Cherokee Rose

by Judy Alter

  At last, the boarders drifted away, the schoolteacher muttering about youngsters without proper education, and the new drummer repeating "Fifteen miles before breakfast?" Louise poured herself more coffee, smiled at my emphatic no when it was offered to me, and settled back in her chair.

  "Why are you here?"

  "The most wonderful thing has happened," I began, "and it's awful!"

  Her sudden, surprisingly deep laughter filled the room, and after just a second I laughed with her. Then we both sobered.

  "You've heard from Zack Miller," she said.

  "You knew?"

  "Of course. I told you I would write to a friend. The colonel—that's what they call Zack—was in here some months back, told me he was planning an exhibition. So I just wrote and told him I knew the best girl roper in the Strip."

  "In the country!" I said indignantly.

  "You'll have to prove that," she said gently. "All right, it's wonderful! You've a chance to ride in an exhibition that isn't the Buffalo Bill show, but it's a start. What's awful? Mama or Papa?"

  "Both. Papa thinks he's going with me, and Mama came as close to forbidding me to go as she could. I—I don't know what to do."

  If I'd expected Louise to hand me the answer, I'd pinned my hopes in the wrong place. She just sat silently, watching me.

  "Well"—I began to talk to fill the silence—"if Papa goes with me, he'll pretty soon be bossing everyone around, probably make that colonel angry. And it'll be hard for me to meet people, because Papa will be in the way. But if I ask him not to go—"

  "He'll go anyway," she supplied.

  "Yes. So maybe there's nothing I can do about that." With an inward shudder, I thought back to the wolf hunt and the way everyone resented me. The exhibition could turn out the same way.

  "I wouldn't give up so easily," came the quick reply. "What about your mother?"

  "She's hurt, angry with me. She won't talk about it, won't even listen to me. I guess all I can do is what I did—tell her I love her. But I have to go do this. If I stay on the ranch with them..." I shrugged, foreseeing that endless future before me.

  "I think your mama will understand once you really go. But you may need my help with your father. When do you go?"

  "Three weeks."

  "I think you should go home and practice harder than you've ever practiced, be more helpful to your mama than you ever have, and leave your papa to me. He'll be in here before then, I can almost guarantee. Now, let's get these dishes done, and then I want to take you shopping."

  In the mercantile store, Louise bought several yards each of serviceable denim and a wonderful buttery-brown wool and some soft challis just a shade lighter. Her last purchase was crisp white cotton, with three yards of lace ruffles. "For the front of the shirt," she explained. "I'll send these home with your father when he comes."

  "Louise, I can't let you do that," I said, feeling that I ought to protest but thrilled at the thought of new riding outfits.

  "Your mother," she said practically, "won't give her approval by outfitting you. I'm glad to have the chance."

  She ended her shopping spree by fitting me with a light straw Stetson. "For summer," she told me.

  By early afternoon, I had Sam saddled and was ready to ride home. We stood by the barn behind Louise's house.

  "Thank you," I said. "I'll—I'll tell you all about it."

  "Never can tell," she laughed. "I might show up at the exhibition." Then she hesitated. "Would that bother you? Would it be like having your parents there?"

  I thought about it for a moment. "No," I said, "I don't guess it would."

  "Tommy Jo," she said, "I guess I have to confess. I'd sort of hoped that if you wanted to get away from the ranch, you might come to Guthrie." In a rush she added, "I know it wouldn't do much for your roping, but—well, you always have a place here." She looked away, as though embarrassed by her own words.

  "Thank you," I said, and gave her a fierce hug. Then quickly, before she saw the tears in the corners of my eyes, I mounted Sam and rode off, only turning to wave when I was a block away. She was standing, one hand shading her eyes against the midday sun, looking after me.

  I waved and spurred Sam into a gallop.

  * * *

  The ride home was as long as my early-morning ride had been short, though we covered the same level dirt road, passed the same open prairies dotted with plum thickets, and the same ranch gates. In the morning, I'd passed no one between Luckett's and Guthrie. Now I saw an occasional rider, who raised a friendly hand to me, and one or two buggies, whose occupants looked curiously at a young girl riding alone. I waved to all and kept Sam at an even pace.

  Two miles from the ranch, I watched the sky begin to darken in the west. The rain began, soft at first and then harder, until it came in a good steady spring shower. The road turned to mud, which flew up at me as Sam raced along, and the wet wind plastered my hair into my face. Off in the distance I could see an occasional streak of lightning, followed by a faint boom of thunder, and I prayed I'd get home before the real storm hit. Lightning was in the same category with wolves: it scared me, because I knew it was a real danger.

  When I rode into our barn, I was chilled to the bone and so tired I wanted nothing more than to be in my bed. " 'Red in the morning, sailors take warning,' " I repeated to myself.

  "Best get up to the house," Casey said, concern showing in his voice. "Your folks are fit to be tied. Was me, I'd whip you within an inch of your life."

  Wilks just watched, his look hinting that he hoped I got a hiding.

  My heart sank, but I managed to say lightly, "Whip me, Casey? I'm too old to whip."

  "Coin' off alone like that," he muttered. "Got no more sense than that there horse. Ain't safe for a girl."

  "For a girl?" I echoed.

  Just then the first crack of nearby lightning hit, startling both Sam and me so badly that he shied, I jumped, and Casey yelled, "Whoa, now! Whoa, now!" as he grabbed the reins. His look seemed to say, "See, I told you a girl couldn't handle things!"

  "For a girl," he repeated firmly. "Miss Tommy Jo, don't you stand here arguing with me. You get on up there to that house and get into some dry clothes."

  Papa met me before I put a foot on the veranda. "Where've you been?" he demanded, ignoring the rain, which beat down on both of us, and my sodden clothes, as he stood there in his yellow slicker.

  "Guthrie," I said as calmly as I could. "I left you a note. I went to see Louise."

  That took the wind out of his sails for just a moment. "Louise? Well..." But then his anger rose up again. "Won't be lettin' you go to the Miller," he said. "You've just shown you don't have the sense to be turned loose. I'll write the colonel."

  "I'll write the colonel," I said, brushing past him.

  "You tell him you aren't able to ride in his exhibition." he called after me, emphasizing the word in a mocking way.

  Mama sat in the rocking chair, her eyes fixed on the knitting in her lap.

  "Mama?" I knelt down beside the chair, one hand on her knee. A puddle began on the floor beneath me as water dripped from my hair, my clothes, my shoes.

  One hand dropped its needles and reached out to stroke my hair, wet though it was. "Your father was frightened and angry. He doesn't mind you going to Guthrie, if he's the one who decides you should go. But if you decide..." There was no denying the bitterness in her voice.

  "And now he's decided I can't go to the Miller?" I asked.

  She nodded.

  "And you?"

  The knitting slid to the floor as Mama wrapped her arms around me and cried, a display so unlike her that it scared me. After four or five loud sobs, she quieted and said softly, "I don't want you to go, Tommy Jo. I don't want you to leave the ranch, and if you do, I want you to go to a city and live in a fine house and be a lady." A sob caught in her throat, and she wiped at the tears on her cheeks. "But none of that is fair, no more fair than letting your papa run your life."

  Now the tears we
re running down my cheeks as freely as Mama's. "Come with me, Mama. We'll go to St. Louis, we'll go wherever." My voice was low, in a whisper, but it echoed with intensity.

  "No," she answered softly. "That's not the answer either. I... you ride in that exhibition, Tommy Jo."

  Papa came in a few minutes later and found us huddled together, Mama still in the rocking chair and me at her feet, both of us now soaking wet, for she had hugged me tightly enough to make her clothes as wet as mine. "Any dinner around here?" he asked, but all the anger was gone from his tone.

  * * *

  In the end, I ran away from home. Or maybe I ran away from Papa, because Mama knew I would go. Papa thought, for almost three weeks, that he had closed the matter with his letter to Colonel Zack Miller, though I never knew what the letter said. And I wrote my own letter, assuring the colonel that I would ride in his exhibition. It occurred to me to wonder if he would expect me, for he probably wouldn't know which letter to believe.

  For those three weeks, I was a model daughter. I rode with Papa and helped with the birthing when the spring calves arrived; I helped Mama with her vegetable plot, digging in the red dirt until I thought my fingernails would never be clean again; in the evenings I helped with supper and did the dishes.

  And whenever I could steal a moment, I practiced my roping. With Billy gone and Papa angry with me, I had no one to walk through my loop. So I built big empty loops and kept them spinning while counting aloud to myself, pretending that a handsome cowboy was walking in and out of the loop or that a horse was thundering toward me from some distance away. I roped poor Sam until it was a wonder he didn't turn skittish every time he saw me with a loop in my hands.

  But during evenings in the house, I no longer built tiny loops. I occupied my hands with mending, while Mama was busy with her knitting and Papa read his blasted St. Louis newspapers.

  He never mentioned the Miller 101, and conversation was sparse on those long evenings. I had nothing to say to him.

  * * *

  The exhibition was to begin on a Sunday. I left home on Friday morning, once again sneaking away before daylight. I rolled my clothes into a pack that would fit on the back of my saddle. Papa had brought me new clothes—two split skirts and a crisp white shirt with a ruffled front—from Louise and handed them over without a word; these were carefully folded into a blanket and rolled, though I knew they would wrinkle badly.

  This time I left no note. Mama knew where I was going, and Papa would figure it out soon enough. The fear that he would come riding after me, determined to bring me back, made me spur Sam all the faster.

  I should be feeling sad, I thought, leaving home with my father angry at me, my mother heartbroken. But my spirits fairly flew ahead of Sam, filled with excitement and anticipation. I was going to rope in an exhibition—really, I decided, I could honestly call it a Wild West show. The parade in Washington flashed before my eyes, and I heard myself again being cheered by the crowd, saw myself bowing and responding.

  The bowing in my mind had to stop if I was to make it to the Miller 101 in two days, and at that they would be long days. I remembered Papa saying the ranch took in three towns—Bliss, Red Rock, and White Eagle—and that it was almost due east of Luckett's place and a little north, near Ponca City. From Luckett's gate, I turned north, away from Guthrie, and rode until I came to a fork in the road. Then I headed east, figuring to meet someone who could direct me once it was daylight.

  The first traveler I met was an old man driving a wagon pulled by two stubborn-looking mules. When I signaled him, he "whoa'd" the mules to a stop, pulling hard on the reins, and said, "What's a girl like you doin' out here on the road alone?"

  "Going to the Miller 101," I said, trying to ignore the rest of his question. "Near Ponca City."

  "That big shindig they're havin' over there, I bet. Still, a girl like you... I was your pa..."

  "My pa's behind me," I said to cut him off. After all, that probably wasn't a lie. "But I just wanted to make sure I'm on the right road."

  "Sure are, missy, but you got a long way to go. You get a mite closer, I bet you'll meet up with some other folks goin' that way. Gonna be a big shindig. If not, they can tell you in Ponca City, and you're headed straight there." He clucked to the mules and moved on.

  The land went from flat prairie to rolling hills as I rode east, and the trees grew taller, the underbrush thicker. The day was hot and clear, and the sun seemed to beat down on me unmercifully. Well before midday, I was grateful for the canteen of cool water I'd brought and the meal of cold biscuits and pork. I ground-tied Sam and settled beneath his shadow to eat, just as Papa and I had done many a time while working Luckett's cattle. Only this time, Papa wasn't here. I was alone, and I was on my way to a great big show.

  By suppertime Sam and I were both tired and ready to stop. I made a cold camp and settled myself for an uncomfortable night, using my saddle for an awkward pillow. As many times as I'd camped with Papa, I shouldn't have been alarmed by the prairie noises at night, but the owls seemed more threatening, the coyotes closer. Thoughts of hungry wolves and even desperate rustlers drove away all my enthusiasm for the show, and I wished myself safe at home. Had I been foolish to run away? I'd ground-tied Sam as close by as I could, and once in a while I'd talk to him just to hear him nicker reassuringly, which helped a little. Still, it was a long night, and well before daybreak I was up and ready to move on.

  The show had grown in my mind ever since I'd talked to that old man driving his mules. By the time I nooned on the second day, other riders had joined me on the road, passing with a wave and a friendly smile. The terrors of the night were forgotten, and I figured I was headed in the right direction. At a fork in the road, an official-looking sign pointed the way to Ponca City, but a kind of home-done sign said, "Miller 101 this way." I followed the second sign.

  By late afternoon, as I approached the Salt Fork of the Arkansas, which ran through the Miller 101, the road was downright crowded with riders, alone or in groups, and horse-drawn vehicles of every description, from wagons to closed-in black buggies with isinglass windows rolled up on the sides. At least two automobiles honked past us, though this time I was alert enough to get a good grip on Sam well before the smoking, noisy things came near us. Holding tight to the reins, I spoke softly into his ear, reassuring him, and he trembled with alarm but never did bolt.

  As the sun began to drop lower, I asked a man on horseback how far it was to the Miller 101.

  "'Bout three more miles," he said, nodding his head down the road. "Big gate, you can't miss it. But they're not letting people in until the show Sunday. Even got a special train track laid out there, to bring them editors or whatever. But today I guess they're gettin' ready." He sighed, as though he would have given his eyeteeth to get on to the ranch early.

  "I'm going to ride in the show," I said, aware that I was boasting. "I guess they'll let me in." And I left him behind me, probably thinking what an arrogant creature I was.

  Within a mile, I could see tents pitched along the river. Whole families appeared to have settled in, their horses tethered nearby, their children playing happily in the red dirt, men sometimes gathered in groups to talk and chew and spit, women mostly out of sight.

  My heart was nearly bursting out of my chest with excitement by this time. All these people had come to see this exhibition! I thought it was a small show for a bunch of eastern newspaper editors—maybe a hundred people at the most—and yet it looked now like the entire population of the Cherokee Strip and the Indian Territory had turned out for the day. And I was going to ride and rope!

  Fear flickered through my mind, just a thin thread that came and then was gone. But I recognized it: What if my loop fell apart? What if Sam pitched and I couldn't control him? What if... A thousand possibilities, all of them bad, began to dance in my mind. And then I thought about Billy, and how he was sure I'd be a great roper, and how I was going to show him!

  "Come on, Sam," I cried, "let's go!"
r />   I swear he ran faster.

  Once I passed the gate to the Miller—a fancy wrought-iron arch with "101 " spelled out at the top—I moved onto land completely foreign to me. On either side of the road lay enormous fields, with the dirt piled up in even rows and small green shoots showing in the center of each row, plants in one section bigger than the other, as wheat, milo, alfalfa, even lettuce and onions sprouted in the early June warmth.

  I passed an orchard—though I didn't recognize an apple orchard at the time—and a pasture where black and white cattle grazed peacefully—I didn't recognize Holsteins either, but I knew they sure looked different from the beef cattle at home. Coming from Luckett's, where there were only beef cattle and no trees or vegetable garden beyond Mama's little plot, I was overwhelmed.

  I must have ridden several miles before an enormous house came into view, bigger and far grander than Louise's in Guthrie. I might have compared it to the convent in St. Louis, but it was not quite that large, and it was of wood, not brick, and was lots more interesting than the square and formidable brick convent.

  The house was three stories high, though the top story looked to be dormer-like rooms beneath the various angles of the roof, all covered with green wooden shingles. The house itself was made of white slats with windows all around the second floor—including one oval window that riveted my attention for a moment—and a huge veranda, with a green shingle roof, that wrapped around the first floor. With its uneven roof lines—a pitch here and an angle there—and its profusion of windows, it was somehow a house of life, full of happiness.

  Clustered around this house, like pups around a mother dog, were a smattering of smaller houses, all shingle, all painted white with green roofs, and all dwarfed by the big house. And beyond that, a field or more away, was an enormous arena. I rode toward it, but when I was about fifty yards from it, I simply stopped to stare. I bet it could seat a thousand people!