by Lauran Paine
He would work over the list in his room at Otto’s until the lamp wick smoked, then he’d go to bed and picture himself driving to Tico with a big black hat on the back of his head like Wyoming men wore, and perhaps smoking a cigar while the spring sun beat thinly across his big shoulders.
Over toward the foothills where the road was scored with tire gouges from those winter trips with Otto, over where the rim of the world looked close in the fresh clean air, would be Sarahlee at her cabin, in something that fitted tightly and showed her off. Dark eyes soft, strong arms bare, maybe her trim ankles showing—and, of course, a decent girl wouldn’t do it—but maybe just a little of her legs showing, rounded and muscular and beautiful. He would sleep on that.
Then one day it became unusually warm. At breakfast Otto said it was a Chinook. The snow would melt, the earth would show through, black, marshy, swollen with rivulets.
“When will spring come,” Shan asked. “After that?”
“After the Chinook, yes.”
“Good. Then I’d better get to town and get the stuff for my cabin.”
Mrs. Muller said from the background, “Do you have enough money, Shan?”
“I’ve got some,” Shan said, arising from the table.
Otto looked at his wife. “He’s got enough for now,” he said.
“For cattle, for a team …?”
“We got that worked out,” Otto said, moving toward the door. His wife was wiping her hands. They exchanged a look, and she resumed her work.
Outside, it was forty above, pretty warm. Shan waited for Otto. “What’d you mean we got that worked out?”
“I’ve been meaning to mention it,” Otto said as they walked toward the barn. “I got a hundred and eighty springing heifers. They’ll calve-out this summer. Now then, first calf heifers need watching. You’ve picked that much up around here this winter. The first time they calve anything can happen … you can’t just turn ’em out on the range and let ’em go. Calves get hung up, the heifers get scairt, do crazy things like abandoning their calves. I’m going to make you a proportion. You take them until they’re calved out, watch them close, and I’ll give you two-thirds of the calf crop. You’ll get a start that way and you’ll also be doing me a big favor.”
Shan looked doubtful. “That’s no favor,” he said, “that’s charity.”
Otto shook his head adamantly. “If you knew this business like I do,” he said, “you wouldn’t say that, Shan. You’ll be riding every day all day after they start calving. Some of the calves’ll be hung up. You’ll have to deliver them. I’ll show you about that. No, Shan, if you think that’s charity, go ask a cowman. He’ll tell you I’m taking advantage of you. Out of the hundred and eighty heifers you’ll get maybe sixty, seventy calves. For that you’ll spend all summer at hard work.”
Shan watched the ground as they walked. Bad enough to know nothing about cattle, worse to suspect Otto was fathering him, giving him charity.
Inside the barn Otto handed him a folded paper. “Give this to the man at the store,” he said. “Say I’ll be along next week to pick it all up with the wagon.”
Shan pocketed the list, saddled up, and mounted the livery horse. Otto stood at his stirrup.
“You going to get some work clothes?” he asked.
The blue uniform was patched and stained. “Yes, see you later, Otto. I expect this’ll take all day.”
“No hurry. Bed down at the livery barn if it’s too late,” Otto said, and stood in the yard, watching Shan ride away. When he was small in the distance, Otto walked back to the house. “You know what I think?” he said to his wife. “I think Shan’s got women on his mind.”
“He never said anything …”
“Not around here, no. I don’t think he even knew he was making woman talk around me.” Otto shrugged, dropped his hands. “He’s young. It’s coming spring …”
Chapter Four
He left Otto’s list with the clerk of the General Mercantile Company at Tico and made several purchases of his own, then went across the road, paid the liveryman for the horse, and got involved in a complicated trade for a work team and the same saddle animal. The deal hinged upon whether the horse trader would credit the money paid him for use of the horse against the purchase of all three horses. This he agreed to do providing Shan bought a set of work harness from him, also. The way the wrangling ended was with Shan buying the team, the saddle horse, a set of used chain harness, and a saddle. The trader agreed to keep and feed the animals until Shan was ready to start back. Shan then took one of his bundles from the store into the liveryman’s saddle room and shed his uniform, donned the conventional range wear, and emerged, self-conscious but satisfied, to inquire about the Gordon place.
He ate buffalo hump hash at a beanery then struck out. The Gordon place was beyond town, and when he left the plank walk, mud accumulated with stubborn persistence upon his new boots. As he walked, he studied his list for the hundredth time, scowled in concentration, and estimated how far his money was going to go toward getting all he wanted. From time to time he had to stop and kick off the heavy adhering snowshoes of mud. Just before he got to the cabin, he bent, used his clasp knife to scrape the boots clean. When he straightened up and gazed at the cabin, a solid lump lay somewhere behind his belt.
When he knuckled the door, he half expected a hollow echo or a strange face. Instead, Sarahlee appeared as if by magic, exactly as he remembered her, and her eyes stayed on his face with a warm small smile.
“Shan, come in.”
Inside, it was warm and there was a wonderful odor of boiling meat. The early winter gloom was thicker indoors. She moved around a table, worked at lighting the lamp there, and words flowed back to him. He didn’t hear them. Bent over like she was, profiled, he studied her. When the light grew, it got tangled in her chestnut hair, made a deep, golden scar of the V in her throat. Her arms up high were half as large as his own arms, round and solid-appearing. She straightened up, still smiling and looking directly at him. The light made dusk lie in far corners in a room that was cozy and warmly personal.
“…wondered about you. I even asked around town if anyone had heard of you. Only the liveryman knew anything, and that wasn’t much.”
“I have the cabin,” he said finally. “I mean Otto Muller and I built it.”
“Otto Muller?”
“He and his wife have that two-storied house way out there all by itself.”
The cloudiness left her eyes. “Oh, yes,” she said in quick recollection. “South of the Blessings’. I don’t know them, though.”
“Honest, plain folks,” Shan said. “He knows that country like a book. I never saw a man who’s as handy as Otto. He can build anything.”
“I’m glad you didn’t give up,” she said.
“Give up? Why should I give up?”
She sat down on a shiny old leather sofa and motioned for him to sit, also. “The way you talked on the stage … about the cold. Remember?”
He sat down near her, but on the edge of the cushions. “That was just talk,” he said, thinking she hadn’t smiled at him like this on the stage, and without the coat her figure was smaller. He remembered the softness of her shoulder, the way she’d rubbed his hands. “You get used to this cold. I worked up there in shirt sleeves some days, and it didn’t bother me at all.”
“Is the land like you hoped? Will you make a ranch out of it?”
He loosened up after a while and talked, and she watched his head, the way it moved, how expressions emphasized what he said, and she noticed he used his hands more than he had before when he spoke. She also noticed how shaggy-headed he was. When the opportunity afforded she commented on it.
“You need a haircut.”
He blinked at her. How long had it been? He ran his head through the heavy growth and grinned. “I expect I do at that. I haven’t thought much abou
t haircuts.”
She got up swiftly. “I’ll do it for you if you’d like.”
“You?”
“Certainly, you won’t be the first, Shan.”
“Well …”
“You sit there a moment and I’ll be right back.” She swept out of the room.
He leaned back and looked at the parlor. It had a layer of serenity, of silence and decorum the Muller place lacked. When she returned, she had a large white cloth, shears, comb, and even a small bottle of something fragrant.
“Sit on this straight-backed chair. That’s it.” She bent from behind him, swept the white cloth around, and for a fleeting second her hair brushed his face, her warmth radiated around him. It became difficult for him to breathe.
“How large is the cabin?”
Shears snipped, locks of hair dropped away, and the combing made his skin tingle.
“Twenty feet wide and thirty-five feet long. Plenty big.”
“That’s almost too large, isn’t it?” She turned his head with cool, strong fingers. “It’ll take a lot of wood to keep it warm in winter.”
“Well … I’ve got lots of trees up there. Besides, someday I may want it … that large.”
Silence settled for a moment. The shears clicked, and she scooped up handfuls of hair on top, made long slices, then combed out what remained. For a while there was only the sound of the scissors, then she spoke again.
“Wyoming doesn’t always make good first impressions. It can be raw at times.”
He shrugged slightly. “Rawness isn’t new to me.”
“No,” she said, “I know it isn’t.” For a second both hands rested on his shoulders; an aura of tenderness swept over him from those hands. Then she resumed her work briskly at the base of his head where short hairs stood straight out.
“What about livestock?”
“Well, Otto wants me to take a hundred and eighty first-calf heifers on shares. I don’t know …”
“That’s wonderful. That’ll be your start, won’t it?”
“It seems like charity to me. Otto says it isn’t … but I’ve got a feeling like he’s just doing it to help me out … get me started up there.”
She swabbed hair from under the collar of his shirt. “It doesn’t sound especially like charity, Shan. Isn’t there a lot of work and responsibility to something like that?”
He told her, yes, there was, then repeated what Otto had said, and she finished the haircutting and combed his hair with gentle, long strokes. When he finished talking, she said: “It sounds like hard work, and if Mister Muller is like you say, then I’d certainly take his word about it.”
“I guess I can help him in other ways, too,” Shan said. “Branding, rounding up, haying, things like that.”
“Yes, it sounds to me like he needs you as much as you need him.” She moved around front, held up a small oval hand mirror. He looked into it and was surprised to see what a truly professional job she’d done. Where the hair no longer covered his flesh, it looked indecently white. She held out the comb and he dutifully took it but didn’t use it. She had a twinkle in her dark eyes at his expression.
“You didn’t think I could do it, did you?”
He looked at her and grinned. “I didn’t know.”
She put the mirror on the table, bent forward to unfasten the neck cloth, and he tried not to see the roundness of her flesh. He was perspiring. When she drew away, he got up, looked downward, and brushed hair off his trousers and shirt. His tongue felt like a slab of frozen pine along the roof of his mouth.
“You bring the towel,” she said, and started across the room. He followed her into a lean-to kitchen where the wood stove was hissing like it had green oak in the firebox. There was a simmering kettle over one burner and from it arose the tantalizing aroma he had smelled upon entering the house and it rekindled his appetite. Sarahlee had to tiptoe to put the shears and comb away on a high plank shelf. Shan stood there in the middle of the room, watching her. Her back was long from shoulder to hip, thicker on down but solid. She turned and took the towel from him, brushed back a heavy curl of her hair, and nodded toward the table. There were two places set.
“Now don’t tell me you’re not hungry,” she said.
He looked at the two settings. “You’re expecting company,” he said.
She turned away, busied herself with the towel, and spoke over her shoulder. “No, I set that extra place when I came out to get the haircutting things.”
“Well, I ate just before I came out here.”
She turned around and was on the point of saying something when a loud knock sounded on the front door. He saw the quick look of apprehension darken her eyes before she moved past.
“Excuse me a minute.”
He listened to her diminishing footfalls, then stood there feeling guilty about something vague in his mind, and awkward. Two voices made a blur of sound beyond the kitchen door. One was deep and strong, a man’s voice. He went closer to the doorway, strained to hear, and when he could not, he peered around the casing. But Sarahlee’s back was to him and the front door was only half open; he could not see who faced her beyond, out in the cold darkness.
He felt betrayed and closed the hands hanging at his sides. Then the man’s voice became insistent and louder and dumb wrath began to pool in Shan without reason. He began moving without any notion of why, crossed to the door, pulled it out of Sarahlee’s hand, and flung it wide open. The stranger in the dark turned a blank, astonished look upon him, but only for a second, then they recognized each other. It was the drunk, bearded man he’d met that first dawn in Tico—the man he’d knocked down in the saloon.
For several seconds no one said anything, then Sarahlee moved to close the door and block out the bearded man’s face. She was upset.
“He didn’t mean anything. It’s just his way … to be hard to discourage.”
Shan didn’t know what to say so he said nothing. The sense of betrayal had spread all through him, made him feel almost ill. His imagination conjured up thoughts too vivid, too painful to tolerate. He went to the sofa, picked up his hat, and turned back toward the door.
“I better go. I’m not hungry anyway.” He reached around her for the latch but she did not move out of his path. He lifted the latch, pulled inward, and a blast of cold night air touched them. “It’s pretty late.”
“Shan … don’t go.”
He spoke doggedly without looking at her. “I got a pretty big load of stuff to haul back. Better get some sleep so’s I can get an early start.”
She moved then, a breath of the night touched her hair, rustled it with the lamplight in it, made a golden chestnut sheen. “I’m glad you came by,” she said, and her lips hardly moved at all.
“Thanks for the haircut.”
“When it’s grown out, I’ll give you another one.”
“Yes’m.”
He walked away with his boot steps making a hard ring upon the frozen ground and he had never really hated anyone in his life—had never known anyone well enough to hate them—so now his feelings toward the bearded man were altogether new. They filled him to choking. He didn’t think how it was—that a girl as handsome as Sarahlee Gordon couldn’t go long unnoticed in a frontier village. All he knew was how painful those vivid imaginings were and by the time he got to the livery barn, where he meant to bed down, his eyes were as dead and dangerous as the thin ice beside the buildings.
The next morning he made a trade for a good used wagon, hitched the team to it, and went to the general mercantile, loaded up without speaking, and drove out of Tico with the saddle horse tied to the tailgate.
He drove all the way back to the Muller place without stopping. Without even making a cigarette or paying attention to the way his new team acted, or talking to himself, something he had grown to do of late when he was alone, dreaming out loud and s
avoring the sounds of his thoughts.
He saw Otto and Mrs. Muller come outside to watch the approaching wagon. It cheered him a little, knowing how large their eyes would be, how proud of his trades and his acquisitions. He hadn’t told them all he had intended to buy in Tico. He saw Otto say something aside to his wife. She scuttled toward the house, and Otto headed for the barn where he was waiting when Shan drew up and looped the lines.
“My God, Shan … you even bought a bed!”
Shan climbed down. The bed had cost eighteen dollars, but he wouldn’t look at Otto because the dark mood had closed down upon him again. Shan went to the team, began unhitching them. Otto bent far over the wagon’s sides, examining things, then at last he peered under the wagon, at its running gear, touched the iron tires for thickness and tightness, and walked up to study the horses. The team was good. Both horses were chestnuts, young and strong with straight backs and powerful shoulders. Otto followed Shan when he led them into the barn and put them in adjoining tie stalls and fed them. He followed Shan back outside when he went after the saddle horse.
“I had room,” Shan said finally, “so I fetched back the things you had on the list. Save you a trip down, Otto.”
They began unloading the Muller provisions, grunting as they moved them into the house, and into the stone pantry with sacks of flour, cans, and boxes. Mrs. Muller supervised the storing of articles with a minimum of talk. When it was all finished, Otto took the milk bucket back to the barn when they went to feed. He glowed from his labor, stopped by the wagon, piled still with Shan’s things.
“Get that cannon cloth,” he said to Shan, “we’d best cover what’s still out here against the frost … and it might rain … it’s rain-time of year.”
After they’d covered the wagon, Otto jerked his head toward the loft. “Pitch down some hay while I milk.” As Shan was climbing upward, Otto put his head to one side. “Didn’t have any trouble in town, did you?”