Cherokee Rose

by Judy Alter

  But in another edition of the paper one day, I read something else that caught my eye. A girl named Prairie Rose Henson had ridden a bronc at the Cheyenne Frontier Days. When she first entered the contest, the judges had told her no women were allowed, but she demanded to see the rules, and of course they didn't say anything about women. So Prairie Rose—what a wonderful name!—got her ride. And then I read further and found out she wasn't but two years older than me.

  I told Papa about it. "If a woman can ride a bronc like Prairie Rose and a woman can shoot like Annie Oakley, I bet a woman could rope in a show."

  "Women," Mama interrupted, "have no business trying to act like men."

  Papa acted as though he didn't hear her. "Probably you could," he said. The way he said you was clear. He didn't mean the generalized you the way some people did when they talked. He meant me, Tommy Jo Burns, roping in a Wild West show. I was smart enough not to ask any more about it in front of Mama.

  * * *

  "Just think," I told Billy. "Me—riding a bronc in a Wild West show, roping—there's no end to the things I could do."

  "Better practice your trick roping," he said.

  I still couldn't throw a loop that Billy was willing to walk through.

  "Yes, you can," he said softly, taking the rope from me for the third time and throwing it into a perfect loop. "Just practice."

  Years later, when I saw a picture of a man teaching a woman to play golf, his arms wrapped around hers, his hands on top of hers on the club, I thought of Billy and those roping lessons. He never put his arms around me—Billy was far too shy!—but sometimes, when he showed me how to hold the rope, his hands brushed mine, and I remembered the girls in the convent and the talk about tingly feelings.

  One evening our hands brushed, out there behind the corral.

  "Sorry," Billy said abruptly, pulling his hand away as though it were burned.

  "It's all right," I said, dropping the rope and reaching after his hand with my own, as though to pull it back. Something made me bold, and I took his arm and pulled so that he turned to face me.

  "Billy Rogers—" I began, and then, as much to my own surprise as his, I reached up and kissed him full on the mouth. It wasn't much of a kiss—I had to aim quickly, and I wasn't practiced at kissing—but it took him by surprise, and he would have backed away again except that I held on to his arm.

  We stood like that a long minute, staring at each other. Billy wasn't all that much taller than me, so our eyes were pretty level, and neither one of us blinked. Then ever so slowly and gently, Billy Rogers put his arm around me and kissed me, softly at first, and then, his mouth moving on mine, with more fire. Walt Denison was wrong—I didn't wait until I was seventeen to respond to a kiss. But Walt Denison was far from my mind right then—as far as the girls in the convent and their tingly feelings.

  As though he suddenly remembered himself, he pulled away, and this time I didn't reach to pull him back. With a crooked smile at me, Billy walked away.

  I didn't see him for three long days. They were days filled with fantasies on my part—Buffalo Bill was replaced by Billy Rogers, who confessed his love for me, wrapped his arms around me as we threw a rope together—probably a physical impossibility!—brushed his lips against my ear as he whispered that I was the best girl roper he'd ever seen. At night I was restless, tossing and turning sleeplessly in my bed; by day I was cross, irritable, and frantic to know where he was. When I wasn't hanging out at the corral, I was pounding the piano so hard, even Mama begged me to go outside. And the two times I tried to pick up a book, I threw it down in disgust, unable to concentrate.

  "Papa, did you send Billy off to some far pasture?" I ventured the second evening at supper.

  "Miss him, do you?" Papa asked with a grin. "Is it the roping lessons—or the man you miss?"

  "James!" Mama's voice cut through Papa's jocular mood before I could mutter, "Both."

  "Thomasina is not interested in that Rogers boy," Mama said, as though to convince herself. "I'll be glad when he moves on." Since most cowboys drifted on after a season or two, this wasn't an unrealistic hope on Mama's part.

  "I am interested in him, Mama," I said calmly. In the back of my mind, I'm sure I had figured out that I couldn't go through life doing what would make Mama happy, from going to convent to avoiding cowboys, because eventually that same course of action would make me miserable. And I was, at that moment, miserable in my desperation to see Billy.

  "Hush," she said. "You don't know what you're saying."

  Maybe not, I wanted to say, but I'd like to find out for myself.

  "Where you been?" I asked when he finally sauntered into the corral, looking everywhere but at me.

  "Riding fence," he mumbled, stooping to pick up something, probably nothing, from the dirt.

  "I looked for you."

  "I'm sure you did," he said. Then, after a long minute, "I thought about you."

  I blushed, pleased but uncertain. But before I could say anything, he went on in that slow drawl, "What I thought is that it's time I be movin' on."

  "Moving on?" I slipped off the corral post and started toward him. He moved back, one step on his part for every step I took toward him. I thought maybe I should promise not to grab him again, so that he'd stand still.

  "I—yeah, movin' on. Actually, I got a chance to go to Australia."

  "Australia?" My voice squeaked. Papa went to Guthrie and sometimes even St. Louis, which was bad enough, but here was the only boy my age—well, almost—for miles around, and he was talking about going to the other side of the world.

  "Yeah. They got ranches down there, and they rope...." His voice fell off as though he didn't know what to say.

  "How will I learn to trick rope?"

  "You half know. Just keep practicin'." He grinned, that slightly cockeyed smile splitting his face. "I know you'll get to the Wild West shows 'fore long."

  "Not without you," I said suddenly, too loudly.

  Turning away, Billy pulled that ever-present rope from his pocket and began to spin it. "Tommy Jo," he said, "I'm near twenty years old, been driftin' now for four years. You're not quite sixteen—and you ain't got no business with me." He spun the rope furiously, holding it as a barrier between us.

  He left the next day.

  * * *

  "Well, I'm glad to see that Rogers person gone," Mama said next evening as we sat on the veranda shelling peas. It was a chore I hated, but my mood was black that evening anyway and I thought I might as well be shelling peas as making myself miserable sitting at the corral and waiting for Billy to come along. He was probably clear to Oklahoma City by now.

  Papa was down at the barn, supposedly working on some harness but in reality avoiding me. "Rogers drew his time," he had said at dinner.

  "I knew he was going to."

  "So did I," Papa had said, looking long and hard at me.

  I thought maybe Papa understood how I felt, knew that a girl's first crush was important. Those are feelings that a girl's mother usually understands, not her philandering father. But my crush on Billy had frightened Mama.

  "I'm not glad he's gone," I said belligerently, mangling a pea in my anger. "Maybe I should follow him to Australia."

  "Thomasina!"

  "I won't follow him," I said in exasperation. "But when he comes back, I'll be the best girl trick roper in the country." Then I wondered how long Billy would stay—-and how long it would take me to fulfill that vow.

  Mama's fingers flew over the peas, but she didn't say anything. We worked in silence for several minutes, and then, maybe because I was feeling contrary, I asked.

  "Mama, who's the woman in Guthrie that Papa goes to see?"

  Mama lifted her chin a little and stared out over the prairie. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said in her usual tone.

  "Yes, you do, Mama. I know that Papa goes to see another lady in Guthrie, and that you get really mad at him, but when he comes back, you always make up with him.
Why?"

  She crumpled in her chair, and the peas fell out of her hands into the bowl. "I—I can't explain it to you. I don't think I can explain it to myself."

  It was more honest than I'd ever heard from her. "Mama, are you sorry you married Papa?" I wasn't sure what kind of an answer I was prepared for.

  "Sometimes," she said slowly, "I try to imagine 'what if'?" What if I hadn't married him, or what if something happened to him—an accident or something. Or what if he chose Louise—that's her name in Guthrie. But it's never right. I can't imagine not being with your father. He's a good man, Thomasina."

  I chewed on that in my mind for a while.

  * * *

  At first after Billy left, my practice went well. As fall turned into winter, I was still working with Papa, doing the daily things that had to be done on the Luckett Ranch. "Can't have you so busy with fancy stuff that you forget how to work a calf," he said. By then I could rope and tie a calf in pretty good time. These days Papa had only Casey and Wilks as hands on the ranch, and I spent many days helping him with branding and doctoring. But Papa, self-appointed, also became my tutor, and he determined that I was proficient enough at spinning a rope.

  "You got to learn to throw that heavy trick rope, Tommy Jo. You do, and I'll walk through it—that's a bargain."

  Patiently, time after time, I laid the rope out in a circle, just like Billy did, and then I threw it—or tried to. The rope was enormously heavy, and for what seemed like forever, I couldn't get it to do more than sail over my head to plop on the ground in front of me. But then, one day, it stayed alive for just a second before collapsing. And the next day it was longer. Cheered by this small success, I practiced for hours a day.

  Finally, one day I was able to hold a vertical loop for thirty seconds. "I'll walk through that next time," Papa said. And he did. Walked through my loop and back again. Then I dropped the rope and exploded into the air in high-jumping happiness.

  "Tommy Jo, you're gonna do it!" Papa said, hugging me. "You're gonna take us to the Wild West show."

  Us? Was Papa going too? In the back of my mind, whether I held a trick rope or a working one, the Buffalo Bill show was always there. I saw myself approaching Cody himself, telling him that he ought to see me rope, then roping and tying a steer so fast that I beat three men on his regular team. Buffalo Bill, courtly as always, bowed low and said, "Tommy Jo, you must join my show." And I graciously accepted. But always in that dream I finally rode off to the show alone, waving good-bye to Mama and Papa, who stood, arms around each other, on the veranda of our house. I hadn't envisioned riding off with Papa, leaving Mama alone on that veranda, and the thought disquieted me.

  * * *

  A day or two later Papa read in the paper that the Buffalo Bill show planned to stay in Europe for a full year. Papa was philosophical when he told me about it, and I knew it wasn't near the disappointment to him that it was to me. A year! Billy would probably be back from Australia long before then, and I'd never make my goal of being in a show by the time he came home. My next thought was that there was no sense practicing if I was never going to be in a show. One didn't throw trick ropes for the amusement of the cattle on a middling ranch in the Cherokee Strip.

  It was a nasty evening—the kind when winter teases with an unpleasant taste of what's to come—and I bundled myself into a coat before slamming out of the house, followed by Mama's tentative question, "Where are you going, Thomasina?"

  I heard Papa say something to her, but the words went past me, for by then I was running as hard as I could, in spite of my skirts and bulky coat, running as though I could catch Buffalo Bill's show and make it return from Europe and perform in St. Louis by sheer willpower, running in spite of the cold light rain blown into my eyes by a north wind.

  Finally, I found myself, winded, at the fence of the corral where Sam was. Nickering gently, he came over to nuzzle me, searching for an apple. Climbing over the fence—an awkward business with my skirts—I stood with my arms around his neck, sobbing and telling him that we'd never ride in a Wild West show. That was how Papa found me. My papa had so often made the world right for me, in spite of his stern manner and wayward ways, that I was glad to see him, thinking he would find the way out of my misery. But the first thing he said made me cautious.

  "Foolish to cry over something you can't change," he said. "What's the matter with you, girl?"

  "I can't spend my life on this ranch with you and Mama," I said. "There's no—no one my age."

  "No young men?" he asked, grinning.

  "That's part of it," I admitted, wishing he wouldn't find that amusing.

  "Where you want to go? You can go to St. Louis, even if there isn't a show."

  "I don't want to go to St. Louis, or Kansas City, or even Oklahoma City. I don't like cities!"

  "Appears to me you don't like cities and you don't like ranches. Not much left." Papa spoke in a drawl, slower than usual for him, which told me he was still finding this amusing, the whim of a flighty young girl, I suspected.

  "I don't know what I want," I said peevishly, wishing now he'd just go and let me alone.

  "Well," he said, "I think you're goin' on a trip. Come on, let's go tell your mother."

  "I don't want to go anywhere," I repeated, as he took my arm and pulled me toward the house.

  When we walked into the house, its heat hitting us like a blast, Papa did an unforgivable thing. "Jess," he said, "Tommy Jo's gonna spend a week in Guthrie. She's not happy on the ranch, doesn't know where she wants to go, and I think she needs a change."

  "Guthrie!" I said. "You didn't say that!"

  "I'm saying it now," he said in the tone that brooked no disagreement.

  "Guthrie?" Mama echoed, her face turning pale. "Where would she stay in Guthrie?"

  "Mrs. Turner's boardinghouse," he said calmly. "She can always use help."

  "I don't want to help in a boardinghouse!" I said, feeling just as I had when I was sent to the convent. "And who's Mrs. Turner?"

  Mama spoke very clearly, her eyes fixed on Papa. "Louise Turner. She's a friend of your father's."

  I whirled to look at Papa, but nothing showed on his face.

  "You may not want to work in a boardinghouse," he said, "but you need to see what other possibilities are open to you. What else can you do if... well, if you don't want to stay here?"

  "Thomasina will marry one day and move from this ranch," Mama said, "but she's too young now."

  "And she has no likely candidates," Papa said dryly. "She tells me she wants to get off this ranch, and that's what I'm gonna see happens. She can go to church in Guthrie, meet some people her age. It'll do her good."

  The idea of meeting people, of being in a community instead of alone with Papa, Mama, and a couple of old cowboys who resented me, was tempting. But to stay with Papa's lady friend! It was unthinkable. I looked at Mama, but she was staring at the flames in the fireplace, with that faraway look that she always got when the subject under discussion was painful to her. Bless Mama, I knew that she was almost desperate to keep me from Mrs. Turner's boardinghouse, but I also knew that she wouldn't cross Papa. And she wouldn't help me.

  "Papa, I didn't really mean—I'm happy here. I was just disappointed about the Wild West show."

  "If you were pinning all your hopes on one Wild West show..." He didn't need to finish the sentence.

  Ah, Papa, you must have known about my fantasies.

  I left for Guthrie the next morning. The spitting rain that had kept up all night had turned to a steady dismal downpour by the time Papa brought the covered buggy to the door. Mama hugged me once, quickly, but neither of us said anything. There was nothing to be said.

  "I'll be back tonight, Jess," Papa said, and when Mama looked at him skeptically, he added, "I really will."

  Mama stood on the veranda, wrapped in a shawl, and watched until we were out of sight.

  I was damp and thoroughly miserable by the time we reached Mrs. Turner's boardinghouse. Papa pull
ed the buggy behind the house, lifted me out, and led the way in through the back door, not bothering to knock. Obviously, he felt at home here.

  "Louise!" he called.

  A small woman, as tiny as Mama was tall and as blond as Mama was dark, bustled around the corner. She wore a fashionable dress of soft challis, with a dainty lace collar framing her face, and her hair was piled high on her head. This was a lady who took some time with her appearance, and I felt awkward and gangly in my wet woolen skirt and wrinkled shirtwaist, my hair straggly under the Stetson that had sort of protected me from the rain.

  "Sandy!" she exclaimed in surprise, using the name that everyone but Mama called him. Then her eyes rested on me, and she stood speechless, looking at him.

  "This is Tommy Jo, my daughter. She's goin' to stay with you a week," he said. There was no asking in his statement; it was foregone that she would do as he wished.

  "Of course. Tommy Jo, I'm glad to know you. I'm Louise Turner." She never lost her composure, after that first minute of surprise.

  "She needs to go to church, meet some people, see how she likes life in town," Papa said. "And she'll help you around here."

  Through all this, I'd not said a word. Louise looked at me curiously, and I felt an obligation to say something, anything. "It's nice of you to have me," I said. "I'll try not to be any trouble."

  "I'll be glad for your company," she said and seemed to mean it.

  We three sat at the kitchen table and made small talk about the weather, and then Papa said he had to get back to the ranch. With a quick hug for me and a bare nod at Louise, he was gone.

  Once he was out the door, she surprised me mightily by sinking back into her chair and bursting into long laughter, laughter almost too loud to come from so small a person. Finally, her chuckles subsided enough for her to say, "Your father is one strong-minded man, isn't he? Now tell me the truth about this story." She propped her elbows on the table, chin in her hands, and looked directly at me, waiting.