by John Boyd
“You’re welcome,” Ian called, still crouched. He was falling for no Mountain Meadows trick. These men, all six of them, had not ridden this far to thank him for straightening out some wild galoot.
“But mostly I’ve come, with witnesses, to speak to the father of one Gabriella Stewart. My son, Billy, wants to come courting; I want to talk dowry.”
“Her pa’s dead,” Widow Stewart called.
Impelled by a sudden and inexplicable interest, Ian shouted across the intervening yards. “But maybe you can still talk to her pa, Peyton, if he’s in heaven. I hear you can talk to an angel named Moroni.”
“Nope, not Moroni,” the grim but still smiling Mormon called back. “I talk to Namoo. He’s my personal angel. I talked to Moroni once, but he’s hard to get to. And I never heard of no angel called Stewart.”
“I don’t mean Stewart’s an angel,” Ian corrected him. “Talking direct to Stewart ain’t the idea… But you keep calling them angels he. Is angels boys?”
It was the craziest talk Ian had ever held over the barrel of a pistol, but the Mormon seemed interested.
“I wouldn’t know, McCloud. I ain’t never seen an angel with its robes off, but I just don’t feel right calling an angel it like a horse or dog.”
“What do angels look like?”
“Pure light, son. Robed in radiance the likes of which you never saw before.”
Now Ian was less amazed by his own questions than by the alacrity with which Peyton answered them, and on the sidelines Brother Winchester joined in the discussion.
“That’s what I been telling them, Superintendent Peyton. See, brothers and sisters, here’s a man who knows.”
“You wear blinders when you talk to angels?”
The question was hurled from the far side of the tables by Hendricks, the horse breeder, and Ian waved to the gallery for silence, calling over to Peyton, “What I mean, Mr. Peyton, is that you can ask Namoo to ask Moroni to ask Gabriel to go over and talk to Mr. Stewart…”
As Ian commenced to explain to Bryce Peyton a logical solution to the Mormon’s problem, commenting to himself how easy it was to solve other people’s problems, Liza screamed behind him, “I’m the girl’s mother, and I handle the dowries in this family. Billy can take potluck with the other boys when he comes calling, but Gabe’s taking nothing with her when she leaves my bed and board but her pa’s books, and that’s all Billy Peyton’s worth.”
“Agreed, ma’am,” Bryce Peyton said. “I thank you, and I’ll tell Billy.”
Bryce Peyton held up his hand in a gesture of farewell. Remembering that this man was a stake superintendent, Ian yelled “Why don’t you light and have a bite with us, super. I’d like to talk more about them angels.”
“I’m mighty obliged, son, but I can’t accept. I got twenty-three mouths to feed, and they keep me right busy. Maybe with Billy farming I’ll have more time when crops are laid by.”
Still smiling, Peyton wheeled his horse and with his five lesser saints rode back up the hill. He had smiled all through Liza’s speech, and she had been downright unpleasant. Bryce Peyton had a facial affliction of some sort, Ian decided.
“All right, folks, you can go back to your socializing,” Ian said. “It’s all over.”
He turned to Liza. “I thank you for backing me up, ma’am, but you’ve got to be more careful. You ought not to go risking a woman like you in Wyoming.”
“No trouble at all, Ian,” she said. “But me and Gabe ain’t had the chance to visit with you. Why don’t you ride back with us as far as the ranch on your way to town?”
“I’d be right happy to, Liza,” Ian managed to answer before a tide of young middle-aged males and a sprinkling of middling young males swept between them, a few eddying around Ian to congratulate him on his stand against the Mormons.
Ian acknowledged the compliments as graciously as his preoccupation permitted, but his one remaining task, the acquisition of a road gang, oppressed his mind and led him to a sympathetic appreciation of the problems of lawmen. He had to jail enough men to build the road and he had to do it legally, without knowing the law, and he could not arrest drunks in the saloon or Mormons. By the time the town’s government got through putting hedges around its law enforcer, he thought ruefully, he’d be able to arrest only bushwhackers who shot people in the back in broad daylight in the presence of at least three witnesses.
One good thing had happened today, the picnic. After riding home from a whole afternoon of eating, Liza would be in no mood to fix a chicken supper, for it was getting late. He could look forward to some uninterrupted courting time with Gabriella as long as he pastured Midnight out of hearing distance.
The horse was getting to be a mite jealous of him, and, to make it worse, the beast was a stallion.
6
Sunset had faded to purple when the trio drew up to the widow’s ranch. By the time Ian got the mare unhitched and Midnight tethered in the front pasture, Liza had lighted the lamp in the parlor and turned the wick down low.
“It’s rather warmish tonight,” she said. “I’ll go open a few windows to cool the house. You young folks can set in the parlor, Ian, if Gabe can’t bulldog you out to the porch swing. Either, you won’t disturb me. I sleep in the back bedroom. I go to roost with the chickens since I get up with them, and after all that eating and excitement, I ought to sleep like a log.”
“I’d like to set out on the front steps for a while,” Ian began, “if Gabe’s willing…”
“She’s willing.”
“… and learn something about the stars from a teacher. It beats me how I been studying about the stars and angels lately.”
“Some nice things up there.” Liza nodded. “Some nice things lower down, too. Well, good night, you ’uns. Don’t do anything I’d do.”
“Don’t mind mama’s language,” Gabriella said, after her mother left, “because she’s got a little Eve in her. Maybe more of Eve than Eve had. My mother would have never tempted Adam with an apple; she would have baked him an apple pie.”
“That was brave of her, standing behind me like she did,” Ian commented. “If the Mormons had drilled me, the bullet could have hit her.”
“She’s bold, all right… Let’s go sit in the swing, Ian. It’s stuffy in here.”
“To tell the truth, Gabe, I’d rather set on the steps and have you name some of the stars for me.”
“Come then. I’ll show you the stars first.”
Going onto the porch, he closed the parlor door behind him to keep from outlining himself against the light and said, “We can see the stars better in the dark.”
From the far darkness of the front pasture, Midnight nickered a greeting as the horse saw its master emerge.
“That’s the darnedest horse I ever did see, ” Ian commented. “One day it tries to kill me, the next it follows me around like a dog.”
“It loves you Ian, because it knows you’re a very masterful person.”
Seating her on his left to keep his holster free, he looked up toward the road but couldn’t see the horse in the darkness. With a horse the color of midnight, a man wouldn’t be able to make a quick getaway in the dark because he’d have to spend some time looking for his horse. He wouldn’t be having that trouble when he took over Colonel Blicket’s Kentucky-bred gray. Only fog could hide Traveler II, and there were far fewer fogs than there were dark nights.
He felt slightly zany thinking about the gray while he sat with a girl beside him under the light of the Western stars with a faint scent of purple sage wafting in from the wastelands.
“Funny thing,” he said, “I’ve rode under the stars all my life and never paid them no mind. Course, if I rode out some cloudless night and didn’t see none up there, I’d be tolerably surprised. But ever since I met you I been thinking different. You may think me bold in telling you this, Gabriella, but maybe it’s you that set me thinking about stars and angels.”
“I know you’re bold, Ian,” she murmured, “and w
omen love a brave man. But how in the world could I set you to thinking about things so unworldly. Is it because I’m a schoolteacher?”
“No’m,” he said, thinking that she couldn’t do anything more than slap his jaws if he told her the truth. “The other night, after I met you, I was looking up at the stars, and I’ll be a wart-headed horned toad if the Milky Way up yonder didn’t remind me of the freckles under your eyes.”
“Why, Ian! That’s a pretty thing to tell me. It may not be grammatical, but it sure is poetical. Now, tell me, why do I remind you of angels?”
“I reckon it’s the way you walk, Gabriella, like an angel flies. I’m not saying there ain’t some hefty parts to you, but even the hefty parts are heavenly.”
“These steps are a little hard, Ian. The swing has pads.”
Although he liked the idea of sitting in the swing with her, years of being hunted had honed his instincts, and now he sensed that something besides the horse lurked in the darkness, some other unseen listener. If he had to draw quickly, the swing would give him an unstable platform.
“First, I’d like to find out about the stars,” he insisted. “Course, I guide on the North Star, but that’s the only one I know by name.”
“Very well, Ian. Close your right eye, lean your head over, and sight along my arm with your left eye so you can see exactly where I’m pointing.”
To balance himself, he flattened his palm against the boards on the other side of her which placed his arm around her. She understood he was merely balancing himself, because she had to hang onto his left thigh with her left hand to keep her own balance as she pointed.
“The one yonder is Betelgeuse,” she said, “and the big bright one is Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus. ‘Taurus’ means ‘the bull,’ and it’s chasing the Seven Sisters. Looks like the bull’s about to catch Merope; she’s the veiled one of the Seven Sisters and apt to be unveiled in a hurry. Now, Betelgeuse is in Orion, and Orion’s a hunter. Perhaps he intends to shoot the bull and take the Seven Sisters for himself.”
Listening raptly, Ian figured the Seven Sisters were in for it, one way or the other, for Gabriella’s words made the stars come alive. With her as a teacher, he might have become an astrologer.
“That group near the polestar is the constellation called Andromeda, named after a woman who consorted with some strange creatures. If the whole truth were known about her, no gentleman would be caught taking that woman to church…”
Gabriella hadn’t seemed too interested in the stars at the outset, but she was warming up to the subject now. He couldn’t remember the names of most of them—couldn’t even see them since the down of her arm blocked his view—but he would not have changed places for anything in the sky. Her shoulder fit the hollow of his cheek, and her perfume was sweeter than that of the honeysuckle vine.
He had never known there were so many stars. Some names he could remember, such as Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee, but he knew, after she named Andromeda, that he’d never be able to match all these stars with their names.
When, finally, she grew tired, she leaned her head against his and dropped her pointing hand into his hand. “Now, tell me, Ian. What do you want most out of life?”
At the moment, he wanted about fourteen men for a road gang, but he didn’t think it proper to talk about lawbreakers to a schoolteacher.
“You tell me first,” he stalled.
“I’d like a good stone schoolhouse built close to the Mormon’s stake boundary with lots of students paying two dollars head tax. I’d like for about ten of my students to be by my own brave, strong husband.”
“That would be about thirty dollars tuition,” he said. “Maybe that’s why the Mormons won’t send their children to school. Mr. Bryce Peyton’s eighteen would cost him about seventy dollars, likely more’n he makes for a year. If you cut your rate on big orders, maybe the Mormons would come in.”
“One thing I’m bound and determined, Ian, is never to lower my fees. A dollar earned is a dollar saved, I say.”
“I ain’t really took to the idea myself,” he admitted, “I was just practicing my sums.”
“Fie on sums. Now, you tell me Ian, what would you like to do most, right now?”
Right now, he would like for her to kiss him and hug him, but he was shy around schoolteachers with high ideals, so he merely said, “You’d slap my face if I told you.”
“You know I’m dead set against violence. Go right ahead and tell me.”
“Ladies first.”
“Cross your heart and hope to die if you tell?”
“Cross my heart,” he promised.
“I’d like to have one good, solid sin under my belt,” she confessed, “so I could go up to the altar and confess it in church. I feel a might lonely, sitting back there in the pews all by myself when the other women go strutting up. Then mama won’t lord it over me. Tell me, Ian, have you ever had a hankering to sin?”
“Not till right now, Gabe. All other times, I just fall into them, natural like. But I’d like to march up to the altar and kneel beside you.”
“Why, Ian, that’s the nicest thing a boy ever said to me. I want to reward you with something that almost any girl can give a boy, but it counts for more when it’s give for the first time. I want to give you the first kiss I ever gave a boy.”
“I’d really appreciate it, Gabe.”
She reached up and kissed him on the lips, but she didn’t hug him.
“That’s half of what I wanted,” he admitted, “but it looks like I’m going to have to take the other half on my own.”
He put his arms around her and hugged her, giving her back a kiss.
“To the swing, Ian,” she whispered.
Now he knew what Bain had meant when the saloon keeper said he could taste poker chips. Ian could taste the wood, paint, cushions, and chain the swing swung by, and he was going to chance it if it meant getting gunned down in the dark.
“Let’s go, girl.”
As he stood, he could faintly see from the corner of his eyes a deeper darkness move behind the dark honeysuckle vines on the south side of the porch. “Gabe, we got us a snooper,” he whispered, and sprinted along the yard toward the vines, drawing his pistol.
He was running in high-heeled boots, and he had to swing around a rosebush planted near the corner of the porch. Whoever it had been was alerted by Ian’s movement and was sprinting toward the ravine. Ian pulled to a halt, knowing he was beaten before he started, for the whop-whop of shoes hitting the ground was dwindling across the side yard.
Probably some chicken-stealing Indian, Ian decided; the snooper was running too fast to be a white man.
Suddenly the rapid whop-whop of the running shoes ended in a sodden whomp, and there was silence.
“Some Indian’s necked himself on the clothesline, Gabe,” he called to the girl, keeping his voice low. “Crack the parlor door to give us a little light, but go easy so you don’t wake up your mama. She’d die if she thought some Indian was stealing her chickens.”
He walked through the dark to the clothesline and felt along it until he stepped on a body. Grabbing it by a leg, he dragged it toward the front porch. From its weight, it might make a good culvert digger, except Indians were lazy. Gabriella watched from the porch as he dragged the body into the spreading sliver of light from the parlor.
His Indian was Billy Peyton, bandaged hand and all, dressed in overall and shod in clodknockers. In a fit of rage, Ian drew back his foot and kicked the supine farmer prone.
Peyton’s rib cracked, he moaned, and Gabriella screamed from the porch, “Don’t do that, Ian. Oh, please don’t!”
Denied physical expression by the girl’s dislike of violence, Ian shouted down at Peyton, “Come on, act alive. I heard you moan, so I know you ain’t dead. So far, all you’ve got is a little necking. I know you’ve took more than this.”
Suddenly Liza’s voice keened through the front bedroom window, “Gentle does it, Ian. That filly ain’t b
een broke yet.”
“Oh, mother,” Gabriella shouted. “Get back to your own bedroom and quit eavesdropping.”
As Gabriella rushed over to slam the window shut, Billy Peyton sat up, rubbing his jaw.
“Why are you sneaking around here, plowboy?” Ian asked.
“I brought over your laundry, Mr. McCloud, like you told me to do.”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out Ian’s bandanna, freshly laundered, starched, and ironed. “I didn’t want to take it all the way to town. I’m a little sensitive about my finger, and farming’s been keeping me busy. Besides, I wanted to see if Miss Stewart would let me call on her when you’re not visiting, because I know she wants them Mormon children for her school and I can help.”
“Billy Peyton, you can call on me if you wish, but I’ll never marry a Mormon.”
“I’ve decided to convert, ma’am. I’m joining the Methodist Church next Sunday, and I’d be powerfully pleased if you’d let me come calling, if you’re not ashamed to be seen with a cripple like me.”
“Oh, hush up, Billy. You’re no cripple. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. And I’ll believe you’re converted when I see you baptized, next Sunday morning.”
“Where’s your horse?” Ian asked.
“I left my mule down in the ravine—the beast has a fondness for willow leaves—and came up on foot. I wasn’t going to stay, but I got interested in the stars. Then I waited to see if you could persuade Miss Stewart to sit in the swing. I courted her for six months and never got her out of the parlor.”
“Well, boy, you’ve brung my laundry, and you’ve seen all you’re going to see. Scratch gravel!”
Holding his neck, Billy Peyton stumbled off into the darkness. Listening to his footsteps make a wide circuit of the clothesline, Ian suddenly found the answer to his greatest problem. Already he knew enough about the town’s laws to get him a road gang by morning and put enough money into the road fund to pay top prices for box lunches.