Darkness at Morning Star

by Joyce C. Ware

  ‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home.

  The notes died away into silence broken only by the crackling of the fire on the hearth.

  “I swear, S’rena, that was pretty enough to tempt the devil himself into churchgoing.”

  It was Quinn’s voice, drawling in from the doorway.

  “Speaking of the devil...,” Belle rejoined tartly.

  “Mind if I join you?” Quinn asked, ignoring her taunt. He ambled in without waiting for an answer. “Fawn and me was out takin’ a stroll in the moonlight when we heard you playin’ and singin’ in here. Sounded real nice and homey.”

  “Fawn was welcome to come, too,” Bazz said quietly.

  Quinn grinned and sprawled down across from Belle, stretching his long legs across to rest his booted heels on a stack of periodicals. “Oh, I reckoned on that, Bazz, so I sent her home.”

  Basil’s fingers struck a series of discordant notes before they clenched, knuckles whitening. I looked from one to the other, baffled by the challenge I sensed lurking in Quinn’s innocuous reply.

  “Right cozy in here, folks,” he continued blandly. “Any coffee left?”

  “Coffee, but no cups,” Belle snapped.

  “Well, then, I’ll just use yours. Belle—unless you got some loathsome disease I ought to know about.”

  “I wouldn’t tell you if I had,” she muttered.

  He winked at me. “Just one big happy family, eh, S’rena? And, hey, Bazz, speaking of families, how ‘bout Clementine? You should know that one; Paw sang it often enough.

  In a cavern, in a canyon ...

  His voice was deep, loud and off-key, but he waved his cup in happy disregard of his vocal shortcomings; and before long Bazz had taken up the tempo, and the rest of us joined in to sing of sandals made from herring boxes only to be lost, along with the poor maid who wore them, in the raging brine. It was, as Quinn had said, a rouser.

  “Would you favor us with that song I heard you singing this mornin’, S’rena?”

  “You mean the one Bucket heard,” I teased, forgetting Belle’s warning. He raised his cup at me and grinned.

  Sensing a private joke, Bazz frowned. “Would I know it, Serena?”

  “It’s called AII the Pretty Little Horses. It’s a lullabye.”

  He shook his head regretfully. “I don’t think—”

  “Our mama used to sing it. Hush-you-bye, don’t you cry, go to sleepy little baby ... remember, Belle?”

  I strained to see her blue eyes in the gloom, willing her to recall, but she raised her hand to shade them, a fluttering gesture, almost like a bird taking wing in fright. It was almost as if she were trying to shut me out.

  When you wake, you shall have all the pretty little horses ... Her voice, when it came, was wavering, her pitch uncertain. Blacks and bays ... dapples and grays ...

  Coach and six-a little horses, we finished together.

  “Hell’s roarings, Belle,” Quinn said, “you sing almost as bad as you keep house.”

  Belle burst into tears. Basil crashed out a mighty chord, then slammed a fisted hand into the palm of the other. “Damn you, Quinn!”

  Quinn raised his eyebrows and spread his arms wide, whether in apology or protest I was unable to tell. Probably the latter, given his stunning lack of sensitivity to the feelings of others.

  “I swear I never have known folks to get so riled by the truth. Maybe I speak a little plain sometimes, not havin’ a store of fancy words like yours in my poke, but truth’s truth, no matter how its wrapped.”

  “How do you expect me to keep a proper house, or even want to, when we’re waitin’ on your eviction notice?” Belle cried. “Can’t get decent help, and the ones we get are more trouble’n they’re worth.”

  “No one worth her salt wants to work for you, Belle. Those two women that stood by Lottie Ross long as she lived got hired on at the Flagler spread. Cobby heard ‘em say they could take her notions better’n your high falutin’ airs.”

  Belle sprang to her feet. She began to pace, pausing to glare down at Quinn, her fingers working agitatedly as if yearning to close around the strong column of his weathered, tan neck. “Airs, huh? The truth you’re so all-fired fond of is that those ugly old crows couldn’t stand bein’ told what to do by an orphan girl like me. You think I didn’t hear ‘em squawkin’ to each other about how I was no better than I should be? Course I heard! I was meant to hear that and a whole lot worse.”

  “Speaking of orphans ,” Quinn said, blandly ignoring her indignant outburst, “whatever happened to those two you and Basil signed up for, even though you had no right?”

  I looked at Belle, startled. Neither she nor Bazz had mentioned anything to me about bringing orphans to Morning Star.

  Belle drew herself up. “We had every right. Every human right, that is. I know what it’s like to be without a home, and neither of them was going to get one in a hurry. Wispy little dark things they were, hardly looking strong enough to earn their keep. They needed us; we needed them. Why should some silly rules stand in the way?”

  “What happened to them, Belle?” Quinn’s voice had quieted, but there was no softness in it. Was Belle now to be censured for doing her Christian duty?

  “All I know is they showed their heels before they hardly got settled in,” Belle said, resentment clipping her words short. “The first one, Ada, couldn’t do enough for us when she started out here that spring, but she soon changed. Expected everything on a silver platter and flat out refused to help in the garden with everything shootin’ up like Jack’s beanpole. By early June, less than three months after we took her in, she was gone, along with Lottie’s fancy silver combs. The next one, same story, except Tessie ran off with a saddle bum that came and left fast as a dose of salts.”

  “Yeah, seem to remember hearing something about that. Funny thing about that feller, he showed up at the Bar Five a few months later. Alone.”

  Belle shrugged. “Pro’bly ditched her after the novelty wore oft, and with those scrawny girls I reckon that didn’t take long. We never saw or heard of them again, and good riddance. You got any more questions, St. Peter’ll have to answer them for you.”

  Quinn’s eyes glinted. “St. Peter, huh? You got reason to think they’re hangin’ around his gates, Belle?”

  This pointless cat and mouse game had gone on quite long enough, I decided. “If the girls arrived in the spring, maybe they heard those stories about Morning Star,” I broke in. “I saw Rita and Spotted Fawn squatting out behind the pillars this morning, staring at Belle’s garden as if they were under a spell ... or casting one. Bazz tells me this happens every year at this time. It’s no wonder the housekeeping suffers,” I added pointedly.

  “Fawn told me Rita was mighty upset about some plants that just came in bloom,” Quinn offered. “Look more like purple snakes’ heads than flowers, she says.”

  Belle heaved an exasperated sigh. “That’ll be the foxglove. It’s one of the best of the healing herbs. Those fool Injun women see whatever suits ‘em.”

  I thought of the monstrous peony blossoms, as darkly red as newly coagulated blood, and shuddered.

  “Spirits walkin’ on your grave, S’rena?” Quinn taunted. “That’s what those squaws see heavin’ up outta that blood-soaked earth. You call ‘em healing herbs, Belle, but what they see is the avenging spirits of tortured innocents.”

  Belle’s hand splayed up across her throat; Bazz, who had moved behind us to the fireplace, kicked viciously at a smouldering log, sending sparks buzzing up into the huge, dark chimney like a swarm of angry bees. I stared at Quinn, aghast.

  Assured of his audience, he chuckled softly. “I reckon we’ll soon be seeing Rita’s heels, too.”

  Chapter Seven

  I awoke during the night from the dream that had plagued me since my arrival at Morning Star, the one in which something, distantly beckoning, lures me up and down staircases of improbable length and number. But the soft footfalls passi
ng outside my door were real, and although as light as the fall of feathers, they were surely more deliberate than the scurryings of mice or squirrels. Was it Belle, attempting to walk her insomnia into submission?

  I slipped out of bed and cracked open the door. Candle held high in one hand, my sister, cloaked head to toe in white, stood at the end of the corridor, but she was not alone. Her other hand clutched the arm of a man, robed and slippered, who bent solicitously toward her; there was no mistaking the glossy cap of pale auburn hair reflecting the candle’s flickering light.

  Concerned, I opened my mouth to call out, then hesitated, wondering if the confiding tilt of Basil’s head wasn’t more suggestive of a rendezvous than an emergency. I eased my door shut and leaned back against it. Had Belle, reluctant to admit the truth, misled me about their relationship? If so, I could hardly blame her. They may have grown up thinking themselves as brother and sister, but judging from their posture as they stood there, eyes intent on one another, Belle’s white nightdress could as well have been a wedding gown. I returned to bed, where I slept fitfully until dawn released me from my uneasy ruminations.

  I followed the mouth-watering aroma of bacon to the kitchen, where Basil, perched on a stool drawn up to the kitchen table, was eating breakfast. The table had been cleared of Belle’s herbal paraphernalia, and Rita silently offered me a plate of bacon and biscuits with white gravy, acknowledging my surprised thanks with an unsmiling nod. A moment later, when the steaming cup she brought me proved to be tea, not coffee, I humbly revised my assessment of the dark, stolid woman: I had no idea she was even aware of my preference, much-less willing to accommodate it.

  “It’s a perfect June day, Serena,” Bazz declared. “What do you say we go on a wildflower hunt? If we pack a lunch, we can take our own sweet time searching out the places I used to go with my mama. I swear, she was better than a book. She not only knew where everything grew, but when they were most likely to be in bloom—not just the season, mind you, but the very week. It varied from year to year, of course, depending on the weather during the preceding winter, but she always took that into account. You were right about Belle knowing a lot about herbs, but Lottie Wohlfort was her teacher!”

  I was struck, not only by the loving pride in his voice, but his reference to his mother by her maiden name. Somehow, I doubted it was a conscious choice. But, although Bazz’s eagerness was infectious, in light of the rendezvous I had inadvertently seen last night, I resisted immediate agreement. “Belle won’t mind not being included?”

  “Good Lord, why should she?” Bazz replied, his eyebrows describing an arc of astonishment. “Besides, it was her... that is, if we stay here she’ll find all kinds of boring tasks for us to do.”

  It was her idea? Is that what he had started to say? Although it hardly mattered who initiated it, I felt a pang of disappointment. “You tempt me, Bazz. I’ve never dared play hooky before.”

  He smiled. “Better late than never, Serena.” He unwound his long legs from the stool and pushed it back against the wall under the hanging bunches of dried herbs, whose gray-green, shriveled leaves released a pungent aroma as he brushed against them. “Tell you what, if you’ll help Rita pack a lunch for us, I’ll break the news to Belle that her slaves are rebelling, then go down and saddle up the horses. I’ll be looking for you there in, oh, about an hour—and remember to bring your hat! A bright, windless morning like this one can be a scorcher by midday.”

  His solicitousness touched me. I couldn’t imagine Quinn Cooper ever caring about the effect of the sun on a woman’s complexion. I couldn’t imagine him caring if she fainted dead away from the heat; he’d probably just sling her over his horse’s rump and tip her into the pond or the horse trough, whichever was handiest.

  We spent a grand day together, Bazz and I! He looked a proper rancher in his clean Levi’s, blue shirt, red-checked neckerchief and pale gray Stetson: too neat for a cowpoke; not slicked up enough to be mistaken for a greenhorn. His tall chestnut horse, Dancer, was a well-mannered animal, responding handily to the nudgings of his master’s heels, and his elaborately tooled boots, judging from their mellow sheen, were a source of considerable pride. When I said as much, Bazz nodded.

  “These boots and Dancer were both given me by my mama.”

  “But I thought you were only a boy when she died,” I said.

  He nodded. “But Mama had her dreams. She put aside enough to pay for my schooling and buy me a good horse and custom-made pair of boots when I came home to take my place at Morning Star. She had a lawyer in town open an account in my name in case there was ever any question about it.” He laughed bitterly. “Paw was of the opinion I should have earned it all by the sweat of my brow. He figured if an occupation didn’t put a man in the way of breaking his bones, it couldn’t be real work. Never occurred to him book work could be every bit as hard as cowpunching or bronc busting.”

  “Harder!” I exclaimed. “Any fool can chase a cow.”

  Basil grinned down at me, amused by my indignation. “I wouldn’t go that far, Serena. It’s different work, a lot of it muscle work maybe, but it’s not easy. Quinn happens to be good at it; I’m not.”

  “But it’s not fair!”

  His mouth thinned. “No, it’s not. But Paw never gave a damn about fairness. His opinion was all that ever mattered, and his deck was stacked against me almost from the beginning.”

  We rode on in silence, our thoughts accompanied by the soft plop of the horses’ hooves and the jingle of their bridle fittings. To me it seemed shameful for a land as wide and pure as this to be sullied by man’s injustices. Just then, I noticed a break in the rolling grassy vastness. Bazz moved Dancer ahead and turned down a sudden steep, stony track, similar to the ledge above the pond but longer and more twisty. At the bottom, a thicket of shrubs enveloped them. I urged a reluctant Bingo in after them, and when we emerged on the other side into an open sandy clearing, Bazz had already dismounted in the shade of a huge cottonwood tree. Behind it, half-hidden in the dense undergrowth, I glimpsed the edge of a long, low roof. Below it, sagging on its hinges, a plank door yawned wide.

  “Did Indians live in this little old house, Bazz?” I began threading my way through the interwoven branches.

  “Watch out, Serena! There’s apt to be rattlers in there! I didn’t mean to alarm you,” he said in a calmer voice as he arrived by my side. “That’s a line rider’s shack,” he explained. “They’re not used much, but every ranch’s got a few of them tucked away to shelter riders—any riders—caught by a storm. In the summer, rattlers find ‘em a handy place to wait until it’s cool enough to hunt. They don’t much like being disturbed.”

  I drew cautiously closer. There were no windows, and the only furnishings were a couple of crude stools, a stable and a rusty stove. The table legs appeared to be cuffed with tin cans.

  “They’re supposed to keep rats from climbing up to eat food left on the table,” Bazz said. “Delightful life, eh? Snow and rain and dust storms outside, rats and snakes inside, with nothing to do during the long nights but read the cans by the light of a stove so full of holes it gives off more smoke than heat.”

  It was a bleak picture Bazz painted, and his brooding expression suggested that for him that dilapidated shack represented everything he hated about ranching: physical hardship, isolation, brutishness. He took my hand, and I willingly followed him back to the clearing.

  “What does ‘reading the cans’ mean, Bazz?”

  “It’s a sort of cowboy contest, Serena. Every fellow that’s ever worked on a ranch sooner or later memorizes the words on the labels of the cans used in every kitchen and cook wagon. They recite ‘em for entertainment, with five cents’ penalty for each mistake in pronounciation; ten cents’ for a wrong word.”

  “Good heavens! I never heard of such a thing.”

  Bazz grinned up at me as he spread out the blanket he had tied behind his saddle. “No, I reckon not.”

  A pretty little streamlet sparkled close b
y, hardly more than a foot or so wide. It was spring-fed, he told me, soon lost in the thicket we had come through, but deep enough here for the horses to plunge their muzzles in for a refreshing drink.

  “And,” he added, removing his boots, “for us to cool our feet while we cool our tea.”

  I gratefully followed his lead, first wedging the jar of tea under the deeply undercut edge of the stream, then sitting back beside him to enjoy the gentle rush of water through my dabbling toes.

  “Forget-me-not,” Bazz suddenly said. “Not me, silly,” he added in response to my startled look. “Those little blue flowers over there, where the shade is deepest.”

  I followed his pointing finger, hardly believing I was seeing here, in this dry land, the same dainty, sky-blue, yellow-eyed florets so familiar from wet places back East.

  “This is the only spot I know of where it grows hereabouts,” he said. “Mama used to say a woman traveling west with her family might have stopped here one day to rest in the shade, maybe wash off the dust in the stream, and left some seeds brought from home as a sort of thank-you token. My mama had lots of stories like that. Some she heard; some she made up herself, like this one.”

  “It’s a lovely story,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to know her.”

  He eyed me speculatively. “It’s hard to imagine two females looking less alike,” he said. “Mother’s hair was black and shiny as coal; yours is like moonlight.” He gently splashed water on my ankles with his toes. “Your skin is pale, too,” he mused. “Much paler than Mama’s ... paler than Belle’s, too.”

  Was that meant as a compliment? I couldn’t tell.

  “Belle used to be as pale as I, and of course her hair was the same shade, too.”

  Bazz smiled wryly. “Belle heard Paw say he favored red hair and curls on a woman. She went out of her way to please him. It wasn’t always easy for her. Never was, for me.”

  Was that what had formed the bond between them, I wondered? Two anxious children at the mercy of a hard taskmaster? Poor Belle. Mother Rogg may have shown me little tenderness, but she had unfailingly protected me. Too much, I had sometimes thought, but now. ...