Rest and Be Thankful (36 page)

“Where are they?” Sally asked, her eyes still on the hills.

“I can’t see them either,” Mrs. Peel said, as she joined the little group.

Chuck explained patiently, using a cloud in the sky, a red-walled canyon, a hill with saw-toothed rocks, and a green-edged creek to mark the exact spot. “Give them about an hour, maybe,” he said, timing their arrival at the south pasture. “Well, I think I’ll go peel a lot of potatoes.” He touched his hat and moved away, and Jackson went with him.

“Jackson,” Mrs. Peel said to Sally, as they walked quickly towards the house to warn Mrs. Gunn about dinner, “is no longer Jackson. The other day he passed by when I was talking to someone, and I saw him out of the corner of my eye. I thought, ‘Well, we’ve a new wrangler.’ And then I looked properly, and it was Jackson.”

“They call him Jack.”

“Jack. Formerly Jackson. Formerly Tisza Szénchenyi.” Mrs. Peel smiled. “He’s travelled a long way,” she said softly.

“So have we, I think,” Sally said, and linked her arm through Margaret’s.

“Will you do something for me?” Mrs. Peel asked unexpectedly. “Will you stop being foolish? The next evening you want to go riding, will you go riding? Instead of refusing and finding some old excuse?”

Sally was silent. Then she said at last. “Mimi is young and she’s very pretty. If I were a man—”

“I wish women would stop making men seem more stupid than they are. I know all about Mimi. I saw her that very first night. She came up to the corral, all ready to go riding by herself, just as you and Jim were setting out. Naturally you asked her to go along. Naturally you found yourself riding alone, while she edged in beside Jim Brent on the narrow trails. And she repeated all these little stratagems every evening after that, didn’t she? Until you began to say you were too busy to go, that you had a headache, or that you couldn’t ride because of your accident. Just any old excuse, Sally Bly. And you were a fool. You didn’t help Jim very much, did you?”

“Perhaps he didn’t want that kind of help. Besides, why should I bother, anyway? It’s none of my business.” Sally’s voice was on the defensive now. “Why should it be?”

“Because,” Mrs. Peel’s voice said gently, “I’m a complete idiot about horses, and your horse is putting on weight.”

Sally had to smile. “You’re a sweet liar,” she said, “but I’ll listen to you. I’ll start exercising him again.”

“In the evenings?” Mrs. Peel insisted.

Sally hesitated. “If I am asked,” she said at last, and the smile disappeared from her eyes.

* * *

The pack-horse came first, running free, streaming ahead of the others, its head pointed unerringly to the ranch. Bert followed it at a fast canter. Behind him, keeping up with him, was Karl Koffing. And then, five minutes later, the group of four men, taking it more easily, riding close together.

They hadn’t spoken much for the last hour. And that, Earl Grubbock decided, as he tried to ease his blistered thighs by standing up in the stirrups, was a damned good idea. He saw the waiting crowd at the corral, and he groaned. At this stage all a man wanted to do was to get off his horse thankfully, look back at the mountains, and say to himself, “Well, I made it.” No questions, no fuss. Just a bath with real hot water. Food and drink. And bed. A real honest-to-God bed with a mattress and springs underneath and four blankets over you. And sleep. Real, deep-down sleep in a dark sheltered room with every noise held away from you. No waking up with a start when a coyote howled in your ear, or a wind moaned through the trees, or a porcupine rustled the dry twigs near you as it wandered around looking for some leather to eat. No waking up when the temperature dropped another ten degrees, and you were so damned frozen already that you couldn’t even pull the blanket more tightly round your chin. No more sudden flurries of snow or icy hail to beat round your ears or make the horses restless. You’d lie there, wondering what the hell made them restless this time—they always had some reason: you’d found that out—wondering if you had tethered your horse securely enough, or would you have to walk five, six, or seven miles to find him tomorrow morning? So there you’d be lying on the hard, hard earth, trying to fall into an uneasy sleep, trying to forget that the horses might break loose at any minute. And if they did—well, you lay there trying not to think about that, trying to forget you were miles from the nearest lonely ranch, with nothing but mountains and trees and creeks and parkland between you and it. That made you think of your boots— and you suddenly remembered that if you hadn’t hung them high enough they’d now be making a four-course dinner for a porcupine. So you got out of your blanket and sleeping-bag, and made sure of your boots. Then you had to wind yourself up like a cocoon again, doing it quietly so as not to waken the others. And you looked at the humped, still figures on the earth around you, and wondered how they could sleep and you couldn’t. And as soon as you started getting mad about that, then you slept no more, just lay there counting the draughts.

Grubbock eased himself on his saddle. He looked pityingly at Koffing ahead of him, keeping up his lead. Boy, I bet that hurts, he thought.

* * *

Jackson opened the gate and let the pack-horse run into the corral. Bert let out a cheery war-whoop. The others waved.

“Well, they look all right,” Mrs. Peel said, with relief. “Just a little more grimy and unwashed than usual.”

“Karl has a bandaged wrist,” Esther Park announced.

Karl Koffing was sitting on his horse, resting his elbow on the saddle-horn. He was looking at the sunset. Nature was giving them a welcome home as spectacular as her early-morning farewell. Nature had won out all around, whether she was setting out to charm or to dominate. One snowstorm, one thunder-and-lightning display, one hail attack with each icy stone as big as a giant-sized pea, one wind-and-dust storm, opalescent dawns with clouds beneath you, flaming sunsets with beaten-brass skies above you. Not to mention, Karl thought, mountains of twelve thousand feet that stretched for a hundred miles as rhythmically as if they were just the ordinary waves in an ordinary ocean. And forests that never ended, big enough to swallow up a city’s millions and have them wandering around, lost and alone, without touch of each other.

“Karl, did you get hurt?” Esther Park was asking.

He shook his head. He was still looking at the range of mountains. Once he had thought them imposing; now he knew that they were only the outer wall to a giant fortress.

“Then why are you wearing a bandage?” Esther asked.

God, Karl thought, I’ll have to dismount. Bert was already on his feet, unsaddling, unbridling, getting the pack-horse unloaded. I’ll have to get this damned saddle off too, Karl thought. But the problem is to get myself off first. The last canter had done it. He’d have been wiser to come trotting along leisurely into the corral like Grubbock. But now, as he looked across at Earl, it seemed that he was also resting for a moment before he tried to swing a leg up and over. This was one night Koffing and Grubbock could have done without an audience. They were all there except Mimi and Atherton Jones.

Fortunately the audience was now too busy asking questions of Bert and Ned to notice Karl Koffing’s silence. The damnedest piece of foolishness was this raw patch of flesh, where the inside seam of his jeans had ground the skin away. He walked stiffly, trying not to limp or hobble, as he uncinched the saddle and carried it to the corral rail. Earl Grubbock, he was relieved to see, was moving just as slowly and carefully.

“How did you get on?” Mrs. Peel was asking Jim Brent.

“Fine.” He had worked quickly and was now turning his horse loose into the pasture. He walked over to the group.

“Run into any trouble?” Robert O’Farlan asked, and everyone waited eagerly for the answer.

“No more than usual. Lost some time trying to find some strays.”

“How was the weather up there?” Carla asked. “We had a very cold wind and some rain two days ago.”

“Just what you’d expect,” Jim Brent answered her.

And the damned thing was, Koffing thought, Brent really meant it.

“Was it wonderful, Earl?” Carla asked suddenly.

“Ask me in three days’ time, and I’ll give you a fair answer,” Grubbock said, with a smile.

“Didn’t you enjoy it?” Mrs. Peel wanted to know. She looked at him, and then at Karl, anxiously.

“Sure. By November we’ll be talking about it with tears in our eyes. Won’t we, Karl?”

Karl nodded. It was easy for Grubbock to admit it had been a tough five days. Grubbock had been in the Army. No one was going to think he couldn’t take it.

Sally said, “Mrs. Gunn’s cooking a special dinner for you. So what about a bath first of all? You’ll have time. We’ve got the water piping hot.”

“Fine,” Karl said. And then, he thought, it wasn’t so fine. For Bert and Ned were walking over to their bunkhouse for a quick wash in cold water, and Robb was about to follow them.

“Hell, I don’t need a hot bath,” Karl said suddenly.

“The hell you don’t,” Grubbock said, and gripped his arm to lead him away. “And I want to see that wrist of yours too, and get a good tight bandage on it.”

Mrs. Peel looked inquiringly at Jim Brent. “It’s nothing too serious,” he assured her. “He was lucky. Now I’ll get cleaned up too.” He looked at Sally as he passed her. “Hello, stranger,” he said. “Good to see you around the corral again. Do you never go riding any more?”

“If I’m asked,” Sally said, her cheeks colouring, her eyes looking very blue and startled.

“Getting formal, aren’t we?” he teased her. “Looks as if I’ll have to start keeping an engagement diary. See you later.”

Now what did that mean, Mrs. Peel wondered. Was it good, was it bad, or was it just...? She glanced at Sally, who had a way of understanding what was meant when it wasn’t said. It must be good, for Sally was smiling as she gave Jim Brent a casual nod.

Carla and Esther and O’Farlan turned to walk back to the house. “It must have been wonderful,” Carla said, looking at the hills lying golden in the sunset. O’Farlan said yes, he envied Koffing and Grubbock: one summer, some years ago, he had gone mountain-climbing, and he had enough to think about for months afterwards.

“I’ve climbed mountains too,” Esther Park said eagerly. And she went on talking as they left the corral.

Mrs. Peel looked after her pityingly. Whatever poor Esther did, and she seemingly had done a lot of things, she would never have anything to think about except herself.

Robb was wasting time. He hadn’t left the corral with the other cowboys. Now he came over to Mrs. Peel and Sally as they turned to go down to the house. He has something to say to us, Mrs. Peel thought, as she halted. But she had learned how to wait. So had Sally.

“Yes,” Robb said at last, as if in answer to a question, “it’s mighty pretty up there.”

“Almost as pretty as Montana?” Sally asked. She looked at the thin, strong-featured face, at the healthy skin that was tight-drawn over the high cheekbones and firm jaw. There was a gentleness round his mouth that might seem weakness unless you also noticed the steady, far-seeing blue eyes. Now, as they smiled back at her, she remembered that she had never heard him say an unjust or petty thing about any other human being. There was no malice, no cynicism in his heart, no hatred of others’ virtues or strength which might be greater than his own. He had seen life at its grimmest reality—for war was the hardest schoolmaster, and Robb had chosen one of its toughest assignments: a parachutist, trained in demolition, who jumped ahead of the airborne troops—and it hadn’t beaten him down. He doesn’t know it, Sally thought, but he has a warmth in him that kindles warmth, in what he writes and in those who read.

“Almost,” Robb was saying, in his slow, quiet voice, making two unhurried words out of one. Then the thoughtful eyes turned to Mrs. Peel. “That book you lent me, Mrs. Peel—” he stopped, half frowning.

“You liked it?” Mrs. Peel asked anxiously. “That’s the poem about the Argentine gaucho,” she explained quickly to Sally.

“Sure did,” Robb said. “Kept me thinking all the way up the trail and back. He knew what he was writing about all right. Seems to me,” and he looked now up towards the hills, “a poem could be written about that too. Not the way Hernandez wrote. The way one of us might write it. Just about a five-day trip into the mountains, going up, being there, bringing the steers back. Just all that.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Peel said quietly. “A poem about that would be something I’d like to read.”

“Is that right?” His frank eyes turned to study her face, as if looking for the truth. “It would be a long poem,” he said, “as long as a novel almost. But different as it went along. There’s one way of writing to get the rhythm of setting out and then climbing the trail, when everyone’s hoping it will be a good journey. Then coming out on top of the plateau, and the world’s before you. And then the day’s work; that would be different again. And then the nights, and talk, and a bit of remembering, and thoughts about all those others who’ve sat, just as you are doing now, around a dying fire in the wilderness. And then sleep, when you don’t sleep, but just lie thinking. That’s a mighty queer thing: you’re lying in the middle of nature, and what you think about is men; you even start planning, seeing things more clearly; right and wrong is easy to understand. And you know it is easier to understand than men make it. All they have to do is to feel the way you’re feeling—for you’re one of them, and they’re a part of you—as you lie out there, listening to the mountains and the night sky. There wouldn’t be so much trouble then. You not only feel it, you begin to know it. Then dawn comes up, and you see nothing but pink clouds below you, and the world is blotted out. You’re a man; you belong to them down there below these clouds; and yet you aren’t a man. You’ve no fears or troubles or hates left in you. You look at these clouds, and they are not the way you see them from the earth. They are a floor of gold and pink and purple and blue, of colours you don’t even know the names of. For a bit you stand and stare. You begin thinking about the way the Greeks made their gods live, high in the mountains, and that makes sense. You even feel you could leap right forward into these clouds; you could fall ten thousand feet and not get hurt. And that’s the thought that makes you know you’re a man again; gods don’t have to think about getting hurt.”