Darkness at Morning Star

by Joyce C. Ware

  “First things first. Cobby. My sister just arrived, you know. I’ll have it for you soon enough.”

  I was about to apologize for being the cause for the delay, when Belle, sensing my intent, jabbed me fiercely, stopping the words on my lips.

  “I’ve brought Serena to meet her pony.” It was a statement, not a request, and the implicit demand, accepted as unremarkable, discomfited me, perhaps because if I had dared such an attitude with anyone while living with the Roggs, I would have been given very short shrift indeed. Despite her present predicament, Belle was obviously used to having her way at Morning Star; I wondered why.

  Cobby leaned back to rap one of the men on the head. “Jed, go bring out Bingo for the young lady.”

  The man he addressed as Jed rubbed his head where Cobby’s sharp knuckles had landed, and made a pass at slapping the dust off his filthy clothes with his hat. He nodded at me politely enough, but his hot-eyed glance at Belle and his deliberate closeness as he eased behind her made me uneasy, as did the low, snickering exchange among the other hands as they whisperingly compared, behind grimy hands, Belle and me.

  Belle ignored them. Following her lead, I remarked to Cobby I’d never seen horses like the ones wheeling restlessly around the corral. “They don’t seem very ... manageable.”

  “Them’s Quinn’s Appaloosas. Indian breed. These here’re young and full o’ ginger. Good horses,” he said with an emphatic nod. “They’s only half-broke, o’course,” he added, sliding sideways to dodge a well-muscled spotted rump and a set of energetically lifted heels.

  Jed appeared from the barn leading a neat little brown-and-white-splotched mare. Her ears were pricked forward, and intelligent dark eyes peered out at us through a long forelock. Her tail almost swept the ground. I thought she was the dearest little horse I’d ever seen. Cobby took the reins from Jed and led her close to me.

  “Let her sniff you,” he instructed. “A horse is like a dog and a cat that way. They like to know who they’re dealin’ with.”

  Bingo stretched her neat head out toward my outstretched palm and whiffed at it with flaring pink nostrils. After a moment she tossed her head and whickered softly.

  I was thrilled; I turned to my sister. “Did you see that, Belle? I do believe she likes me!”

  Belle smiled at me indulgently. “I do believe you’re right, Reenie. Help her on, will you, Cobby? I don’t know that she’s ever ridden—”

  “I have,” I broke in. “But not very much,” I admitted, “and usually bareback. Never in a saddle like this.” I eyed the boxed stirrups and horned protuberance on the pommel nervously.

  “Not much different from the kind Buffalo Bill uses, Reenie, isn’t that right, Cobby?”

  Cobby’s reply was a snort, whether of agreement or scorn, I wasn’t quite sure.

  “It’ll be like riding in a rocking chair, darlin’,” Belle added encouragingly. “Up with you!”

  A moment later, thanks to Cobby’s vigorous boost, I was in the saddle; a few minutes after that I was circling inside one of the smaller, empty corrals under his critical scrutiny.

  “She’s been trained good and treated better, so settle easy ... don’t go haulin’ on them reins, missy! ... thass right, thass right... give’er her head, she’ll take you where you oughta go ...”

  “How about where I want to go, Cobby?” I called back over my shoulder as we circled, trotting now, past him. “Don’t I have any choice about that?”

  “Ain’t many choices on the prairie. Hers’ll be better’n yours.”

  I had progressed to a lovely slow canter, even nicer than the rocking chair Belle had promised, when Bazz came riding up on a tall, prancing chestnut as elegant as the man astride him. How wonderful they look, I thought.

  “Reenie’s taken to riding like a duck to water, Bazz,” Belle announced.

  “Well, Serena?”

  I pulled up Bingo in front of him. “How can I ever thank you? She’s ... she’s absolutely perfect!”

  “Your smile is my reward, Serena.” Basil bowed forward and swept his Stetson off his head in a manner befitting a cavalier’s plumed hat.

  Cobby snorted. A plain man himself, he obviously had little tolerance for fancy phrases and gestures. As for myself, Basil’s fine eyes regarding me—yes, I could see now that they were gray, pale and clear as spring water—and the sweet curve of his wide mouth suddenly brought to mind a line from the prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, one of the last things, a favorite, that I had read to Malcolm Wilcox. He was a verray parfait gentil knight....

  Basil winked at me before addressing Cobby. “Would you approve,” he began solemnly, “of my asking Miss Garraty to ride out with me to Chalk Pond this afternoon?”

  Cobby looked astounded, the pipe almost dropping from his mouth. “Not for me to say,” he blurted. When he belatedly realized Basil had been asking his opinion not of the invitation but my ability, he darted an angry look at him. “She’ll do,” he muttered.

  Cobby stumped oft, ignoring the thanks I called after him.

  “I guess Cobby doesn’t much care to have his leg pulled, Basil,” I remonstrated gently.

  He frowned. “Cobby has a skin as thin as cobwebs, always has. It never seems to stop him from saying what he thinks. Sour little toad. He came with my mother from her parents’ ranch. You’d think that—” He stopped short. “The fact is. Cobby doesn’t like me, Serena, no more than my father did. There’s nothing I can do to change that, but sometimes ...” He shrugged.

  Sometimes he wanted to hit back. I knew that feeling, but the method Basil had employed seemed ... oh, not quite worthy of a perfect gentle knight.

  My misgiving, if that’s what it was, was a tiny passing cloud on an otherwise perfect day. Basil somehow assembled a simple picnic lunch, and the setting at Chalk Pond more than made up for the meal’s shortcomings. Cradled in a bowl of low hills about three miles to the northeast, the pond, ringed by willows, was fed by springs uncovered during the quarrying of a long-depleted bed of limestone. At the end where we sat it looked to be quite shallow, three feet or less, and so clear the pond’s inhabitants could be viewed as if in an aquarium. Stands of blue flag, planted there by his mother, Basil said, unfurled straplike leaves among the slenderer grasses. At the other end, cattails crowded against a wooden platform, like youths impatiently waiting their turn to dive. Judging by the darker color, this was the deepest part. A dozen or so feet, according to Basil.

  “Seemed more like a hundred the day Quinn tried to drown me,” he added offhandedly.

  I stared at him, aghast. “You can’t mean that.”

  But he did. His father, Basil said, had brought Quinn for a visit, contrary to the expressed wishes of Basil’s mother. One very hot day, Basil had begged to go wading at the pond.

  “I was very good at wearing my mother down,” he admitted wryly, “but she didn’t feel up to taking me—as I said, it was very hot—and since I didn’t know how to swim, she refused to let me go by myself. So Quinn offered to take me. We hadn’t seen much of him; he preferred spending his time with Paw and Cobby—he was fifteen, almost a man in my nine-year-old eyes—but they were busy that afternoon with something that bored him, at least that’s what he said.

  “It seemed harmless enough,” Basil said. “After we left, Mama went to her room for a nap, but she couldn’t settle down. Her unease grew until finally she ran down to the barn. My father said he was too busy to go, so she asked him to hitch up the buggy for her. He refused.”

  I was shocked. “Good heavens, Basil, how could he?”

  “He thought she was hysterical. He was right, she was; she had reason to be. In the end, Cobby took her, and when they got to the pond they saw me struggling at the deep end, trying to keep my head above the water. I was exhausted. Sometimes I still dream about Quinn’s hand clutching at my ankle. The way Mama told it, his head and shoulders broke above the water just as I disappeared. She screamed at him—oh, how she screamed. ‘Leave him be, you bre
ed bastard! Leave my boy be!’ and she lashed out at him with the buggy whip, and he yelled and dove back under to yank me down again.”

  “Oh, Basil!”

  “Quinn denies it, of course. Anyway, she ran out on the dock, sprawled out full length, reached down and pulled me up by my hair. No sooner was my face above water than Quinn came lunging up next to me and pushed me up and out onto the platform. Do you know what he said to my mother then? ‘You damn near killed him, you silly cow.’“

  “But certainly your father—”

  “My father couldn’t decide what to think, but he sent Quinn away; and when he brought him back to Morning Star after my mother died, the two of them were so much at odds over every little thing, I assumed Paw couldn’t help but think that Mama’s version of the ‘accident’ was the right one after all. I guess I was wrong.”

  “There’s no way you can know that for sure, Basil. If I were you, I’d think whatever put my mind at rest.”

  “And I think it’s time you called me Bazz,” he said.

  We were seated side by side on a blanket he had untied from behind his saddle. The horses contentedly grazed a few yards away on the tender spring grasses. He looked at me. “You’re not much like your sister, are you?”

  I self-consciously patted my wind-disordered hair, very much aware of his intent regard, unable to read the expression in his quick-silver eyes. “I’m thinner, and my hair’s straighter and paler than hers now, but—”

  “I don’t mean physically, Serena, I mean inside, in your heart. You’re so much more ... accepting of life.”

  “Belle is wonderful!” I protested fiercely. “She’s so lively and spunky and—”

  He placed a long finger across my lips. His eyes invited me to drown in their pale depths; his smile was as sweet as honey.

  “Oh, Bazz ...”

  “Bazz is very hungry,” he murmured.

  I took a quivering breath and leaned toward him— even Ernest would have guessed my expectation— then colored hotly as a packet of sandwiches was flourished beneath my nose.

  “You shouldn’t tease,” I whispered.

  “It’s hard not to, when you’re so adorably teasable.”

  “Cobby’s not the least adorable, yet you teased him.”

  Basil stared at me, then gave a shout of laughter. “And Belle’s not the only spunky one. Here, have a sandwich.”

  We passed the rest of the afternoon in an amiably foolish fashion, making faces at ourselves in the clear, still water; feeding crumbs to the little olive-backed, orange-sided killifish that rose pout-mouthed to our bait, and attempting to capture frogs that escaped in soaring, plopping leaps to hang daringly, green on green, on grasses reaching up from decades of wind-blown silt layered below.

  That was the first of many excursions to the pond, always on Bingo, sometimes with Basil, occasionally in a festive threesome, Belle and the food arriving in a buggy, but mostly, contentedly, alone. There was so much to see: crowds of dragonflies, hovering on splendid gauzy wings, dispersed in a rainbow burst of color by the splashing arrival of mallards and pintails, their murmurous quacks expressing smug delight at having spied this blue dot of watery repose in the vast expanse of prairie. Bullfrog tadpoles prospered to enormous size, and once, surprised by me while stalking one, a stripy length of snake slipped in silently from the stony verge to cut flamboyant scallops across the placid surface.

  For Basil and Belle and me, the days drifted by, . unremarked, like bits of thistledown. If there was any urgency to prepare to leave Morning Star, I was unaware of it. After the first week, Quinn Cooper was rarely mentioned, much less discussed. Meals were haphazard—more often than not, the kitchen was taken up with Belle’s herbal preparations—and I found myself beginning to view the unkemptness of the great house, except for my own room, which out of habit I kept in order, with a more tolerant forgiving eye.

  In any event, Rita was hopelessly unequal to unsupervised tasks, and Bazz spent most of his time at his piano. Once, when I complained mildly to Belle, she reminded me sharply of the hours she spent helping me alter clothes of hers to fit me. Chastened, I abandoned any further attempts to organize the household and decided instead to adopt Belle and Bazz’s attitude of allowing tomorrow to take care of itself. Having done so, my enjoyment of our carefree life together was unfettered. I had gained a family if not a home, and of the two, family was far dearer.

  The reverse was true down at the working center of the ranch. There, the ripening of spring increased the urgency of chores to be done, and Cobby’s gruff commands could be heard at all hours. The hands were seldom seen lounging along the fences these mid-May days—except for Jed, who always managed to wangle himself into Belle’s vicinity—and when their eyes strayed toward me as I came and went on Bingo, Cobby soon set them straight. Once, he suggested I groom Bingo out of sight of the men.

  “Seein’ you like that, missy, strokin’ her and whisperin’ in her ear ... it gives ‘em notions.”

  I could tell from the way he ducked his head and twisted his hat in his hands that speaking to me like that had cost him a dollar’s worth of embarrassment. But I realized, too, that in his own crabbed way he’d come to like me, so although it was sometimes inconvenient to respect his advice, his wish to protect me touched me more than I dared let on to him.

  Taken all in all, very little marred a succession of idyllic days. True, the dooryard peonies’ blood-red blooms, shoulder-high when fully grown, exuded a ripe meaty odor that to avoid I took to entering and leaving the house through the kitchen. At night I continued to skitter up and down staircases that existed nowhere else but my dreams, but repetition made my sleep-time journeys more boring than bothersome, although it sometimes crossed my mind to wonder why I had seen no evidence of the legions of mice that evoked them.

  Our peace was shattered one morning in late May. I had ridden out on the prairie shortly after daybreak, as had become my custom. There had been a cloudburst in the hours before dawn, and the price paid for that morning’s concert of bird song was a generous spattering of mud: on Bingo, on the saddle leathers, and on the boots whose extended loan by Belle had evolved into ownership by me, a transfer confirmed by her teasing aside to Bazz at supper one evening that I probably even wore them to bed.

  Exhilarated by the spicy, fresh-washed scent of the prairie, I stayed out much longer than usual. It was nearing noon by the time I left Bingo, sponged and curried, dozing in the corral, and as I bent over inside the barn door to scrape clots of mud from my boots, a lusty thwack on my bottom sent me sprawling. As I lay there, outraged, in the straw—I assumed one of the hands, Jed most likely, had taken the liberty Cobby had warned me about—I heard from above me an unfamiliar deep-voiced drawl.

  “Laws-a-mercy, Belle, and here I’ve been thinkin’ you always landed on your feet.”

  I pulled myself up, with no help from the stranger who stood, arms akimbo, watching me. A well-worn, dust-streaked black hat, pulled low, hid his eyes; his cheeks were dark with unshaven stubble, and a stalk of prairie grass dangled from the corner of a mouth curved in a careless smile. He obviously found my predicament entertaining. I set my hat straight, tossed my braid over my shoulder and stared up at him, too angry to speak.

  Six feet or more to begin with, his hard, whip-thin figure made him seem even taller. He returned my stare. His eyes, seen closer than I found comfortable, were as dark as jet. Unlike that lifeless stone, however, something danced in their depths, a cruel mischief that slowly ebbed as he realized he had made a mistake. I waited him out, relishing his confusion. Somehow, I doubted a man like this would admit to it.

  “Hell, you ain’t Belle!” he accused.

  I was right; he hadn’t. “I’m her twin sister, Serena, here on a visit.”

  He plucked the straw from his mouth, then pushed up the brim of his hat, revealing dark eyebrows arching almost to the line of untanned skin that rimmed his broad forehead. “My God, you mean there’s a matched set of you? Not really matc
hed, Belle’s brass and you’re silver, but two of you? My, oh, my, think of Paw missin’ out on that.” He shook his head from side to side in exaggerated surprise, presenting in profile as he did so a broken-ridged nose and a jaw line as sharp as an axe blade.

  “Too bad you won’t be stayin’ long,” he added. More than a comment, it was a pronouncement, delivered in a tone as uncompromising as the glare of the midday sun.

  I fear I gaped. This lord-of-t he-manor air ... he can’t be, he can’t possibly be.... “You don’t look at all like Bazz,” I muttered, more to myself than to this overbearing stranger.

  He grinned hugely. In his black eyes little lights began to dance again. “I surely don’t, S’rena.” He stuck out a calloused, very brown hand. “Howdy, I’m the bastard brother, Quinn.”

  Chapter Four

  “Cobby around?” Quinn Cooper continued. “I got me a wagon to unload and—”

  He broke off as a slim figure appeared behind him out of the shadows, his footsteps as soft as feathers.

  “Goddam but I hate being stole up on ... who’n hell are you?” Quinn demanded.

  The boy started, as a deer might at the approach of a predator.

  “His name is Sharo,” I said. “Cobby hired him on a couple of weeks ago. He needed a good hand with your horses.” I placed a quiet emphasis, deliberately, on “your.” “The other men you left him with ...” I shrugged dismissively.

  Quinn’s black eyes slanted toward me, then away again. He knew I was right. “Couldn’t afford no—” But he had hardly started before he stopped, grunted, and clamped his mouth tight shut. I fancied I could read his mind: Explain myself to a woman? Not very damn likely! He turned to Sharo. “You good with horses, like the lady says?”

  The lad’s dark eyes dropped under his scrutiny. “Cobby thinks so.”

  “I ain’t askin’ what Cobby thinks, boy, I’m askin’ you.”

  The eyes came up. “Yes.”

  Quinn nodded. “All right, then,” he said, sensing as I did the confidence implied by the terse answer. “Say, what blood are you?” he added conversationally.