Darkness at Morning Star

by Joyce C. Ware

  I was put to the test the next morning. As I started down the path toward the barn, I became aware of a continuous din issuing from a cloud of dust rising over the corrals. My ears soon distinguished the piercing squeals of frightened animals from the hoarser shouts of men, and as I rounded the corner the dust-hazed air assaulted my nostrils with the rank stench of burning hair and flesh. The corrals seemed too small, their rails too slight, to contain the milling cows and calves that bleated and bellowed within them.

  In the midst of the wheeling, plunging confusion, mounted cowpunchers whirled ropes, sending the released loops flying with astounding accuracy toward the heads of terrified calves, whooping when a noose connected as intended, cursing explosively when it did not. Once roped, the bawling calf was hauled away from its protesting mother to the pen nearest me where, just outside its gate, a large fire blazed.

  I watched in mounting dismay as calves, roped a second time, were unceremoniously slithered on their sides, their backs or their rumps to the fire’s smoldering edge. There, after the rope was stripped away, the poor creature’s head was twisted so as to keep its flailing body flat on the ground. A second man shoved one of the calf’s hind legs forward with his booted foot, then pulled the other leg to the rear with both gloved hands. As the squealing victim lay helpless, its bulging eyes rolling wildly, a third cowboy applied to its hip a white-hot length of iron pulled from the fire, while a fourth nicked its ear with a knife.

  The men, each with his neckerchief pulled tight across his nose, eyes narrowed against the smoke, were unrecognizable; the outlines of their hunkered bodies wavered specter-like in the columns of visible heat. One of them, responding to another’s nudge, turned in my direction. There was no mistaking the corncob pipe clutched upside down between his teeth. Motioning another of the men to take his place. Cobby trudged over to where I was standing.

  “Have to get Bingo yourself today, miss.”

  I nodded. “I can see you’ve got your hands full, Cobby. What’s going on here?”

  He gestured with his head toward the chaotic scene. “These be calves born on the range we brung in for brandin’. Fine Hereford stock,” he said, pride animating his usually noncommittal tone. “Quinn knows what he’s about.”

  One of the red-coated, white-faced little animals, just released, scrambled stiffly to its feet to wander off dazed in search of maternal consolation. His sturdy box-shaped body was a good bit scruffier than the pretty little Jerseys on the dairy farms I’d known back East, but when I said as much to Cobby, he snorted indignantly.

  “The Crown Bar Five wouldn’t be paying no twenty-five dollars a head for milk cows!”

  “The Crown Bar Five?”

  “That outfit Quinn worked for up Nebrasky way,” Cobby said. “Driving them up there soon’s the brandin’s done.”

  “Will Quinn be going with you?”

  “Will Quinn be goin’ where, S’rena?”

  The noise having muffled the sound of Quinn’s approach, I started at the unexpected rumble of his deep voice directly behind me.

  “To Nebraska,” I said. “Cobby was telling me about taking these calves there, and I was just wondering—”

  “Be back before you leave ... you gonna miss me, S’rena?” He stood very close; his dark eyes smiled down into mine.

  “Why, I’d sooner miss the devil!” I exclaimed.

  He started to laugh, then broke off with an angry shout. “Hey, you! Jed! Take it easy with the little feller! If I ever see you haulin’ one of my colts like that, you can jest haul yourself out of here.”

  Jed looked up, surprised, from the calf he had been dragging through a patch of glowing embers dislodged from the blazing logs. I could see smoke rising from a wide-singed swath of fur.

  “Hell, Boss, a horse is a horse; this ain’t nothin’ but meat.”

  “And I’m telling you these are blooded stock you’re treatin’ like range mavericks. Here at Morning Star we have roundups not cow-hunts, and if you’re too dumb to tell the difference ... ahhh-hh-h, get on with it,” he ended in a mutter of disgust. He wheeled toward me. One hand rested on the butt of the bolstered gun slung low on his right hip, and from the look on his face, I feared for one heart-stopping moment he was going to take out his frustration on me.

  “Mark what I say, S’rena,” he said, addressing me tight-lipped with hardly a trace of his customary drawl, “once I’m clear of Bazz and that sister of yours and get back on my feet, you’ll see a change here at Morning Star, starting with hands in the bunkhouse as good as the stock they’ll be driving.”

  “Brave words,” I taunted, “but regardless of how it changes, for good or ill, I won’t be here to see it— much less care.” That wasn’t entirely true, of course, but I was too riled just then to worry about niceties. I’d grown to love the prairie, and I’d miss Cobby and Bingo; but for me Morning Star had lost its sweet promise. It had become an unhappy place, unfit for the ordinary lives of ordinary people like me.

  I thought of the morning star rising here, year after year, suffusing the spring horizon with its cold, deadly brightness. My anger emboldened me to sally forth on dangerous ground. “Tell me, Quinn Cooper, do you suppose your father really knew what he was about when he built his grand stone mansion on that accursed, bloody ground? Don’t you suppose he lived to regret it?”

  Quinn stared at me expressionlessly. Ashes and dust caked the lines of his face, lending it a severity more akin to gray Vermont granite than the golden Kansas sandstone. “I don’t suppose nothing about any of it. What I know is I’ve heard more’n enough of your female foolishness. I got work to do.”

  It was near noon when Bingo and I arrived back at the barn. Bazz was waiting in its cool recesses; clearly he had something to tell me. Exhilarated by our wild gallop home across the prairie, I had lost my taste for conspiracy. I avoided his eyes and turned a deaf ear to his whispered words, and when we emerged out into the sunlit dust smelling of cattle and lathered horses and the honest sweat of the men astride them, I found it unaccountably, perversely, exciting.

  I crossed to stand near the holding pen’s gate just as Sharo released a bawling calf newly branded by Quinn. The youth and the man, so recently at odds, worked in surprising harmony, wasting neither words nor motions.

  Bazz, who had reluctantly followed, paused beside me, one hand resting on my shoulder. “It’s a bloody business,” he said, his voice a rasp of distaste.

  Quinn, overhearing him, rose to his feet, stretched, and strolled over to lean against the rails of the corral.

  He pulled his sweat-stained kerchief from around his neck and slowly wiped the blood from his hands. The warm, healthy smell of him filled my nostrils. Seeing them flare, Quinn boldly winked at me, but his words were for his halt-brother.

  “No dirty hands for you, eh, Bazz?”

  “I hate it. Always have,” Bazz said. “That’s what Paw could never understand.”

  “Nothin’ wrong with hating to hurt critters ...”

  Quinn paused, and as the two men eyed each other I sensed strong emotions churning beneath their clipped words. Basil’s pale eyes dropped first.

  “... but that don’t keep you from eatin’ ‘em, does it?” A slow smile curved Quinn’s lips as he pushed himself off the rails and reached out to drag his soiled kerchief down Bazz’s cheek. “There you go, little brother, bloodied without liftin’ a finger.”

  It was a brutal gesture. At my gasp, Quinn turned to me, his eyes hot and intense. “Those English fellers up at the Crown Bar Five tell me that’s what’s done to a boy on his first fox hunt, ‘cept they use the fox’s lopped-off tail to do the honors. Blooding, they call it.”

  Bazz paled. “You bastard!” he hissed.

  Quinn grinned. “You got that right.”

  Bazz urged me away as Sharo called for Quinn’s assistance with a balky calf. But although the confrontation was over, I was inexplicably reluctant to leave. I could make no sense of it. I met Quinn’s eyes in a long, searchin
g glance. Was it yearning I saw there? I resisted Bazz’s impatient tug at my arm.

  Sharo called again. Quinn exhaled a long sighing breath, as if making a painful decision. “I reckon you’re old enough to take care of yourself, S’rena,” he said slowly. He turned toward Bazz; his head lowered bull-like, in primitive challenge. “But if I ever catch you sniffin’ around Spotted Fawn, I swear I’ll kill you.”

  He spun on his booted heel. I watched as he strode across the hard hoof-pounded earth toward the fire and the cruel demands of the life he had chosen. My well-schooled sensibilities reproached my body’s response to his lithe muscularity. No decent woman should be drawn to a man like that; besides, he had made his priorities quite clear.

  I clutched Basil’s arm and smiled up into his handsome, troubled face. He had been kindness itself ever since my arrival. Once the three of us were on the road, I told myself, three young, healthy, carefree Gypsies with Morning Star behind us and enough money to start us off ... why, we could do anything we set our minds to!

  And yet, as we trudged up the path to the big house, its honey-colored stone pearly in the blaze of the midday sun, it slowly came over me that at no time since I arrived two months ago had there been any talk, any happy speculation, any mention at all of where our travels might take us or what we hoped for our future. Our shared future, the promise of which had directed my every decision, animated my every move, from the day I received Belle’s letter. I had kept it safe, that precious letter, as one might a fragment of bone of a miracle-performing saint of old, and although I could hardly any longer make out the faded writing on its creased, yellowed pages, I would cherish it always.

  Chapter Ten

  As Bazz and I approached the walk leading to the front entrance, a rank odor drifting like invisible smoke from Belle’s garden slowed my steps. Deeply cut leaves as big as platters crowded the space where the poppies had so recently spread their crinkled cups. How could anything grow that large so fast? The heavy, bloom-laden stalks rearing above them, tip groping toward tip from either side of the path, threatened to burst the bounds of their stone-fenced beds. I had no wish to pass beneath their arch.

  I swerved to the right, intending to enter through the kitchen. Basil tugged at my arm.

  “Before you go in,” he said, “there’s something you should know.” He hesitated.

  “What is it, Bazz?” I prodded, sensing his reluctance. “I have something to tell you, too. You and Belle both. Good news, I think.”

  He looked at me questioningly. “You first,“ I said, giving him a gentle nudge.

  “This morning I found the entrance to the space behind the fireplace.”

  “Good for you!”

  He shook his head. “Pure dumb luck, I’m afraid. I pushed and I pulled at what I thought were joinings of the stone slabs until my fingers were numbed by the effort. Finally, I did what frustrated people usually do when faced with a situation like that: I kicked at it.”

  I blinked at him. “You don’t mean—”

  “Oh, but I do, Serena. The entire stone facing promptly gave way. It had been bolted together like the windowsill in the nursery, then mounted on a simple swivel device triggered by pressure at a particular spot on the bottom edge.” He gave a self-conscious laugh. “If I hadn’t lost my temper, I might never have gotten inside. It’s very small, more a nook or cubbyhole than a closet.”

  He fell silent for so long I felt like kicking him. “For heaven’s sake, Bazz, call it whatever you like. What did you find in it?”

  “Nothing.”

  I stared at him.

  “Nothing, that is, but a wooden chest so heavy I couldn’t lift it. That’s when I called Belle in from the kitchen. I dragged it out, she opened it, and when we saw the contents glittering in the lamplight—well, we were pretty excited. But when we hauled the chest out into better light we realized our golden hoard was nothing but iron pyrite.” His look invited my commiseration.

  “I’m sorry, Bazz,” I said slowly, “but I don’t know what iron py ... py ...”

  “Pyrite,” he repeated. “I keep forgetting how new you are to the West, Serena. It’s also known as fool’s gold. Pretty to look at, but as Belle said, ‘worth no more’n tin pot with a hole in it.”

  I sighed. “Well, maybe my news will cheer her. Those calves Quinn is branding? He’s selling them to that ranch in Nebraska he rode for before your father’s accident. He can’t settle with you and Belle until he’s paid for them, so as soon as the herd is ready to move, Quinn and Cobby will be leaving.”

  Bazz’s eyes lighted up. “That means they’ll be away at least a week. We’ll have plenty of time to look wherever we want, whenever we want.”

  “Won’t that depend on who’s left behind?”

  Bazz shrugged. “I don’t think any of those drifters are much for carrying tales to the boss. Cobby’s the only one with any loyalty to Quinn, and if he’s going with him ...”His words trailed off as his gaze drifted dreamily beyond me. “Do you suppose he’ll take that little girl of his along?”

  “Spotted Fawn? I should certainly hope not! From the look of her, she’s not yet recovered from her last excursion with him.”

  “Maybe if you offered to look out for her .. .”

  I smiled. “You have a kind heart, Bazz. I’ll do that... not that I expect it’ll do much good. Now! Shall we hunt up Belle?”

  No sooner had I poked my nose inside the kitchen then Belle exploded.

  “Did Bazz tell you what that father of his did? I swear if I’d of known about it then, I sure wouldn’t have made his last years so blame easy. Bastard!”

  “Good heavens, Belle! You make it sound as if he did it on purpose.”

  “Of course he did it on purpose,” she said, rolling her eyes in exasperation. “Fool’s gold! Big joke. Haw-haw! Lordy, what a ninny you are sometimes, Reenie.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you think that, Belle,” I said, blinking back sudden tears, fearing she’d think me even more of a ninny if she noticed them.

  “Sorry never bought any bacon.”

  “Tell her, Serena,” Bazz urged.

  “Tell me what?” She held up her hand. “But don’t if all’s you got to say is you found more of that fool’s gold in the bunkhouse sill.”

  “I won’t tell you that, because I haven’t looked yet, but in a day or two we can look all we want: Quinn won’t be here, and neither will Cobby.”

  Belle regarded me with a skeptical squint. “What’s she talking about, Bazz?”

  Bazz nodded to me, and I took her through the events of the morning. As I talked, Belle’s squinty look relaxed; when I finished, she gave a little yip of delight. “You’re a right smart little prospector,” she said, her rosy mouth spread into a grin. “When the cats are away—”

  “—the mice will play,” Bazz and I chorused.

  “And all of Morning Star,” Belle added, spreading her arms wide, “will be our oyster.”

  “Except there aren’t any oysters out here. Belle,” I said, laughing.

  “Try telling that to the Grand Hotel in Ellsworth. Why, I reckon the cans of ‘em they sell during a year’d fill a wagon. And then there’s prairie oysters, but considerin’ the company you kept back East, I guess you never heard tell of those. I used to make ‘em for Ross all the time, ain’t that so, Bazz?”

  Bazz nodded stiffly.

  “Ross Cooper sure liked his whiskey, Reenie, sometimes a little too much, and that’s when I’d stir up a prairie oyster to clear his head and settle his stomach. Mashed up canned tomatoes mixed up with a raw egg and a few bits of dried chilies.”

  “It doesn’t sound very appealing,” I said.

  “Seems to me most things s’posed to be good for a body don’t, like praying and minding your p’s and q’s and passing sweet-talking cowpokes by ...” She winked at me.

  “Oh, Belle,” I said softly, slightly shocked by her boldness, but delighted to have her teasing me again.

  “All right, troops, g
ather “round,” she commanded, all business again. “Now, here’s what we’re gonna do ...”

  It was like a game, I told myself, a big jolly game like the kind we used to play at the orphanage. But as Belle outlined her plan, her animated face reminded me anew that although for me just being here now with her and Basil—talking, laughing, sharing— was happiness enough, hers was linked to a future whose dimensions remained unknown to me.

  The next day promised a repeat of the preceding two. The clear dawn sky soon became gauzed with the promise of unseasonable warmth, and the dirty disorder of a house whose dankness mystifyingly increased as the days warmed and lengthened, made me welcome any excuse to remain out of doors, even if it involved spying. It’s a game, nothing but a game, I again assured myself, as I let myself quietly out the kitchen door.

  Lost in thought, I had started down toward the corrals, when a loud halloo behind me claimed my attention. I turned, whipping my hand up to shade my eyes, for although the sun had not yet topped the roof, the mansion’s stone bulk was surrounded by an aura whose brilliance jolted me with its intensity. I blinked my watering eyes and saw Bazz waving at me from between the massive slit-eyed pillars. He cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “... anything from town?” he called.

  The aura grew brighter still. I steepened the angle of my shading hand. I had forgotten Bazz had volunteered to go into town to buy much-needed supplies. Cobby was too busy to be spared; the other hands too apt to bring things we didn’t need and forget those that we did. Anything from town? A Jew yards of sprigged muslin for a summer dress? Lavender toilet water? Nothing Bazz should be asked to get for me. It could wait. I shook my head and turned away just as the sun’s rim blazed above the slates, transforming the pillars into flaming swords.

  In front of the corrals, a stout trail wagon was being loaded with bedding for the drive to Nebraska with the branded calves. A number of blackened pots and pans hung from a frame over which a stained canvas sheet had been slung, and a couple of the hands were lashing a water barrel into the box. As I drew closer I saw a faucet protruding through a roughly hacked hole. Judging from its well-worn edges, this wagon had seen its share of cattle drives.