by Anya Seton
‘Natanay,’ she whispered, and for an instant the near, protecting stars seemed to withdraw into frozen distance. Sharply in her memory she heard the church bells as they had clanged ten years ago in Santa Fe for a frightened, lonely child. She shut her eyes and stood swaying against the ever-freshening night wind. Then she walked down the hillside.
Terry met her outside the cabin. ‘Where in thunder’ve you been?’ he cried, catching her to him. ‘I thought you were fixing up, but they told me in there you went out strolling with an Injun.’
‘He was an old friend, Terry,’ she said. ‘I met him long ago.’
Terry roared. His teeth gleamed. His silk shirt clung to his slim, powerful body. He gave out a strong aroma of bay rum and whiskey. ‘ Can’t make me jealous tonight. If he’s an old friend, ask the Injun to the wedding.’
She shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t come.’
Terry was not interested. He swept her in through the door, calling, ‘Found my bride, boys!’ and they were received with boozy cheers from the prospectors.
Twenty minutes later, Fey and Terry were married. During the ceremony they stood before a table which Wootton had pulled out from behind the bar and hastily wiped off. He had also placed a tattered Bible upon it, with a hazy idea of lending some proper solemnity to the occasion. He produced Fey’s ring from a box of trinkets which he kept on hand for bartering with the Indians—it was made of two gold-washed wires clumsily entwined into a lover’s knot.
‘And so—by the power invested in me by the territories of Colorady and New Mexico I now pronounce you man and wife,’ finished Uncle Dick, and went on at once uncertainly, ‘Don’t know but it seems like we ought to do something more—kind of round it off.’ He looked at the young couple in front of him. They both looked frightened. Dillon’s eyes were easy enough to read, startled misgiving. The look of a brusquely sobered man who awakens to find himself in a predicament. The girl’s face was harder. Her gray eyes were wide and staring at some point past his head. She was unnaturally still except for her hands. Her right index finger and thumb twisted the shiny wedding ring round and round in a slow mechanical way which Wootton found disquieting.
‘Let’s sing a hymn, boys!’ cried Uncle Dick to the five prospectors. ‘Come on, you Injuns,’ he called to the silent gathering at the back of the room. ‘You sing, too—got to have music at a wedding.’ He cleared his throat and struck up the first tune which occurred to him.
‘From Greenland’s icy mountains, and India’s coral strand——’
The prospectors joined in hoarsely. The Indians politely shuffled in rhythm and made low, chanting noises.
Fey lowered her gaze in a bewildered way, and stopped twisting the ring, but Terry’s eyes cleared. ‘ By God,’ he cried, ‘we can do better than that—sounds like a funeral.’ He grabbed his banjo. ‘ Give me a drink,’ he said to Wootton, and he burst into a rollicking version of ‘Jingle Bells.’ ‘Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way——’
He sang at the top of his voice, purposely falsetto, and he stamped his foot on each beat. The Indians fell silent again, but one of the prospectors seized the half-breed squaw and cavorted around the room with her. Wootton beat time on the bar and sang too.
Fey continued to stand by the table.
‘Liven up and dance, sweetheart,’ called Terry. ‘Dance with the minister.’ He gave her a little push toward Wootton.
She shook her head. Her hands were clasped tight together. The thin twang of the banjo rattled in her ears, jingle, jingle, like tin, like pellets of ice.
Terry had been watching her. He finished in a spatter of chords, flung the banjo on a chair. ‘ G’night all!’ he cried. ‘And don’t you dass to give us a chivaree.’
He reached down and picked Fey up in his arms, stood holding her a moment like that high in the air.
The prospectors snickered and nudged each other, looking at them enviously.
‘This way, folks,’ said Wootton, frowning. ‘We’ve fixed up the downstairs bedroom for you tonight.’ He was displeased. There wasn’t much decency about the way the young fellow was acting. Bed, of course, was the proper place for a new married couple, but there was something animal-like, uncouth, about the way things were going. And the girl, with her eyes shut, looking half-drowned. He averted his gaze from the sight of Terry laying the girl down on the big double bed. The squaw had put on the best goose-feather pillows and a fancy quilt from the East. The girl was so slight she hardly made a dent on it, but her bosom was fluttering—like she was in pain.
Well, they were married, anyhow, and all legal, thought Uncle Dick, trying to recapture his early feeling of triumph. He shut the bedroom door.
Chapter Seven
TERRY AND FEY spent three weeks traveling eastward on the remainder of the Santa Fe Trail. For them both the discomforts of the journey—stifling dust and pitiless beating sun, drenching thunderstorms, swollen fords, mosquitoes, and broken axles—all were hazed and diminished by their preoccupation with each other. Even for Terry, the companionship of this responsive, passionate girl was enough, and her presence beside him attuned him to beauty he would never otherwise have noticed. He shared in her delighted interest when they first heard the whip-poor-will and the delicate song of the lark. He stopped the wagon to gaze with her at a distant herd of antelope, floating like fairy beasts into the violet dusk. And earlier, after they had left Old Fort Bent on the Arkansas and had their last glimpse of the mountains, he had felt as she did the poignancy of this farewell.
‘It’s so flat,’ whispered Fey, staring at the unbroken plains ahead of them. ‘I didn’t know it would be so flat.’ And she strained back to see the Spanish Peaks; two lone, snow-topped sentinels on the western horizon, last outposts of the Rockies behind them. ‘Terry, are there no more mountains?’
He shook his head. ‘Not for over a thousand miles.’ He bent and kissed her, and they clung together, both awed by the vast indifferent prairie stretching limitlessly to meet the vast and indifferent sky.
‘We’ll get used to it, darling,’ he said. ‘We’ll get along.’
Her heart swelled that he should understand and comfort her. Mountains had been part of her life, the Sangre de Cristos, the Sandias, and on the Trail there had still been the Ratons—all guardians, protecting one from this feeling of pressed-down, terrifying insignificance.
Terry picked up the reins and flicked the mules. The wagon creaked, the wheels resumed their rhythmical dry swish through the buffalo grass. Fey leaned against Terry’s shoulder. ‘Yes—we have each other,’ she whispered, closing her eyes, and resting softly against him.
See, she said to Natanay and La Gertrudis, see how wrong you were. He is my man, and he loves me. And she felt for them a scornful pity.
But she seldom thought of the past and never of the future. At night in the wagon or under the buffalo robe beneath the stars, she gave herself to Terry with an eager pagan joyousness. And he was deeply moved. For those weeks he did not regret the marriage nor look ahead to anything but a continuation of this vivid physical bliss. When he sometimes remembered that this girl, who was so delightful a mistress, was also his wife, he felt astonishment and complacency. They had not, however, found a padre to perform the religious ceremony. ‘In Leavenworth, perhaps,’ he told Fey, ‘or maybe in New York.’ And she had acquiesced, as she did in everything.
Below the unfolding excitement of their passion the material incidents of the journey rolled on inexorably. One day they reached Fort Dodge—a collection of mud hovels at the edge of the arid country—and here they had two glimpses of buffalo. At Fort Larned they picked up the perennial rumor that the vicious Kiowas were on the warpath, and though neither of them wished for company, they were persuaded by excited warnings to join forces for a few days with an empty homebound wagon train. But once the scare was over, they shot ahead of the slow oxen. Neither of them had the knowledge or experience to fear the plains Indians. Terry was constitutionally incapable of worry, an
d Fey naturally thought of all Indians in terms of the Pueblos—and Natanay.
In any case the Trail was no longer the dangerous adventure that it had been; during this summer of 1867 over six thousand wagons had deepened the ruts and mudholes between Leavenworth and Santa Fe, and from Bent’s Fort eastward, Terry and Fey were often in sight of other travelers.
These they punctiliously greeted as the courtesy of the Trail demanded, but except for the days of the Kiowa scare, they were alone and content.
Each morning was an adventure, and each meal a delight to their sharp appetites. Sometimes there was buffalo steak and home-made bread bought from one of the sod shanties which were beginning to dot the plains. More often there was a rabbit or plover which Terry himself had shot and which Fey had become expert at cooking in their frying pan.
They drank quarts of scalding hot coffee or sweet water from an unexpected spring, and Terry did not miss whiskey, which was unprocurable except at the forts and too expensive for them there.
They discovered, as lovers always have, the joy of childish games—teasing, coaxing games rewarded by kisses; of a private language and silly jokes. Often in the evening, while they sat by their little fire, Terry amused her by reciting extracts from romantic rôles he had played. He had a good memory, and her adoring interest stimulated him to better acting than he had ever done on the stage. She responded by singing him Spanish love-songs while he lay with his head on her lap listening drowsily. Her low voice throbbed in its new maturity, and she sang the plaintive melodies so that each soft note was a caress.
One afternoon, near Pawnee Rock, they rejoiced to find a deep spot in the Arkansas—disappointing river, all too often thinned to a yellow trickle oozing over mud flats. But this pool was deep enough for bathing, and the flat alkaline water, sheltered by a fringe of scrubby willows, was unexpectedly cool.
They had splashed and ducked each other until their bodies glowed, then, refreshed and clean, they had clambered back up the bank to lie in the shade of cottonwoods. The Kansas prairie did not seem intimidating then. Outside the shelter of their grove it lay like a warm brown ocean lapped in content. A small breeze came with the sunset and the gentle insect noises increased; the plop of grasshoppers in the gamma grass and the prolonged clickings like a thousand tiny stemwinder watches. Near the wagon the mules munched and swished their tails.
‘Peaceful,’ murmured Terry. He yawned and turned to watch Fey.
She was languidly drying her hair, shaking it, combing it out over her naked shoulders and breasts. It rippled over them like live black silk, iridescent in the deep waves, catching the light as she combed. She was frowning a little, mysterious and entirely unself-conscious, absorbed in the feminine rite.
His heartbeats slowed and thickened. He reached out and touched a strand of the long gleaming hair.
‘Don’t braid it,’ he whispered. ‘You’re beautiful like that.’
At once she loosed the part she had gathered in her hand and put the comb on the ground. She leaned back on her elbow, smiling down at him. ‘As you wish—Terry. Always——’
They looked deep into each other’s eyes.
‘Don’t!’ He made a violent motion with his hand, bringing it down sharply between them.
‘Don’t what—?’ she breathed. She drew back. The tender smile faded from her mouth. She crossed her arms hard over her breasts.
Don’t what? He did not know. She had brought him pain, dim—unnamed.
He jumped up, shaking back his curls. His eyes were hostile. ‘ It’s getting cold. Better get some clothes on.’
She bowed her head, pulling her hair around her. She walked silently to the wagon.
Later, after they had eaten, he was still brusque, and he would not look at her. They talked of practical things. How many miles tomorrow? The mules’ feed was getting low again.
Fey, now dressed in the sprigged calico, her braids pinned tight around her head, busied herself in washing and putting away the cooking utensils.
Terry rambled around their camp-site, picking up sticks for the morning fire, shying pebbles at a green butterfly, examining for the third time a small stone bruise on Calvin’s hoof.
Suddenly he went into the wagon, came out carrying his banjo. He flung himself down on a fallen log and played ‘ Turkey in the Straw’ very fast and loud, banging time on the ground with his foot. He finished in a discordant jangle.
‘That was a most strangely angry turkey,’ said Fey. She had moved over beside him, and stood looking down at him. There was a faint smile on her mouth, but her eyes were serious and questioning.
Terry stared at her. Then his sullen face cleared. He threw back his head and laughed, and, catching up a handful of her skirt, he pulled her down onto his lap. ‘You sing then. Sing “Chula la Mañana.”’
Fey hesitated, pushing back the somber cloud—denying it.
He put his hands around her waist, giving her an impatient squeeze.
‘Sing, “Chula”!’
So she sang that blithest of all Mexican love-songs, and Terry, to whom she had taught it, harmonized the melody in his dear baritone. They sang together until the fire fell into embers, and light from the orange prairie moon sifted through the cottonwood leaves onto their upturned faces. After that, in laughter and music and love-making, the gilded days slipped past them and vanished.
One afternoon toward dusk they arrived at Leavenworth City and the end of the Trail.
Leavenworth, with its population of over twenty thousand, was the metropolis of Kansas. During these latter years, as the railroad oozed slow tentacles westward, it had been the eastern terminus of the Trail, the joining point of the wilds and civilization. Here it was that Fey saw her first train, slept in her first hotel, and it was here, too, that she was jarred out of the timeless idyll which she had shared with Terry.
They drove into the bustling little city, and each of them was at once affected by the new atmosphere of briskness and efficiency. The weary mules broke into a startled trot as the wagon rattled down Kickapoo Street toward Main and they encountered a crush of traffic—buggies, stages, and even an elegant brougham. The wooden sidewalks teemed with ladies in stylish crinolines, bewhiskered gentlemen in top hats. No one paid any attention to the travel-worn wagon, and Fey, accustomed to friendly greetings, was dismayed by a sudden feeling of anonymity. It was her first experience of the impersonality of civilization.
Terry had no misgivings and no dismay. He sat very erect on the seat, negligently guiding the nervous mules, his eyes darting from side to side and taking pleased inventory of the city’s attractions. Three whole blocks of stores, good ones, too, with show windows; plenty of prosperous-looking saloons, and actually four hotels which did not compare too unfavorably with those in San Francisco.
‘Of course, this can’t be a patch on the real Eastern towns,’ he observed. ‘But, God, it sure seems good to see something going on. I’m sick of prairies and Injuns and greasers.’
Fey gave him a quick look, and her throat tightened. She saw that he was no longer conscious of her. The honeymoon was over, and Terry, as was his wont, immediately grew bored by the past while he strained to capture the new experience.
It happened that they were near the depot when the five-fifteen snorted and clanged in from Wyandotte. Calvin and Harriet at once became totally unmanageable, and Terry, swearing richly, was forced to yield to their terror. He hitched them around the corner out of sight of the train. ‘ Come on,’ he said to Fey. ‘Let’s look it over.’
She got down from the wagon and followed him to the platform. They stood silently side by side, staring. Smoke and cinders still belched from the locomotive’s funnel-shaped stack, and begrimed passengers were still clambering down the high steps from the three wooden cars. ‘Fine trip, George,’ called a stout man with a gold watch-chain to another man who emerged from the depot. ‘Made it in two hours; remember when it took two days, and not so long ago neither.’
‘Did you clear up th
at deal, Joe?’ asked the Leavenworth man.
‘Like taking candy from a bebby,’ answered he of the gold watch-chain, flourishing his wallet, ‘Money’s flowing like a river back East. All you got to do is get out your little pail and scoop it up.’
Terry watched and listened. He cast one more eager look at the train.
‘Sell the wagon and the mules,’ he said, under his breath—‘hold a couple of shows——’ For the first time since they had reached the city, he returned his attention to Fey.
‘Think you can do your stunt by tomorrow, if we rehearse it again and freshen it up? I got to have time, anyway, to make the Elixir.’
‘What are you planning, Terry?’ said Fey slowly.
‘Make enough money to get East on the cars, of course,’ he answered, astonished. ‘Like I said from the very beginning.’
Yes, she thought, that was always his plan, and I guess it was mine, too, back there in Santa Fe. Why, then, during the last weeks had she forgotten it so completely? Why, in passing the little sod shanties on the prairies, had she unconsciously pictured herself and Terry in one like them, still alone together, loving and striving and building toward a dream as did those other young couples.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ he said negligently as they walked back to the wagon. ‘You ought to be excited over your first sight of the cars. Thing is to scrape together enough to ride on ’em.’
‘I wish we didn’t have to hold a show,’ she said, very low.
They were back on the wagon seat and Terry turned on her a quick anger. ‘You’re my wife now, and you’ll do what I say.’
She answered his look by one of such sadness and yearning that his anger melted. He pulled her against him and began to kiss her.
The medicine show was very nearly a fiasco. They held it on an open lot just north of town and they attracted a fair crowd, since Terry had repainted the sign on the wagon and had driven all day through the streets, pausing on the corners to make speeches.
