Rest and Be Thankful

by Helen Macinnes

  “Or do you say a Flatfeet?” Mrs. Peel wondered aloud, as the car stopped at a clear space on the sidewalk.

  Prender Atherton Jones, about to deliver his farewell, touching lightly (but surely) on the self-sacrifice he had volunteered to make, looked at Mrs. Peel in bewilderment.

  “One Flatfoot, surely,” she said, convinced she was making everything clear. “Oh, Prender, do look at these pioneer children on horseback, and that frontier girl riding side-saddle. Why, the costumes are authentic 1870... And look, there’s a covered wagon, and two Indian guides, and a crowd of trappers. They must all be starting to gather for the parade. Do stay, Prender. You’ll still have plenty of time to reach Three Springs for luncheon at the inn: unless you care to join us at Bill’s Drug Store or the Elk Café?”

  Sally saw him flinch this time. “Everything is going to be so crowded,” she said gaily, “that we’ll probably eat at a hot-dog stand in the rodeo grounds. Won’t you stay, Prender?”

  Prender could not bear the word “hot-dog,” far less eat the object. He flinched for all to see. He looked at the growing crowds now beginning to jam the sidewalks, at the cars bringing people from all over Upshot County and beyond. Then he looked back at the interested faces of Margaret Peel and Sally Bly, so delighted with what was happening around them that they scarcely noticed him now. Earl Grubbock, standing on the running-board of the car to get a better view of the faces that passed him, had forgotten everything else.

  “Look!” Mrs. Peel cried again, for a group of men on magnificent horses with elaborately worked saddles and silver-decorated bridles were riding past towards the starting-point of the parade. The horses almost outshone the men, and that was something Mrs. Peel had thought impossible. She looked round her, watching the pretty girls in gay Western clothes or bright cotton dresses, watching the sun-tanned men in their handsomest shirts and best boots and newest hats, watching the excited children with well-polished cheeks and healthy bodies, watching the quiet content of the old people, watching the laughing faces and the eyes that looked at her so candidly. “Why, Prender,” she said, suddenly noticing him again, “you aren’t looking at anything.”

  “Not my line,” Prender said, gazing intently at the giant banner swaying lightly in a touch of breeze. “WELCOME, STRANGER, TO THE SWEETWATER STAMPEDE!”

  “There are the Indians!” Mrs. Peel cried.

  “And there are Bert and Ned and Jim on horseback,” Sally said. “Flying Tail Ranch is looking very grand today. Where have they been keeping all these clothes?” But there was a smile of pride on her face—the same smile that was on all the faces around her as they identified their friends and neighbours.

  “Are these Iropshaws?” Mrs. Peel was asking. “Flatfeet have circles of tail-feathers. And there are our Indians! There’s Hubert Slow-to-Move. And he knew us! Prender, did you see that? He straightened an eyebrow. And look at his daughters today—white buckskin, beads, pink silk scarves and shawls. Why, I never saw so much shocking pink outside of Schiaparelli’s showrooms.”

  “Hello, Miss Bly,” said the Sheriff, on horseback. “And this is Mrs. Peel? Glad to see you, Mrs. Peel. Well, we’re kind of trying to clear the cars off the street now. Got to get the parade started.”

  “The car’s just leaving,” Sally said.

  “No hurry. Just thought I’d drop the word.” He saluted and rode off.

  “That’s much the nicest parking ticket we’ve ever been given,” Mrs. Peel told Jackson, who only looked back at her pleadingly. If I don’t get this car to Three Springs I’ll miss all the fun here, he seemed to say. He had worn his new black hat, too, and his equally new silver belt.

  “Goodbye, Prender,” Mrs. Peel said quickly, and startled him, although he had been trying to leave for the last five minutes.

  “Goodbye.” He didn’t make his speech. He didn’t feel he was making any sacrifice at the moment. He wouldn’t have stayed here unless he had been tied down with chains.

  “Goodbye,” Sally said, as Jackson ground the car into first gear warningly.

  Grubbock jumped off the running-board in time, and yelled a belated goodbye after the departing car. He watched it negotiate the last difficult stretch of Main Street, and smiled as it was chased down the Three Springs road by a chorus of cowboy yells. That’s Ned and Bert, he thought. “By the way,” he asked, “did I hear anyone say thank you?”

  “Prender never actually does, you know,” Mrs. Peel said.

  “It’s not his line either?”

  Sally said, “If this had been the annual festival in a little town in Mexico or the South of France he would have stood for hours and applauded. He would have talked about it for months afterwards. Authentic folk art. The Colour of the Soil.” Blast him, she thought; he’d almost spoiled her day.

  “Temper, temper,” Earl Grubbock said, watching her face, but he gave a sympathetic smile. “Does he have to stiffen quite so artistically when a hot-dog is mentioned?”

  “Prender’s trouble is that he has never been really hungry in all his life,” Mrs. Peel said unexpectedly. “If he had stayed in Paris as we did for part of the War he would have had wild dreams about all the food he had ever refused. But that was naughty of you, Sally. You know how he feels about sausages.”

  “I only brought up the humble hot-dog to correspond to something like tamales. He wouldn’t have refused them at a Mexican fiesta. And he missed the whole point why you and I are so happy... Doesn’t he know the joy of seeing ordinary hard-working people looking so prosperous and proud of their lives? Doesn’t that tell him anything?”

  But Earl Grubbock, his eyes once more searching the sidewalk, wasn’t listening.

  “Perhaps she is on the other side of the street,” Sally suggested.

  He smiled then. “I’ve been trying to watch both sides,” he confessed, “but—” His voice changed. It became very matter-of-fact. “There she is,” he said, and he stared angrily at three handsome young men who were escorting Norah through the crowd. He didn’t move towards them, didn’t even let them see him. He just stood there, watching Norah.

  At that moment a dazzling white hat struggled in Mrs. Peel’s direction. “Hello, Miss Whikkleton! How are you? I’ve been trying to reach you for twenty minutes. Want you to meet some of the folks. Make you feel right at home. Big day today for this little old cow-town. Sure is.” Milt Jerks looked round with pride on his adopted realm.

  “Mr. Jerks,” Sally said, trying not to look at the blue embroidery on the white satin shirt, “who are those boys over there, standing in front of the wooden Indian?”

  “You mean the Brebner boys?”

  “Brebner?” Sally smiled at Earl. “Then they must be Norah’s brothers.” Or cousins... In Wyoming people had so many cousins.

  “Sure. One’s studying to be a doctor somewhere in Michigan. And one’s managing the Bee Ex Bar Ranch down in Montana—a big outfit, they tell me. And the youngest, he’s still at school, going to be a lawyer, I hear. Come all the way for the Sweetwater Stampede. Yes, sir, none of these young fellows miss it if they can help it.”

  You would have thought Milt Jerks had lived here all his life, Sally thought, and she found his enthusiasm touching. Then she noticed that Chuck and his friend Cheesit Bridger had moved up to this part of Main Street too. They had made no attempt to come forward, but had propped their backs comfortably against the rattlesnake window, and were keeping a seemingly casual eye on everything.

  “Now, Miss Whittleton,” Milt Jerks was saying, grabbing hold of passing arms, “let me present my old friends John Jackson, of the Tee Bar You, and Judd James, of the Double Ex Gee. Hey, Mrs. Christie, want you to meet my friend Miss Elizabeth Whifferton. Mrs. Christie’s the wife of our banker, Bob Christie. And here’s Miss Snodgrass, of the telephone exchange, and Mrs. Bill Buell, of the Zenith Beauty Shop. All the shops closing now? Getting ready to begin, eh? Half an hour late, Sweetwater time, eh?”

  As Milt Jerks made himself master of ceremonies Sally was wat
ching Earl Grubbock. “It looks as if Margaret and I are going to be well taken care of,” she suggested. “And I notice that Mimi and Carla and Robert and Karl are standing across the street, so everyone is safely here. We’ll meet you at the rodeo.”

  “Fine,” Earl Grubbock said, gave her a half-embarrassed smile, and left as quickly as possible. Sally wondered if people in love were always so obvious to other people, sometimes even more obvious than they were to themselves. She kept wondering about that, and she was suddenly as embarrassed as Earl Grubbock had been. Fortunately Milt Jerks was still introducing people. He managed a slight variation on Whiffleton at every try. Once, towards the end, Sally was sure she heard “Whittington.”

  Chuck and Cheesit Bridger looked as if they wondered whether things were getting out of hand, whether any action had to be taken. But the group that Milt Jerks had created swallowed him up, and Mrs. Christie and Mrs. Bill and Judd James and Miss Snodgrass formed a quiet phalanx round Margaret Peel as if they had been reading her mind. Chuck and Cheesit Bridger gave Sally a smile and went on their way.

  The last children were allowed through the waiting crowd (the smallest ones were passed overhead) to find a good view and a seat at the edge of the sidewalk. A silence fell, and all heads were turned to look along Main Street in the direction of a sudden blast of music.

  “That’s the school band,” Mrs. Christie explained. “There’s my Tommy, see, with the trumpet!” She pointed to a ten-year-old blowing manfully. She forgot all the agonies she had endured, this last month of practising, and she clapped as delightedly as all the other mothers were clapping their musicians.

  “That’s my niece with the flute,” Miss Snodgrass said, waving to a fair-haired girl no more than eight. “And there’s Young Bill’s boy with the drum. My! How he’s grown since last year. He’s almost as big as it is now.” And she turned to congratulate his proud grandmother on Little Bill, who might not be keeping very good step, but certainly could keep up the right bangs.

  Bands, Mrs. Peel thought, always make me cry, especially if they play My Country, ’tis of thee, just a touch off key, and march so determinedly out of step. She looked quickly away, blinking in the bright sunlight, towards the rest of the parade.

  The prettiest girl in the whole of Upshot County came first, riding the noblest horse. “Her dad runs a small ranch just out of Sweetwater a piece,” Miss Snodgrass explained. “Getting married next month. Look, there’s her boy. He’s riding with the men from the ranches, just behind her. My! Isn’t she pretty in her Western clothes? Milt Jerks wanted her to wear white satin, but we soon put a stop to that.”

  The crowd cheered the groups in turn—the men from the ranches; the men who had come from Montana and Colorado and Idaho to take part in the rodeo; the cowgirls; the old-timers, still able to sit a horse even if they were reaching ninety. Cheesit Bridger was in this group, but Chuck wasn’t old enough to qualify seemingly. As she looked at them Sally thought that if they had vied with each other when young, in being quick on the draw, in loving fast women and beautiful horses, in holding ten gallons of raw liquor, in shooting bears and bison and any Indian that didn’t seem to appreciate the white man’s westward march, they now had a rivalry between each other to see who’d last longest. Old-timers didn’t die, they only faded away.

  Then the children came riding along, all the way from the kindergarten on Shetland ponies to the bareback riders in the Eighth Grade. One very small boy almost fell off his nervous pony, but a business-man of the town (identifiable, although he wore cowboy clothes, by his more expansive waistline) wheeled his horse to dash to the rescue and raised a cheer. “Nearly fell off yourself, Bob,” a man’s voice called. “Turned so darned quick you just about left your horse standing.” Bob, trying not to look too proud, rode back to his place at the side of the parade. He wiped his brow and said he’d given his old saddle a right good coating of glue that morning, so they all could stop worrying.

  The cheers, the offered advice, the friendly laughter over the inevitable predicaments, drew the spectators and riders together until they became one. Everyone was in the parade, Sally thought. The watchers laughed and suffered with those who rode, as floats stopped floating and had to be pushed. Or there was the horse that started bucking with one of the local policemen, who just managed to keep his seat, but lost his hat, while the crowd roared with delight and cheered the horse on. Or the pioneer woman, driving a jurky, who started to travel in circles until two substantial townsmen on suitably substantial horses got her headed in the right direction. Yes, everyone was in the parade: those who stood on the sidewalks and cheered, or watched with critical silence, or admired with quick comments, were all riding down the centre of Main Street too.

  After the highly decorated floats, with their tableaux of frontier days, had reminded everyone that life was not always a matter of a steady job, a cinema on Main Street, or Main Street itself, there came the newest tractors and reaping-machines with waving arms and reaching teeth, lowered as if by magic to pass under the street’s banners. They were applauded too; and then, as if to apologise for this sudden interest in the machine, the horses that followed were given double cheers. Here were the bright sorrels, the creamy buckskins with their dark manes and tails, the golden palominos, and the Appaloosas. “What on earth is that?” Mrs. Peel said aloud, staring at an Appaloosa. But everyone around her, although more accustomed to the idea of a horse that reminded you of silver leopards and zebras and still didn’t let you solve the problem, agreed with her bewilderment. “It’s just,” Miss Snodgrass said, shaking her head, “an Appaloosie.”

  “They love it. They know they’re beautiful,” Mrs. Peel said, referring mostly to her favourite palominos, although she included buckskins and sorrels too. “They’re like Ziegfeld Girls coming down a runway. Or am I a little mixed?”

  “A little,” Sally said. “But they’ve certainly been glorified. Everyone within miles of Sweetwater must have stayed up all night polishing his horses. If you ask me, the horse’s best friend is man.”

  Just then a deep silence fell on the crowd. The Indians were coming, riding in the full array of their tribe. Then the cheers burst out, as rich and full as they had been for anything else that day.

  “They love it too,” Sally said quietly. “And so would I, if I were one of them. It is something to have been an enemy and to have become a friend.” And she watched the rest of the parade in thoughtful silence.

  At its end Mrs. Peel shook her violently by the arm and pointed. “Do you see what I see?” she asked. It was the last group, cowhands and wranglers and ranchers, bringing the parade—symbolically enough—to a workaday close. And there, riding between Jim Brent and Chuck, his face beaming with pleasure, his borrowed horse well under control, his black hat pulled over his black eyebrows, his silver belt gleaming round his staunch waistline, was Jackson.

  28

  JIM AND SALLY

  Mimi was rather subdued by the time the rodeo had ended. It could very well be hunger, Mrs. Peel thought; or it could be five hours of sitting on a hard wooden bench; or it could be five hours of watching quick movement in bright sunlight, of your blood-pressure rising when a triumph was won, of your heart sinking when a man lay on the ground unable to rise and the ambulance drove slowly into the rodeo field. For Mrs. Peel was suffering from all these things. She was as emotionally purged as if she had been attending a Greek tragedy.

  “Home for me,” she said to Sally. “But you stay for the dance.”

  Sally shook her head. She was watching the judges’ stand. Jim Brent was leaving it now. “No,” she said, “of course I shan’t.” She tried to sound as if she weren’t disappointed. She even smiled. But there was disappointment in her eyes.

  “I’ll take Mrs. Peel home,” Robert O’Farlan said. “I’m a rotten dancer, anyway.”

  “But Sweetwater is something to see tonight,” Sally said. “It will be wide open. It’s said to be the next wildest Western town to Jackson Hole, once t
he night begins.”

  “What fun!” Carla said. “Why, Jackson Hole is the wildest place after Butte, isn’t it? And Butte’s the wildest town in all the West. So that gives Sweetwater third place!” That made her think of Ned. “Too bad,” she said, becoming serious again, “about Ned, I mean. And he missed it by so little, only a quarter of a second.”

  “Well, he got second place,” Mimi said. “That’s always something, I suppose.”

  “But he has made better time before. Why, I’ve seen him rope a calf in fourteen seconds. Today he took fifteen and a half.”

  “That’s the unpleasant thing about losing,” Mimi said. “You know you could have done better, somehow—if you had only known what to do.” She was watching Jim Brent riding slowly over the rodeo field towards them. But you haven’t lost yet, she told herself: he’s been nicer to you in these last two days than he’s ever been. She glanced at Sally. Yes, she’s attractive, very attractive: there’s something about the way she looks at you, the way she smiles; her skin is good, and she has that soft blonde colouring that some men seem to like; her figure’s all right too. Wonder if I’ll look as good as that when I’m her age? Or was she joking about her age? But, whatever her age is, I’m younger. And I’m not unattractive either. And one sure way of losing is to tell yourself that you’ve lost. She looked round at the grandstand, now slowly emptying, and chased away the doubts that had been forming all this afternoon in her mind. After all, she thought, Jim Brent doesn’t have to live here always...

  Karl stood up and stretched himself. “The crowd’s clearing,” he said. “We could start leaving, ourselves.” He looked at the rows of benches, littered with pop-bottles and spilled peanuts and popcorn. “There is going to be a lot of sick kids in Upshot County tonight. Or are they toughened from the cradle onward? Come on, Mimi, let’s get going.” He looked after Earl Grubbock and Norah, who had slipped away quietly by themselves even as he was talking.