Читать книгу The Earthbreakers - Ernest Haycox - Страница 10

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EDNA walked through the first town she had seen since leaving Missouri six months before. There were perhaps forty raw-boarded houses scattered along a street which dipped and rose to the contour of the land and had no particular order. Here and there some enterprising soul had built a fence and at intervals a section of boardwalk made walking passable; otherwise the street was two dirt footpaths bordering a lane churned to loose mud by wagons and rain. She passed a church, a hotel, a blacksmith shop and a coopering place; she paused at a store's doorway to catch the odor of goods which came from it; she saw a second store, Ermatinger's, across the way.

Other people from the wagon train cruised through this town, something like idle visitors on a holiday. She saw Moss Rinearson and looked at him until his attention came around; and she smiled at him and went on. At the farther end of town was a big warehouse and farther on some sort of mill; out in the river the falls were a great horseshoe of ragged water overhung by mist.

She paused, half an eye on the water, half an eye on the street. George Collingwood detached himself from a group of men and moved toward one of the stores; he saw her, hesitated a moment, and went into the store.

Retracing her way, she noticed one of the Crabtree boys staring at her. She had no particular interest in Sam Crabtree, yet his attention was the golden coin of a man's interest and she gave him a full answering smile.

Katherine and Harris Eby stood by the Ermatinger store and for a short time, drawn by the only thing that really interested her—the personal relationship between a man and a woman—she looked toward them with her warm and suspicious thoughts. Two Indian women sat on the doorstep of a house as though it were a public bench—one very old woman and one very young, the latter holding a baby across her lap. Edna stopped and her smile quickly came as she looked down at the baby's round, dark and dirty face. She laid a finger on the baby's button mouth and softly stirred it; she made small bubbling sounds with her own mouth.

Ralph Whitcomb's voice came from behind. "What's original about a baby, Edna?"

She drew back. "It's like a doll."

"Rag doll," said the doctor. The Indian mother's eyes clung to him, smileless and without motion, and the doctor suddenly said, "Do you speak English?"—and seemed relieved when she appeared not to recognize the question. "I guess she doesn't. It's just a baby, and it'll grow up half tame and half wild with no world of its own. That always happens when white people move in."

She said, "I hear Indian mothers don't have much trouble."

"No more than animals, usually."

"You shouldn't speak of her as an animal," said Edna.

"She's younger than you are, but she's already showing age. She was pretty. She isn't now. Smoke and dirt and gluttony and starvation have done it."

"We all get old soon enough," said Edna. "In ten years I'll be fat and ugly." Her broad mouth refused to be serious. "But I'm not troubled about that. The only thing that would trouble me is to think I'd never get married."

"You've got no worry there," said Whitcomb.

She lifted shoulders and head, appreciating the compliment. At such a time it seemed to Whitcomb she had been spoiled by experience. She liked men and was alert in their presence; yet there was nothing sly about her. Her actions were impulsive rather than deliberate, so far as he had noticed them, and though other and more self-contained women looked at her with reserve it occurred to Whitcomb that nature had put into her a more than sufficient capacity and that she was at its mercy. She reached out to absorb the sensations of life with a spongelike readiness. She accepted the coarseness of her surroundings and shrank ladylike from nothing. She was the exact opposite, he suddenly thought, of Lucy Collingwood.

"Your people decided where to go?" he asked.

"Dad's not said." Her eyes turned to him with speculation. "Where'll you go?"

"I'm staying here. I've found a house."

"Then we'll have no doctor."

"Yes, you will. I'll ride the circuit. I'll see you all."

"We'll miss you."

"So shall I."

"So you will." Her glance seemed to penetrate the layers he built up against the world and to come directly upon the desires he sheltered; it was an illusion of course, created by the half smile of her lips and the largeness of her eyes. "You'll miss some people more than others," she said.

"Don't you judge people too soon."

"Why, I don't judge people at all." Her smile lessened. "And I wish they'd not judge me. I don't ask them to. I don't ask anything. They like me, or they don't. If they don't like me, they can let me alone."

"It would be pretty hard to let you alone."

The compliment brought her good humor back and she walked on with her head lifted to the little sights about her. As she passed Abernethy's store she looked in to see Collingwood, and a hundred feet beyond she turned her head and found him coming behind.

She went by the straggling houses and made a turn into a side pathway which carried her by the back buildings of town and indirectly toward the wagon camp. She walked without haste and she was abreast a lean-to shed half-filled with hay when Collingwood's voice reached forward to halt her.

He had been traveling rapidly and he was excited; he took her arm, cast a quick glance about, and drew her into the shed. He put both hands on her arms and he searched her face with his rising boldness.

"Why'd you come this way?"

She gave him an easy smile; she said nothing.

"You knew I was behind you," he said. "You knew I'd follow." He was sure, yet not sure enough; he tugged gently at her arms, waiting for her to come in, to give him some signal. Her body furnished him with no clue; it was neutral, responding as he pulled, stopping when he ceased. The half-smiling of her face told him nothing, but by then her closeness worked him loose from his hesitancy and he flung his arms around her, thrust himself hard against her and bore down with his mouth. She let him have his way for a moment and then, as though the moment were enough to settle her curiosity, she gave him a short push.

He was roused and his breath sawed heavily against the quietness of the shed; his nostrils were flared out, his eyes half closed. The rebuff stung him. "If you didn't want this," he said, "why'd you let me start?"

"Do what you please," she said indifferently.

"You didn't stop me," he said. "You let me go on. You want me to think you're too nice, or you want me to just run hell out of myself trying to get you?"

"Make up your own mind," she said.

He looked at her with a renewed excitement, and stepped toward her.

"No," she said curtly, "that's enough."

"My God, Edna, don't you know anything? You can't encourage a man, then slap him in the face."

She shrugged her shoulders and was clearly disinterested.

"No," he said. "What was it—what'd you want?"

She shook her head and her chin moved forward, lending to her face a heavy and stubborn cast.

"I want to know," he insisted.

"Oh," she said impatiently, "I'm tired listening to you." She turned from the shed and left her order behind her. "You go the other way don't follow me. And don't bother me any more."

"Damn cheap fun you had, wasn't it?" he said.

She kept on with the trail, passing into a light stand of timber which lay between town and camp, and as she walked she soon lost her air of resentment and began to smile at the memory of the foolish expression on Collingwood's face; and in this humor she turned a bend of the trail and found Cal Lockyear working with his ax on a thin tree which he had dropped across the trail; he was apparently hewing a plank from it. There was a complete preoccupation about him and Edna stood at the barrier created by the tree for a full minute before his eyes rose from his chore. As soon as he saw her he moved forward to chop aside the upthrust branches of the tree, and when he gave her a hand across the log his glance fell upon her with a moment of weight and afterwards he turned back to his chore.

It was curiosity which made her stand there to watch him. She was never kind to men who ran after her too hard; she was never very kind to men who ignored her, and Lockyear had mostly watched her from a distance. Sometimes she thought she saw in his eyes a certain malice or a certain belief concerning her, and that made her think he was rude. But still she knew her attractiveness and she knew he had his share of man's lustiness; therefore she was curious and observed him now with an attention which had a certain wariness in it.

"What's that you're making?"

"Plank for Daniel Rinearson's wagon," he said.

"Daniel's got three sons to do that kind of work for him."

He leaned back from his labors and showed her his rough amusement. "Daniel's got two sons out hunting cows, and one son too damned lazy to come in from the rain."

"Funny, though," she said. "You're not much of a man to do anybody favors."

"Pleases me to work, right now. Tomorrow it might please me not to. Always do what I please."

She shook her head. "Just sometimes we do what we please. Most of the time we do what's got to be done."

"No," he said, "I don't do a damned thing I don't want to do."

"Oh," she said, "don't talk nonsense to me. If you want to make men think you're a big one, go ahead. But don't tell me that. It's silly."

"You do what you want to do, I notice. With men."

She grew cool toward him, she shrugged her shoulders. "Let them mind their affairs—and I'll mind mine."

He stared at her with his bright and driving interest. "You want 'em to do that?" He sat straddled on the log, hands folded one on the other, but this attitude of rest produced no actual air of rest. The black brows made a straight strike across his face, the ash-gray eyes were intent, the long body had its innumerable suggestions of restlessness about it. As he studied her his expression shifted until some of the pointedness was gone and he seemed to find things within her which commanded his attention; when this more reasonable manner came to him, Edna let him see the more friendly side of her—let him see it for a discreet moment, and then went on through the woods to the camp. His ax remained silent and by this she knew he watched her; and she smiled to herself at the knowledge she had broken through his indifference. It was only a game he had played; and she got the notion she could beat him at it.