Читать книгу Beginners Luck - Emily Hahn - Страница 4

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“And over there is Camel Rock,” Gin shouted, trying to reach the far corners of the bus with her voice. Just then the driver went into low and made it more difficult. She sat as near the edge of her seat as she could without falling off when the bus turned a corner and rocked a bit. Eleven heads turned obediently towards Camel Rock.

“See it?” she screamed. “See the hump, and the head in front?” Her voice almost cracked.

They all saw it at last. Those who couldn’t at first were helped by the others, standing up to look back at it while the bus went on. Gin sat back in the seat again and relaxed, swallowing hard. There would be nothing more to show them until Santa Clara; perhaps she could be quiet until then. She looked around to see if anyone was nursing a grievance. Would they expect her to keep talking in between the points of interest? Sometimes people wanted her to, other times they preferred to sleep. There was a fat man in the third seat who showed signs of being difficult; the kind of tourist who wrote letters to the company after the trip, commending and criticizing. Every courier lived in terror of such a letter.

“While I have nothing but praise for the courtesy and attention of your driver, I am sorry to say that none of us were satisfied with Miss Arnold’s behaviour. She seemed distracted; she did not attend to her duties. She seemed to lose no opportunity for disappearing from us; whenever the occasion offered itself for her to wander off, she was nowhere to be found. I am unwilling to complain about anything connected with your excellent tours, but I must say that when I have paid an extra fare of forty-seven dollars and fifty cents....”

Gin took a deep breath and leaned forward to the fat man.

“Do you like this road, Mr. Butts?” she asked tenderly. “It’s quite famous. The guests always like it. I do think that this is one of the nicest trips we have, even if it is included in the regular Detour. The first and third days may be more educational, but today I think you’ll have a lovely time besides.”

Mr. Butts merely grunted, but there was a satisfactory reaction from the old lady who sat in front of him. She turned and smiled nervously.

“Isn’t this road dangerous for the speed we’re going?” she quavered. “Of course it’s perfectly beautiful. Mr. Butts, do look at that, right behind you!”

Mr. Butts turned his head resignedly and looked. The bus had come to a place that gave a short glimpse of Santa Fé behind them, tiny and white and scattered. It was immediately hidden by the dark turbulent waves of hill around it as they drove on.

“Pretty,” said Mr. Butts in his brief way.

Gin gave it up for the moment and settled back, fanning herself with her hat. The bus was hot and stuffy, although all the glass windows were open. She yawned and drifted off, thankful that she wasn’t feeling particularly nauseated today by the constant motion. Some of the girls could never get used to it, but she seemed to be adjusted. She looked around apathetically at the dudes and wondered if they were all as stupid as they appeared or if it was because she needed sleep. Some days, it was true, everyone was perfectly charming. Those were the days that followed good healthy nights of sleep. There weren’t many of them, she thought ruefully. She often thought ruefully of her habits, but never to the extent of changing them. No one did in Santa Fé when they had lived there as long as she had.

One of the crowd today wasn’t so bad, she thought. She had noticed him at the hotel office when he signed on at the last minute for the trip. As skilful as the clerk in sizing up the tourists, she had put him immediately in the pigeon-hole reserved for summer visitors who stayed the season. He was no train-tripper. He probably lived in one of the big houses outside of town, with a swimming-pool and a stable. A nice-looking kid, just a baby, probably sixteen. Since she had not seen him before, he must be new. Since he was wearing summer clothes of an extreme carelessness—blue shirt and white trousers and no hat—he was not a resident; residents of Santa Fé never admitted that it was a summer resort; they tried to dress as if Santa Fé were New York. Well, he’d be around now, riding around the Plaza, playing tennis with Teddy Madden, looking scornfully at the newcomers after he had been there a week, and talking learnedly of Indian customs. He was new, though: she could tell it by the fact that he was taking a trip with her and looking at everything with an ingenuous pleasure. She liked the way he looked out of the window. He was taking it hard.

It made her pensive and reminiscent: his youthful rapt gaze. She thought of the first time she had driven out here, with the couriers’ training school. It had been raining; up on Baldy there was a light snow and there was mist around Jemez. She had felt terribly excited. All the other girls told her it was the altitude. Whatever it was, she liked it. And then the bus had come near Española and the valley.... They were almost there now; she watched the boy like a cat, to see what would happen to him when he saw it.

Yes, he got it. She knew it by the way his thin little shoulders jerked and his head leaned back, closer to the window. She could just see the back of his head, but she knew. When she had first seen it, she had cried. Probably the effect of the altitude, but why not? There was nothing like it anywhere else. The valley was absolutely naked; bare rock shaped in lumps on the bare sand, drowning in mists of vague lavender and dark blue and thin brown and yellow, transparent colors. The rock was shaped in pillars and blocks and squat cylinders, cut off flat at the tops. It was all dead and ghostly. Nothing lived here. The few scraggy clumps of juniper were not alive, for they were as ancient and dusty as the rocks, and as motionless.

It was only for a few miles. Beyond, the land lived again, flushed to foliage by the lazy sandy river. Back of all of it were the real mountains, with pine forests and trout streams, but now while Gin and the boy looked at them they were too far off to be green; they were dead dark blue.

“My, that’s gloomy,” said the cheerful lady from Chicago. “Miss Arnold, is that land good for anything? Does the government own it, or what?”

They crossed the wide white bridge to Española and followed the road through a rocky country, bearing down on the ugly round buildings that housed the Government schools. Approaching Santa Clara, the driver honked his horn loudly to warn the pottery-venders. By the time he came to a stop before the church, in the dry yellow plaza surrounded by square adobe huts, the women were filing out to the clear space in the centre, carrying their pottery on their heads and swinging baskets of smaller stuff—modelled animals, black-painted, and bead belts and necklaces. They walked serene and fat, surrounded by children and yellow dogs. They sat down in a neat half-circle before the bus and spread their wares out, impassive or smiling in their cotton shawls and long smocks. Eleven potential customers climbed out of the leather chairs and looked curiously at the big black bowls and the brown faces.

The men of the party were already saying, “That would be fine for Cousin Sally,” and the women were saying, “Now, John, be careful. We’ve just packed the trunk as it is; we can’t buy everything we see,” when Gin slipped away. She hurried around the corner of a house and walked down one of the many back paths, trying to get away before someone asked her to argue with an Indian about the price of the bowls. She stopped at one of the screen doors and peeped in. Her friend was at home, making a bowl in the middle of the whitewashed clay floor.

“Oh, come in, Ginny,” said Rufina, pushing a chair with her feet. “I heard you coming. How are you? I haven’t seen you here for a week. Been sick?”

“No, they sent me to the Canyon all of a sudden, and I just got back yesterday. How’s all the family?” A sticky little girl, pursued by flies, climbed up in her lap.

“Not so good. My mother is still sick, but she is getting better. Did you bring many people today?”

“One full load, that’s all.”

“We have been busy. Yesterday there were so many. Two buses and other people coming by themselves, all day.”

Outside the door a bulky shadow fell. It was the lady from Chicago, reconnoitering on her own. Gin wondered if she had been walking into any of the houses without knocking; it sometimes had an oddly infuriating effect on the Indians.

“Oh, there’s Miss Arnold right at home in the middle of them. Come here, Eddie, here’s the cutest thing. I want you to take a picture of it. Look, here’s an Indian making a pot right in her own house. Isn’t that darling? Would you think that you were in the States?”

“Come in,” said Rufina. They stepped over the threshold and she sat back on her heels, smiling blankly.

“Oh, look,” said the lady loudly. “A baby too, right in Miss Arnold’s lap. Perfectly adorable. Miss Arnold,” she asked, whispering in a small shout, “aren’t you afraid of catching things? Her hair....”

Gin said that it was time to go back to the bus. She held open the door, waved good-bye to Rufina hastily, and went back to the marketplace. Eight of the dudes were back in the car, and Blake was waiting for her with a new purchase to show her, a turquoise ring.

“Let’s see it,” she said, and he took it off and handed it over.

“Why, it’s quite nice,” she said. “Did you buy it here?”

“Yes, that man over there was wearing it and I asked him if he wanted to sell. Is it really good? I liked the colour of the stone.”

“The green stones always look nice, I think,” she said. “Nice and old. They’re not the best, of course,” she added in low tones. “You probably paid more than he expected, but it’s good-looking, I think.”

It was not ethical to tell any dude that he had paid too much, but he didn’t seem to care. He liked the ring, that was all. Summer people always collected jewelry in a serious way—they liked to have heavy bracelets sitting around on the tables or shelves in a careless, opulent manner. The old timers scorned it.

Now the other ten were sitting in the bus, and on Mr. Butts’ face was a look that meant, “Must we wait all day while that hussy flirts?”

She took her own seat, thinking that she would get Mr. Butts yet.

They were growing a little impatient about lunch, she thought. The long drive up to Puye, around a hairpin turn that made the Chicago lady squeal for three minutes, distracted them a little from the idea of food. But not much. On top of the plateau while they were exclaiming over the view she thought of something that might get the wedge into Mr. Butts.

“In November,” she said as they entered the forest, “there are wild turkeys here. Lots of the boys in town shoot a couple during the season.” He grunted, but turned to look again at the neat wooded lawns. “He’s slipping,” she thought hopefully.

The cliffs of Puye were nearer: pale yellow in the pale brightness of the air. Higher and higher they went, round big curves that pulled them closer to the caves with every sweep. She showed them the caves——

“See those dark spots? Those are the cliff-dwellings we came out to see. Yes, we’ll see them much closer than this, Mrs. Jennings. We’re going to climb right up; right up there.” Mrs. Jennings squealed a little. She had them already, Gin reflected; she had all of them but Mr. Butts. How long would he take?

They swarmed over the rest-house when the bus came to a halt.

“Lunch!” she cried gaily. Mr. Butts seemed unimpressed. The hostess called her into the kitchen and whispered, “I’m at my wits’ ends. Will you please put it into your report again tonight? I simply cannot manage without another maid. I’m sorry, Gin, but I don’t think you’ll have much time for your own lunch today. Would you mind eating it afterwards?”

Gin carried plates and glasses back and forth from the kitchen to the living-room. Mrs. Jennings offered to help in a very sportsmanslike Western manner, but she was refused. Gin was horrified at the idea of a dude stepping into the kitchen. The hostess worked furiously unpacking the lunch that had come on the back of the bus; jellied soup and salad and apricot pie.

“Gosh, I get sick of this soup,” said Gin disconsolately in the kitchen, talking to the cook. “It’s worse when I have three trips to the same place in succession. Some day I’ll start bringing my own lunch.” She walked over to the window and watched the dudes disporting on the porch, fully fed and happy, teasing the rest-house puppy. Mr. Butts looked dour, however. He hadn’t been able to eat the apricot pie or the sandwiches because he was on a diet. “That fat one,” she told the cook, “is pretty bad.”

The cook looked over her shoulder and agreed heartily. “They all travel, that kind. Nobody will keep them at home. Have some more coffee?”

“No thanks. We’ll have to be starting. Well....” With a gesture of tightening her belt, she walked out to the porch. “Well, people, are we ready to go?”

“Where to?” asked Mr. Butts.

“Right up there.” She pointed to the stone-stepped hill behind the house, with the caves at the top of a long climb. Mr. Butts seemed to hesitate. “Curly’s going,” Gin added, nodding to the driver. “Aren’t you, Curly?”

“Sure thing. I’ll take care of you.”

Mrs. Jennings was the first to step forward. “All right; if Curly can make it, I can.”

Mr. Butts’ masculinity conquered, and he set out without further discussion. Blake had evidently gone on ahead; they could see him at the top with his hands in his pockets, looking around in a very pleased fashion all by himself.

There is a steep ladder at the top of the hill which leads from the slope to the flat summit. It sometimes causes a lot of trouble to people who have not caught their breath while they study the caves. Two of the ladies in Gin’s party looked at it fearfully and refused to climb it at all. They proposed to go down again to the rest-house, and said that they were satisfied with what they had seen. This feminine timidity spurred Mr. Butts to a genial teasing attitude. He laughed at the ladies; he taunted them; he essayed the ladder and found it easily conquered. From the top he persuaded them to be brave and come along. With pushing, pulling, lifting and pleading, they all managed to get there, and they gathered in a triumphant panting group about Gin, talking of mountain climbing in Switzerland and taking pictures of the ladder. She gathered her flock about her on the wind-swept summit and lectured on the glory that was Puye, waving to the piles of debris that once were houses and pointing out the dry water-hole. They walked the length of the village and peered into the excavations. They looked down upon the distant top of the rest-house. They stood up straight and breathed hard and gazed for miles over the tree-tops to the distant mountains, which did not look so high as they had before. Blake sauntered away and looked for bits of pottery. And Gin kept a wary eye on the red face of Mr. Butts.

“Yes, he’s slipping,” she told herself.

Afterwards they started home, a long silent ride that was uninterrupted except for a short visit to Tesuque. They were too tired to take much interest in Tesuque, which after all was just another Indian village. Of course, there was old Teofilo. Teofilo was a great help with his professional attitude of glad-hander; he greeted all couriers with the same glad surprise, although he saw at least one a day, and he was more than willing to show his scarred head, which had once been scalped. He loved to have his picture taken.

Then, the rest of the way was quiet. The dudes arranged their cameras in their laps, peered around at the bigger pots stored in the back of the bus, and settled down to doze. The afternoon waned and the shadows lengthened across the road and the mountains darkened. In town, Curly manipulated the bus through the narrow streets and stopped before the Palace of the Governors, now a museum.

“We stop here to see the Museum,” Gin shouted through the bus. “Indian relics and paintings and the chair Lew Wallace wrote ‘Ben Hur’ in. Afterwards we walk back to the hotel.”

“Good-bye,” said Blake suddenly, and climbed out. Off across the Plaza he sprinted; he could be seen intercepting Teddy Madden just as he was going into the drug store. Gin looked after them and wondered if Teddy had made any attempt to call her that morning. Perhaps she had better call him and remind him that they had a date. He was so forgetful. Mechanically she ushered the dudes into the Palace, then to the first room on the right.

“Now, here we have a model of the place we saw yesterday. See, here’s the ruined church....”

But if she called Teddy, Harvey would answer the phone and might think that she had called to speak to him. Had she a good enough excuse for calling Teddy? Was she justified in assuming that they were good enough friends? Oh, to hell with that. There was no reason why she shouldn’t call him.

“This is the Frijoles room. Frijoles is one of the places we have for private tours. It is very lovely and very famous: it’s all excavated. We take it in one-day trips or two: there’s a hotel with cabins for rooms. It’s most interesting. It has cave-dwellings similar to what we saw today, but they’re in the walls of the canyon instead of being on a cliff. There’s a little model of the kiva; see, like the ceremonial cave we saw today.”

With a guilty feeling, she came back to the business in hand and listened to herself talking like a Victrola. That was no way to act. One must put oneself over. Mr. Butts was looking at the pictures on the walls with a thoughtful eye, a competitive eye. She smiled at him, glowing with all the force of her personality.

“I’ll tell you what effect that has on me, Mr. Butts,” she said confidentially. “When I stand there in that canyon I get the queerest feeling.” It was true, that was the worst of all, she thought. The idea of telling him! “When I’m there I can’t help feeling that the people who used to live in those caves are still there, in a way. They’re being very quiet, and looking at me.” She paused and stared at him with wide eyes. “It’s silly of me, isn’t it?”

Yes, she had him. He looked down at her and thought about Frijoles and the dead cave-dwellers, and he looked at her again and thought of the lost ages when men were men, and of the ladder he had climbed today, and of the letter he could write home about it. She knew it. She had him.

“You do?” he asked, and there was actually a kindly glint in that fishy eye. “So that’s how it makes you feel, does it?”

He rubbed his chin. He looked at her and saw her as a person instead of a courier, a person who had watched him climb that ladder. There would be no letter to the company. She had him.

“Well, well, well,” he said jovially. “Well well well.”