by Aaron Latham
The bumblebees buzzed loudly as if they were angry, but they were just warming up for the collective move to the back of the patch of sunflowers. Goodnight looked around at Revelie to see if she was impressed.
“That’s amazing,” she said.
“Ain’t it?” he said. “Look at ’em go.”
“I don’t mean the bees,” she said. “I mean you. At first, I thought you were never going to start talking. And then when you finally got going, I began to wonder if you were ever going to stop.”
15
Goodnight kept expecting her to mention his letter. He didn’t want to be the one who brought up the subject because he knew he hadn’t written elegantly. Because he was in no hurry to get bad news. Because the whole matter now embarrassed him. Because he didn’t want to seem to be putting pressure on her. But he figured she would bring it up. Day after day, he waited for the blow to fall.
Every day, Goodnight and Mr. Sanborn rode up and down the valley. From time to time, the rancher would point out a spring or some other valuable feature, and Velvet Pants would make a note of it in a little leather book that he carried with him. He wrote a small neat hand. Goodnight envied Mr. Sanborn his handwriting. Velvet Pants was all business. If he was aware of a proposal of marriage, made formally if somewhat crudely, he didn’t let on. He acted like a potential partner but not a possible father-in-law.
Day after day, Mrs. Sanborn remained in her tepee, which was all right with her host. She stayed inside because she was sick. Anyway, she said she was sick. Goodnight wondered how sick she really was. He had never met anybody like her and hadn’t figured her out. All he knew was he felt more secure outdoors with her indoors.
Goodnight began to wonder if the whole Sanborn family—father, mother, and daughter—might one day ride away without the subject of marriage ever coming up. He had always supposed that if you asked a young woman to marry you, she would at least answer you. She might say yes. She might say no. She might say she wanted time to think it over. But it had never occurred to him that she might never say anything about it at all. Was she so far above him socially that she didn’t even deign to notice that any proposal had been made? He didn’t quite know whether to be insulted or not. He felt he just had to find out what she thought of his terrible letter and his sincere offer. He was still in earnest.
• • •
One morning, Mr. Sanborn came to breakfast with a big smile on his face. Goodnight thought maybe Mrs. Sanborn was well, but that wasn’t it.
“Mr. Goodnight, I say, why don’t we make a holiday today,” Velvet Pants proposed. “Let’s cease our search for springs and go after bigger game.”
“Like what?” Goodnight asked.
“Buffalo.”
“Well, I dunno. There’s too much work for me to do around here to take off and go buffalo huntin’.”
“But it will be great sport. A real Western experience. I wouldn’t miss it.”
Goodnight felt as if he were trapped in some sort of dead-end box canyon. He didn’t want to say no to his prospective partner and possible father-in-law, but he didn’t like the idea of senseless buffalo-killing either.
“Less git some grub,” Goodnight said, stalling, “before Coffee throws it out.”
He moved toward the chuck wagon and Mr. Sanborn followed. They held out tin plates and the cook forked griddle cakes onto them. Then they poured a thick layer of sorghum over the top. Goodnight squatted down to eat, and Velvet Pants hunkered down beside him.
“I’m in earnest about this hunt,” Mr. Sanborn said.
Goodnight remembered a similar phrase in his proposal letter. He wondered if Revelie’s father was making fun of him. He was a little irritated, but he wasn’t sure he had a right to be.
“Well, I don’t hold much with shootin’ buffalo just for sport,” Goodnight said a little too sharply. “Now it would be different if we was hungry and needed the meat, but we’re drowning in meat all around us. So I don’t see much sense to it.”
Mr. Sanborn looked at his host sternly. Goodnight wondered if he had said too much. Well, there was no unsaying it now. Besides, he believed what he had said.
“Mr. Goodnight, I wasn’t asking your permission,” Mr. Sanborn said. “I don’t need your permission to hunt buffalo. I mean, they aren’t your buffalo. They don’t belong to anybody.”
Goodnight thought he knew who they belonged to, but he didn’t say so.
“I didn’t say they were mine,” he said.
“They belong to whoever shoots them,” Mr. Sanborn said. “That’s all. If you don’t choose to accompany me, that’s your affair. Just as going is my affair.”
“Well, I cain’t stop you. That’s true. But I still don’t hold with it.”
Goodnight suddenly felt that he was tired of this Sanborn family pestering him all the time. The father wanted to murder a buffalo for the fun of it. The mother was always complaining. The daughter wouldn’t even get on a horse, which meant you had to walk around on your two legs like some damn chicken if you wanted to talk to her. And then when she talked, she wanted to talk about everything in the world except what he most wanted to talk about, but which he was afraid to bring up. Well, why didn’t they just all get on their horses and ambulances and get the hell out of his canyon and leave him alone? Who had asked them to stay anyway? Who needed them, anyhow? That was what he wanted to know.
Velvet Pants did get on his horse and ride away. He was accompanied by a couple of the soldiers from Fort Elliott, who seemed to have nothing better to do with their time. Goodnight grumbled to himself about the waste of tax dollars, but they might at least keep the great hunter from getting lost. That way, Goodnight wouldn’t have to go looking for him.
“If you’re not going with my father today,” Revelie said, “would you like to take a walk?”
Goodnight jumped because he hadn’t seen her come up. He thought she was still in the tepee ministering to her ailing mother. Seeing her appear so near him, almost as if by magic, he studied her to see if she were some kind of mirage. She looked real all right.
“I dunno,” he said. “Lot to do around here.”
Goodnight told himself that he was tired of these silly people and all their silly games. But she didn’t look silly or sound silly. She looked like a young woman whose soul was a dark forest. Her voice was the wind through those trees.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “Could I help?”
“Most of it’s horseback work,” he said.
“Then you go ahead. I understand.”
“No, less walk. Ain’t nothing I gotta do right this minute.”
“You’re sure?”
They walked a long time without talking, but this time Goodnight did not find the silence oppressive. He watched her growing admiration for his canyon, for its plants and animals, for its lofty promontories and its dark caves, for its flowers but also for its thorns. He thought the valley had a kind of fierce beauty. He thought she had it, too.
“It’s still the purdiest place I ever seen,” Goodnight said. “Could be the purdiest place in the whole wide world.”
“It’s lovely,” Revelie said.
Goodnight was a little disappointed. Lovely? That was like saying the face of God, the face of the Great Mystery, was lovely. If it was lovely at all, it was the loveliest. If it was beautiful at all, it was the most beautiful. If it was moving at all, it was the most moving. If it was like God’s face at all, then it was one of the holiest places on this earth. Didn’t these Writers know how to speak their own language? Didn’t they appreciate the distinctions it could make? Or was it just this one particular Writer who didn’t understand? Who got a letter but didn’t know how to read it . . . who saw God’s work and didn’t know how to praise it . . . who was going to miss life because she didn’t notice it passing by . . . who made him so angry . . .
“I hate to be the one to bring this up,” Goodnight said, exasperated, “but I wrote you a letter. I know it waddn’t a v
ery good letter as letters go. But it was about something and not all letters are, I reckon. Couldn’t you read my handwritin’? Mebbe that’s the trouble.”
He could see that he had flustered her. Well, at least that was some reaction. She might be a dark forest on the inside, but on the outside she was pretty much still water. Now he had stirred up a little ripple, which pleased him and worried him at the same time.
“I didn’t say anything,” Revelie said, “because I didn’t know what to say. I know I owe you a lot. You saved me from those men. But . . .” She evidently couldn’t think of the words to go on.
“Then why’d you come out here?” Goodnight asked.
“My father wanted to come,” she said, “to look at your ranch. He thinks it might be a good investment for his clients. And so I asked to come along, too.”
“Did you tell him about the letter?” he asked.
“No, but I told my mother. I made her promise to keep it a secret. She said if I was coming, she was coming. It was really very brave of her. She hates everything about this canyon. How big it is. How wild it is. How much of it is outdoors.”
Goodnight coughed and laughed at the same time. “She’s a piece of work, I’ll give her that.”
“And she returns the compliment,” Revelie said. “I came because I wanted to get to know you better. And now I do know you better. And you know me better.” She paused. “But I still don’t know. It’s such a big step and I still feel so small. This canyon is so big. It might swallow me forever. It’s such a wild place. It’s lovely but it frightens me.”
“Loveliest spot I ever seen,” Goodnight said, giving her a hint, showing her how to talk.
“Yes, it’s very nice to look at,” she said, not taking the hint. “But do I belong here? I don’t even know how to ride a horse.”
“I been thinking about that,” he said. “I got a proposition for you. I figure I know a little about somethin’ that you don’t know, and you know a lot about somethin’ I don’t know. So I figured mebbe we could up and swap. Trade like. If we got—uh—well—if you was to come live here, see, I figure I could teach you to ride. And you could teach me to read ’n’ write. I mean I know my alphabet and stuff, but I could sure stand some brushin’ up.”
“You want a teacher?”
“Well, you’d be my teacher, but then again I’d be yours. Fair trade like.”
“Why, Mr. Goodnight, didn’t anybody ever tell you that you don’t have to marry somebody to get them to teach you to read and write. I’m sure you could find—”
“That’s not why I want to. That ain’t it atall.” He decided it was time to give up being a coward, for a little while at least. “I want to marry you, Miss Revelie, because my mind cries for you.”
“What?”
“That’s what the Comanches say. Only they don’t call themselves Comanches. They just say Human Bein’s, see? And they don’t call it ‘love’ like white folks. They say, ‘My mind cries for you.’ I like that part about the mind fallin’ in love insteada the heart. Makes more sense, really. Anyhow to me. So that’s it. My mind cries for you. I know I’m ramblin’, but . . .”
Goodnight stopped talking because he saw that she was crying. He was just stepping forward to take her in his arms—if she would let him—and comfort her when he saw something that stayed his step. Two horsemen were approaching at a trot. Then as they drew closer, the two riders turned into three. One horse carried a double load. Squinting, he recognized Mr. Sanborn mounted behind one of the Fort Elliott soldiers. The father seemed to have dropped from heaven at just this moment in order to thwart Goodnight’s attempt to embrace Revelie. God damn your eyes, Velvet Pants.
“Your daddy’s comin’,” he said, pointing.
Revelie looked and started trying to dry her eyes. She obviously did not want her father to catch her crying. Goodnight could sympathize because he didn’t want Mr. Sanborn to think he was in the habit of making Revelie cry.
When the horses were a dozen yards away, they stopped. Nobody said anything. On the one hand, Goodnight was put out with Velvet Pants for going on a buffalo hunt, but on the other hand, he figured the father had every right to be put out with him for driving his daughter to tears. The rancher decided just to call it a draw and not say any more than he had to. Revelie wasn’t anxious to talk either, maybe because her voice might sound funny. And the soldiers never said much anyhow. Who knew why Mr. Sanborn kept quiet? It wasn’t his nature.
“Daddy, you’re hurt,” Revelie broke the spell. “What happened to your leg?”
Now Goodnight noticed that Velvet Pants’s left velvet leg was torn and dirty and stained by blood. A bandage was tied around his knee. Goodnight wondered why he hadn’t noticed sooner. Well, his mind had been on other things.
“I was a damned fool,” Mr. Sanborn said. “That’s what. I’d read somewhere that it was great sport to shoot a buffalo with a Colt revolver. The idea was to ride alongside your target, matching him stride for stride, and fire at him from the saddle. I could see the picture so clearly in my mind. I really could. But it wasn’t quite as simple as I had imagined, suffice it to say.” Then he fell silent.
“Please, Daddy,” Revelie begged, “tell me what happened to you. I want to know.”
Her father shrugged. “Well, it turned out to be harder to shoot from a galloping horse than I had realized. The revolver was bouncing all over the place. It’s difficult to see what you’re doing or where you’re aiming. I just kept shooting and shooting. I don’t know if any of my bullets hit the buffalo I was chasing. But I do know one shot hit my horse in the back of the head. Poor animal. I had a nasty fall.”
“Oh, Daddy.”
“I’m sure Mr. Goodnight is thinking that it served me right, and I suppose it did. Don’t tell your mother. She’ll worry.”
16
Ithink we’d better have a little talk,” Mr. Sanborn said after breakfast the next morning. His eyes flashed, but the rest of his bruised body was moving stiffly. “Just the two of us.”
Goodnight shivered. Had Revelie at last unburdened herself to her father about his proposal? Was Velvet Pants—who had on a brand-new pair today—going to tell him to leave his daughter alone?
“Fine,” Goodnight said uneasily.
The two of them withdrew into a grove of hackberry trees. The limbs were so interwoven that they formed an almost impenetrable wall around a small clearing at the center of the thicket. This thorny dell was as private as any oak-paneled den.
“What can I do for you?” asked Goodnight nervously.
“Well, it’s quite a place you’ve got here,” said Mr. Sanborn. “Or anyway it will be.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I believe in your canyon, Mr. Goodnight.”
“Thank you.” He wished this man’s daughter had said those same words. “I appreciate that.”
“I am prepared to advise my clients to invest in your enterprise— provided we can come to some sort of agreement on what form that investment would take.”
“Come again.”
“Terms, Mr. Goodnight, terms. We must agree upon the terms of our partnership. I must know what I am buying. We must put our relationship on a sound business footing.”
“Well, I ain’t never had much truck with business.”
“Ranching is a business, Mr. Goodnight, pure and simple. There’s no getting around it. You must learn business, and I will be your teacher, if you will allow me. I have had some considerable experience.”
“Teach away, Mr. Sanborn.”
Velvet Pants took a sheet of creamy white paper out of his coat pocket and carefully unfolded it. The page was covered with small, neat words and numbers. He did the race of Writers right proud. Goodnight looked down at the paper with considerable misgivings, for he knew that writing gave Writers an advantage that he didn’t know how to counter. Writing was Writer magic. Writing was Writer medicine.
“I have taken the liberty to draw up some terms that I consider to be
fair,” Mr. Sanborn said. “May I read them to you?”
“Of course,” said Goodnight, but he already dreaded the words. Seeing them in black and white made them seem so final. The majority of the written words he had ever seen were in the Bible, and they didn’t have much give-and-take in them. You were just stuck with them and no arguments. Goodnight knew this agreement wasn’t in any Bible, but he was nonetheless intimidated by it. He didn’t figure there would be much give-and-take in its commandments either.
“The agreement will run for five years,” Mr. Sanborn read from the written page. “I will undertake to finance this enterprise in full. That will include paying you a salary of twenty-five hundred dollars per annum—”
“Excuse me,” Goodnight interrupted. “I don’t git much outa them four-bit words.”
“Per annum,” Velvet Pants taught, “means ‘every year.’” He found his place with his finger and started reading again. “In addition, I agree to fund the purchase of one hundred thousand acres of land from the State of Texas at a price not to exceed twenty-five cents per acre for a total price not to exceed twenty-five thousand dollars.” He looked up. “Am I going too fast?”
Goodnight shrugged and shook his head at the same time.
“Good,” Mr. Sanborn said. “That’s what I promise to do. Now we come to your part of the bargain. Let’s see, where was I? Oh, yes, you will furnish the foundation for the herd and direct the enterprise. You will also repay my investment in full plus a ten percent charge for interest.”
“Interest? I’m not sure I—”