by Gary D. Svee
“Reverend Peabody said he would hold services out here for anybody who wanted. Tried to talk him into putting them off until afternoon. His sermons would dry the paint on this place faster than a desert wind.”
Mary grinned as Pierson helped her down off the wagon.
The stationmaster bowed his head slightly, an unconscious gesture that made Mary smile again.
“Ma’am…”
“Mary.”
Pierson nodded. “Mary, those ladies in the circle over there are working on curtains. Gladys Johansen said she could sure use the help, if you don’t mind.”
“I would enjoy that.”
“Good, now come along, Mac. Let’s get this house built.”
Mac was leaning back on the grass, watching the clouds float by. He was stuffed, two days of eating whenever he wanted. The roast beef was wonderful. Horace Bumgartner took the compliments formally in the German way, nodding and saying danke, but Mac could see the old man smile occasionally, when he thought no one was looking. His mother’s potato salad was wonderful, everyone said so, and each time they did, she blushed. And each time she blushed, Sparks Pierson looked at her in an odd, gentle sort of way.
Everywhere there was laughing and joking and food. Everywhere people would stop for a moment to look into their neighbor’s eyes and laugh for the sheer joy of what they were doing.
And now only Mort Timpkins remained in the house. He inched backward toward the door on his hands and knees, rubbing oil into the oak. As his haunches appeared at the door, a roar went up from the crowd. The home was finished. In two days the people of Eagles Nest had come together to build a home for Sheriff Frank Drinkwalter and his bride. For two days the people of Eagles Nest had come together.
Pierson stood and threw his hat in the air, and a moment later everyone’s hat and bonnet sailed up, riding a chorus of hurrahs into the heavens.
Sheriff Frank Drinkwalter rattled toward Eagles Nest in a cloud of despair as dark as the heavens outside the train. Not long now until he reached town. Not long now. The sheriff shook his head and sighed. He would reach the culmination of his life, tomorrow morning when Catherine Lang stepped from the train.
She would emerge as a crocus emerges from the barren ground of winter. She would be a spot of color and beauty in his life, and he would take her over to his home, and drag that color and beauty into icy despair.
Catherine’s face was never far from Drinkwalter’s mind. It merged into his consciousness at the oddest of times. Sometimes when he was watching a sunset, he would see her eyes, sun and sky creating just the right mix of clarity and color. Sometimes he would see her smile on another woman’s face, disappearing a moment later. Once in Billings he had seen a woman two blocks away. There was something in the way she carried herself that made him think Catherine might have come early, hoping to surprise her beloved. But the stranger wasn’t Catherine, only a woman who walked a little as she did.
He knew that he appeared to Catherine that way, too, little hints of him in other men she might see. But tomorrow morning she would see him as he was, a failure in a world where one’s value is judged by his possessions. Tomorrow, she would see what he had made of himself, and she would be mortified.
The train lurched, the engineer setting the brakes for the slow approach to Eagles Nest, the clatter of steel wheels against steel track, easing a bit. The sheriff rose, taking his valise from the seat beside him. He walked to the back of the car, nodding to the conductor as he stepped past him to the loading platform.
There was a light inside the depot. Sparks Pierson must be doing some late work. Good man, Sparks. A real community leader, not like that self-anointed, strutting little peacock Jim Pratt. The sheriff stepped down stairs to a walk and made his way toward Main Street, watching for any lines on the sidewalk revealing a snake curled there on the warmth of the concrete.
Lot of racket coming from the Absaloka. Pete must be having some kind of party. Drinkwalter thought about walking down to the saloon. Usually that’s all he had to do, stop in so the men there would remember that reality lay just outside the saloon doors. But Bert was in charge now, and the sheriff wanted to get back to his place.
The sheriff turned the key to his home and stepped inside. The place was stuffy. He would leave all the windows open tonight, freshen up the place a little. That was something he could do. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
The sheriff’s hand found the string hanging from the overhead light. The bulb didn’t do much to light the room, but it provided enough light for the sheriff to see that nothing had changed very much.
And then he saw something out of place on the table. A bouquet of flowers, a collection of tulips and lilacs and roses were together in one big bouquet. And his suit, his only suit, hung freshly cleaned and pressed from the door to his bedroom. His shirt was starched and ironed. And a tie, a new tie, was draped around the collar.
The McPhersons had done what they could. He would thank them for that. They said they would go to the train with him to meet Catherine. He hoped they would be there. It would be easier if there were more people there. Then Catherine’s attention wouldn’t be focused only on him. Then she wouldn’t see what a failure he was, at least not right away.
The sheriff stepped into his bedroom and pulled off his boots. He undressed and pulled back the covers. Fresh sheets. Mary McPherson had done everything she could.
He lay back in bed, his head cradled in his hands and eyes open, staring through the dark at the ceiling. Not much sleep tonight, he thought. Not much sleep the night before the most important day of his life.
24
Mac sat on one of the two chairs in the McPherson shack, rubbing bootblack into shoes long past resurrection. His mother stood at the range, her hair cascading into a basin as she rinsed it with rainwater for the third time.
“S’pose the ten forty-two will be late?”
Mary shook her head, squeezing the water from her hair as she straightened.
“No, the ten forty-two is never late. Never on a day when you want it to be, anyway.”
“I don’t want it to be late. I want it to be early.”
Mary smiled. “I want to meet Catherine, too. It’s just that we have so much to do…”
“To make ourselves presentable?”
Mary stopped running a towel through her hair to stare at her son. “Mac, I didn’t mean that. I suspect Miss Lang will accept us as we are. I just want everything to be perfect this morning.”
“Like it was with you and Pa?”
Mary smiled again. “Yes, like it was with me and your father.”
She shook her head, little droplets of water sputtering as they fell on the stove. “I don’t know what I’ll wear.”
Mac jumped to his feet. “Well, what in the world is that?”
Mary jerked, knocking the basin to the floor. Galt. Mac must have seen Galt, but Mac was looking at his bed. Something had slithered into their home. Another mouse? Or maybe a snake. Maybe a rattlesnake had crawled into the warmth of the shack.
Mary drew back, willing whatever it was not to be a rattlesnake, but Mac didn’t seem to be frightened. The boy stepped to the bed, dropped to his knees, and reached under, hand groping for something.
“Careful, Mac! Be careful!”
Mac turned to his mother. “Ma, we chased the bogeyman away some time ago. I was just wondering what this was.” The boy pulled a box wrapped in shiny pink paper from beneath the bed.
“Well, look at this, Ma. A box.” He studied the card as though it were a clue in a Sherlock Holmes murder case. “It’s for you, Ma.”
Mary took the package. A secret admirer, the card said. She looked at Mac. He was struggling to conceal his grin. “Why, someone must be taken with my feminine wiles,” she said.
“Don’t see how it could be any other way,” Mac replied.
She stripped the paper from the package and opened the pasteboard box inside. A dress! A pretty pale blue dress with long sle
eves and white trim. On one lapel was a pink embroidered rose that distorted and then disappeared behind Mary’s tears.
“Sheriff gave me a raise to six dollars a week. I didn’t tell you so I could hold back the dollar. Mrs. Harris helped me pick out the dress. She was real nice. She embroidered the rose on it. I told her I’d like to have a rose on it because I know you like them so. Do you like it, Ma? Is it okay? Mrs. Harris said it would fit you to a T.”
But then Mac saw the tears streaming from his mother’s eyes, falling splat on the floor. The excitement disappeared from Mac’s voice, leaving it flat and dead. “I’m sorry, Ma. I should have asked you before I bought it. Maybe Mrs. Harris will take it back.”
Mary bridged the space between her and Mac in two steps. She wrapped him in her arms, her tears falling into his hair. “Mac, it’s the prettiest dress I ever saw, and I’m the proudest mother ever.”
Mac and his mother stepped into a beautiful day. The sun trickled through the leaves of the cottonwood trees, lighting the trail. They walked single file to the street, but as they stepped out of the trees, Mary reached to take Mac’s arm.
“Guess we’re the highfalutin McPhersons on their way to the biggest social affair of the season,” Mac said.
“Just Mac and me stepping out on the town.”
Both laughed.
“Ma?”
“Yes.”
“You know how it is when you think something will be the best thing in the world and then when you have it, it doesn’t seem like so much?”
“Yes.”
“Do you suppose it will be like that with Catherine?”
“You mean will you think less of her when you meet her?”
“Yeah.”
“I think she must be someone special, Mac. You can see that reflected in the sheriff’s eyes when he talks about her. I think she must be something special.”
The morning sun was high enough to warm the day, and it reached down to kiss them, welcoming them into its light and warmth. The sheriff stood on the depot landing. He was wearing the blue serge suit Mary had cleaned and pressed, and he held the bouquet of flowers as though in salute.
“Ma, he’s wearing the tie we bought for him.”
“Yes.”
“He really looks sharp, doesn’t he?”
“Yes.”
Mary thought about her first meeting with the sheriff, how flustered she had been. Sheriff Drinkwalter’s tall, rangy good looks were part of that. But Mary had been drawn to his eyes. They were clear and they invited people to peer within. That afternoon on the doorstep, she was afraid that if she looked too long into the sheriff’s eyes, she might not find her way out.
Drinkwalter nodded and smiled as Mac and Mary drew near. “You look very nice today, Mary. The dress becomes you.”
Mac smiled as though the compliment were meant for him. He looked at his mother, pleased to see a blush spreading across her face.
The sheriff’s attention turned east again, peering at the hill where the track swung loose from the river. So focused was the sheriff that he didn’t notice the little knots of people gathering at the depot. They came in flutters of color as though bouquets of flowers had taken to walking the streets of Eagles Nest. First one bunch appeared and then another, whispering greetings and sharing excitement. They filled the depot and spilled over to the gravel beside the track, each maneuvering for the best place to see Catherine.
The sheriff was oblivious to the fussing and whispers of the people hiding in the shadows of the depot. His entire being focused on that tiny point where the two tracks became one and the river raged at the railroad.
Mac’s eyes ranged over the crowd behind them and then jerked back. Yellowstone County Sheriff James Thompson was marching up to the landing with a covey of deputies. They were dressed to the nines, uniforms pressed and boots polished. The men might have been a contingent from a military academy, so straight were their backs.
They came to a halt and then parade rest without a word from Thompson. So disciplined were they that Mac imagined they would stand at attention on the track until a train swept them away if Thompson ordered them to.
Imposing as the deputies were, they stood like toys next to Big Jim. He stood at attention, eyes focused on something only he could see. The people of Eagles Nest shifted back, giving the law-enforcement officers room.
Thompson must have come up on the milk run and hidden out until this moment, Mac thought. But how could that bunch hide in a town the size of Eagles Nest?
Drinkwalter stiffened. Mac felt it more than saw it. Light flashed as the train pulled into sight at the east hill. Puffing smoke it was, sending up its own clouds into that bright blue sky.
Mac heard the sheriff inhale. The boy felt his back stiffening, as though the sheriff’s breath had sucked the air from his own lungs.
Seconds stretched into days as they waited for the caboose to pull free from the hill, but the train seemed to pick up speed once it reached the valley floor. Now it was coming too fast, as though the engineer had forgotten the stop in Eagles Nest, but then he set the brakes. Sparks sprayed as the immovable object of the tracks met the irresistible force of the steel wheels.
Mac’s chest swelled. That was the way for Catherine Lang to come to Eagles Nest, sparks flying.
The train rolled to a stop, chuffing as though to catch its breath after a long run.
James Thompson and his men marched up the wide steps to the landing, boots beating a rhythm to match the chuffing of the train. The conductor poked his head out, saw Thompson, and nodded. While the conductor set up the step on the landing, the deputies formed an aisle leading from the door of the car.
Catherine Lang stepped from the train, and the crowd sighed.
She was wearing a green dress, a soft green, like the first leaves of spring but softer. Mac strained to see her face, but it was hidden in the shadow of a hat tied under her chin. She turned and saw the sheriff.
The crowd, the train, the depot disappeared then. In all the world, there was only Catherine Lang and Sheriff Frank Drinkwalter. It wasn’t that the crowd had been excluded from the meeting, but that they had been pulled into it, that they were part of it.
Thompson offered Catherine his arm, and she took it, and the two of them walked toward Drinkwalter. Mac thought that if the Queen of England had followed that pair from the train, no one would have noticed.
Catherine didn’t seem bound by gravity or the awkwardness that afflicts lesser creatures. She glided toward Drinkwalter. As she neared, Mac could see that she was crying, tears cutting little rivulets down her face.
A step away from Drinkwalter, she dropped her arm from Thompson’s. Thompson seemed stricken to lose her, but when she and Frank Drinkwalter came together, he smiled, and Mac thought he saw a tear in Thompson’s eye, too. Mary’s face was shining and her eyes were leaking tears.
Every man in that crowd took Catherine into his arms at that moment, and every woman stepped into Frank Drinkwalter’s arms. They came together like two pieces of a whole, each special, but together, they were …
Mac shook his head, his words unable to describe his feelings. He understood then what the Reverend Eli Peabody had meant when he said that God was more likely to speak to people in feelings than in words.
The embrace may have taken an hour or a day or a week. Mac didn’t know, and he didn’t care. He was pleased simply to be that close to it. When the two stepped away from each other, the crowd roared.
For the first time, Drinkwalter seemed to notice the people around him.
Thompson clapped his hands, and his deputies formed ranks marching through the crowd to Mort Timpkins’s carriage, making way for Frank and Catherine. They stood at attention while the sheriff and Big Jim helped Catherine into the carriage. Drinkwalter waved Mac and Mary to the carriage, helping Mary in and then waiting until Mac boarded before he took his place beside Catherine.
Timpkins clicked his horses into movement, and the carriage set off
toward the west hill, leading a parade of wagons.
The sheriff’s face curved into a question as they rattled up the sandstone road leading to the house. When he saw the steps leading up to the top of that big flat rock, his eyes jerked to Mac. Mac was the only one he had told about that rock.
The carriage pulled to a stop beside the house. Beautiful the house was, white as a cloud with blue trim, just like the peaks of the Beartooths to the south were blue where shadows lay across the snow. The house had two bedrooms toward the back, one larger for the Drinkwalters, and one for their child or children. A formal entry just inside the front door opened into a hall that led to a front room, a kitchen, formal dining room, and sitting room with shelves for books. Outside, a porch shouted for rocking chairs so the Drinkwalters could sit there and watch the rivers and the mountains. They had even built stairs to the top of the cabin-sized rock. During the construction of the building, one or another of the people had climbed those steps to take deep breaths of clear air, to see the beauty of the place and the work they were doing.
Frank and Big Jim helped Catherine and Mary down from the carriage. Thompson spotted the tables piled high with food. He winked at Mac, took Mary’s arm, and charged the tables.
Sparks Pierson stood on the porch yelling “Your attention please” until he had it.
“Sheriff, you might say this house is a monument to you and the people you serve in Stillwater County, and you would be right. You might say, too, that this house is a monument to the good people of Eagles Nest, and you would be right there, too. You might say, too, that…”
A voice floated out of the crowd. “You might say you’re a little windy, Sparks.”
Sparks grinned. “I guess I am at that. Anyway, Sheriff, we have declared July second Frank Drinkwalter and Catherine Lang Day, and I would like to present you with the deed, free and clear, to this home. May you always be happy here.”
The crowd cheered, and the same voice floated up again. “The best part of Sparks’s speeches are always the end.”
Pierson opened the door to the house, handed Drinkwalter the key, and ushered them through. The crowd pushed up to the windows so they could watch the two examine their handiwork.