Forgetting Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

  “It's the same with bull calves at branding time,” whispered Mrs, Garrison. "But you know, the men aren't terribly comfortable about that either. And it does have to be done. Would you like some more lemonade, Evangeline?"

  She said that last more loudly, and Evangeline turned back, shook her head.

  Mariah said, "They recovered very quickly, though, and seem happy as ever. Stuart says the hardest part wil be shearing. Come Monday, other sheep ranchers wil be herding their flocks to Mr.— I mean, to his father's homestead, so that they can work together shearing and dipping them. Stuart says it wil take a week!“ She waved a fly away. ”But at least I won't be feeding al those strange men. Mother MacCal um is in charge of that, and I only have to help."

  “If it's anything like roundups,” said her mother, “that is a very good thing.”

  “How did you manage feeding so many men, when you first married?” asked Mariah.

  Mrs. Garrison said, “I made your father hire a cook, dear.”

  Mariah looked as startled as Evangeline felt. “Oh!”

  Evangeline took a thoughtful sip of her lukewarm lemonade. Mariah's husband, she thought, could not have hired a cook. Mariah had turned her back on money, social status, her father, even a grand house to live in a sheep-wagon.

  And yet the wagon, which she'd shown off before heading out to their picnic, was clean and charming—as different from the shanty Evangeline shared with her mother as could be. Mariah had planted a vegetable garden near it, watered by bucket daily. She proudly showed off the wel her husband and his brother were digging, even the outhouse they'd built “for her.”

  Even in lowered circumstances, Mariah had little in common with Evangeline—she stil managed to be happy. And yet...

  It made Evangeline wonder. Could she plant a garden outside her mother's shanty? She'd grieved when school ended and the Garrisons moved out to their ranch. Summer stretched endlessly ahead of her, with no visits to lighten her weeks. But—what if she used that extra time to somehow give her home some scrap of the Garrisons' charm?

  If Mariah could do it, out on this rocky stretch of range, could Evangeline not at least try?

  Then Mrs. Garrison asked, “You're happy, then?” and Mariah MacCal um said. “I have never been happier.”

  And Evangeline thought: Something is wrong.

  Immediately she felt guilty. Who was she to second-guess a respectable woman like Mrs. Stuart MacCal um? And yet she had suspected Stuart and Mariah's relationship before anybody else.

  Victoria said Evangeline had “good instincts.” So was something wrong?

  That upset her. If Mariah could not find happiness, then how could Evangeline even hope? She decided to pay attention over the next few weeks, lest she discover what could possibly be troubling her otherwise happy ... friend?

  And in the meantime, looking shyly into her lemonade glass, she ventured to ask, "How did you start your garden?"

  Dougie stated—with increasing frequency—that he'd rather Idaho Johnson leave off his slow intimidation and just come gunning for them. But Dougie's courage was that of a temperamental youth, short-fused and impatient. Stuart knew better. He understood that, as long as they kept steady, every week which passed without further assault could be used to their benefit as easily as to Johnson's. Every week brought opportunities to improve the claim, birth more lambs—love his wife. Every week meant another letter of protest to his congressman, his senators—even the president.

  Stuart doubted anyone in power would care about the plight of the sheep farmers. But Mariah said her mother always wrote them about woman's suffrage and child labor. Stuart figured the powder keg brewing in the Bighorn Basin had to be at least as important as that.

  So when spring shearing arrived, Stuart counted it as a qualified victory. Something was going to break, sooner or later. But it wasn't likely to break with dozens of armed men gathered to face it together. And it wasn't, he thought, going to stop him from sel ing his wool.

  Besides, Stuart loved shearing. For a week, Da's usual y lonely ranch—this year's gathering ground for sheep men across Sheridan County—would come alive with “wool growers.”

  “So you can al talk about sheep,” assumed Mariah, the night before the shearing would begin.

  They'd camped the wagon on his da's homestead, and she was choosing which of her work dresses to wear, and with what apron.

  Stuart, wearing just his pants over his union suit as he honed the blade of his shears, did not pause in his long, scraping strokes. But he noticed the way Mariah eyed the fading fabric of one dress, testing a sleeve against the inside of a pocket. If they got a good price for wool this year, she could buy dry goods to make a new one.

  “It's more than talking business,” he tried to explain. “It's almost a ... kinship. For the rest of the year, the cattlemen make outcasts of us. But for a week or so, we're with our own kind.”

  Hanging her chosen dress, Mariah stood there in her nightgown, smoothing the fabric for a moment too long. She did not, Stuart noticed, defend the cattlemen as she normal y might.

  For some reason, that unsettled him, and he put his whetstone aside. “What is it?”

  When she turned to him, her gray eyes looked troubled—and lighter than ever in her sun-warmed face. She'd lost weight since their marriage; her face looked slimmer and, despite her generous nightgown, he knew her body had grown leaner with the hard work she'd been doing. Sometimes he worried that she'd gotten in over her head, that he asked too much of her.

  And yet she'd never seemed prettier.

  “It's just... I'm not that kind, Stuart,” she reminded him. “Not a fel ow sheep person.”

  “You helped with the lambing and docking both!” Perhaps more than she should have.

  “But I haven't been made an outcast,” she insisted. Then, when he silently chal enged that, she added, “Oh, I lost a few friends, but nobody too important. I've been so happy, I've barely noticed if anybody else avoids me. It hasn't mattered.”

  Except your father, he thought. That, he knew, mattered to her a great deal. But she was not lying to him. He trusted her more than that. She lied only to herself.

  “What if your friends don't like me?” insisted Mariah.

  Stuart put down the shears—he would just get up earlier tomorrow to finish honing them—and opened his arms to her. She came to him immediately, let him pul her onto his lap.

  “How could they not, love?” he asked into her lavender-scented hair. “You're as fine a woman as they can hope to meet. And you're my wife, not just some cattleman's daughter.”

  She stiffened slightly in his arms. “Just some cattleman's daughter?”

  “You know I didna mean it that way,” he insisted quickly, kissing sunshine off her throat. “No matter whose daughter you were, you're my Mariah now. That's true enough, isn't it?”

  Her hesitation bothered him even more than her faded dress. He leaned back from her. “Isn't it?”

  The question startled her, as if her thoughts had momentarily strayed. Her mouth made an “o” of indignation. “Of course it's true! Yours now and always. You know that!”

  Since he had his arms around her already, it was easy for Stuart to draw her back against him and take a kiss— a hard, deep, possessive kiss that twisted feelings up inside him.

  “Aye, Mrs. MacCal um,” he agreed huskily, once their wel -matched lips drowsed back from each other's. “I just wanted to make sure you knew it as wel .”

  She leaned near his ear and whispered, “Would you like proof, Mr. MacCal um?”

  “It's not necessary,” he assured her in an eager whisper. “But greatly appreciated.”

  So she proceeded to prove it to him in the very best of ways—taking full advantage of the time that Johnson's delaying tactics bought them.

  Everyone worked during shearing time. Smal er children carried cups of ginger water to the men doing the actual shearing—loud, sweaty work, ful of bleating and laughing male voices and exciteme
nt. Older children, careful not to get in the shearers' way, helped carry armfuls of wool to the farmers, who tied it into bundles, then loaded the bundles into enormous sacks. The sacks went into waiting wagons, harnessed to horses half-asleep in the heat.

  When Mariah got the chance she liked to watch Stuart shear. General y, neither the sheep farmers nor their herders did that specialized work. They left it up to a band of skil ed men who traveled from farm to farm, relieving the sheep of their heavy winter coats for food and pay. But as Stuart explained, he'd been one of those men for the last five years; that was in part how he'd earned enough to buy the wagon and start his own flock. "I doubt I can stil shear a hundred and fifty of the beasts a day,“ he'd told her. ”But I might yet manage an even hundred."

  Which she knew meant less paid out to shearers, and more for his and Mariah's future.

  Stuart, shearing, more resembled the confident man Mariah made love to at night than the awkward, solemn boy who'd first won her heart. The men worked in a large pen covered by brush for shade. As Stuart tied each animal's legs together and started shearing it, his muscles bulged beneath the clothes he'd quickly sweated through, his brown eyes often crinkled with laughter, and his smiles even showed his teeth. His camaraderie with the other shearers, most of whom he already knew, did resemble a kinship ... had he been kin to a gregarious group of men, many of them swarthy Basques who spoke an odd language that was neither French nor Spanish.

  Euskera, Stuart cal ed it—and though he claimed not to speak it himself, she suspected him of modesty. He could certainly communicate more easily with the sheep-savvy immigrants than he ever had with his own classmates in Sheridan.

  Marian watched his interactions with the other men whenever she could. She fed Pet, and hiked back to their empty claim once a day to tend her garden. But for the most part, she helped her in-laws with the meals. Cooking for almost thirty men started before dawn. Breakfast included pancakes, fried eggs, salt pork. For lunch the men got fried mutton, mounds of potatoes, peas and beans and asparagus," bread and butter, rhubarb pies for dessert. For dinner, they had cold mutton sandwiches on freshly baked bread, pickled cucumbers, tomato relish, boiled eggs, and cake. And, twice a day, the ladies brought out thick coffee with heavy cream, and donuts.

  Frying donuts in May fil ed the kitchen with a thick, sweet heat that made Mariah dizzy and stuck her hair in curls against her face. But it could be no worse than the work of the men outside, especial y those men doing the dipping. After the sheep were shorn, these men pushed them into and along a trough of hot, rank “sheep-dip,” made of tobacco and sulfur and goodness knew what, to destroy parasites.

  No. Though the men's company looked more cheerful than that in the kitchen—thanks to stern Mother MacCal um —Mariah felt thankful to have one of the easier jobs. In fact, despite that only two other wives joined them for the week of shearing, she enjoyed the social occasion it became...

  and how much less alien it seemed to her than she'd feared. She savored the heady sense of making herself useful. She felt pride at the obvious respect Stuart had earned, despite his young age. She hoped that, as a sheep farmer's wife, she could make him proud, too.

  The only thing that concerned her was when the sheepmen complained about the cattle ranchers

  —and how viciously. Not that they did not have cause for complaint!

  The first night, the men started by comparing tales of their unusual losses to a cougar, the slaughtered antelope they'd found. But that quickly led to complaints about the ranchers. Idaho Johnson had cal ed on pretty much every sheep farmer and herder in the county, always with the same warning—the cattlemen wanted them out, no matter what.

  To Mariah's mounting dismay, Stuart and Dougie were not the only herders to have lost sheep to an unknown riflemen. Between them, almost thirty sheep had died in “warnings.”

  “Whoever shot at mine panicked 'em so, eleven scattered right off a ridge,” spat a man whom Stuart cal ed Joe.

  “Rim-rocked,” agreed an older man. “Ain't nothing. I knew a fel er lost over six hundred head that way.”

  That led to tales of sheep who'd been “fired,” who'd been clubbed to death, who'd been

  stampeded by wild horses or cattle by the thousands—and townships that almost always

  protected the ranchers and cowboys who did it.

  Of course the stories made Marian uncomfortable. She hated to hear about the slaughter of any animals, from buffalo to wolves. But the tone in the men's voices, as they talked, upset her even more.

  “Is it always the cattlemen who are behind the sheep kil ing?” she asked Stuart the first night, in bed. But she should not have taken so long to work up the nerve.

  “Aye, lass,” he managed to murmur. “Since the Indian wars, leastwise. And the Indians...” he yawned, exhausted, “stole them.”

  But he fel asleep before she could ask more. And they rose so early the next morning, she did not want to waste the few minutes they shared with so unpleasant a topic.

  The day ended that way, even so. This time, the sheep men started talking about the Wyoming Stock Growers' Association—an organization formed by the cattlemen some years back—and their fine gentleman's club in Cheyenne, where they supposedly schemed against the sheep farmers, nesters, and smal -time ranchers.

  Mariah had stayed at the club several times—most recently, on her way to Europe with the Wrights. It was a beautiful, three-story building. The cattlemen who congregated there fol owed strict rules governing profanity and ungentlemanly behavior. They had always worn suits and treated her with the utmost civility.

  In fact, her “uncle” Benjamin Cooper—as charge d'affaires for the Circle-T—stayed there with his wife quite often.

  For a shameful moment Mariah, serving more coffee, felt a surge of annoyance. How dare these men in their shirtsleeves, most of them sweaty and some barely able to speak English, find fault with the very gentility to which the ranchers aspired!

  Then Stuart held out his coffee cup. As she stiffly fil ed it, he smiled his special smile for her and mouthed, “Thank you, love.”

  And Mariah faced the ugliness of her conceit. Stuart was one of these shirt sleeved men.

  Someone said they should band together. Another suggested a wool-grower's association. Others started to predict why the Wyoming cattlemen would never al ow such a thing.

  Mariah felt too ashamed to hear it. She finished pouring coffee, managing smiles and "you're welcomes" to the men who thanked her. And as soon as her pot was empty, she fled to hers and Stuart's wagon.

  Four other wagons, almost identical, camped near the MacCal um homestead. She only recognized hers from its placement, the curtains in the window, and the sleeping lamb tied to the wheel. See, Mariah. You real y are one of these people.

  How could she possibly think there was anything wrong with that? To do so was to question Stuart, stil back at the dinner tables debating the dangers and strengths of organizing against the cattle ranchers. And why shouldn't he be?

  Though her papa had a little too much old-time cowboy in him to enjoy the refinement of the Cheyenne Club, he'd belonged to the Wyoming Stock Grower's Association since they'd formed, the year Mariah was born. Why shouldn't the wool growers have that kind of fraternity?

  And would the ranchers truly object?

  Lighting a lantern, she opened a drawer and withdrew the family photograph she'd carried with her to Europe. She'd spent hours staring at the sepia-toned print. Never before had she seen anything ominous in her father's stern, unsmiling expression. That was just Papa.

  The door to the wagon opened and Stuart climbed in. "Mariah? Ma says you left with nary a word, and washing to be done. What's wrong?"

  For a moment, Mariah closed her eyes under the weight of too many guilts. “I'm sorry,” she said, putting down the picture to face Stuart again. “I'l go help her.”

  But Stuart didn't move from in front of the door. “She made do without you for years,” he insisted, wiping a
tired hand down his face. “She'l manage tonight. What is it?”

  She loved him for things like that. Stuart had insisted she entertain her mother and their sisters before the chaos of shearing started. Stuart chided her for carrying too much water to her garden alone, mourned the blisters she'd raised on her hands turning soil, clumsily helped her curl her hair for church.

  How could she have thought him ignorant or vulgar, even through association? Why?

  She could never admit such a thing to him. And yet, he had asked her a question. As her husband

  —her partner, her friend, her lover—he deserved an honest answer.

  So she gave him part of one. “My father isn't a bad man, Stuart.”

  Stuart inhaled with slow understanding—then, as an afterthought, he hooked his thumbs into his suspenders to pull them down his arms. Ah, his attitude seemed to suggest. That's al . “Nobody mentioned him by name,” he said. “They may not even know you're his daughter.”

  She wondered why he hadn't mentioned it—to keep her from being ostracized by the sheep

  farmers? Or was he...

  He wasn't ashamed she was a rancher's daughter, was he?

  Marian bit her lip, wishing she knew how to keep al these awful, ugly thoughts out of her head.

  Even if Stuart were ashamed of her, it would serve her right.

  She watched him fumble tiredly at his shirt buttons with bandaged, work-stiffened hands.

  Instinctively, she stepped to his side and took over for him. He smiled quiet thanks—that's how exhausted he was, to not protest her assistance—and sat, hard, on the bed so that she could pull his shirt up over his head, too. Then she started unbuttoning his pants.

  “Ah, love,” murmured Stuart, sinking back into the pillows. “The spirit is wil ing ...”

  “Don't be vulgar, Stuart MacCal um,” she chided, biting back a fond smile—and blinking back guilty tears. “I just want you to rest more comfortably. There—now raise your hips ...”

  Stuart did. But he was stil wearing his boots. She couldn't get his pants off him until she took those off first.

  “If you want me to rest comfortably,” he yawned, “Come up here where I can hold you.”