Читать книгу So Far from Spring - Peggy Simson Curry - Страница 13

CHAPTER VI

Kelsey rode into the yard of the Plunkett ranch with the cold fall rain drifting over him. He’d come for the Red Hill Ranch mail. After tying the horse to a fencepost, he walked through the muddy yard, which was pockmarked where the chickens had dusted themselves in summer.

To Kelsey the house had an easy, slipshod appearance that matched Amie’s character. Built of logs, it had settled on one side, listing toward the east. In many places the mud chinking had fallen from between the logs and been replaced by rags. There were no curtains up, for Amie never got around to ironing them until they were so mussed it was time for another washing.

Beyond the house he could see the river, running high from the heavy fall rain. Yellow leaves clung to the willows, made brighter by the wetness of the day.

He stepped onto the sagging porch. Sodden chickens huddled under it. A clutter covered the gray boards of the floor. There were old tin cans, worn coats and shoes, toys, a wooden washtub, a rusty boiler, two pitchforks, shovels, and a soggy crust of bread a child had dropped half-eaten. He knocked on the door, which was sticky from jelly-smeared fingers, and heard Amie’s warm voice lifted in a shout. “Come in if you can get in!”

Harry Plunkett was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. He wore no shirt, and his long gray underwear was stained at the armpits with sweat. Opposite him sat Amie, her dark hair wound carelessly on top of her head, loose strands clinging to her plump cheeks. She was wearing a soiled pink wrapper; the hem was stained black from trailing across the kitchen floor. The baby, a little girl, cooed to herself where she lay in a clothes basket, her pink toes thrust in the air above her. From another room came the noise of the three small boys playing.

“Coffee’s hot,” Amie said. “Sit, Kelsey, and take a load off your feet.”

Harry looked sour—in one of his brooding moods, Kelsey thought; Harry was either away up or away down in his mind. He was big and fair-skinned and heavily freckled, much younger-looking than his wife. Now he stuck a finger in his ear and worked it back and forth. “Got them head noises again.”

“Oh, hell,” Amie muttered, setting a cup before Kelsey, “he gets them every year this time. When haying’s over and he starts thinkin’ about winter, then he’s got wheels in his head.”

“By God, you wouldn’t think it’s so funny if you had ’em,” Harry said, scowling at his wife. “You gonna get Kelsey his mail, or are you gonna sit here and run off at the mouth for an hour?”

Amie thumbed her nose at him, and a brief smile lighted Harry’s face. The dirty hem of the wrapper flipped behind her as she went from the kitchen to the small bedroom which was the post office.

Harry poured coffee and shoved a cream pitcher toward Kelsey. A hard yellow river of cream curved from the mouth of the pitcher and down its bulging front. “I dunno if this country’s worth what it takes out of a man,” Harry complained. “Man tears his guts out chasin’ water and shovelin’ manure all spring. Then he runs himself thin after the cattle until they’re ready for summer range. After that it’s put up hay, and every time a cloud rolls over the range a man worries for fear he’s gonna get his grass wet, and then it’ll burn and maybe have to be put up damp, and after that it can sweat in the stack and cause sickness in the cattle come winter. And winter—what’s before a man in winter but shovel hay until his back’s broke down and—”

“It’s not shovelin’ hay that’s broke down your back,” Amie said tartly, putting a pile of mail on the table before Kelsey. “And any time you want to take over the kids and the house I’ll be glad to pitch hay. I’d just like the chance—no kids to fuss with, no meals to cook, no house to clean.”

“You oughta been a woman like Monte Maguire,” Harry said, his eyes narrowing as he looked at his wife. “She run right out of the house and onto the range—like a man.”

“And more power to her! I like Monte Maguire. She’s the only interesting woman in this damn snowhole of a country. What’s more, I don’t care what the other women say or think about her.”

Harry shrugged, a glint in his eyes now. “Well, she sleeps around, they say. Only trouble is, them that are supposed to get it don’t keep it long.”

“You talk dirty, Harry Plunkett! Didn’t ever see it, did you? Got no proof, have you? And what if she has slept with a few men? She’s human and lonely, and no man or kids to hold her down. Maybe I’d do the same thing—if I was free.”

Harry laughed. “Now, Amie—”

“You think because I’ve been pregnant and spread out until I’m two ax-handles across the rear that I couldn’t find a man?”

“Now, look here, Amie, there’s some things men can do and it’s figured to be their right because they gotta, but—”

“Got to, my foot! Men been gettin’ away with that idea since heck was a pup. Trouble is, women let ’em and never put up a fight.” She turned to Kelsey. “You got two letters in that pile of mail—both of them from Scotland.”

“Amie.” Harry glared at her. “You’re not supposed to fiddle with other people’s mail.”

Her dark eyes opened wide. “Am I to sort letters with my eyes shut? How could I help seeing they were from Scotland?”

“Don’t forget one day I caught you holding a letter of that kid Long Dalton’s up to the light,” her husband accused.

“I was only tryin’ to find out if he got that girl in a fix—the one was waitin’ table in Posser’s hotel. He didn’t. Found out since he can’t get nobody in trouble. He’s got something wrong with his—”

“Amie!”

“Oh, all right! He’s sort of sterile, you might say—and a good thing, or this country would be full of Dalton bastards.”

Kelsey burst into laughter. A man never knew what Amie would say next. It was one of the pleasures of being in her company.

“Be quiet,” Harry said. “Let Kelsey read his letters in peace, will you?”

“Be quiet yourself. Pass the cream.” There was a sound of ripping cloth as she stretched an arm toward the pitcher. “Damn, there goes that seam again! What’s the matter with the thread they make nowadays?”

“Haven’t noticed you usin’ any,” Harry replied.

Kelsey turned his attention to the stack of mail before him. He sorted through the catalogues for Hilder, Dalt, Tommy, and the cowpunchers. He went through the ads. Then he came to the two letters. One was from Taraleean, and the other—His hand trembled and his heart was suddenly full. Prim had written at last! Prim had found courage to defy Big Mina. He laughed softly back in his throat. Did Big Mina really think Prim would forget him because an ocean lay between them?

It was only a small page of a letter, and very wrinkled. He smoothed it impatiently, thinking, Not long enough, my lassie—not nearly long enough, and I’ll be telling you about that when I write. Then he bent close to the blurred page, his breath quickening.

Words leaped up at him, smudged and shocking. “I may as well tell you before somebody else does. . . . I’m back from the highlands, and it’s as I feared all along. . . . It can’t be kept from the harbor folk any longer. . . .” He read on, a sickness growing in the pit of his stomach, a numbness creeping over his mind. And when he finished he put his head down on his arms and made a groaning sound in his throat.

“Kelsey—what is it, boy?” He felt Amie’s strong hand gripping his shoulder. “Bad news?”

“Yes,” he said stupidly, “bad news, Amie.”

She shouted at her husband, “Don’t sit there like a bump on a log! Get him a drink! He needs it.”

“No, Amie—no, I don’t want any whiskey.”

“Get it anyway, Harry. He can use it.”

Moments later Harry thrust the glass into his hand. Kelsey gulped the whiskey.

“Cut some wood, Harry,” Amie said. “We’re out, and it’s cold in here.”

Harry raised his voice in a bellow. “Andy! Jimmy! Dick!” But his three small sons continued their playing. He shoved back his chair. “For hell’s sake! Were they born deaf?” Muttering, he banged the kitchen door behind him.

“Is it a death in the family?” Amie asked.

Kelsey didn’t answer. He sat thinking. No, not a death, a life, a life beginning that’s my own—a wee one that’s mine and Prim’s. And me here in this far country, and the lassie with no husband to stand by her side and stop the wagging tongues.

Harry came in and dumped an armload of wood on the floor by the stove. He looked at Kelsey and at his wife. Then he put on an old jacket and went out into the wet day.

“Nothing’s ever bad as it seems,” Amie said. “Another drink, boy?”

He shook his head, and then, because the whole thing was too big and painful for him to hold in himself, he looked into Amie’s kind, plain face and blurted, “The lassie I have in the old country—she’s to have a child, and it’s mine.”

Amie Plunkett lifted her broad shoulders. She put her hand over his and said slowly, “Well, what about it? You love her, don’t you? It might be something to fret over if you didn’t love her. Listen, boy, lots of good people have started off in the world not marrying because they wanted to but because they had to. Take it easy, Kelsey. You can send for her. You can meet her outside—maybe in Denver—and get married, and who’s to ever know you didn’t marry her in Soctland?”

He got up and began to pace back and forth. “I’ve got to get the cow—today,” he said, talking to himself. “I’ve got to have more than wages to take care of Prim and the wee one. And I better write a letter—now.”

Amie found paper and pencil. “I’ll see it gets to town tomorrow,” she promised. “Harry’s got to buy groceries. We’re down to our last bean.”

For a time he just sat at the kitchen table, staring out at the fall landscape. There was a wet and muted sadness over the whole big country, the like of which lay in himself. Then he turned to the paper and began to write quickly and passionately. He loved her, and she surely knew that. She was his own before God, and there was nothing to be ashamed of. He couldn’t come for her, not now, but she must come to him. He’d send his check for this month’s work—it was all he had—and surely her brothers would let her have enough money to book passage. She must come quickly. . . . He glanced up, a mist before his eyes, wiping quickly at his nose. Again the pencil moved across the paper. “As long as I live, I’ll make it up to you, Prim. What a glory I’ll have in loving you, in making the world right for our bairn. You are my own, my dearly beloved, my wife.”

Early that afternoon, after eating the noon meal with Harry and Amie, he rode on toward Vic Lundgren’s ranch. Now that the cattle were all back on the meadows, he would get the cow that Vic was holding for him. He’d take her home to the Red Hill Ranch. Time enough later to worry about what Tommy or Monte Maguire might say.

He saw no sign of Vic around the corrals and went up the slope to the ranch house. Ellie Lundgren answered his knock. “Oh, come in, Mr. Cameron. Vic, he be here pretty soon. He go to town after wire. Starting to use wire on his fences, he says. When a thing is new Vic, he thinks he wants to try it, but he never likes anything new.”

Kelsey followed her into the kitchen and saw the table was set with linen and fine china. But there was only one place, and it was obvious that she had just finished eating. A bottle of wine was on the table with a fragile glass beside it.

“Sit down. I give you a drink of my wine, Mr. Cameron. I eat alone. Never with the hired men. I serve them, but I do not eat. It is my right to eat alone if I want.”

She got a small glass from the cupboard, filled it with wine, and handed it to him. “People talk because Ellie Lundgren, she eats alone and has a bedroom to herself. I don’t care. You think I have known only a man like Vic Lundgren? Well, I tell you something, Mr. Cameron. I was married before—handsome man who reads good books, takes me to hear the music in New York.”

She picked up her empty glass, stroked it, murmuring, “Yes, we eat out at places where there is fine dishes and glasses, like this.”

Kelsey shifted uncomfortably, wishing Vic would come in.

She looked up, and her faded eyes were sad. “Oh, he tires fast of me, this fine man in New York. It almost kills me when I have to leave him. But I’m not sorry, Mr. Cameron. He gave me so much! And what have I in this cold, lonesome country? Vic, he is clumsy and work with the cows so long he don’t know how to touch a woman—ach, it sickens me! But I give him a daughter, and she is like him exactly; they both care only for cows. It is that way with most men in this place. They forget a woman is not like the cows, not ready for love any time. They think she is like the animals.”

He was embarrassed and wanted to get away from her. Her voice grated on his nerves, for it was high and thin and sounded ready to break. He drank his wine in a quick gulp.

“I get along, I live,” Ellie went on, pushing back the graying strands of her hair. “I get all the papers from New York. I see what play is there, and the music. Maybe it is foolish that I sit here and pretend Ellie Lundgren sees the play and hears the music.”

Vic came in then, to Kelsey’s relief. “You come for the cow, eh?” Vic shoved his hat back, glanced at Ellie. “Nice, huh? Eat by yourself without me.” There was bitterness in his voice.

Ellie got up and began clearing the table.

“Come on to the corral, Kelsey,” Vic said. “I got that cow in. Figured you’d be along this week.”

The heavy feeling lifted from Kelsey’s heart when he saw the cow. She was beautiful; she was fat from summer range, and her reddish-brown hide had a richness to it, and the white on her was cleanly marked in the right places.

“Best damn cow in the country, yup, yup,” Vic said. “You like her, Scotty?”

“Like her! Man, she’s glorious!” Kelsey went forward, humming under his breath. The cow lifted her head, blew through her nose, and began swinging her tail from side to side.

“She is wild yet,” Vic explained. “She don’t want you close, not till she’s sure about you being her friend.”

“Bonnie Jean,” Kelsey said, his eyes shining. “That’s what I’ll name her. How old is she, Vic?”

“She is yust three-year-old. She is bred as two-year-old and has her calf fine. Don’t need no help. I want you to have the best to start. I spend three days pickin’ this cow. And in spring she gives you one dandy calf.”

“Bonnie Jean,” Kelsey said softly. It was the beginning of his dream, and as he looked at her he saw her multiplied by ten, by hundreds.

“The old woman,” Vic said, dropping his tone, “I don’ know what to do with her. She is worse than she used to be. Doc Bingham, he say she is in the change. Oh, I can’t tell about a woman, Scotty! You think if it is change that works on her, maybe she be better someday, huh?”

Kelsey looked into the rancher’s brown, troubled face. “It’s a thing they go through,” he said, remembering vaguely talk he had heard around the harbor. “She’ll get over it.”

“Amie—I talk to Amie about it, and Amie say with some womans it is all in their heads, this trouble with the change. Amie say too much has been made over it by old womans tellin’ tales to young womans until young womans can’t think about it without bein’ scared. Amie, she say to her it will be a blessing.” And then Vic’s face lighted and he laughed. “Amie, it is right for her, yup, yup. No more kids, huh?”

In the damp, quiet afternoon, with the smell of the earth around him, Kelsey drove Bonnie Jean toward the Red Hill Ranch. He wouldn’t put her among the other cattle, not yet. He wanted her in the corral, where he could get acquainted with her.

As they moved parallel with the meadow he looked across the brown stubble that had a shine to it after the rain, and he thought of the haying season behind him. It was the time of noisy men in the bunk-house, the poker chips clanking at night, and the time of the early beautiful mornings when a man felt good and as if he had been born all over again and no weariness or sadness in him. It was the time of the hot noons, the smell of hay dust thick to the nose and the green-headed horseflies plaguing the horses, and the stink of sweat on the men when they stopped to eat the hot noon meal Hilder brought to the field in the lumber wagon. And there were the afternoons—the cooling breeze dropping over the hogback, and the shadows long on the mountains, and the sound of the mowing machines far down the meadow like the purring of big cats. And the going home at last, riding in from the field in the evening light that took the sharpness off everything as it rounded the hills and the peaks, filling the hollows with dusk—home, and the supper waiting, and a man gulping the food and going to bed, and quiet at last with the cool night wind playing over him in a silver caressing that was like the touch of a loved one.

Now the cattle were on the land that had once been green, and the green was heaped in browning stacks for winter, and the poles of the stackyards were dark from the rain. Quiet was over everything—a waiting quiet, as though the earth were caught between summer and winter.

“It’s like myself,” he said aloud. For the earth had aged from spring to autumn, and surely he had aged. Ah, yes! Sometimes, he thought, I believed I had never been a lad, but now I know that I was. It was this morning that those days were gone forever and I was suddenly a man, with a woman and child to think of. How quickly it comes upon us, then!

Dusk was dropping over the hogback when he came to the corral. He put the cow into it and stood there, so enraptured at the sight of her that he fell into dreaming again.

The voice cut sharply through his thoughts. “Is that a Christly camel I see in this corral?”

He turned and saw Monte Maguire come through the gate, walking with the long free stride of a man. The silvery light of her pale hair stood out in the gathering dusk. She paused beside him, almost as tall as himself. “Where’d she come from?”

“Vic Lundgren’s.”

“What’s she doin’ in my corral?”

“She’s mine.”

“Oh, is that so? You figure she’s better than Two-Bar stuff?”

“No, Mrs. Maguire. But she’s almost as good.”

“Almost?”

“Well, you might have a few better—not many, though.”

There was a long silence, and then Monte Maguire said, “And what did you figure on doin’ with her?”

He put his hand on the corral fence to steady himself. The wood felt rough and strong and cool-wet from the rain. He thought of Prim and the child that was his, the heart of it beating there in Prim’s body. “Mrs. Maguire,” he said, forcing his voice to be steady, “I have to make a start in the cattle business. Wages aren’t enough. I thought you might agree to cut some of my wages so I could run a few cows. I’d make more that way. And today—today I found out I had to make more than just a wage.”

“Why?” The word was frosty. It would have withered a strong man.

Her still, composed face was suddenly sharply clear to him there in the few feet of dusk that separated them. And he knew that she was not a woman a man lied to. He told her the truth then. And when he had finished there was such an ache in his heart he could no longer face her. He walked a few steps away and stood by himself in the corral with the wet-manure smell rising around him.

Beyond the corral, on the side of the hogback, he could see still the muted scarlet of the aspens, and he was touched with sadness. The night was coming down, night that blotted away everything, all the color and shifting light of day. Only the mind and heart kept alive what was gone. The aspen fire didn’t die with the darkness, not as long as he was there to remember. It was in him, Kelsey Cameron, that the world lived and died. And when he was gone there would be the child that was his and Prim’s—the child to speak his name when that name was no more. That child would remember him through its whole life, even as he would remember Taraleean in the silence of himself long after she had gone.

Would this strange woman never speak? Why must he stand here waiting for her temper, for the curt tongue that would tell him he must move on and find another job? And then her voice was there, with a softness in it that had been unknown to him before this moment, and her fingers were hard and strong on his arm, giving him a little impatient shake. “A hell of a man you are, going to Vic Lundgren instead of to me if you needed help. And as for cattle, Vic’s not dry behind the ears yet when it comes to learnin’ cow business. Keep your cow. Run her here, and I’ll make the cut in your wages. As soon as you have enough money, buy another cow. But get the rest of ’em from me—you hear?”

Weakness swept over him, making his knees tremble. He tried to thank her, but the words wouldn’t come out through the tightness in his throat.

“A tough break doesn’t hurt a man,” she said. “Sometimes it makes him what he is. I’ve had ’em. I know. And I can look the whole damn world in the face and tell it to go to hell and never miss it.” Her hand came away from his arm, and he heard the sharp catch of her breath.

“I’ll make this up to you, Mrs. Maguire. I’ll—Some way I’ll show you how much I—”

“There’s nothin’ you have to prove to me, Kelsey. And I’m not giving you anything, either. You’ll earn what you get. Better yank the saddle off your horse and come to supper. That cow’ll keep till mornin’. She won’t look any different come daylight.”