The Unplowed Sky

by Jeanne Williams

  It was awful! Putting scary names on people was what Cotton did in bigoted ignorance and Raford in calculated malice. She suspected that Garth’s mission tonight would be futile and he wouldn’t want to talk to anyone—her least of all—when he came home. His accusation—that she had sparked Rory’s desertion—still rankled, but she had to warn him.

  And tell him she could run the engine. Hallie started some coffee. Then she opened the prayer book and read aloud, “Help us not to fear the terrors and dangers of this night.” But she was afraid. For all of them, but especially for Garth.

  As time crawled, in spite of her anxiety, weariness blurred the words on the page. Several times she snapped awake as her head started to droop forward.

  What was taking Garth so long? She hoped that at least he and his brother wouldn’t use their fists on each other. Coffee revived her for a little while, but she was nodding again when a motor roused her. It stopped outside. She heard Garth thank Rich and tell him good night. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, she jumped up and had a cup of coffee poured when Garth walked in.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  From the hurt anger that smoldered in his eyes, she didn’t need to ask what had happened. “I hunted around for another engineer or separator man,” he said. “Couldn’t find either one, what with threshing already started. Rich’ll drive me to Dodge City tomorrow. Maybe we’ll find someone there.”

  “Garth, I can run the engine.” Annoyed that he hadn’t thought of her even in his desperation, and more annoyed at his incredulous stare, Hallie said firmly, “I can’t do a lot of the maintenance, and I’d want you to help get up steam a few times, but Baldy could help me with the firing. I know how to use the injector, make a set, and belt up. You’ve seen me.”

  A spark of hope flickered and died in his eyes. “Who’ll help Shaft?”

  “Meg can do a lot. Jackie loves to fetch and carry. If Baldy and you can get up steam of a morning, I can help with breakfast and get dinner started. Shaft thinks you can surely find a girl who’d like to hire on somewhere along the way.”

  “So Shaft thinks this could work?”

  “Yes.” She couldn’t keep the acid from her tone. “So do I, or I wouldn’t offer.”

  A reluctant smile tugged at the corners of the mouth she longed to feel hard and sweet on hers. “Guess it’s a good thing you learned, daft as it seemed last summer.”

  “I wouldn’t have tried if you hadn’t thought I couldn’t do it.”

  “It’s not so much I thought you couldn’t. More I thought you shouldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Too dangerous.”

  “It’s dangerous for men, too.”

  “Sure, but—” He made a helpless gesture.

  “The way you feel about women, I’d think you’d be glad to get rid of at least one of us.”

  His hands clamped tight on her upper arms. “Don’t say that!”

  Their eyes battled. A wild tingling sweetness flowed through her, dissolving her strength. Her lips parted, waited for his as blood drummed in her ears.

  He released her abruptly. She almost fell, had to steady herself against the table. Why had he drawn back as if her flesh burned him?

  “All right,” he said roughly. “You can have a try at the engine till we come across a man who can either run it or the separator. Baldy and I’ll fire it up in the morning while you help Shaft get breakfast. Then it’ll be all yours.”

  Suppressing her baffled disappointment, Hallie said, “There’s something you’d better know.” She told him about Raford and his sneering remarks about the crew. “I wouldn’t put it past him to sic Cotton and the Klan on us.”

  “You’re not afraid?”

  “Well, of course I am! Not for myself as much as for Luke and Dan and Henry and Buford.”

  Garth pondered. “I’m not going to drag them out of bed to talk about this,” he said after a moment. “But I’ll tell them at breakfast and let them decide whether they want to stay with me.”

  “I think they’ll stay. But if they don’t—”

  “Reckon I’ll have to go to town and wait for hoboes to hop off the freight cars.” He shrugged. Incredibly, he flashed her a grin. “If you’re going to be our engineer tomorrow, you better get to sleep.”

  “So had you, if you’re going to fire up.”

  “Go up the stairs, Hallie. I’ll blow out the lamp.”

  How she wished they were going up together, arms around each other, close in the darkness. “Good night, Garth,” she said, and went up alone.

  Meg and Jackie were such good help at breakfast that Hallie was able to pop three pies in the oven before she sat down with the crew. That was a funny feeling; eating with the crew, being one of them now, rather than a cook. Garth had the engine up to steam so Baldy was watching it while Garth came in to eat and explain to the men about Hallie’s new job and Raford’s threats.

  “If any of you would rather get another job, I’ll sure understand,” Garth said. “I don’t think Raford would hound you if you weren’t helping me.”

  “We’d still be Indians,” Luke said. Dan nodded.

  “I’d still be a Mennonite,” Henry said.

  “How could I teach my students about being responsible citizens if I caved in to that red-necked Cotton?” Rich asked.

  “Wobblies did some bad things sometimes,” Buford admitted. “But nothin’ as bad as the government framing Joe Hill for murder and shooting him dead or John D. Rockefeller’s hired gunmen setting fire to the striking miners’ camp at Ludlow in Colorado and killing women and kids along with the men. I still think the IWW had the right idea, and I’m just sorry the war broke the union. I aim to be buried with my red card.”

  Garth looked around, studying each man in turn for some hint of misgiving. They met his gaze. Luke said, “Dan and I appreciate your hiring us when plenty wouldn’t on account of our skins. We’re with you, Garth, as long as you want us.”

  Into the chorus of affirmation, Garth said, “All right, boys. If that’s how you feel, let’s start our threshing.”

  Garth gave Hallie a quick but thorough summing up of her duties. “Keep an eye on the water glass. That crown sheet’s got to keep covered or the whole things blows. Now turn on the injector.”

  Hallie was tense at first, but Rory’s persistent drilling echoed in her mind, and as water glass and steam gauge responded to her actions, she began to feel confident and excited at the power she controlled.

  She glanced up to find Garth watching her with an expression that made her heart leap before he said, “Okay, engineer! Make your set!”

  Hallie steered the engine to where it could be hooked up to the separator, and away they chugged to the first field. At Garth’s signal, she pulled the separator between some stacks so it faced the prevailing south wind.

  She drove away from the unhitched separator and swung around to face it, careful not to make her half-circle too wide. To her thankful jubilation, with the men all watching and cheering, she lined the engine up with the separator which the men had leveled swiftly. Henry and Buford stretched the belt from the drive pulley of the separator while the other men pulled the extension feeder into position.

  It hurt to remember how Rory had taught her to let the engine creep toward the belt, hurt to remember how, last summer, Rusty had usually been the one to shove the belt over the big wheel on the right side of the engine as Henry was doing now.

  Moving the reverse gear as if it were fine china, Hallie backed cautiously away as the belt drew tight. Buford blocked an engine wheel, saluted Hallie, and grabbed his pitchfork. He and the other spike pitchers took running jumps up the stacks, working their way up with pitchforks.

  Garth gave a final squirt with the oilcan and climbed up on the platform of the separator so he could keep an eye on everything—including Hallie. Hallie tooted the whistle. It made an exuberant sound, and she drew in a breath of sparkling air before, as the first loads of grain struck the feeder, she pulled the b
andanna over her nose.

  The summer’s run had started—and the engineer was a slender woman in a bright red bonnet.

  Averaged out fifty bushels per acre,” Garth said at supper the day they finished threshing his wheat. “Hope everyone gets that good a yield.”

  “If they do, it’ll pay some mortgages,” Baldy said. “Do we head for Brocketts’ in the morning, boss?”

  Garth’s face tightened. “No. He sent word that Raford’s outfit will do his threshing. First place we thresh will be George Halstead’s. On his way home tonight, Mike Donnelly’s going to stop and tell George we’ll be there bright and early tomorrow.”

  There was an awkward silence. Everyone knew Rory would be on Raford’s engine, cutting his own brother out of work. It was a relief when Baldy covered a yawn and chased his final bite of apple pie with a last swig of coffee. “So I need to fire up ’way before it’s bright.” He scraped back his chair. “Good supper, Shaft. Already lookin’ forward to breakfast.”

  “So’m I,” retorted Shaft, “but not perzactly in the same way.” When Hallie started clearing the table, he tried to shoo her away. “I’ll do that, honey. Engineers don’t do dishes.”

  Rory had. Stabbed by remembering how they had laughed together, Hallie felt for Garth, who must ache constantly at his brother’s defection. “I don’t do all the things an engineer does,” she said, forcing a smile. “So it’s fair enough to help you when I can. Besides, running the engine doesn’t make me as tired as standing up all day to cook.”

  “I’ll still wash and you dry,” Shaft insisted.

  He got a good start while Hallie filled Meg’s tub and settled her for a soak. These treatments were going to be hard to manage once the outfit moved away from the house, but maybe the swimming Luke promised would serve almost as well to loosen whatever was wrong with Meg’s spine.

  As if reading Hallie’s mind, Meg said, “It’s funny. My back doesn’t hurt much anymore. It feels like I should be able to walk, but when I try without my crutches, something sort of locks. If there was just some kind of key—”

  “Maybe we’ll find it,” Hallie encouraged her. “Anyway, if you don’t hurt as much, that’s wonderful.”

  Meg snorted. “What would be wonderful would be to run the engine like you—or even the water wagon!”

  “You’re helping Shaft, and that’s mighty important.”

  Meg only scowled, and Hallie retreated. After all these months together, after all she’d done for Meg, the girl still resented her. Could it ever be different?

  I’ll last out this threshing run if it kills me, Hallie vowed. But then, if these stubborn MacLeods still treat me like Typhoid Mary, I’m taking Jackie and finding other work. Then Jackie would hate her for taking him away from his adored Meg, but Hallie knew there was no way she could endure much more of being close to the man she loved and yet so far away.

  Afraid some folks lost their harvests last night,” Garth said heavily when he came in for breakfast.

  “Yeah.” Baldy nodded. “It was still pretty dark when we started firing up, but there was smoke all around off at a distance.”

  “Too far for there to be any use in our trying to help,” Garth said. “Looked too far away to be Donnellys’, Halsteads’, or Crutchfields’, but it may have got Brocketts’, Jonas MacAfee’s, and just about all the fields around there.”

  “Last night there was no lightning.” Henry frowned.

  “No, and hands aren’t supposed to smoke in the fields,” Garth said. “But every now and then someone gets careless. Doesn’t take much of a spark to set stubble or stacked wheat blazing.”

  Baldy scratched his hairless skull. “Don’t see how fires spread out like that could start from one place and all be going at about the same time. An’ it would sure be peculiar for that many smokers to all get careless at once.”

  “Don’t look my way.” Buford gave a wry grin. “Wobblies used to get blamed for settin’ fields on fire, and maybe a few did, but I don’t hold with burnin’ up good wheat.”

  Baldy persisted between bites of fried potatoes and eggs. “What is doggone peculiar, boss, is that it looks like there weren’t any fires at the farms you’re aimin’ to thresh.”

  “It’s peculiar, all right, but that is how it looked,” Garth conceded. “I’m sorry. Wouldn’t wish it on anyone to lose their crop.”

  Buford shook his head. “I don’t like this, boss. Those farmers who lost their wheat are goin’ to be lookin’ for someone to blame.”

  Garth stared. “What are you getting at, lad?” he asked slowly.

  “See it the way the farmers may,” Buford urged. “Your wheat didn’t burn. It’s safe in the elevator at Hollister. Donnelly, Halstead, Crutchfield, Thomas—the ones you’re goin’ to thresh—looks like they’re okay. But those that burned quit you for Raford. To top it all, he’s got your brother on his engine. Think it over, Garth. How’s that goin’ to look to a bunch of farmers who’ve seen their year’s work and profit go up in smoke?”

  As if he couldn’t take it in, Garth looked around the table. “You mean someone set the fires so they could blame us? Raford …”

  Garth’s voice trailed off. Would Raford order such a thing? With a sick all-gone feeling, Hallie knew he would; knew Cotton would gleefully harm people he had no quarrel with if that could destroy Garth and the crew Cotton had come to hate, including her.

  Into the shocked silence, Shaft spoke gruffly. “Garth, if Raford’s behind this, it’s you he wants.”

  Rich Mondell nodded. “You better take my flivver, Garth. Pile in Dan and Luke and Henry and head for town—or farther—till this gets straightened out. Buford, maybe you ought to make tracks, too.” He grinned even in that tense moment. “Wobs do have a reputation as firebugs.”

  “Anyone can go who wants to.” Garth finished his coffee and got to his feet. “Luke, I reckon maybe you and Dan and Henry should in case Cotton brings the Klan down on us. Hallie, you take Meg and Jackie and go with them. Me, I’m due at Halsteads’ in a couple of hours. I mean to be there.”

  Luke rose, dark and graceful, his heavier-built cousin beside him. “We’re going with you, Garth.”

  “So will I,” said Henry, though he was pale beneath his tan.

  Rich shot Steve a question. The college boy grinned. “This beats studying.”

  “You’re out of your head, boss.” Buford shrugged. “But I always did like crazy guys.”

  “Me, too,” Baldy said.

  Garth looked around at his crew. He must have felt the painful contrast between their loyalty and Rory’s betrayal. “I appreciate this, lads, more than I can say. We’ll go about our work like the innocent men we are. But Hallie, you and Meg—”

  “I’m going with you, Daddy!” Meg glared at him. “I can’t walk, but I can do that.”

  “You need an engineer,” Hallie said and went to get her bonnet.

  XXIII

  Half an hour later, Hallie sounded the whistle and steered the engine out of the yard. While Shaft and Meg did dishes and tidied the kitchen, Hallie had driven to the separator and the men had hooked it to the engine, followed by the caravan of cookshack, water, and coal wagons. The men got into the Model Ts or perched on the seats of the wagons.

  This was how the outfit had looked last summer, when Hallie first saw it, except there were so many changes. Rusty Wells lay in the soft, ancient earth of his native hills; Jim Wyatt was running his own engine again up in Saskatchewan; Cotton Harris and Pat O’Malley had been replaced with Dan and Steve; instead of Meg, Lefty Halstead would be driving the water wagon—and laughing, golden-haired Rory wasn’t saluting Hallie with smart little toots of the whistle.

  She would never have dreamed that she could control the engine. But though that had turned out to be important, far more significant things had happened in these past twelve months. She and Jackie had found a kind of family, one that he chose over going back to his mother. Hallie’s smoldering hurt and anger at what she had considered
her father’s desertion, and the guilt she’d felt when he died, had gradually faded as she assumed responsibility for Jackie, learned more about life and people, and came to love Garth. Maybe that was growing up; to care about others and work for their good rather than concentrating so much on your own griefs and desires. Not that she didn’t need Garth and hope for his love with all her heart.

  The procession reached the main road and turned toward the bridge—the fateful bridge where she had joined the crew last year and where, in the autumn, Rusty died and Meg was crippled. Dust roiled high and yellow brown on the road across the creek, churned up by what looked like a dozen trucks and flivvers. The smell of charred grain carried on the breeze from fields still smoking at Brocketts’ and farther away. Hallie’s mouth went dry. Her eyes stung with dust. And fear.

  Above the sound of the engine and the roaring motors across the creek came vengeful, gloating shouts. “Here comes that bunch of Wobs and Indians that burned Ernie Brockett!”

  Dear God! Ernie, the gawky boy whose shirt and overalls had been Hallie’s first threshing attire? Had he been caught in a wheat fire? Dizzy and nauseated, Hallie broke into clammy sweat as louder shouts rose above the din.

  “That damned Garth MacLeod burned us out! His grain’s safe—but he ain’t!”

  “We’ll burn his threshin’ outfit an’ him with it!”

  “I want the yellow-bellied Dutch draft dodger!”

  “We’ll teach that Bolshevik perfessor things he never learned at college!”

  No escape. Not for the slow-moving engine. But Hallie could block the bridge with it, stop the motorized rabble. With luck, most of the crew could reach Hollister in the Model Ts.

  It took all her will, all her love for Garth to break the paralysis that gripped her and edge the engine onto the bridge, but her brain and perceptions operated with detached clarity. The water glass! The level was dangerously low. Relying on Garth and Baldy to have checked it, she hadn’t looked at it that morning, but she was sure they had.