Mrs. Peel was still with Golden Boy. She wakened up to the last sentence. “They do,” she protested. “Really it is amazing how much they can think. Whenever we come to a patch of flowers I can see Golden Boy weighing up the situation. What kind this time? How long will I get away with it? Two minutes? And if I urge him on he breaks into a canter just to discipline me. You know what I’ve discovered? Horses don’t only think, they’ve got a sense of humour. Why, the way he looks round at me if I choose a very steep path, as much as to say, ‘Are you sure you mean this? You’ll be sorry!’”
Mrs. Gunn said nothing. It did her heart good to hear Mrs. Peel laughing, even at herself partly. You couldn’t blame her for paying so much attention to the horse: he was nicer to her than most of the human beings around here. Miss Bly was kept so busy with the shopping in Sweetwater through the day, and riding with Jim in the evenings. And the others were busy too, pestering the boys when they weren’t arguing among themselves.
“He’s a fine horse,” Mrs. Gunn said at last. “And you look fine riding him.”
“Do I?” Mrs. Peel was so pleased that Mrs. Gunn refrained from finishing her remarks, which were about to be, “if you don’t look so nervous.”
Mrs. Peel pushed aside her coffee-cup. “That was just what I needed, Mrs. Gunn. Now I must go and change the flowers in the living-room. They are wilting, and Mr. Atherton Jones would hate to look at faded flowers in between his paragraphs. Oh, but, of course, there won’t be a lecture this evening... Or will there?” She looked in dismay at the dough now being rolled out on the marble-topped table where Mrs. Gunn’s perfections were made.
“Blueberry-pie tonight. That will put him in a good humour.”
“Oh, dear...” Mrs. Peel’s worries flooded back, and she remembered all the things she had meant to ask when she had first come into the kitchen. “Mrs. Gunn, what shall we do about Drene?”
“I’d tell her to go. She’s little use to us. Just a waste of money.”
“But Ned?”
“He’d understand. Besides, he’s got his troubles with her too.” “If only Mr. Schmetterling would leave!”
“That wouldn’t improve her work. Carries a duster around as if it would bite her.”
Mrs. Peel considered that. She said slowly, “You know, I don’t like to discharge her. A month is not a very long time, anyway, to have her around. And she really is so decorative. Silent, of course. Does she ever speak?”
“I don’t mind that. Norah talks too much.” Mrs. Gunn had been hurt.
“Norah’s a bright girl, Mrs. Gunn. She’s in her third year at college, isn’t she?”
“Going to work on a newspaper some day,” Mrs. Gunn said, with justifiable pride. “And, even if I say so, she’s a pretty girl. Not Drene’s style, of course. Thank heaven for that.”
“But Drene isn’t a bad girl... I mean, she attracts men; but you can’t blame her for that, Mrs. Gunn. Now, can you?”
Mrs. Gunn pursed her lips. “She doesn’t try to hinder the attraction. She’s going to do some trick riding at the rodeo.” Mrs. Gunn sniffed openly.
“Then I couldn’t discharge her—not now,” said Mrs. Peel, in relief.
“Why not?”
“Well, the rodeo probably means a lot to her. It would be a blow if she were to miss it because we had sent her home.”
“You sort of like her?” Mrs. Gunn was scandalised. “Why, she’s only good for posing her eyelashes against a sunset.”
Mrs. Peel began to laugh. “True,” she said. “But consider the lilies of the field...”
Mrs. Gunn folded the dough, refolded it, and then rolled it out for the fifth time into a smooth thin circle. “Just like Mary choosing the better part... Sometimes I wonder why any of the rest of us went and chose the other.” Mrs. Gunn slapped the dough angrily into a large pie-dish.
“It isn’t so easy,” Mrs. Peel agreed hastily. “Oh, if only Mr. Schmetterling would leave, that would solve everything, I’m sure. I’ll speak to Drene about the cleaning. She always listens so charmingly, as if she wanted to understand. And if she doesn’t improve, Mrs. Gunn, then we’ll ask her to leave.”
“If that isn’t too late. Poor Ned, I mean. His mind isn’t on his work these last few days. Hasn’t practised any calf-roping, either. Fine showing he’ll make at the Sweetwater rodeo. And he’s missing other rodeos. He should have entered for two this week. He will never get enough points to qualify for Madison Square Garden.” She shook her head gloomily.
Mrs. Peel had never imagined anything like this. “I shall talk to Drene,” she said. “And please believe me that we really appreciate the work you do, Mrs. Gunn.”
“Ah, well,” Mrs. Gunn said, mollified, “the back is made for the burden.” And she shrugged her strong shoulders and smiled.
“Ned...” Mrs. Peel said reflectively. “Is he the only one who has found our guests—well—troublesome?”
Mrs. Gunn was intent on placing the pie in the oven. Then, as Mrs. Peel waited for an answer, she turned round. “No,” she said frankly. “There has been a bit of bother with Mr. Koffing.”
“Oh?”
“The boys thought he was kind of funny at first, but he’s just getting to be a plain nuisance. Keeps telling them they ought to have a forty-hour week.”
“Oh!”
“And he wants to see the land divided fairly among the workers, so that everyone can have their right share. He thinks a lot of a new system being tried in some countries in Europe, where the farmers get twelve acres each. ‘But this is America,’ Bert says, meaning the grazing is probably different here. Mr. Koffing picks him up wrong. ‘All right, then. This is America. Everything bigger and better. Double that twelve-acre estimate. Does that suit you?’ Chuck says, ‘Twenty-four acres for me?’ Mr. Koffing nods his head, serious as can be. ‘There’s plenty of land and too few people on it,’ he says.”
Mrs. Peel was speechless.
“He says all ranchers are making fortunes, while-people in the cities can’t get meat unless they pay a dollar and twenty cents a pound.”
“He means well,” Mrs. Peel said gently.
“Maybe. But he don’t know much. That’s what the boys say. He’s plain ignorant, or he wouldn’t talk that way. Chuck says, imagine us working a forty-hour week when the stock don’t know anything about union rules. When they need you they need you. And Bert tried to explain that the steers cost us twenty-six cents a pound, and that after a summer’s work of moving them from pasture to pasture and giving them feed when the grass isn’t good enough we’ll be lucky to get twenty-eight or -nine cents a pound for them. If it was a drought year half of them’d be dying off, and the other half would be skin and bone and no weight on them at all. But it was the sixty-acre idea that raised the biggest laugh. As Chuck said, they’d be able to have one steer and a fifth apiece.”
“But didn’t they tell him all this?”
“He’s not the kind of man who listens to what you say. Mr. Grubbock did, and he asked a lot more questions. But Mr. Koffing just began talking about the way the ranchers were going to steal the National Parks.”
“But Mr. Brent wants to leave the National Parks as they are!”
“And so do most of the ranchers. Their fathers had to fight the big ranchers once, when this country was being opened up. We don’t forget that battle. Why, the big ranchers even got Texas to invade Johnson County, and that’s right near us. It was only fifty-six years ago.”
Mrs. Peel was at a loss for words. “I’m so sorry about all this,” she said at last. “Oh, the idiot!”
“That’s what the boys say.”
“What can I do?”
“I’d leave it to Jim and the boys.”
Mrs. Peel was alarmed. “Oh, no!”
“Don’t worry now. It will all be settled in a nice way. You don’t think we are savages, do you?”
It was a justified rebuke. Mrs. Peel flushed. “No,” she said, and put all thoughts of a fight out of her mind. “I suppose t
hat people who talk too much underestimate those who don’t.” The sound of a car returning from Sweetwater drew nearer. It was approaching the bridge.
“Now we can relax, Mrs. Peel.” Mrs. Gunn listened to the car. “Running better, too.”
Mrs. Peel nodded.
“Don’t worry so much,” Mrs. Gunn went on, in her quiet kindly voice. “The ranch is doing well, and your guests are having a fine time. Some of them may not know it until they get back to New York, but they are having a fine time. We’ve been lucky too. No accidents so far. Bert tells me that Fennimore’s Dude Ranch has had two broken arms, one broken leg, one smashed jaw, a collarbone, and three broken toes this summer.”
Mrs. Peel could only say, “And that could happen here too?”
* * *
The moving cloud of dust travelled slowly down the trail towards the south pasture. The herd of a hundred and fifty steers was coming safely in. Flanking it, Bert and Robb were riding confidently. Jim was following up the bunch, keeping a watchful eye on the stragglers. The noise of the slowly moving herd—the never-ending lowing and bellowing, the heavy, plodding hoofs—was broken with the shouts and oaths of the men, the cracking of Bert’s bull-whip, the changing gaits of the quick horses. The body of sound moved along the peaceful valley, splitting the silence of the mountains as sharply as lightning struck at their peaks. Then the Babel of noise receded into a diminishing chord, and the quiet of the hills returned.
The new wire fence was ready around the south pasture. Chuck and Ned had ridden up to open the gate, and then had taken a wide sweep over a rough hillside to meet the herd without turning it. Robb gave them a whoop of welcome: all hands were needed now for the last stage of the long journey. The riders, in careful formation, headed the leading steers towards the gate. The strays at the edge of the mass of brown-coated, white-faced steers crowded back towards the others. The leaders had sensed water ahead of them. The herd’s lumbering pace increased. There were few stragglers now. Those that had stopped to graze, all along the way, pushed forward as greedily as the others. There were no set fights now, either, except for a bad-tempered lunge at a competitor who was forging too heavily ahead.
“Steady,” Jim yelled at them, “you dumb bastards! Steady!” They would be ripping themselves up on the barbed wire, pushed into it by those that followed, blinded by their mass excitement. First they wouldn’t go, and then they’d go with a rush, shoving madly, pushing headlong because they were scared, not knowing what they were scared of, not needing to be scared. It was only with cursing and yelling and a cracking bull-whip that they’d calm down. The damned silliest bull-headed bastards. Jim Brent yelled again and spurred his horse on. So did the other cowpunchers, as they tried to brake the pace of the herd and yet keep it bunched together.
The cow ponies moved quickly, carefully, obeying the least command. They were as alert as the men, as quick to feel sudden trouble. They were good cow ponies, well trained, and they enjoyed knowing that. They patrolled the flanks of the moving column watchfully, proudly. And at last the steers, controlled into a reasonable pace with swinging ropes and shouts, began to move into their new pasture. The horses stood still now, surveying a job well done.
Down at the corral Mimi and Carla stood with Grubbock and Koffing, and they watched the horsemen on the sloping hillside. They said nothing, just watched.
The last steer was through the gate. The riders waited until Ned closed it securely. Then, grouped together, talking a little, laughing, they rode at an easy pace down to the ranch. If they saw the watchers by the corral they gave no sign.
Koffing moved away, back to the house. Grubbock, with a last look at the hillside, followed him. Mimi and Carla were still watching.
* * *
The hum of the car filled the yard. “Yes,” Mrs. Peel agreed, as she listened, “it sounds much better.” She went to the door to welcome Sally and Jackson with their armfuls of parcels and bundles.
“How was it in Sweetwater?” she asked.
“Hot as hell,” Sally answered. And Mrs. Peel asked no more questions.
Jackson counted the parcels, nodded, went back to the car for one they had overlooked.
“If it hadn’t been for Jackson,” Sally said, accepting some tactfully iced coffee, “I’d have had a nervous breakdown right in the middle of Main Street. It was all these first- and second-choice colours in shirts, and six-buttoned cuffs, and blue jeans guaranteed to shrink just two inches, that nearly set me off.” She glanced at the long shopping-list and shook her head. “Zero hour was three o’clock, with the sun at its hottest. I was tempted to buy an egg and fry it on the sidewalk in front of the Bank. Only we hadn’t our camera along to take the picture of the year. Camera... Oh, Jackson, we forgot Mr. Atherton Jones’s films. Oh, blast!”
“Well, I’m glad to see your language has been cooled by the iced coffee,” Mrs. Peel said. She eyed all the packages on the table. “Didn’t Mr. Grubbock order some liquor, though?”
“Not today. Perhaps his waistline has something to do with it.”
“One does become conscious of one’s waistline on a horse,” Mrs. Peel agreed and looked virtuously at the cake which Jackson wasn’t refusing.
“You’d wonder why they don’t get all the things they needed once a week,” Mrs. Gunn suggested, as she set aside the batch of rolls to rise and began splitting the pea-pods into an enormous bowl. She looked at Sally pointedly.
“They still have the New York corner-drugstore complex... open twenty-four hours a day just around the corner. But that’s an idea, Mrs. Gunn. Worth trying, perhaps. Now I’ll clear all these packages into the library and set up shop there. And I’ll give you a hand with the dining-room table. I bet Drene has forgotten it is Norah’s day off. Margaret, there’s a party tonight. Jackson is going to teach us the czardas.”
Jackson grinned, and interrupted his conversation with Mrs. Gunn about the merits of their horses to say he had forgotten most of the steps.
“Then you invent them. No one will be any the wiser.”
“Bert dances a nice Varsoviana,” Mrs. Gunn said.
“It will be fun,” Sally said, and wondered if Jim Brent would be there. “I suppose everyone is coming?”
Mrs. Gunn nodded, and watched Miss Bly’s happy face with interested speculation.
“I’ll be late,” Mrs. Peel said gloomily. “After all, one of us must turn up for the lecture.”
Sally said, “I had forgotten all about it!” She looked at Mrs. Peel in dismay.
“I’ll handle the situation,” Mrs. Peel said. “It’s my turn to struggle through a temperature of ninety in the shade.”
“Ninety-six,” Jackson said proudly, and helped Sally to gather the parcels together.
“The nicest thing about going to Sweetwater is coming back here, high up into the mountains and the fir-trees and the rushing streams. You know, Margaret, the name of Rest and be Thankful really means something.”
Jackson was no longer smiling. He stared at the parcels in his arms thoughtfully, and a dark gloom settled over his face.
Mrs. Peel watched him anxiously. “Jackson,” she began timidly, and then she decided that her question would be better asked when she and Jackson had no audience. Did he really dislike being here so much? Every time anyone praised Rest and be Thankful, he looked sad and thoughtful. Were Atlantic City’s attractions so powerful, even at the distance of two thousand miles?
Jackson had looked up at her as she spoke, but fortunately Earl Grubbock and Karl Koffing appeared at the kitchen door.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” Grubbock said. “We had an idea we’d go riding before dinner, but our horses weren’t so easy to catch. What about a lesson in lasso work, Jackson?”
“Roping takes a few lessons,” Mrs. Gunn suggested.
“Then the sooner we start the better. What about now?”
“Go ahead,” Sally said. “And I got that thirty feet of rope you wanted. There it is on the table, under the straw hat for Mi
mi. Tell her that it’s waiting here to be dipped in the trough and shaped into a bulldogger’s crush.”
Jackson picked up the rope. “It will have to be stretched,” he said, with a most professional air. And the three men left.
The women watched them go. Perhaps they are enjoying themselves, Mrs. Peel thought hopefully of her two guests. But Jackson? The truth is I’m afraid to ask him if he wants to leave: what isn’t asked isn’t answered.
“I noticed some of them were looking at the fishing-rods in the hall,” Mrs. Gunn said. “That was real smart of you, Miss Bly.”
“What was?”
“To leave the fishing-rods in the rack in the hall and never suggest fishing. I kept wondering at the waste of all that tackle, until I saw the men having a look at it this morning. They’ll be taking pack trips into the mountains, and they’ll all quieten down and stop arguing except about the fish they didn’t catch. Real smart of you.”
Sally laughed. “I begin to think you see right through me, Mrs. Gunn.” Then she flushed, wondering just how much Mrs. Gunn did see.
Mrs. Gunn smiled. It might have been with pleasure as she looked round her kitchen at the well-ordered preparations for dinner. She opened the door of the oven and basted the roast methodically. “Everything is going to be all right,” she said, as Mrs. Peel and Miss Bly left her.
12
PROBLEM AND PARADOX
Prender Atherton Jones brushed his hair, admired its effect against the deep tan of his skin, looked approvingly at a diminishing waistline, and walked away from the mirror in a sudden attack of good temper. It didn’t last long. From his bedroom window he looked down upon the garden. Esther Park was sitting there, and none of the others. She looked up suddenly as if she had felt his glance, and he drew back behind the green curtain.
They had been here over a week now, he thought bitterly; and she still haunted him. If he slipped out through the kitchen he might reach the corral unseen. But what then? In his depression he had to admit that riding on Sunday mornings in Central Park might be enjoyable, but riding on a Western saddle, up and down mountains, edging along canyon trails, was quite another thing. It wasn’t riding. He had shown both Grubbock and Koffing, neither of whom had ever ridden before, the correct way to sit a horse and to post. They hadn’t listened. Instead they were out-cowboying the cowboys—slouching on the saddle, sitting the trot, breaking into a canter to pass him on the trail, urging their horses into a gallop (which they insisted on calling a lope) to leave him far behind. The women were just as bad: they watched him tolerantly as he mounted, and they didn’t seem to object to the barbarous lack of either mounting-block or hand-up. And yesterday, when they had been approaching one of these interminable gates, Mimi had said in front of O’Farlan (who had only begun to ride and admitted he just hung on and hoped for the best), “Let me open this one, Prender. I can do it easily.” That was enough.