Rest and Be Thankful (3 page)

A hard ride nowadays took Chuck’s breath away, as he put it. But now that the warmth of the food and the coffee was working on him he was ready to join in the talk. “Dudes,” he said reflectively. “First bunch of dudes I ever seen, back in 1898, was—”

Jim Brent, who knew all Chuck’s stories and wasn’t even expected to listen to them, rose to his feet. “Come on, Bert. You know all about Easterners. We’ll take a couple of shovels in case that flower-picker has gone wandering into a ditch looking for watercress.” He moved stiffly over to the door—he had been in the saddle since six o’clock that morning—and started to pull on his slicker. Bert followed him, saying nothing, listening to the increasing gusts of wind, the renewed thunderclaps. They both halted for a moment, before they opened the door, and listened to the wind and the rain outside.

Mrs. Gunn said, “Perhaps they drove right on to Sweetwater.”

Jim shook his head. “Didn’t know if they were coming or going, far less that Sweetwater ever existed. Ready, Bert?” They plunged into the night, and it took both men to close the door.

“There was five of them, all straight from St Louis,” Chuck was saying.

“Sure rains here in Wyoming,” Ned said. “Ought to have known it. At the Garden the Wyoming ponies had webbed feet. Sure puzzled me at the time.”

“Sure, sure,” Robb said. “And the Arizona ponies all had humps in place of withers. Crossed them with camels, they tell me.”

“Now, boys!” Mrs. Gunn said. “Anyone else for a doughnut? If the ladies come here they won’t touch them. Bad for their figures, they say.” She laughed, and patted her own gaunt hipbones. “It’s not the eating, it’s the sitting, if you ask me. Well, I’d better get a couple of beds ready. Robb, give me a hand with some logs. We’ll need a fire in the guest-room to cheer them up. Hasn’t been used now for almost seven years.” Her smile faded as she thought of the changes the War had made, and she left the kitchen quickly. Fortunately, she thought, as she climbed the stairs to the linen closet, she had always kept the house aired and cleaned and polished as if all the Brents were still living here. It would be nice to have the guest-room used again.

In the kitchen Ned stretched his long, thin legs towards the bright fire. Like Chuck, he was going to wait to see the arrival of this flower-picker. He rolled a cigarette and listened to Chuck, whose breath had fully recovered and now matched his memory.

Sarah Bly awoke first.

She lay quite still, enjoying the soft warmth of the bed, the deep silence, the pale sunlight filtering through green curtains, the comforting disorder of opened suitcases, the feeling of having slept so well that no more problems existed. If they did exist—for, after all, the car was still in the ditch, and their clothes were probably shrinking to nothing as they dried in the warm kitchen downstairs—they would be solved. That was the kind of morning it was. Cold, too, she decided as she stepped out of bed. But she had to see what lay outside the green curtains.

* * *

Mrs. Peel stirred, yawned, and then looked round in a dazed way. It was the pleasantest hotel room she had seen in a long time. She stared at the fireplace, with its evidence of a log fire, and gradually she remembered. She drew the four blankets and wool comforter more tightly about her. At least, here was safety. Last night... She shuddered. She closed her eyes, but she could still see the three miserable, drenched, mud-covered scarecrows being brought into a warm, cheerful kitchen. And that thin, white-haired woman, Mrs—Mrs. Pistol, taking them in charge, helping them unpack their suitcases, finding them dry clothes, lending them an extra cardigan, heating up stew and coffee for them. All in the quietest way, as if this were nothing unusual. Yes, everyone had been like that, all the strange, expressionless men who didn’t say much but looked politely at the bunch of lupines which she had still clutched in her hand as she walked into the kitchen.

After all, she couldn’t hurt Jackson’s feelings by leaving them to drown in the car: she had told him so often that blue flowers were her favourite ones, and he had picked the lupines yesterday to cheer her up for having been so wrong in insisting on that road. Jackson never explained, because he still thought in Hungarian, and that kept him silent except in moments of great excitement. Once Mrs. Peel had suggested that she would learn Hungarian, and then he would have someone to talk to. But the proposal had alarmed Jackson. That Mrs. Peel had understood too. It was Jackson’s consolation that he was able to do one thing that very few people in France or America could do. Whenever he felt perplexed by the Western world he would smile, knowing that if he started talking Hungarian he could bewilder it too. She couldn’t take that smile away from Jackson. He had understood the logic that if she wasn’t to learn Hungarian, then he would have to be renamed. Jackson was something she could pronounce without having her tongue trip over a weird assortment of strange sounds. Too many sneezes, Sarah had agreed.

“Sarah!” she called. She lifted her head to look across the room. But the other bed was empty, and the bathroom was silent.

“How extraordinary!” Mrs. Peel said, and began to worry. Sarah never behaved this way. What could have happened to her? Where was she?

After all, this was a strange house in a strange—a very strange—place, and they were miles from civilisation. The people had been very kind last night, but now that she came to think of it, hadn’t they been also very quick? Yet there was a little town only twenty-five miles farther along this road—Mrs. Pistol had talked about it—and there must be a hotel there. Never, in Mrs. Peel’s long and varied experience of getting lost, had she been welcomed as a guest overnight in a strange house and treated as a friend. Either she had been directed politely to the nearest inn or, if she stayed, she paid.

Mrs. Peel sat up in bed, shivered, searched for her watch under the pillow, and couldn’t find it. Her purse—she couldn’t remember where she had put it last night, but she had put it some place in this room—wasn’t visible, either. She stared wildly round. Twenty-five miles to the nearest house, she remembered. She set out bravely for the door.

A sound of chopping came upstairs from the kitchen. Then, as she hesitated on the landing, wondering if she should dare call Sarah once more, she heard Mrs. Pistol’s voice and Sarah’s laugh.

“Sarah!” she called sharply, angry with herself and with Sarah. As she heard Sarah’s high heels leave the kitchen she turned and ran back to bed. She was cold. She was hungry too, and the tantalising smell of eggs and bacon and coffee which had drifted up from the kitchen had sharpened this unaccustomed early appetite.

Sarah, looking most attractively healthy, carried a tray into the bedroom. She was alarmingly cheerful too for this time of day.

“Lazybones,” she said. “It is practically mid-morning, ranch time.”

“My watch—” Mrs. Peel began fretfully.

“It had fallen on the floor. I put it on the dressing-table. Now have something to eat and you’ll feel much better.”

“You know I never eat in the morning,” Mrs. Peel said.

Sarah only smiled. “You’ll be surprised how good ham and eggs are after all these years. I’ll have a cup of coffee and give you the news of the day. No morning papers here, you know.” She laid the heavy tray on Mrs. Peel’s lap, and then went over to the broad stretch of windows. She drew back the green curtains and let the bright sunshine spread into the room. The sky was blue. The clouds were white and innocent. A tree-top stirred in the gentle breeze and fluttered its fresh green leaves.

“What time is it?”

“Half-past nine,” Sarah said.

“You made me think it was noon,” Mrs. Peel said accusingly, and sipped a cup of strong black coffee. “Did you have breakfast with the cowboys?”

“Good heavens, no. They had breakfast hours ago. I only got downstairs about half-past seven. And they seem to be called wranglers.”

“If cowboy was good enough for the West for fifty years or so it’s good enough for me,” Mrs. Peel said rebelliously. “And they are all out riding again... What an incredibly romantic life!” She was becoming more human as the cup of coffee took effect. She looked at the inviting slice of ham and the two perfectly cooked eggs. “I’ll just have a little taste,” she said, and cut into the first yolk.

“Not entirely romantic,” Sarah said. “It seems there is a lot of work around the ranch, and it’s done by them without outside help. We’ve rather added to their chores, I’m afraid. Jim Brent—he’s the tallest one, with greying hair and grey eyes, who spoke to us on the road yesterday evening, and he’s the owner of the ranch, did you know that? Jackson was quite surprised, and rather pleased, when he heard that: it made him feel better, somehow, about eating supper along with us last night. You know how feudal he insists on being sometimes! Anyway, Jim Brent has gone with Jackson and Robb to get the car back on the road. Once that is done Jim and Robb have to clear the road to Sweetwater, where a tree fell last night. Ned is repairing a saddle. Later he and Bert have a job of mending fences to do. But meanwhile Bert has gone to clear the stream with Chuck (the very old man: he’s worked on this ranch for years and years, even before Mrs. Gunn came here), so that the water-supply won’t be blocked by the storm.”

“And didn’t Mrs—Mrs. Gunn have time to tell you about herself?” Mrs. Peel was enjoying the second egg now.

Sarah Bly laughed. “She has been here for fifteen years. She used to be the Brent family cook. Now she is a kind of caretaker for the house. Do you know, Margaret, this house is practically empty now? Isn’t it a shame? It is the most charming place you can imagine. No, don’t look at me like that... It is beautifully built, and it is in the most perfect setting.”

“Setting for what? The Ride of the Valkyries?”

Really, Mrs. Peel reflected, as Sarah talked about the house, about the scenery, Sarah was in the best of spirits this morning. Her blue eyes were clear, her skin had been tanned to a warm glow by yesterday’s sun on that misleading road, and her hair curled just sufficiently round her neat head to be attractive. Mrs. Peel wondered what her own hair would look like after that storm last night. And she never tanned nicely. If she couldn’t find calamine lotion by this afternoon she would have a face like a broiled lobster. Oh, well, what did it matter when you were fifty-three? No one cared. Usually she was philosophic about her age: she had reached the stage of even beginning to take pride in telling the truth about it. But at the moment it was slightly depressing to see Sarah Bly (who had been in such a cross mood yesterday because it had been her birthday and she was thirty-seven) now looking frankly not a day older than thirty. Even Sarah’s excitement over this new place was a young excitement. And it was infectious.

“Sarah,” she said reflectively, “an experience like yesterday’s may be good for us after all. I mean, we were getting into a certain kind of groove. All we do, all we think, is the kind of thing we have done or thought ever since we were twenty-five.”

“Oh, our arteries haven’t hardened already!” Then Sarah Bly looked ruefully at her friend and smiled. “Or have they? Is that why we have been so—so baffled in this last year, ever since we came back from Europe?”

Mrs. Peel sighed. “It’s horrid to think about...” She looked down at the tray, now emptied of food. “Well, that’s one longstanding rule I did break.” Then, as she poured the last quarter-cup of coffee, she said, “Remember Paris in 1930 when you had just arrived there? And then, two years later, when we set up house together? How very full of experiment we were then...we’d try anything once. But nowadays when we want to feel happy all we say is, ‘How this is like what we once loved!’ It is all a kind of seeking back—a sort of middle-aged retreat.”

Sarah said nothing for a few moments. “All right, then. Come and try some more new things. Wash in ice-cold water, put on your warmest clothes, and come and see the house. It is built on a green island, where the stream divides round these trees. And all around are mountains, for the island lies in the centre of a valley.”

“I’m afraid mountains have lost something of their charm for me this morning. When do we leave for that little town? What’s its name?”

“Sweetwater.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Sweetwater. Mrs. Gunn thinks we ought to wait until the evening at least, to let the road have a chance to recover from the rain. It is said to be bad, and it is all downhill, twisting and turning. Besides, the car may be slightly rebellious after the treatment it got yesterday.”

“But we
can’t
force ourselves on strangers like this. And I need calamine lotion, anyway.”

“Mrs. Gunn says baking-soda is just as good.”

Mrs. Peel stared at her in amazement. “What on earth have you not been discussing with Mrs. Gunn?”

“There seems to be quite a lot to talk about. Frankly I’d be sorry to leave at once. I don’t know why. I was prepared to hate every minute in this place when we staggered into the kitchen last night. But...” Sarah Bly shrugged her shoulders. “Do hurry, Margaret. We’ve wasted so much of the morning already. And bring your camera and plenty of colour film.”

Mrs. Peel’s face brightened. As she got out of bed and headed for the bathroom she asked, “What ranch is this, anyway?”

“Flying Tail Ranch. The large mountain overlooking us is Flashing Smile. The rushing stream at the front door is Crazy Creek. And the green island on which this house is built is known as Rest and be Thankful.”

Mrs. Peel looked round the bathroom door, toothbrush poised in mid-air. “Say that all again.” She listened raptly. “It sounds like Stephen Vincent Benét,” she said, and, having established a literary flavour, went back to scrubbing her teeth enthusiastically. Suddenly she was at the door again. “It’s snowing! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and it’s snowing.”

“That’s the cottonwood-trees along the creek. They are shedding little white fluffs of cotton, and it floats down in clouds.”

Mrs. Peel stared. “Sarah, are you developing a Western sense of humour?”

“I can’t keep my face quite straight enough for that.”