Wanderlust Creek and Other Stories (4 page)

“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” said
Lars. “I figured maybe the Judge might be able to make you listen,
so I went for him. You didn’t owe nothing to Johnny or anybody
else, and don’t you forget it.”

Lars’ voice ceased abruptly as if someone
had pushed him aside. And then Vern knew that Rosemary was there
even before she touched him. She lifted his head gently into her
lap, sitting in the dust of the street without a thought to her
dress. He looked up into her face.

“I had to do it,” he said. “It was the only
way out.”

“Why couldn’t you have just told us the
truth?” she said.

“Just pride,” he said. “I thought that
this”—he moved his right hand slightly, and the back of it touched
the gun which still lay in the dust by his leg—“was the only thing
anyone respected me for. I wanted to keep it that way. Without it
I’d be—nothing.”

“You’re a fool,” said Rosemary softly, her
slim fingers threading almost unconsciously through his dark
hair.

He tried to smile. “You’re always
right.”

“Could you really believe that was all
anyone cared about? That it was all you meant to any of us? Do you
think
that
matters at all to me?”

Sudden warmth and light broke through his
soul, like new life. “To
you
, Rosemary?”

“If you do,” she said, “then you’re a bigger
fool than I thought you were.”

And she bent and kissed him, in front of
them all.

It began very much as any other day at
Mattie Arnold’s place on Front Street. To say any other busy day
would be redundant, for every day was a busy one at Mattie
Arnold’s. Front Street fronted on the railway depot and the
stockyards; the lumber mill was down at one end of the street and
the Wells Fargo office at the other, so nearly all of the town’s
commerce passed through the street; and the cowboys who trailed
herds to the stockyards, the lumbermen and trainmen on their dinner
breaks, the stockmen who came to buy and sell cattle, the
businessmen who came to buy lumber, and the travelers arriving or
departing by train or by Wells Fargo coach, all came in to eat at
Mattie Arnold’s place. It was never called anything else—the
unassuming sign over the door said “MEALS,” and the business ran on
reputation.

There were twelve tables in the big front
room, covered in red-and-white-checked tablecloths, and matching
curtains at the windows, which shone crystal-clear in the mornings
but were filmed with dust from the street by afternoon. The wood
floor was kept clean by constant determined attention; Etta Arnold,
always in some sort of quick motion, seemed to employ all her time
not spent waiting on table in sweeping, skittering around the room
like an eager water-bug on dry land. The tablecloths were whisked
away and replaced with fresh ones as soon as they were soiled, and
the polished brass spittoons glaringly dared anyone to miss their
aim.

Mattie Arnold was a widow, a brisk, capable,
pleasant-looking woman in her early forties with a head of handsome
red-brown hair, who ran the place with the help of her daughter and
a hired girl. Etta Arnold, sixteen, wide-eyed and small for her
age, took orders and waited on table; her mother assisted her where
needed and worked behind the counter, and all three worked in the
kitchen. Mattie had a knack for managing and a knack for putting
herself on an easy footing with nearly anyone in a matter of
minutes, both of which qualities went a long way towards the
success of her business. She knew everyone and knew precisely how
to greet them: she was cordial to the older men, motherly to the
young ones, and an oasis in the desert to weary and distracted
woman travelers. At Mattie Arnold’s you could get a cup of strong
black coffee that would not have disgraced a roundup camp, or a cup
of tea that would have made an Englishman feel at home. Etta knew
the corner table at which to seat traveling families, with the long
bench where a line of children tired or boisterous from a long
railway journey could be seated and divested of hats and coats and
occupied with a hot, homelike meal. There was even a sort of little
cloakroom—really a piece of the back hallway behind the kitchen,
which had been connected with the front room by knocking out a
closet—with a mirror and washbasin where ladies could refresh
themselves and remove travel dust.

Breakfast was served until ten o’clock, and
dinner for the rest of the day. There were busy times in the
morning and evening, but the high point of the day was the noonday
rush, when all the tables were swamped with customers and none of
the three women were still for a moment. To Etta Arnold, her long
brown braid swinging wildly behind her as she circled and swooped
around the crowded tables, it felt like a race, except it was a
race without a finish line—the cycle of orders taken, full trays
carried in, empty ones carried out, money changing hands, never
really stopped; it only slowed down into the afternoon hours, and
you never noticed when the rush had ended until after it was
over.

This Thursday morning began in the approved
fashion. Joe Conner, the Wells Fargo stage driver, and Cal Runyan,
the guard, were eating their breakfast at a table on one side of
the room, Runyan’s unloaded shotgun leaning against the wall near
him as he ate. The distant lowing of cattle from the stockyards
announced a new trail herd in town, which meant a trail crew to
feed—Mattie Arnold heard, and made mental calculations, and went to
give instructions to Mary, the hired girl, as to the estimated
number of flapjacks that would be required. At ten past the hour,
the eight o’clock train deposited a smattering of passengers, most
of whom entered Mattie Arnold’s place a few minutes later.
Conspicuous among them was a fair-haired woman with her hat on
crooked, looking breathless but determined, and shepherding three
small children before her. Etta appeared, rather like an elf in
white cuffs and apron, and conducted them to the corner table,
where with a nominal amount of elbowing and wriggling the children
slid into their places on the bench. There was a little girl of
eight or nine with long flaxen braids, a sturdy small boy a year or
two younger, and a dusty-faced cherub of three years old with her
bonnet even more crooked than her mother’s hat, fair curls and
enormous round cheeks.

“How would you all like a peppermint stick?”
said Etta, beaming on them in a friendly way. “All you’ve got to do
is eat up your breakfast real good—that’s Mama’s rule. You can have
’em to take with you when you leave.”

Turning to the mother, she said, “There’s
soap and water and a mirror and such through that door, ma’am, if
you’d like to freshen up a bit. I can sit with the kids for you if
it isn’t too long; we’re not that busy yet.”

“Thank you,” said the mother gratefully.
“We’ll eat first, I think. I do very much appreciate it. Is
there—could I get a cup of tea?”

“You bet,” said Etta cheerfully, and turned
and whisked through the swinging door to the kitchen, the tip of
her long braid just missing being caught as it closed behind
her.

More town customers began to come in while
Etta was taking the orders of the other train passengers, and by
the time they were served, the noise in both front room and kitchen
had risen to a busy hum. Etta brought coffee to the Wells Fargo
men; her mother carried a tray of ham and eggs to two men who had
come on the train. The three tow-headed children in the corner were
chattering energetically but doing full justice to their bread and
butter, while their mother leaned back in her chair and sipped her
tea, and ate her meal more slowly.

The screen door to the street was suddenly
kicked open unceremoniously, and two cowboys strode in, half
carrying, half dragging another, while a few more crowded in behind
them. Someone pulled out a chair from the nearest empty table, and
they put him into it. His clothes were torn and dirty and his face
unrecognizable under a coating of blood and dirt. The taller of the
two who had brought him in looked round as if to ask for something,
but Mattie and Etta were already there, one on each side of the
chair. Mattie Arnold supported the young cowboy’s head with one
hand as he slumped back slackly in the chair, and took charge in
unperturbed fashion. “
Good
gracious, what now. Etta, go get
some water and a clean towel—Cal, may I have that coffee? Thanks,
put it on the table here—”

She had shaken out a clean napkin tucked in
the waistband of her apron, and began carefully cleaning the worst
of the blood off the boy’s face. The tall cowboy stood bent over
with his hands on his knees and watched her.

Etta was back, clutching a bowl of water
slightly wet on the outside from the haste in which she had filled
it, as her mother succeeded in making the young cowboy’s features
fairly visible. He came to life somewhat under her ministrations
and squirmed a little, but Mattie’s arm across his shoulders held
him in place. She dipped the only clean corner of the napkin in the
bowl of water, wrung it out and wiped the dirt away from a cut
across his cheek.

“Say, what happened to him?” said Etta, with
a good deal of interest as well as solicitude.

“I couldn’t begin to guess,” said Mattie, as
her patient uttered a muffled “Ow.” “Mark Lindsey, tell me what in
the world you’ve got yourself into this time.”

He coughed, and spit dust. “Oh…just a
fight,” he said. He grinned up at her from one side of his face;
his right eye was already half swollen shut. “I was doing all right
for about half a minute, but after that it was all the other
way.”

“There were two of them,” said his friend
Tripp hotly. “It wasn’t a fight; they just beat him up.”

“Billy and Ames,” supplied Mark, somewhat
muffled by the wet cloth being applied to his split lip. “Dunno
what got into ’em—just decided they didn’t like me, I guess.”

“Put your head back and keep still,” ordered
Mattie Arnold. She cast a quick eye around the room to make sure
everyone still at the tables had food in front of them, and then
went on with her work, washing out the cuts on Mark’s face and
making a wet compress of another napkin to lay against his bruised
eye. Etta stood by to help her, handing things as needed and
watching interestedly.

“Mark, if you don’t cut out some of the
noise you make every week, you’re going to end up losing your job,”
said Mattie, dabbing at a cut on his chin.

“I just did,” said Mark. “Old Boiler fired
me on the spot, when the fellows broke it up. At least I think he
did—my head was kind of going round, so maybe I didn’t hear too
well.”

“He fired you all right,” said Tripp. “And
me, too. Billy was whining to him about what a troublemaker you
were, and I was trying to hold you up while I was ripping into
Billy and Ames for pounding you, and everybody else was taking
sides, and so the Boiler shot a column of steam a mile high and
said you and me were both troublemakers and could go—away. I’m
surprised you folks didn’t hear the commotion up here.”

Etta said “Oo,” commiseratively, but Cal
Runyan, who had been standing looking on with his hands in his
pockets, began to laugh. “I can just see it,” he said, “and hear
it, too.”

“Cal, you’d better go in the kitchen and
have Mary give you another cup of coffee—this one’s getting cold,”
said Mattie Arnold, one side of whose mind was always running on
the convenience of her customers even in the midst of
distractions.

“You going to make me drink it?” protested
Mark.

“Only if you don’t hold still,” said Mattie,
taking him by the chin and turning his head straight for the fifth
time. “What are you boys going to do for jobs, with the busy season
ending?”

“I don’t know. But after today I’d rather be
quit of that outfit, anyway. They can get along without us, we can
get along without them,” said Tripp recklessly.

“We’ll make out. Bad penny, you know…always
lands right side up. Or something like that,” said Mark. He winked
roguishly at Etta with his one good eye—whereupon it became
extremely difficult for Etta to swallow and her eyes permanently
gained a size.

“I thought it was a cat that always lands on
its feet,” said Mattie, but nobody was listening but Tripp, who
grinned.

The other cowboys who had followed the
excitement into the eating-house had begun to take off their hats
and sit down at the tables, for most of them had meant to come in
here for breakfast anyway. “Here, Etta,” said her mother, handing
up the bowl of water with the stained cloths draped over the edge,
“you can take these back to the kitchen—and you’d better help Mary
with the flapjacks. Make sure that ham doesn’t burn; I’ll be out in
a minute.”

Etta obeyed, but she did not disappear with
her usual dragonfly-like directness; she floated dreamily through
the kitchen door as though borne on a sluggish breeze.

Mattie Arnold put Mark’s tousled hair right
with a quick comb-through of her fingers as though he had been six
years old, then went out to the kitchen to wash her hands and came
back to take the men’s orders. Etta and Mary were kept busy filling
them, so it was Mattie who stopped by the corner table a few
minutes later to collect the empty plates of the fair-haired woman
and her children. This group had observed the cowboys’ entrance and
the subsequent scene in some astonishment, but without comment. The
mother was looking, not surprisingly, a little unsure of her
surroundings.

Mattie smiled at her in the easy way that
won so many people’s goodwill. “Don’t mind the interruption,” she
said. “It happens every once in a while. Those boys can get a
little high-spirited!”

The mother smiled gratefully up at her.
“Yes,” she said with a little laugh, “it certainly looks so!”