Gathering on Dance Hall Road

by Dorothy A. Bell

  Jo said they’d found him in the road in front of the school. He didn’t remember that, but he did remember congratulating himself for reaching Cherry Grove when he passed the Cherry Pit Saloon on his way to the school.

  »»•««

  When next he opened his eyes, the room was dark. The door opened, and Jo entered carrying a lamp. She set it on his bedside table and retreated. She returned balancing a teapot, a cup, and a plate of toast on a tray. “I thought you might be ready for a little more to eat and drink.”

  “What day is this? How long have I been here?” he asked, scooting up to a sitting position. Jo stuffed some pillows behind his back and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Ten days, Van. You’ve been here ten days. I swear you were half dead when we found you in the road. What the hell happened to you? I’ve never seen anyone so gaunt. How did you get those cuts? I read the sheriff’s report. He said you subdued Kramer with the butt of a rifle. He didn’t mention a knife fight.”

  She poured him a cup of fragrant tea and handed him the cup. His hands were shaking, and the hot tea slopped down his bare chest. She took it from him and held it up to his lips. He put his hands over hers and drank it all down.

  He laid back, reveling in the warmth and comfort the liquid brought to his body. “Ranger killed Kramer’s brother the night they tried to steal Melody’s horse. Melody, we think, was tossed off Maji when the brothers attempted to hobble her. Ranger took out one of the bastards, stomped him to death. Lyle Kramer escaped to attack me. And I whacked him with the gun butt. In jail, he wouldn’t shut up, going on and on how he wanted to kill Ranger, kill me, kill the sheriff. Rutland was relieved to hand him over to the deputies from Wasco County where the brothers were wanted for horse stealing. But Kramer escaped and tracked us to River Glenn.

  “The Millers wanted to work the Caledonian festival at River Glenn. And Melody wanted to do her act, so I tagged along. I ran into Kramer in the dark at the festival. I didn’t know it. I wasn’t expecting him to be there. He came at me with a knife. The knife he’d used on the deputies in Pendleton. I don’t know what happened, how Melody knew Kramer was there. But she came screaming after him. She stabbed him in the back with her staff. She’d traded for that staff when we’d laid over at the mission. It had a set of deer antlers on it and feathers. As it happened, it proved a very effective weapon.”

  He closed his eyes and licked his lips before he could continue. “Rutland had sent Royce a wire letting him know his daughter had incurred a close call with a pair of horse thieves. Royce hightailed it to Pendleton the day we left town and Kramer escaped. Naturally, Royce joined up with the sheriff when he found out he meant to find Melody and me. There was a thunderstorm the night we camped at the mission. It slowed Royce and the sheriff down. They arrived at River Glenn in time to cover the body. I got cut up a bit, but nothing life-threatening. Ruined my coat.”

  “My God,” Jo said, her hand on his arm. “Why did you leave her, Van? I don’t understand.”

  “I’d like to hear the answer to that,” said Ryder from the opened bedroom door.

  Van sighed and took a deep breath. “I left Melody free to pursue her dream as a performer. It’s what she wants. I have to go home. I should never have left home. I sure as hell won’t ever again. I can’t follow your sister around the country,” he said to Ryder. “I won’t be her pet dog. She doesn’t want to stay in one place, live the boring everyday life of a rancher’s wife. I could never ask her to…to do that. So I left. Better we face it. We are not meant to be together. It was a mistake. Her virtue is intact, Ryder. So you and Royce don’t have to beat me up or load up the shotgun. Melody and I are…we’re…friends. Good friends. We’re family. Like brother and sister.”

  Jo poured him another cup of tea. “Eat the toast. There’s applesauce, try it on the toast.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  From the paddock gate, Melody felt her father and mother’s eyes on her. Today they were putting Maji out to pasture with Ryder’s stallion Sarg. Melody knew how this worked, how brutal a process mating could be with horses and hesitated to let Maji lose. But the mare continued to scrape the frozen ground and pace the pasture fence longing to be set free. Sarg trotted a few yards away, calling the mare. Melody could no longer deny Maji, or nature’s call. She opened the gate, and Maji flew past her. Sarg reared, Maji sped past him, and the chase was on. They disappeared into the copse beyond the trees that bordered Laura Creek.

  Melody, at the open gate, worked to swallow back her tears.

  “You’ll see them in the morning. Maybe tomorrow, or the next day. Leave the gate open,” Royce said, calling to her from the barnyard.

  Melody nodded and hooked the wire around the gate post to keep it open.

  “Come inside,” Cleantha said. “It’s cold out here. You haven’t had any breakfast.”

  The thought of food held little appeal, but what else was there to do? Melody put her arm around her mother’s waist allowing her to lean on her to adjust the canes in her hands.

  Melody didn’t know if her mother’s infirmity had become more acute or if she’d grown up, at last, more aware of the difficulties her mother faced to get around, especially in the barnyard on uneven ground. Inside the house, her mother moved from one chair to the next, or the doorway, or countertop or table. Today she appeared more bent and fragile than Melody remembered.

  Everyone in the family knew of the circumstances under which Cleantha had become crippled. A runaway marriage, a carriage accident, and a miscarriage had left Cleantha crippled and barren at the age of seventeen.

  Royce and Cleantha had married knowing they could never have children of their own. But when Melody’s big sister Tru brought Melody, and her brothers Ryder and Jewel to Laura Creek, Royce and Cleantha didn’t hesitate to take all of them into their home, adopt them, and make them their own.

  “You miss Mrs. Miller’s cooking I suppose.” Cleantha poured batter on her griddle. “Royce told me about her apple fritters. Do you know how she made them? I’d like to try making some.”

  “No,” Melody said, wiping her hand on a tea towel. “She just scooped in the floor, apples butter and cream and somehow it turned into stuff, donuts, fritters, dumplings, biscuits. I mostly washed dishes and kept the fire going. I don’t really want breakfast.” Melody took the plate of hot cakes and set them on the table.

  “Sit down,” Royce ordered. “Mooning around, not eating, staying in your room all day is…is…”

  “Royce,” Cleantha said, “she’ll eat when she’s hungry. We can’t force her to eat. I’m just grateful she’s home, not running around the country doing God only knows what.”

  Once again, they started talking about her as if she weren’t in the room. Her sister, Tru, and her husband Quinn, Royce’s brother, came over last night for supper and the four of them got into a discussion about Melody’s future.

  Tru suggested Melody come work in the mercantile. Cleantha thought she’d be happier doing something with the children. Royce didn’t care what she did. She could sleep in the barn with her horse. She could prance around in the meadow and dance with her horse. She could even go ahead and do summersaults off her horse’s back; it was all right with him so long as she stayed close to home where he could keep an eye on her.

  “This is my fault,” Melody said aloud. Royce and Cleantha stopped their bickering to stare at her, jaws slack. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t write, let you know what I was doing and where I was, or how I was. I’ve been disrespectful, I’m sorry.”

  She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. “I went silent as a little kid after the death of my parents. I still withdraw. I run away, hide in my room, go out in the barn, or the meadow, talk to the horses, but not to you, not to my family. I’m sorry. Would you both come sit down?”

  “You don’t have a thing to be sorry about,” Cleantha said, putting the honey and a jar of apple butter on the table. “You had a perfectly dreadful experience at
the school. We understand.”

  “Stop. Please, sit down and stop talking and listen,” Melody said.

  “You will mind your tone of voice when you’re speaking to your mother, young lady,” said her father.

  Cleantha put her hand on his arm and set her canes aside before she sat down and folded her hands in her lap. “Melody has something she wants to say, Royce. We need to listen.”

  He didn’t budge but stood with his hips against the kitchen counter, arms folded across his chest, a scowl on his face.

  Melody tipped her head to the side and ignored him. “I admit my joining a traveling show was about rebelling. I wore trousers and worked very hard to be something I wasn’t. The arena in Boise put on a rodeo once a month. Maji and I did our trick riding show. It was fun. But…but it wasn’t…thrilling. Not like the performance I did with Ryder. Ryder brought the crowd to their feet. He was spectacular. Crowds love Maji, and they applauded me. But when I rode her down the street in town, it was Maji everyone remembered and wanted to see. No one remembered me. I could walk down the street, and no one noticed. They didn’t notice if I was wearing trousers or a fancy dress, they didn’t care if I was male or female. No one noticed. I couldn’t very well be jealous of my horse.

  “By the time we’d reached Pendleton the end of summer, I’d about decided to come home, give it up. But the horse thieves turned up. And Hoyt Van DeVeer saved Maji and me not once, but twice. If it weren’t for the broken ribs and the dislocated shoulder I wouldn’t have tried on my mother’s wedding dress, the dress I stole out of Tru’s bureau drawer.”

  Cleantha, her delicate brows furrowed, opened her mouth, but Royce put his hand on her shoulder and shook his head. He sat down at the table. “Go on, I’m listing.”

  “It was the night before we were to leave Pendleton and Jerry Miller and his boys got out their instruments and started playing. A stream of folks wandered up the hill where we were camped to enjoy the music. I had to do something. So I tried on the dress. It fit perfectly. I had these bells, so I made a couple of bracelets. I couldn’t do my trick riding, not with busted ribs and a sore shoulder, but Maji and I could do our dance routine like we do out in the meadow.

  “Ollie, Mrs. Miller, started selling her cakes and pies. And I danced out into the open. I moved, and Maji moved, and everybody fell silent. I thought they hated it, but Van said I’d stunned everyone into silence. He said I was beautiful. Not Maji, but me, I was beautiful.” Tears rolling down her cheeks, she sobbed and gulped.

  “Oh, Melody,” said her mother, tears spilling over the rims of her beautiful green eyes.

  Melody sniffed and swallowed hard. “No, wait, let me finish. Boys, the boys in school never chased me around the school yard. They never asked me to dance. They didn’t even bother to tease me. Twyla-Rose and Grace told me it was because the boys were afraid of me. But I know it’s because I’m…homely as a rusty board. I’m not very feminine. I’m invisible.

  “I come home,” she said and cleared her throat and picked up her head to look her parents in the eye, “and you all talk about me like I’m not in the room. And it’s my fault. I let you do it because I’m stubborn, and I don’t want to share with you what I do or why I do it because I know you would disapprove, or I tell myself you would disapprove.

  “The funny things is, I shared with Van. We shared things we’ve never told anyone else. It just happened so easy. He left me,” she said, her voice cracking. “He left me because I let him think I would never give up performing. I ran away, sort of. I ran away from him. Not literally, but I let him think I would never give up my traveling life. I begged him to come with us to River Glenn. He didn’t want to. He told me straight up he wanted no part of traveling around the country, following me around. But I begged him to stay with us, come with us to River Glenn.

  “Maji, poor Maji. There, at River Glenn she was in a state, nervous and fractious, all those horses around and the stallions picking fights with one another. She was coming into her season; I knew that. That night I came to my senses, but I still had one more show to give. I made her dance with me. I never gave a thought to what she’d rather be doing. I’m nothing without her. I’ve never been anything but Ryder’s little sister, or Twyla-Rose’s friend, or your scrawny little adopted orphan.”

  “That’s about enough of that!” Royce said, slapping the table with the palm of his hand. “You obviously haven’t looked in a mirror lately. Van is right, you are beautiful. Graceful, lithe, and yes, beautiful. You are also the most obstinate, exasperating female I’ve ever tried to reason with. You are completely self-sufficient. You don’t need anyone, Melody. Or at least that’s the impression you give everybody. You can out ride, and outshoot, any boy around here. You can kill, gut, and cure any game you take down. You’ve got the nerve and the smarts of a she-wolf. It’s little wonder boys are scared of you. Hell, you scare me, and I’m your father.”

  Cleantha cleared her throat. “I have a question. Was Van afraid of you?”

  Melody had the grace to blush. “Maji and I, we charged him. I mistakenly thought he was one of the two men who’d cornered me after our show in Pendleton. They caught me in back of the feed store with Maji and tried to strong-arm me into selling her. I punched one of them in the…the, you know…because they were about to get rough. Jerry, Mr. Miller, and his sons showed up and took care of them.

  “Van was coming up the hill, the sun going down and I didn’t see his face until I got close. Too late I realized he wasn’t one of those men. I lost control, Maji bolted, and Van’s horse bolted, and we took off over the hill. By then it was dark. Maji liked the little ravine at the bottom of the hill. That’s where I thought she was going. Next thing I remember I’m on the ground looking at the stars and a row of moons and all twisted up. So yes, I scared Van the moment I saw him. But after that, he basically treated me like Ryder and Jewel treat me. I had to bait my own hook even though my arm was in a sling and my ribs hurt. He made me carry stuff. He didn’t wait on me at all.”

  She pressed her lips together to hold back the fact she’d scared him when she’d disrobed in preparation to copulate. Or when she’d insisted they sleep together. There were some things you didn’t tell your parents, at least she had sense enough to know that.

  “Ah, ha,” Cleantha said, eyes narrowed seeing right through her. “I scared Royce plenty before we were married. I had him shaking in his boots. Something tells me you know what I mean, young lady.”

  Blushing, Melody said, “He’s beautiful. I never knew a man could be beautiful, but Van Buxton is beautiful and brave, and he has blue eyes. He kissed me. No boy has ever kissed me. No boy ever tried. I never wanted to be kissed, but I wanted Van to kiss me. And he left me because I don’t have any guile. Girls should have guile. I don’t have a single drop. I tried, but I don’t have it.

  “You can stop scowling at me, Daddy. I really made it hard for him to resist. You are right, though, it’s time for me to grow up. I just need some time, and I would appreciate it if you all would stop talking about me when I’m in the room. At least wait for me to leave. I’m going to my room to write a letter,” she said, chin up, lips quivering, and tears welling up in her eyes.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “She wrote this letter to me, Ryder. She meant for me to deliver the letter inside this letter to Van. She didn’t know where to send it. It’s addressed to Van. You can’t open it,” Van heard Jo say outside his door.

  “But it’s from Melody. What did she say to you?”

  “She just asked me to send the letter on to Van.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “What’s she doing writing letters to Van? She should hate his guts, never want to speak to him or see him again.”

  “Well, I don’t know. But this is Van’s letter, and I’m going to deliver it. Now, get out of my way,” Jo said, and the door opened. She was wearing her nightgown and robe again, but the sun had been up for hours, and he�
�d heard the school bell ring quite a while ago. “You playing hooky today, Jo?”

  She blushed and pulled her robe closer about her middle. “I wasn’t feeling well this morning. But I feel better now. I’ll go over to the school this afternoon. This letter came for you this morning.”

  Van took it from her and studied the graceful, swooping handwriting.

  “She really has a style all her own, doesn’t she?” Jo said. “I had her in my class. Her reports were a thing of beauty, well executed, profound, and poignant. She’s a sharp mathematician, too. But her real strength lay in logic and problem-solving. She was a joy to have in class. She loved to share her knowledge and help the younger girls. We miss her, Twyla-Rose, Grace, and me, we miss her very much.” She sighed and backed up to the door. “I’ll see about some lunch. You look better today. I’m glad.”

  “Thank you,” he said and waved the letter at her.

  ∙•∙

  Van laid back against his pillows, holding the letter in his hands, hesitating to open it. Melody had every right to dress him down good and proper. He’d run out on her after she’d saved his skin. He’d left without one word of goodbye or thank you.

  Guilt made him set aside the letter. He’d read it later, after lunch. He closed his eyes, but the letter sat there on the bedside table silently mocking him for a coward. He picked it up and laid it down, fingers tapping the envelope. Disgusted with himself, he tore open the seal and removed two pages of writing front and back. Preparing himself to take his medicine, he sat up a little straighter and squared his shoulders.