Gilbert said, “Guilds and societies and suffragette marches.”
April sat dumbfounded for a moment as her younger brothers tossed the word suffragettes about, laughing. Finally, she said, “Someone has to feed the poor. Clothe the naked orphans of the world. Spread the Gospel to China.”
“And vote the men out of office,” Charlie added. He strapped his gunbelt on.
Val said, “Whoa!” again. “Is that a real one?”
Ezra piped up with “Colt forty-five. It’s a real buster! I shot one before.”
Val circled around Charlie. I needed to have a talk with that little boy as soon as I could get a moment. I turned away from Val, away from Charlie. I faced April. Her face flushed a dark pink. I said loudly, “Anybody who’s got to live by the law ought to have a voice in it. Women’s votes wouldn’t be swayed by a hand of cards or bought with a case of watered-down whiskey.”
Charlie broke the silence. “Mayor Sarah A. Elliot, del pueblo de Tucson. It has a ring.” Then everyone busted out laughing.
I waved my hand and said, “Politics. I don’t have time for foolishness. I work for my living. If April has the money to have someone else do her laundry, why on earth should she run her hands to the bone doing it?” No one had a word to say to that.
Charlie said he’d come back and tell me Miss Esperanza’s answer before he left, but he was headed down toward the Chiricahuas this very day. I watched Charlie through the curtains of the front window. The three little boys went after him into the yard, hollering farewells after him.
“I’m going back to the house,” I said.
Mary Pearl caught my arm. “All right if I tag along?” she said. “Everybody here is planning a nap. I ain’t had a nap, except for being sick, since I was four years old.”
“Come ahead,” I said.
She pulled Duende behind us, and we got all the way to my front door without talking. Then Mary Pearl said, “Cousin April said her tea party will have to wait for the spring season. Like them society balls and such.”
All I said was, “That’s likely a good idea.”
Inside, Charlie sat on the bare floor, cleaning a Colt pistol I didn’t recognize. Must have bought it new with his job money. Beside him, broken down in pieces, was a Remington rifle, one of those new ones that load from the stock. He was peering down the pistol barrel from the business end, but the cylinder was on the floor. Heaven knows I raised my children with enough sense not to stare down a loaded gun. He didn’t look up, except for a glance. Charlie said, “Grandpa’s gone to get my horse shod. Gilbert’s around here somewhere. I’m leaving soon as I get this done.”
I sat in the chair across the room. Put the basket at my feet. Watched his face. There was a wildness in his eyes, a fever. He took a bristle brush to the hammer and drew it back a couple of times. Charlie said, “My old pistol was getting a creep in the pull. Griego wouldn’t give me a plug nickel for it, he said. He claimed it looked to be from the Mexican War. I told him better, and he just laughed. Had to lay out nine dollars for this one, but it’s nice and tight.” He sighted down the barrel, aimed at the floor.
I said, “You’ll want the best.”
He nodded. “Mr. Griego let me fire it out back into some old wadded blankets. She’s got a mean kick. Take a look. Krags with the rim out.” He scooted a box toward me, and I had to lean down to pick it up. I admired the ready-made bullets. Hefted one from the box. What a difference they might have made thirty years ago, every one a twin to the next one, loaded true and molded smooth. A lot different from pot lead poured into a mold by a campfire and then carefully beaten into a shell with a hammer.
“Well? Are you getting married?” I asked, scooting the box back toward him.
“She said she’d never rest being married to a lawman. Had no intention waiting at home for who knows when I’d be back.”
All I said was, “She’s made a sorry choice, then. You’re a good man.”
“I’m done talking about it, Mama.” His neck grew flushed and dark.
Over my shoulder, I saw Ezra, Val, and Zack come into the room. They stayed quiet and listened. Mary Pearl watched over their heads. I said, “Who else’s going, down south with you?”
“Only Gilbert, and only maybe. I told him any nuisance and I’d send him home with his tail between his legs. I’m boss on this ride, come high water or hellfire.”
“No posse?”
“Rangers send one man at a time, maybe two. If you’ve got a badge and a gun, a warrant is enough. They issued me a rope and told me to use it. Will you load that thing for me while I put this together?” He nodded toward the pistol, which was set on a rag.
So I did load it. Pushed the shells into the chamber and lined up twenty-five of them in the belt loops. Wondering all the while if one of those bullets I was handling would be the end of Willie Prine.
Mary Pearl leaned against the door frame. She said, “Charlie, I’ll go, too. I can ride and shoot. There’d be three of us.”
Charlie stood up and took the pistol and belt from me. He went to Mary Pearl and put his arm around her shoulder. “Thanks, Little Biscuits. You stay here and go to April’s tea party.” He kissed the top of her head.
“I’d be more use riding with you boys,” she said.
Charlie smiled. I swear to goodness, but his mustache wrinkled up just like Jack’s always had. He said, “Probably more use than Gilbert in the long run. I’ve seen you peg a fence post from the back of a moving horse. But I’d feel responsible for you, like I had to protect you. It’s going to be tough enough to bring in someone I don’t want to peg if I can help it. I’m asking you to stay home. Besides, when Mama goes home with the little fellers, she’ll need you riding shotgun, won’t she?”
Mary Pearl looked at me, her brows raised, and I nodded. Chess announced that Charlie’s horse was ready. Gilbert came down the stairs, raring to go, too. I made them wait while I wrote a note to Mr. Hanna. Told him I was sorry his boy had stayed up here but said that hard work was probably good for him if he wanted to try it. It would make him sure appreciate living at the ranch, and he’d be itching to get home before long. Told him to try not to feel too bad about it. Then I added that I’d be there soon.
Charlie went outside, and I heard him talking to his grandpa. Well, there was no one around but Gilbert and me, and he pulled up a chair. “Mama?” he said, “mind if I interrupt you for a minute?”
“No,” I said. Would this be the boy getting hitched? “What’s on your mind?”
“I want you to know why I’m going with Charlie. It’s my fault Willie went bad.” He laid his hands on the table between us. I waited. “See,” he said, “old Boots was tormenting Ezra. Teasing Zachary until he cried, and that little kid doesn’t cry all that easy. We—I mean I—I had this idea that Boots should have a talk with Mr. Sparky, to sort of straighten him out. We planted him next to Willie’s bedroll. Just sitting there in the dark. When Willie woke up, he got crazy and kicked Sparks and beat him all to pieces. After that, well, he just got kind of crazy mad. He went off with those old Wainbridge boys. They’d brought their corn liquor, and he sat with them, acting stupid and laughing at the stars. I’m sorry, Mama.”
Maybe that explained Willie turning sour just about overnight. He’d seemed to be getting hold of things, helping with the roundup. I’d been plenty mad myself, caught off my watch by that skull and scarecrow thing. Got hot under the collar and wanted to wring someone’s neck. I said, “You boys had some tussles, didn’t you?”
“Pure sideways, after a bit.”
“Where’s Sparks now?” I asked.
“Willie busted him up, sorta. What’s left is in a feed sack in the barn.”
I patted Gilbert’s hand. His hands were larger than mine. Meaty and strong. Steady as a rock. I said, “Son, that might explain him getting mad and cussing. Or throwing a rock at the side of the barn, even. It doesn’t give him leave to make threatening moves with a gun. It doesn’t in any way give him leave to
steal a thousand and some dollars. And it surely doesn’t allow him the taking of what was left of my herd.” I folded my letter and set the pen on its little holder. “Gilbert, did you threaten him? Offer to chase him off, or beat him senseless, or knock some holes in his grin?”
Gilbert kept shaking his head as I asked those questions. He said, “No, ma’am. Nothing like that. We just dropped old Sparks next to him while he was sleeping. Tapped him on the shoulder. He come up cussing, but it was all over with that.”
“I don’t think you made Willie go bad. I don’t think any of us could have stopped him if we’d tried. Go on with your brother if you want to help him out.”
My sons put their things in saddlebags, just like their papa used to do. Carried my heart in his saddlebag, he told me once. Charles Elliot put on his hat, cocked down against the sun in his eyes, and rode south with his kid brother to bring an outlaw in.
I stood on the front porch, watching Charlie’s back, big and square, narrow at the waist. I made him that shirt he was wearing for Christmas last. I remember every stitch in that shirt. Behind him, Gilbert was not as rangy, but still young and slim and handsome, their steps as full of lightning as little Hunter’s. Reckon I should be thankful he’s not chasing Apaches, but many a white man I’ve known makes an Apache warrior seem like a parlor guest when it came to meanness. All I could hope was that Willie hadn’t gone that bad yet. That he’d have some feelings for his own cousin when he sees Charlie. Not shoot him. All I could do was watch them go and pray God they’d come home and grow old.
Talking to Gil had made me realize that all the hoping and praying and talking in the world didn’t matter a hill of beans to a boy who was bent on really being a “cowboy.” Not the way little Val saw Charlie; to me, a cowboy was the same thing as an outlaw. Willie had said as much the first time I laid eyes on him, talking of changing his name to Frank or Jesse. I still felt as if I’d failed Willie somewhere along the line, although I wasn’t as certain of it as before.
Mary Pearl and I fixed five plates of cold meat and fruit and some leftover biscuits with coffee for us and Chess and the little boys. The wind started to kick up. We had to close the windows or get blanketed with dust. The house was hot, though, so I told the boys we’d go to the very top—the third floor, where the cupola pulled a draft—to have some lessons and tell stories until it was time for bed. As I talked to the little boys, I thought of Charlie, figuring he had to have passed the arroyo by now. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Zack said, “Aunt Sarah, aren’t you going to finish? What happened next?”
“I don’t remember,” I said.
Val said, “Grandma, is that cowboy fella really my cousin?”
“Yes,” I said, thinking of Willie.
“Is he going to shoot somebody?” Val asked.
“Certainly not. You all get to bed.” They grumbled, but they went. Leastways I left them to it. Whether they went right to bed, if I was asked later, I couldn’t rightly say.
The house was dark except for my lanterns as Chess followed me into the kitchen. I started pumping water at the sink and filled the coffeepot. Chess saw what I was doing, and he pulled down the coffee grinder, went to putting some beans in the top. The crunching of the beans and their comfortable perfume filled the kitchen. After awhile, he said, “Got a lot of their papa in ’em yet. Can’t change a leopard’s spots.”
I stared out the window. I wished Clove and Joshua had been here to go with my boys. If all the boys were riding together, at least that’d be safer. Charlie so resembled Jack.
“You say something?” Chess said.
“Charlie went and joined the Rangers.”
“I know it. I declare. Just like that.”
I said, “‘Just like that’? Just like Jack.”
Chess said, “He’d be proud of that boy.”
“He’d take a strap to his backside and send him to school.”
“There’s plenty to learn outside those walls you always put such a store in.”
“Hmm.” I opened a lid on the stove and took a towel in hand to make sure the flue was wide-open. “This’ll need to cool. I don’t much feel like cooking.”
“Supper’s over. I thought we were making coffee,” he said.
“That’s right. We were.” I bent to push kindling into the stove. It caught quickly on the coals banked at the back. “I’m feeling scatterbrained,” I said.
“Charlie’s a full-growed man. ’Bout time he shirked off them apron strings you’re trying to strangle him with.”
“I’m doing no such a thing.”
Chess spilled grinds on the table. He picked up a rag and went for them, but coffee grinds stick to everything, and if the rag is dry, you’re likely to spread them instead of catching them. He worked at it awhile and then said, “Looks like it from here.”
“You’re polishing a hole in that table and leaving crumbs everywhere else.”
“Reckon so, Mrs. Elliot? Sort of like sending a man to sit and learn postulatin’ and polishin’ words, when there’s useful work that needs doin’?”
“I can’t talk to you anymore.”
“’At’s a fact, Sarah.”
I let out my breath and went to the doorway. “Chess,” I said. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
Chess took the dish towel from my hands and patted my arm. “He’ll find out.”
That night, I rose from my bed. Off in the distance, clouds arched across the sky, blue above them, indigo beneath. Instead of being in town, I was in strange house down on familiar land at the ranch. The clouds were yellows and oranges, pinks and shades of violet. Something moved, and I looked to the horizon. A so-familiar form. “Jack,” I whispered. “Come here, across the arroyo.” I saw him plain as day, waiting on the other side, reins in his hands, smile on his face, cavalry hat cocked a little to one side. I wasn’t in town, but out in the desert in a great hacienda of vast empty rooms. From each window in every room, I saw the same view. I called to him. “I need you, Jack. Come on to the house.”
He took one step toward me and was suddenly right outside the window. The openings in the walls were two feet thick, like a nice fat adobe, and the window glass was raised. I put my hand through the opening and reached toward his outstretched hand. Jack said, “Stay inside, Sarah.” My heart fluttered at the sound of his voice. I reached farther. My fingertip touched his.
My eyes opened. Sweat glued me to the pallet and a chill ran through me. If I could have stayed asleep one more second, he’d have taken my hand. Never before had I heard his voice like that. I got up and went to the window, opened it, and breathed the sweet rain-clean air. I lit a lamp and lay down again, then stared a long time at the tin tiles over my head.
Chapter Twenty-One
September 3, 1906
Monday morning, we started packing to return to the ranch. We’d leave the twins to their jobs and Esther to her schooling. Until Josh, Charlie, and Gilbert returned, Esther would live at April’s house. April promised to visit us, but of course it would have to be arranged during a break from school and not interfere with Val’s piano lessons. Then she squeezed me and kissed my face again. “Mama,” she said, “I do promise I’ll come. We’ll send you a note at the station down there. Just a few weeks from now.”
As we packed, I thought about how I felt connected to April’s family, despite the differences between us, and deep-down sorry to leave her behind. I felt torn, needing to be home and wanting to be in town. But it was good to be sad to leave, rather than being thankful to be alone.
What with having all the children in and out of both houses at a moment’s notice, and those grandchildren of mine, who were so little, I had hidden the rifle I always carried. I’d taken the precaution to hide the shells in a brown crock labeled CASTOR OIL. I knew the children would stay away from that. It was so out of sight—up on a shelf in a little room we rarely used—that I nearly forgot it. The moment I had the box of shells in my hands, I heard a great crashing of glass from the fl
oor below me. I tucked the rifle under my arm, along with the satchel I was carrying, and hurried downstairs.
In the kitchen, Mary Pearl stood with her hands on her hips, dripping water and suds down her sides. Esther was at the far side of room, standing near a pile of broken dishes. She was sobbing into her hands.
“Esther? What in heaven’s name were you thinking?” Mary Pearl said. Esther ran from the room. Mary Pearl said Esther had picked up a stack of plates from the rinse water and for some odd reason had decided to dry them at the table, rather than on the board near the tub. She’d whirled around, and every last one had tumbled from her hands. Mary Pearl frowned and said, “She’s having a conniption about something. Mama’s going to be really upset, and now there aren’t three plates left in this house.”
Esther, the middle daughter, who never gave anyone a moment’s trouble, never was a lick of nuisance in her life, was in the parlor, sobbing loudly. Savannah was fuming. “Are you afraid of going to school?” she asked. “You’ve worked so hard for this opportunity to be a teacher, just like your sisters. What has possessed you, Esther?”
Savannah asked me to be stern with her, thinking, I suspect, that my words might sound more severe than her own. However, I doubted even Savannah knew just how much her own children craved her approval and would brave anything to get it. Every last person gave her the best “Cheer up; you’ll pass muster” speech we could come up with, and still Esther cried. Finally, we got her packed. Albert was fixing to drive her to April’s place in my old buggy. She kissed everyone and hugged us, and seemed cheered some. As they drove off, Savannah watched from the front window, concern on her face.
“She’ll settle in,” I said. Savannah just nodded. Well, Albert returned after a bit, and he said Esther had finally quit crying at April’s house. She bade him leave her bags on the porch, saying she’d just take them in later. Of course, by the time he came and told us that, Savannah had found the letter.