Mrs. Peel obeyed him, thinking how pleasant it was to have someone to take charge and give orders and make up her mind for her when she was so dazed that all she would have done would have been to sit hunched over a fire and wait for Dr. Clark’s telephone call and try to get everything sorted out in her own mind and decided and—oh, she couldn’t even take care of her sentences any more; things were just running away from her.
After breakfast, which she ate with an appetite that surprised her, they sat with their elbows on the kitchen table, talking over their fourth cup of coffee and a cigarette. She was warm enough now to throw off the wool dressing-gown which had covered her tweed suit and sweater, and somehow everything began to look less difficult to solve.
“Thank you, Jim,” she said, “for taking charge last night.”
“Someone had to, I guess.” The younger men didn’t feel they ought to take charge, and Atherton Jones had just dithered around stroking his hair and saying, “Good heavens, this is terrible, terrible!” It had been easy enough to take charge, Jim thought. All he had done was to get Dr. Clark to bring up the ambulance and get Esther Park out of the house.
“She didn’t want to go to the hospital. She wanted to stay here. That’s worried me, Jim. Could we have nursed her here?”
“And kept you tied to her room for months? No. Besides, she was Jones’s friend, wasn’t she?”
“It was puzzling the way she didn’t want to go to the hospital. No one knew her there, she kept saying.”
“I wired for her sister to come and take charge,” Jim said.
“I think I’ll go down to Three Springs and stay until the sister arrives.”
Jim Brent looked at her thoughtfully. “It seems to me,” he said slowly, “that there are nurses and doctors in a hospital. And her sister, if she likes to catch the first ’plane from New York to Denver, could be in Three Springs by this evening.”
“Perhaps she won’t though.”
“Look, you are not going down to Three Springs. You are just about ready to be ill yourself. If anyone should hang around Three Springs until the sister arrives it should be Atherton Jones. He knows the family. Let him deal with this. He started it all in the first place. I told him as much last night.”
“You told him?”
“Well, he was making quite a speech about someone having to go down to Three Springs—what would the sister think, and all that stuff. I said, sure, what would the sister think if she found the family friend was still having a holiday some thirty-five miles away from the hospital.”
“Oh, Jim!”
“And before he got his second wind I told him Jackson would drive him into Three Springs this morning before the parade started through Sweetwater.”
“What did Prender say?”
“Oh, he fluffed a bit. But he’s leaving here at nine o’clock.”
Mrs. Peel said, “Well, it looks as if I’m too late to decide anything.” She smiled. “And I’m glad, too. Every time I try to make things simple I always end up complicated.”
“It was rough justice, perhaps,” Jim admitted. “But sometimes that’s the most honest kind of justice. And I shouldn’t worry too much about Esther Park, either. She asked for this.”
“Now, Jim,” Mrs. Peel said, “that’s not like you to say that. People do get lost, and frightened. And seeing the Indians in the dark...” Mrs. Peel shook her head sadly.
“Look, where does she get her ideas about people? This is 1948.”
“But you’ve been brought up among Indians, Jim. You know them. We don’t. Look how we all got so excited last night, once Esther was safely away in the ambulance and we could have our party with the Indians. It was the most fantastic and exciting experience for all of us. I know they were drinking coffee and talking with me ten minutes before, and we had all laughed together. But once they started dancing I was scared. I just stood, unable to speak, or even to move. And so were the others. Even Grubbock and Koffing were impressed.”
Before the drums started to beat Earl and Karl had been discussing a lot of things that caught their fancy. The Indians’ long, tight red woollen underwear, for instance, which now took the place of the red paint which once had covered their bodies. Was it, Earl wanted to know, the happiest solution for the problem of skin that had become accustomed to warm clothing? Karl said the white man had given the Indians all his worst faults—colds, drink, and modesty. He thought it was comic, too, that Cowboys and Indians had become an historic game, for now there were only Indian cowboys. Earl Grubbock wondered if Pocahontas would have won John Smith’s heart if she had worn lipstick and blue jeans and a permanent wave. But both Karl and Earl stopped joking when the drums began. Then a silence fell. And the men began to dance, moving in a circle round the central pole, where once an enormous fire would have blazed. Their intent, painted faces, their elaborately dressed bodies, were lit by the flares that hissed and spluttered on the grass. Their feet stamped the rhythms of the discordant drums. The women and children watched and listened, quiet, motionless. And behind them all stood the tall white tepees with the dried scalps hanging from them, like ghosts in the shadows under a cold, hard sky.
“Yes,” Mrs. Peel said, remembering, “we all stood silent then. Even if there was red woollen underwear beneath the shoulder-capes and breech-clouts and beads and feathers, that didn’t matter. For there was something else—strong and deep. Something terrifying, as all old primitive ideas can be terrifying. Perhaps because they are so real. Don’t you see, Jim?”
“Yes.” He looked at her again, and this time he decided to tell her. “But what I had in mind mostly was this. Esther Park didn’t have to be on that rock in the darkness. She asked for all that happened to her. Look, Mrs. Peel; she must have heard Chuck. The Indian boys described exactly how she was sitting, and where she was sitting, when they reached her just ten minutes after Chuck was calling. They heard Chuck, remember. Now, when you questioned her, she told you she was too weak and exhausted to call back. But she could still have pulled the trigger of that gun of hers. Sally and I had a look at it. It hadn’t been fired.” He took the gun out of his pocket and placed it on the table. “Why didn’t you tell me she was wandering around all month with this gadget at her belt? We’d have stopped that mighty quick, I can tell you.”
“Well, no one took me very seriously about that, and I didn’t want to trouble you. Besides, she never used it, did she?”
“And if she had? Don’t you kind of think that trouble is best taken care of before it starts?”
“Yes, I see that now.” But the others had seemed to think that any interference was an attack on Esther Park’s personal freedom: she liked having a gun, and that was her own business. No more dangerous, Prender had said, than owning a car that tempted you to drive at eighty miles an hour. None of them had approved of the gun, of course, but none of them had wanted to interfere, either. “It’s a wonder she didn’t shoot the Indians,” Mrs. Peel said thankfully.
“She tried to, when she was lying on the ground screaming her head off. The Indians stopped, to let me reach her first. I saw her struggling to pull something out of that purse on her belt. Lucky the lamp shone on it. I kicked it out of her hand, and hit her over the head to keep her quiet. Couldn’t have got her back to the ranch if I hadn’t.”
“That’s why she kept saying the Indians scalped her! I had the most frightful time explaining they couldn’t have, because her hair was still on her head. But she said they had. She felt the blow of the tomahawk.”
Jim shook his head. “If that woman weren’t such a tragedy she’d be a comedy. Didn’t she realise that if you carry a gun and are lost, then you fire the gun to attract attention? Or didn’t she think that we’d notice this?” He pulled out the torn wrappers of the chocolate bars which he had found in the glade. “Two half-pound slabs. Who takes that with them for a morning ride, anyway? Wonder she wasn’t as sick as a dog,” he added, in disgust. “And another thing, did she think you can tie a horse to a t
ree for hours and it won’t leave any traces?”
“Then she planned it all,” Mrs. Peel said, suddenly angry.
“And she got more than she bargained for.”
“Does anyone else know about this?” Mrs. Peel thought of what the others would say.
“Best keep it quiet,” Jim said. “She’s away. That’s the main thing.”
Mrs. Peel agreed., “If the Indian boys hadn’t admitted seeing her—why, we’d have been searching all night!” And other accidents could have happened on the dark trails. And the rodeo would have been ruined for everyone. And Ned—with his entry money paid. And Bert too, who hoped to win something at bulldogging. For the cowboys would have searched all night through and all day if necessary. “Jim,” she asked suddenly, “what about the horse? Did you ask for it?”
He smiled. “Not this time. But I got the saddle and bridle back. I let Slow-to-Move and Running-Nose learn that I knew the horse had wandered. I said that you were worried about the saddle and bridle because they were your favourites.”
“I was worried?”
“Well, I said Flowing Ink was worried. I also said you would give the horse as a present to the boy who was clever enough to find it and bring back the harness. The saddle was sitting on the hitching-rail by three o’clock this morning.”
“Flowing Ink will pay for the horse certainly,” Mrs. Peel said, with a smile. “But, Jim, aren’t you angry about it all?”
“I don’t see what good that can do now. There had to be a slight balancing of accounts, and the horse did it. You see, the Indians took some trouble finding Esther Park last night—that interfered with all their own arrangements. And John Running-Nose lost a silver buckle through some bet that his son made, I heard. And Hubert Slow-to-Move lost a valuable tail-feather in the pine-woods. Belonged to his great-grandfather. So I knew then the horse was gone for good, no matter what I said.”
“What if a horse had been stolen from the corral, and there had been no trouble about Esther?” Mrs. Peel asked. It was all, as she had said earlier this evening, very involved. And yet logical too.
“I’d have made a good try at getting it back. It’s a matter of who’s to laugh last. The Indians like a joke. Keeps them happy for years. If you see an Indian laughing at something that doesn’t seem funny to you he’s remembering how a joke once began just with the same kind of situation he sees round him now. And he’s thinking that the joke could be repeated again. It might not be, but it could, and he’s enjoying it in any case.”
“And once I thought Indians were a grave and gloomy people,” Mrs. Peel said, remembering the laughter and talk and noise and bustle of the Indian camp last night.
“That’s when they are among strangers,” Jim said. “But yesterday they were your hosts. Well, now, we’d both better get a couple of hours’ sleep.” He left, without wasting any more time on unnecessary goodbyes.
Mrs. Peel watched him for a moment. There’s another comforting kind of man to have around your life, she thought. Then she had no more time to think of Jim or of Sally, for the telephone bell rang sharply in the hall. It was Dr. Clark, with reassuring news. There were no further complications. Just a nice, straightforward fracture which would keep Esther out of mischief for a few months. There was nothing to worry about; everything was well under control. And he had found just the right nurse, too. He didn’t say that the rest of the hospital staff called her the Holy Terror. Instead he ended with a cheery, “See you at the rodeo!”
Mrs. Peel climbed the stairs happily to her bedroom. She lowered the blinds and drew the curtains to keep the sun out. And within five minutes she was deeply, wonderfully asleep.
27
SWEETWATER STAMPEDE
Mrs. Peel, Sally, and Earl Grubbock arrived in Sweetwater well before the parade was due to start. They drove in with Jackson and Prender Atherton Jones, who was all packed and prepared for Three Springs. This was Mrs. Peel’s first journey down to Sweetwater—her arrival at Rest and be Thankful by the Snaggletooth road had been almost enough to cure her of travel—so that she found herself excited and curious as they approached the little town.
It lay at the beginning of a plain stretching eastward, rippling in waves of small hills, spreading into infinite distance. The plain was a dust-coloured green, covered with sagebrush and buffalo grass. Some ten miles away (although, if the map hadn’t insisted on ten, Mrs. Peel would have said two) a small puff of white smoke traced the path of a train on the singletrack railroad, winding its way towards three neat circles of blue water. That would be Three Springs, proud possessor of a railroad station. Distances within distance were peculiar, Mrs. Peel thought. These strange islands of stone called buttes, for instance, which rose steeply and unexpectedly out of the distant plains: bare mountains with their peaks cut off, flatly, evenly, their steep sides clearly balanced and outlined. They looked as if they had been built by a forgotten race of giants who liked their tables pyramid-style. She couldn’t believe that the nearest butte was over seventy miles away, and the farthest one was a hundred and ten miles distant. But Sally said it was true enough, and had given her the map to prove it.
As they drove down the twisting road into Sweetwater and entered the cluster of dolls’ houses and treetops, which suddenly became real houses and shaded gardens, they began to forget the lonely miles of plain which stretched out so hungrily towards the town. Sweetwater had obviously no fears that it could be swallowed up. The log cabins were substantial, and there to stay. The white-painted houses had their plots of well-tended grass and bright flowers. And Main Street, looking very different from the buffalo trail that had wandered over the giant plain only seventy years ago, was a smiling host. Banners and flags were strung overhead across the street; every store was decorated; and the biggest sign of all, stretching from an upper window in the two-storied Court-house to the roof of the Teton Bar opposite, bade them “WELCOME, STRANGER, TO THE SWEETWATER STAMPEDE!”
It was there that Prender Atherton Jones began to flinch. But the others, most annoyingly, were too busy enjoying themselves as Jackson drove the car slowly along the bustling street, avoiding the darting children, the arriving cars, and the tethered horses. Sally knew everyone, it seemed, and everyone knew Sally.
Mrs. Dan Givings stood at the doorway of her Western General Emporium and gave them the first wave. Next there was Milt Jerks, with his new white beaver felt. He was standing outside the B Q Bar discussing the day’s events with a group of men. This was, as Sally pointed out, an astute middle point between the Wigwam Laundry, the Fill-up Gas Station (“WE CHECK YOUR WATER, WE MEASURE YOUR OIL, WE DO ALL WE OUGHTER, AND SAVE YOU TOIL”), the Rocky Mountain Regal Palace Cinema (Roaring Gulch and Two-gun Hennessey, grand double feature, air-conditioned), and the Western Supply, with the hitching-rail, well hitched this morning, at its doors. “I suppose the airfield will just have to take care of itself today,” Sally said. She waved back to the dazzling Jerks hat, once she had recovered from the electric-blue satin tie and the embroidered shirt with its silver buttons.
Outside the Purple Rim Cheesit Bridger and his friends were grouped in more normal attire, having contented themselves with a fresh cotton shirt and a good shave. Their best hats looked remarkably like their usual hats, except that they were twelve years or so younger. They weren’t the kind of hats that waved at ten o’clock in the morning, but the way they were pulled down a little more over the friendly eyes made Sally and Mrs. Peel feel welcomed, not just for this day, but for any other day too.
There ended the first block, and Ed Yonker, the under-sheriff, doing traffic duty for the day, waved them on against the lights. He gave them a broad smile, called, “Hello, Miss Bly! Going to enter for the bronc-riding?” and went back to his own conversation with three friends who were grouped round him.
In the second block in Main Street Bill’s Drug Store said, “WE WELCOME YOU!” And Mrs. Bill, of the Zenith Beauty Shop upstairs, had a commendable placard saying, “us Too!” The Methodist Ch
urch welcomed all and everyone. Vic Matteotti, Boots Soled and Bought, had an outsize American flag. Cas Morawski, of the Elk Café, had two flags. The Evangelical Lutheran welcomed one and all. The office of The Sweetwater Sentinel had its welcome (“WELCOME!”) framed in the flags of the United Nations. This idea had almost caused the staff, who had worked all night in the best newspaper tradition, to have nervous prostration deciding which flag was upside down and which wasn’t, even if it looked as if it were.
Young Bill, son of Bill of Bill’s Drug Store (and of Mrs. Bill) was doing his job of traffic-directing towards the third block in grand style. He had been a traffic M.P. at Remagen Bridge, and his short, efficient gestures were so unmistakably clear and commanding, even to the most frenzied farmer’s wife in a car packed with swarming children, that his admiring audience on the sidewalk all said it was no wonder Bradley got across the Rhine so damned quick. Young Bill was doing such good business that J. Huff Top Quality Groceries must have wondered why he had spent so much time on a window display. Still, for those who cared to turn round, it was a sight worth seeing: an artistic Empire State Building, worked out in cans of Sheridan Export from one of J. Huff’s postal-card collection. Next door a large banner in red letters told you, “PETE KENNEDY’S MEN’S WEAR BIDS YOU WELCOME!” The window of Mat Billings, Meat Market, was quite filled by the head of a buffalo with a formidable frown and a curly forelock. Henry Adelbert, apothecary, had a stuffed rattlesnake fighting it out with a ruffled eagle (suspended by wires), which also helped—trust Henry—to emphasise his window display on antidote for snakebites. Bartlett’s Billiards had washed its windows. The Bank was closing its doors. And Joe’s Barber Shop, overflowing with last-minute customers who wanted a haircut to set off their best hats, had produced a genuine wooden Indian, which two Iropshaws and a Flatfeet were studying with interest.
Rest and Be Thankful Page 35
