Centennial

by James A. Michener

  One day as she was walking idly out to inspect Confidence, she happened to see Jim Lloyd approaching from the other direction, and for the first time she noticed how straight he was, how lithe. She had rarely spoken to him but did remember that morning when he came to report her husband’s suicide. He had been gentle and perhaps more stricken than she by the death of his long-time boss. Beyond that she knew nothing except that he had come north as a boy of fourteen and through the years had been mixed up in some way with an Indian girl.

  Actually, she knew him best through the letters of Finlay Perkin, who held him in the highest regard. What were the phrases? “Absolute trust ... sober good judgment ... fine man with Herefords.”

  “Hello, Mr. Lloyd,” she said as he reached the corral fence. “How’s the bull?”

  “He’s doing great, ma’am,” Jim said.

  “As good as you hoped?”

  “Better. He’s ... he’s ...” She wondered what word he was groping for and was surprised when he said, “He’s voluntary. Moves right out. That’s a good sign in a bull.”

  “He’s certainly not cat-hammed,” she said.

  They began to talk about many things, and she was impressed with his broad knowledge. He had read widely, had studied economics and was capable of expressing strong opinions. He was really much better informed than Mr. Skimmerhorn, who stuck pretty much to ranching. But she also detected that he was an isolated man, extremely lonely, and she sensed that if these were critical years for her, trying as she was to settle upon patterns she would follow for the rest of her life, they were doubly crucial for this cowboy. For her, finding a new husband was merely following a style of life; for him, taking a wife could be life itself, the acceptance of another human being; and she supposed that she was the only means whereby he could escape from the prison of loneliness in which he had immured himself.

  So one afternoon she said, “Mr. Lloyd, would you care to have dinner with me tonight?”

  “I’d be most obliged,” he said and at six promptly, he appeared at the door of the castle.

  “I had in mind about eight,” she said, and he replied, “I work early, ma’am.”

  So she hurried up the cook and they sat in a kind of regal splendor in the round dining room, and she asked him how the sales were going, and then they got into differential freight rates and the possibility that if a sugar-beet factory ever started in the area, the beet tops might be utilized as feed for the Venneford cattle.

  Suddenly she asked, “Are you still involved with that Indian girl?”

  He reddened and said, “I wanted to marry her. She wouldn’t have me.”

  It was growing late and Jim excused himself, but next day Charlotte saw him at the loading chute and said, “Last night was so pleasant, James. Could you come to dinner again tonight?”

  “No,” he said and when she showed disappointment, he added, “Because I’m inviting you to Centennial for a bite.”

  At six he was at the door with a polished rig drawn by two bays. They rode quietly into town and dined at the Railway Arms, where several townsmen greeted them, then turned away to discuss the impropriety of an English gentlewoman’s consorting with a cowboy.

  The same thing bothered Jim. In later years it would become accepted for heiresses or wealthy widows inheriting ranches to socialize with cowboys, but in 1889 such a relationship bore the marks of scandal, and Jim was a very proper man. He was also worried by the fact that he was two years younger than Charlotte, and that she had more money than he, more power at the ranch.

  Offsetting these doubts was her beauty and her lively interest in the west. She was fun to talk with, always ready for an adventure, and she maintained a certain organization in her life. She really was a superior woman, Jim concluded, and he acknowledged his good luck in having excited her interest.

  And so in this unresolved fashion they drifted through the mild winter and spring of 1889, dining here and there, working together, reading the same books and checking the same figures. It could have continued this way for a long time, but recently Charlotte had turned thirty-seven, and although the prairie she had learned to cherish was still expansive, her own life was closing in. She had rejected Bristol and would never return there. India was out. Africa, too. All that remained was her future in Colorado, and she had better get it organized.

  So on a day in June she arranged a picnic, and even though she no longer owned Line Camp Four, she and Jim trespassed there, among the piñons and eroding spires, and it was after speaking of her regret at having allowed this heavenly spot to be sold that she said boldly, “If we don’t marry, James, then in the years to come we’ll have other regrets.”

  He was playing with a pine needle, holding it between his thumbs to make a whistle. Blowing a long, sweet blast, he” dropped his hands and without looking at Charlotte, said, “You’re right.”

  “Then what shall we do about it?”

  “Get married, I guess.”

  Impulsively she thwacked him over the head. “Damn it! Are you proposing?”

  “Yes!” he cried happily. Grabbing her around the waist, he hoisted her high in the air and carried her into the little stone house he had built twenty years before.

  When their engagement was announced, there was much discussion of how that canny Texan had arranged “a good thing for hisse’f.” The ladies wondered how a rich gentlewoman like Charlotte could demean herself by marrying a poor cowboy, but the town banker confided, “You got it all wrong, ladies. Jim Lloyd’s no pauper. I’d call him one of the best catches in town.” When the women asked how this could be, the banker explained, “Because he saves his money, that’s why.”

  The wedding was to be held in the Union Church soon after the Fourth of July, but on the first of that month the Union Pacific brought an unexpected guest to Centennial. It was Clemma Zendt Ferguson, only thirty-four years old but with the look of a tired and defeated woman.

  As soon as Jim Lloyd heard she was in town he rushed to her parents’ home and found her in the kitchen. “I’ve got my divorce,” she said dully. “I’m ready to marry you now.”

  Ignoring everything that had happened in recent months, Jim swept her into his arms, and as he kissed her his heart felt as if it were expanding. “I’m so glad you’ve come home,” he said.

  That one embrace settled all problems for Jim. He realized that he was under serious obligation to marry Charlotte, and normally he could have done nothing to embarrass that fine woman. He knew also the advantages she would bring him, and whereas the community might view with distaste the marriage of a wealthy gentlewoman to a cowboy, he trusted that she would never use that whip against him. She was an honorable woman, and she would make a good wife. But to be with Clemma was to be with the earth he loved, with the Indian west that he revered. She was a total vision of life, and to win her, any sacrifice would be justified.

  “Will you marry me right away?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied, acknowledging at last that for two decades this simple option which could have saved her life had lain before her, without her being able to appreciate or accept it. Now, at the end of a long trail, she was prepared to marry the man she should have married years before. His obvious love convinced her that she had been right in burying her fears and returning to Centennial.

  Embracing her again, he excused himself with the remark, “I have some work to do at the ranch.”

  “I’ll bet he does,” Levi said as he departed, and when Clemma asked what this meant, her father replied, “He has some heavy explaining to do. He was supposed to marry Charlotte Seccombe next week.”

  And as he said these words he noticed that Clemma showed no surprise or remorse, as if Jim’s obligations were no responsibility of hers. “She’s a lot like the Stoltzfus girl,” Levi said to himself, and he was not happy with the comparison.

  At the ranch Jim found Charlotte preparing her wardrobe for their wedding, and without any attempt at finesse he said, “Clemma’s back.”r />
  Charlotte continued laying out her clothes, and said nothing.

  “She’s back,” he shouted. “And I’m going to marry her.” Charlotte did not even pale. She simply pulled Jim around by the arm and asked, “You’re what?”

  “I’ve got to marry her. It’s her only salvation.”

  Charlotte did not ask, “And what about me?” Instead she said quietly, “James Lloyd, our wedding is six days from now. Take those days to think this over. But bear in mind one thing. Clemma Zendt will ruin you. She’s a drifter. She cannot control herself. And you deserve better than that.”

  He tried to explain, to protest, but she would hear none of it. “Please leave now,” she said firmly, a very proud and resolute woman. “Ride your horse, James, and do some thinking.”

  She escorted him to the door, and felt inclined to shove him out, when a much wiser tactic came to mind. Holding him by one hand, she gave him a long kiss and told him, “You’re a man worth having, James Lloyd. And I intend to marry you.”

  For two days he rode to the corners of the ranch in a fever of indecision. Twice he went into town to talk with the Zendts, and as soon as he came within the presence of Clemma he felt his heart pounding, and once when she kissed him goodbye it seemed as if all the passion of Colorado were compressed in her lithe and poetic body.

  His mind was made up. Clemma was the only woman he would marry. But as he rode east of town to that crossing of the Platte where he had first seen her, a captivating little Indian girl of thirteen, he suddenly realized that all through the years he had continued to think of her as that fairy-tale child. He really knew nothing of her as a woman, or what had touched her in St. Louis and Chicago. And at last he had to face the truth: that he was in love with an obsession which he himself had cultivated.

  However, on the fourth day, still indecisive, he returned to the Zendts’ to find that Clemma had been drinking, seeking to fortify herself against the charge circulating in the town that she had come home to take Jim away from Charlotte Seccombe. The accusation of course was false, since she could not possibly have known of the marriage plans, but when Jim tried to explain this, she repeated what she had predicted in Chicago: “They just don’t want Indians in this town.”

  “Ridiculous! Your mother ...”

  She was no longer listening. Across the prairie the evening train whistled, and he could see that the sound tormented her, and that she was no longer a story-book Indian princess of thirteen but a tragic and haunted woman of thirty-four.

  On the evening of July 4 the Zendts were in their kitchen when a knock sounded on their screen door. “Come in,” Levi called, and he was surprised when Charlotte entered. She nodded to the senior Zendts and asked if she could speak to their daughter alone. When they left, she shifted one of the chairs so that she could sit facing Clemma.

  “I want you to leave on the morning train,” she said firmly.

  “He wants to marry me.”

  “I’m quite sure he thinks he does.”

  “And I want to marry him,” Clemma said softly.

  “Do you? Really?”

  “I should have married him years ago.”

  “Positively,” Charlotte said with real eagerness. “You should have married him while I still lived in England. You should have married him the year of the blizzard, when he was promoted. You should have married him a thousand times ... but you didn’t.”

  “I always meant to come back ...”

  “But you didn’t. You never had the courage.”

  Clemma poured herself a small drink and felt better when it was downed. “I don’t want to hurt you, Mrs. Seccombe,” she said.

  “We’re not talking about me,” Charlotte corrected. “We’re talking about your hurting James Lloyd.”

  “Jim?” Clemma cried, and something in the way she said the word—as if he were inanimate—made Charlotte realize that this woman had never once considered Jim as a human being with rights and feelings of his own. She, Charlotte, had considered Jim’s estate most carefully; she would do nothing to demean him, would not even marry him if she thought she might in any way destroy or even imperil his manliness.

  “Yes, Clemma, we’re speaking of James Lloyd ... a real human being. Long ago you’d have destroyed him if he’d been one shade weaker.”

  “I never meant ...”

  “I know you didn’t,” Charlotte said softly. “Even now you mean nothing wrong.”

  “But you’re older than he is, Mrs. Seccombe. How can he love you the way ...”

  “He can’t. He’ll always love you. But with me he can make a life for himself. With you ...” She hesitated, knowing that whatever she said next would be of crucial importance. “How long would you stay with Jim?”

  “Well ...”

  “How long?” Charlotte asked with great force. “How long before the morning train took you away again?” There was no reply, and she added, “For the sake of a man who at last has a chance to build a life for himself, get out of here.”

  She left Clemma seated in a chair, staring at the floor, a small glass in her hand. As Charlotte came onto the porch she told the older Zendts, “I advised her to leave.”

  “You were wise,” Levi said. He was an old man now, entering his seventies, and he could sustain no illusions about his daughter; he supposed that she would leave in the morning and that they would never see her again.

  She did leave. Jim Lloyd, weighing feed, heard about it from one of his cowboys who had delivered steers to the morning train. For two days he roamed the prairie, riding out to where Line Camp Two had been located, then up toward the Nebraska border, where he had long ago homesteaded that excellent piece of land at the mouth of the draw.

  When his turbulent spirit came under control, he could see again that eternal prairie and his relationship to it. Bending low over the withers of his horse he muttered, “You work. That’s what you do. You work the land and make it feed your cattle. And after a few short years they bury you in the earth, and what has happened in between doesn’t matter a hell of a lot. Just so long as you keep close to the earth.”

  With a comprehension that would last for the remainder of his life he rode back to the castle and said simply, “I abused you, Charlotte, and I apologize. If you’ll have me, let’s get married.”

  “I will indeed have you,” she said. “I fought for you, and together we’ll build something this state will be proud of.”

  He clasped her hand, then said, “Before we ride in to see the minister I want you to have this paper. It’s my wedding present to you. I bought it two weeks ago.”

  When she inspected the paper she found it to be the deed for the retreat among the piñons at Line Camp Four. He had spent all his savings to buy it back from the man in Cheyenne. “It’s proper that you should have it,” he said. “I built it years ago ... for someone like you.”

  CAUTION TO US EDITORS: There is no way you can exaggerate the cattleman’s contempt for the sheepman. When Charles Russell, the famous cowboy artist, first went from St. Louis to Montana, he could find no work on a ranch, so for two weeks he helped run sheep. Subsequently he completed over 3500 works of art, in which he portrayed every known kind of western animal: rabbit, bear, buffalo, you name it. But never once did he depict a sheep. That he would not tolerate.

  I witnessed two vivid exhibitions of the old animosity. The Rotary Club at Centennial invited me to lunch, and my host, Morgan Wendell, asked my forgiveness in advance. “This is hardly a proper day to take a guest,” he said, but I didn’t understand. Before the meal the president apologized, saying, “Gentlemen, we must exhibit our sense of fair play. After all, a lot of people share Colorado, and we must live together. Once a year to prove our brotherhood this club serves lamb.” Six members rose and strode from the hall, including a grizzled veteran who had been sitting beside me. As he left he growled, “I’m seventy and I’ll be goddamned if any man will ever accuse me of eating sheep.” Three men at my table remained in the audience bu
t refused to touch their food. After the meeting they would go to some restaurant and have real food, and Morgan Wendell, a man with a college education, was among them.

  Another time I was doing some investigation on the loneliest part of the prairies, at a ramshackled house which had broken the heart of homesteaders, who had abandoned it. An old squatter now occupied it, making his meals from cans. When I asked him who lived on the big ranch I passed, one with good water and a fine set of buildings, where the occupants were probably making a fortune, he said, “You wouldn’t want to bother with them ... sad case ... they run sheep.”

  Warning. In Wyoming the range wars were a lot more virulent than in Colorado, but even though they do provide good illustrative material, I would advise against referring to them. Frank Horn was such a vile killer that after he was hanged, they skinned him and tanned his hide and from it sewed articles which they gleefully exhibited in the local drugstore. Frank Canton was a fascinating Jekyll-Hyde, churchgoing cattle detective by day, a moonlighting range murderer at night, always in the employ of members of the Cheyenne Club but never so careless as to be caught.