Читать книгу So Far from Spring - Peggy Simson Curry - Страница 8

CHAPTER I

Kelsey Cameron stood alone on the prairie in the pale noon sunlight. It was late April in 1898. He set his cheap straw suitcase in the sagebrush and straightened to face the wind that came at him out of the west, blowing off the snowcapped mountains. It was a vicious wind that pasted his trousers to his long legs, sent his suitcoat flapping behind him, and tugged vainly at the coarse, forward-growing hair that jutted down the center of his forehead in a rough red V.

So this was North Park, Colorado, the place his cousin Tommy had written about; this was the wonderful country where a man could go into the cattle business, get rich, and live as he pleased. “God,” Kelsey muttered, staring at the monotonous gray landscape.

The vast loneliness of the earth crowded into his mind and formed a cold knot. There was desolation here he could never have pictured in his wildest imagining. All around the big valley were mountains, white and cold and aloof, like the jagged waves of some giant winter sea that had hurled itself savagely against the sky and been frozen there forever.

Between the mountains was the prairie, a rolling, drab earth, covered with the gray sagebrush. Southward a lone butte lifted like a strange island out of the lower land. And to the north, close to him, was an ugly, rounded mountain that faced him like an enemy, the lower slopes barren and gray, and a dark stubble of trees on the summit. And there was nothing anywhere—no gull to sweep the clean blue arch of sky, no house standing firmly on the earth, no human being walking toward him on the dusty road. Only the wind kept him company, battering him, nagging him, thrusting through his clothing to his shivering bones.

He tried to tell himself that all of North Park wasn’t like this part where he walked; he knew there was a town away there to the southeast where a haze of blue smoke lay in the air, and there were ranches and rivers hidden from view by the rolling plains. But he could not rid himself of the sharp disappointment that had been with him ever since he got off the train at Laramie, Wyoming. Vividly now he remembered the jolting ride across the Laramie Plains in the spring wagon with the crude canvas covering to shut out the weather, and the slower ride over the mountaintop on the sled, for snow still lay deep in the high timber. And today, in another wagon, he had come down out of the foothills and into this valley—the Park, his companions on the stage had called it.

What a wrong and foolish notion he had carried in his mind of North Park. When his cousin had written of it, Kelsey had pictured many trees and little towns with cattle ranches between them. Once, crossing the mountain from Laramie, he’d tried to explain to one of his companions what he thought about North Park. The man had grunted, looked at him pityingly, and said nothing. And when he’d gotten off the stage, two hours ago, the same man had leaned out to say, “Better change your mind and ride on into town with us. It’s a long walk to the Red Hill Ranch—maybe sixteen miles.” When Kelsey hadn’t answered, he’d added, “Well, fella, take it easy. You’ll get used to it.”

How could any man get used to anything so big and empty and lonely? And it was more than the way the land looked; it was the way it felt—overwhelming and forbidding. Here he was nothing, nothing at all—a speck in distance, a stranger. For a moment Kelsey felt so bewildered and alone that panic came over him, sending him running up the narrow road, stumbling over the sagebrush that grew in the center of it. Then panic left him as quickly as it had come, and he slowed to a walk, panting, feeling sweat under his arms although the cold wind rushed against him and hammered at him like a thousand padded clubs.

“Damn the wind!” he said to the empty blue sky and the gray earth. “It’s worse than the winter gales in the old country.” And the familiar Scottish landscape rose in his mind, green and beautiful and so far away. He halted and dropped the straw suitcase as terrible homesickness washed over him, leaving him shaken and desperate. If I could see my mother, Taraleean, and her garden, yellow now with daffodils . . . What madness had possessed him that he’d left his home, his mother, and the lass he loved?

A look of bitterness settled over his rugged young face with its bold, thick nose and wide mouth. Anything was better than staying in Scotland, even this bleak, unfriendly land so far from spring. He stooped and picked up his bag and walked on, the stiff new shoes rubbing his heels raw, his stomach cramping with hunger, his mouth hanging open as he gulped the shallow air of the high mountain valley.

As he trudged on he tried to forget that he was disappointed, tired, and broke. Somewhere ahead, maybe over the next rise of ground, lay his cousin Tommy’s ranch. He called to mind exciting lines from Tommy’s letters—“Acres of land for the taking . . . hundreds of Hereford cattle . . . country fit for a king . . .”

A king. Yes, anybody could be like a king in America; a common man could become president. And was such a thing possible in Scotland? Never! Again the bitterness was in him, bringing to his mind the thing that had begun when he was a small boy at school, for there he had punched a playmate in the nose for saying the Camerons were only common folk and could never own land like the lairds. And that night he had gone to his father and said, “Is this ground our house sits on not yours, Father?”

“The land belongs to the laird’s estate, as does all the village. But the house is mine, and the things in it.”

“And why is that?”

“It is the way in Scotland, lad. Some are born of the nobility and some are not. I pay no taxes on the ground where this house sits, but I must pay rent to the laird’s factor. That’s how the laird lives—on the rent from his land.”

“And is there no ground that isn’t the laird’s?”

His father thought for a while and then replied, “Well, there is the high-water mark along the shore, the place where the sea has washed up on the earth. That is part of the sea and belongs to no man. Why do you get such a frown on your face, lad? What is it that troubles you?”

“I’ll build me a house on the shore someday; I’ll make it from old boards—pieces of broken boats—and I’ll take no orders from the laird or his factor, and I’ll pay him no rent.”

“What daftness is this in a lad not yet old enough to know his own mind?”

Then Kelsey’s mother, Taraleean, put her hand on the boy’s head and said, “Leave the lad be, John. It’s no daftness in him, but only the wild dreaming such as is in myself. Many a time—before I knew you, John—I asked myself why I was born to be an Irish tattie howker and pick potatoes while others rode in fine carriages.” And she pressed Kelsey close, hiding his face in her skirt, saying, “Be careful, lad, for the wild dreaming leads to hurting.”

The wild dreaming. Kelsey paused and shifted the suitcase to his other hand. What a dreaming they had done, he and his lassie! The things he’d promised her—how he’d own his father’s shop someday and they’d go once a year to London, where she’d buy herself all manner of fine things to wear! And what had come of all his hopes and plans? An ugly country, no money, and himself walking like a beggar on a lonely road. He shook his head, trying to put his rising anger from him; he mustn’t think on Scotland, for such thinking tore him apart. The bloody gentry! Let them keep their land and be damned! Here he would have his own bit of earth and no man to give him orders as if he were a stable boy. And here, as soon as he had the money, he’d have Prim Munro, his lassie.

Kelsey walked slowly now, forgetting the sagebrush that shuddered in the wind, forgetting the whole of North Park. He saw only Prim, a pert bit of a lass with a tiny waist he delighted to span with his big hands; he saw her clear green eyes, her smooth black hair, and her mouth so full and smiling. What was it folk at the village always said of Prim? “A wee breath of a lass, but with a look in her eyes that says there’s iron in her.”

His arms ached to hold her again as he had held her before he left Scotland; there, in the hut he had built on the shore—his hut—he had loved Prim Munro and made her his own. Ah, what a night that had been!—the smell of the sea around them and the plushy sound of it breaking against the shore. He stopped in the narrow road, drew a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped the moisture from his eyes. More than the wind does this to me, he thought—more than the wind, for what is a man until he loves a woman and makes her his? Surely nothing but an empty shell waiting to be filled. I should never have left Prim back there—not after what we were to each other. Some way I should have brought her with me.

Then he was angry. God in heaven, could any man reason with Prim’s mother? Could any man talk sense into the stubborn and selfish mind of that old sow Big Mina Munro? Certainly he had tried hard enough; he had explained that Prim must come to America with him, that they were married in the eyes of God if not before men, and that to leave her was a cruel thing and not fair to either of them. But Big Mina had cursed him and ordered him from her house. And Prim had only wept and cowered in a corner like a demented child.

“Stand up to your mother!” Kelsey had cried. “Don’t let her do this to us.”

But there had been no answer from Prim, and no comfort from anyone that night until he went home to Taraleean to pour out the whole story of his love for Prim, the words torn from him in passion and sorrow. “Oh, Taraleean, Taraleean, my mother, what is this thing between a man and a woman, that an ugliness is put over it? What is so wicked about the thing we did, my lassie and me?”

“Hush, lad. Hush and sit here by me. Take the stool there at my feet. Put your head in my lap.” And he had felt the gentle touch of her fingers that had so often dug in the earth to fit the curve of the new potatoes when she was a tattie howker, before his father found her and loved her and married her. And her voice with its clear, singing sound spoke quietly to him. “All things are ugly or beautiful as a man sees himself and the way of his heart. It is what some folk make of a thing that puts ugliness on it. Make what happened with you and Prim Munro a good and beautiful thing; make it so if it takes a lifetime. And what is the meaning of life, anyhow, but we lift our ways above ugliness into beauty, that we make honor out of dishonor and good from evil? Big Mina is wicked. Don’t let her hurt you or Prim. You must rise above Big Mina—and above the world.”

Again he wiped his eyes, staring over the strange, barren country. His mother’s words had been good; they had been with him like a warm cloak in the days before he sailed for America. And she had kept her step light and her head high, even when all the Camerons gathered to bid him farewell with weeping and drinking and the tossing off of their little poems that were so poor in meter but strong in feeling.

Now he felt the need of his mother, and the need of all his people with their warm, deep voices and their quick way of talking and doing. And he wanted Prim. Damn Big Mina Munro! Surely here in America there would be ways to deal with Big Mina. He would write Prim every day, pouring out his love, and Prim would become weary of listening to Big Mina’s talk; Prim would cease to believe that, because Big Mina had borne a daughter late in life, she, Prim, was to blame for the asthma and rheumatism that plagued Big Mina. When he had a job and money, then Prim would come to him; for what could really separate them now? Not an ocean or Big Mina or the world!

He was comforted by this thought and walked more lightly toward the west. He came at last to a place where the rising prairie dipped sharply and the road wound down a steep hill. Then a smile came over his face, for there, at the foot of the hill, was a rider. Kelsey hurried down the road, eager to meet whoever it might be.

The rider had pulled up his old black horse and sat slackly in the saddle. He was a small man with wisps of white hair sticking out from under a dirty black cap. His face was brown and wrinkled, and his crooked neck was set deep in the thick shoulders. As Kelsey came close and stopped, he looked into eyes the color of faded blue cloth.

“Afternoon, son,” the stranger said. “What you doin’ out here on the flats afoot?”

Flats, Kelsey thought. What kind of name was that for the rolling country? Before he had time to answer, the little man swung down from the saddle in such a free, smooth motion that Kelsey could only stare.

“Hell of a big country to be walkin’ over, son. Come far?”

“From across the Platte River. I left the stage there. I’m Tommy Cameron’s cousin, and I’m looking for his ranch.”

The faded eyes opened wide. “Whadda you know!” And the man stepped forward, thrusting out a chapped, dirt-lined hand. “Glad to make your acquaintance, son. I’m Jediah Walsh.”

Jediah Walsh was very close now, and Kelsey could smell the strange rank odor that came from him. Didn’t this little old man ever wash his clothes?

“I know Tommy real well,” Jediah said. “I take care of the headgate up at the mountain lake, and I walk the big ditch. That ditch waters the meadows of the Red Hill Ranch. Yep, I chase water when I’m not runnin’ trap lines. You might say I’m a man that’s just part employed, for I only work in irrigatin’ season—and that don’t get goin’ good until May and ends about the first week in July. Trappin’, that’s not work; it’s usin’ your wits and havin’ fun at it. Takes a right smart man to outwit foxes and coyotes, mink and martin, to say nothin’ of beaver.”

Talkative old bugger, Kelsey thought, restraining a smile. And then he thought of the empty country. It was no wonder men had a lot to say when they met other men.

Jediah spat on the ground, and a brown river of tobacco juice ran down his gray-whiskered chin. “And I betcha Tommy never opens his mouth to you about me bein’ responsible for the water he uses. Most ranchers gotta blow about their fences bein’ in good shape, about the hay they’re gonna cut, or about the cattle and the markets. Hell, son, they wouldn’t have no grass, no cows or nothin’, if it wasn’t for water. Yep, water controls everything in the West—and don’t you ever forget it.”

“And a fine place Tommy must have,” Kelsey cut in, eager to hear about the ranch.

“Hmm. So Tommy’s told you all about his place, eh?”

“He’s written to me since he left Scotland six years ago.” Kelsey’s face broke into a smile. “I haven’t seen him since I was fourteen. It’ll be a great time when we meet again.”

Jediah scratched under one arm. “Gotta get me some new clothes; been wearin’ these so damn long they’re ready to drop off. That’s why I’m headed for town. Tell Tommy I’ll be back soon.”

“How far is it to the ranch?”

“I dunno—maybe five or six miles yet. See that ridge over there—the long one runnin’ north and south with the peaks lookin’ over its shoulder? Ranch is right at the foot of it. We don’t measure distance out here; we just take a look and guess at it. All you have to do is follow the road.”

Kelsey looked at the long ridge. “That’s close.”

“Nothin’s as close as it looks in this country, son. You see a mountain and it’s so sharp and big you figure you can hop right over to it. Instead you walk until your belly’s up against your backbone.” Jediah shifted the chew of tobacco, making a bulge on his cheek, and looked across the land. “Great country, ain’t it? God’s own. Ain’t another like it on the face of the earth.”

Kelsey didn’t answer. One place like North Park was enough. If Jediah Walsh had ever known the green fields of Scotland . . .

“Grows on you, this country,” Jediah went on. “And it ain’t the way it looks on first acquaintance. Most good things don’t shine up fancy on first meetin’, whether it’s a man, a woman, or a country.”

He was quiet for a few moments and then added, “The Park’s more than a place; it’s a way of livin’, son. And you’re gonna fall in love with it or you’re gonna hate it the way a man can hate another man’s guts. Nobody I ever met has an in-between feelin’ about the Park.” Then he smiled a sudden warm smile that made his face startlingly young. “I gotta hunch about you. A big redheaded fella with eyes to match the sagebrush belongs in this country.” He swung into the saddle, looked at Kelsey for a long moment, and added, “So long, son. Come up to Big Creek Lake and see me—if Tommy don’t work the tail off you.”

Kelsey watched him ride up the hill, sitting so carelessly in the saddle. He drew a deep breath of the fresh air. Was there ever a man lived had such a stink to him as this Jediah Walsh? And he chuckled to himself as he moved on.

In the late afternoon Kelsey limped to the top of a low hill and stopped. There before him, maybe half a mile away, lay the ranch. Around the buildings the earth was vivid red, as though a big barrel of red paint had rolled down the ridge and broken open at the foot of it. And when he looked around he saw that all the land before him had the red color. Then he noticed the cattle; they were everywhere—on the brown meadows south of the ranch buildings, in the open land north of him, and on what appeared to be pasture there below him. He had never seen so many cattle, and there was something about them he found hard to describe. They seemed to belong to the earth; they were somehow a part of the grayish-red country with the wind blowing over it.

He went down the hill, wincing from the pain in his heels, opened the pole gate, and closed it carefully. He started following the road that led across the pasture toward the house, filled with impatience to see Tommy. And then his steps slowed, and finally he came to a stop, for the cows were close to him, their white faces lifted curiously as they looked at him. The sunlight touched their dark reddish-brown hides; they snorted and ran and then turned to study him, all the white faces toward him. How many were in this bunch—a hundred, two hundred? For a moment they made him think of a mass of enormous white daisies. He laughed at himself; it was a notion such as a woman might have. Then an excitement stirred in him. If all these cows were his he’d be a fair toff; he’d be like a laird in the old country! And suddenly he knew he liked cattle and wanted them for his own, and it was more than the money they would represent; it was a feeling deep in him as he looked at them. For the first time since he had left Scotland he felt right inside himself. And he left the road, walked into the sagebrush, putting out a hand toward the cows, saying softly, “Here, you lassies with white faces—don’t run from me.”

But they snorted loudly and fled, stirring up a fine red dust behind them. A distance away they turned once more. He smiled and limped on toward the ranch house, forgetting the pain in his tortured heels. There was no doubt about his future; as soon as he had any money to spare he’d buy a cow.