could see the schoolhouse. It looked small. But so did the house and barn, for the country had been fashioned on such a grand scale that whatever man built seemed tiny and inadequate.

  Having spent several years of her childhood on an Ohio farm, she looked about her with interest. Save for the chickens and the truck patch down by the creek, she found little that was familiar. Beyond the barn, there was a pole corral, decorated by several coyote pelts that had been hung up to dry. A young Cottonwood, its catkins just beginning to swell, raised its head outside the kitchen door, where it obviously had the benefit of the daily dishwater. It was the only tree in the yard. But it was the absence of the usual litter of farm tools and machinery, rather than the lack of living green things, that she missed most.

  The truth was that Webb had little need for anything beyond a plow and mowing machine, which were carefully kept under cover, for 40 acres of alfalfa hay was the only crop he took from the soil; his cows ranged over the rest of his original quarter section and the 80 acres he had acquired recently.

  The kitchen door stood open and Eudora saw that the family was at the table. At that moment, a shaggy dog, of uncertain parentage, came running from the direction of the barn and set up a great barking. It brought a teen-aged boy to the door. He picked up a stick and brandished it at the dog.

  “Stop that, Bruno!” he yelled. “Go on!”

  The dog slunk away, and the boy turned to Eudora, jerking up his head to toss his tawny, unkempt hair back from his face. Young as he was, he was almost a six-footer. She correctly surmised that he was Verne Nichols, Webb’s oldest son. “He makes a lot of noise, but he won’t bite, less you tease him,” he said, selfconsciously.

  Webb shouldered him aside. “Come in, Miss Stoddard,” he invited. “We just set down.”

  Mrs. Nichols got up as Eudora stepped into the kitchen. “Laws, Miss, you didn’t need to git up so early!” she exclaimed, apologetically. “If you hear us stirrin’, don’t pay no attention to it. The teacher can have her breakfast as late as seven o’clock.”

  “It’s such a beautiful morning that I’m glad to be up early,” Eudora assured her. “I thought I’d walk over to the school and get things ready for Monday.”

  The two younger children, Elly, a dark-eyed girl of eight, who strongly resembled her mother, and Hagar, a tot of three or four, were giggling nervously. Verne and his brother Moroni, two years his junior, continued eating, but they stole furtive glances at Eudora.

  “Moroni, you slide over on the bench with the girls and give Miss Stoddard yore chair,” Webb ordered, his tone leaving no doubt that when he spoke he was to be obeyed. “The key to the schoolhouse is hangin’ there beside the door,” he told Eudora. “You take charge of it.”

  Mrs. Nichols brought Eudora’s breakfast from the stove. She was younger than Webb, but hard work had left its mark on her hands and fac
e and made her look old beyond her years. She sat down after filling Eudora’s cup and ate a mouthful or two.

  “My, you are young to be out teachin’!” she observed, studying Eudora with frank interest. “Maybe you’ll git along better with the children on that account. When a woman gits to be an old maid, she gits so set in her ways that all the patience dries out of her and she don’t understand young folks. When I was goin’ to school, I always got more learnin’ from young teachers.”

  Eudora smiled at this bit of homely philosophy and said she hoped it would hold true in her case.

  “I see no reason why it won’t,” Mrs. Nichols told her. “Of course, the trouble with attractive young wimmen like you is that yo’re always runnin’ off and gittin’ married, and that’s the end of the teachin’.”

  She recalled an incident of her girlhood in Utah to prove her point. She seemed happy to have someone of her own sex to whom she could talk. Webb gave her a glance, however, and she fell silent.

  Trivial as the incident was, it confirmed Eudora’s feeling that Rheba Nichols was only the family drudge; that authority rested solely in Webb. Proof of it came a few minutes later, when Elly asked Eudora if she could accompany her to the schoolhouse.

  “Elly, you talk too much!” Verne said, with a reprimanding scowl. “Miss Stoddard don’t want to be bothered with you.”

  The little girl ignored him and appealed to her father. “May I, Papa?”

  Webb was ready to say no, when Eudora told him she would be happy to have Elly go with her. “I may be there several hours, but I’ll send her home as soon as she’s shown me where I can find everything.”

  Webb considered. “If she can help you any, she can go.”

  No one asked Mrs. Nichols what she thought about it.