She sat down at the table and faced the girls. July was outside, well out of hearing. "July don't want to face up to the fact that his wife never loved him," she said.
"She ought to have loved him," Sally said.
"Ought don't count for as much as a gnat, when you're talking about love," Clara said. "She didn't. You seen her. She didn't even care for Martin. We've already given July and Martin more love than that poor woman ever gave them. I don't say that to condemn her. I know she had her troubles, and I doubt she was often in her right mind. I'm sorry she had no more control of herself to run off from her husband and child and get killed."
She stopped, to let the girls work on the various questions a little. It interested her which they would pick as the main point.
"We want July to stay," Betsey said finally. "You'll just make him run off, being so stern, and then he'll get butchered up too."
"You think I'm that bad?" Clara asked, with a smile.
"You're pretty bad," Betsey said.
Clara laughed. "You'll be just as bad, if you don't reform," she said. "I got a right to my feelings too, you know. We're doing a nice job of taking care of July Johnson. It just gripes me that he let himself be tromped on and can't even figure out that it wasn't right, and that he didn't like it."
"Can't you just be patient?" Sally said. "You're patient with Daddy."
"Daddy got his head kicked," Clara said. "He can't help how he is."
"Did he keep his bond?" Betsey asked.
"Yes, for sixteen years," Clara said. "Although I never liked his drinking."
"I wish he'd get well," Sally said. She had been her father's favorite and grieved over him the most.
"Ain't he going to die?" Betsey asked.
"I fear he will," Clara said. She had been careful not to let that notion take hold of the girls, but she wondered if she was wrong. Bob wasn't getting better, and wasn't likely to.
Sally started to cry, and Clara put her arms around her.
"Anyway, we have July," Betsey said.
"If I don't run him off," Clara said.
"You just better not!" Betsey said, eyes flashing.
"He might get bored and leave of his own accord," Clara volunteered.
"How could he get bored? There's lots to do," Sally said.
"Don't be so stern with him, Ma," Betsey pleaded. "We don't want him to leave."
"It won't hurt the man to learn a thing or two," Clara said. "If he plans to stay here he'd better start learning how to treat women."
"He treats us fine," Sally pointed out.
"You ain't women yet," Clara said. "I'm the only one around here, and he better spruce up if he wants to keep on my good side."
* * *
July soon returned to work, but his demeanor had not greatly improved. He had little humor in him and could not be teased successfully, which was an irritant to Clara. She had always loved to tease and considered it an irony of her life that she was often drawn to men who didn't recognize teasing even when she was inflicting it on them. Bob had never responded to teasing, or even noticed it, and her powers in that line had slowly rusted from lack of practice. Of course she teased the girls, but it was not the same as having a grown man to work on — she had often felt like pinching Bob for being so stolid. July was no better — in fact, he and Bob were cut from the same mold, a strong but unimaginative mold.
When she came down from washing her face, she heard talk from the back and stopped dead on the stairs, for there was no doubt who was talking. The chord of memory that had been weakly struck by the sight of the horsemen resounded through her suddenly like an organ note. No sound in the world could have made her happier, for she heard the voice of Augustus McCrae, a voice like no other. He sounded exactly as he always had — hearing his voice so unexpectedly after sixteen years caused her eyes to fill. The sound took the years away. She stood on the stairs in momentary agitation, uncertain for a second as to when it was, or where she was, so much did it remind her of other times when Augustus would show up unexpectedly, and she, in her little room over the store, would hear him talking to her parents. Only now he was talking to her girls. Clara regretted not changing blouses — Gus had always appreciated her appearance. She walked on down the stairs and looked out the kitchen window. Sure enough, Gus was standing there, in front of his horse, talking to Betsey and Sally. Woodrow Call sat beside him, still mounted, and beside Call, on a bay horse, was a young blond woman wearing men's clothes. A good-looking boy on a brown mare was the last of the group.
Clara noted that Gus had already charmed the girls — July Johnson would be lucky to get another bowl of soup out of them as long as Gus was around.
She stood at the window a minute studying him. To her he seemed not much older. His hair had already turned white when he was young. He had always made her feel keen, Gus — his appetite for talk matched hers. She stood for a moment in the kitchen doorway, a smile on her lips. Just seeing him made her feel keen. She was in the shadows and he had not seen her. Then she took a step or two and Augustus looked around. Their eyes met and he smiled.
"Well, pretty as ever," he said.
To the huge astonishment of her girls, Clara walked straight off the porch and into the stranger's arms. She had a look in her eyes that they had never seen, and she raised her face to the stranger and kissed him right on the mouth, an action so startling and so unexpected that both girls remembered the moment for the rest of their lives.
Newt was so surprised that he scarcely knew where to look.
When Clara kissed him, Lorena looked down, nothing but despair in her heart. There the woman was, Gus loved her, and she herself was lost. She should have stayed in the tent and not come to see it — yet she had wanted to come. Now that she had, she would have given anything to be somewhere else, but of course it was too late. When she looked up again she saw that Clara had stepped back a bit and was looking at Gus, her face shining with happiness. She had thin arms and large hands, Lorena noticed. Two men were walking up from the lots, having seen the crowd.
"Well, introduce your friends, Gus," Clara said. She had a hand on his arm, and walked with him over to the horses.
"Oh, you know Woodrow," Augustus said.
"How do you do?" Call said, feeling at a loss.
"This is Miss Lorena Wood," Augustus said, reaching up to help her dismount. "She's come a far piece with us. All the way from Lonesome Dove, in fact. And this young gentleman is Newt."
"Newt who?" Clara asked.
"Newt Dobbs," Augustus said, after a pause.
"Hello, Miss Wood," Clara said. To Lorena's surprise she seemed quite friendly — far more so than most women were to her.
"I don't know whether to envy you or pity you, Miss Wood," Clara said. "Riding all that way with Mr. McCrae, I mean. I know he's entertaining, but that much entertainment could break a person for life."
Then Clara laughed, a happy laugh — she was amused that Augustus had seen fit to arrive with a woman, that she had stunned her girls by kissing him, and that Woodrow Call, a man she had always disliked and considered scarcely more interesting than a stump, had been able to think of nothing better to say to her after sixteen years than "How do you do?" It added up to a lively time, in her book, and she felt she had been in Nebraska long enough to deserve a little liveliness.
She saw that the young woman was very frightened of her. She had dismounted but kept her eyes cast down. July and Cholo walked up just at that time, July with a look of surprise on his face.
"Why, Sheriff Johnson," Augustus said. "I guess, as they say, it's a small world."
"Just to you, Gus, you've met everybody in it now, I'm sure," Clara said. She glanced at July, who so far hadn't spoken. He was watching her and it struck her that it might be because she was still holding Gus's arm. It made Clara want to laugh again. In minutes, the arrival of Gus McCrae had mixed up everyone, just as it usually had in the past. It had always been a peculiarity of her friendship with Augustus. Nobody h
ad ever been able to figure out whether she was in love with him or not. Her parents had puzzled over the question for years — it had replaced Bible arguments as their staple of conversation. Even when she had accepted Bob, Gus's presence in her life confused most people, for she had soon demonstrated that she had no intention of giving him up just because she was planning to marry. The situation had been made the more amusing by the fact that Bob himself worshipped Gus, and would probably have thought it odd that she had chosen him over Gus if he had been sharp enough to figure out that she could have had Gus if she'd wanted him.
It had been one-sided adoration, though, for Gus considered Bob one of the dullest men alive, and often said so. "Why are you marrying that dullard?" he asked her often.
"He suits me," she said. "Two racehorses like us would never get along. I'd want to be in the lead, and so would you."
"I never thought you'd marry a man with nothing to say,'' he said.
"Talk ain't everything," she said — words she had often remembered with rue during years when Bob scarcely seemed to utter two words a month.
Now Gus was back, and had instantly captured her girls — that was clear. Betsey and Sally were fascinated, if embarrassed, that this white-haired man had ridden up and kissed their mother.
"Where's Robert?" Augustus asked, to be polite.
"Upstairs, sick," Clara said. "A horse kicked him in the head. It's a bad wound."
For a second, remembering the silent man upstairs, she thought how unfair life was. Bob was slipping away, and yet that knowledge couldn't quell her happiness at the sight of Gus and his friends. It was a lovely summer day, too — a fine day for a social occasion.
"You girls go catch three pullets," she said. "I imagine Miss Wood is tired of eating beefsteak. It's such a fair day, we might want to picnic a little later."
"Oh, Ma, let's do," Sally said. She loved picnics.
Clara would have liked a few words with Augustus alone, but that would have to wait until things settled down a little, she saw. Miss Wood mostly kept her eyes down and said nothing, but when she raised them it was always to look at Gus. Clara took them into the kitchen and left them a moment, for she heard the baby.
"Now, see, all your worrying was for nothing," Augustus whispered to Lorena. "She's got a young child."
Lorena held her peace. The woman seemed kind — she had even offered her a bath — but she still felt frightened. What she wanted was to be on the trail again with Gus. Her mind kept looking ahead to when the visit would be over and she would have Gus alone again. Then she would feel less frightened.
Clara soon came down, a baby in her arms.
"It's July's son," she said, handing the baby to Gus as if it were a package.
"Well, what do I want with it?" Augustus asked. He had seldom held a baby in his arms and was somewhat discommoded.
"Just hold him or give him to Miss Wood," Clara said. "I can't hold him and cook too."
Call, July and Cholo had walked off to the lots, for Call wanted to buy a few horses and anyway didn't care to sit in a kitchen and try to make conversation.
It amused Lorena that Gus had got stuck with the baby. Somehow it made things more relaxed that the woman would just hand him to Gus that way. She stopped feeling quite so nervous, and she watched the baby chew on his fat little fist.
"If this is Sheriff Johnson's child, whereabouts is his wife?' Augustus asked.
"Dead," Clara said. "She stopped here with two buffalo hunters, had the child and left. July showed up two weeks later, half dead from worry."
"So you adopted them both," Augustus said. "You war always one to grab."
"Listen to him," Clara said. "Hasn't seen me in sixteen years, and he feels free to criticize.
"It's mainly Martin that I wanted," she continued. "As life goes on I got less and less use for grown men."
Lorena smiled in spite of herself. There was something amusing about the sassy way Clara talked. It was no wonder Gus admired her, for he liked to talk a lot himself.
"Let me hold him," she said, reaching for the baby. Augustus was glad to hand the baby over. He had been watching Clara and didn't enjoy having to divert his attention to a wiggly baby. It was the same old Clara, so far as spirit went, though her body had changed. She was fuller in the bosom, thinner in the face. The real change was in her hands. As a girl she had had delicate hands, with long fingers and tiny wrists. Now it was her hands that drew his eyes: the work she had done had swollen and strengthened them; they seemed as large at the joints as a man's. She was peeling potatoes with them and handled a knife as deftly as a trapper. Her hands were no longer as beautiful, but they were arresting: the hands of a formidable woman, perhaps too formidable.
Though he had only glanced at her hands, Clara picked up the glance, displaying her old habit of being able to read his mind.
"That's right, Gus," she said. "I've coarsened a little, but this country will take your bloom."
"It didn't take your bloom," he said, wanting her to know how glad he was that she was in so many ways her old self, the self he remembered with such pleasure.
Clara smiled and paused a minute to tickle the baby. She smiled, too, at Newt, who blushed, not used to ladies' smiles. The girls kept looking at him.
"You'll have to pardon us, Miss Wood," she said. "Gus and I were old sweethearts. It's a miracle both of us are still alive, considering the lives we've led. We've got to make up for a lot of lost time, if you'll excuse us."
Lorena found she didn't mind, not nearly so much as she had thought she would even a few minutes earlier. It was pleasant to sit in the kitchen and hold the baby. Even hearing Clara josh with Gus was pleasant.
"So what happened to Mr. Johnson's wife, once she left?" Augustus asked.
"She was looking for an old boyfriend," Clara said. "He was a killer who got hung while she was recovering from having the baby. July went and saw her but she wouldn't have anything to do with him. She and one of the buffalo hunters traveled on, and the Sioux killed her. You watch close, or they'll get you too," she added.
"I guess no Indian would dare bother you," Augustus said. "They know they wouldn't stand a chance."
"We kept some of them alive the last few winters, once the buffalo were gone," Clara said. "Bob gives them old horses. Horse meat's better than nothing."
She put a little milk in the baby's bottle and showed Lorena how to feed him. The baby stared up solemnly at Lorena as he drank.
"He's taken with you, Miss Wood," Clara said. "He's never seen a blonde, I guess."
The baby took a sneezing fit and Lorena was afraid she had done something wrong, but Clara merely laughed at her anxiety and the child soon settled down.
A little later, while Clara was frying the chicken, Call came up from the lots. He wanted to buy some horses and had found some to his liking, but neither Cholo nor July would make the deal. They had shown him the horses readily enough, but informed him that Clara made all the deals. It seemed irregular to him: two grown men right there, and yet he was forced to do business with a woman.
"I was told you're the horse trader," he said.
"Yes," Clara said. "I'm the horse trader. You girls finish this chicken and I'll see what Captain Call has picked out."
She looked again at the boy who had blushed when she smiled at him. He was saying something to Sally and didn't notice her look. To her eye he was the spitting image of Captain Call, built the same way, and with the same movements. So why is your name Dobbs? she wondered.
On their way to the lots Call tried to think of something to say, but he was at a loss. "You have a pretty ranch," he said finally. "I hope we do as well in Montana."
"I just hope you get there alive," Clara said. "You ought to settle around here and wait five years. I imagine Montana will be safer by then. It ain't safe now."
"We're set on being the first there," Call said. "It can't be no rougher than Texas used to be."
Clara set such a stiff price for her horses that
Call was tempted to balk. He felt sure he would have done better with her husband, if he had been up and about. There was something uncompromising in Clara's look when she named the prices. It was as if she dared him to bargain. He had bargained over many a horse in his day, but never with a woman. He felt shy. Worse, he felt she didn't like him, though so far as he could remember he had never given her any reason to take offense. He studied the situation in silence for several minutes — so long that Clara grew impatient.
Newt had followed them, thinking the Captain might need him to help with the horses if he bought some. He could see that the Captain was mighty put out with the woman. It surprised him that she didn't seem to care. When the Captain was put out with the men, they cared, but the woman just stood there, her brown hair blowing, not caring in the least and not giving an inch. It was shocking: he had never expected to see anyone stand up to the Captain, except maybe Mr. Gus.
"I'm neglecting my guests," Clara said. "There's no telling when I'll get to see Gus McCrae again. You take all the time you want to think it over."
Newt was even more shocked. The Captain didn't say a word. It was almost as if the woman had issued him an order.
The woman turned, and as she did, she looked at Newt. Before he could drop his eyes she had caught him looking at her in turn. He felt greatly embarrassed, but to his surprise Clara smiled again, a friendly smile that vanished when she turned back to the Captain.
"Well, it's a stiff price, but they're good horses," Call said, wondering how the men could bring themselves to work for such a testy woman.
Then he remembered that the younger man had been the sheriff chasing Jake. "You come from Arkansas, don't you?" he asked.
"Fort Smith," July said.
"We hung your man for you," Call said. "He fell in with a bad bunch. We caught them up in Kansas."
For a second, July didn't remember what he was talking about. It seemed a life ago that he had left Fort Smith in pursuit of Jake Spoon. He had long since ceased to give the man any thought. The news that he was dead did not affect him.