A Century of Great Western Stories

by A Century of Great Western Stories (retail) (epub)

  He didn’t try to get up but just lay there, and I thought how terrible it was he didn’t have any bunk or bedstead, only the floor under him. Then he smiled at us and said, “The trip was too much for me, I guess. We’ve come a long way. Melora, will you put on the coffee?”

  The woman went to the old stove that had pools of velvety-looking rust on the lids and she set a small black pot on it and filled the pot with water from the bucket. Her arms were soft and rounded but strong lifting the bucket.

  No one said anything for a few moments and I could hear a rustling that seemed to come from all the corners of the room.

  “You’ve got lots of mice,” my uncle Rolfe said.

  Melora smiled at him. “I know. And we forgot to bring traps.”

  Mother looked around and drew her skirts close to her, her mouth pinching into a thin line. I saw her touch the shiny lid of a tin can with her toe. The can lid was nailed over a hole in the rotting wooden floor.

  Melora cut the cake, saying what a beautiful cake it was, and glancing at my mother, who still had that tight look on her face. Then she poured coffee into two battered tin cups and three jelly glasses. “Billy,” she said to me, “if I’d been expecting you, I’d surely have fixed lemonade and put it in the river to cool.” She stroked my head again and then walked over to one of the geraniums and I could see her fingers busy among the leaves. Her hands moved so softly and quietly in the plant that I knew she was loving it just as she had loved me when she touched me.

  We didn’t stay long and Melora walked to the buggy with us. She shook my mother’s hand and said, “You were good to come. Please come back soon—and please bring Billy.”

  Driving home, my mother was silent. Uncle Rolfe finally said, “I knew we shouldn’t go there. Makes a man feel low in his mind to see that. He’s half dead, and how are they going to live?”

  “I’m going to ride over with mousetraps,” I said. “I’ll set them for her.”

  My mother gave me a strange look. “You’re not going alone,” she said firmly.

  “No,” my uncle Rolfe said. “I’ll go with him.”

  A few nights later we rode to the house on the flats and Uncle Rolfe set twelve mousetraps. Sam was in bed and Melora sat on an old spike keg, her hands folded in her lap. We’d just get started talking when a trap would go off and Uncle Rolfe would take it outside, empty it, and set it again.

  “Sam’s asleep now,” Melora said. “He sleeps so much—and it’s just as well. The mice bother him.”

  “Isn’t there any other place you can go?” Uncle Rolfe asked, a roughness in his voice. “You can’t live off this land. It won’t grow anything but sagebrush.”

  “No, we haven’t any other place to go,” Melora replied, and her strong shoulders sagged. “We’ve no kin and Sam needs this climate. I’ve got more plants coming from Missouri—that’s where we used to live. I’ll sell my geraniums. We’ll manage—we always have.”

  She walked out in the night with us when we were leaving. She put her arm around me and held me hard against her. “So young,” she said, “so alive—I’ve been around death a long time. Sam—look at Sam. And our babies died. We had two. And now, now I’ll never have another child—only the geraniums.” Her voice broke and I knew she was crying. Her arms swept me closer and there was something about the way she clung to me that made me hurt inside.

  “Come on, Billy,” Uncle Rolfe said gruffly. I pulled away from Melora and got my horse. I could still hear her sobbing as we rode away.

  We were riding quietly in the dark when my uncle Rolfe began to talk to himself, as though he’d forgotten I was there. “Beautiful,” he said, “and needing a strong red-blooded man to love her. Needing a child to hold in her arms—and there she is, tied to him. Oh Lord, is it right?”

  A week later my uncle Rolfe wrapped a piece of fresh beef in a white sack and rode off toward the flats. My mother watched him go, a frown on her forehead. Then she said to me. “Billy, you bring in the milk cows at five o’clock. I don’t think your uncle Rolfe will be back by then.”

  The next morning I saw a pink geranium on the kitchen table and a piece of brown wrapping paper beside it. On the paper was written in strong sloping letters, “For Anne from Melora.”

  It wasn’t long till everybody in the valley spoke of the cabin on the flats as “Geranium House.” On Sundays, before the haying season started, the ranchers drove out in their buggies and they always went past the cabin on the flats. The women stopped to admire the flowers and usually bought one or two plants. They told my mother how beautiful Melora was and how kind—especially to the children.

  “Yes,” my mother would say and get that pinched look about her mouth.

  One morning in early August when Gus brought the mail, he told us Melora had been driving all over the valley in the cart, selling geraniums and visiting with the women. “And she’s got a new horse to pull the cart,” he said, “a big black one.”

  That afternoon my mother saddled her horse and taking me with her went riding through the horse pasture. “I’m looking for the black gelding,” she said. “Seems to me I haven’t noticed him around lately.”

  We rode until sundown but we didn’t find the gelding. I said he might have jumped the fence and gotten out on the range or into one of the neighbor’s pastures.

  “Yes,” she said, frowning. “I suppose he could have.”

  She asked Uncle Rolfe about the black gelding and Uncle Rolfe let on like he didn’t hear her. “Well,” my mother said tartly, “there’s such a thing as carrying goodwill toward your neighbors too far.”

  “You haven’t,” he said angrily. “You never bothered to go back. And she must be lonely and tired of looking at a sick man every day.”

  “She hasn’t returned my call,” my mother said, her chin in the air. “I’m not obligated to go there again. Besides, there’s something about her—the way she looks at Billy—”

  “You’ve forgotten, Anne, what it is to hunger for love, for a child to be part of you—for a man’s arms around you in the night.”

  Tears came into my mother’s eyes. “No, Rolfe! I haven’t forgotten. But I’ve got Billy—and when I saw her eyes and her hands on the geraniums—Rolfe, it isn’t that I don’t like her. It’s—it hurts me to be around her.”

  Uncle Rolfe put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Anne, I shouldn’t have said a word.”

  “If she comes here,” my mother said, “I’ll make her welcome, Rolfe.”

  And then one warm morning I saw the two-wheeled cart driving up in front of the house, and I saw that the horse pulling it was our black gelding.

  “Billy!” Melora called to me. “How are you, Billy?” And she got out of the cart and put her arms around me and I could feel the warmth coming from her body and covering me like a wool blanket in winter.

  My mother came to the door and asked Melora in. “How’s Sam?” she said.

  Melora put her hand to her eyes as though she wanted to brush something away. She was thinner than when I’d last seen her and her eyes burned bigger and brighter in her face that now had the bones showing under the fine-tanned skin. But still she looked strong, the way a wire is tight and strong before it breaks. “Sam,” she said, “Sam’s all right. As good as he’ll ever be. It’s a weakness, a sickness born in him—as it was in our babies. Anne, I didn’t know Sam was a sick man when I married him. He never told me.”

  Uncle Rolfe came in with his black hair looking wilder than usual. The color burned in Melora’s cheeks and her eyes lighted. “Hello, Rolfe,” she said, “and thank you for being so kind to Sam.”

  “That’s all right,” Uncle Rolfe said gruffly.

  “I went to town to see the minister,” Melora said, still looking at Uncle Rolfe. “I asked him to find me a baby I could adopt—like you suggested. He said ‘no.’”

  “He did!” Uncle Rolfe sounded shocked.

  “He said I had nothing to take care of a baby,” Melora went on. “He said I
had my hands full now. I begged him to help me, but he just sat there with a face like stone and said it wasn’t my lot in life to have a child.”

  “The fool!” Uncle Rolfe muttered.

  My mother set food on the table and asked Melora to stay and eat with us.

  Melora shook her head. “I’m going home and fix something for Sam. He can’t eat much this hot weather but I tell him he must try. And he gets so lonesome when I’m gone.”

  My uncle Rolfe went out and helped her into the cart. He stood for a long time looking down the road after she left.

  Two weeks later we saw the buggy of Gus, the mailman, coming up the road. It wasn’t the day for bringing mail. The horses were running and a big cloud of dust rose behind the buggy. My mother and I stepped onto the porch just as Uncle Rolfe rode in from the haying field with a piece of machinery across the saddle in front of him. My uncle Rolfe dismounted and waited for Gus. The buggy rattled to a stop. The horses were panting and sweating, for it was a hot morning.

  “Melora’s taken Sadie Willard’s baby,” Gus said, “and drove off with it.”

  “Oh no!” My mother twisted her hands.

  “Happened a little while ago,” Gus said. “Sadie went to feed the chickens and when she came back she saw Melora’s cart going over the hill in front of the house. She thought that was strange. She went in the house and looked everywhere and the baby was gone. She sent the sickle grinder to the hay field after Jim and just as I left Jim come in and said he’d get the neighbors and they’d go after Melora. It’s a terrible thing and Jim’s about crazy and Sadie sittin’ cryin’ like her heart would break.”

  Uncle Rolfe looked at my mother. “Anne, you take the lunch to the meadow at noon for our hay hands. Billy, you come with me.” He jammed his big hat lower on his black head and we started for the barn.

  The heat waves shimmered all around us on the prairie as we rode toward Geranium House. When we got there our horses were covered with lather, but there wasn’t any sign of the cart or Melora. Everything looked still and quiet and gray except for the flowers blooming in the windows and around the outside of the cabin.

  Uncle Rolfe pushed the door open and Sam was propped up on some pillows, reading an old newspaper. There were two bright spots of color in his thin cheeks. “Hello, Rolfe,” he said. “Thought you’d be making hay.”

  “Where’s Melora?” Uncle Rolfe asked.

  “Melora? She left me a lunch and said she was going to drive up to the timber and get some water lilies. A lily pond she found awhile ago, I guess. I don’t know where it is, though.”

  “I do,” Uncle Rolfe said.

  “Folks are lookin’ for her,” I said, my voice rising with excitement. “I bet they’re goin’ to—” Uncle Rolfe’s big hand covered my mouth and he shoved me toward the door.

  “What’s wrong?” Sam said. “Has something happened to Melora?” And his face twisted like he was going to cry.

  “No,” Uncle Rolfe said gently, “nothing’s wrong with Melora. You just take it easy, Sam.”

  It took us awhile to reach the timber, for it was so hot we couldn’t crowd the horses and there was no wind moving to cool things off. The smell of pines was thick, almost clogging my nose, and I could see big thunderclouds building up behind the mountains.

  I didn’t know where the pond was but Uncle Rolfe rode right to it. It was a small pond and very smooth, with the blue dragonflies hanging over the yellow lilies. Uncle Rolfe got off his horse and I followed. He took a few steps and stopped, staring.

  There sat Melora under an aspen tree, holding the baby against her breast and her eyes closed and her mouth smiling. She didn’t look like any ordinary woman sitting there. She looked like the pictures of saints they have in Sunday school books.

  Uncle Rolfe said, “Melora—”

  She opened her eyes and looked at us. Then she said in a small frightened voice. “I only wanted to have him a little while to myself—to feel him in my arms. I meant no harm to him.” She got up then, holding the baby carefully. “He’s asleep and don’t you bother him.”

  “They’re looking for you,” Uncle Rolfe said. “Melora, you shouldn’t have done this. The women will never be your friends again.”

  Melora bowed her head and began to cry. The sun came through the trees and made her hair shine until it looked like a halo. “I only wanted to hold him,” she said. “I only wanted to have him in my arms a little while.”

  “Hush!” Uncle Rolfe said roughly. “Where’s the cart?”

  “I hid it in the trees.”

  Then Uncle Rolfe took hold of her arm and said to me, “You bring the horses, Billy.”

  Melora cried all the way through the timber until we reached the cart. Then she sat stiff and quiet, holding the baby. I rode along behind, leading Uncle Rolfe’s horse.

  When we got to the cabin on the flats there were several buggies and saddle horses there, and men were standing by the front door, their faces dark and angry. Inside the cabin I could hear Sam shouting hoarsely, “She meant no harm, I tell you! She’s good, a good woman with no mean thing in her!”

  Uncle Rolfe took the baby and gave it to Sadie’s husband, Jim Willard, and the baby wakened and started to cry. Jim Willard stared at Melora, his face ugly. “You get outta this country!” he shouted. “We’ve got no place for baby stealers in the valley. If you ain’t gone by tomorrow night, I’ll burn this shack to the ground!”

  Melora shrank back, pressed against the wheel of the cart, her eyes filled with a terrible look of pain and her lips moving but no word coming out. The men began to mutter and shift restlessly and someone said, “Why don’t we load their stuff and start ’em out of the valley now?”

  Jim Willard kicked at one of the geranium plants that sat beside the cabin door. His big boot ground the blossom into the dirt. Melora gave a little cry and covered her face with her hands.

  “That’s enough, Jim!” Uncle Rolfe’s voice was cold. He moved to stand close to Melora, his shaggy black head lifted, his fists clenched. “You men go home and leave her be. She’s got no other place to go and her man’s sick. I’ll take care of things. I’ll be responsible for her—and for him, too.”

  One of the men moved forward toward Melora, and Uncle Rolfe’s big hand grabbed him and shoved him aside, spinning him away like a toy man. There was some arguing then but Uncle Rolfe stood silent with that fierce look in his eyes. After awhile the men got on their horses and in their buggies and went away. Melora walked slowly into the house and we could hear Sam half crying as he spoke her name, and then her voice, soft and warm, “I’m here, Sam. Now don’t you fret. Sleep now, and when you waken I’ll have supper ready.”

  “Come on, Billy,” Uncle Rolfe said. His voice sounded old and tired. We rode slowly toward home.

  It was black that night in the mountain country, black and sultry, the window curtains hanging motionless. When I went to bed it was too hot to sleep and I could hear thunder rumbling in the distance. Lightning began to play through the house, flashing streaks of blue and red, and I heard my uncle Rolfe moving in the bedroom next to mine. I heard his boots on the floor and then his steps going to the kitchen and a door closing. I got out of bed and ran through the dark house and when the lightning flared again, I saw my uncle Rolfe walking toward the barn. A little later, when the lightning glowed so bright it made me shiver, I saw my uncle Rolfe ride past the window, his hat pulled low on his black head. He was headed toward the flats.

  I was awake a long time, for it was hard to sleep with the thunder getting close and loud and the lightning popping all around. When the storm broke I got up again and closed the door of Uncle Rolfe’s room. A little later my mother came into the kitchen and lighted the lamp and heated some milk for us to drink. We sat close together in the kitchen until the storm went over and a cool wet wind began to blow through the house.

  I never knew when Uncle Rolfe got home that night but the next morning he was at the breakfast table. And all the rest of the
summer he didn’t ride toward the flats again.

  It was far into fall and I was going to country school when Gus came one Saturday morning and brought my mother two large red geranium plants with the penciled message on brown wrapping paper. “To Anne with love, from Melora.”

  “Pretty,” Gus said. “Never did see such geraniums as are in that house now. And Melora, she’s bloomin’ like the flowers.”

  Uncle Rolfe put down the local paper he’d just started to open and turned to look at Gus.

  “Yes sir,” Gus went on, “she always was a woman a man had to look at more than once, but now she’s downright beautiful. Sam, he’s not much better. Might be he’d die tomorrow and might be he’d live a few years yet. Never can tell about things like that. And I guess if he did die, somebody’d look out for a woman like Melora.”

  “I expect so,” my mother said, pouring coffee for Gus.

  “The Lord’s favored her, make no mistake about that,” Gus went on, “for she’s going to have that baby she’s been hankerin’ for. The women, they’ve all forgive her for what she did and been up there with baby clothes and buyin’ her geraniums again.” Gus sighed and sucked at the end of his drooping brown mustache. “Only the Lord’s doing would give a woman a baby when she needed it so bad and didn’t have but a shell of a man to love her.”

  My mother lifted her head and stared at my uncle Rolfe, a strange softness in her eyes and around her mouth. My uncle Rolfe looked back at my mother and it seemed to me they said a lot of things to each other without speaking a word. Then my uncle Rolfe opened the local paper and began to read the news.

  Every aficionado of Western fiction has his or her opinion as to the finest story ever written about the Old West. It is safe to say, though, that not a few of them would cast their votes for Eugene Manlove Rhodes’s (1869–1934) brilliant novella “Pasó por Aquí,” first published in 1927. He has been called “The connoisseur’s Western writer,” and indeed his fiction is not only superb entertainment but of high literary merit as well. If “Pasó por Aquí” is the standout among his longer works, The Proud Sheriff, Stepsons of Light, and Copper Streak Trail are not far behind; and of his shorter works, “The Trouble Man” certainly ranks as one of the best.