“But he already said he’d buy me the Wainbridge ranch. He said he’d got it weeks ago so we could live there next to Mama and Papa.”
“Well, can’t you have both?” I said. “I’ve got a house in town, too.”
“Yes, but you don’t live there. Aubrey says a lawyer can’t make a living out here, that he has to be in town where people need him. I told him he could help out on the farm, and he just laughed. He laughed!”
“Oh, honey,” I said. What could I say, that he and his papa may both be filled with feathers, the way they’ll take off on a wild-goose chase over one thing and another?
“He wants to sell Wainbridge’s, for ‘capital’ he says, and buy some house close to the courthouse on Church Street.”
“It’s up to him to make a living for you,” I said. The words nearly caught in my throat. “If you’re going to marry the man, you have to live where he lives and works.”
“You haven’t ever lived clear away from Granny.”
“No, that’s true,” I said. Was I ready to live where Udell lived? Follow him if he got itchy feet like my pa and set out for greener pastures? Had I thought it out clearly? I patted her shoulder and said, “Why don’t you let it simmer for a while? Think on it and go see the house. Everyone I know ended up different than they expected. Fate, you know. It’ll settle in your mind.”
“What if it doesn’t settle? What if I hate it? I—I wanted to go to art school, and there aren’t any here, so I’ll have to go someplace else. He said he’d wait for me to go, maybe two years. Now he’s buying this house and it seems like it’s going too fast. What if I don’t want to live there?”
“Well, I don’t know just what to say, honey, but you aren’t marrying a house. And he’s not a pair of pants, you’re marrying the lawyer that’s in ‘em. You’ll have to decide whether you want to wash and mend them the rest of your days, not me, nor anyone else. He’s the one to choose where he can make the best living for you. You talk this over with your folks?”
“Mama tells me I’m betrothed and that’s as good as married. Papa says that a mistake only half done is twice-easy fixed. Aubrey’s not a mistake. I love him, truly, but he told me he was buying the Wainbridge place. Next to Mama and Papa.”
I grasped her hands and turned them in mine. They were delicate, firm, and strong, but still white and unweathered except for a line of callus across the palms. I had seen those tender fingers put a steel blade into a fencepost from across the yard, and pull a trigger on wild game and coyotes. To me, she had everything a girl could want going for her, and no one ought to try to change the course of the river that was Mary Pearl except herself. I said, “I always took you for a girl who could think for herself. A man can sure turn your head, that’s a fact. You do what’s right for him and for you. That’s all.”
She sighed, fell against my shoulder and hugged me, and said, “When I think about him, I can’t think at all. It’s worse than being kicked in the head by a mule.”
I laughed. Then we went to see how the roast was doing. After a bit, Mary Pearl and I got into the baseball game. At my turn, I clipped a good lick on that raggedy ball with the board we used for a bat and took off for the rock that was the first base, hiking my skirts up so I could run. Albert yelled, “Shameful!” and everyone laughed at me.
Gilbert scooped up that ball and tossed it to Ezra, who was pitching, then hollered out, “She’s been practicing that swing on my back pockets since I was little, I tell you what.”
April laughed and called to him, “No, no. I got the worst of it!”
When Mary Pearl got her turn with the bat, she hit it a lick that nearly took Ezra right out of his shoes, but he caught it so she struck out. I couldn’t read her face but it seemed to me she didn’t care about getting out so much as knocking that ball into next year. Later, Ezra hit up a ball that Gilbert missed catching so Rebeccah and Mary Pearl both got to run to home plate. We had a fine game, what with no real teams and everyone winning.
Finally, Chess announced the venison roast was ready, and we descended on our feast like jackals. Thank goodness April had also brought dishes. I didn’t even have enough plates to go around. As we all settled down I counted all those folks and added up my riches, right there, like Udell said. We were a fine bunch, I’d say. Anyone who didn’t get full at that meal didn’t half try. When we were stuffed to the gills, we started in on the sweets.
Then the grown-ups and the babies slept, while the children ran loose as chickens. The sun was low on the hills to the west when I saw a movement in the east. Two people rode horseback, moving at a gentle pace as if their horses were tired. They pulled a pack animal behind them. It was a man and a woman.
We all turned and stared. Zachary muttered, “Say, looks like Mary and Joseph showed up late, Ezra,” but Albert heard him and snapped Zack’s ear with his fingertip for blaspheming.
Pretty soon, the man held up a hand and waved, then spurred his horse onward, holding his hat in one hand. Both of them came on a gallop. It was Charlie! Charlie and a woman.
I ran toward him and he hopped down. He was clean and shaven except for a mustache, and looked all a-glow. Tall and filled out good, too, as if he’d been eating well and had finally quit growing. “Mama, oh!” was all he got out, and gripped me in a bear hug that took the breath out of me. The woman’s horse caught up to us, then, and the rest of the family gathered.
Her clothes were simple, the kind Savannah wore. On her hands were light gloves, new and likely just bought for the trip, although she rode well accustomed to a saddle. Though most of her face was hidden under a stiff shawl, the chin I saw was firm and deeply cleft, and brown.
“Well, son,” I said, “introduce us.”
Charlie grinned, not the least embarrassed or shy, reached up and lifted the woman from the saddle as if she were a child. He held her hands in his for a moment longer than the lifting down took, and gave her a sincere look as if he were reassuring her this meeting would turn out all right. I remembered in that fleeting instant the time I first met Chess and what a scallywag he’d been to me. Charlie turned to me and said, “Mama, you remember Elsa, don’t you?”
“Elsa?” I said. The woman pulled back her shawl, revealing a delicate face I vaguely knew.
Mary Pearl squealed with delight, “Elsa!” and flew between her brothers. The two girls hugged each other and kissed each other’s cheeks again and again. Mary Pearl cried, “Elsa, my dearest, sweet friend!”
Elsa Maldonado. I stared at Charlie. My mouth dropped open and my heart felt as if it had stopped. Rudolfo’s oldest daughter should have been cloistered in the convent in town. Then I sighed with relief. Charlie was simply escorting her to her folks for a Christmas visit. Naturally they came by this way first.
The clothes Elsa wore were plain and featureless, but by no means were they a habit of any order. She was trim but buxom, and had a manner about her that made her seem ten years older than I knew she was. Plus, I sensed some fear or pain in her bearing that, now that I knew who she was, I was sure did not come from meeting us.
“Well, come on and have supper,” I said. “Sun’s going down and we’ve cooked the livelong day. There’s a feast for an army. You have to stop and eat, Elsa; let us get a look at you before you go on home.”
Elsa smiled, whispering, “Thank you, señora,” before she turned to Charlie. “I hope,” she said, and paused too long, I thought, before she continued, “I am home.”
“Mama,” Charlie said, “folks—everyone—I mean, Elsa and I were married in town before we left yesterday. We’d have gotten here sooner but we lost a horse. I knew you’d be looking for me at Christmas. I tell you, we spent a cold night down in that arroyo.” He laughed nervously.
Granny seemed to be studying her shoes. Chess let out a whistle and everyone kept silent for a long minute. Savannah’s girls all whirled in for the rescue, surrounding Elsa and Charlie and giggling, kissing, embracing the bunch, happy as birds in spring.
Ch
arlie had married Elsa Maldonado, connecting us to Rudolfo in a way I never to my last breath would have imagined. It would be polite to congratulate my son and his new wife, all of seventeen or eighteen years old. It would be right to hug her and kiss her, myself, and welcome her to the family. What I should have done was to smile and cheer them, but what I did was only to look into Savannah’s eyes and say, “Does your father know about this?”
“Now, Mama,” Charlie started.
Elsa pushed through the circle made by Rachel, Rebeccah, and Mary Pearl and faced me squarely. “No, he does not. I tried to write to him, but his letters to me in reply were only orders to stay where I was. He would hear of no choice for me but the Sisters’ convent school. I—I had to leave there. I had to. I wanted to come home, but—”
Charlie interrupted her. “Anyway, it’s done, and legal. And that tough old padre in the mission was mad at her, but Elsa and I, we—” He turned his hat around in his hands, fiddled with the band around the crown, and smoothed it before he kept on, saying, “Well, we’ve known each other since we were kids.”
Granny said, “Just like Harland and Melissa. Only Melissa didn’t have a whippersnapper of a pa waiting to put a bullet through Harland for taking her away from him.”
Charlie grimaced, but seemed undaunted. He’d been an Arizona Ranger for several months, had lived in the desert heat by his wits and his guns. Not many people could make the fellow squirm. I felt a swell of pride in him that was outside the circumstance before us. I said, “The truth of it is, son, talk to Rudolfo if you please, but the Maldonado ranch is not a place to ride up to tonight with news of that sort. He’s got men stationed around, guarding, and watching for, well, strangers. They mightn’t recognize you. You two had best bunk here.”
“I aim to get his blessing,” Charlie said. “It was because of me he sent her there.”
Had Charlie made known to Rudolfo some affection toward his daughter that had angered him? And that I never noticed?
Chess grumbled. Then he hissed, “You’ll be more likely to get his buckshot.”
Charlie laughed, but the hard resolve I saw in his eyes made me know he wasn’t about to back down from any man standing.
So the evening meal was a long and windy one, with so many things to tell Charlie, so much I wanted to know from him and Elsa but couldn’t ask. I’d always thought if a girl went into that convent, she was as good as gone and likely to be sent to South America. She was a pretty girl, too. Pretty enough to turn a young man’s head.
Mary Pearl kept trying to tell Elsa about things she was interested in, like fashions and school and that time she stomped on a snake last summer. But to all her questions and prodding for conversation, Elsa only nodded. It was as if she had been utterly locked away from any kind of girlish frills for those two years, as if Mary Pearl’s words were foreign to her.
In between everything, we got the story of their secret romance, and how just before Thanksgiving Elsa had left the convent after what she called a grievous ten days of prayer and penance, convinced she was not called to a life’s vocation. Together they told how Charlie’d stopped in the market to find a gift for me. Pausing by Elsa’s table, thinking she was only a girl selling embroidered handkerchiefs, he discovered her anew. Gilbert kept quiet, now and then looking up with a dark flush to his face.
After we washed up, made more coffee, and pulled out blankets to bed down the children, it got quiet as the little ones turned in. April went to bed, too, being worn out and looking swollen with her next babe. Only then did we tell Charlie and Elsa about last night’s Christmas Eve at the rancho south of here, the railroad man coming to the house, the políticos and cientifícos gathered around Rudolfo’s table. Elsa’s eyes grew wide and dark with fear.
I reckoned my Charlie had caught himself a timid little cottontail rabbit, used to being bullied by her papa. Snagged her right out of the jaws of an old lion that Charlie was going to have to battle as long as he lived. Then something changed in Elsa’s face. She sat rigid, gripping her coffee cup as if she warmed her hands on it, and looked quickly to Charlie before she said, “All the time I’ve been gone I prayed to be united to Christ, but my heart is not a Sister’s. For three years my friend Esperanza secretly brought letters from Charlie when he was going to the school there. She carried my messages to him, too. Then when he left, I was crushed. I didn’t know why he was gone and couldn’t get word to him. I thought he’d left me. I tried to forget Charlie, though I’d loved him since we were children. I left the convent and I’d been living in Tucson for a month and a half at a widow’s home, sewing and washing, doing odd tasks. When Charlie came to town and we met by a miracle, so perfectly ordered that I knew it was no accident, I … I’d already accepted his proposal before he made it. That’s how certain I am that I love Charlie.
“I have had plenty of time to think and begin to understand my father. His strength is also his weakness. Much as he has built his wealth on hard work, he is very much afraid to lose anything. If he will not bless our marriage he will lose me. If we have to leave to keep you safe, we will, but I think he will be too afraid of what he will lose to make a decree to us and lose me forever. This is what I think.”
“I’m ready, too,” Charlie said. “If we can stay here a bit, I’ll work for you, Mama, harder than I ever did, for our room and board. If not, I’ve got a job waiting for me up toward the Mogollon as a deputy sheriff out of Springerville. Word is they’re breaking up the Ranger outfit come summer, and anyhow rang-ing’s no life for a man with a wife.”
“No, don’t go. Of course you can stay.” Lands, if they went that far away, I’d never see them. There could be babies born, just like when April was in Philadelphia, that I’d not see for years. I turned to Albert, Chess, and my mama, lastly to Savannah. Her eyes were misty and she nodded slowly. I felt as if my jaw had frozen.
In the midst of my thickheadedness, I remembered my gift. The last shirt I’d ever make for my oldest son. I rushed to my bedroom. Opening the chest, I took up Charlie’s shirt. I had no gift for Elsa. What with thread and cloth so dear I’d barely managed something for those at hand; I hadn’t done extra. In that chest was the remainder of the pinafore material, waiting to be cut up for quilt scraps. I trimmed it up square and folded it carefully. I found a piece of lace in there, about two yards long, raveled out at one end, but I trimmed it smooth and folded it onto the cloth. Folks were talking in the other room. I laid a long spool of white thread on the stack, though I had not a single button to spare except some big round ones that go on men’s pants fronts, nothing a lady would wear. Hunting for more, I lifted the quilt at the bottom of the chest. There was the spirit level I’d bought. I refused to let myself look on it or think on the man I intended it for. I was headed for the door when I spied the assortment of odd things jumbled on top of the highboy chest, and from it I took up my best new thimble, adding it to my gift to Elsa. Couldn’t it have been anyone other than Elsa?
I gave my son and his new wife their gifts for Christmas and they were kind and said their thanks. Though I replied, I could barely speak above a whisper. Elsa grabbed my shoulders and hugged me and I think I smiled but, Lord, I wanted to cry. I wished them a house full of healthy children and all, but I couldn’t leave off thinking my boy Charlie had married the only girl in the Territory who could bring to this house the tender femininity possessed by a leaky keg of blasting powder.
Chapter Eight
December 26, 1906
I got my saddle blanket on a green-broke pony and rode north across the Cienega toward the sandy cliff. The cold that seeped through the seams in my old coat cut into my ribs and chest. I came upon the place where the stage had turned over and I kept going. My mount, a small bay named Hatch, was shy of the shadows, and danced as she walked. I’d left the family to make their own breakfast and had gone to the barn after only a cup of coffee. Chess offered to come along wherever I was going as I shouldn’t be out alone but I told him to stay put. Maybe he though
t I was going to see Rudolfo. Have some words with him. Truth is, I didn’t know where I was going, I just needed a ride.
By now, Udell should be in Colorado, and maybe caught up with the end of the rainbow he’s chasing. I gave Hatch her head and went up the stage road to where the bend went toward Granny’s place. Two miles up, I found a wooden stake beaten into the ground with a strip of a red handkerchief tied to it. The horse snorted at the fluttering cloth, and pulled on her reins. I pulled up that stake and tossed it into some brush. I made her settle, and then we cut far around by a washy place where the sand had become frozen and hard. It broke in U shapes with each step of Hatch’s hooves.
Far upwind, the slow-rising call of a wolf spooked Hatch and she hauled up into the air about three times before setting off on a dead run. I jerked the reins, held on for my life, and got her to plant her front feet, but nearly went over. The wolf gave one more howl as I jumped off and pulled that horse’s nose to my chest, talking low and steady. Hatch’s eyes were white all around and her ears laid back. Without me on her, she could barely keep her feet on the ground.
I should have ridden Baldy. Leastways I’d be free to think of my own worries instead of his. I should have used a saddle instead of just a blanket, so this lunkhead cayuse would mind. We set off walking, me pulling Hatch’s chin lead, across the frozen patch of sand to the cobbled gravel beyond it, knowing I’d left footprints behind me. I watched the ground closely, finding a path where the greasewood was far enough apart Hatch wouldn’t have to rub her sides on it. Ornery horse. I wanted to be somewhere else and I didn’t much care where it was.
I pictured my papa when I was a girl, the day he came to the house and told us to bring in the herd because he’d got word there was better grazing in San Angelo, Texas. He’s buried there, now. Savannah’s papa and sisters had stayed there, too, farming, all except Ulyssa, who died at the lung asylum here in the Territory a couple of years ago. How had Papa come to choose moving instead of staying? If he’d known it would cost him his life, would he have gone pulling up stakes and leaving the only home I could remember? I had visions of the curly-stemmed grass that used to get into my stockings when I was a girl, in the place I grew up, Cottonwood Springs, and the way the wind blew constant for days rather than coming in gusts and storms the way it does here. Had he ever felt part and parcel of the land he wanted to leave that day? Was it easy to ride away?
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