by Lauran Paine
“I guess not.”
When daylight was fading, Otto, who was facing toward the cabin, smiled. “They’ve got tidies up over the windows,” he said. “A man’s house ought to look like women live in it, Shan.”
Shan jumped up. “Come on, let’s ride over and see what happened to Blessing.”
They rode slowly, side-by-side, and with a rind of daylight holding fast off in the west just above the horizon. Otto’s little eyes roved constantly, never stopping. “Time for the dogs to commence barking,” he said when they broke over the ridge and began the descent. No dogs showed themselves or barked. Otto drew back on his reins. “Hold up a minute. It’s awful quiet down there.”
Shan stopped and bent forward a little. When he spoke, the words carried, bounced off the walls of the silent buildings. “They’re gone off the porch.”
Otto eased his horse out and Shan moved beside him. “Look there. That’s where one of them is. That’s Amos over there.”
It was a freshly rounded grave, and although the newly moved earth was dry and cracking, it hadn’t begun to settle yet. The grave wasn’t more than a day old.
Otto stopped again and was motionless while he studied the house, the barn, and outbuildings. Nothing moved or made a sound. He moved out again, rode across in front of the house, and peered down at the headboard.
Amos Blessing
1835-1867
They rode back to the house and sat their saddles uncertainly, then Otto got down stiffly and went up under the overhang, and looked at the ground. “Bloodstains’re still here,” he said, then tried the door, flung it wide open. A squeaking echo went through the dingy rooms.
Shan dismounted and tied the horses, went over by the dug well, and drew up a bucket, drank from a rusty dipper, and refilled it for Otto. They stood by the well box, feeling uncomfortable.
“Let’s go,” Otto said finally, and didn’t look back until they were upon the far ridge. “She must’ve been down there somewhere when we took them back, Shan. Hiding, I expect. Well, wherever Art is, he isn’t going to use that fast gun any more.”
They started down the southern slope and Otto looked far out. “Let’s make a circle around the heifers before we ride back,” he said.
They headed for one particular little herd of cattle standing close together, facing inward with the dying red sun slanting across their backs.
“They look like a sewing circle, don’t they?” Otto said.
“What’re they doing?”
“Come over here and you can see. One of them’s having her calf.”
Shan rode closer and stood in the stirrups. It thrilled him. The first calf born on his ranch—his and Sarahlee’s ranch. At sight of them the little herd broke up, moved away a little. The mother cow stood up, facing them, shook her head in warning.
“I expect I’ve seen that happen a million times,” Otto said, “but it makes me feel good every time I see it.”
“It’s sure little,” Shan said, gazing at the dark, wet, curly object in the grass, then he transferred his attention to the cow. “She didn’t have any trouble, Otto.”
“No, most of them don’t. Maybe I talked too much about that. I just wanted you to understand that with first-calf heifers you’ve got to watch them close while they’re calving. Old cows don’t have any trouble. It’s just an occasional first-timer.”
They lingered for a while, then headed for the barnyard. While they were unsaddling, Shan moved around so he could look up toward the cabin. Sarahlee was standing in the dooryard, peering down toward the barn, the sun behind her. It limned her. He stood there, staring, until Otto came up beside him, then they went to the house as Sarahlee headed inside. Right in front, where the sun hadn’t been for a couple of hours, it was shady and pleasant. They both sank down and leaned back. Sarahlee came back out with a plate holding hot, fresh bread on it. A heavy wave of chestnut hair hung low over her forehead and her eyes sparkled at them. Otto joked with her about learning to cook.
“I know how to cook,” she said, looking at Shan. “I’ve been cooking for ten years.”
Otto got a twinkle in his eyes. “Sarahlee,” he said slowly, “most womenfolk don’t talk in years.”
She laughed, and Shan smiled up at her. Mrs. Muller came out. Her cheeks were flushed and damp. “There’s enough bread here to last two weeks,” she said, then looked closely at her husband and lowered her voice. “You need a bath, Otto.”
Sarahlee leaned beside Shan, touched his head, ran her fingers down along his neck, and caught at the thick skin inside his collar, and kneaded it. He got covered with little tiny bumps.
“You, too, Shan.”
“All right. Get me the lye soap.”
They went down to the spring box behind the barn. Otto had an odd way of bathing. He stripped from the waist down first, scrubbed himself, then put on his underpants and trousers and removed his upper clothing, washed that part of his body, then redressed.
It was growing dark by the time they returned to the cabin. A lamp was burning inside on the table. The women had also hung another lamp from the ceiling and to one side of the stove. When Shan entered ahead of Otto, Mary threw him a quick look from the dishpan, then went on scrubbing something furiously.
Supper was pleasant and gay. Mrs. Muller took more liberties with Shan than she ever had before, and it rather embarrassed him. Otto went back down to the spring box, dug the rye jug out, and brought it back, poured two cups full, and toasted the new house. Later, he and Otto went back outside. It seemed that as large as the cabin was, it was too small for five people. They sat on the ground with the sounds from within making a background to their thoughts. After a while Otto said: “This is what it’s like, Shan. Multiply this a thousand times, maybe a million times, and you’ll know what your evenings are going to be like from now on. Someday you’ll have a floor in the cabin, maybe another room or two, and likely a covered porch, but those sounds will always be pretty much the same. A cow bawling out there in the dark, a horse cribbing on the manger in the barn. Woman talk, summer nights. Woman talk, winter nights. Bad winters, drought, death come on your range, different kinds of troubles, but the evenings will be about like this one tonight. You like it?”
“I like it all right, Otto.”
A little later Mrs. Muller went past them in the gloom. They watched her head for the barn. When she returned, she smiled, passed them, and reentered the cabin. A few moments later Sarahlee came out, heading the same way. Shan watched the roll of her movement, the way she carried her head. When she, too, came back, he was filling his pipe. She reached over and touched him, then disappeared inside. He squirmed on the ground and Otto spoke softly without looking around.
“Just one more night, son, then Georgia and I’ll be going home.”
They called out their good nights and went toward the barn, burrowed into the hay, and lay back. Otto squinted at the sky a while, then averted his face, but Shan looked steadily upward. Little lanterns flickered up there. When the moon arose much later, he noticed the slice off the bottom now extended part way up the side. Clean, he thought, clean as ice. Rides alone up there and doesn’t see a single thing. Doesn’t hear anything or smell anything. A man could lie in the hay until Doomsday with a fire in his guts like hot shot and that big ball of nothing would never know he was alive.
He turned upon his side and gazed down across the land. It was too quiet. The cattle were still and no coyotes sounded. Beyond, he could see Otto’s form, broad and flat in slumber. His right arm was flung out, fingers partially hooked, fingers that had sent a big rifle ball through a man’s brain. Fingers turned to soft silver by moonlight. Dead fingers like Amos Blessing was dead. Art Blessing … ruined. Unable to hold a pitchfork again, an ax, a saddle horn … a gun. He stirred and looked out where the ground swelled upward into the dividing, long slope of land. What about the woman? Cried, sure, cried
buckets full when she’d come creeping out of hiding and found the inert bodies, one dead, one near death.
What would become of the Blessing Ranch—the land, cattle, horses? There were Blessing animals strung out far and wide—who would get them now? Excitement swept up through him. He raised up on one arm, looking down into the yard by the spring box. Otto would know what was right, but one thing was sure. Shan was in the best possible position to profit from unbranded Blessing calves, and this was calving time. Blessing calves, enough of them to fill his corrals. More than he’d get from his share of the Muller calves. Instead of waiting out a lean five years to get into the cattle business, he could do it in one year.
A phantom slipped out of the shadows by the cabin. It took a moment for his mind to attach significance to it, then he watched, focused his eyes, closed his mind down around its progress across the yard. It was Mary. He could see her better after she moved out into the moonlight. She was making for the barn. He watched until she disappeared from view. She was carrying something. What was she up to? He drew his legs up cautiously, moved clear of the hay, and worked his way toward the loft ladder, went down it a rung at a time until he was just inside the door, where he flattened, listening. There wasn’t a sound. He eased outside into the shadows of the building and made his way stealthily toward the corner. His heart was thudding by the time he got close enough to see her.
There was something holding her hair back so that it fell around her shoulders as black as coal except where the silver light shone down upon it. She was taking a bath at the spring box with her back to him. He watched, feeling ashamed, and when she drew up, dry, and threw her head back to look up into the bowl of heaven, there was sweat running down his chest and in the palms of his hands. He thought she was like a doe, built to run, to watch, to fade into shadows. She was symmetrical, beautifully light, and frail-appearing. There was nothing sturdy or heavy about her.
“Mary …”
She moved so swiftly, for a second he lost her in the gloom by the spring box. He moved forward, and when she arose from behind the logs, she had the gingham dress on. She didn’t run or speak angrily or, as he’d done, throw a clod at him. She just stood there, watching him come closer.
The pine needles and sweet-grass scents was mixed with the less attractive and sterile odor of lye soap. When he stopped, looking down into her face, he couldn’t think of a single appropriate word to say. He reached out and touched her with one large hand. Let the fingers lie lightly on her shoulder. She was like a soft bronze statue in the moon’s flat rays. Behind them was the ghostly outline of buildings, forgotten now.
“Let’s walk,” he said. “Come on.”
They went east. The barn lay between them and the cabin. Shan thought it was like being drunk, what he was doing. You knew, you knew perfectly well, but you went ahead anyway. He stepped on a cocklebur with his bare foot, stopped, swore softly, and pulled the thing out, and resumed his way without looking around at her. Walked until a little blur of dark shadow turned out to be a clump of scrub oak, lithe and beautiful in the strange, hushed world of night, and there he stopped.
She stood beside him, and at first she didn’t look at anything else but his bigness, the broad sweep of chest, the pale flow and ripple of muscle when he moved. The strange little thing in the side of his cheek that jerked.
She turned a little to see the land, the clear, crystal sky, blue-gray with a ragged fringe of dirty old silver far out along the horizon. The silence everywhere, deep and lasting.
“You like me, Mary?”
She nodded, still solemnly looking beyond, far out, into eternity.
He touched her again, caught her in both arms, and drew her close. She neither responded nor resisted, and he loosened his hold. Then she did an unexpected thing; she put her hands up to his face and held it averted, away from her, and studied it. He forced his head back around and bent forward. Her hands went down to his waist and hung on. Where the fingers lay, widespread, it burned like hot iron.
He kissed her. It was like drawing something out of himself, something savage to match her own ferocity, and he moved back afterward.
“Sit down.”
She sat, face away from him. “You good man, Shan. Strong man.” Then she turned suddenly and smiled, and all the impassivity she was capable of disappeared forever between them. The moon made her golden-colored. Black eyes as deep as night clung to him. He dropped down unsteadily upon the warm earth.
“Those Indians you killed …”
“What about them?”
“They make me go. They stoled me.”
“Stole you? Why, I thought one of them was your husband, Mary … or maybe your brother.”
She shook her head shortly. “Stole me to take far away. No good.”
“What were they doing at my ranch?”
“See smoke before sunup, ride over. Not long you come, big fight, run, run …” She leaned toward him. “You want to kill me, too?”
He flushed. “I thought you were a buck Indian then. I didn’t know you weren’t until I shot your horse, Mary.”
She continued to bend toward him, stare into his eyes. “You like me, Shan?”
He made no answer. A hotness was engulfing him, flooding upward inside his head. She bent closer, touched him with a small hand, dropped her head swiftly and pecked at his mouth, drew back, and made a gentle, strange smile. His heart was pounding.
She leaned over him and trilled a song. There were no words and the music was more chant than song, but the movements that went with it left little to be imagined about its purpose and meaning, and in the end, because passion was beyond prudence and her deep nature in all its simplicity invited it, they were close. A half of him was placid and filled with a richness, the other half was suffocated and lost.
Chapter Fourteen
The next morning it rained. Shan had ridden out before daybreak and wasn’t there for breakfast. As soon as he had eaten, Otto also saddled up and rode out among the cattle. When he found Shan, standing beside his dark-wet horse in the downpour, he laughed at him, his face shiny with water.
“Now the feed’ll last,” Otto said over the splash and hiss of water. “I could get down and wallow in it. There’ll be plenty of hay, too, son. This is the prettiest thing I’ve seen this year, this rain water.”
Shan looked up at him, his unruly hair plastered flat. “How’ll that little calf make out?”
“Hah! As long as they get a gut full of warm milk first, they can make it through a blizzard. A little rain don’t hurt them.” Otto gestured with a dripping shirt sleeve where the cattle were standing humped up with their rumps to the north against the force of the storm. “They’ll drift with it. You’ll have to ride a little and haze them back to your range, but rain water never hurt them. Never at all.” He dropped his arm. “I guess that’s what you figured, why you came out here so early. They’re holding breakfast for you. Let’s go back.”
Shan looked at the fish-belly sky a moment. Off in the east were some monstrous old thunderheads. They reminded him of the greasy smoke that rises above burning towns. He turned swiftly and mounted, settled into the saddle. “I could use some hot coffee,” he said.
They turned, rode toward the glistening barn, and Otto talked most of the way back. Shan’s head was down, rain water running in a dirty trickle off his black hat.
When they put up the horses, Otto stood in the drafty doorway, admiring the sullen sky. “Not everyone that comes out here gets a good summer, boy. You’re lucky.” Shan fiddled with the saddle, finally hung it up, and went back to look at his horse. He seemed in no hurry to go to the cabin. “We’ll have fat cattle to sell this fall,” Otto went on. “This is a lucky year.”
Shan finally went to the door and looked out. Up the slope where he’d been the night before by the clump of scrub oak were some cattle. “Otto,” he said flatly, “what’ll
happen to the Blessing range and cattle?”
Otto’s expansive smile dimmed a little. He looked at Shan’s solemn profile. “The range’ll be open for public use, I expect, unless they’ve got an heir to come out here and take it up. The cattle … well, they’ll have calves just like they’ve always done.”
“I know.”
Otto walked heavily out into the mud, hesitated, and looked back. “How many calves would you say it would take to replace a burned-out barn?” He started forward. “Come on, we can lace that coffee with your rye whiskey.”
Shan forced himself out into the yard, felt the quick, driving lash of rain across his shoulders, kept his head down until they were at the door, then he raised it. Mrs. Muller was smiling at Otto. Sarahlee swept up and laughed at Shan.
“You must have been a long way out when it started.”
“I was.”
“You’d better get into dry clothing or you’ll catch your death of colic, Shan.”
He saw Mary’s black eyes on him and turned away from her. The Mullers were more than happy over the rain; they were unusually gay. Mrs. Muller helped Shan rig up a blanket partition for him to change his clothes behind, and afterward they ate another breakfast, all of them. Otto laced the coffee, even for the women. They sat inside with the cabin door open, looking out, listening to the drum roll across the shake roof and talking over the racket it made. Finally Otto got up.
“We’d better head back, Georgia,” he said. “Shan, how about me taking the buggy and riding back, when this lets up, for the team and wagon?”
“Sure, Otto. Sarahlee and I’ll bring the team and wagon down the next day or two. You don’t have to make the extra trip.”
After the Mullers left, waving and smiling through the drenching, Sarahlee put a shawl over her head and shoulders and went down to the barn with Shan while he fed the stock. She walked through the building, touching things, breathing deeply of the wet fragrance.