Go Gently

by Nancy M Bell

  “Let me talk to your father about all this and I’ll let you know what he says. Leave it with me for a bit, okay?”

  Chapter Five

  “Dad!” Laurel stamped her foot. “Why can’t I go?”

  “Don’t you stamp your foot at me, young lady,” Colt Rowan spoke evenly.

  “You’re being so unfair. I have the money to pay for plane fare.” Laurel tried to lower her voice.

  “It’s not about being fair, Laurel.”

  “Then what is it about?” she demanded.

  “Watch your tone of voice,” her dad warned.

  “Fine.” She twirled a piece of hair around her finger and clenched her teeth.

  “Laurel, honey. Try to see your dad’s point of view.” Anna Rowan tried to make peace with her warring family.

  “I don’t understand his point of view. What’s so wrong about wanting to go and visit Ash, and Gort, and Coll?”

  “I don’t like you hanging around boys I’ve never met. Why can’t you give Chance a break?” Colton argued.

  “What’s Chance got to do with me going to Cornwall?” Laurel rounded on her dad.

  “Nothing, other than he’s good kid and he worships the ground you walk on.”

  “Dad! He’s like my brother. You’re imagining things.” She let herself be distracted for a moment.

  “Colt, don’t push the boy on her,” Anna warned her husband.

  “There’s nothing wrong with the boy. His parent’s land abuts ours, it’s going to be his one day. It only seems natural that the two of them should get together,” he continued.

  “Hey, I’m still here. Quit talking like I’m not in the room,” Laurel broke in.

  “You’re right, sweetie. Sorry,” her mom said.

  “Aisling asked me to stay with her, at her house. It’s not like I’m going to be staying at Emily’s in the same house as Coll,” she argued.

  “I don’t like it,” Colton growled.

  “It’s Christmas, Laurel. Don’t you want to be home for Christmas?” Her dad tried a different tack.

  “What if I went now and came home just before Christmas? I could fly on Christmas Eve, or the twenty-third,” she suggested.

  “That might work, Colton,” Anna said. “There’s no harm in her wanting to see her friends.”

  “Who’s going to make sure she doesn’t get into trouble? We don’t even know this girl’s parents. That Sarah, or Sarie, or whatever her name is, I don’t trust her one bit. She was in cahoots with my mother all that time ago,” Colton warmed to his subject.

  “You could call and talk to Ash’s parents,” Laurel attempted to sidetrack her father before he really got wound up.

  “We could call them,” Anna said.

  “Whose side are you on? Are you saying you think her going is a good idea?” Colton demanded.

  “I remember what it was like being her age and liking a boy my parent’s didn’t approve of.” She lifted an eyebrow and smiled gently. Her husband had the grace to blush.

  “That was different,” he muttered.

  “How is it different?” Laurel demanded. “If you like Chance so much, you hook up with him!” She turned on her heel and stormed out of the room. She let the porch door slam behind her and jumped down the step. She slapped the hat she’d grabbed on the way on onto her head and crossed the yard to the barn. Even though it was November, the day was fairly warm.

  She stopped at the corral fence and leaned on the top rail. Laurel whistled shrilly and waited for the small herd grazing in the pasture to come to her call. Sam threw his head up and whinnied. Wheeling on his haunches, he cantered through the open corral gate toward the fence where she stood. The buckskin gelding came to a snorting halt in front of her. Laurel reached for the halter lead shank draped over the rail and climbed over the corral fence. She fished a treat out of her jacket pocket and slipped the halter over his head. Tossing the shank over the gelding’s neck, she tied the free end to the nose band of the halter.

  Grasping at handful of mane, she vaulted lightly to his back. Touching him with her heel, she turned him from the fence and trotted down to the gate. Kneeing him closer, she asked Sam to side-pass against the barrier. Leaning over, she unhooked the gate and pushed it open. Keeping her hand on it she rode through, pivoting as his rump cleared the opening. Sam side-passed neatly to help her close it. Laurel pointed the horse’s nose across the rolling prairie toward the Old Man River.

  A herd of cattle grazed in the distance, she gave them wide berth, and they in turn ignored the horse and rider. The sun was warm though the wind had a bite to it. Laurel pulled the hat lower on her head and raised the collar of her jacket up around her ears. She was glad of the warmth of the gelding beneath her. She squinted at the position of the sun. It was low on the horizon and she reckoned she had an hour of sunlight left. Plenty of time to ride to the river bluffs and back. The gelding was content to amble along, picking his own way across the short grass prairie. She skirted the arrangement of large rocks laid out in a rough circle. The place had an oddly peaceful feeling to it. Often in the summer she’d ride out and leave Sam to graze while she walked among the stones, wondering how long they’d been there and what they represented.

  Mom said people of the Blackfoot Nation created the circle a long time ago. She didn’t know how long exactly or what it had been used for, but she taught Laurel to always treat it with respect and never move any of the rocks. As she passed it, Laurel dropped a bit of cornbread she kept in her pocket for Sam. It always felt right to leave some sort of offering when she came there. A little further on was a figure of a man and a giant turtle laid out on the prairie in rocks covered with rusty coloured lichen. Laurel smiled and halted Sam so she could savour the sight. It always amused her and she wondered if the figure of the man was leading the turtle, or if the turtle was chasing the man. She always thought of the stone figure as the native trickster Na’pe, Old Man, in English. That’s who the Old Man River was named after, she imagined.

  Shaking her head, she nudged Sam forward. She set him into a rocking lope and laughed as the wind whipped across the plains from the west. Before long she reached the clay coloured bluff overlooking the winding river far below. There were other places where trails led down into the river valley, but there was no time for that today. She let Sam drop his head and pull at the tough gamma grass. She braced her hands on his withers and watched the shadows change as the sun dropped lower. The wind whipped the grass so it rippled like the waves on the sea. Her thoughts turned back to Gramma Bella and Cornwall. Why can’t Dad see I need to follow Gramma Bella to England? And what’s with Dad going on about Chance and me like he expects us to get married some day? As if!

  She pulled Sam’s head up, and after taking one last look at the river valley bathed in the orange light of the setting sun, Laurel headed back toward the ranch house. Sam broke into a jog and Laurel allowed him to set the pace, sitting easily to his smooth gait. The dry grasses rustled and tumbleweeds ran before the wind, piling up against the cross fence where it joined the north pasture. She took a different route back, pausing to open and close the ranch gate set in the bob wire fence. A streamer of smoke blew almost horizontal from the chimney of the ranch house. Laurel thought of the story Harry Good Smoke told her about how the Black Foot people got their name. Periodically, the tribe would burn off sections of the prairie, controlling the burn by beating back the flames when they reached the limit of where they intended to stop. The bottoms of their moccasins became stained with soot from the ashes, and the soldiers and missionaries identified them by that mark. Of course, he explained, Black Foot was only what the white folk called them. He was proud of his heritage and still lived on the Blood Reserve. They earned the name Blood Indians from the red ochre they used to paint their faces for ceremony and ritual. He was from the Akainawa Nation, he said. The others were Siksika, and Piikuni. They used to range as far north as Ponoka, which he told her mean Elk in his language.

  “P’NO’ka,
” she said aloud putting the emphasis on the second syllable like he’d taught her. She slapped Sam’s neck and laughed. “You are an elk-dog, did you know that? When the Black Foot first saw horses they thought they were a mixture of elk and the dogs they used as beasts of burden. “P’no’ka-Imitaa.” Sam shook his head and broke into a lope when she touched him with her heel.

  The sky darkened as the sun slipped below the hills to the west. Her thoughts returned to figuring out a way to convince her dad to let her go visit Aisling. And Coll, she added. When she reached the corral she slid down from Sam’s back and slipped the halter and shank over his head. She spent a minute rubbing his cheeks and scratching behind his ears. Sam leaned gently into her ministrations and lipped the fingers of her other hand. She pulled a crumbled krunchie from the pocket of her jeans and offered it to him. He took it and left to join the other horses when she pushed him away.

  Laurel hung the halter and shank on the top rail and crawled through the fence. Dusting the hair off her butt and inner thighs, she headed toward the house. The light had mostly leaked from the sky and the sight of the yellow light streamed across the yard from the windows made her warm inside. Mom and Dad were still in the study, their figures clearly visible to her. They seemed to still be talking. She hoped Mom had convinced him to see things her way.

  She knocked the dirt from her boots before climbing the steps. Laurel stooped to pet Charlie’s head as she passed. The big shepherd cross mutt licked her hand and laid his head back on his paws. The warmth of the house was welcome when she stepped through the door. Once the sun went down the temperature dropped pretty quick. She shed her jacket and hung it on the rack by the wall. Standing up, she used the boot jack to pull off her boots, steadying herself with the back of the hall bench.

  “Laurel, is that you?” Mom called from the kitchen.

  “Yeah, I just came in.” Laurel padded down the hall, wondering when Mom left the study and went to the kitchen. “Do you want help with supper?” She pushed the swinging door to the kitchen open.

  “You can peel the potatoes.” Mom pushed the bowl of vegetables toward her.

  Laurel got a paring knife out of the drawer and settled on a stool, pulling the bowl closer. A pan of salted water sat at her elbow and as she finished peeling and cutting up the potatoes she dropped the pieces into the water. She glanced at Mom out of the corner of her eye, wondering if she dared ask if Dad had changed his mind. Her mother was humming under her breath as she rolled out dough for cinnamon buns. Sighing, she stood to put the full pot on the stove before turning back to centre island to start on the carrots.

  “What’s the real reason you want to go to Cornwall so badly?” Mom didn’t look up, but kept plying the rolling pin.

  Startled, Laurel had to think a moment before she answered. “You know I went to see Gramma Bella in Bragg Creek, but she wasn’t home. If I go to Penzance to see Aisling I can see Gramma Bella, too. I’m sure she’s staying with Sarie. I’m gonna email Ash tonight and find out for sure.”

  “How serious are you about this boy, Coll?” Mom glanced at her.

  The heat rose in her face. “Umm, I don’t know. What do you mean by serious? I like him fine, but we’re not talking about getting married or anything. What was Dad on about with Chance? Does he think we’re gonna get married? Where would he get an idea like that?” Laurel dropped a chopped carrot in the pan with more force than was necessary.

  “No man wants to see his little girl grow up and become a woman. You’ll always be his little baby girl,” Mom tried to explain.

  “What’s that got to do with Chance, or Coll, for that matter?” Laurel interrupted her.

  “He knows Chance, knows his family. You’re our only child, sweetie. One day the ranch will be yours, if you want it. You’re gonna need a good man to help you run it. Dad thinks Chance would be a good choice.” Anna smiled at her, her hands busy sprinkling brown sugar, raisins and butter over the dough.

  “What if I don’t want to marry Chance? Don’t I get some say in this?” She stood up, her temper rising.

  “Of course you do, sweetie. You’re too young to be worrying about getting married anyway. It’s just your dad wanting to take care of you and trying to do it the best way he knows how. So, if you don’t feel that way about Chance, tell me a bit more about this Coll character.”

  Laurel ducked her head. “There isn’t much to tell…he’s just different from the other guys I know. Sometimes, he makes me mad, ‘cause he just doesn’t get what I’m trying to say, but it never lasts and pretty soon he’s doing or saying something stupid to make me laugh.”

  “Has he kissed you?”

  “Mom! As if.” Laurel let her hair fall forward to hide her red face.

  “Just asking.” She could tell from Mom’s voice she was trying not to laugh.

  “Chance tried to, kiss me, I mean,” Laurel confessed.

  “What did you do?” Anna stopped cutting, the knife resting on the rolled up dough and filling.

  “I kinda avoided it. I just don’t feel like that about him.” Laurel peeked at her mother through the hair falling over her eyes.

  “Was he good about it? He didn’t push the issue, did he?” A small frown creased her forehead.

  “He was sorta mad. Wanted to know what was wrong with me,” Laurel muttered.

  “I hope you told him there was nothing wrong with you.” Anna laid her knife down.

  “I said it was gross, like kissing my brother.” She looked up and grinned. “He didn’t much like that. Stormed off and didn’t talk to me for the rest of the night.”

  “When was this?” Anna went back to cutting the cinnamon buns.

  “After the last rodeo. I got a ride home with Arlen Beckett.”

  “It was good of Arlen to bring you home, it’s a bit out of his way,” Anna remarked.

  “Said he didn’t mind, and I offered to give him some gas money,” Laurel said.

  “I’m glad you remembered your manners. It was good of him, I’ll have to remember to thank him next time I see him.”

  “Has Dad been encouraging Chance, like talking to him about his crazy idea of joining the ranches together? That’s all I need. Carly’s my best friend, and I can’t very well avoid her brother when I’m over there all the time.” Laurel put the carrots on the stove.

  “I’ll speak with your dad about it. If you really don’t want to get involved with Chance, he’s just gonna have to accept that.”

  “Did he change his mind about me going to Aisling’s?” Laurel held her breath and crossed her fingers.

  “Not yet. Laurel, I think you need to come clean and tell him about going out to find Bella. You know how he hates having things hidden from him. Maybe if you explain it to him, he’ll come around. No promises, though. Whatever he decides, you’re going to have to live with it,” she warned.

  “I’m sixteen. I can make my own decisions.” Laurel stuck her chin out.

  “While you live under our roof you have to abide by our rules,” Anna warned her daughter. “I wouldn’t go and talk to your dad with that attitude.”

  “I’m gonna go get changed,” Laurel said.

  “Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes, make sure you’re down in time to set the table.” Anna ruffled Laurel’s hair as she passed.

  She took the stairs two at a time and slid down the hall in her socks. She giggled and grabbed the door jamb of her room to stop her skid. After shedding her clothes, she showered and changed. Gathering her dirty things into a ball, she went back downstairs and tossed them into the basket in the laundry room off the mud room. Laurel hesitated as she passed the study door. It stood ajar and she could hear her dad talking to someone on the phone.

  Better not disturb him, she thought. It was going to be a hard enough sell as it was. She made short work of setting the table, poking her head into the kitchen to ask if Harry was joining them for dinner.

  “Harry’s headed into town so he’ll get something to eat there,” Anna
answered.

  Laurel removed the extra place setting and turned the light on over the table. In answer to her mom’s call she pushed through the door into the kitchen and took the platter of meat from her. She went back for the vegetable bowls, inhaling the intoxicating scent of the baking cinnamon buns. Mom made the best sticky buns Laurel had ever tasted.

  Dad came out of the study right on schedule as Mom carried the last bowl out to the table. She smiled at him and he dropped a quick kiss on her head. Laurel rolled her eyes. There was something embarrassing about seeing her parents being mushy. It made her very uncomfortable to think about her parents being interested in each other that way.

  After Laurel finished helping with the supper dishes she went upstairs to do her homework. Closing the math book with a relieved sigh, she went in search of a snack. Wandering down the stairs, she looked into the living room where Mom was stitching at her needlework and watching a sit com. She hesitated outside the study and then chickened out and continued on to the kitchen. Scrounging into the fridge for something to snack on, she pulled out a brick of cheddar cheese and a green apple. She added some crackers to the sliced fruit and cheese and returned the items to the fridge. Pulling up a stool, she sat at the island and satisfied her hunger. She washed and dried the things she used and wandered back out into the hall.

  Laurel listened at the door to the study, it didn’t sound like Dad was talking to anyone so he was probably working on the books. Fall branding hadn’t been over for too long, and she knew he’d sent some yearling steers and some replacement heifers to Balog’s auction mart in Lethbridge. She knocked on the door and pushed it open.

  “Hey, Laurel. What do you want?” Dad laid down the pen and rubbed his eyes. Leaning back in the chair he scrubbed his hands through his hair, the rich blue black strands peppered with silver.