Rest and Be Thankful Page 20

  “She’s met some friends probably,” Robert O’Farlan said gently. “You know what it is like in a small town: everyone gets to know you.”

  “Yes,” Mimi broke in quickly, glad of the chance to talk about her own visit to Sweetwater. “It was simply incredible today. After we left the little colts beside their mothers in the vet’s nice clean barn we drove into Main Street and parked the trucks. We thought we might get a late lunch—just a sandwich, you know—at the Foot Rail. But before we got there we were stopped twenty times if we were stopped once. And in the Foot Rail, itself—why, it is the most incredible place, right out of a Hollywood movie.”

  “Perhaps the Hollywood movie came straight out of the Foot Rail,” Earl Grubbock suggested.

  “I expected Gary Cooper to come in at any moment through the swinging doors, a six-shooter in each hand. And Marlene Dietrich ought to have been leaning against the black-jack table, with a spangled skirt and a welcoming smile. Earl, Karl, why didn’t you tell me all about this? I do believe, Mrs. Peel, they wanted to keep the Foot Rail a secret for themselves.”

  “You should get Brent to take you to the Purple Rim next time,” Koffing said, and silenced Mimi. “The Foot Rail is pretty tame.”

  “Did you see any sign of Sally?” Mrs. Peel asked quickly.

  “In the distance only,” Mimi answered, and made a charming little face at Karl Koffing. “He-man!” she jibed.

  “Where?” Mrs. Peel wanted to know.

  “Just along Main Street. Jim and Bert were talking to a ranger, one of those National Park men—now, Karl, there’s a real he-man for you; you should have seen him!”

  “And?” Mrs. Peel asked patiently.

  “And by the time they had stopped talking I didn’t see Sally any more. She must have gone into a store.”

  “So Jim didn’t see her?”

  “I don’t think so,” Mimi answered casually, but with a touch of embarrassment as Mrs. Peel’s brown eyes watched her keenly.

  “Perhaps Sally met Drene and Dewey in Sweetwater,” Carla suggested. “And she’s been trying to persuade Drene to come back here.”

  “Hope it works out that way,” Grubbock said. “The kid doesn’t know what she has let herself in for.”

  “Well, I won’t miss Schmetterling, for one,” Karl Koffing remarked. He looked pointedly at Mrs. Peel, and congratulated himself on his powers of understatement.

  “Nor I,” Carla said cheerfully. “Wasn’t he dull? He had nothing to say. It was really disappointing, because I expected someone very witty and amusing. I did enjoy his book, you know.”

  Prender Atherton Jones smiled. “Authors are often dull and disappointing to meet.” And Dewey won’t dare put me in a book now, he thought, with satisfaction: not after this little exhibition. It wasn’t running away with a girl that amused Prender so much; it was running away with Drene, with pearl-grey pants and ribbon-bowed braids. Dewey and Drene... good God!

  “That’s discouraging,” Earl Grubbock said, with a grin. “Perhaps we shouldn’t be so anxious to get published.”

  “Dewey called us ‘the Great Unpublished.’ I heard him one day when Sally was arguing with him about something,” Esther Park volunteered. “And he also said we were Six Authors in search of a Character.”

  “He would,” Mrs. Peel said, with so much bitterness that they all stopped thinking to stare at her.

  “Don’t worry,” Earl Grubbock said. “You can score him off your guest-list from now on.”

  “But he wasn’t on my guest-list,” Mrs. Peel protested. She looked at Atherton Jones with kindling revolt. Had he given the others the impression that Dewey Schmetterling had come here by her choice? “He arrived here uninvited. He stayed. And stayed. And now he’s gone.”

  “With a bang,” Karl Koffing said.

  Robert O’Farlan looked sharply at Koffing. Had he forgotten his own interpretations of Schmetterling’s visit here—some of them not too charitable to Mrs. Peel? Or was this just Koffing being very much Koffing: when you are wrong never admit it, never apologise, and keep on talking so that others won’t remember how wrong you were? It seemed that way. For Koffing was now talking hard about Drene.

  “It would de damned funny, you know, if we hadn’t all liked Drene,” Koffing said.

  “Reminds me of a Somerset Maugham story,” Prender Atherton Jones said. “Remember? About the man in the British Foreign Office who became infatuated with a female clown in a third-rate travelling circus, and followed her all over France.”

  Mimi laughed. “Oh, Prender! I can’t see Dewey following Drene all around the little country rodeos, adjusting her saddle for her, hanging around the chutes. In any case, he isn’t like the man in the story. He isn’t in love.” She was quite certain about that.

  “Sally thought he was,” Mrs. Peel said mildly, and looked round at the amazed faces. “Perhaps he is. But that’s no excuse for ruining Drene’s life.”

  Jim Brent entered the dining-room as Mrs. Peel was speaking. He drew a chair up to the table beside her. “I see I don’t have to do much explaining,” he said. “Thanks, I’ll have a cup of coffee.” He looked round at the group of faces. Mrs. Peel was as worried as he had guessed. Atherton Jones still looked a bit astounded, but satisfied; he always reminded Jim of a large prize Persian cat. Koffing was amused, and so was Earl Grubbock. Mimi was looking pretty. O’Farlan was thinking things out, perhaps wondering if he would have the courage to elope some day. Carla was upset. And the woman with the peculiar face— “the Chinless Wonder” Bert had called her—was more goggle-eyed than ever. “Where’s Sally?” he asked.

  “She hasn’t come back from Sweetwater yet,” Mrs. Peel said.

  “Did she ’phone?”

  “No.”

  Jim Brent frowned. He pushed away the cup of coffee and rose. “I’ll take a look. There’s a storm coming up, and she may be stuck on the road.”

  “I’d be awfully glad if you did. She doesn’t know much about cars, and the road is steep in parts.”

  “She’ll be all right. I’ll just hurry her along,” Jim said.

  “And what about Drene?” Karl Koffing asked. He was no longer amused. He was thinking that it was typical of Brent to come in here, brush Drene off with a phrase, and play the gallant rescuer for Miss Bly.

  “What about her?” Jim asked.

  “It seems to me she needs some help. She’s got no friends in Wyoming outside of your ranch; no money; no family. We could start ’phoning the hotels in Three Springs. Then we’ll know where to pick her up. She won’t travel very far with the railroad fare that he’ll leave her.”

  Jim said, “Look, Koffing, Drene has been taking very good care of herself since she was fourteen. The guy is going to marry her. It’s none of our business.”

  “Marry?” Koffing exchanged a half-angry, half-amused look with Grubbock. Simple-minded idiot. “Schmetterling marry?”

  “Sure. She told Ned she was going to marry him. That’s the same thing in the end.”

  “Jim,” Mrs. Peel said, “we feel rather badly about this. I assure you all Easterners don’t behave this way. That’s why Karl is so indignant.”

  Karl exchanged another glance with Earl.

  “Well, you can lose that worry, Mrs. Peel,” Jim said. “As a matter of fact, up at the bunkhouse we were feeling pretty badly about it too. I assure you all Western girls don’t behave that way either.”

  Koffing cut in. “What’s wrong with the way she behaved? She was a nice kid, out for some fun; and she got more than she asked for.”

  “Did she?” Jim said. Then he listened. “Here comes the rain.” He left the room hurriedly.

  “I’ll go along too,” Earl Grubbock said unexpectedly, and ran after him.

  “It seems,” Atherton Jones was saying, as Mrs. Gunn and Norah came in to clear the table, “as if Rest and be Thankful blames Dewey, and Flying Tail blames Drene. That’s rather odd. I should have thought it quite the other way round. Men usually blame the man, you
know.”

  “Except the cowhands are siding with Ned. Naturally.” Koffing shrugged his shoulders, disposing of the whole problem.

  “And so you might, Mr. Koffing,” Mrs. Gunn said. “If you ask me they are a well-matched pair.”

  Women hate a pretty girl, Koffing thought. He wasn’t the only man thinking that either.

  Atherton Jones said, “Now, Mrs. Gunn, we must be charitable. Think of the girl’s people. They are going to blame Rest and be Thankful.” He looked as he spoke at Mrs. Peel. “They sent their daughter here, and—well, there was a certain responsibility attached to looking after her properly.”

  “Just a moment, Mr. Jones.” Mrs. Gunn finished filling the tray and handed it to Norah. “You can start washing up,” she told her niece.

  It seemed to Mrs. Peel that Norah looked disappointed. She noted, too, that the braids and the ribbon bows had disappeared.

  Mrs. Gunn cleared her throat, stood very erect, with her hands clasped in front of her, and began. “Mr. Jones, it might be easier if you’d all stop jumping to conclusions and get something straight just for once.” She shot a glance at Karl Koffing. Carla giggled nervously, and then looked apologetic.

  Mrs. Gunn went on, her voice now less nervous. “Drene left her home when she was just newly fourteen. She has been on her own ever since. Doesn’t even know where her people are. She took everything Ned or any other silly boy would give her. She was working in a drugstore outside of Phoenix when he met her. She wanted to be a rodeo star. So he helped her. He bought her the horse and the equipment. He trained her. He paid her rent and her food and her clothes. He made a lot of money in these last two years, but he hadn’t a spare dime when he started work here. The boys had to stake him—they’ve been paying his rodeo entrance fees and helping out with new equipment. If he wins they get a cut of the prize money. That’s how it’s done when you haven’t much to go on. Well—there’s the real story for you.”

  She took a deep breath, and her voice became completely natural again, now that the strain of setting the facts right was over. “Ned has had a bit of experience which may help him save more of his money in the future. Drene is getting something bigger than working in a drugstore or doing trick riding: that’s what she thinks. And Mr. Schmetterling’s getting a mighty pretty girl, who’s shy and retiring: at least, that’s what he thinks. I’m not pitying any of them. Ned had a year with her, and that squares his account. He wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. Jim could have told you all that, only he’s too decent. He thinks no one goes making up false reasons when people keep silent.” She looked pointedly at Koffing. Then she blew her nose, looked suddenly embarrassed, and seized the two nearest coffee-cups to carry into the kitchen.

  “And that,” Atherton Jones said, “would make a splendid curtain for Act Two.” He rose from the table. “Well, as Mrs. Gunn says, we’ve got things straight for once.” He mused over that with a smile. “Delicious. Servants in Wyoming are extremely refreshing.”

  “We have no servants in Wyoming. We have help.” Mrs. Peel looked at him as coldly as she could. Sally was right: Prender was the complete egotist. At this moment he was beginning to gloat over the predicament of Dewey Schmetterling. “For my part,” she said, “I hope they are in love. In that case any further discussion on our part is impertinence. Now we shall all go to the south field, and watch Ned rope calves as we promised to do.”

  “It’s raining,” Esther Park said.

  “It isn’t heavy yet. We are going. As if nothing had happened.” She looked at Esther Park as she added, “No talk. No sympathetic words. If we can’t learn anything else from the West we can at least learn its dignity.”

  For a moment she was amazed by the words and the calm, determined voice that had come out of her mouth. But everyone was agreeing with her. “Okay, general,” Koffing said, with a smile, and walked out of the room beside her. The others followed. Even Prender made no protest as he went into the hall and pulled on his raincoat and well-worn tweed hat.

  * * *

  Ned was roping badly, but doggedly. He was getting his calf, but his timing was poor, for his pony wasn’t working with him. He cussed it steadily and cussed the calves and began to feel more normal. He made a little better time—twenty-two, then twenty-point-eight seconds. Still not good enough. But the audience thought it was wonderful. They had even forgotten about the drizzling rain.

  “Git after him!” yelled Bert, releasing another calf through the gate. Ned streaked after it, standing in his stirrups, the noose swinging in a wide and then gradually quickening circle over his head. The calf twisted and turned, but the horse twisted and turned to follow. Again the pace of the swinging noose was increased. It flew straight as an arrow to rope the racing calf. As the noose tightened round its neck, Ned leaped off his horse and sprinted towards the calf. He threw it, kept it on the ground by the weight of his knee, and tried to tie-rope three of its ankles together. But the horse wasn’t working properly. The rope, attached to its saddle-horn, was slack. The noose around the calf’s neck wasn’t held taut enough: it thrashed wildly on the ground, kicking madly, struggling to rise. Ned, avoiding a broken jaw or a mouthful of smashed teeth, got an armful of three legs at last. He tied them quickly, surely. Then he rose, signalling with upraised arm, and walked back to his horse. Still too damned slow. He pulled sharply at the slack rope which stretched between the calf and the horse. “See that, you goddamned lazy sonofabitchn old pony you!” he said to Ragtime. He jerked the rope again, smacking Ragtime across the face to make him pay attention, mind his business, and back up. Ragtime backed, holding the rope taut, almost strangling the calf now that there was no need for it. “You do that next time,” Ned warned him, “or I’ll skin the goddamned hide off your back.”

  Robb untied the calf and let it run away. He brought back the tie-rope to Ned. “Better,” he said. “Twenty-point-two seconds that time.”

  The audience, perched along the fence, hadn’t liked seeing Ragtime being disciplined (“Ned’s upset about Drene,” Mrs. Peel explained). But with his next calf Ned made it in eighteen seconds flat. This time his pony worked. No one in the damp audience, however, drew any inference from method to result. They just thought it was wonderful.

  They stayed through the drizzling rain for almost half an hour. And then, the gusts of wind increased enough to make umbrellas useless, and the skies darkened still more, and the first roll of distant thunder came over the mountains. There was a general retreat towards shelter and a warm fire and something hot to drink.

  * * *

  Sally hadn’t returned. There was no sign of Jim and Earl. And somehow, as the guests waited, they gathered in Mrs. Gunn’s kitchen. Prender Atherton Jones did most of the talking. The others listened partly to his words, partly to the rising storm, partly for the hum of the returning cars.

  It was almost nine o’clock before they heard a car. One car, not two. They looked at each other. Then they were on their feet, the women crowding round the door, the men out in the rain-driven yard. The bright straight shafts of lightning turned them into black shadows with white faces.

  Jim Brent’s car came slowly into the yard. Then he and Earl helped Sally out, and carried her towards the bright kitchen. Sally was saying, “I’m all right. I am, I tell you.” But she closed her eyes and lay quite still.

  “She took the cut-off to save time,” Earl explained hurriedly to Mrs. Peel. “That’s why we were so long in finding her. The car went over the bank. She got out before it burned.”

  Sally opened her eyes and tried to smile. “All that shopping,” she said, “I didn’t save a thing.”

  17

  THE STORM

  By the time Mrs. Peel came downstairs to report that Sally was almost asleep and that Mrs. Gunn was going to stay with her the others had lit an enormous fire in the living-room and were gathered there. Earl Grubbock and Jim Brent were drying off in front of the blazing logs. Earl was answering the questions which Carla kept asking�
�not that he could give her much information about the accident itself. But he did describe the narrow dirt road, and the twisting mass of the burned car, and Sally some fifty yards away from it. She had travelled that distance before she found she didn’t feel like travelling at all. She was unconscious when they found her, but at first they hadn’t seen her—only the blackened, burned-out car. That was a bad couple of minutes for both men. Then Jim’s quick eyes saw the cardigan and hat on the road, and the search was started. They found her lying at the side of the road, near a blasted pine-tree. Afterwards, in the car, she said that she kept hoping lightning didn’t strike twice in the same place, and that the chipmunks were very sympathetic.

  Jim Brent said nothing. But he noted that Mrs. Peel’s face was less worried, so Sally wasn’t in danger. He relaxed, and he even smiled when Mrs. Peel admitted that Mrs. Gunn was a much better nurse than she was. Now all they had to do was to wait for the doctor to arrive from Sweetwater. “The road may delay him,” Mrs. Peel said. “It is extraordinary how quickly a deluge of rain can turn a country road into a river of mud.”

  Earl Grubbock nodded his agreement and looked down at his boots. “Fine quality of liquid earth you keep here,” he teased Norah, who was helping Mimi to pour out coffee and pass round the sandwiches. “You’d have thought a full armoured division had been over that dirt road before we reached it.”

  Norah laughed. “There’s more of the storm to come. You’ll see plenty of fireworks in the next half hour from these windows.” She offered Jim a sandwich. “Lucky you weren’t up in the mountains tonight, Jim. When are you going? Next week?”

  Jim nodded. “I’d rather have this than snow. It’s kind of depressing to wake up and find six inches covering you and the stores, and the horses broken loose as likely as not.”

  “Snow in August?” Mimi said, looking up from the coffee-table.

  “You can expect it any time after the middle of August once you get into the mountains.”

  Earl said, “I don’t think I’d enjoy my breakfast if I had to dig for it first. Why are you going into the mountains, anyway?”