When he came out of the stable-barn Jackson was washing his face and hands at the pump. “Weather coming up,” Jackson said, drying himself vigorously.
“Been coming all day.”
“Stew tonight?” Jackson hung the rough scrap of towel to dry for the next man.
“And no cracks from you,” Chuck said, with a grin. “This ain’t the Ritz.”
“Wasn’t thinking of none.”
Chuck nodded approvingly over his pupil’s progress. Jack had a real command of English now. Never used to talk at all. Now he’d understand ’most anything, and when he spoke he used the words right. “And don’t be going adding any of that red-pepper stuff,” Chuck said.
“Paprika. Makes stew well.”
“Hey! Forgetting your English lessons? ‘It makes a real good stew.’ Got that? It don’t, though. Stew’s stew, without any of them fancy tastes added.”
Jackson grinned. “And ketchup?”
“That ain’t a taste. That’s a necessity.”
They walked back to the bunkhouse together. It was a neat, compact building of logs. Downstairs there was a room for cooking and eating. Upstairs a room for sleeping, with a row of cots. Over the door the sign “Wranglers’ Roost” had been taken down, for now there were few horses to be wrangled. In its place Bert had nailed up the new name “Cowpoke’s Corner.” Ned had said a comma had got out of hand there, and Robb, with all his poetry reading, had called it something that rhymed with pot of coffee. Bert said it was a plugging good sign, and had taken the best part of a Sunday afternoon to do, and everyone knew them damned commas was as skittish as a colt to handle.
Well, whether it was “Wranglers’ Roost” or “Cowpoke’s Corner” it was home. Chuck spat the limp stub of cigarette from his lips, and ground it out automatically with his heel. “Best time of day,” he said, watching the two trucks in the distance heading this way, as they wound along the narrow road in the valley. Then they disappeared among the trees as they neared Rest and be Thankful. Their engines quietened for a minute or two when they reached the house. That would be Mimi Bassinbrook being unloaded, Chuck thought. He wondered how the little redhead had enjoyed her trip in a truck down to Sweetwater and back. Then he heard the trucks go into first and start up the hill. He moved through the door into the kitchen, and rescued the potatoes just in time from burning. He threw the can-opener to Jackson, who had followed him. “Get busy on them vegetables,” he said, pointing to the six cans of beans. He looked at the potatoes. “God-damnit, you can’t take your shrivelling eyes off them perishing murphies without the bastards acting up.”
“Let me get supper one night?” Jackson suggested, watching Chuck’s heavy scowl over the potato-pot.
“Hell, man, you crazy.”
“No. Like food fine.”
Chuck looked at him now. “You kind of get your words mixed,” he said sorrowfully. Fine was all right. Like was all right. You could say, “I like it fine.” But somehow you couldn’t say, “I like food fine.” Hell, he’s getting me mixed up. “Chow, man, chow. Not food.” He was sure of that at least. “You trying to tell me you like to cook?”
“Sure.”
“You got enough on your hands right now.”
“Them damned doods,” Jackson agreed. “If not here, I—” He closed his lips tightly, lowered his brows, and opened the sixth can of beans with a bang.
“You’d be doing some riding with the boys,” Chuck finished his sentence for him. “Or helping me with this old chuck-wagon. You sure aim to be a cowhand, don’t you? What about that right pretty automobile you drove from New York?”
“Good to ride to Sweetwater, Saturdays.”
“If you was a cowhand you’d be riding in your old Chevvy or the pick-up on Saturdays.”
“Okay too.”
“Spoken with the boss, yet?”
“No,” Jackson said gloomily. For what would Mrs. Peel say?
“Sooner the quicker. She’s a real nice woman. Won’t bite your nose off.”
“Not that,” Jackson said quickly. “Just...” He didn’t finish the sentence, but Chuck was used to that by this time. Jackson thought unhappily of how helpless Mrs. Peel and Miss Bly were without him. That was his whole problem. He felt like a traitor, and that saddened him.
Chuck shook his head. Jack wanted to be a cowhand, but it would take a few years before he would know enough. It was pretty tough to start in when you were over forty. It was a hard trade that took a lot of learning. Still, if you didn’t mind rising before the sun was up, working in all weathers, long days of riding and watching, or days of ordinary plugging work on fences and gates and sluices and fallen timber, it was a good life.
“It’s a good life,” Chuck said. “I wouldn’t have none other.” He thought with nostalgia of the lonely nights on a cold mountainside that had given him rheumatism.
“Life for a man,” Jackson the ex-boulevardier from Paris, said, so forcibly that Chuck felt somewhat embarrassed. He looked down at his thin legs and grinned.
“That too,” he admitted. “Back in the fall of ’88 I lost my roll—all of a season’s wages—in three nights. That were in Jackson Hole, over by the Tetons, wildest place in Wyoming Territory. There weren’t no State of Wyoming then. I were a young fellow, full of mash and vinegar. Me and another fellow, Bill O’Brien it was, from Buffalo, came riding over Toggarty Pass, all of ten thousand feet high if it’s an inch, dodging the Shoshones, aiming to reach—”
But Jackson would have to wait for the story, for Bert and Jim Brent came into the kitchen, and Chuck had something to say to them. “Began to think you was roped and tied down in Sweetwater.”
“Near enough,” Bert said. “Sure as nearly didn’t make it back up here. She loved, just loved, the Foot Rail Bar. Full of atmosphere, she said. What the hell did she mean, Jim?”
“Cigarette smoke and stale ale,” Jim suggested, with a grin. “Hello, Jack. Had a quiet day? No broken necks?”
“No trouble,” Jackson said.
“Too bad,” Bert said. “A nice little accident, nothing serious you know, makes it easier on the horses.”
“How was the colts?” Jackson asked.
“All sewed up. They’ll stay in Sweetwater for a week.”
“Mimi thought it was ‘so sweet’ that we brought their mothers along for company.” Bert’s grin broadened. “Hey, Jim, how do you like being sweet?”
“Try and get a sick colt into a truck without its mother,” Chuck said. “Grab your plates. Line up.”
“Now don’t tell me,” Bert said. “It couldn’t be! As Mimi says, ‘It just couldn’t be!’ Well, well...it could.” He looked at the stewpot, shaking his head.
“No cracks!” Chuck warned stonily. He looked round at the doorway. “About time,” he said, as Robb entered. “Where’s Ned?”
Robb threw his hat on to the nearest free peg on the timbered wall. He said nothing. He nodded to the others. When he didn’t even make one small joke about stew Chuck looked up at him sharply.
“Where’s Ned?” he asked, meaning it this time. “Where’s he at?”
“He’s outside. He’s coming.” There was something in Robb’s voice that caught all attention. They looked at each other. But Robb was concentrating on crumbling the hunk of bread beside his plate.
Chuck said, “Drene was up here about four o’clock. Asking for him. I told her he was down in the hayfield.”
“Yes, we saw Drene,” Robb said. “She came driving past the field with that Schmetterling guy. She made him stop the car, and she came running over to us.” His tone kept the others silent. They had all stopped eating.
Robb went on, “She said goodbye. She left Ned the horse to look after. She had the dog with her.”
“She’s left?” Jim asked. “You mean, Drene has gone for good?”
“Eloped. Drene’s going to marry Schmetterling, she says.”
“She says,” Bert burst out with a roar. “And she left the horse to Ned. And she stopped to say
goodbye! That’s mighty nice of her, mighty nice. Considering Ned bought the horse for her, and gave her a good year in Phoenix. Gave her everything she owns. Spent every penny of his prize money on her. Tramp!”
Jim nodded warningly towards the door. Bert’s voice quietened. He said, “You’re just kind of lucky if you don’t lose your roll when you meet up with that sort.” Then he fell silent, brooding on the times he had lost his.
Chuck looked round at the worried, angry faces. He walked over to the door. “Come and get it, damn you, before I throw it out!” he yelled.
Then, at last, Ned came in. The others started joking about the food, and for once Chuck didn’t stop them.
Ned helped himself to stew, and stepped over the bench to take his place at the wooden table. He said, “I was having a look at that little old pony of yours, Chuck. He’s feeling mighty sorry for himself now, but right soon he’s going to get frisky and start acting up again. Damned if he don’t.”
“By October Bert will have broke him for a good cow pony,” Chuck predicted.
Jim said Ned’s own horse would need some more breaking in if Ned didn’t exercise him more.
Ned said that was right. Ragtime was getting as fat and lazy as one of them white-faced steers. He’d start tonight, and do some practising on the calves in the south field.
Robb said they’d have to hurry. It looked like bad weather. And heavy rain would spoil the ground for tomorrow—make it too slick.
Jim Brent, watching Ned now eating as quickly as the others, was satisfied. Ned was taking the news well. He wasn’t going to leave the ranch and start wandering. When a cowhand started wandering he’d lose his money more quickly than he had earned it, and certainly more easily. At the time he might not care one red hell whether he lost everything. Later he’d wake up and find he would have to start over again. That was all right when you were young. You could do it. And a good cowhand could get a job anywhere. But it wasn’t a habit to learn, for when you were older it was hard to start over. When you were older the broken bones and bruises and chills you had collected along the years began to trouble you. If you were a steady man like old Chuck that was all right: you’d always have a job. But if you weren’t, then either you became one of the old vultures at the poker-table in a bar, waiting for the young men to come in and work off their disappointments, or you were just someone with a good enough story to get another free meal and a free drink. “Atmosphere,” Mimi Bassinbrook had said delightedly, when they left the Foot Rail this afternoon. She had talked about Gary Cooper and six-shooters and Marlene Dietrich in black-spangled skirts. Atmosphere... Jim Brent laughed suddenly.
“Something funny?” Bert said.
Jim, conscious that Ned was watching him carefully, began a story he had heard today when he was over to Sweetwater. It was about Milt Jerks and his proposal to brighten the Sweetwater rodeo with a couple of girls, dressed in tight short pants and twirling a stick above their heads, to march ahead of the school band.
Ned relaxed, and laughed with the others. Jim relaxed too.
The others finished their meal, and followed Ned out towards their horses and the south field. Jim said, “I’ll be over to try my hand too. Clearing up a little business first.”
Chuck waited until the last man had left. Then he said to Jim, “Going down to the house?”
“Yes, I’ve got some explaining to do.”
“Maybe they’ve heard already about this elopement.”
“Maybe, but I’ll have to go and see them.”
“Well, have another cup of coffee while you make up your mind what you’re going to say to Mrs. Peel.” Chuck helped himself to the last of the canned peaches. “You know, I’m kinda sorry for that guy Smatterling. Doesn’t know what he has let himself in for with that Drene. Ned’s well out of it.”
Jim agreed. “Better now than later.”
“Ned will get a good price for the horse, but not as much as he had to pay for it, I bet. And Milt Jerks will buy the fancy saddle and sell it to one of them doods. Then Ned can pay off Bert and Robb—they was staking him for the rodeo. Hadn’t even the entry money when that Drene was around. And what about the horse-trailer and her car? Ned bought them things too.”
“Schmetterling probably drew the line at a horse-trailer behind his Lincoln.” Jim smiled. “That would have been a pretty sight.”
“Cost Ned six hundred dollars, that trailer did. Well, he could use a new one himself. He’ll be arriving at the rodeos in style for a change.”
“He’ll be arriving at the rodeos.” Jim thought of the three rodeos Ned had missed since Mr. Schmetterling had started complicating everyone’s life.
“And when he starts hauling in prize money again, wonder what little blonde’s hard-luck story he’s going to listen to this time?” Chuck asked. “Or maybe it’ll be an old buddy from the Army, or from some ranch away the hell and gone in Idaho.”
Jim nodded. There were two things which used up a cowhand’s money: his horse and equipment; and other people. Ned was no exception to the rule.
“Well,” Chuck said; poured himself a fifth cup of coffee, and began to roll a cigarette. “Give when you’ve got it. And when you haven’t you get it. That’s the way it works out here. Young Robb was telling me he might be travelling east to do some of that poetry writing this winter. Miss Sally’s been talking to him, it seems. But, as I said, as far as I can make out, the cities don’t live the way we live. He’ll be real miserable. If he hits bad luck there won’t be no one to share it with him.”
“Robb will have to find out for himself. He might like the East. Some do.” Jim didn’t sound too enthusiastic. He had had his own taste of the East. Although—as he admitted now to himself—it was hardly fair to blame the East.
Chuck licked the cigarette thoughtfully, and sealed the moist edges of the yellow paper with a broken thumbnail. He spat a thread of tobacco out of his mouth with an expressive sound. “Do they?” he asked, with a wry smile. “There were young Strausser from Double Emm, he were going to paint pictures. And there were Pete Devoe of Diamond Ess Dee, he were going to be a carver—”
“Sculptor.”
“—because he was right clever at whittling things out of wood. And Jim Dalzell of Doubleyou Gee, he was to write stories. And Tommy Rosen, and Bob Tisdale, and Ralph Cusick, and all the others.”
“Including me,” Jim said, with a grin.
“I were only forgetting you out of politeness,” Chuck reminded him. “What happened to them? Right back among the mountains, singing don’t bury me on the lone prairie, and rubbing their tails off on a saddle. Didn’t even wait to finish their training, some of them. Hitched the first ride west they could get. Now you stayed away four years and more. But I always figured that out as plain ordinary stubbornness.”
“Maybe you were right,” Jim said, and laughed. He rose, pushed Chuck’s hat farther down over his eyes (Chuck only took off his hat in church or in bed), and left him.
As he walked towards the house Jim was still wondering what he’d say to Mrs. Peel. He felt, as all the boys did, responsible for this new worry. And she worried so damned much. All Easterners did. They lived on worry, almost resented its being taken away from them when they couldn’t get clear radio news bulletins or the papers on time. But after they had been here for a spell they’d throw away their vitamin pills and sleeping-tablets, and they’d even stop worrying about their worries.
16
ELOPEMENT
After dinner that night the guests sat round the dining-table with their last cup of coffee as if they were unwilling to leave. And for the first time this summer, Mrs. Peel thought they were a united group. She sat at the head of the table trying not to worry about Sally’s empty chair. She watched the steady glow of the candles, held above the twisted arms of silver, and listened to all the theories about Drene’s disappearance. Everyone was exceedingly gloomy about her future, but they were gloomy in an excited way. Mrs. Peel, once the first shock was over, h
ad become really depressed.
“I am really sorry for Drene, I really am,” Carla Brightjoy was saying. “And to think I saw her eloping, although I didn’t know it at the time! When Drene called to Ned in the hayfield he went over to meet her half-way. I stayed with Robb. And when Ned came back he said nothing. But his face was really like death.” That wasn’t exactly the way it had seemed, but now it was all very clear to Carla. “He kept so silent. I couldn’t help wondering... And then I left to come home, and Mrs. Gunn told me all about it.”
“Mrs. Gunn may have been wrong,” Mimi Bassinbrook said. “Perhaps Drene only went for a long ride with Dewey. He never said he was leaving.”
Mrs. Peel said, “He was, though. And Mrs. Gunn, along with Norah, saw Drene get into the car with her small suitcase. Dewey Schmetterling drove off before they could run outside to speak to her. She turned round, laughed, and waved. She looked very happy, Mrs. Gunn said.”
“Poor kid,” Earl Grubbock said.
“Her dog, Guard, was with her,” Mrs. Peel went on.
“Thank goodness for that,” O’Farlan remarked. “He was a nasty-looking brute. Perhaps he’ll keep Schmetterling in order.”
“It’s incredible!” Prender Atherton Jones said. “I can’t quite believe it.” But he obviously wanted to.
“It is absolutely shocking,” Esther Park said, her eyes indignant yet excited. “Is she going to live with Dewey, do you think?”
“That’s their business,” Earl Grubbock said curtly.
Karl Koffing said, “I’m damned sorry for her. I give her three weeks with Dewey, perhaps two. Then what?”
Everyone agreed with that. There was a short silence.
Mrs. Peel looked at the clock. “I wonder what can be keeping Sally down in Sweetwater?”