by Edna Ferber
“I guess you’ll find things different out here from what you’re used to.”
Leslie managed a light gaiety. “I want it to be different.”
“I suppose you’re all tired out, traveling and all. You’ll want to turn in quick, be all raring to go for tomorrow. The girls are wild to see you.”
Solemnly they were ascending the stairs. Leslie heard herself making polite conversation and she began to feel very odd; light in the head and heavy in the legs. “Are they all nearby neighbors—the girls?”
Luz laughed a sharp little cackle. “Texas, anything less than a hundred miles is considered next door. Only real nearby one is Vashti Hake and she’s better than sixty miles. The Hake ranch.”
Leslie was tempted to ask if this Vashti Hake was the girl whom Jordan in spite of family pressure had not married. Better not. I’ll know when I see her. Luz was still rattling on, Leslie forced herself to listen, standing there in the upper hall, a politely interested smile on her lips, the light glaring down on her tired eyes.
“Texas ranch folks, a lot of them, have gone to living in town and only come out to the ranch when they feel like it. The Hakes and us and two three more around are about the only ones left hereabouts who live on the place, summer and winter, day and night, the year around. Of the big countries, that is. Of course the Klebergs over to the King ranch they do too. There used to be a saying the Benedict men and the Hake and Beezer men, they were married to their ranches, any wife coming in would be only morganatic.”
Leslie held out her hand. “Good night, Luz. You’re right, I do seem to be awfully tired. I’ll write to Mama and Papa and then I think I’ll——” Her voice trailed off, emptily.
“Sure I can’t help you with anything?”
“No. No really.”
“Good night.” The heels pounded down the hallways. Over her shoulder she tossed a final word. “I’ll wait up have coffee with Bick like always.”
Her trunks had come, the two women were slip-slapping about in her bedroom, the lights were blazing, it was horribly hot. They had hung away most of the gowns; the bureau drawers, open, showed neat rows of pink and blue and white, but a froth of lace and silk on chairs and bed testified to the inadequacy of the room’s cupboards and chests and the fantastic unreality of Mrs. Lynnton’s geographical knowledge.
Leslie, standing in the doorway, began to laugh for no reason at all and the two women, with quick Latin sympathy, laughed to keep her company so that an outsider coming upon the scene might have mistaken the moment for one of girlish merriment.
Leslie clapped a hand to her head. “I am very tired. Will you go away now. And take these things somewhere. Anywhere.”
They were full of little murmurs and nods of understanding. “Sí sí sí! Dolor de cabeza Rendida.” They looked about the room rather wildly, they snatched up armfuls of delicate clothing, they bowed gravely. “Buenas noches, señora.” They were gone, the slip-slip of their feet on the tiled floors. Silence in the great house.
From somewhere outside the hum of a stringed instrument—a guitar? A scent drifted in—a sweet dusty scent. The wind had not stopped blowing, she had hoped it would by nightfall. Hot winds made her nervous and irritable. I must ask Jordan if the wind always blows like this in Texas. Perhaps this was just a windy day. Tomorrow I’ll take a walk. A nice long walk, I’ve been cooped up in that train for days and days.
There was a little glass-fronted bookcase and in it perhaps a dozen books leaning disconsolately against each other or fallen flat in zigzag disorder. She opened the glass door. A little pile of magazines, the Cattleman’s Gazette. Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. A Girl of the Limberlost. The Sheik. Wild Animals I Have Known. The Texas Almanac for 1919. She closed the little glass door.
She went to the door and listened. Nothing. She went through the bedtime ritual of her adult life in Virginia; brushed her hair, washed and creamed her face, wiped it carefully and canceled the process by dusting it over with powder. Men, she had learned, found cold-creamed wives distasteful. She sat down at the little table-desk, she took from the drawer the stationery engraved with the reata, she thought, Lacey would love this.
Dear Papa and Mama and Lacey. She stared at this for a long time. I am camping out in a Spanish castle. But how did you go about writing a letter in which you thought one thing and wrote another?
When Bick came in an hour later she was still seated there with her pen in her hand drawing curlicues on the paper before her—the sheet of paper that said only Dear Papa and Mama and Lacey.
“You still up, honey!”
“It’s only a little past ten—on my beautiful watch that my husband bought for me in New York.”
The dusty clothes he had worn at dinner were a trifle dustier now and as he bent to kiss her there was a horsy smell that was not too unfamiliar to her Virginia background, nor too repugnant. But she made a little face. “Phew! You certainly have been down to see the vet.”
“Gone about a month and you’d think I’d been away a year. Luz always gets the whole place to milling when I’m off.” He paused at the door. “Coming?”
“Where?”
“I’m going down to have some coffee.”
“Can’t you have them bring it up here, all cozy? I don’t think I’ll have any. I’m dead for sleep, suddenly. Do you think it’s the change in climate?”
“Sure. Texas air’s too heady for you after that thin Virginia stuff. Texas air’s so rich you can practically live off it.”
“Darling, you Texans have a kind of folklore, haven’t you?”
“Why, I don’t know exactly. What——”
“Nothing. Uh—look, dear, I must order a lot of books from Brentano’s in Washington.”
“Oh, you won’t do much reading out here.”
“But I always read. I read a lot. It’s like saying you won’t do much breathing out here.” Her tone was a trifle sharp for a bride.
“Here in Texas there’s so much more to do. You won’t have time to read.”
“The house, you mean? Yes, I suppose there must be a lot to do, just running a big house like this.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that. Luz runs the house.”
“But Jordan! I mean—I’m quite good, you know. Really. I know about food and servants and furniture and I’m even a pretty good cook. I’d like to——”
“We’ll let Luz tend to all that. She wouldn’t like anyone else to run the house. She and old Uncle Bawley out at the Holgado Division they can’t bear to have anybody mess in with their way of doing things.”
“But I’m your wife!” Her sense of the ridiculous told her that she was talking like a woman in a melodrama. She began to laugh, rather helplessly. “Let’s not be silly. This is my—this is our house, isn’t it!”
“As long as we live and want it, honey. And you’re going to be happy in it, and relax and have fun. You’re going to love it down here, all the space in the world——”
“Space! Some of the happiest moments of my life have been spent in a telephone booth.”
Bick pulled off his brush jacket and tossed it on a chair, he yawned a shade too carelessly and stretched his arms high above his great hard lean body. There was nothing amorous in the glance his bride bestowed upon this fine male frame. “I’m going down for a cup of coffee. Come on.”
“Jordan Benedict, do you mean you’re going downstairs to have your coffee!”
“I’ve got to talk to her anyway about something. We’ll have to give her time. Luz is used to being the point, she’ll have to have time to get used to being the drag.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what those words mean.”
“That’s so, you don’t,” he agreed genially. “In a roundup—you know what a roundup is—everybody knows what a roundup is—a man—on a horse of course—a man is posted one east one south one west. In a kind of triangle. The front man, the man at the front tip of the triangle, is the point. The other two men at the base of the triangl
e, at the rear end, they’re the drag. Of course the swing men, they’re stationed behind the point man they’ve got to swing in the herd when they scatter. You know we’ve got a saying here in Texas if you owe money or somebody is after you hot on your trail we say, ‘He’s right on your drag.’”
She flew to him, she twined her arms about him, the lace and silk and ribbons were crushed against his dusty boots his crumpled shirt. “You don’t wish you had married a Texas girl, do you, Jordan? That Texas girl. Do you? Jordan!”
“You’re the one I wanted to marry, the only one. Sweet. Wonderful.”
“I’m frightened. For the first time in my life I’m frightened.”
“Frightened of what, honey!”
“I don’t know about all those things. Those Texas things.”
“You will. You’re just tired out. Look, I’ll just run down and see——.”
“Stay with me!”
“I’ll be back in a minute. Come on down with me. Come on, Leslie, unless you’re too tired.”
“Yes, I am. I am too tired. I’ll finish my letter and then I’ll pop into bed. I think I never was so tired in my life.”
She stood a moment after he was gone, listening to the sharp click-clack of the high-heeled boots on the hard floors. She went to the desk, she stared a moment at the words on the paper. Dear Papa and Mama and Lacey. She took up the pen and went on.
I love it. Texas is so different and wonderful. Jordan’s house is huge but then everything’s big here. Luz, Jordan’s sister, the one who was ill, is here with us and I know we’re going to be great friends she’s so refreshing. And all those picturesque vaqueros and the stuffed heads I must write you all about them when I’m feeling more rested after the long journey down.
She began to cry and the tears plopped on the sheet of paper and she quickly dried them with a blotter but they left a little raised spot anyway.
10
She awoke to the most exquisite of morning smells—hot fresh coffee and baking bread. Piercing shafts of light stabbed the drawn window blinds. The wind again. The wind the wind hot and dry. Faraway shouts. The thud of horses’ hoofs. And from somewhere below in the house the mumble of voices talking talking talking an endless flow of talk.
She glanced at the wedding-gift bedside clock, a charming bijou. It was six o’clock. Curiously enough she felt rested, refreshed. Bick was not beside her, he was not in the bathroom, he was nowhere to be seen or heard. In her slippers and robe she tiptoed into the hall. Then she remembered that this was her home, that she was mistress here. She ceased to tiptoe, her slipper heels clip-clapped on the stone floors like every Texan’s. She leaned over the banister as she had done the night before and again she heard the little rustling and stirring near by, but when she turned she saw no one. So she called, very clearly, “Lupe! Petra! Tomás!”
And there was Lupe the silent one and behind her Petra, the younger ones, less somber and secret. Buenos días, señora. Buenos días, senora. Buenos días Petra buenos días Lupe if this keeps on I’ll be speaking Spanish in no time. On the little tray in Petra’s hand was the ubiquitous coffee. The delicious aroma pricked the senses. Leslie drank the brew sweet and black and hot, two of the little cups that were the size of after-dinner cups in Virginia.
“Mmm! Delicious!” she said.
The two nodded violently, their faces broke into smiles, they seemed delighted out of all proportion. “Delicioso, sí! Delicioso!” And Leslie repeated delicioso after them and added a word to her Spanish vocabulary.
It was the nearest approach to friendliness that they had shown. She wondered about them a little. It was curious, their manner, not unfriendly but withdrawn even for a servant—strange, as though they wished to be as unnoticeable as possible. They moved silently, fluidly and with remarkable inefficiency. It was much as though children were trying to help and only succeeding in getting in the way.
But Leslie had decided that nothing would upset her today. A new day, a new home, a new life. Adventure and strangeness and novelty, that was that she always had wanted—freedom from convention and custom grown meaningless. And here it was.
She bathed, listening for Bick’s returning footsteps. She dressed, one ear cocked. She decided on one of the plainer daytime frocks, a little silk, her mother had called this sort of dress. Anything inexpensive was “little”—a little dress, a little dressmaker, a little tailor, a little piece of jewelry. This little dress was of soft blue silk, quite simple. The white suede shoes with the smart blue kid tips and the not too high heels. There was a blue head-hugging hat to match—a cloche, it was called. She was hurrying now, she was listening for departing hoofbeats. But he wouldn’t leave without seeing her.
When she had clattered downstairs there was no one about. The dining room, of course. There was the long table and the same islands of ketchup and chili sauce and vinegar and sugar and oil and cream. The tablecloth, she noticed, had lost the pristine freshness of the night before. She decided that she’d soon attend to that. Spotted tablecloths indeed!
Seated at the table were two men and a woman; the men in boots, canvas trousers and shirts, the woman in what, in Virginia, they called a wash dress. They were eating T-bone steaks with fried eggs on top; and grits and enormous rolls and there were big cups of coffee and large bowls of jams, yellow and purple and scarlet. The three glanced up from the business of eating and looked at her amiably as she entered.
“Howdy!” they said. “Howdy!” And went on eating.
So Texans actually did say howdy like that. She decided to try it herself but shied away from it at the moment of test and said “good morning” instead. “Isn’t it a lovely morning!”
At this they again looked up from their plates but now they regarded her thoughtfully, their gaze more searching and direct.
One of the men—the older one—said, “You visiting from the East, ma’am? Kansas City or around?”
She hesitated a moment. She did not want to embarrass them. “I’m from Virginia. I’m Mrs. Benedict.”
They seemed to find this in no way remarkable. “How-do!” said the young woman, a little more in the way of formality. “Howdy, ma’am,” the men said. And the older one again took the lead. “Hodgins is my name. Clay Hodgins.” He pointed with the tip of his knife. “My boy Gib and his wife Essie Lou. We’re from up in Deaf Smith County, we been taking in the Fat Stock Show down to Hermoso.”
Leslie had seated herself at an empty place at table, she leaned forward, her face alight with interest. “Why that sounds fascinating. I’d love to go to a fat stock show.” And she meant it.
“Well, it’s over, honey,” the girl said.
A Mexican girl placed a platter before Leslie. On it was a slab of flat greyish steak that bore a nightmarish resemblance to its twin of the night before. Two fried eggs atop it glared at her with angry yellow eyes. Hot thick biscuits in a little baking crock, they bubbled a little with heat and butter. Coffee. Hurriedly Leslie poured the coffee, she regarded the three bright-eyed over the cup’s steaming fragrance. “Tell me about it,” she said. “Do they have to be fat—and how fat?”
They all laughed politely at that and she realized that they thought she was being humorous. The young man now spoke rather shyly in a charmingly soft musical voice, he blushed a little as he spoke. Leslie thought him most engaging. “We figured we’d best get an early start, we lit out of Hermoso three this morning it looked to be such a hot of a day down here, we figured to make three four hundred miles before daylight and we sure enough did.”
“How nice,” Leslie murmured inadequately.
Now the girl spoke up again, her voice was a shrill rasp after the man’s low soft drawl. “We come away without what we went down after, mostly, though.”
“What a pity,” Leslie said. “What was that, do you mind telling me?”
“Appaloosas,” the girl said.
Defeated in this, Leslie was girding herself for further enlightenment when the younger man unwittingly came to
her rescue.
“You wouldn’t believe, would you,” he demanded, rather heatedly for one whose voiced indignation was so gentle and slow-spoken, “that they wasn’t a bunch of appaloosas I’d cut up into horse meat! All we was looking for was five six real using horses that rein good and work a rope.”
“Well, now,” the older man ventured gently. “I wouldn’t go so far’s to say they wasn’t some might have fitted in, but not what you’d call real outstanding individuals.”
“So,” the younger man concluded, ignoring this defense of the four-footed humans, “we said well, look, we’re riding right by Bick Benedict’s country we could easy drop in see what he can show and sure enough we got just what we come for, we could of saved ourselves a heap of time and trouble down to Hermoso.”
“Yes, but,” the girl protested, “I had a real time for myself with the stores and the shows and all.”
“Well,” the man named Clay said, and rose from the table. “We got to be going along.” Gib and Essie Lou pushed back their chairs. “Next time you come up to Deaf Smith you come and pay us a visit we’d sure be glad to see you, we’re up there outside Umbarger. Course it’s kind of wildish up there, not like here, and we only got a small place—couple hundred thousand acres—it ain’t what you’d call a braggin’ ranch—but it’s all deeded, no lease land, and like I say to Gib and Essie Lou, it’s home.” He drew a long breath after this speech and glanced at the others in a kind of oratorical triumph.
“I’d love to,” Leslie said. “Perhaps someday when my husband is out that way he’ll take me along. I want to see every bit of Texas. Is it far?”
Gib considered this question a moment as though loath to be less than strictly accurate. “It’s a far piece, yes ma’am. But then again, not too far. About eight hundred miles if you come right along——”
Taptaptap. Swift high-heeled boots. Luz Benedict. “Well, howdy!” she cried. “Sure nice to see you! When’d you blow in? You been treated right?”
“Sure have, ma’am.”
“Hope you’re aiming to stay awhile.”