Bendigo Shafter (1979)

by L'amour, Louis

  There wasn't fuel enough to last the night so I scouted along the riverbed. Here and there I found a broken limb from a tree, washed down from above, but in two trips I'd found everything within walking distance, and it wasn't much.

  Several times I tried to feed the small boy, but he refused it. I wished John Sampson was with me, or Helen or Mrs. Macken.

  All I could do was keep them warm and hope for the best. After a while the girl fell asleep, and I was alone with the sick child, trying to keep the place warm. Finally there was nothing for it but to burn the stable door, so I brought the horse in with us where his body heat would help and broke down the manger and burned it and then the door. Somehow I kept the fire alive through the long, weary, very cold night.

  Sometime about daybreak I fell asleep myself and was awakened by a hand on my shoulder.

  Mr. Shafter?

  I sat up, ashamed of myself for sleeping. What is it, honey? What's wrong?

  It's my brother, Mr. Shafter. He's gone, I think.

  And so he was.

  Chapter 10

  Drake Morrell tried to sit up when I walked into Sampson's house. Did you find them?

  The boy didn't make it.

  I was afraid of that. How did she take it?

  Like a soldier ... so far.

  Their mother was a fine girl, a very fine one. He looked up at me. I knew her before. Long ago. She was ill. In very bad shape. So was the boy. I knew they had people in New Orleans, and if I could get them to St. Louis they could catch the steamboat.

  He was silent for a while. He looked better but was far from well. He would be weak for a good long time.

  Where is she now?

  At Ruth Macken's. She's a widow with one son, not much older than the girl. She had the most room, and she was the best person for a girl to be with at a time like this.

  He had that book on the table beside him and when I left he began reading again.

  Webb was in Cain's house when I entered. He looked at me. Do you know who that man is? He's a riverboat gambler and gunfighter. He's killed a half dozen men.

  So?

  Figured you'd like to know.

  He conducts himself as a gentleman should, and as long as he does I'll find no fault in him.

  We can always use a good man with a gun, Webb agreed. Two nights later when I was invited to Ruth Macken's fine supper, I saw again the girl I had brought back from the cold.

  Mrs. Macken had contrived a dress for her from an old one of her own. She greeted me with a curtsy and led me to the table. She seemed somehow older than her twelve years, a grave, beautiful girl with large dark eyes.

  This was also the night I was finally returning Walden, which I had read twice, so Mrs. Macken went to her trunk for another. This time it was Plutarch's Lices, a book about ancient Greeks and Romans whose lives were somehow similar.

  More great men have read this book, Mr. Shafter, than any other unless it be the Bible. I think you will enjoy it.

  We ate by candle and firelight, no casual meal as in the other cabins, but a formal dinner, carefully done and carefully served.

  When we were alone for a moment Ruth Macken said, She's very brave, but a strange child. She never mentions her brother, but at night I've heard her crying.

  I shouldn't wonder, losing her mother and brother so nearly together. Does she know anything of her relatives in New Orleans?

  Only their names. She saw them only once, when she was very young, and she remembers they lived in a very grand house and did not approve of her father. He was an actor and played in London and Paris as well as New York.

  What happened to him?

  She hasn't said, and I haven't asked. Ruth Macken smiled at me, amusement in her eyes. You have an admirer, Mr. Shafter. You are her hero now. You came out in the storm and rescued her, just like in the stories.

  I felt myself blushing. I did nothing, I said. She changed the subject. What do you know about Drake Morrel?

  He is a gambler. He was sentenced to be hung in San Francisco, but we don't know the circumstances. How he escaped I have no idea. I am sure he's a man of good family, and with some education. He is reading a book now, in some foreign language. I believe it is Latin.

  Webb knows something about him. He said he had been a river-boat gambler. He has supposedly killed several men, but so have we.

  Only a decent man would allow himself to be saddled with two youngsters while escaping from enemies. I think he will bear acquaintance, Mr. Shafter.

  The days that passed were days of work, and for me, days of planning. I spent many hours with Ethan, going over the Oregon Trail in our talk, talking of water holes, where grass might be found, and such things. Our celebration of Thanksgiving was quiet, a brief sermon by John Sampson and then we sang hymns, the old ones: like Rock of Ages and Come Ye That Love the Lord.

  Drake Morrell recovered slowly, but before he did he hired Tom Croft and me to build him a cabin. We took our pay in gold, a twenty dollar gold piece to each of us. I hoarded mine against the Oregon trip.

  He bought needful things from Ruth Macken, and I was present when he made his purchases. When she answered the door he said, Madam, I understand you have blankets and clothing to sell? She led the way to her storeroom, and he selected blankets and the usual kitchen utensils. He was polite, yet there was something about him that froze off any questions.

  Is there a post? he asked. I mean, can a letter be mailed from here?

  At present, no. We sent some mail by Porter Rockwell when he was here, but there has been no reply.

  Rockwell comes here?

  He came to thank us. We helped some Mormons.

  You were fortunate, he commented dryly, Porter's visits usually have less happy results.

  He studied the matter. Then you've no regular post?

  Not yet. There's talk of a stage line when spring comes again. It has been running off and on for several years, but the Indians steal their horses.

  I'll be going west after Christmas, I said. I am going to buy cattle and drive them back. I could take your letters then.

  He looked at me thoughtfully. You are enterprising. Yes, thank you. I shall write a few. He gathered his packages. Do you have many visitors?

  Almost none. When spring comes we hope that will change.

  I'm sure.

  He bowed again and walked out into the air. A handsome woman, he said, and a lady.

  She lends me books.

  Books?

  I am reading Plutarch, I said.

  He glanced at me. You are fortunate. He was a man of great understanding, a man of the world in its best sense. Yes, he is well worth reading. And Mrs. Macken? Does she read Plutarch?

  Her husband did. I believe she has also.

  What happened to Mr. Macken?

  Indians ... on the way out. Over on the Plain. He'd been a major in the army and served in several frontier posts as well as in the east.

  When we put down the bundles, I said, I noticed you were reading.

  Yes, I have many books, but only the one with me. He smiled. You will understand, Mr. Shafter, I had no time to pack.

  Well, I said, he who reads and runs away lives to read another day.

  He glanced at me again, but made no comment. Then after a moment be said, When a man has put one bullet into you, and you have been trusted with the care of two children, you do not risk a second bullet. No doubt the gentleman and I shall meet again.

  That book ... it was in another language.

  Latin ... the Satires, of Juvenal.

  Turning to the door, I hesitated. Mr. Morrell, I said, I like you. We would like you to stay as long as you wish, but there is one thing. I understand you have had several gun battles.

  Not of my choosing. Not, he added dryly, in every case.

  We have a man here named Webb.

  I have seen him.

  He is a good man, but a difficult one. When there is trouble he is always ready for it, no matter what kind. We need
men like that. But he is touchy ... he has never hunted trouble, but is very quick when it comes.

  Why do you tell me this?

  Because I do not want trouble between you and would not want it to come from a careless word.

  Thank you. I will remember what you have said. He turned away as I started out, then asked, Are you the town marshal?

  No, sir. We do not have one.

  You'd better. I mean before spring comes. This man Webb, perhaps?

  He's too quick.

  Then you? You have handled this situation very correctly.

  I'll be gone, I said, and I don't want the job.

  Sometimes the job selects the man, he said.

  For several days then we saw very little of Drake Morrell. He spent most of his time indoors, occasionally walking down to Beaver Creek in the evening.

  And then we had the chinook.

  I awakened in the night. Something was different, strangely different. At first I could not realize what it was, and then I knew.

  It was warm.

  Lying there in my bed I could hear water dripping from the eaves. I went down the ladder to the window. Cain was sitting on the edge of the bed, listening. What is it, Cain?

  Sounds like rain, but it can't be. Not at this time of the year.

  We opened the door and looked out. Water was dripping from the eaves, and where the night before there had been a solid field of snow there were now large patches of black where the snow was no longer. A warm wind touched our faces, and the snow was vanishing as if by magic.

  It's what Ethan told us about, Cain said, it's a chinook.

  By daylight there was little snow left, and the road to the falls was black with mud. The air felt wonderful, and I bathed my face and upper body in a tin washbasin outside the door.

  For a few days we had fine weather and Cain and I turned to working on the tub mill we planned to build, marking out the ground and beginning the foundation. Croft had gone hunting with Neely Stuart, and all was quiet in the town.

  We worked steadily, hauling rocks and building them into a wall, with smaller rocks for a chimney. Cain worked without effort, the largest boulder seeming nothing to him.

  You were with Morrell when he bought blankets? he asked suddenly.

  Straightening to get the kink out of my back I said, He bought clothing as well. I think he means to stay.

  Cain was silent. After a while he took his pipe from his pocket and lighted it. We can use another man. He's an educated man, you say?

  Yes.

  He will be a companion then to Mrs. Macken. I do not doubt she has wished for somebody with education.

  Surprised, I glanced at him. I hadn't thought of it that way. They had nothing to say to each other.

  Give them time. No doubt she misses educated talk. I heard her husband talk a few times, and he was a man of parts, very bright, and a fine speaker. Whatever he spoke had meaning. And then he added, I never had a gift for words.

  What you say is to the point, and that's important. He returned to work, but the conversation puzzled me. There had been a note of wistfulness, almost of uncertainty in his voice. He was always so calm, so sure. I think he made fewer false moves than any man I ever knew.

  He had always seemed so complete a man that I never thought of him feeling any lack in himself, yet now I knew he did. The lack of education disturbed him, made him less sure. And there was something else there, too. Something that I could not, at the moment, put a finger to.

  After a bit we left our work on the mill and went over to the places chosen and paced off the spots for a schoolhouse and a church. As we gathered tools at the day's end, Cain said to me, We are invited to Ruth Macken's tonight. There's to be a performance.

  A what?

  The little girl you brought to us. It seems she is an actress, as well. She is going to recite and sing.

  An actress? Her?

  They begin very young, sometimes. At least it will be a change.

  We walked to Cain's cabin and he put down the tools under the overhang of the shed. I hope Mrs. Stuart will cause no trouble.

  What sort of trouble?

  She doesn't believe in the child exhibiting herself, as she puts it, before a crowd of people. She was very outspoken.

  It will probably do the child good, I said. She probably feels we have given her everything, and she has done nothing. As for Mrs. Stuart, if she doesn't wish to come, she needn't.

  The weather remained warm, and after chores we all walked up the hill to Mrs. Macken's. Ethan, with Bud's help, had placed some planks on chunks of wood to make benches where we could sit.

  Neely Stuart and his wife were there, looking very prim and proper. Tom and Mary Croft were trying to look the same but not managing it as well. I don't know what they expected or what I expected myself. Probably something like what you'd get at a church pageant or a social, or on visitor's day at school when the children would each stand up and say a 'piece.'

  It was nothing like that.

  She walked out very quickly and said, I am Ninon Vauvert, of New Orleans and Boston, and now of your town.

  She did not seem at all a child but was perfectly poised and composed. She sang The Old Oaken Bucket, which was popular at the time, following it with a song from John Howard Payne's opera, Clari... Home, Sweet Home.

  She sang in a sweet, but a surprisingly strong, well-trained voice, and Morrell, seated beside me, whispered, She is even better than her mother was ... much better.

  She seemed nothing like the slight, shivering child I had held before me on that freezing twenty-mile ride from the Oregon Buttes.

  She danced a clog, something amusing I had seen a Negro do in St. Louis, and recited a poem by a journalist of Philadelphia, who had died a few years before. His name was E. A. Poe, and the poem was called The Raven. None of us had heard it before but Morrell, who had known Poe through a mutual friend, another writer named George Lippard.

  Nobody quite knew what to do when it was over, although we all applauded. Suddenly I felt very awkward toward her. Cain took her hand in his and said, Miss, that was the most beautiful singing I ever heard!

  Mae Stuart ran to her. Ninon, will you teach me to dance like that?

  Neely turned sharply around. Mae! Don't make a fool of yourself! When everybody had gone, Drake Morrell, Ruth Macken, Ninon, and I sat around just talking. Oddly, I had not known her name before.

  She had been carried on the stage while still a baby, she played Cora's child in Pizarro, and the child of Damon in Damon and Pythias, and from that time on had worked most of the time, playing in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Mobile, New Orleans, and San Francisco. After the closing of their show in San Francisco they had started for New York, and her mother had died in the mountains to the west of us, of pneumonia.

  You are welcome here as long as you wish to stay, Ruth Macken told her. We would love to have you.

  She has family in New Orleans, Mrs. Macken, Morrell said, but she has no wish to go to them, and I have no wish to see her go.

  Then don't go, I said bluntly, we haven't much, but I'll do my share to see you have enough.

  I don't know. I don't know what I want to do.

  There's no hurry, Ruth Macken said, it is best to think about it and make up your mind without being hurried.

  We walked outside while Ninon got ready for bed. Standing under the stars, Morrell said, Ninon comes of a very old and very good family, Mrs. Macken. The acting was on her father's side of the family, but they were more than simply strolling players. One of her ancestors wrote some excellent chamber music, another was organist for a king.

  Her family disapproved?

  Very much so. They were aristocratic, very straitlaced, strong on tradition and all that. He glanced at Ruth Macken. I know exactly what she went through and how Paul Vauvert must have seemed when she met him. He was a handsome chap, a really fine musician, and an accomplished actor.

  She had always loved to sing, to dance, to p
erform. What she lacked in talent she more than made up for in vivacity and personality. Ninon is like her. She is like them both, with a strong touch of her grandfather, also. Ninon is intelligent, more than the usual.

  I miss the theater, Mrs. Macken said. We never lived where there were more than a few companies of traveling players, but we visited Boston, New York, and Washington.

  Ninon's mother played in Lady of Lyons, The Duchess, and Our American Cousin. She also played both Juliet and Rosalind. Ninon knows most of the roles. She has a fantastic memory.

  We talked a little longer, of our town as well as of the eastern cities. Most of the time I listened, for there was much to learn, and I knew nothing of such places.

  After Mrs. Macken went back inside Morrell and I walked off down the hill. You're staying on? I asked.

  I have been thinking of it. It is restful here.

  We need you. I mean, there has been trouble, and we are expecting more in the spring, and if I leave, our town will need every gun it can get.

  You'll go alone?

  We can't spare anyone. Ethan Sackett knows the way, but he's our best hunter.

  You are better off alone. Morrell bit the end from a cigar. Begin to depend on no one but yourself. The fewer people whom you trust, the fewer on whom you rely, the better for you. Especially when traveling.

  If you know it is entirely up to you, you will be more careful. The greater the number of travelers, the greater the carelessness. Be wise, my friend, travel alone. You'll ride faster and farther.

  And when I bring the herd back?

  Hire men as needed, get rid of them immediately if they cause you trouble, and don't trust any of them. Most of them will be trustworthy, I have no doubt, so you will have lost nothing. Others will try to steal from you or kill you, but you will be on guard.

  We parted, and he walked on to his cabin, and I stood watching until he was within his door, thinking of what he had said. I did not entirely agree with him but his words stuck in my mind and would not leave me.