Wanderlust Creek and Other Stories (5 page)

Mattie was piling the dishes together on a
tray. “You’re new in town, aren’t you? Just come in on the
train?”

“Yes. My husband is a mining engineer—he’s
just taken a job up at the Kammerman silver mine, and we’re going
out to join him.”

“Oh, sure!” said Mattie; “that’s just a few
miles north of here. Are you going up on this morning’s stage, or
staying in town a while?”

“We’re going right up this morning. I—” The
mother paused and bit her lip a second, and then said, “Can you
tell me—is it—what is it
like
up there?”

“Well, it’s pretty bleak to look at just at
first,” said Mattie, who believed in being honest, “but they’re
putting up some good frame houses and offices now—wagons of lumber
for them have been going by here all day. There’s a lot of women up
there now, the manager’s wife and some others, and a couple of them
have got children too. There’s the company store for food and such,
but you’ll want to buy your furniture and clothes and things here
in town.”

“I’m very grateful to you,” said the mother,
who had been listening with earnest attention. “I’m sure we’ll do
fine up there—it’s just the getting started, you know!”

“Well, we’ve got to be rolling,” said Cal
Runyan, getting up and collecting his shotgun. “Stage for Kammerman
and Gruett leaves at nine sharp, people, if any of you are going to
be on it.”

“Anybody’d think you were the driver, the
way you keep that stage on the clock,” said Tripp.

“Joe drives the stage, and Cal drives Joe,”
said Mattie Arnold, picking up her tray of dishes.

Runyan collected Joe Conner in much the same
way as the shotgun, and ushered the stocky driver out of the
eating-house, Joe grumbling about the last mouthful of coffee he
hadn’t had time to finish. Three more men passed them coming in as
the Wells Fargo men went out; it was getting to be the busiest part
of the breakfast hour.

When Etta came back from the kitchen, her
long braid was pinned up in a halo around her head, which somehow
only made her look even smaller and more elf-like. Her mother’s
lips twitched in just the slightest way, but she said nothing as
she passed her with the tray of empty dishes. There was more than
one twinkling eye and subdued titter among the cowboys as she
passed between their tables—her movement could now be best
described as gliding—but they managed keep their faces straight
when they faced her. Etta was having another one of her grown-up
fits, which usually occurred when Mark Lindsey cast a careless
smile or wink in her direction.

At the one table where she might have wished
to make an impression, however, nobody noticed. Tripp and Mark had
demolished a substantial breakfast—not even a beating could take
away Mark’s appetite for too long—but instead of fortifying their
spirits it seemed to have had the opposite effect. Now that the
initial excitement and indignation of their dismissal had abated,
they were considering their prospects somewhat gloomily. It was
true that not many ranches would be hiring at this time of year,
and their ex-foreman—familiarly known as the Boiler, on account of
rages that were legendary—was not known to take back men fired in
the heat of temper.

Gradually the dining-room filled up as more
men came in from the stockyards, many of them belonging to the
outfit from which Tripp and Mark had been summarily ejected. Among
them were the other two participants in the fight, who sat down
together at a wall table. The face of one bore a few corresponding
bruises, but he still glowered triumphantly at Mark Lindsey across
the intervening space. A few more men came in and sat down,
including the Boiler himself, looking capable of submerging anyone
in hot water, who took a table alone, ordered “
hot
coffee”
and swallowed it as though stoking up on fuel. In spite of this
combination of hostile elements, there was no further outbreak; the
ex-combatants contented themselves with surreptitious glances at
each other and talking in low voices to their friends.

“Smug set of skunks,” said Tripp, whose
spite seemed channeled into the gift of inventing picturesque
epithets. “They know they got us fired. And they’re darn well
pleased about it, too.”

“Let ’em be,” said Mark. “We can’t waste our
time on them. Tripp, how much money you got left?”

“Not much that belongs to me,” said Tripp.
“I gotta pay off two or three fellows I owe—that ought to pretty
much eat up what the Boiler threw at me this morning.”

“Most of mine’s got to go on that new
saddle,” said Mark. “I’ve got three more installments on it. I
wouldn’t have bought it if I’d known this was going to happen.” He
paused. “Suppose there’s anything doing up Gruett way?”

“Well, the stage leaves at nine—” said
Tripp, and paused.

“Yeah,” said Mark slowly, “but—”

He glanced up at Etta, who, having a free
moment, was hovering shyly near the table listening to their
conversation with a sober expression on her small pointed face.
Mark grinned at her—with rather grotesque effect, since one side of
his face was puffed up and discolored. “Aw, we’ll find something,”
he said. He pushed back his chair and stood up, and Tripp rose too.
“You can count on it. And you can count on us being back for
dinner, too.”

His usual method of saying goodbye to Etta
was pulling her braid, but not finding it in its usual place, he
tweaked her ear carelessly instead and went out with Tripp, feeling
rather tenderly of a bruise on the back of his head that had
manifested itself for the first time when he put his hat on.

Other customers finished their breakfast and
rose to leave. The fair-haired woman, much refreshed by a cup of
tea and a wash in the little cloakroom, collected her children and
departed to find their luggage and see that it was loaded at the
Wells Fargo office in plenty of time for the nine o’clock stage.
The Boiler also completed his stoking and departed; as did the two
who apparently carried such a grudge against Mark Lindsey.

The breakfast trade reached its high-water
point and then gradually ebbed, leaving a space of time where only
a late-morning straggler or two sat in the big tranquil front room.
The sunlight fell through the screen door and lay in two broad
squares on the floor. In the kitchen, Mary and Etta washed a
towering stack of plates, sliced potatoes and put pies in the oven,
while Mattie rolled up her sleeves and began dipping chicken in
flour to fry for dinner.

The beginning of the noonday rush could be
equated to the first stray droplets of water before a flood. The
first few customers dropped in at about eleven-thirty; by a quarter
to twelve the screen door was swinging open to admit someone every
few minutes; by twelve o’clock Mattie Arnold’s place was a noisy
hive of activity, and by half-past the noonday rush was in full
swing. The swinging door to the kitchen was never allowed to come
to a full standstill before one of the three women was pushing
through it again, going or coming. Knives clattered, glasses
clinked, chairs scraped on the floor, voices rose loud in order to
be heard over the general noise. Etta, in the thick of things,
swung right, whirled left, balancing a tray on one arm, her other
hand sliding things off it and onto it when she paused by a table
in mid-swing. It was like the steps of a madcap square dance with a
dozen callers: the voices ringing from all different tables with
orders for fried chicken, pie, more coffee, more potatoes. The
braid pinned up around her head was beginning to come loose.

And at the height of the noise and activity
the screen door was kicked open with sudden force for the second
time that day and a stream of people poured into the dining-room,
the sight of whom made most of the customers drop their forks and
rise to their feet. Once again something untoward had occurred and
the principals had instinctively made their way into Mattie
Arnold’s place as an emotional haven and a practical refuge—only
this time the circumstances seemed a little more dramatic. Cal
Runyan’s shirt was torn at the shoulder and the ends of a rough
white bandage were sticking up from it; Joe Conner was carrying the
shotgun upside-down and declaiming something at the top of his
voice; the fair-haired woman who had left on the nine o’clock stage
was clutching her hefty baby on one hip and trying to keep in sight
of her other offspring, who were chattering excitedly and tripping
up every adult they got in front of. Runyan dropped into a chair;
Joe Conner waved the shotgun and said things nobody heard; Etta
stood with her mouth open and everybody talked at once, until
Mattie came from the kitchen, shouldering her way through the
crowd, arrived at the center of excitement and asked in a voice
just loud enough to make itself clearly heard, “What happened?”

“The stage got held up,” said a man who had
come in with the passengers.

“They got the mine payroll,” said Runyan
through his teeth, as if that hurt more than the shoulder.

“Who? How many? Did you get any of them?”
the voices broke out.

Joe Conner gestured in a warlike manner with
the upside-down shotgun. “Two of ’em! They were waiting just the
other side of that uphill turn, you know where they had to blast
with dynamite when they were building the road up to the mine, and
they hit Cal before we even seen ’em, and they came alongside and
held a gun on me and I had to pull up and—”

“They had GUNS!” declared the small boy with
relish.

“Now, hold on! hold on, Joe,” said
Blackburn, the town marshal, a tall capable-looking man who had
just pushed his way through the crowd of people inside the door.
“Let’s get all this straight. There were two of them, you said?
What did they look like?”

Joe Conner cast a dark look around as if to
emphasize his speech. “They had their faces covered, bandanas
pulled up over their noses. But I saw one thing all right—the one
who held the gun on me had a black eye!”

A murmur of sensation ran around the room,
and Etta cried, “Oh!” and put her hand to her mouth. Blackburn, who
did not know what it meant, glanced about him and then looked to
Mattie Arnold, who alone was silent, her arms folded. “What’s that
mean? Somebody know?”

It was a cowboy near the door who answered,
scratching his head reluctantly. “I guess he means Mark Lindsey,
Marshal. Mark got in a fight with Ames and Billy Leeser over by the
pens this morning, and the Boi—Borgman fired him an’ Mel Tripp for
being troublemakers. Mark was kinda bruised up.”

“That’s right,” put in another more
emphatically. “I was here this morning when Tripp brought him in
here for Miz Arnold to patch him up—and Cal and Joe were here
too—”

“And Mark Lindsey had a black eye?” repeated
Blackburn, with his usual strict, careful mode of questioning.

Joe Conner broke in again. “He sure did. I
seen him, and so did Wilcox there, and Cal did—didn’t you,
Cal?”

“Did you?” said Blackburn to the guard.

“Yes, yes, I saw him!” said Runyan in a
harsh, ragged voice, like a man pushed to the edge of his endurance
or patience. He was sitting holding his injured arm tightly; there
was sweat on his face. “Mark had a shiner you could see half a mile
off. That’s all you wanted to know, isn’t it?”

Mattie Arnold spoke up for the first time.
“Cal, you look like you could use a drink.”

Runyan managed the ghost of a smile. “If
it’s not against regulations, Mattie.”

She turned and went out into the kitchen
again. Mattie Arnold’s place did not serve liquor, but there was a
certain bottle that could always be produced in emergencies. She
took it from its place in a cupboard that held such odds and ends
as a needle and spool of thread, mosquito netting, smelling-salts,
and the jar of peppermint sticks, and picked up a glass from the
counter.

Etta had followed her mother out into the
kitchen, watching her movements almost fearfully, as if trying to
guess her thoughts. When Mattie turned around Etta put both hands
anxiously on her arm. “Mama—you don’t think Tripp and Mark really
did
it, do you?” she whispered.

Mattie shook her head. “I don’t know—we
don’t know enough yet to say. Don’t go blurting anything out,
and—listen, don’t set your heart on their
not
doing it,
Muffin, because if they did—”

“Oh, Mama, that’d be awful!”

Mattie nodded in agreement. “It would. Come
along, they’re waiting.”

When they re-entered the front room
Blackburn was sitting on the edge of a table with his arms folded,
frowning a little as though trying to think amidst the voices of
Joe Conner and several others who were all talking to him at once.
The fair-haired mother had sat down with a thump on an available
chair, borne down by the weight of the sturdy child in her arms
rather than the weight of her experiences. Mattie handed the glass
of brandy to Runyan, who thanked her in an exhausted voice and
lifted it to his lips with an unsteady hand.

“All right, all right,” said Blackburn.
“Yeah, it makes sense. They were out of a job—fellows are saying
here they both owed money—they knew like everybody else knows that
the Kammerman payroll goes up on the last Thursday of every month.
And you say you recognized Mark Lindsey by his black eye.”

“You bet I did,” said Joe Conner. “And say,
it was his hat, too—creased the same way, with that nickel-studded
band he’s been wearing since last fall! I’d know it anyplace!”

“Why, that’s nothing,” said Mattie
scornfully. “Half the cowpunchers around here have been wearing
hatbands like that since the mercantile had that sale on them last
fall—and it’s not so much of a stretch to think two men could
crease their hats the same way.”

“There ain’t no way it couldn’t have been
him!” insisted the driver, awash in a superabundance of
negatives.

“You’re surer than you were before,” said
Blackburn.