Rest and Be Thankful (43 page)

Chuck said, “They are paying us a visit. I guess they came to give us an invitation to watch them dance. Sort of dress rehearsal for tomorrow, when they perform at the rodeo. They’re friends of Jim. Guess they kind of expected him to entertain them as usual. They made him a blood-brother ten years ago. Strong-Wind-in-the-Mountains they call him.”

“What’s the name they gave you?” Sally asked. Any talk was better than just staring at the dark hills and forests, thinking how vast they were.

“Now that’s a mighty strange thing,” Chuck said. “They give a name that fits. Or they give a name that’s opposite, so everyone knows it fits extra well. Like the wife of John Running-Nose. His name fits, but hers is Pretty Smile, and she’s had about three teeth in her head since she was sixteen and had her first son. That’s the opposite kind of name. See?” It’s good to keep talking, he thought, as he watched the strained faces about him. “Now, when it came to giving me a name, you’d be surprised what they thought up.”

“What?” Sally asked.

“They call me Long-in-the-Tongue. That’s a heck of a name.” And I don’t go spreading it around, either. Only, he thought, tonight’s different. “There’s Jim coming back now,” he reported suddenly.

Everyone turned to watch Jim, as if they could judge the news he brought by the way he walked. Behind him the three Indians were stalking back towards their camp in the growing darkness.

“What on earth had they to say?” Prender Atherton Jones asked angrily. “They’ve wasted more than ten minutes.”

“You can’t hurry that kind of talk,” Jim said. “But I did find out something. Two of their boys saw a woman. Just after five o’clock. Up on that small park called the Waiting Maiden.”

“But I was there,” Chuck burst out. “Or a couple of hundred yards at most from it. I hollered good and loud. There weren’t no woman on that hillside.”

“Cedric Slow-to-Move and Harold Running-Nose say they saw her.”

“They’re good boys,” Chuck admitted. “Truthful. Except when it comes to horses, like all Squeehawks. Say, Jim, they didn’t see any horse, did they?”

“That wasn’t mentioned. I got the feeling that the horse delayed our conversation a bit.”

“So them boys lifted it, saddle and all?” Chuck’s lips tightened. He looked as if he were trying hard to keep some well-chosen words from exploding.

“How
can
they behave like that?” Atherton Jones said, staring angrily at the receding figures of the Indians. Only two minutes ago he had been reflecting on the nobility of the Indian in all his array, making the white man (Jim, in this case) look insignificant. “A human life is at stake,” he went on, “and they hedge because of a horse which they don’t want to give up. I presume they
have
stolen it?”

“Take it easy,” Jim said sharply. “They’re good guys. They’re worried about this darned horse business, and they took a chance of losing it back to us when they came over here to tell us about Miss Park.”

“This is too involved for us to understand, Jim,” Mrs. Peel said appeasingly.

He gave her a smile. “I’m taking Jackson, and we are riding out with Bird-in-Hand, Two-in-the-Bush, Running-Nose, and Slow-to-Move. We’ll signal to Bert and Ned and Robb and get them off their trail. And I’ve an invitation for all of you to visit the Indian camp as their guests. Don’t ask me how they knew you were here. But they knew. And they knew about Mrs. Peel. They are sorry that their tribe doesn’t go in for initiating women, but they’ve got an honorary name chosen for her. Flowing Ink.” He lifted one of the lanterns that Jackson had lighted, and swung himself easily on to his horse. He paused only to look down at Atherton Jones and say, “Sure, the Indians have their little ways. And we have ours. Guess some of them don’t look too good either, sometimes.”

Never, Sally thought, had she seen Prender so properly silenced. Strong-Wind-in-the-Mountains had done it.

“We’ll all go back to the house and get everything ready,” Mrs. Peel said. “And I’ll ask the Indians to be
our
guests; then Mimi won’t catch pneumonia out in the night air. Perhaps they’ll dance on the lawn.”

“We’ll see how Esther is first,” Sally reminded her. And she wondered, as she thought of the mass of children playing over the hillside, whether an Indian camp might not be a better place for the party than a lawn and a house with many doors. Tonight was sufficiently complicated. This, Sally decided, is one time I’m going to say no to Margaret. Mimi could go wrapped up in blankets, which would be appropriate enough.

“Oh, of course,” Mrs. Peel said. “I’m afraid Flowing Ink went right to my head. But I don’t think Esther is hurt, do you? Jim seemed relieved, didn’t he?”

They all began talking. The sense of disaster was beginning to dissipate, and relief over Esther and excitement over the Indians took its place. “It’s wonderful!” Carla said about everything. And they all began to move towards the house.

“Coming?” Earl Grubbock asked Koffing.

“I’m still on duty.” He glanced at the horses. “Looks as if my job is just starting. Why didn’t you go out again with Jim and Jackson?”

“Couldn’t sit a horse any more,” Earl admitted frankly. “Guess this is something like sun-tanning: a second burn on top of the first one raises pure hell.” He looked at Chuck and tried a Western joke by way of general apology. “Got enough raw hide on my tail to make a brand new saddle.” And once, he thought, I used to pity the infantry. He set out determinedly towards the cabin.

Under cover of the darkness Chuck smiled openly. He had liked the way young Grubbock could keep his face straight. “See you later,” he called after him.

Karl was watching the lanterns moving swiftly out by the Timber Trail towards the Seven Sisters. “I wonder why she didn’t hear you,” he said. That stopped Chuck’s enjoyment of the joke. He went back to brooding over Esther Park. And why hadn’t she heard him? It was the kind of failure he didn’t like. He was going to think this one out.

* * *

The men, guided by the two subdued boys, rode out to find Esther Park. They rode quickly up the dark trail, but when they reached Laughing Creek and crossed over into the black wood their pace slackened. This path was treacherous by night.

Jim Brent called out to reassure her. There was no answer. He called again, as they came out of the wood and reached the glade.

“Isn’t here,” Hubert Slow-to-Move said, and looked at his son Cedric.

“She was here,” Cedric said, and his cousin Harold nodded.

They searched the ground by the light of the lanterns. The Indians pointed out where she had sat—there were scraps of silver paper and the crumpled wrappers of chocolate bars on the ground beside a rock. There, the Indians said as they came to a tree, she had lain down for a long time. Perhaps had slept. They said nothing of the obvious traces of a horse which Jim’s quick eye had noticed, too, by another lonely pine-tree. He said nothing either.

They all gathered together and talked. Daylight would be better. “It has to be tonight,” Jim said.

They gathered together again, and they talked some more. Then, with the lanterns held high, they began to search the ground more carefully.

“This way,” Chief Two-in-the-Bush said at last. It was difficult to judge at night, but he was sure she had taken this way.

“This way,” Chief Bird-in-Hand said almost simultaneously. He spoke with equal conviction. Then, in silence, they led the way over the crest of the sloping hill that sheltered the glade, through the scattered pine-trees, out into rough, open ground covered with boulders. The others followed, bringing the horses.

It was then that Esther Park wakened. First she heard the night wind sighing through the fir-trees. And then she saw the darkness above her, around her, blacker and deeper than it had been before she had fallen asleep. She sat slowly up on the rock where she lay. She had climbed there before the darkness fell, climbed to get away from the ground and the animals that haunted the ground. She felt tired and ill, hungry and sore. She had wept and shouted so long, before she had fallen into a deep sleep that was almost unconsciousness, that she had no strength left in her throat. But I must shout when they come, she told herself. They will see me easily on this rock. They must come... She lifted her eyes and stared wearily into the blackness that surrounded her. The tears were running down her cheeks once more. Then her body stiffened. Lights. Lights wandering down there on the hillside below the rock. Horses, there were horses, and there were men. She tried to call, and she couldn’t.

She tried to call again, but now she saw the two men with the lanterns. She saw the dark, frowning faces, the painted brows, the long thin plaits of hair, the tall feathers rising sharply from the narrow headbands. Indians. Indians pointing towards her, running towards her. She moaned in terror; she didn’t hear Jim Brent’s voice calling to her. She only heard the high-pitched shout of an Indian. She screamed and rose. She turned to run, forgetting the high rock on to which she had climbed; and she fell, still screaming, down into the darkness.

Mrs. Peel, wrapped in a heavy wool dressing-gown, came into the kitchen to get warm. She placed the kettle on the electric stove in the pantry, and then sat down in Mrs. Gunn’s rocking-chair. It was four o’clock in the morning. The house had fallen into sleep at last. Mrs. Peel was supposed to be in bed too, but after she had made the coffee and drunk it she didn’t go back upstairs. She threw some kindling into the wood stove in the kitchen, and drew the rocking-chair to face the flames. The fire caught, and held. If it hadn’t, she thought, I might have burst into tears. That was how she admitted she was near the breaking-point. Then she found she was crying a little, anyway.

She was still sitting there, watching the flames, when Jim Brent came in.

“I saw the light, and thought I might be in time for a cup of coffee,” he said. And he had hoped it would be Sally who was in the kitchen. But he hid his disappointment. After a quick glance at Mrs. Peel’s face he went on talking while he searched for some dishes and bread and butter and the frying-pan. “Breakfast is what we need,” he said, and began cooking the eggs. “Well, the Squeehawks have gone. Robb, Chuck, and I saw them off. Rode as far as Flashing Smile with them.”

Mrs. Peel rose to help. She was quite calm now, and all traces of tears had been quietly wiped away, but she was white-faced and haggard. “Then you never got to bed?” she asked.

“We talked a bit after the dancing and singing was all over, and the women and children were packed off to sleep. Then, before dawn, they all began getting ready to move. They’ll reach Sweetwater in time to set up their camp near the Iropshaw and Flatfeet Indians—you’ll see quite a collection of tepees at the side of the rodeo field—and they’ll rest a bit, and then they’ll get ready to ride in the parade. The young girls won’t be dressed in blue jeans and cowboy shirts. They’ll be riding side-saddle in white buckskin dresses. Pity they couldn’t dress for you last night—too busy, I guess, setting up the tepees and cooking and keeping the children out of harm. But wait until you see them today: shawls of every colour, buckskin leggings and moccasins, all beaded and embroidered with porcupine quills. They dye them every colour in the rainbow, you know.”

“I don’t think I’ll see the parade or the rodeo,” she said. “I don’t feel like it somehow.”

He pretended to be studying the slices of toast which Mrs. Peel had managed to burn.

“Just wait until you’ve had breakfast,” he advised her, “and had a short sleep, and got dressed, and driven down to Sweetwater. When you feel the sunshine and see all the laughing faces around you you’ll enjoy yourself too.”

Mrs. Peel shook her head, perhaps over her efforts at toast-making.

“Stop thinking about Esther Park,” he said. “She’s alive, isn’t she? And no thanks to her. The”—he controlled his language— “the silliest piece of stupidity... She could have followed Laughing Creek right downhill to where it joins Crazy Creek, and she could have been on the road. Then all she had to do was to keep the mountains on her left hand, and she would have been here by midday.”

“But she wouldn’t know
where
to keep the mountains,” Mrs. Peel said, remembering her own experiences on a trail.

“She had the mountains on her right when she rode out. Obviously you keep them on your left when you ride in.”

Mrs. Peel smiled faintly. “You make it sound easy, Jim.”

“It is. Good heavens, she was no distance at all from the ranch—five or six miles at the most.” It was easy, if you really wanted to find your way back. He looked at Mrs. Peel. I won’t tell her that unless I’ve got to, he thought.

“How long will it take a broken thigh to mend?” she asked.

“That depends on the person with the broken thigh.”

“And she may have other injuries. Dr. Clark said he would call us around six o’clock and give a full report.”

“Well, she’s in good hands. Three Springs Hospital is up to date. And it has had a lot of experience in broken thighs and smashed legs.” He set the plates of ham and eggs on the table. “Come and eat. And we’ll stop talking about her until we’ve been fed.”

Mrs. Peel obeyed him, thinking how pleasant it was to have someone to take charge and give orders and make up her mind for her when she was so dazed that all she would have done would have been to sit hunched over a fire and wait for Dr. Clark’s telephone call and try to get everything sorted out in her own mind and decided and—oh, she couldn’t even take care of her sentences any more; things were just running away from her.

After breakfast, which she ate with an appetite that surprised her, they sat with their elbows on the kitchen table, talking over their fourth cup of coffee and a cigarette. She was warm enough now to throw off the wool dressing-gown which had covered her tweed suit and sweater, and somehow everything began to look less difficult to solve.

“Thank you, Jim,” she said, “for taking charge last night.”

“Someone had to, I guess.” The younger men didn’t feel they ought to take charge, and Atherton Jones had just dithered around stroking his hair and saying, “Good heavens, this is terrible, terrible!” It had been easy enough to take charge, Jim thought. All he had done was to get Dr. Clark to bring up the ambulance and get Esther Park out of the house.