Centennial

  One afternoon as Jim was passing time with Levi Zendt at the store, he noticed how the old Dutchman walked, picking up his feet and planting them solidly, and he burst into laughter. “What’s so funny?” Levi asked.

  “You walk just like King Bristol.” Jim chuckled and he imitated the great bull, and Levi understood the joke but did not laugh.

  “If I was you, James, and I was thirty-four, I wouldn’t be content to be in love with no herd of cows, white-faced or not.

  Jim flushed. Others had teased him about tending his Herefords so lovingly, and he asked, “What would you do, Levi?

  “Find me a girl and get married.” And instantly Jim replied, “If I could find Clemma, I’d get married.” And Levi asked, “After all these years?”

  Yes, after twenty years Jim Lloyd still believed that one day a stranger would come to Centennial with news of Clemma’s whereabouts, and he would hurry there to claim her. No stranger came, but one afternoon the army officer who had been stationed in Denver years before did return to the area, and as a courtesy he stopped by Centennial to pay his respects to the Zendts.

  “Yes,” he said expansively, after informing them of his duty along the Canadian border and of his adventures in pacifying Indians, “believe it or not, I’ve met your daughter. Actually talked with her. I was waiting to change trains in Chicago and went into this little Irish restaurant. Kilbride’s Kerry Roost ...”

  As soon as Lucinda had the name properly written down she sent a messenger up to the ranch to inform Jim Lloyd, and he rushed down to discuss the startling news that Clemma had been located. And once more he made plans to seek her out.

  “James!” Levi reasoned when the cowboy told him he was going to Chicago. “She’s known where you were all these years. If she’d wanted ...”

  “Don’t you care for your own daughter?” Jim cried. “All you ever think about is your son. Because he’s here, helping you. Well, Clemma’s not here, and she needs me.”

  Levi saw no sense in further argument, no reason to explain to this irrational cowboy that he thought of Clemma every night, even prayed for her in Mennonite German.

  So Jim caught the night train to Chicago, and as soon as he landed in that busy city, hurried to Kilbride’s Kerry Roost, where the white-haired, lugubrious owner remembered Clemma Ferguson: “Fine-looking girl. Good waitress.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Owner of a fancy restaurant came in here for lunch, saw her, offered her a better job.” He shook his head mournfully, as if to indicate that bad luck hounded him.

  Jim found her working in an oak-paneled restaurant near the railway station used by the Union Pacific. From the doorway he watched her as she managed her customers with that raffish smile and naughty good humor he had loved years ago. She seemed smaller and her eyes were deep-sunk. She was older, much older, but strangely, she did not look worn out.

  He waited till she paused in her work, then walked firmly toward her, extending his hand. “It’s me, Jim Lloyd. You’re to come home with me.”

  As gaily as if she had talked with him only a day ago, she said, “Jim! How nice to see you again.”

  “You’re to come home,” he repeated.

  “Sit down. I’ll bring you a menu.” She deposited him at one of her tables, and after a decent interval, handed him a printed menu offering many dishes.

  Later she came swinging back, treating him as if he were a first-time customer. “The lamb’s good.”

  “I don’t eat lamb.”

  “Of course not. The veal here is very good. Crown Vee calves only.” She was laughing at him, and before he could order she had moved deftly away to tend another customer.

  When she returned, with her order pad open, she asked, “What is your desire? and the words sounded so awful that he threw the menu down, then quickly recovered it and said, “I’ll take the veal.”

  “You’ll not regret it,” she said professionally, and after he had finished the excellent meal, unable even to speak a dozen words to her, she presented him with a bill, and he caught her hand.

  “Please!” she whispered. “Mr. Marshall watches me.” She took his money and returned with his change.

  “When can I see you?” he pleaded.

  “I work here every night.”

  So every night he walked from his quarters near the railway station to the restaurant and tried unsuccessfully to engage her in serious conversation. On the fourth night he grew desperate, and finally thought of something which he hoped would pierce her armor: “Your parents can’t live forever. Don’t you want to see them?”

  “I see lots of people,” she parried, but he could see that she was affected.

  “Not too much idling, there,” Mr. Marshall warned as he walked by.

  “What keeps you here?” Jim whispered when the owner had moved on.

  “Wait for me outside,” she said in a low voice.

  She led him to her cheerless room, where she tried to convince him that return to Centennial was impossible: “I like the city. I never want to go back to that tiny town.”

  “You like this?” And with a wave of his hand he indicated the drabness of her flat. “Surely you can remember the good land?”

  She cut him off. “Here in Chicago it doesn’t matter if you’re an Indian. Life is better when no one knows who you are.”

  The bleakness of such reasoning was so contrary to the warm love he had known on that Texas farm with his mother, and so alien to the friendships he had experienced on the trail north with Poteet that he could not accept it. “You must come home. Where people love you,” he pleaded.

  She replied, “You know I’m grateful to you, Jim. Coming all the way to Chicago just to talk with me.”

  “I went to St. Louis, too.”

  For a brief moment she appreciated the stubborn love this cowboy must always have had for her, and she was tempted. “I’d marry you ... if I could. You know that. But I already have a husband.”

  “Ferguson? I was told he left you.”

  “He did. But we’re still married.”

  “Get a divorce. That’s no problem. We’ll go to court tomorrow.”

  This innocent phrase had a terrifying effect on Clemma. She drew back, and a real look of terror came into her eyes. Without another word she ran past him and out the door, and for three days Jim could not find her.

  Eager for any clue to her strange behavior, he went to the Kerry Roost to ask the mournful proprietor, “Has Clemma been here?”

  “Nope.”

  Jim stayed at the counter, explaining that things had gone well with them until the mention of divorce sent her flying away.

  “She’s never been divorced, so far as I know,” Kilbride said.

  Jim toyed with his coffee cup, trying to re-create the scene. “I did mention divorce ... said she could go into any court ...”

  “Well,” Kilbride broke in. “That explains it.”

  “You mean court?”

  The Irishman seemed hesitant to explain, but Jim reached out and caught him by the wrist. “Has she ever been in court?”

  “Just that once ... when the judge gave her a year.”

  “You mean in jail? A year?”

  “It wasn’t her fault. Even the judge admitted that. It was that fellow Harrigan who gave her the bad checks to cash.”

  “Where is he?” Jim asked, instinctively reaching for his belt, as if he were once more carrying Mule Canby’s army Colt’s.

  “He skedaddled ... and she went to jail.”

  “Jail!” Jim repeated with all the anguish he would have experienced if the sentence had been his. “God, I’ve got to find her.”

  But as he started for the door the weary Irishman said quietly, “Young bucko! Finish your coffee.” And when Jim returned to his seat at the counter the old man leaned forward to confide, “I’ve seen all sorts in my time, and I’ve learned one thing. If a girl takes it in her mind to run away, no man on earth can stop her. I couldn’t keep Clemma in my
restaurant, and you can’t keep her in your bed.”

  With each word Kilbride spoke, Jim’s tired and muddled brain visualized a headstrong young woman with high cheekbones and squarish jaw; she was fleeing the prairie as if braves of an alien tribe were pursuing her, and there was no mortal way of stopping her.

  With a pain so great he could not contemplate it, nor seek relief, he walked through the desolate streets and back to his lodging. There he packed his bag, then caught the train for Omaha. As the wheels rattled through the darkness he slowly began to gain control of his emotions. I’ll be a fool no longer, he pledged. There’s always the ranch. And a man never knows enough about Herefords. I’ll work. I’ll work.

  He believed he had found the solution to his problem, and that he was at last free of Clemma. But then the rhythmic clacking of the wheels reminded him of the girl’s teasing laughter, and all his bold defenses crumbled. Covering his ears to stifle her taunts, he confessed: It must have been my fault. If I had been able to bring her back to Centennial ... And as dawn broke over the prairie, he could see in the flaming clouds the figure of an Indian girl, running and laughing.

  After Oliver Seccombe shot himself, his young widow, not too surprised by this action, faced a series of perplexing decisions: Where to live? How to dispose of her castle? And especially, where to look for a new husband?

  Her confusion was unraveled, as she might have expected, by old Finlay Perkin. Anticipating her troubles, he wrote:

  You must come to Bristol. The directors will buy your castle, deducting such moneys as they feel you owe them. And as for the ranch, I want to assure you that I have every confidence in Skimmerhorn and Lloyd, two trustworthy and loyal men. They are ideally prepared to look after your interests.

  It was a strange letter. “Your interests.” Why had he spoken as if the ranch belonged to her?

  When she arrived in Bristol she understood. Earl Venneford was a very old man, and he had sold all his stock in the ranch except one large block, which he intended deeding to Charlotte, whose mother had been related to him. When Charlotte visited him to pay her respects she found him painfully thin, bundled up in tweeds, but bright of eye.

  “You’re a spunky girl,” he said. “I’m giving you my share of the ranch. I want to think of those wild acres as belonging to someone who will appreciate them.” He asked what her plans were, and when she proved vague, he said, “Find yourself a good man ... someone who’s served in India ... or an army man with African experience. How old are you?”

  “Thirty-six.”

  “Prime of life. Woman’s never better. Has some sense to go along with her beauty, and you always were a beauty, Charlotte.” Then he asked bluntly, “Was it Seccombe who stole our money out there?”

  “He stole nothing. He managed the ranch well, and if the blizzards hadn’t come ...”

  “I’ve found that blizzards usually do come,” he said.

  Later that afternoon, when she informed her father that through the kindness of the old earl she now owned a substantial portion of the ranch, he surprised her by confiding that one day she would own a great deal more, because it was he who had bought the shares the old earl had disposed of. “When I die, you’ll own nearly half the stock.”

  “Is it a good investment?” she asked.

  “Excellent. Of course, you’ll never make any money running cattle—too much book count.”

  “Where will the profit come from?”

  “Land. Each year that enormous spread of land will become more valuable. Never sell, even if you have to borrow money to pay the taxes, because that land is gold.”

  He advised strongly against her ever returning to Colorado. “Keep out of their way. It’s a man’s job, and your job is to stay here, rely on Finlay Perkin and collect your dividends.”

  “What if Perkin dies?”

  “He’ll never die,” Buckland said. “He’ll wither down to a little lump, but he’ll still be able to scratch a pen.”

  When she met with the old factotum she found him as vital as ever, a wisp of a man with only one concern in life: to keep the distant ranch profitable. “Miss Charlotte,” he said in an effort to erase the bitterness which had marked their last encounter, “one day you’ll own a great ranch ... that is, a fair portion of it. I hope to serve you as faithfully as I have served your predecessors.”

  “I couldn’t get along without you,” she said, and having placed her confidence in the little Scotsman, she turned to her major problem.

  She spent her time in Bristol society, renewing old acquaintances and learning afresh how pleasant life could be in the placid west of England. She was more handsome than ever, in a horsy way, and since she was known to be an heiress, she became an attractive target for bachelors either eligible or ineligible, who were seeking rich wives.

  Most of them seemed interchangeable, like the parts of those new guns, where you could switch stocks and barrels and sights and never know the difference. There was one widower of forty-eight, home from India, but his life was dictated by his regiment, and when Charlotte was invited to dine with some of his fellow officers in London, it was painfully obvious that she was there on approval. Her being a good horsewoman enhanced her chances of acceptance, but her strong views on justice for Indians rather shot holes in her score, and by the time the evening was over, she knew that she had failed her tests. She was not for the regimental mess in India.

  And then, in rapid-fire succession, two deaths made her desultory courtships seem unimportant. The old earl died peacefully one day, and scarcely was he buried when Henry Buckland, a much younger man but grossly overweight, dropped dead. It fell to Charlotte to supervise both funerals, and in this distressful time it was Finlay Perkin who helped her most. He was a canny gnome, and on the way home from her father’s funeral she confided, “I’ve received a perplexing letter from Colorado. All about cat-hamming and what I must do to avoid it.”

  She showed him Lloyd’s letter, which he immediately saw as a way for diverting her from her sorrow. “What we must do, and promptly, Miss Charlotte, is search the countryside for a good bull.” So he took her from one farm to another; they found many bulls, but none with the characteristics they sought. And then one afternoon, as they rode home in disappointment, Perkin startled her with a proposal she could not have anticipated.

  “When we do find our bull, Miss Charlotte, I think you should take him out to Colorado.”

  “I never expect to see the place again.”

  “I know, your father told me he advised you to stand clear. But I’m afraid he gave bad advice.”

  “How?”

  “Isn’t it obvious, child? Bristol’s not for you. The men you’ve been wasting your time on ... you’d marry none of them. Go back and find yourself one of the Englishmen working the ranches in Wyoming—daring men like Moreton Frewen and Claude Barker.”

  She did not respond to his counsel on marriage, but his mention of the west lingered most hauntingly. At times she would be looking at some cultivated, rock-walled English field and would see instead the sweeping prairie. Flakes of snow would fall and she would see a blizzard. Life in western America had a majesty, and the memory of it possessed her.

  And then one day she and Perkin found their bull, and one sight of it made up her mind. She wanted to watch it grow on the prairie. She was homesick for Colorado. That night Perkin wrote to Skimmerhorn:

  I feel every confidence that he is the bull we seek. He is from an admirable strain of dams, and I have always believed the inherent quality of a bull to be derived from the female side. In the rear he is most heavy, like his dam, and Charlotte has given him the appropriate name of Confidence. She has decided to bring him to you.

  When she arrived with this excellent animal at the Centennial station, there was none of the awe that had greeted King Bristol, for the young bull lacked every characteristic which had made that noble beast so predominant: he was not heavy; he did not stride with kingly grace; he lacked space between his emer
ging horns. He had only two conspicuous qualities—extremely substantial rear quarters with never a hint of cat-hamming, and a pre-potent power to stamp upon his offspring, especially his bull calves, the physical attributes he possessed.

  “Cat-hamming is ended,” Skimmerhorn said, leading the young bull to a dray. Then, turning to the new owner: “Miss Charlotte, it will seem so natural, having you in the castle again.”

  “I’ll be traveling in Wyoming,” she said.

  Her search for a husband in Wyoming proved fruitless. The kinds of young Englishmen she had once known had long since vanished, expelled by the blizzard and the economic disaster that followed. The levity and the long evenings of croquet were gone, and several times she had the dismal feeling that her return to the west had been a mistake.

  On her ride back to Venneford she realized with a pang that the ranch no longer owned Line Camp Four, where she had spent so many delightful days. It had been sold to a Cheyenne merchant, who used it several weeks each year. She considered buying it back, but took no steps to do so, for she was at odds with herself, unable to determine anything.