Rest and Be Thankful (35 page)

Then she looked down at the sheet of paper which lay on her writing-table. “How’s this?” she asked. “‘Elizabeth Whiffleton no longer anonymous. Dewey Schmetterling made an honest woman out of her. Writing. Love, Kisses, and Remorse, Margaret.’ Sally, would you be an angel and cope with the telephone exchange in Sweetwater for me? Get Miss Snodgrass to send this telegram to my agent.”

“I’m so glad, Margaret,” Sally said. “You
do
mean this?”

“When I make up my mind I make up my mind. As you ought to know by this time, darling.”

Sally picked up the telegram.

“It will be a relief to poor Elizabeth,” Mrs. Peel said. “She may even find she enjoys writing now.”

“How’s the historical novel about Idaho coming along?”

“Not very well. Elizabeth seems rather against it, somehow.”

Sally laughed and kissed her friend suddenly.

“Demonstrative tonight, aren’t we?” But Mrs. Peel smiled happily.

“I’m just
so
glad,” Sally said, and she hurried into the hall towards the telephone.

By the time she returned to the sitting-room she found Mrs. Peel almost at the end of the first chapter of
The Lady in White Gloves.

“You know,” Mrs. Peel said, looking up with surprise, “it isn’t as bad as I thought. It’s just terribly nineteen-twentyish, that’s all. It has a certain cadaverous charm, like looking at a one-time beauty of the ball. And however did Elizabeth Whiffleton think of all these things! Telegram off safely?”

“Miss Snodgrass is fully in charge. By the way, her nephew won the local 4-H prize in steer-raising. Complete treatment, as far as I could gather. He brought it up and lifted it too. He’s going to be in the first float on Saturday.”

“4-H?” Mrs. Peel asked, leaving the lady in white gloves walking through the dining-car of the Simplon Express.

“Head, heart, hands, and health.”

“No hearth or home? But perhaps that’s for the older ones. And floating—floating where?”

“In the parade through Sweetwater before the rodeo on Saturday, darling. Trucks all disguised into tableaux with crepe paper and branches and things.”

“Ah,” Mrs. Peel said understandingly. “Like Nice.”

“Exactly. Only no emphasis on
l’amour.
All very hearty and healthy.”

Mrs. Peel nodded. “How Prender will hate it!” she said, with pleasure. She picked up the battered copy of
The Lady in White Gloves
once more. “Now, darling, if you don’t mind, I’d like to finish this book.”

Three days passed. Four. It was the fifth day, already late in the afternoon, and Earl Grubbock and Karl Koffing were still in the mountains.

Rest and be Thankful was alarmed. Only Mrs. Gunn seemed to take the delay as being something quite normal, but the more she kept calm and unruffled the more the others were convinced that something must have happened. Chuck and Jackson were just as baffling as Mrs. Gunn.

“Sure,” Chuck said to Carla, who had been worrying him with questions, “they’ve had a bit of a skirmish with hostiles. Or maybe they’ve gone hunting bear. Bringing home one apiece so you can take them back to New York, along with them elk-horns you’ve been collecting.”

Carla then had to spend a heated half hour trying to convince her shadow, Esther Park, that Chuck was joking, so all must be well.

Esther said, “He wasn’t. He didn’t smile one bit.” And she went back to Chuck and pestered him with predictions of possible gloom until he said, “Sure. That’s it. They got lost. Wouldn’t be surprised if they reached Yellowstone by Christmas.” Jackson had to laugh that time, so Esther Park knew she was meant to laugh too.

“Still,” she said, with her usual perseverance, “people could get lost.”

“Sure.” Chuck was being serious now, if you cared to watch his eyes. “If a man don’t know them mountains he’s just kind of asking for trouble getting mixed up with them. There were a young fellow, over at Bar Ex Gee last summer, he made a pack trip by himself up over Muledeer. Didn’t want no guide along. Just himself and nature. Well, reckon he got that all right. Took us the best part of a week to find him. Weren’t a ranch or forest station round here, for near a hundred miles, what weren’t out looking for him. Cost us a heap of sleep and good working time. Him and nature.”

“Was he alive?”

“He weren’t dead.” He’d been kind of lucky, that fellow.

Esther saw Prender Atherton Jones in the distance, and so she abandoned Chuck and Jackson, who didn’t seem too crushed by such neglect. Prender had gone into the saddle-barn, which was strange; but stranger still, when she searched there he wasn’t to be found. He must have taken the side-door out. So he couldn’t have seen her waving to him, after all.

She went back to the house. Robert O’Farlan was busy, he said. And Carla was at work too. After ten minutes with each of them she found Mrs. Peel in her sitting-room. But she was writing and didn’t even look up. Sally was in the library, and she said, “Hello! Glad you’re free, Esther. I’ve a job of work for you to do.” Esther said she’d love to, but she had to see Mrs. Gunn first about something important. So Mrs. Gunn, returning to the kitchen from a visit to the chicken-house, found Esther Park sitting in the rocking-chair.

“I think it is all very silly,” Esther Park said.

“What’s silly?” Mrs. Gunn had to recount the eggs she had brought with her.

“All this fuss everyone is making over Karl and Earl.”

Mrs. Gunn looked at her in surprise. She thought of all the horrible ideas that Miss Park had produced at the luncheon table today, worrying everyone with her questions. “Who’s making a fuss?” she asked.

“Why, everyone. Just like the silly fuss they make over Mimi.”

Mrs. Gunn selected the eggs she was going to use for dinner, and walked into the pantry to store the others carefully away in the big refrigerator. Miss Bly was there, signalling with a finger to her lip. “Thought you’d need some help,” she whispered. “I’ve found the cure: give her some work to do.”

Mrs. Gunn stared.

“Work,” repeated Sally, “that’s all.”

Mrs. Gunn went back to the kitchen, hoping it was now empty. But it wasn’t. Miss Park was rocking gently in the chair, her eyes fixed on an invisible object on the wall in front of her.

If only she keeps quiet, Mrs. Gunn thought, that won’t be so bad. It’s not that she’s ugly—I’ve seen worse. It’s her expression. It’s a good lesson to all of us that we’ve got to look after the thoughts we think, or just look what happens. Now that’s a cruel thing to say, Isabella Gunn! But it is funny, though, the harder Miss Park tries to make people like her, the less they do. But, then, she ought to make
herself
more likeable. She has money and a famous family and all that, and they don’t seem to matter one bit to anyone else. Not that they should. It would be a poor look-out for the world if people were judged by money or family.

“Do you think Mimi Bassinbrook’s going to have pneumonia?” Esther Park asked suddenly.

Mrs. Gunn gave her a sharp look. “No,” she said shortly.

“Imagine!” Esther Park said scornfully. “Imagine the doctor being brought all the way from Sweetwater for only a cold.”

“Dr. Clark has cured her pretty quick, hasn’t he?” Mrs. Gunn stared angrily at the woman rocking so placidly in her armchair. Pensomething-or-other he had given Miss Bassinbrook. She’d be all right for the dance on Saturday. More was the pity, perhaps.

“I’ve had pneumonia,” Esther Park said. “My doctor warned me to be very careful in future. That’s why I was so worried a few days ago when I had that terrible cold. Of course,
I
didn’t want to bother anyone.”

But you tried hard, Mrs. Gunn thought grimly. Then she said, “Why, here are five pounds of peas to be shelled for dinner! And I just needed someone to help me.”

“I’d love to,” Esther Park said slowly. She looked at the mountain of green peas on the table, at Mrs. Gunn placing an enormous bowl invitingly beside them. She rose. “But I did promise Mimi I’d go upstairs and see her before dinner. I tell you what, I’ll go and cheer Mimi up, then I’ll come back and help you.”

“Fine. I’ll need some help with peeling the potatoes too.”

Perhaps, Mrs. Gunn thought hopefully, as she looked at the chair rocking peacefully and still more peacefully by itself until it at last came to rest, perhaps she won’t even stay once Norah is away and there will be work to do. And Miss Bly, she thought admiringly. Miss Bly is no fool.

She couldn’t have paid Sally higher praise.

* * *

Before dinner Mrs. Peel made a habit of taking two carrots up to the corral. Sally came along with her this evening. Both of them looked towards the hills, but there was still no sign of any riders. They did not notice that Chuck and Jackson were sitting outside the saddle-barn, waiting and watching too.

Chuck was squatting in his favourite position, his left leg kneeling with the weight of his body balanced on its heel, his right elbow resting on the bended right knee. He shook his head at the carrots in Mrs. Peel’s hand. “Look at that, will you?” he seemed to say.

Jackson grinned, partly in agreement, partly in anticipation. It wasn’t, by any wrangler’s standards, the way to treat a horse, but Jackson had seen Mrs. Peel at work on many an evening.

“Next thing they’ll be tying blue ribbons on its tail,” Chuck said, as he watched Mrs. Peel and Miss Bly walk over to the fence. His voice was low, for sound carried easily across the stillness of the evening. Nice women, but kind of crazy, he had long since decided.

Mrs. Peel’s voice, unaware of its audience, was clear and confident. “Here, Boy!” she called. “Golden Boy!”

The horses, grazing quietly in the west pasture, went on grazing quietly. Except the palomino, who lifted his head and looked round in an inquiring manner.

“Is that call for me? Put it through, will you?” Sally said, and began to laugh.

“Be quiet, Sally. He’ll hear you.”

Sally looked at the horse, a golden statue with its head turned towards them. She looked at the other horses, their heads stretched down to the grass. Perhaps, she thought, I will have to learn to paint: I just can’t go on like this, wishing I could paint. “Look at the design they make, Margaret! And their colours against that gold-green grass!” White, sorrel—one a darker chestnut than the other, rich bay-brown, black, cream buckskin... “This is what I like best: to see them together, to watch them free. It must have been magnificent when there was a remuda of hundreds.”

“A what?”

“A cavvy. At least, I think that’s it. Oh, a herd, if you prefer that.”

“Boy!” Mrs. Peel called again. “See, he’s coming! I don’t even have to wave the carrots now.”

The golden palomino left the others. He walked slowly, pausing now and again to stretch his long graceful neck towards a tuft of tempting grass.

“He takes his time,” Mrs. Peel explained, “to show us that he has an independence above carrots. He is being polite, making up his mind to receive visitors with an elegant air. He’s like one of those horses in a baroque painting, isn’t he? When he shies, you know, he tosses his mane, dilates his nostrils, and widens his eyes. All he needs is Louis XIV on his back, pointing a finger upwards and onwards, through a froth of lace round his cuff. He’s completely baroque. In fact, it’s so funny to watch him that I forget even to be frightened when he shies. It really isn’t so unpleasant as I used to think it was—it’s rather like chassezing sideways on a dance-floor. Perfectly safe if you don’t come loose from your partner.”

“I’m sure he’s a first cousin to a Hollywood blonde with a shoulder-bob. Why not rename him Glamour Boy?”

“And he would throw me, just to teach me how to behave. Don’t laugh, Sally. He has his own ways of thinking, and they get him along all right. How would
you
like to spend the winters out in these hills? If self-preservation doesn’t involve some form of thinking, then—Boy! Here, Boy!”

The palomino quickened his pace suddenly, and swerved at a trot towards the fence.

Jackson looked at Chuck. “Well?” he asked, with a broad grin.

“Well,” Chuck said, and pushed his hat back off his forehead. “She’ll be learning the bastard to count next. Then he’ll be laying down for his country and rising for
The Star-spangled Banner.
What’s this, anyways? A goddamned ranch or a jigging circus?” But he was smiling. “And what’s baroak?”

Jackson shook his head.

“That’s what she said, wasn’t it? Baroak...” How do they get round to talking that way, he wondered. Sure must tire them out. Guess some folks use their voices as others use their eyes. Baroak. It had a good sound to it. Come in handy when he was having a little talk with his own pony. You goddamned sonofabitchn baroak pony, you. That would get it listening. She was right, too: horses had their own ways of figuring out people.

“Mighty nice woman, that,” he said to Jackson, whose dark, serious eyes suddenly smiled with real pleasure. “Don’t you worry, Jack. When you tell her you’re staying here and not driving to California or any other such place she’ll understand.” Then he went back to watching Mrs. Peel, who had now clambered through the fence and was walking a few paces beside the palomino with her hand on its neck. Then she gave it a few brisk claps, and it broke away to return to the horses on the hillside. Some people, Chuck had heard, had their own way of explaining a friendship like that: sure, they said, a childless woman, a lonely man, is always losing their hearts to a dog or a horse. But they only proved one thing for sure: they hadn’t ever had a dog or a horse that liked them enough to let them know what they were missing.

Sally turned round, ready to walk back to the house. “Hello!” she called, as she suddenly saw Jackson and Chuck. She walked across the dusty corral towards them. “Come down and enjoy Ma Gunn’s cooking, won’t you? The boys won’t be here for supper tonight, I’m afraid.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Chuck said, looking beyond her to the hills.

“What? Have you seen them?” Sally turned round quickly and looked once more. “Margaret,” she called, “Chuck’s seen them!”

Chuck, who had been watching the small cloud of dust for almost half an hour when he hadn’t been studying Mrs. Peel, nodded. He pointed. “Heading for the south pasture. Can’t move them steers too quick. Lose weight if you look at them, almost.”