“Rooting around for something more to eat, the bear broke into the ruck-sack but there wasn’t anything that suited him, so he tried to climb Frank’s tree. The way Frank tells it, the bear stood on his hind legs dancing around the tree and finally settled down underneath it like he knew Frank would have to come down sooner or later.”
Harlow leaned toward Belle and his tone became more deliberate as the story intensified. “Well, when Frank didn’t show up at home and his horse did, a bunch of us went out looking for him. When we found him, the bear was gone but Frank was still in the tree with his hands holding on like a couple of C-clamps and we had to coax him down. Right there on the ground, not five yards away, was the mighty hunter’s loaded rifle.”
Harlow leaned back in his seat and lit his pipe. His heavy beard hid so much of his face Belle wondered who he was behind all that hair. Certainly not a Ben Herrington. But he was a good storyteller and she wanted to hear more about life in that river canyon of his.
The lights dimmed in the Pullman car; the passengers settled down for the night. Belle’s cheek rested against the window as she traced the Big Dipper with her finger on the glass. Tomorrow she would be with the Doigs. It was nine months since she left Aberfeldy; it seemed like a lifetime.
Her father had sent a letter after Tommy’s death designed to comfort her and it had. He’d written, “What will be, will be and we can’t change that.” Belle had not thought of him as a fatalist before. In his beautiful precise script he had written, “Yet, in many ways we can control our own destiny.” She thought about the baby and how she’d had no control of it being in her belly. What would her father think if he knew? He had applauded her courage. She wondered if she had enough of it left to go through childbirth in this new country that so far hadn’t been very kind to her.
Belle had written and told Meg; someone at home should know, but not her father--it would worry him. The time would come when she must write and tell him, but she’d wait until the baby was born. Even then, could she tell him the whole story? Why then, she mused, hadn’t it been difficult to tell Harlow Pruett, a man she scarcely knew?
Although she had used the vaguest of terms, she knew he understood what had happened. And just what would she say to the Doigs? How she dreaded the explanation she would have to make to them.
Harlow’s head was thrown back, his jaw hung open as he snored. His blond eyebrows bushed above pink eyelids where colorless lashes curled. His head came to rest against Belle’s shoulder when he stirred in his sleep. She let it stay there.
The train whistle blew, filling the fog with its sound as the conductor wove down the aisle announcing that the train was ten minutes out of Nampa. Belle had already gathered her belongings. Her body ached from the long night of sitting. How she looked forward to stretching out in a real bed.
“Someone coming to meet you?” Harlow asked.
“I don’t know. I hope so,” Belle told him.
She stood on the platform watching passengers being greeted by friends and families until she was left standing there alone. It had been at least an hour. So nervous about explaining the baby to the Doigs, she was almost relieved that they hadn’t come.
Then she saw Harlow Pruett in his wagon pulled by a pair of Clydesdales. She waved and when she caught his eye, he turned his horses into the depot.
“So they didn’t come?" he yelled.
Belle knew how pathetic she must look, her stomach poking out, standing there on that empty platform with her luggage. “No, they didn’t come. Probably didn’t know just when I’d be arriving,” she said defensively.
“Come on then, I’ll take you. Can’t be too far out of my way. I have to go east to get up the canyon anyway."
Belle pulled out the map that the Doigs had sent before she and Tommy had left Scotland and handed it to Harlow. After he loaded her things, he made room for her next to him and studied it. Harlow’s big wagon was heavy with mining equipment and supplies he’d picked up at the General Store.
She watched the taut muscles of the Clydesdales flow as they pulled their burden with ease. They were magnificent animals. The pride of the Clyde River Valley in Scotland where they originated. Her body, which had always moved with the freedom of a gazelle, felt frumpy. Her balance was gone. Every movement had become a chore. She couldn’t get comfortable sitting.
For the first time, Harlow was quiet and it made her feel like an intruder. She knew she had imposed on him but she didn’t have much choice.
It was a long slow trek down dirt roads before the wagon pulled to a stop in front of a farmhouse, tidy and clean and surrounded by willows, so much like Scotland it seemed like going home. So this was the Doigs. This was where she would live.
“Go on ahead and I’ll bring your things,” Harlow said.
Belle stood in the parlor nervously waiting. A rotund Mrs. Doig, without much greeting, quickly excused herself to fetch her husband. Belle read the shock on the woman’s face that told her she should have said something in her letter to them about her condition, but it was too difficult to put on paper. After all, she hadn’t seen the Doigs since she was a little girl.
Walter Doig entered the room and sucked the sunshine right of it. Heavy dark eyebrows formed a shelf below his forehead, making his knife-sharp eyes seem deeper-set than they actually were. He didn’t greet her or ask about her trip, or say he was glad to see her at last, only, “Where is the father?”
Belle was stunned. She wasn’t prepared for his abrasiveness. “Is it that man out there in the wagon?”
“No. He’s just a man I met on the train.” That didn’t come out sounding like she meant it to. She knew Doig was judging her and she felt so diminished by him that she just stood there.
“Then you’ve nothing to say? Lass, you’ve disgraced your family name. Your father will hang his head in shame when he learns of this. And your dear mother, it’s just as well that she’s in her grave and will not have to grieve over your loose ways. Ye’ll not spend one night under this roof, Miss Mackay.” He folded his arms across his chest. He had condemned her. She felt the blood come to her cheeks, she felt dizzy, sick at heart.
Belle ran from the house. Blinded by her tears, she stumbled on the stairs and fell into Harlow’s arms. He was waiting there to carry her grip into the house. Her reserve melted; she wept as he held her.
She hardly remembered the Doigs when they lived in Scotland--yet she’d always thought of him as a reasonable man, not unlike her father. How wrong she had been. He was horrid.
As Harlow helped her back into the wagon, Mrs. Doig was there tugging at her skirt. “Don’t judge him too harshly, Isabelle. He is a pious man, only doing what he believes is right.”
“I have not disgraced my family. You tell him that!” Belle said.
“It’s appearances, Isabelle. We must keep ourselves above reproach.”
“Mrs. Doig, I do not have the luxury of even thinking about appearances."
As the wagon rolled away from Doigs, Harlow asked Belle where she wanted to go. She was too devastated to think. How could Walter Doig be so mean-spirited and call himself a man of God? His God and hers bore no resemblance.
He hadn’t given her a chance to explain. What gave that pompous man the right to judge her as if she was a fallen woman? Didn’t she have trouble enough? Her misery turned to anger and anger settled into contempt. That poor shallow man whose wife had the gall to call him pious.
“I could take you on into a hotel in Boise but it’s a long way and it would mean I’d have to travel after dark to get home. Can’t leave you out here, now can I?” Harlow’s eyes rolled across the emptiness of the landscape. “Guess you can ride on with me if you’re a mind to.” He looked at Belle, quizzing her with a raised eyebrow. “Well--that’s probably not a good idea.”
“You mean up the canyon? I’d be no trouble.” Belle needed desperately to lie flat somewhere, anywhere.
“Just don’t get no ideas. I’m not looking to be harnessed up ag
ain. It’s temporary until you can find some place to go.”
Belle leaned against Harlow’s arm, only because there was no place else to lean, and closed her eyes as the afternoon sun relaxed her tired body. Rolling hills flocked with rabbit brush gave way to a terrain of farmland where tender growth had not yet hidden the black earth and wild grass in its spring newness laid in velvet folds down the steep slopes.
Instead of worrying about the impropriety of accompanying a man she scarcely knew, or what danger there might be for a woman with a man alone, her thoughts settled on how she could earn her keep so he wouldn’t be sorry he had brought her along with him. After all, he was old enough to be her father. And certainly, they weren’t wildly attracted to each other.
She felt her baby move and wondered if the sight of it would keep a man’s lust in check. It occurred to her that she had a long hat pin that Granny Ferguson had woven into the lining of her muff. “It’s a useful article if a man gets too familiar.” What she would do with it, she wasn’t sure, but it was wicked and could find its mark. She ran her fingers deep into the wool batt of her muff and sure enough, it was still there. The iron wheels of the wagon found every rut. In April on the hilly road with all its hairpin turns, there were quite a few.
As the wagon moved slowly down from the summit, the brake ground against the iron wheels. Like fingernails on a blackboard, the squeal of metal against metal raised goose flesh on Belle’s arms.
A greening hillside flowed gracefully into the valley below. The wagon followed Harris Creek for miles until Harlow pointed out the river valley. “We’re coming into Horseshoe Bend. See how the river bends back upon itself.” The river bank, dotted with a dozen or so cottages, carved a wide arc.
They eased into the town and Belle read the names on the buildings as they rode by them. “Hotel, O.K Cash Store, Odd Fellows’ Lodge, Shelley’s Livery Barn.” As they crossed the railroad tracks, Belle looked longingly at the hotel; it likely had soft, warm beds. Harlow stopped at the livery barn for some strapping and that gave Belle an opportunity to avail herself of its outhouse.
The town was pleasant, she thought as they climbed the hill and it disappeared behind them. One long turn skirting the mountain and they were in the mouth of the river canyon. The grass-covered hills flowed gently, one into another. The river wedged between them was trimmed with cottonwoods and willows. Belle’s eyes grew wide with joy when Harlow stopped the team. Down from the wagon, she filled her arms with wild flowers, buried her face in the bouquet and forgot for a moment how miserable she was. The shadows of the cottonwoods along the river lengthened as they turned up a mountain road that circled a farm house and then became little more than a game trail. The Clydesdales didn’t seem to notice as the wagon bounced off uneven ground. Belle shielded her body from the bumps by sitting on her hands.
The wagon clung precariously to a narrow ledge while directly below the descending sun blinked across the crystal waters of the Payette River snaking its way between vertical canyon walls beyond.
Stretching high into the fading light, the mountains glowed in the transparent pinks of gloaming. There, Belle got her first glimpse of Harlow’s ranch.
Nestled in a grove of locust trees, the ranch house and outbuildings rested on a plain between two mountains. The wagon passed a new orchard where the fruit trees the size of buggy whips bloomed, and a flat area that had recently been harrowed revealing jet black soil where Harlow said the vegetable garden would be planted. Up behind the house, flanking the toe of the hill, stood an icehouse, a smithy shop and an outhouse. Among them, a ribbon of water spread lazily through a half dozen locust trees, a cottonwood and a mulberry before it hurried downhill separating the barn with its milking shed and corral from the chicken house and pig pen. There it went into a culvert under the railroad tracks and disappeared into the river. A shoestring of fences and gates laced the buildings together.
The setting sun lit the crest of the mountains as shadows settled in the gullies. “It’s perfect, perfect,” Belle sighed. ‘‘A dream come true.” Here she was in the place she had pictured in her mind so long ago--it was everything she’d dreamed of and more.
Harlow pursed his lips and threw a look at Belle. “Whose dream? Don’t get any idea you’re staying here long. This is temporary until you can find something.”
Crimson-washed clouds flared from the horizon line as the broom of darkness swept across the canyon. “A red sky at night,” she whispered, “that’s a good omen.” After all, she had to believe in something.
A sprinkle of sunshine came through the open window and spilled across the quilt sham on the feather bed long before Belle’s eyes opened.
She had never dreamed there could be such comfort. The feathers beneath her gave way to her body in a nestling, pampering way. She might not want to get out of bed again--ever. All the aches from the long haul from Cheyenne had slithered away as she slept, a wonderful long rejuvenating sleep. She almost felt she could face the world anew. Voices outside brought her from a sleep that she wasn’t ready to give up.
She heard a man’s voice: “You sly dog. Fast work, fella.”
“What do you mean, Cal?” It was Harlow’s voice.
“You no more’n got rid of Etta and you got another woman. How come you’ve got all the luck? Took years before I even found me one.”
“I haven’t got another woman. Etta was enough to do me in, you know that,” Harlow snarled.
“Henrietta saw you driving through Horseshoe Bend, said there was a gal in your wagon.”
“It’s not like that, Cal.” Harlow sounded irritated.
“She’s got it wrong? There ain’t no woman?”
“Oh, there’s a woman all right. Well, more like a girl, really.”
“Henrietta said she heard you got a girl in a family way and that’s why Etta left.”
“Hell, no!"
“That ain’t what happened?”
“It’s nobody’s business. Who told her that?”
“You know these canyon women. They know things before they happen. They have an uncanny way of finding things out.”
“The truth is Cal, the girl does have a bun in the oven. I just gave her a ride and then couldn’t get rid of her. I didn’t want to bring her up here, but I couldn’t just dump her out in the middle of nowhere, could I? She didn’t have any place to go.”
So that’s how Harlow felt--guess he had a right to, Belle thought. But what business was it of this buttinsky--asking all those questions. Wish he’d go away before he makes it worse.
“Henrietta said she’s a looker.”
“She’s pretty all right. A freckled-faced Scottish girl.”
“Where’d you find her anyway?”
“I met her on the train. She was a dance hall girl in Cheyenne,” Harlow explained.
‘‘A dance hall girl? What do you know about her?”
“Men are worse gossips than women ever thought of being,” Belle mumbled as she shut the window. She didn’t want to hear any more. She’d put Harlow Pruett in a pickle. It was appearances again. How things look, not necessarily how things are. Maybe she should leave. Harlow had already been very generous. She didn’t want to cause him any trouble. She could find work but who would hire a girl in her condition? And what about the baby--how was she going to work and care for it? Belle gnashed her teeth in vexation. Back in bed, she pulled the quilt up over her head to ward off the sunlight and the day itself. She’d think about it later.
The aroma of biscuits, coffee and ham frying in onion filled the kitchen when Harlow came in from his chores. Belle had whizzed through the house tidying things up and she hoped the food on the table would be hard for Harlow not to appreciate. She’d picked a bouquet of pansies that were blooming against the house and arranged them in a china basket on the table.
As Harlow slid into a chair, Belle was at his elbow, her hair pulled back with a ribbon and her face scrubbed pink. “Ye really need help around here. I know how to cook, cle
an and plant a garden. Even milk your cow if you’d show me how. I’ve won prizes at the fair for my cooking. I can take care of things when you’re away at those mines of yours. Aye, ye’ll hardly know I’m here.” She gave him a quizzical smile, the best she could muster.
“Stop it. You can’t stay. I don’t need anyone looking out after me and you don’t need the canyon women talking about you.”
There was resignation in Belle’s voice as she sighed, “I know. You’re right, Harlow, but I’m caught no matter what. I’ve no husband and so I’m an embarrassment no matter where I go. If it’s not the canyon women gossiping, it will be someone else. There’s no escape. But it’s not your problem.”
Out of Innocence Page 10