Gathering on Dance Hall Road

by Dorothy A. Bell

  In the purple dusk before full darkness, the sleigh shooshed past Petra’s boulder. At the mouth of the canyon, the view opened up. Held in one wide beam of golden light stood a yellow, two-story farmhouse with a wide, wraparound porch. Two barns and three outbuildings, all painted red, glowed in the light. Patches of green rushes and golden grass dotted the landscape surrounding two pools of deep blue. The scene, outlined in a layer of snow, lay like a grand painting on canvas. Huge trees at the base of the canyon, branches bare, guarded the pools on both sides of the road.

  Melody threaded her hand through Van’s arm and laid it on his thigh. She leaned her head against his shoulder and sighed, tears winding down her frozen cheeks. “Beautiful,” she said. It was all she could manage to say at the moment.

  Van slowed the horses as they passed the bathing pool. Torches lit up the interior of the shelter and highlighted the sloping gravel beach and the deck that extended a few yards over the steaming pond. “We’ve added two special chairs for those unable to walk to reach the pool. We’ll provide them upon request. In the cabins, you’ll find information on the medical studies done on the benefits of bathing in mineral waters.”

  “Well, I’m ready,” said Cleantha. She’d hardly spoken at all the whole long day, so her declaration took them all by surprise. They all laughed, happy to have the end of their journey in sight. “After sitting all day, a nice soak in hot water sounds like heaven. How warm is the water?”

  “It fluctuates,” Van said, “between eighty-six and ninety-two degrees. In the shallow water the temperature is cooler.”

  Jo waved. “Look! There’s Daddy and Idella.” The sleigh tipped slightly, and Cleantha grabbed Jo’s arm and squeaked. “Sorry,” Jo said. “Almost there.”

  “We usually have extra hands, and household help,” Van said, “but Juana and her family left a few days ago to be with relatives in Halfway for a few weeks. Feel free to wander, make use of the kitchen. If you can’t find something, ask, and we’ll try to find it for you. There are plenty of towels in the cabins. We ask you to hang them up after use to dry.”

  Van dropped the reins and hopped down. Giggling, Melody put her hands on his shoulders, and he swung her to the ground. Buck and Idella rushed forward, greeting and welcoming everyone. Van offered Melody’s mother his aid, but Royce pushed him aside. He shrugged his shoulders, and not wanting to stand around like a big useless lummox, decided to take the horses to the barn.

  Her hand on the harness, Melody winked at him, smiling at him from around a horse’s head. “I don’t think we’ll be missed for a little while,” she said.

  “No, I don’t s’pose. But you’re a guest, you should go inside, get acquainted, warm yourself. I can do this.”

  “Oh, I know, but I want to. You said we could make ourselves at home. I’m your guest, this is what I want to do.”

  Silently, they worked. Van chopped the ice from the water troughs. Melody located the chamois cloths and tossed one to Van. They rubbed the horses down and threw horse blankets over their strong backs to settle them in for the night.

  Melody hung up a length of rein and draped her cloth over a nail and brushed her hands together. “There now.”

  Van gathered her into his arms. “You were right, we make a good team.”

  She came up on her toes and gave him a kiss. “I think I smell something really delicious coming from the house. I’m famished. I need to freshen up. I’ll see you in the house.”

  Van didn’t know what to say, or what was happening to him. He suspected her of intentionally throwing him off his stride, but to what end? To play with him, get him all worked up into a lather, so she could discard him at the end of her stay, claim a conquest? Or maybe she thought to ensnare him, bring about his downfall somehow. Pay him back for running away.

  ∙•∙

  Smiling, satisfied with herself, Melody left the barn. It was all she could do to keep from skipping across the yard.

  “Your father and mother went to their cabin,” Jo said from the porch. “It’s this one closest to the house. They wondered where you’d gone. I told them I took you round to show you where to find the privy.”

  Guilt stopped Melody in her tracks. She put her head up, but unable to come up with anything witty to say she settled for, “Thank you.”

  “Your folks wanted to warm themselves and freshen up. I imagine you need to do the same.”

  “I wanted to help Van with the horses. It’s a cold night.”

  “Uh, huh,” said Jo, her arms folded over her chest, resting on her big belly. “And you wanted some time alone with my brother before you faced everyone inside.”

  Melody smiled up at her. “We rubbed the horses down. Van chopped the ice off the water trough. I poured some feed in their buckets.”

  “And you snuggled, stole a kiss or two.”

  Melody giggled. “We do work well together,” she said on her way to the cabin next to the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Van tip-toed down the stairs in his stocking feet, fully dressed for a frosty winter morning, boots in hand. He eased out to the front porch, careful to keep the screen door from slamming shut behind him. Leaning on the porch post, he tugged his work boots on and looked up to the early morning sky, still dark, stars twinkling.

  Shoulders hunched, head down into the collar of his coat, hands stuffed deep in his coat pockets, half-asleep, he didn’t see the light coming through the cracks and knotholes of the barn door until he was several yards away from the house. His first guess, Buck couldn’t sleep and had come out to the barn to get ahead of the chores.

  The man-door opened. In silhouette, the familiar outline of a slender boy in trousers and slouch hat stood before him. “Melody? What the hell?”

  Melody waved at him, her hand flapping, encouraging him to hurry. “Get in here. I’ve got the stove going, and the coffee’s on. I saw your light come on in your room. Did you know my bedroom window is right beneath your room?” she asked, taking him by the hand, pulling him inside and to the back of the barn.

  He stumbled, unable to take his eyes off her bottom. Her tight-fitting trousers left very little to his imagination. He still held the memory of her standing before him in her thin chemise and pantaloons in the moonlight. Her figure, far from voluptuous, slender and lithe, probably wouldn’t appeal to most men. But the easy way she moved, quick and energetic, teased him, and had him fantasizing the many ways in which two energetic bodies could meld together. She let go of his hand once in the tack room. The house plans he’d been working on lay open. He’d left a coffee cup, two lead sinkers and a metal ruler to hold down the corners to keep the paper from scrolling up.

  “Sorry,” she said and handed him a steaming cup of strong coffee, the smell of it distracting him from the uncomfortable throbbing in his trousers. “I couldn’t resist a peek. What is this?” she asked, tapping the paper.

  “It’s…an idea I had. Dad and I were thinking of adding on to the house.”

  She sipped her coffee, licked her lips, and bent over the paper. Her hat slipped to the side, and her long braid of black hair tumbled down on the surface of his table. He reached out and took the braid in his hand to put it back over her shoulder. She glanced up at him, smiled, and leaned her cheek on his hand. “This is the main house? And this is a house added on to the side of the main house?”

  “Yeah. It would be my house.”

  She pulled back to look at him. “Yours?”

  “Yeah, all mine.”

  “But you spend most of your time here in the barn, and the corrals, and work sheds. There’s a bunk in here, I bet you sleep here most of the time. This house,” she said, tapping the paper, “is on the other side of the main house. You couldn’t even see the barn, the ponds, or the cabins. You wouldn’t have a view of the mountains at all.” Her head tipped to the side, a finger in her mouth, she studied the design and her braid once again fell off her shoulder and onto his paper.

  Van, dragging his gaze awa
y from the nape of her neck and her dainty earlobes, stared down at the drawing, his father’s premonition whispering in his ears. Draw up your plans. Then your wild woman can tear your plans apart and draw up a better plan. That’s how it works.

  “Well, where would you put a house…if…it was your house?” he asked and held his breath while she studied the layout.

  “Over here,” she said, pointing north and east.

  “But that’s away from the main house.”

  “Does it need to be connected?” she asked, turning her head to look into his eyes. “I mean, it is your house. You could have a detached house, couldn’t you? It wouldn’t be that far from the main house. If you put it over here, you’d be closer to the barn. You could even build an overhang, a breezeway between the house and the barn. In bad weather, you could get back and forth without having to wade through the wind and the snow. It would be a great place to store cordwood. And it would be upwind from the barns, chicken coop and the sulfur smell from the ponds.”

  She stopped long enough to take a deep breath. “If you took your floor plan and turned it around, the big window here in the front parlor and the one in the kitchen would look out on the paddocks and the open pasture beyond. You could see the mesa and the ponds. And I bet, from the upstairs bedroom, you could see the mountains and the sunrise.”

  A knot of tears lodged in the back of his throat. He could see it, all of it, the life they would have. Too soon to ask her, he told himself. Not yet, he warned himself. Caution, proceed with caution. Don’t want to scare her off. She’s been here less than a day. She needs more time to get the feel of the place, the isolation, the routine. I can’t be sure she’s not playing with me.

  He pulled her into his chest and held her tight. She tipped her face up to his, and and wrapped her arms around his waist. “What are you doing out here, besides snooping around my work table?”

  She put a finger to his chin and ran it along the stubble of his jaw. “I heard you and your father talking last night. With Luis and Carlo gone, you told him you’d spread some feed out behind the barn for the cattle and the other critters foraging for food. You have plenty of hay. I checked the hay shed on my way over here. I’ll help you hitch up the job horses to the flat sled, and we’ll have the chore done in no time.”

  “Why?” he asked her, giving her body a little shake.

  “Why? ’Cause I’m a guest, I want to do this.”

  “You’re a guest, Melody. You don’t have to work off your board and room. This isn’t that school. No one expects you to work off your keep.”

  She shoved out of his embrace and gouged the rough board floor with the heel of her boot. “I know that.” Her chin went up, eyes lit up full of defiance. “If you were in the kitchen scrubbing pots, mopping the floor, you’d be on your own. I’d be outside with the animals, doing chores, watching the weather. I can do housework, but I don’t like it, so don’t ask me.”

  He grinned and shook his head at her. “Getting up at the crack of dawn to be with me is very nice, but a bit, well, strange. Last night, when I came into the parlor, you were there. You smiled at me, then went back to holding the skein of yarn for Idella. You looked at home. It looked right. And now here in the barn, of all places, finding you here, making yourself at home, to be with me. If you’re playing with me, I might turn the trick back on you, and you could find yourself stuck here with me. I might not let you go.”

  She put her arms around his neck, gazing up at him, coming up on her tiptoes. “I want to be with you. Work alongside you. I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m becoming more and more certain with every passing hour. But we’re wasting time. Everyone will be getting up soon and we need to get this done. And I need to get back to the cabin and out of these trousers before Daddy sees me.”

  »»•««

  Melody changed her clothes and pulled a brush through her hair, twisting a hank of hair away from her face to the top of her head and pinning it in place with a recently acquired hair comb. She draped her shawl around her shoulders and adjusted the lace fichu in the décolletage of her moss green woolen dress. She looked into her mirror to discover her mother stood behind her in the doorway.

  “You look very nice. I’m glad your sister Tru helped you pick out some new gowns. You’ve grown some in the last year. You look…womanly, elegant.” Moving her canes, then her feet, her mother shuffled her way into the room. “I would like to go to the pool after breakfast. Idella said she’d go with me. You want to join us?”

  “I don’t know how to swim,” Melody said, unable to look her mother in the eye.

  “I know.” Her mother, leaning one cane against the wall to free her hand, loosened a few wisps of Melody’s hair to allow them to feather over her ears. “But, if you’re thinking of…well… What I’m trying to say is, maybe it’s time you learned. And what better pool than a lovely warm water pond out of the public eye with two ladies who’ll take very good care of you.”

  “Do you swim?”

  “I used to. I don’t know if I can swim, but I’m sure I can float and tread water. The secret is don’t fight the water, let it lift you, carry you. We’ll start in the shallow end,” her mother said. “Hurry up now. I smelled something lovely coming from the main house. And shake the straw out of the cuffs of your trousers before coming in from the barn,” she said, leaving the room.

  ∙•∙

  Buck caught Van ripping up his house plans and busted out laughing. “She did it. By God, I was kidding, but she did, the little spitfire, she tore into your plans, ripped them to shreds, didn’t she?” He shook his head at him. “If she didn’t like yours, she sure as hell won’t think much of mine. I liked yours better. So, what did she recommend?”

  Van tossed the scraps of paper into the stove and slapped the cast-iron door shut. “She was out here when I got up this morning. She helped spread hay. We counted thirty head of cows and two bulls. No kills so far. The elk are staying near the mesa. No sign of the horses yet.”

  “The ladies went down to the pond,” Buck said, leaning over the work table, studying Van’s fresh drawing. “Jo went along. She can’t go in, of course. Ryder and Royce are waiting for us. They want to go hunting. I told them we’d find some geese at the other end of the wild pond. What’s this?” he asked, tapping his finger on the sketch. “What’s this building? Looks like it’s attached to the work shed, or…the barn?”

  “The house is attached to the barn by way of an open-sided breezeway.”

  “Breezeway?”

  “Yeah. Melody pointed out I spend most of my time in the barn or checking on the cattle in the corrals. And the view is better over here on the north side. You can see the ponds and the mesa and the mountains.”

  Buck laughed in his face and clapped him on the shoulder. “Would it help any if I told you Idella said practically the same thing when I showed her my design? Come on, get your shotgun. Let’s bring home supper.”

  Van rolled up his drawing. “When she pointed out the obvious, I nearly cried,” he said, reaching for his shotgun and canvas hunting vest. “She got me to thinking about water supply and where to put the privy.”

  “Indoor plumbing, Van? You could have indoor plumbing. A bathtub and water closet. Ryder knows an architect. He met him on one of his jobs. They used him when they updated the school. It’s the twentieth century, have to keep up.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Christmas Eve, Jo and Ryder retired early to their cabin. Jo confessed to Melody she had gas pains and didn’t want to disgrace herself in front of company.

  In the main house, a freshly cut lodge-pole pine stood proudly in the parlor corner near the piano, decorated with popcorn garlands and candy canes. Daddy Royce fiddle tuned, Cleantha at the piano, and Tru’s husband, Melody’s Uncle Quinn and his harmonica, set the room into a festive mood playing Christmas carols.

  Melody, Twyla-Rose, Birdie-Alice, and Van did their best t
o keep up and find the words to every verse of Good King Wenceslas. When they couldn’t remember the words, Melody and Van made up words to fit, giving everyone the giggling fits.

  Big, good-looking Telt Longtree lay stretched out on his belly on the floor in the middle of the room, his pretty, plump wife Wren next to him, both of them deep in a game of tiddly-winks with Tru and Quinn’s boys Lukas and Roman. Rafe and Doreen, and Buck and Idella, were in the kitchen sipping hot buttered rum drinks. Gabe, seated on the parlor sofa, his feet up, had charge of little Joy. She’d fallen asleep in her daddy’s arms right after supper.

  The party mood was interrupted when the front door flew open, and Ryder rushed in. “Jo, Jo…the baby. We were in bed and pop. I heard a pop and then water between her legs. She’s in labor.”

  Birdie-Alice calmly relieved her husband of their sleeping daughter. Gabe rolled up his sleeves. “Ryder, go back to the cabin, get Jo, and bring her over here. We’ll get her upstairs to her old room. Keep her on her feet for a while, let her walk around a bit.”

  Ryder, shirt unbuttoned, in his longjohns, barefoot, red in the face, eyes blazing, looked ready to explode. “She’s not one of your God damn mares!”

  Gabe put his hand on his shoulder and said very quietly, “I know, she’s my sister. I love her too. We need to let her move about a little until the contractions get too hard and start coming close together. Her labor will go faster if she moves around.

  “Melody, go with Ryder. Bring back any baby things Jo’s brought with her, and a spare nightgown if she has one. And help Ryder get her over here and up the stairs. I brought a kit with me for this very purpose. We’ll start to gather up what we need.”

  Melody opened her mouth to say she doubted her brother would cooperate with her. Gabe gave her an encouraging smile. “Go on, Jo will be happy to see you. She knows how capable you are. And your brother knows it too.”