Sisters of Grass

by Theresa Kishkan

  Out the door, out to the barn to change into her blessed trousers in the tack-room graced by a coyote skull over the lintel, grabbing a bridle and a tin of oats. Daisy was standing under a cottonwood with the blue roan gelding, and Margaret gave them each a handful of oats, leading Daisy away to be saddled by the barn. She wanted to be up on the ridge before the sun came over, wanted to see the darkened windows flare. It was a Sunday, and everyone was taking an hour or two of extra rest, even the ranch dogs lying on the porch. One of them barked a little as Margaret led Daisy through the gate and then returned to sleep.

  Daisy was fresh and sidestepped as Margaret tried to mount; once up, she tightened the reins as the mare snorted and blew, wanting to run. Margaret gave her the chance on the lower slope of the ridge, letting her gallop until she slowed down as the hill grew steeper, sweet oaten breath drifting back to her rider’s face. Once on the summit, Margaret dismounted to look back at the ranch as the sun came up. Everything was illuminated, house, summer kitchen, barn, bunkhouse, by clean sunlight. A rooster crowed once, then again for the sound of his own voice. Seeing her home from this vantage gave Margaret a sharp delicious ache, as though she was watching the life of the ranch go on without her. As though she had never been part of it, watching from the years ahead while the trees grew to shelter her absence. Mounting again, she rode east, letting Daisy gallop along the ridge, the smell of young southernwood rising from her hooves.

  She decided to ride to the spring range to see if there were messages to take home to her father. The cowhands were camped in a shack they’d fixed up, their bedrolls stretched out on plank bunks, a stone fireplace outside to bake biscuits and grill slabs of marbled beef. An old coffee pot frothed continuously on the back of the fire, the cook adding water until the cowhands refused to drink the bitter brew; then he’d rinse the pot in a cursory sort of way in the nearby creek and start fresh. They were pleased with this cook, a Celestial who’d come recommended from Douglas Lake last year. He had an odd smell, sort of sweet and tarry; Margaret’s father told her it was opium, which the Celestials smoked. She found the little jars sometimes when she helped to clean up the camp after the cowhands had moved on to a new range and was fascinated by the writing on them, more like the marks on her grandmother’s baskets than the alphabet she knew. And once she found a tin with a rooster on its label. Opening it, she could smell the cook’s fingers as he handed her a plate of food, his clothing.

  As Margaret rode, she was thinking of the treat in store for her family. Her father had purchased tickets for concert in Kamloops; Madame Emma Albani was coming to the Opera House with several other singers, and Father had booked rooms at the Grand Pacific Hotel. They were going by stage — the Costleys ran stages in summer, fall and spring, and a horse-drawn sleigh in winter — and were making a holiday of it. Father knew Angus Nelson, the rider for the stable, from the days when the Kamloops hockey team came to play at Nicola Lake. Angus had been both team captain and a forward during the last game at the Kamloops rink; Margaret’s father had played goal for Nicola. That was 1902, and every year since then, both men hoped to organize more games. They’d meet on the Kamloops-Forksdale road, William Stuart taking harness into Nicola Lake to be mended or planning to look at a horse at Pooley’s, Angus Nelson stopping the stage briefly to discuss the possibility of matches for the upcoming winter. It was Angus who told William about Madame Albani’s concert: “You’ll not have the chance again, Stuart. She has a stop-over en route to a concert in Vancouver, and she’s giving this concert as a kindness, really. Bring the family, why don’t you? You and I could meet for a drink at the Inland Club and talk about next winter.”

  Margaret had never attended any function at the Opera House. She’d seen the building on trips to Kamloops and loved its facade, imagining the opulent interior. She would wear her deep rose muslin dress and the pearls Father had given her for her sixteenth birthday. Musing and dreaming, she rode on until Daisy stopped in her tracks and nickered softly.

  Three men sat under a ponderosa; one of them she recognized as George Edwards, who worked, as far as she knew, at the Douglas Lake ranch. He rose and walked toward her, holding his palm flat for Daisy to sniff.

  “It’s Stuart’s girl, isn’t it? I’ve seen you with your dad. Where are you bound for?”

  (From my distance ahead of her, waiting in history, I want to tell her, Yes, take pleasure in pearls, yes, show kindness to acquaintances and strangers taking the morning air under a patterned shadow of pines.)

  “Yes, I recognize you, Mr. Edwards. I’m going to our spring range, to see if there’s anything the men need. It was too nice when I woke up to do anything but saddle my horse and think of somewhere to ride.”

  She’d always liked George Edwards. He played fiddle sometimes at the socials, and he often had candy for children he met. People said he’d been a cobbler, and in fact he made shoes for some of the poorest families in the area, never charging them anything. It was odd to see him away from Douglas Lake, though. As if he read her thoughts, he said, “I’m not working for Greaves anymore. There was an accident with the irrigation team, some Chinaman thought I’d killed his brother and threatened to poison me. And who can blame him if he really believed I was responsible, though I wasn’t. But Joe and I thought I should make myself scarce, so I’m doing a little prospecting now with Shorty, here, and Louis. We’ve got our eye on a creek over towards Tulameen. Here you go, young lady, something to sweeten your ride.”

  Mr. Edwards handed her a peppermint stick, a swirl of red and white stripes, and she tucked it into her pocket for later. The other two men nodded to her and began gathering up their gear. She waved goodbye and went on her way, thinking how nice Mr. Edwards was, how gentle his eyes under the brim of his hat, which he’d raised to her as if she were a grown woman. She liked to listen to his drawl, and when he sang “My Old Kentucky Home” there were always tears.

  The next morning was overcast, some rain and then periods when the billowing clouds parted enough to let the sun through. In the higher parts of the plateau, on Hamilton Mountain, for instance, it would be snowing, the clouds shaking down gusts of it to dust the new flowers and grass. When Margaret’s father asked her to take some pinkeye medicine for the new calves to the spring camp, she readily agreed. Daisy had returned home from yesterday’s ride with a bruised frog as a result of picking up a sharp pebble in her hoof, so Margaret saddled the blue roan gelding, a bigger and stronger mount. Like Daisy, he was very fresh and wanted to run. They finished the errand quickly, and Margaret decided to take the longer way home, around Chapperon Lake, to see if the cranes had returned to the marsh at the end of the lake. She loved to watch them flying on the thermals in a V like geese but then dispersing in the warm air, gathering again in formation as they met the next current. Sometimes there would be nearly a hundred in flight, though only about ten pairs nested on the marsh. They were beautiful birds, graceful in flight and attentive to their young. She couldn’t imagine hunting them, though her mother’s people must have done so. She wondered if they tasted like goose, which was delicious. In hunting season her father shot ducks and geese and returned home with strings of them hanging behind his saddle. She hated plucking them because they had to be singed, a disgusting job, but then Mother roasted some with stuffings of apples, dried serviceberries and onions and preserved a few in their own fat to flavour soups in winter.

  The terrain near Chapperon Lake was rocky, wooded with tall firs and aspens and, in the draws near water, slender willows and cottonwoods. The gelding was sure-footed, and Margaret was not paying much attention when suddenly he shied to the left, almost unseating her. Ahead, perhaps a hundred feet, she could see a little wisp of smoke rising from behind a low, brushy hill. A mounted rider gestured to a party of men to close ranks behind him. They all dismounted and stepped slowly into the brush. Realizing that she hadn’t been seen, Margaret slid down from her saddle and tied the gelding to a tree. She walked quietly towards the smoke, and when she co
uld see the fire it came from, she slipped behind a tree. To her surprise, the men around the campfire were Mr. Edwards and his companions. One of the strangers asked them where they’d come from.

  “Across the river,” George Edwards replied. He explained that they’d been prospecting, his voice calm and soft.

  The stranger said, “You answer the description of the train robbers we are hunting for, and I arrest you for that crime.”

  Margaret nearly cried out, “No, you’ve got it all wrong, that’s Mr. Edwards, we all know him, he plays the fiddle,” but something, a keen fear, made her return to her horse as Mr. Edwards replied, “Well, we don’t look much like train robbers, do we?” She quickly untied the gelding, jumped into the saddle and moved away as quietly as she could. All of a sudden there was shouting — “Look out boys, it’s all up” — and then gunshots, many of them, and a man screamed, “I’m shot!”

  Margaret pressed her heels into the gelding’s sides and urged him to gallop as fast as he could. Her heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t catch her breath, but she didn’t dare pull her horse up until she reckoned she was a mile or two away. When she finally let the gelding stop, he was lathered with sweat, and she was trembling so hard she had to dismount and sit down in the new grass to calm herself, not caring if it was wet with the day’s rain.

  Closing her eyes, she saw the strangers sneaking towards Mr. Edwards’s camp, heard the stern voice of the one who accused the three of being train robbers, Mr. Edwards’s calm, friendly reply. She heard the shots, echoes making it impossible to tell whether there’d been three shots or thirty, the scream, the shouting and chaos in the grove of trees. Her horse’s eyes had shown white when she’d mounted him, snapped at his rump with her glove so he took off in a scuffle of dust and mud, kicked him to a gallop. Unshod, his feet had pounded the ground without the ringing of metal shoe on rock. She opened her eyes again and got up to make sure he hadn’t chipped a hoof or injured an ankle. He was quiet, standing beside her while she felt his legs, lifting each foot to examine it; she heard his tail swish away the flies and felt his breath on the back of her neck as he turned to see what she was doing. She tried to figure out what she’d seen, what had happened to Mr. Edwards. Was it he who had screamed out that he was shot? Was there anyone she should tell? She wondered if she’d been seen by the strangers, but as no one had followed her, she assumed she hadn’t. She decided to ride home right away, the day ruined by the unexpected brutality in the brush near the cranes’ marsh.

  I have dreamed of a girl bent at the waist to make herself low on her horse’s neck. Particles of dust in the dream, strong sweat, long cry of cranes across the pastures. Those men under the pines will be remembered — stern faces looking into a camera lens, broken boots, a worn felt hat. In the memory of a girl, riding in search of wild birds, will linger the image of three men sitting in calm air, a battered coffee pot aslant on a piece of stone. A place that might still hold the mystery of shouts and gunshot, the silenced cranes on the edge of water. Where clouds passing over the bodies of the hills might contain the smoke of their cooking fire.

  At the ranch, there were several men in the yard, talking to her father while the sheets snapped and blew in the wind. One man was saying, “They know where the scoundrels are, more or less, they’ve found tracks, and I’d say they’ll get them any time now.”

  William Stuart called Margaret to him. “I should never have sent you over to the camp this morning. Bill Miner and his gang are on the loose, I didn’t hear until now that they robbed a train over at Ducks last week and have been spotted up by Campbell’s Meadow. The tracks show them heading over towards Minnie Lake. Go now and take the saddle off that horse, and then I want you to stay close to home until they’re caught. A search party is out now with Indian trackers, so it shouldn’t be long.”

  Margaret said nothing. Walking the gelding over to the corral, she began to tremble again. She knew that she couldn’t tell her father what she’d seen, thank goodness she hadn’t remembered to tell him at dinner last night about seeing George Edwards and his companions. But he liked Mr. Edwards, so why was she relieved not to have told him? It was all so confusing. Was the man Mr. Edwards called Shorty or the one introduced as Louis really the train robber Bill Miner? Why were those men shooting, and who had screamed? One thing she knew for certain: if her father knew she had been where men were shooting, he’d never let her ride alone again.

  William saddled up his own horse and headed out with the other men, asking Margaret to milk the cow in his absence. They were headed over to Douglas Lake to see if they could help with the search. Each carried a rifle slung over his shoulder, and Margaret saw her father tuck his Colt into his jacket pocket. She shivered to think of her father in danger and then shivered again to remember how close she’d been to danger herself.

  In the house, her mother was clearing up after what had obviously been an interrupted dinner. Her father’s plate still held a portion of roast beef and a mound of mashed potatoes.

  “Let me get you something to eat, Margaret. You must be hungry.”

  “No, Mother, I’m fine. I ate a big breakfast and took some bread along on the ride. I’ll help you with this.”

  The routine of clearing plates, stacking them, putting food away helped to settle her heart and mind. She worked hard at the chores for what remained of the afternoon, taking out dinner leavings for the pigs and making sure the horses all had water. She ate supper with her sisters and brother and washed their dishes when they’d finished. At dusk her father was still not back, and so she took out a scalded bucket and milked the Jersey cow who provided milk for the household. Leaning her cheek against the cow’s warm flank soothed her as she squeezed each teat, felt the warm fluid as it left the cow’s body, listened to the ping against the side of the bucket. Margaret strained the milk, cleaned the bucket and put the jug in the cellar to cool. Already the cream was collecting on the surface; by morning her mother would skim off a full third of the jugful for butter.

  Back in the kitchen, Jenny Stuart was sewing by lamplight. Margaret took up a shirt of her father’s from the mending basket and began to turn the collar so the frayed part would be underneath. By the time they heard hoofbeats in the yard and the chorus of barking, it was almost completely dark outside.

  William called to the ranch dogs to quiet down. He came in, bringing with him a gust of cool air, and he carefully put his rifle away.

  “Well, they got the men all right, but you’ll never guess who Bill Miner turns out to be. George Edwards! You know him, Margaret, from Douglas Lake? And Jenny, you remember his fiddle playing? Imagine that. I thought for certain they’d made a mistake, but Corporal Wilson from Kamloops is positive this is Miner because of some tattoos. They’ve gone over to Quilchena for the night to get Doctor Tuthill to look at the one who was shot.”

  “One was shot?” Margaret asked, wondering which man had screamed so horribly and if he was still alive.

  “A fellow called Dunn. Not seriously, though, just a flesh wound to the leg. I can’t get over old Edwards, for the life of me. A decent man. We all said that over at Douglas Lake when the Royal North West Mounted Police brought them in. Greaves was the most surprised, didn’t believe it at first. I think maybe I don’t still. Is there a chance of some supper, Jenny?”

  Jenny quickly got her husband a plate of cold beef and pickle, a couple of biscuits, and a wedge of cheese. She poured him a glass of milk from the pitcher she kept cool on the window sill. With his feet on the fender of the big range, he told them about seeing the trio brought in to the home ranch at Douglas Lake, exclaiming every few minutes that he found it hard to believe that Edwards was a train robber. He was too polite for that, surely. And the one other fellow, the one that hadn’t been shot, he was so well-spoken, more like a banker than a criminal.

  Under her wild geese quilt that night, Margaret dreamed of the three men being herded to Quilchena by a posse of gun-slingers and woke in a panic about her own role
in the event. Should she have told her father about seeing the shoot-out by the lake? She decided in the moonlight that her father would only worry, and she was safe, wasn’t she, so why trouble him with the information? No, this would be a secret between her and the blue roan gelding, and he wouldn’t talk, of that she was certain.

  I am between two worlds. At my desk in the museum, collating pages or making detailed notes on the items that are brought in to me, my mind wanders along the road winding up behind Quilchena, a road I have driven on to find myself among horses. Outside my window, the dense coastal vegetation obliterates the sky. A quilt, neatly folded in a box, waits for me to examine it. Early in the month I woke from a dream of three men, bent under the weight of provisions, walking across the high grasslands. There was such silence in the grass and overhead a sky like a book of hours, blue and open. In the dream I was a girl again, alone under the sky, waiting for my life to begin, waiting for the pages to turn. And now, well underway, I am left to wonder about the men, the girl, their landscape of sage, pine, soft grasses and wild clematis. Back and forth I move, between home and the valley, my work and this deep exploration of place, the years of my girlhood and the present, between the life of the body and what remains, a few objects, a tube of bone on a rocky hill. Across the hills the men made their way, a girl watching them in secrecy, while on the marshy shores of a lake, cranes nested with their young, oblivious.

  And what of the woman I leave when I take the road high above Quilchena? Does she continue on, unchanged, sorting through a box of leavings, wondering about the propriety of reading letters addressed to another? Of preparing marriage linens to be viewed by a generation that never embroidered the initials of lovers into fine cotton? Did anyone know that by such things lives are remembered?

  Thinking makes me heavy with loss. I think of Sappho, surrounded by young women, and I understand the wistfulness of her lyrics.