Gathering on Dance Hall Road

by Dorothy A. Bell

  “You like it, living on a ranch? Staying in one place?”

  He met her gaze and said, “Yes, yes I do. I stay away from town if I can. I’d rather be out riding, checking on the cattle or mending the corral or the barn roof. I’m not very sociable. I’ve been known to hide.”

  “I don’t like to socialize either,” she said and wrinkled her perfectly proportioned nose.

  He snorted. “What do you mean, you don’t like to socialize? You perform in front of a crowd of people every chance you get. I could never do that.”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to be friends with any of them, or…or dance or talk to them. I do my act, and usually, I go sit in my wagon or groom Maji until everyone goes home.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  Her little hat slipped back, and she let it fall down between her shoulder blades. Tipping her head to the side, she pulled her long ponytail over her shoulder and adjusted the ribbon beneath her chin. “People, strangers, want to know things, like who’s your mother? Does she know what you do? You’re an Indian. Where’s your tribe? Shouldn’t you be on a reservation?”

  He chuckled. “Well, now, wait a minute, you just asked me, where’s my tribe.”

  She giggled and waggled her shoulders. Maji did a little side step. “I did, didn’t I?” She corrected her mount and gave Van a sly smile. “Sorry.”

  “My turn,” he said with raised brows and a snicker on his lips.

  “Oh, no, here it comes.”

  “So you don’t make friends easily?”

  She huffed. “I have friends. I have two very good and dear friends, but they’re at school.”

  Ah, the time had come to probe. But would she tell him the truth or prevaricate? “You went to school with them?”

  “Yes, at an all-girls school in Cherry Grove. That’s where I met the Millers. Not at the school, they were passing through. It was hard to leave my friends, but I really wanted to perform trick riding, you know. And I was done with school. I turned twenty this last June. How old are you?”

  He laughed at her, admiring her quixotic way of changing the subject. “I turned twenty-four in July. These friends, did you grow up with them or meet them at school?”

  “I grew up with them. We’re like sisters.” She pressed her lips together and gave Maji a pat on the neck. Van was beginning to read her tells. He braced himself. She was about to say something outrageous.

  “Van,” she said without looking directly at him, “I…wish you would stay with us for a while. I would miss you. I…I know we haven’t known each other for very long but…but…”

  Yup, she’d gone and done it, thrown him off his stride. He gave her question some thought, asked himself some hard questions. And, in the end, the Sheriff’s warning held firm. “The thing is, I’m a stay-around-the-home-fire kind of man. This is the first time in my whole life I’ve ever gone out just to roam around. I’m not comfortable with it. I want to go home, but I’m making myself look around. I want to go home; you obviously don’t.”

  She put up her chin and sniffed. “I should go home, but I don’t want to. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

  Her voice failed her, cracking. She sniffed and rolled her shoulders back. “I love my parents. But when I go home, I revert to their pitiful, lonely little girl. I didn’t talk for a whole year after my birth parents died. I was three years old. My brothers and I were adopted by two wonderful people. I love them dearly. But when I’m home I’m, I’m bad, I get moody and become childish. I don’t like myself.”

  He reached over to touch her hand. “There’s nothing wrong with you. I feel like that all the time. We will always be our parent’s children. I understand,” he said directly into her eyes. “You have ambitions. I don’t. My only ambition is to see to it the stock is fed, and the hay crop is stored properly, and to set a trap for the fox to keep him from stealing all our chickens. Your life is exciting and fulfilling, mine is boring and…well, kind of sad really because it’s exactly what I want. I suppose someday…”

  She pulled her hand away from his. “Someday what? Someday you’ll find a silly girl who likes being bored, and you’ll have a dozen boring children?”

  On the defensive, he jerked to attention. “Yeah, I guess. Right now I can’t see it, but it could happen. I think, if I set my mind to it, it could happen.”

  Turnabout being fair play, he asked, “What is it about performing that drives you? Why do you do it.?’

  She pulled her lips to the side and shook her head. He smiled to himself, pleased he’d irritated her. “I don’t know,” she said, tossing her head, averting her eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she said down to her hands, the hands holding onto Maji’s long mane. Chin up and looking him straight in the eye she said, “For one thing, I’m in charge. I do what I want, and no one tells me or makes me do anything.”

  The vehemence in her voice took him aback. “You had people ordering you around? Your parents? Where was this?”

  “School. The people who ran the school thought they were doing me a favor by letting me stay with my friends. They let me know if I wanted to stay I had to work to keep my place.”

  “Your place?”

  “My place as an insignificant, half-breed, squaw brat in a white man's world, seeking a white man's education.”

  Her words shocked him, left him speechless. Her pain, her wounds, ran deep. He silently cursed the people who’d been cruel to her. And blessed Ryder McAdam, Melody’s brother, his sister’s husband, for exposing them and bringing justice down upon their ugly heads.

  He knew for a fact now things were different at the Cherry Grove School. Jo had seen to it. The girls were happy and treated well. But something kept him from revealing his identity, revealing that Jo, Melody’s sister-in-law, was his sister.

  Looking down to his hands, unable to meet her eyes, he asked, “You’ve never thought about having a home, making a home of your own?”

  She was slow to answer him. She sighed, chin up, looking at the mountains. “I have, and every time, there’s a man wanting his supper, his bath water warmed up, his hair cut, complaining I burned the biscuits again. But I do think about…about children. They’re a lot of work, but I could teach them so much. I would like that. I’m not a cook, but I can do it and do it pretty well. I hate keeping house. I grow a good garden, and I can take care of stock. I can make three different kinds of sausage, soap, and dig a privy, but I’d rather play with my horse.”

  To himself aloud he said, “I wouldn’t complain about burnt biscuits. And I wouldn’t ask you to warm my bath water.”

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. You’d be a handy person to have around a ranch. All of us had to pitch in when my mother was ill. We all cooked and cleaned for ourselves. No one complained or ordered anyone around. Does your father complain about your mother’s cooking?”

  She laughed at his question. “He wouldn’t dare. My mother is a woman of strength. You’re right, I’ve never heard my father order her to do anything she didn’t want to do.” She giggled and said, “But Mother Cleantha does order Daddy Royce around from time to time. Funny I’d never thought about how they are together. They more than love each other, they revere and cherish each other. And maybe that’s the problem. They love me and my brothers, but they don’t need us like they need each other.

  “My birth parents had the same kind of bond, I think,” she said, eyes downcast. “My father shot himself, and my mother couldn’t bear to live without him, that’s what my sister Tru told us. I don’t know if I would ever want to love like that. It’s selfish and dangerous. Frightening.”

  Van held his tongue for a few seconds. “My father lost the love of his life too, but he didn’t perish. He withdrew for a time, but he’s as alive today as he ever was with a new wife, a new partner.”

  She turned and looked right at him. “What a funny conversation we’re having. I’ve never talked like this with anyone before.
Please don’t leave us just yet.”

  He weighed his words very carefully before speaking. “I’ve never courted a girl, Kit. I never wanted to. Until a few days ago, I pictured myself living my life as an eternal bachelor, content with my lot, actually relieved I wouldn’t have to concern myself with courting and all the foolishness that goes with it. But I want you, Kit. I want to win you. But you don’t want to be won, I guess. I doubt you’ll ever want what I have to offer, so what’s the point of torturing ourselves. I have to go home. It’s where I intend to spend my whole life. Your life is out here roaming the countryside, winning the admiration of strangers in a crowd.

  “I’m not going to follow you around and hope someday you’ll change your mind and want a home. One of the things I admire about you is your…your spirit. It would be wrong to try to curb it or stifle it. It’s best if we part now before…before we go any further.”

  She clamped her lips shut, put up her chin, nose in the air. They rode in silence for a while until Melody urged Maji off the road. He had no recourse but to follow her. She waved the Millers forward and wheeled Maji around to come to him face to face. “I don’t believe you,” she said, her black eyes shooting daggers at him. “How dare you tell me you want to win me, then turn around and tell me I don’t want to be won.”

  Van pressed his lips tightly together to suppress a smile. “Why did you charge at me?” he asked her, hoping to throw her off track. And by the parting of her lips, and her little exasperated sputter he knew he’d managed to do just that.

  “What?”

  “Why did you come over the hill at me screaming? You scared the stuffing out of me.”

  “Two men, they cornered me. They wanted Maji. I thought you were one of them and I wanted to warn Ollie a stranger approached camp. Then I saw your face. The sun was in your eyes. It was too late by then. Maji bolted, and I held on. I didn’t realize we’d spooked your horse too until we were over the hill.”

  He leaned over Ranger’s head to get close to her face and look into her eyes. “The prize I was speaking of would be your regard, your trust,” he said.

  He decided to stop taunting her, sat back in the saddle and asked a benign question. “What are you hoping to trade for?”

  Muttering to herself, she urged Maji back onto the road. He followed and came alongside. “I’d like some feathers, maybe more bells,” she said. Her pretty nose in the air, she sniffed and tossed her pretty head.

  “I don’t have anything except the fishing poles. And I’m keeping them. Ollie put all the gear in her wagon. Are you Umatilla?”

  Lips pulled up in a little pucker she answered, “No, Cayuse.”

  “My mother was half Kootenai from Seven Devils country.”

  “Did you spend time with them?” she asked.

  “A little. How about you?”

  “My sister used to take us with her to visit. She went there to trade food and staples for goods for the mercantile in Laura Creek.”

  “Do you have any kin on the reservation?”

  “Oh, I know there are, but no one speaks of it.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  At dusk, black, ominous clouds were building behind them in the northwest. Melody, with Van beside her, followed the Millers into the open meadow behind the Mission school and the church. Jerry halted the Miller party near a grove of decaying cottonwood close to a small encampment of a half dozen shelters consisting of shacks and teepees.

  Jerry, the agile little man, somersaulted off the back of one of the big bays harnessed to his wagon, and before his child-sized boots hit the ground a greeting party formed, children racing forward, adults shouting, “Igasho, hey Igasho!”

  Unfazed, Melody dismounted. Van hesitated, mouth open, eyes wide.

  “‘Igasho,’ the wanderers. Jerry’s very popular here,” she said without looking at him. She smiled to herself and set her hat on her head. “His size fascinates, and Ollie’s red hair and freckles are admired.”

  Soon blankets lay scattered in front of the wagons on the dry meadow grass, and the trading began. Mick and Jim unloaded their wares. Melody begged Ollie for a couple of her cinnamon rolls and a pouch of coffee beans. Van handed her the bag of trade goods she’d gathered from her wagon. He stood beside her until Jerry motioned for him to help him and the boys move the horses.

  Melody stood for a few moments, choosing her venue carefully. A lone woman with two small children had laid out her small rug at the very end of the row of hawkers. Melody spotted the woman’s staff. The stick, polished smooth, sported a bleached set of deer antlers on the end with white feathers tied to the antlers and little bells attached to the thongs. The gentle tinkle of bells called to her.

  She allowed the woman to talk her out of all her yarn and the gloves and left the vendor with an entire staff of feathers and a box full of bells. Down the line, a lively exchange over three bolts of calico had erupted. Van, with his hands in his pockets and a smile on his lips, stood to the side observing.

  Melody slipped away, rushing across the field to the side of the mission school. The weathered, clapboard two-story school stood ominous and silent against a gray overcast sky. In the fading light of day, she hurried on to the church next door, then down a narrow trail to a small shack near the river’s edge.

  She knocked on the door once, and it creaked open. A pair of pearl-sized black orbs beneath fleshy lids, heavy and veined, stared at her through the crack. The door opened and the old face, lined and sagging, broke into a toothless smile. Without saying a word, the old crone waved her in.

  Melody left the staff of feathers beside the door and stood for a moment holding her bag and Ollie’s buns and coffee beans to her breast, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim interior of the one-room shack. The old woman, her back humped, hands gnarled, fingers trembling, poured a concoction of brown liquid into a chipped bowl and handed it to her. The old woman lowered herself to the floor, folded her legs, ankles to knees, and motioned Melody to join her on the elk hide rug before her cheery hearth.

  Seated on the floor, Melody respectfully took a cautious sip of her drink and swallowed without wrinkling her nose. The strong herbal mix left a bitter taste in her mouth. She held the bowl with both hands, and stared into the dark concoction, uncertain how to phrase the question she wished to ask. Setting the bowl aside, she withdrew the white leather dress from her bag and handed it to the old woman.

  The old woman’s black eyes flooded with tears, spilling over and down her shrunken cheeks. She pulled the dress to her sagging bosom and nodded to Melody.

  “I wore it for the first time last night,” Melody said, forcing herself to look into the old woman’s watery black eyes. “I danced in it. I…I didn’t feel like me. I was someone else, something else. I had bells on my wrist and ankles.”

  Turning away from Melody, fumbling in the chest behind her, the old woman removed a small box of cloth scraps, a small bundle of discolored papers, and unearthed a small wooden box. She opened the lid very carefully, reverently, and removed a spool of very fine white silk thread and a needle. She turned the dress inside out and pointed to the fine stitches at the shoulders and the side seams and nodded.

  “Your stitches?” Melody asked.

  The old woman nodded.

  “My mother’s dress?”

  The old woman nodded again.

  “You knew my mother?”

  The old woman put her hands to her heart, opened them and stretched them out toward Melody, then up to the dark ceiling of her shack.

  The old woman retrieved another treasure from her little box, a braid of black hair interwoven with brown hair and tied off at the ends with matching blue beads. She kissed the braid and handed it to Melody.

  “My mother and father’s hair,” Melody said, trading the braid for the dress to place back in her bag, “This is her wedding dress?”

  The old woman blinked and nodded, tears winding down the deep cracks in her sunken cheeks. She opened her thin lips to speak, b
ut no sound came out. Her eyes closed, she took a deep breath. In a voice, hoarse and garbled, teeth missing, and using what was left of her tongue, she spoke, “Bells empty noise, listen to heart.”

  “Yes,” Melody said, understanding and not understanding, accepting she would know the meaning in good time.

  “Weave feathers,” the old woman told her, touching her hair. “See truth.”

  Melody pressed her lips to the old woman’s wrinkled, weathered cheek, set the rolls, coffee, and a small pouch of herbs she’d gathered in the old woman’s lap, and left with no further words spoken.

  ∙•∙

  Van hesitated to follow her, but he had to find out where she was going. It was getting dark and with a storm coming who knew what kind of trouble Melody could find out here. When the door of the shack opened, he feared for her safety. He moved closer but couldn’t hear what, if anything, was said. When Melody entered, and the door closed, he backed up to the church and stayed out of sight behind the front steps to wait.

  The wind had picked up, and he pulled the collar of his coat up around his ears. Melody left the shack, rushing past him without notice. He ran around the front of the church and the school, hoping to beat her back to camp. At her wagon, he found her inside laying her costume in a box below her cot.

  “You must be hungry,” he said.

  Startled, she popped up, hands going behind her back. “Yes, yes, very hungry,” she said in a rush and slid the box containing her dress beneath her cot with her foot.

  “So, trading all settled then?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes. I found a wonderful staff and more bells. I’m very hungry and ready to celebrate.” She started to jump down off her tailgate. He caught her about the waist and lifted her up off her feet, bringing her body close to his. Lowering her very slowly, he kissed her. She sighed and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  When he released her, she said, looking him squarely in the eye, “I’m going to forget you’re leaving us in the morning. We have tonight. No boy has ever attempted to kiss me, or chase me, or even hold a conversation with me other than my brothers. I’ve kept up my guard and repulsed all possible approaches, not that there were any attempts made.”