“You know,” Mrs. Peel said, looking up with surprise, “it isn’t as bad as I thought. It’s just terribly nineteen-twentyish, that’s all. It has a certain cadaverous charm, like looking at a one-time beauty of the ball. And however did Elizabeth Whiffleton think of all these things! Telegram off safely?”
“Miss Snodgrass is fully in charge. By the way, her nephew won the local 4-H prize in steer-raising. Complete treatment, as far as I could gather. He brought it up and lifted it too. He’s going to be in the first float on Saturday.”
“4-H?” Mrs. Peel asked, leaving the lady in white gloves walking through the dining-car of the Simplon Express.
“Head, heart, hands, and health.”
“No hearth or home? But perhaps that’s for the older ones. And floating—floating where?”
“In the parade through Sweetwater before the rodeo on Saturday, darling. Trucks all disguised into tableaux with crepe paper and branches and things.”
“Ah,” Mrs. Peel said understandingly. “Like Nice.”
“Exactly. Only no emphasis on l’amour. All very hearty and healthy.”
Mrs. Peel nodded. “How Prender will hate it!” she said, with pleasure. She picked up the battered copy of The Lady in White Gloves once more. “Now, darling, if you don’t mind, I’d like to finish this book.”
22
RETURN FROM THE MOUNTAINS
Three days passed. Four. It was the fifth day, already late in the afternoon, and Earl Grubbock and Karl Koffing were still in the mountains.
Rest and be Thankful was alarmed. Only Mrs. Gunn seemed to take the delay as being something quite normal, but the more she kept calm and unruffled the more the others were convinced that something must have happened. Chuck and Jackson were just as baffling as Mrs. Gunn.
“Sure,” Chuck said to Carla, who had been worrying him with questions, “they’ve had a bit of a skirmish with hostiles. Or maybe they’ve gone hunting bear. Bringing home one apiece so you can take them back to New York, along with them elk-horns you’ve been collecting.”
Carla then had to spend a heated half hour trying to convince her shadow, Esther Park, that Chuck was joking, so all must be well.
Esther said, “He wasn’t. He didn’t smile one bit.” And she went back to Chuck and pestered him with predictions of possible gloom until he said, “Sure. That’s it. They got lost. Wouldn’t be surprised if they reached Yellowstone by Christmas.” Jackson had to laugh that time, so Esther Park knew she was meant to laugh too.
“Still,” she said, with her usual perseverance, “people could get lost.”
“Sure.” Chuck was being serious now, if you cared to watch his eyes. “If a man don’t know them mountains he’s just kind of asking for trouble getting mixed up with them. There were a young fellow, over at Bar Ex Gee last summer, he made a pack trip by himself up over Muledeer. Didn’t want no guide along. Just himself and nature. Well, reckon he got that all right. Took us the best part of a week to find him. Weren’t a ranch or forest station round here, for near a hundred miles, what weren’t out looking for him. Cost us a heap of sleep and good working time. Him and nature.”
“Was he alive?”
“He weren’t dead.” He’d been kind of lucky, that fellow.
Esther saw Prender Atherton Jones in the distance, and so she abandoned Chuck and Jackson, who didn’t seem too crushed by such neglect. Prender had gone into the saddle-barn, which was strange; but stranger still, when she searched there he wasn’t to be found. He must have taken the side-door out. So he couldn’t have seen her waving to him, after all.
She went back to the house. Robert O’Farlan was busy, he said. And Carla was at work too. After ten minutes with each of them she found Mrs. Peel in her sitting-room. But she was writing and didn’t even look up. Sally was in the library, and she said, “Hello! Glad you’re free, Esther. I’ve a job of work for you to do.” Esther said she’d love to, but she had to see Mrs. Gunn first about something important. So Mrs. Gunn, returning to the kitchen from a visit to the chicken-house, found Esther Park sitting in the rocking-chair.
“I think it is all very silly,” Esther Park said.
“What’s silly?” Mrs. Gunn had to recount the eggs she had brought with her.
“All this fuss everyone is making over Karl and Earl.”
Mrs. Gunn looked at her in surprise. She thought of all the horrible ideas that Miss Park had produced at the luncheon table today, worrying everyone with her questions. “Who’s making a fuss?” she asked.
“Why, everyone. Just like the silly fuss they make over Mimi.”
Mrs. Gunn selected the eggs she was going to use for dinner, and walked into the pantry to store the others carefully away in the big refrigerator. Miss Bly was there, signalling with a finger to her lip. “Thought you’d need some help,” she whispered. “I’ve found the cure: give her some work to do.”
Mrs. Gunn stared.
“Work,” repeated Sally, “that’s all.”
Mrs. Gunn went back to the kitchen, hoping it was now empty. But it wasn’t. Miss Park was rocking gently in the chair, her eyes fixed on an invisible object on the wall in front of her.
If only she keeps quiet, Mrs. Gunn thought, that won’t be so bad. It’s not that she’s ugly—I’ve seen worse. It’s her expression. It’s a good lesson to all of us that we’ve got to look after the thoughts we think, or just look what happens. Now that’s a cruel thing to say, Isabella Gunn! But it is funny, though, the harder Miss Park tries to make people like her, the less they do. But, then, she ought to make herself more likeable. She has money and a famous family and all that, and they don’t seem to matter one bit to anyone else. Not that they should. It would be a poor look-out for the world if people were judged by money or family.
“Do you think Mimi Bassinbrook’s going to have pneumonia?” Esther Park asked suddenly.
Mrs. Gunn gave her a sharp look. “No,” she said shortly.
“Imagine!” Esther Park said scornfully. “Imagine the doctor being brought all the way from Sweetwater for only a cold.”
“Dr. Clark has cured her pretty quick, hasn’t he?” Mrs. Gunn stared angrily at the woman rocking so placidly in her armchair. Pensomething-or-other he had given Miss Bassinbrook. She’d be all right for the dance on Saturday. More was the pity, perhaps.
“I’ve had pneumonia,” Esther Park said. “My doctor warned me to be very careful in future. That’s why I was so worried a few days ago when I had that terrible cold. Of course, I didn’t want to bother anyone.”
But you tried hard, Mrs. Gunn thought grimly. Then she said, “Why, here are five pounds of peas to be shelled for dinner! And I just needed someone to help me.”
“I’d love to,” Esther Park said slowly. She looked at the mountain of green peas on the table, at Mrs. Gunn placing an enormous bowl invitingly beside them. She rose. “But I did promise Mimi I’d go upstairs and see her before dinner. I tell you what, I’ll go and cheer Mimi up, then I’ll come back and help you.”
“Fine. I’ll need some help with peeling the potatoes too.”
Perhaps, Mrs. Gunn thought hopefully, as she looked at the chair rocking peacefully and still more peacefully by itself until it at last came to rest, perhaps she won’t even stay once Norah is away and there will be work to do. And Miss Bly, she thought admiringly. Miss Bly is no fool.
She couldn’t have paid Sally higher praise.
* * *
Before dinner Mrs. Peel made a habit of taking two carrots up to the corral. Sally came along with her this evening. Both of them looked towards the hills, but there was still no sign of any riders. They did not notice that Chuck and Jackson were sitting outside the saddle-barn, waiting and watching too.
Chuck was squatting in his favourite position, his left leg kneeling with the weight of his body balanced on its heel, his right elbow resting on the bended right knee. He shook his head at the carrots in Mrs. Peel’s hand. “Look at that, will you?” he seemed to say.
Jackson grinned, partly in agreement, partly in anticipation. It wasn’t, by any wrangler’s standards, the way to treat a horse, but Jackson had seen Mrs. Peel at work on many an evening.
“Next thing they’ll be tying blue ribbons on its tail,” Chuck said, as he watched Mrs. Peel and Miss Bly walk over to the fence. His voice was low, for sound carried easily across the stillness of the evening. Nice women, but kind of crazy, he had long since decided.
Mrs. Peel’s voice, unaware of its audience, was clear and confident. “Here, Boy!” she called. “Golden Boy!”
The horses, grazing quietly in the west pasture, went on grazing quietly. Except the palomino, who lifted his head and looked round in an inquiring manner.
“Is that call for me? Put it through, will you?” Sally said, and began to laugh.
“Be quiet, Sally. He’ll hear you.”
Sally looked at the horse, a golden statue with its head turned towards them. She looked at the other horses, their heads stretched down to the grass. Perhaps, she thought, I will have to learn to paint: I just can’t go on like this, wishing I could paint. “Look at the design they make, Margaret! And their colours against that gold-green grass!” White, sorrel—one a darker chestnut than the other, rich bay-brown, black, cream buckskin... “This is what I like best: to see them together, to watch them free. It must have been magnificent when there was a remuda of hundreds.”
“A what?”
“A cavvy. At least, I think that’s it. Oh, a herd, if you prefer that.”
“Boy!” Mrs. Peel called again. “See, he’s coming! I don’t even have to wave the carrots now.”
The golden palomino left the others. He walked slowly, pausing now and again to stretch his long graceful neck towards a tuft of tempting grass.
“He takes his time,” Mrs. Peel explained, “to show us that he has an independence above carrots. He is being polite, making up his mind to receive visitors with an elegant air. He’s like one of those horses in a baroque painting, isn’t he? When he shies, you know, he tosses his mane, dilates his nostrils, and widens his eyes. All he needs is Louis XIV on his back, pointing a finger upwards and onwards, through a froth of lace round his cuff. He’s completely baroque. In fact, it’s so funny to watch him that I forget even to be frightened when he shies. It really isn’t so unpleasant as I used to think it was—it’s rather like chassezing sideways on a dance-floor. Perfectly safe if you don’t come loose from your partner.”
“I’m sure he’s a first cousin to a Hollywood blonde with a shoulder-bob. Why not rename him Glamour Boy?”
“And he would throw me, just to teach me how to behave. Don’t laugh, Sally. He has his own ways of thinking, and they get him along all right. How would you like to spend the winters out in these hills? If self-preservation doesn’t involve some form of thinking, then—Boy! Here, Boy!”
The palomino quickened his pace suddenly, and swerved at a trot towards the fence.
Jackson looked at Chuck. “Well?” he asked, with a broad grin.
“Well,” Chuck said, and pushed his hat back off his forehead. “She’ll be learning the bastard to count next. Then he’ll be laying down for his country and rising for The Star-spangled Banner. What’s this, anyways? A goddamned ranch or a jigging circus?” But he was smiling. “And what’s baroak?”
Jackson shook his head.
“That’s what she said, wasn’t it? Baroak...” How do they get round to talking that way, he wondered. Sure must tire them out. Guess some folks use their voices as others use their eyes. Baroak. It had a good sound to it. Come in handy when he was having a little talk with his own pony. You goddamned sonofabitchn baroak pony, you. That would get it listening. She was right, too: horses had their own ways of figuring out people.
“Mighty nice woman, that,” he said to Jackson, whose dark, serious eyes suddenly smiled with real pleasure. “Don’t you worry, Jack. When you tell her you’re staying here and not driving to California or any other such place she’ll understand.” Then he went back to watching Mrs. Peel, who had now clambered through the fence and was walking a few paces beside the palomino with her hand on its neck. Then she gave it a few brisk claps, and it broke away to return to the horses on the hillside. Some people, Chuck had heard, had their own way of explaining a friendship like that: sure, they said, a childless woman, a lonely man, is always losing their hearts to a dog or a horse. But they only proved one thing for sure: they hadn’t ever had a dog or a horse that liked them enough to let them know what they were missing.
Sally turned round, ready to walk back to the house. “Hello!” she called, as she suddenly saw Jackson and Chuck. She walked across the dusty corral towards them. “Come down and enjoy Ma Gunn’s cooking, won’t you? The boys won’t be here for supper tonight, I’m afraid.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Chuck said, looking beyond her to the hills.
“What? Have you seen them?” Sally turned round quickly and looked once more. “Margaret,” she called, “Chuck’s seen them!”
Chuck, who had been watching the small cloud of dust for almost half an hour when he hadn’t been studying Mrs. Peel, nodded. He pointed. “Heading for the south pasture. Can’t move them steers too quick. Lose weight if you look at them, almost.”
“Where are they?” Sally asked, her eyes still on the hills.
“I can’t see them either,” Mrs. Peel said, as she joined the little group.
Chuck explained patiently, using a cloud in the sky, a red-walled canyon, a hill with saw-toothed rocks, and a green-edged creek to mark the exact spot. “Give them about an hour, maybe,” he said, timing their arrival at the south pasture. “Well, I think I’ll go peel a lot of potatoes.” He touched his hat and moved away, and Jackson went with him.
“Jackson,” Mrs. Peel said to Sally, as they walked quickly towards the house to warn Mrs. Gunn about dinner, “is no longer Jackson. The other day he passed by when I was talking to someone, and I saw him out of the corner of my eye. I thought, ‘Well, we’ve a new wrangler.’ And then I looked properly, and it was Jackson.”
“They call him Jack.”
“Jack. Formerly Jackson. Formerly Tisza Szénchenyi.” Mrs. Peel smiled. “He’s travelled a long way,” she said softly.
“So have we, I think,” Sally said, and linked her arm through Margaret’s.
“Will you do something for me?” Mrs. Peel asked unexpectedly. “Will you stop being foolish? The next evening you want to go riding, will you go riding? Instead of refusing and finding some old excuse?”
Sally was silent. Then she said at last. “Mimi is young and she’s very pretty. If I were a man—”
“I wish women would stop making men seem more stupid than they are. I know all about Mimi. I saw her that very first night. She came up to the corral, all ready to go riding by herself, just as you and Jim were setting out. Naturally you asked her to go along. Naturally you found yourself riding alone, while she edged in beside Jim Brent on the narrow trails. And she repeated all these little stratagems every evening after that, didn’t she? Until you began to say you were too busy to go, that you had a headache, or that you couldn’t ride because of your accident. Just any old excuse, Sally Bly. And you were a fool. You didn’t help Jim very much, did you?”
“Perhaps he didn’t want that kind of help. Besides, why should I bother, anyway? It’s none of my business.” Sally’s voice was on the defensive now. “Why should it be?”
“Because,” Mrs. Peel’s voice said gently, “I’m a complete idiot about horses, and your horse is putting on weight.”
Sally had to smile. “You’re a sweet liar,” she said, “but I’ll listen to you. I’ll start exercising him again.”
“In the evenings?” Mrs. Peel insisted.
Sally hesitated. “If I am asked,” she said at last, and the smile disappeared from her eyes.
* * *
The pack-horse came first, running free, streaming ahead of the others, its head pointed unerringly to th
e ranch. Bert followed it at a fast canter. Behind him, keeping up with him, was Karl Koffing. And then, five minutes later, the group of four men, taking it more easily, riding close together.
They hadn’t spoken much for the last hour. And that, Earl Grubbock decided, as he tried to ease his blistered thighs by standing up in the stirrups, was a damned good idea. He saw the waiting crowd at the corral, and he groaned. At this stage all a man wanted to do was to get off his horse thankfully, look back at the mountains, and say to himself, “Well, I made it.” No questions, no fuss. Just a bath with real hot water. Food and drink. And bed. A real honest-to-God bed with a mattress and springs underneath and four blankets over you. And sleep. Real, deep-down sleep in a dark sheltered room with every noise held away from you. No waking up with a start when a coyote howled in your ear, or a wind moaned through the trees, or a porcupine rustled the dry twigs near you as it wandered around looking for some leather to eat. No waking up when the temperature dropped another ten degrees, and you were so damned frozen already that you couldn’t even pull the blanket more tightly round your chin. No more sudden flurries of snow or icy hail to beat round your ears or make the horses restless. You’d lie there, wondering what the hell made them restless this time—they always had some reason: you’d found that out—wondering if you had tethered your horse securely enough, or would you have to walk five, six, or seven miles to find him tomorrow morning? So there you’d be lying on the hard, hard earth, trying to fall into an uneasy sleep, trying to forget that the horses might break loose at any minute. And if they did—well, you lay there trying not to think about that, trying to forget you were miles from the nearest lonely ranch, with nothing but mountains and trees and creeks and parkland between you and it. That made you think of your boots— and you suddenly remembered that if you hadn’t hung them high enough they’d now be making a four-course dinner for a porcupine. So you got out of your blanket and sleeping-bag, and made sure of your boots. Then you had to wind yourself up like a cocoon again, doing it quietly so as not to waken the others. And you looked at the humped, still figures on the earth around you, and wondered how they could sleep and you couldn’t. And as soon as you started getting mad about that, then you slept no more, just lay there counting the draughts.
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