“Me? Well, Mama’s wishing I was home helping with the canning, but the last of it will be done in a day or two. Rachel and Becca have teaching positions that they’ll go to pretty soon. Esther is going to her first term at the university next month. All I’d be doing at home would be watching Ezra and Zack. I reckon they could spare me, if Mama says.”
“Mama,” said Gilbert. “I think you ought not to go all that way without one of us fellows. Why don’t you wait just two or three more days? Then I’ll go along with you.”
“Big-city boy,” said Charlie.
Gilbert shot him a look. “Then you go. Take my new hat. You’ll be escorting two ladies.”
Charlie gave a snort and said, “Your head’s too thick. It’ll ride on my collar.”
“Stuff some of that wadding you got in your head down around your ears. That’ll hold it,” Gilbert said.
“Boys,” I said. “Your aunt is dying. I know you all don’t remember her, but your granny cared for her since she was a little child, younger than Zachary is now. I’m too tired for any teasing or foolishness. Just talk straight.”
“I’ll go,” said Mary Pearl. No one else spoke. Fine, then. She’ll be the one.
Mary Pearl and I washed up in the dark. Esther brought us clean nightgowns and a lantern. I saw her face, and she looked like a spark was rising inside her. While I was brushing my hair, she and Mary Pearl put their heads together and twittered like little chickens; then they came to me.
Mary Pearl nudged her sister with an elbow. “Tell her,” Mary Pearl whispered.
Esther said, “Is Mary Pearl really going to Chicago with you, Aunt Sarah?”
Mary Pearl stomped her bare foot. “No, I meant tell your secret.”
Esther dipped her head and said, “I’ve got a secret admirer.”
I backed up, newly reminded of Savannah’s dread of this “secret” lover. “Well, do you know who it is?”
“No,” she said. “I found another note for me right here, on the door to the chicken coop, and one nailed on the back porch rail. I can tell by the writing it’s the same fellow. He wrote me a poem.” She gleamed and put her hands on her face—the same way Savannah, her mother, used to do when we were girls.
Lord, I remember feeling that way myself, but I don’t remember my April acting that way. It struck me how much I’d missed of my girl’s growing up, being harried by work and raising my other children. It also struck me that I don’t know much of how to tell a girl to act. Surely I didn’t do everything right as a girl. Yet I do know how my two grown boys are, and I do remember the name Esperanza in the margin of a science book. I had boys figured out better than I knew girls. “Well,” I said, “don’t encourage him, and that’ll get him to come forward sooner. Nothing like desperation to make a young fellow start worrying you might not have noticed him.”
Esther giggled. Mary Pearl said, “I think he’s got to be a knothead. How’s he expecting to be invited to supper if he’s going to play silly games?”
“Oh, but this,” Esther said, “is so romantic. Who could it be?”
Behind us, I could hear the boys yawning noisily, crawling into their bunks, and I motioned the girls toward our beds on the sleeping porch. I said, “Look around you and figure who’s here you’d like it to be. There’s not a one of these sorry old cowhands I’d want to see you lassoed by. Esther Prine shouldn’t settle for less than a top hand. My top hand is Charlie, and he’s your cousin. Maldonado’s top man is Card Verdez, and he’s got an Apache wife and seven children. That doesn’t leave many worth having who aren’t family. Reckon it might be a joke. Now, let’s get some sleep.”
Esther’s face fell. “A joke? Well, it’s not a very nice one.”
Mary Pearl made a noise in her throat. “If it is, then it don’t amount to nothing. If it ain’t, he’ll come forward. Seems simple enough to me.”
Mary Pearl’s stubborn refusal to mind her grammar sometimes tatters my patience. I blew out the light and we settled in. Granny snored. An owl called—maybe the one who’d flown at us on the road. After a little bit, Esther said, “It’s still romantic.”
Well, I didn’t mean to hurt the girl’s feelings, but I don’t think a secret admirer’s letter means anything except that somebody around here has bad manners.
Chapter Fourteen
July 26, 1906
“Sarah, get up. There’s trouble.”
I opened my eyes. Granny stood over me, wrapped in only her nightgown. She was carrying a shovel, and there was a smear of something dark across her arm. The sounds of people sleeping made me whisper. I said, “What is it, Mama?”
“Rattlesnake got your best horse.”
“What, Mama? A snake?” I jumped from the bed and followed her. She was already through the house and opening the kitchen door before I could shake the sleep off and find my shoes. “Mama?” I called.
I managed to snag my kitchen pistol off the top pantry shelf as I chased after her. In the parlor, the little clock pinged four times just as I got out to the front porch. The morning air was cool and already greening in the east. The moon was up, too, and though it was only two-thirds waxen, it brightened the ground. Granny was using the shovel like a cane, headed for the round pasture. I heard the sounds of troubled horses snorting and stomping the ground, pawing and grunting.
I called for Granny loudly, but she didn’t stop until she had climbed through the rails and was standing by the water trough. She turned and waited impatiently for me, one hand on her hip. When I got through the rails, too, she said, “Look here. I killed it, the sorry devil. Killed, but too late. I won’t abide a rattlesnake. And now old Rose is going to die.”
I gasped. I could just make out Rose by the white on her nose, standing far away from Pillbox and Hunter and old Dan. An old paint named Ringer had been added to the retiree’s corral, too, and I couldn’t see him or Maize at all over in the shadows. I called out, “Rose? Sugar, sugar,” and held out my hands as if I’d remembered to bring sugar. Rose didn’t move, just nickered softly. Then she squealed. Pillbox whinnied loudly right behind me, which made me jump in my skin. She pushed herself between us and Hunter, skittering around and around him as he tried to see what was going on.
Granny said again, “Look here,” pointing. At her feet was a six- or seven-foot-long rattlesnake in two pieces. The business half of it was still writhing on the ground, wound up in some brittlebrush that grew next to the trough. She said, “I couldn’t sleep. Having bad dreams some nights lately. Heard a snake, so I fetched the shovel from your shed. It was too late, though. I saw it bite your horse, and she stomped around trying to shake it off. I stepped on his tail and chopped off his head.”
“Mercy, Mama. You stepped on his—you stepped on its tail? Did you see where he bit her?”
“That right pastern. Go yonder and see it. Like as not, she’ll be dead by sunup.”
Only on the leg? I felt the fear leave me, as if it had weighed a hundred pounds. I went toward Rose and she shied away from me. She didn’t wear a halter, so I had nothing to catch hold of. I grabbed a handful of mane and tugged her head down. Talking low all the while, I felt Rose’s face. A determined rattlesnake will bite more than once, contrary to what people think. There was no swelling on her nose. Most often, a horse will be nibbling something and catch a rattler with their nose and suffocate from swelling in less than an hour. There on her leg, just like Granny had said, was a bloody smear and swelling, and Rose had the leg pulled up, not allowing it to bear any weight. Granny came up behind me and waited while I talked and petted Rose. The horse nuzzled my leg, where I usually have a pocket on my aprons, hoping for a piece of apple or sugar. “It’s all right, girl. You are going to be sore, but it’s not a fatal one.” Finally, I said, “Mama? How did you hear a snake all the way out here from the back porch?”
“Told you. I dreamed it. I just hate a snake.”
“I do, too.”
“Reckon I’m getting old. Can’t sleep at night sometimes.
When I do, I have bad dreams, and so I got the shovel.” Granny said, “Reckon you’ll put her down?”
“Don’t you think we can wait? She might make it,” I said.
“That horse is old anyway. Just eating up food. Not earning her keep.”
“If she lives, she can go on eating all she wants,” I said.
Granny nodded. “Just like some old people around. More trouble than they’re worth, but you keep on feeding ’em.” She patted my arm.
“Did you really step on that snake?”
“Well, I did at that. That devil made me so mad. The very gall of that nasty old—I just didn’t give him time to turn around. Snakes’ll just kill everything you love.” Granny leaned the shovel toward me and I took it. I jabbed at the squirming half of the snake a couple of times for good measure. Then I put my arm around Mama’s bony shoulders. Years ago, Granny had sung to my littlest brother, holding him in a quilt while he died of snakebite. Somewhere, buried in the desert between New Mexico Territory and San Angelo, Texas, is a little grave with a child in it, not seven years old. The boy Albert named his first son, Clover, after. With little Clover, a sister I never knew named Harriet, Papa, and now Ernest, Granny has put a lot of her people in the ground. I have, too. A stillborn boy, little Suzy, Jimmy, then Jack. Now Mason Sherrill. It’s a wonder any of us wear anything but black all our days.
I put some sulphur in a poultice on Rose’s leg. Then Granny and I sat on the edge of the trough, talking, watching Rose to see how she’d do. Granny held the shovel again, leaning toward it. The moon sank in the sky. I told her about Harland’s letter and Melissa’s wish to see her. Granny was clear as the dawn. Not a bit confused. I was amazed, for she seemed perfectly able to go on a trip all by herself, excepting that it wouldn’t be proper. I asked her which of us she’d like to take along, mentioning myself, of course, and Mary Pearl.
She shook her head. She thought Mary Pearl was too young. “And you,” she said, “have to mind this horse. And see to your cutting out the herd and selling them off.”
When I was silent for a while, she asked what I was thinking. I said, “Just that I didn’t know whether you knew what was going on around here. You’ve seemed a little troubled the last few days.”
“Well, I miss my children that’s buried. And your papa. And them others.”
“I know it,” I said. “I worry about you, is all.”
Granny said, “I’m lucky I’ve got a girl that will. Albert and Savannah are fine children, but they’ve got a houseful and plenty of worries of their own. It’s hard for you, without a girl to worry about you, isn’t it?”
“I have April—she’s in Tucson—and the boys.”
She puckered up her lips and gave a little whistle. “Tucson’s a day’s hard ride. Too far. The boys are going to marry and go off, or find a war somewhere to die in.”
“Lord, Mama.” Just like that, my heart welled up and tears spilled from my eyes. “Don’t say such a thing.”
“Don’t go to leaking, now,” she said. “Chop that thing up good, before it hurts someone else.” I took the shovel, pitched that snake’s head over the fence, and then dug a little hole and buried it. We could feel the heat of the day begin before the sun crested the hill. Noises and movements of people waking came from the house. With both Granny and me gone, no one would question, as which they might have if only one of us had been out of bed this early. I checked Rose’s bandage again, then loosened it so it wouldn’t cut off the blood by swelling against the rags. I had a hard time getting it fixed just right, so it wouldn’t slide down.
Granny followed me every step while I worked, watching silently, the way she used to follow Papa and talk with him when I was little. After I got done fixing the poultice a second time, Granny said, “I reckon I’ll take Clover and Joshua with me. Charlie’s your top hand, and you can’t spare him. That little Willie, I can’t rightly trust. He’s Ernest’s boy, but he’s not much like us. You need Gilbert here, too. There’s plenty of work to be done. Albert’s boy Clover runs the farm and knows all the machinery, but harvest’s a couple of months away. They’re just digging rows and berms and such. They can spare that for a month and still get it done. Those two ought to be able to catch an old lady if she gets out of the fence.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and feeling. I was hurt. It was my place to go with her. I had a bag packed. “Don’t you want me to go?”
“You’ve got work here.”
“Nor Mary Pearl?”
“She’s a good girl, but most of the time she’s not paying attention. She’d likely be thunderstruck in a big city. Two addled females would be more than one young man could handle.”
I said, “You’ve got this all thought out. As if you knew it before I told you.”
“Been up, thinking. Then I took a nap. Then I killed a snake. ’Bout time for breakfast.”
What could I do but agree with that? “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I hooked arms with her and we strolled to the house in our nightgowns. I’ll wash the snake’s blood out of her sleeve before she leaves for Chicago.
July 27, 1906
Before she left this morning, I took advantage of my mama’s return to the here and now by having another talk with her. I explained to her how much easier it was to keep an eye on Willie if she was at my house. She, of course, knew that was folderol, and she asked why I didn’t just come out and say that she was not mindful enough to live alone anymore. “Well,” I said, “because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
She chuckled to herself. Then she said, “I’m tired and I’m lonely and my mind wanders. Got pure spoilt being here at your place them days, and if you don’t mind having an old nuisance around, I’d be kindly obliged to stay here. I have a hard time sleeping at night and a hard time staying awake in the day. Being old is harder work than I thought it would be, that’s all. It’d be easier if you were to tend to the lamps and things.”
So we made a plan, she and I. I’m going up to Granny’s house and close it down for good. If my boys take back their rooms, like as not I’ll be needing to build on a little by the end of summer. If the cattle sell for a fair price, we’ll come out all right and be able to afford that. I haven’t added a room on this house in ten years, and I do love the idea of spreading it notch or two.
Clover borrowed my old-fashioned brougham to drive Granny to town, where they’ll take a train to Chicago. Joshua rode beside them on a mare. Watching them go was harder than leaving my family behind with a dry well when Chess and I ran off to find Harland in California. Being the one doing something is always so much easier than being the one waiting. Watching them disappear beyond the horizon, I got so full of sadness and lonesomeness, I felt ashamed and quit staring at the road.
I set off to take on the day’s burden. It followed much as the day before, except at noon Rudolfo called to everyone and we prayed for rain. One thing I’d started to notice was that where all the cows ran on open rangeland, his brand outnumbered everyone else’s two to one. That beat-up land was barely holding my stock, and he had twice as many, eating up everything in sight and starving all of them. Rudolfo was praying because he’d lost so many head.
Charlie came to me after all that praying and said, “He should have culled his herd and sold off part last year, and we’d all have fared better.”
“El Maldonado would say you’re too young to question an old rancher.”
“Well, Mama, you’ve taught us all our lives to question. I’m seeing land that’s grazed off so bad, it’s overrun with tumbleweeds where there ought to be natural forage. On one ridge Flores and I rode, the tumbleweeds and thistle were piled up twelve feet high, like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
I pulled my horse close to his. “If that’s going on,” I said, “I’m going to speak to Rudolfo about cutting down his herd with this sale, and not send so many of ours. They’ll do better without the competition.”
I didn’t see Willie but once all day. Mary Pea
rl, too, stayed busy, and when we all limped home at the end of the day, Willie stayed with the cowhands and didn’t follow us. Maybe Rudolfo would put him to work there. Nothing like good hard-won rest on the hard ground to straighten out a boy. That was the end of it for the Maldonado herd. They’d just be kept in place with Baker’s and Cujillo’s and the few strays of mine, and then we’d move over to my spread and start combing the hills. All of us could use a day off to tend gear and such.
The next day, Willie came along right after breakfast. He got off his horse at the porch. I said to him, “I heard you got a letter. Did you hear from your mama?”
“I didn’t get no letters.”
“Are you saying what I heard was a lie?”
“Saying I didn’t get no letters. Not from nobody. No damn body.”
“Willie? This morning, I want you out helping Charlie in the barn. We’ve got to clear out some tack in the back stalls and make room for when the gathering here at our place starts.”
He said, “Why’nt you put them horses in the pen? Good enough for the others.”
“Because what I’m putting in the barn are bunks for men, not horses. Just to have ready if someone wants to use them.”
His bottom lip stuck out as he said, “All you do is try to work me to the bone.”
I declare, that boy flashes hot and cold faster than I can keep up. I said, “You told me you want to learn ranching. Hard work won’t kill you. Sloth will.”
Willie moved toward the horse, then stopped and turned. He said, “I been worked by that old Mex till I’m done in. Learn ranching? And ‘What year in school you done?’ Always trying to make like I’m the ignorantest cuss ever born. Everybody here looks at me like they scraped off their boot and there I was. You and them others just sit around conjuring up claptrap for me to do. I’m going out to do some shooting.” He flipped a pistol from behind his back, where he had stuck it in his belt. Twirled it on a finger.