Paint the Hills Red

by Ron Schwab

  5

  WITH WHAT DAN had learned was her typical bluntness, Megan Grant had announced the previous day, “After tomorrow, you’re on your own. Sol and I don’t have time to nursemaid orphan calves. We’ve got branding and castrating to get done.”

  “I understand,” Dan had replied. “I’m grateful for all you have done.”

  “Do you want to rent out your grazing land this season?” she had asked, shifting the subject abruptly.

  “I haven’t given it any thought.”

  “We wouldn’t overstock it, and we’d pay going cash rent. We couldn’t pay you till fall, though, after we sell off some of the steer calves and cull the old cows. But if you don’t rent it out, you won’t have any income from it anyway. It would be a good deal for both of us. I didn’t bring it up because you owe us anything. You could probably strike a better bargain with the Diamond D.”

  “Why would I want to deal with Dunkirk?”

  “Money. And it might be a whole lot safer. Of course, maybe you want to sell out. I’d make a fair offer. I can’t compete with Dunkirk if you want cash. You’d have to carry some of it.”

  “Look, Miss Grant, I’d appreciate it if you’d quit throwing this Dunkirk in my face. I’m not selling the land. I’m staying here. And I’ll rent you the grazing land.”

  “I’ll draw up the lease and bring it over tomorrow,” she had said.

  “I won’t sign it. I said you can rent it. I’ll take your word on the going rate, and you can pay next fall.”

  “But that’s not good business,” she had protested.

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “I don’t know yet. I just like to do things in a businesslike way.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. I’m an artist, not a businessman. If you want your cattle to graze the land, you’ll have to do it my way.”

  Dan swung his legs off the cot and stood up, straightening his body carefully, testing the soreness in his back and ribs, slowly working out the stiffness before stepping across the room to ferret out some clothes to cover his nakedness before Megan Grant arrived. On second thought, maybe he ought to greet the saucy young woman in his birthday suit. It would be interesting to catch the look on her face if she walked in on him like this. It might be something to capture on canvas.

  Damn, she was a strange one, he thought. Hardly a congenial word had passed between them over the past ten days. The first week Sol had stayed over nights. Beneath the facade of the old man’s gruff manner, Dan had discovered a warm human being who had sensitivity and shrewdness that Sol Pyle, for some reason, tried to hide. He would have to paint Sol someday soon.

  But while he had fashioned a friendship of sorts with Sol and learned a great deal about the ranch foreman who had saved his life, Megan Grant was still an enigma to him. She was as aloof and standoffish as the first day they met. She had changed the dressings on his wounds twice daily, and she had fed him better than he had eaten for months: fresh baked bread, beef steak, strawberry pie. She had cleaned the house, such as she could, maneuvering around the easels and stacks of paintings scattered helter-skelter about the rooms. She had tended to the horses and for the past few days had spent a good deal of time outside, apparently, from the sound of the rapping hammer, looking to some of the repairs he had found so easy to put off.

  But there was a barrier between them that imposed formality, made them guarded and wary. It was “Miss Grant” and “Mr. McClure.” When she spoke, she tended to snap or bait, and he invariably responded in kind. Silence seemed to work best for them. Still, he thought, as he buckled his belt, he could never quite kick Megan Grant out of his head, and he spent too damn much time thinking about her. Maybe any woman would have done that to him now. Perhaps it was just the simmering, unsatisfied lust within him and not some nobler attraction for a woman that he found so unsettling. Whatever it was, he could not deny the existence of Megan Grant.

  He tossed a few sticks of white ash on the dying embers in the stone fireplace. He would try to have a red-hot bed of coals by the time Megan Grant arrived. She was bringing a buckboard full of supplies today, she said, and she would fix breakfast. After that she was done with him.

  He pulled the burlap curtain aside—the curtain Megan Grant had installed—and peered out the window. A gray cloud hung over the valley; it looked like they might get some rain before the day was out. And according to Sol, it was badly needed. It had been a dry winter and a dryer spring. And the grass would not thicken until a good gully washer swept over the Pine Ridge. Grass. Water and grass. They were the lifeblood of these hills.

  He caught a glimpse of Megan’s team and buckboard crawling down the wagon trail before he let go of the curtain and reached for his denim shirt. He slipped on the shirt as he stepped out on the porch and onto the ranch yard where he stood and waited. The wagon dragged some behind the horses, Dan observed. It evidently carried a heavy load. He ambled slowly out to meet her as the wagon rolled into the yard.

  Megan disarmed him momentarily when she flashed an uncertain smile before she sprang off the wagon. Then, as she moved to the rear of the buckboard, her mood seemed to shift, and she shot him a reproachful glance.

  “Good morning, Mr. McClure,” she said coolly.

  “Good morning. You’ve got quite a load there. Let me give you a hand.”

  “No, you go back in the house. You can’t do any lifting yet.”

  “I feel fine,” he protested, “and you can’t unload all this yourself.”

  “Yes, I can,” she said. “And don’t be foolish. I can’t waste any more time looking after things over here. If you don’t use some common sense, you’ll overdo it and end up flat on your back again.”

  “Miss Grant, you’re treating me like a child.”

  “You’re acting like one.”

  Damn, the woman’s tongue could cut leather and there was no reasoning with her.

  “All right, I’ll go on in, but let me take some of the smaller items. I won’t exert myself, I promise.” He nodded toward the supplies. “What is all this anyway? I’m just one man.”

  “Coffee, flour, staples and canned goods that should see you a month. There’s a slab of cured venison and some beef jerky. Somebody will try to drop some fresh meat off once in a while. The sacks are full of grain for the horses. You ran out a week ago in case you didn’t know. They need grain. The grazing isn’t good enough yet. I don’t know what you planned to feed those animals, let alone yourself.”

  “I was intending to go into Medicine Hill for supplies.”

  “Sol said you were an army man. You should have known that you don’t let yourself run that low in this country.”

  “I had other things on my mind.”

  She handed him a sack of coffee beans and a tin of sugar. “Like painting pictures?”

  He caught the scorn in her voice. “You don’t approve?”

  “I don’t approve or disapprove. It’s not my business. But it seems to me a man ought to tend to making a living first and looking after his land if he’s going to own it. This ranch you bought yourself . . . my father tried to buy it from Ike the day we moved in from Texas. Dunkirk and a lot of others would like to add this place to their holdings, and it grates me that you don’t appreciate what you’ve got here.”

  She had her arms loaded now and they walked together to the house. “But I do appreciate it,” he said. “I said I’d never leave. I figure I’ve got me a piece of heaven on earth right here.”

  “If you feel that way, you ought to take care of it then. These buildings need to be put back into shape. Ike didn’t keep up his fences worth a damn, and that’s going to make trouble with your neighbors if you don’t do some fence work pretty quick. I suppose if the Bar G is going to rent your grazing land, we’ll have to fix your fence, too.”

  “You guessed right, Miss Grant, because I don’t intend to while away my summer fixing fences. You just do what has to be done and deduct the materials from the rent you owe me.”

&nbs
p; “What about the time?”

  “That’s your problem. I’m renting you the grass with the understanding that you’ll keep up the fence.”

  “That wasn’t part of the bargain.”

  “You don’t have to rent it. Like you said yourself, there are plenty of others who would like to graze this land. As for the buildings, they’ll just have to wait till I decide to make time. I’ve got to make up my mind what I’m going to do with this ranch over the long term anyway. I may want to run my own herd. That would make a difference on what I decide to do with the buildings.”

  “This place is too small to run your own herd. You can’t run enough cows to make it pay, especially if you’re going to spend your time painting pictures.”

  Dan bristled. “You know, Miss Grant, about my paintings . . . you said a little bit ago it wasn’t any of your business. Well, I’m inclined to agree.”

  6

  MEGAN GRANT HAD outdone herself on the breakfast: ham, fresh eggs, biscuits, honey. Dan had added a pot of steaming hot black coffee. It was midmorning before Megan, with Dan’s token assistance, had unloaded the buggy, and it was close to noon now as they both sat silently at the sturdy oak table, the one furnishing in the ranch house that Dan valued as a reminder of another life and time. They had barely spoken since their earlier sparring, and now they ate silently with the soft clicking of their utensils against their tin plates seemingly the only sound in the house. Dan cast a furtive glance at Megan across the table. She ate slowly, her eyes downcast as though absorbed in the mechanics of eating. He wondered if he could persuade her to sit for a portrait despite the apparent disdain she had for art. Or was it just artists she disliked?

  There were not many women like her in this part of the country. There were transplants from other cultures—the East, or in many cases, Europe—and there was a place for them in his work. But Megan Grant was a child of the West, unscathed by any other influence in her upbringing. Could he capture her untamed spirit on canvas? What a challenge that would be.

  He fixed his eyes on Megan now, studying her. She was beautiful in her own way. It was not the soft, gentle beauty that Larisa had carried with such grace. Not the kind of beauty one found in a satin gown in a grand ballroom. No, it was hard to imagine waltzing across a dance floor with Megan Grant.

  Her smooth dark skin suggested Spanish ancestry, and it glowed with the sheen of a healthy, wild creature. Her supple frame exuded hardness, toughness, strength. She challenged a man, dared him to prove she was not his equal. She was a breed apart and Dan had never encountered a woman like her. What kind of man could she love? Certainly not a weak man.

  He wished she would look up. He wanted to see her eyes again, those fascinating eyes that were a monochrome of green. In the dusky room, they were dark like lush, shaded grass. But in the afternoon sun, they would turn to the shimmering aqua of a turbulent ocean. Her eyes changed color with each mood and setting, probably with each season. How would he ever paint such eyes?

  A low rumbling, like a mountain lion’s morning growl, jarred him from his musing, and then a clap of thunder roared and shook the house. Megan looked up. “I’d better harness the team and try to beat this storm home,” she said, but even as she stood up, the droplets of rain commenced pattering against the wood shingles and, in a matter of moments, the rain exploded from the sky in waves and sheets.

  “There’s the gully washer Sol’s been praying for,” Dan said. “You can’t head out of here right now.”

  “But I need to get back to the ranch.”

  “You wouldn’t get any work done with this rain anyway,” he said. “Besides, it’s dangerous traveling in weather like this. Wait till it lets up.”

  She suddenly seemed nervous and skittish, and she went to the window and looked out. Then she turned back to him, her face glum. “I guess I’d better wait a little while.”

  As he helped her clear the table and wash the plates, it occurred to Dan that Megan Grant, imprisoned with him in the house now, was edgy and unsure, like a caged animal, waiting for the chance to bolt out an open door. It made him sorry that he had exchanged barbs with her earlier, and he resolved to ease her temporary captivity.

  “I’m afraid I was a little gruff earlier,” he volunteered. “You and Sol saved my life, and you’ve done more than any man has the right to expect of his neighbors. I apologize, and I hope I can pay you back some way.”

  “There’s no debt,” she said. “We’ll present a bill for supplies but the rest, well, that’s just something folks have to do for each other out here if we’re going to survive.”

  “I see.” He picked up the steel poker and knelt down to stir the embers in the fireplace. “I think I’ll toss on a few more logs. The dampness is starting to make a chill in the house.”

  “Mr. McClure?” Megan asked.

  He looked up. “Yes?” Her eyes had softened and looked sad somehow. Remorseful? He doubted it.

  “Since I’m stuck here for a spell, I wonder if you would mind showing me your paintings.”

  He eyed her skeptically and tossed the logs on the fire before rising. “Sure. I’ll be glad to show you. I just thought coming in and out of the house you would have seen them all.”

  “Well, I’ve glanced at them, but I’ve never taken a close look. I never got the chance to study them.”

  He led her through the cluttered rooms, skimming some of his work but pausing at some length at a painting from time to time to tell her about the history or setting, or to relate an anecdote about his inspiration. She was either genuinely interested, he thought, or an excellent actress, for her eyes leaped from intent appraisal to sparkling pleasure as they toured his cluttered gallery, and although she was obviously not schooled in art, her questions were intelligent and pointed, and she appeared to have some inborn sense of what was good and what was mediocre. She was candid in expressing her opinions, but her criticism and occasional praise, was almost always on the mark.

  “How long have you been doing this?” she asked

  “I can’t remember when I didn’t. I started sketching when I was a small child. We lived on a farm in the Ohio Valley. My first sketch was of a cow on a barn door. My father didn’t approve of my wasting time on such things, but my mother was a piano teacher, a very sensitive woman, and she encouraged me. She always got her way with Dad anyhow, but I think he was always a little disturbed by my paintings. I guess he thought of my drawings as something of a perversion. I remember he would get embarrassed as hell when my mother would drag out some of my sketches and show them off to company.”

  “Did you attend an art school?”

  “Eventually. I got an appointment to West Point when I was seventeen. I was trained as an engineer. Of course, after graduation it was the army’s logic that I be assigned to cavalry.”

  “You told me you had served at Fort Robinson.”

  “Yes, in the early days. There were some bad times. I fought the Sioux. I can’t say that I’m proud of it. But I fell in love with the West during that time. I want to trek into the Rockies and see—and paint—more of this country and its people, but this will be home.”

  “You said you had training.”

  “Yes, after I was discharged from the service, I studied art for a year at Yale. It helped, I think. I learned techniques that have given my work more sense of depth and reality. And I think I’m better with colors now. I know I approach my painting more systematically. But in the end, it’s still something that comes from within you, and you can’t teach that. Five artists will paint the same person five different ways. A good artist paints a close physical likeness, but a great artist will capture the soul or at least his conception of it. To me, that’s the challenge whether I’m doing a portrait or a landscape or anything else.”

  “Have you sold many of your paintings?”

  “Only a few. I’ve given more away to friends than I’ve sold. Until now, it’s always been something I’ve done nights or between jobs. I’ve sent some of
my work to a dealer in St. Louis. He thinks it will sell. I’m not so sure. I’ll give it a year or two, but if I can’t sell my paintings, I’ll have to try to make a living some other way. But I’ll stay here, and I’ll keep painting when I can. I have to.”

  She paused by one of the portraits. “This one,” she said, “I noticed it the first time I was here. Tell me about it. No, don’t. . . . Let me guess.” She stepped back from the painting, studying the golden-haired woman and the sleeping girl she cradled in her lap.

  Dan had intended to hurry past this painting. He had been reluctant to discuss this one, but the excitement that glittered in Megan Grant’s jade eyes pleased him, for the one joy that exceeded self-appreciation of his work was the sight of someone else receiving pleasure from it.

  “You did it here,” she said, smiling warmly at him, her face radiant.

  “Did what?”

  “It’s not just a painting showing two people. You caught their souls. You’re telling a story about them.” She wrinkled her brow and suddenly looked serious. “That makes you great, doesn’t it?” She crinkled her nose and smiled impishly.

  He grinned sheepishly, “Yeah, I guess so. But you were going to tell me about them.”

  She turned back to the portrait, her eyes narrowing as she dissected it. “The child’s tired out, but it’s a happy tired. She’s been playing, and she feels very safe in her mother’s arms.” A strangely wistful look came over Megan’s face at the remark. “The woman is her mother, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I’ve never seen a lady so beautiful, and she’s very refined. I could never be a woman like that, but, oh, how I envy her right now. She’s very gentle and quite warm. She has what some folks call breeding. But she’s not a snob. Her child, of course, is very dear to her, and they’re so at peace. . . . I’d call it ‘Portrait of Peace.’ Oh, my—”