“How do you know that?” he asked.
My rifle had gone empty. Ulzana rode toward me, spear raised, and I pulled the trigger twice, uselessly. Jack Elliot had fired the shot that crippled Ulzana’s horse and saved my life. I caught a glimpse of dusty blue uniform, the glint of a saber through clouds of dust and gunpowder, heard the squeak of saddle leather and soldier’s boots grinding against stirrups. Jack’s hands, bandaged and bleeding, touched my cheeks, and his eyes pierced my heart. I stared into the unlined, never-shaven face before me, wide eyes as innocent of pain and experience as April’s new baby. “I just do,” I said.
“Aw, you’re making that up,” he said, and left to catch up with the other boys.
Chapter Fourteen
October 5, 1907
The school term is near halfway through and I can hardly believe it. Every moment I’m in town, I worry about what is happening at home. Udell has got up a garden after all, and he is keeping watch with his small flock of chicks and cows until he is so tired he can’t work on the house. I fear the work at home piles up. Granny and Chess are not able to keep up, Elsa is touchy with baby sickness, and while Charlie and Gilbert handle the rougher work, no one has made soap nor scoured the floors nor a hundred other things that need doing.
I write letters every few days to Udell, each time thanking him for his gift of schooling, although each one I close brings a heavy feeling of betrayal, for my doubt in my ability to keep on with this schooling grows daily. Along with it, strangely, grows hunger for more. I want not to return home at all. I want to stay and find more classes, let out on the ones too tormenting to abide and just take the wonderful ones. Still, I notice often how separate I am from the other students.
On my way to my horse one afternoon, three boys on bicycles nearly ran me down. For some reason I can’t tell, I stopped that very day and bought some Hagan’s Magnolia Balm: “Guaranteed to keep a woman from looking like a hag before her time.” I planned to put it to use while I was a student. Heaven knew it wasn’t my “time.”
Every minute of every weekend at home, I spend thinking of school. My unfinished assignments pile up like laundry from a dozen children. Then there’s the work I give to myself, such as after Professor Osterhaas told each person how to fix their essays I rewrote mine twice, determined to get a decent mark in that class. Also, I worry that Harland’s children need more care than Rachel can manage alone. April needed me there in town more than I realized. Once Tennyson’s fever left, April wanted my opinion about wallpaper or diaper rashes and thumb-sucking. Gilbert came to town too much to visit Charity, and makes himself at home at Harland’s place. When I asked if he wasn’t leaving too many chores to Charlie, well, Chess said to let the boy go to town if he wanted. Fine way to raise a spoiled fellow, if you ask me, but no one did.
Letters from Mary Pearl tell me of her successes. I see through the handwriting more than her words, for she is homesick but not lonely, challenged but not defeated, and so I write her about my professors, and tell her all sorts of things I’d never say to another soul. When I headed for the ranch, I took her letters and the drawings she sends and I put them there in my bureau drawer.
Friday I rode home in a drizzling rain. By the time I got there, my throat was sore as if I’d been swilling lye. It rained all night and all morning, Saturday. The rain finally quit and the air is prickly with cold, and when we go out to feed, damp needles of ice stab our faces. Mighty cold for this early. After lunch, Charlie left to ride to Udell’s place to check on the ten head of cattle he had there and to have a look around. He said they’d come back for supper, so Granny and I put a roast of beef in the oven with some onions and carrots, and settled in for a couple of hours of sewing. It was all I could manage, feeling poorly enough I wished I was in bed.
The fellows cleaned and sharpened knives and tools, fixing boots and playing checkers. I felt raw and poorly, but tried to study, out of desperation, I suspect.
Gilbert picked halfheartedly at his guitar, staring into the fire, starting pieces of song and never settling on something we could hum to. I worked arithmetic problems until my head ached, and I had to put the books aside. I stared out the window at the gray and dismal sky. I started a pot of coffee to have something hot on my throat. Gilbert got tired of plinking his guitar and went to the book room.
Granny has been piecing another quilt, this time a redwork piece. Granny had dozed off, quilt scraps still between her fingers, needle poised for duty but quiet when a distant rattle caught my ear. “C- C- Comanches,” she said.
“Chess!” I hollered. “Chess! Where are you?” The sound of running horses grew louder, and two more shots sounded near at hand. Then a whole string of shots followed like firecrackers. “You all, get away from the windows. Elsa, take Granny to the kitchen. Gilbert—” But Gilbert ran out the door with no coat and a pistol in hand, headed toward the gate. “Gilbert! Charlie!”
Before I could get a rifle in my hands, the door was flung open from the outside and in rushed Charlie. “Maldonado’s boys. They killed one of Udell’s cows and then chased us off his land, Mama,” Charlie gasped. Then Gilbert came in, bringing the last of a hard chill clinging to him, and he closed the door, pulling the bolt in place. It moved stiffly, since we had only latched it once or twice before. Charlie went on, “He had five sorry-looking vaqueros waiting there, and when we stopped them to ask where they were going one of them pulled out a shooter. Like we were trespassing. I should have never gone down there without a pistol.”
“Anyone following you, waiting for someone to stick their head out the door?”
“They turned tail when Gil came running out and winged one of them with his first shot.”
We heard a rattling sprinkle of more gunshots, not far away. I turned to Gilbert, who looked pretty trembly. He gulped and said, “I’m going down to the old señors place and tell him a thing or two.”
“No you’re not!” Charlie hollered the same words just when I did.
Elsa ran to Charlie’s side and the two of them whispered for a minute. Then Charlie said, “Mama, this is about him being angry with us. We’re going to leave. We knew this might come. We’ve got to go away to keep you all safe.”
Here came Granny, lugging a box that looked to weigh as much as she did. It was the shot box we used to carry, about half full of ready-loads. None of them needed packing or loose powder, thank goodness.
“Mama, what are you doing?” I asked, taking it from her.
She said, “Put this by the window. It’s full of shot and lint and powder. I’ll load for you. Always did it for your pa and before that, too. We’ll teach them who’s got the pluck and the lead.” She shook her little bony fist toward the window. “Just show yerselves, you varmints! My Sarah can put the eye out of a tick from a hundred yards!”
“Mama,” I said, “it’s over, for now. Anybody seen Chess?”
Armed like bandits ourselves, we scoured the house in the next few minutes but didn’t find him. Gil went to the barn with Clover; Charlie checked the smokehouse. Around the side of the house, it looked to me like prints from Chess’s boots left the yard and went over the hill toward the south on foot, so I followed them.
I could hear a man’s voice. The muddy ground made tracking easy enough. I looked everywhere but behind myself, and listening as I was to the voice, heading toward it, I stopped to turn around. I felt plum startled to find Elsa trailing after me. We walked on, following the sound, and came upon Chess standing with his back to us. He laid down a stream of the sorriest curses ever known, and as rangy as he can be, I never heard the like from him.
I hollered over the commotion, “What in heaven’s name is wrong with you?”
“Missed every dad-blasted one of them. Damn it to blazes! Not a shot. This old rifle is bent. The sight is off and these loads are wet. Couldn’t hit— and I was always a shot! Not a thing. Not a god—” He caught himself up, seeing Elsa at my side. “Son of a gol-damned—Tarnation, girls. Get back to the hou
se. Can’t you see when a man has got some cussin’ to do?”
I said, “Come do it in the yard out of their line of fire,” and turned Elsa around, taking her hand, and we hurried back to the house. Partway there, I chanced a peek at her face. I expected pale, well-mannered shock, but saw a smirk.
Elsa said, “Señor Chess makes me very thirsty!”
“Some men are saltier than others,” I said. Then we just had ourselves a bitter little laugh, and got inside the house.
The night passed peacefully enough though I sank into la grippe and tossed the night through. In the morning I had chills that rocked me in the bed, and could not make a sound. I stayed in bed until supper, then I got up to have a cup of hot coffee. Elsa felt sick, too, but not with fever. I moved slow as cold molasses. Chess sat in his chair by the fire for a long time, watching me while I sipped the cup. I had to whisper. “Something on your mind?”
“You get that rifle sighted in yet?”
“No. Leave it in the kitchen here. I’ll try it tomorrow. Maybe it got dropped.”
“That Hanna’s expecting you to marry soon’s you get done with this dad-blasted schooling. Isn’t that why you were asking me about Texas? Ready to run?”
I lifted the coffeepot using my skirt wrapped around the metal handle, poured him a cup next to mine.
“You’d be free of an old worn-out boot. Charlie and his girl will be here. Gil, too. You shouldn’t run off to Texas. I’ll go back to Texas. You’d be free.”
“I’m not taking up living with Udell to get shed of you. It’s already settled with him. He’s building you a room. I’m not going without you, Chess. Mama, either.”
“Fah!” he said with a wave of his hand.
“That’s exactly the kind of conversation I couldn’t live without,” I said. “The curious vocabulary of a right ornery man.”
Then he said, “I saw that house there. He said he’s thought of a deal where you keep this here place and let your boys live on it. Sell it to ‘em for a dollar. He asked me what I thought and I told him it was the damnedest thing.”
Udell hadn’t said a word of this to me. “Only he didn’t mention where you fit in,” I said, and went to fill our cups again. “What’d you say?”
“Nothing. I came home to pack my duds and head east.”
“Not while I’ve got this tornado brewing with Rudolfo, you’re not.” I started to feel my voice coming back. “I can’t go to school and have to worry about this here, if you’re gone.”
“Can’t hit the broad side of a barn. No use staying around. You’re leaving, too.”
I stood and put my hands on both hips, saying, “Well, aren’t you the sorry old buzzard? I haven’t asked you for fancy target shooting in all these years and suddenly your aim is off one day and you’re cashing in and heading out, and never mind what in thunder I’d do without you? If that isn’t the lowest, cussedest thing. I knew you were a tough old bird, Chester Elliot, but I never thought you’d slip so low as to leave me when the chips were down. Just because there’s change on the wind and lightning in the air, you aim to take off and desert the family that’s counted on you all these years. Never mind the patches I sewed on your behind nor the biscuits I cooked nor a fireside that’s been your home as much as mine all these years, you are just leaving me to the wind, just like that! Well, I swan!” Then I left the room and went to find Granny.
I woke her from a nap in the parlor, and said, “Mama? You know if I marry Udell Hanna, you’re going to have to move to his new house. Are you going to come, or not?”
“Oh, one chair is as good as another,” she said. “Never had no root to speak of.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “If I don’t marry, we’ll stay put.”
“You sure are in a fuss. Indians again? I’d sure like some soup for dinner.”
“I’ll make you soup, Mama, tomorrow.” Chess had followed me into the room and stood right behind me. “Chess?” I said. I took hold of the sleeve of his shirt and pulled it. “If you won’t come with me, I won’t marry him.”
“Aw, honey,” he said.
Then, for the first time in all our lives together, he put his arm around my shoulder. His hands patted my back as if he thought I’d break. I felt tears heat up behind my eyes and pushed him away. I said, “Now, get along. I’m sick and I’ve got to get to bed. Straightening out your rope was all I had in me.”
Sunday afternoon, I couldn’t go back to town. I felt so weak and ill it was hard to breathe. I’d have to quit. Well, the boys told me students were allowed to be sick and stay home, and to just lay up and get well, so I did. It was pretty near accepted that with all the new folks around everyone would be sharing their sickness, too. For near a week I got coddled on by my family and by Friday I grew plum right again. All the while in bed, I caught up on all the papers and readings, too. I felt joyful when Sunday rolled around and it got time to head back to town. Until I got to school.
October 21, 1907
Although Brownie was mean as a boot full of cholla, Mrs. Everly made me want to draw swords every time I laid eyes on her. The harder subjects may have been things I didn’t understand, but that Everly woman just made me feel a fool over things I’ve been doing as natural as breathing, my whole life. I decided to let myself out of Domestic Science to preserve the common good and keep myself out of jail.
In mathematics I scored a passing mark on a paper. I felt pleased, but such a stack of work awaited and they were so far ahead, by the time I got to Brownie’s class I was pure sorry I had laid off sick. His rambling lectures have nothing whatever to do with the tests he gives, and I kept remembering that when Charlie and Gilbert dropped out of school last year, three weeks before final examinations, Charlie had complained that I didn’t know what they were up against, and swore the geology professor had been unfair and cantankerous. That teacher had been this Fergus Brown, a little squirt no bigger than my right arm. Brown had quailed my boy Charlie, a man who had been an Arizona Ranger and was tough and smart as anyone you’d care to know. I piled up my books and notes and lugged them to Professor Osterhaas’s class feeling like the tail end of destruction.
Professor Osterhaas asked us to write a theme on “What I Want.” It seemed simple enough. He would require us to read them aloud, and each person must learn to express himself well. I put that on the top of a new page in my tablet. What I Want. I thought about schooling, and my family, and my home. I thought about going on to more schooling, mostly, and the railroad should go bankrupt. Rudolfo should get friendly again. My mama to get her thinking back. I made a list and connected the things on it with dashes. I was ready. I quit carrying the pistol. The place was like home.
Days later, after two people read their essays on “What I Want,” and the whole class discussed them, I decided to write mine again. Then I went to Professor Fairhaven’s class early one day, and sat clear to the back to watch and see if folks filled in around me or moved away like I was a snapping turtle thrown in their fish pond, just like in Brownie’s class. I took out my Latin primer and the notes I had, for I’d translated the lessons for the rest of the week.
Fairhaven closed the door, fiddled with things on his desk then walked around the room. I shifted my feet as he stopped in front of me and sat on the desk across the aisle. “Afternoon, Miss Elliot—Mrs. Elliot—so easy to forget. Doing well in this class?”
“I like your class fine, sir.”
“You haven’t made many friends, though.”
“I ‘spect not, sir.”
“Well, count me as one, would you? I find you are quite the student, after all.”
After all? Had I struck him as a lunatic before I took his tests? He kept talking but I quit hearing what he said. Others came in and I felt glad for the interruption, for he was just too smiley. They did sort of shift away from my seat, but eventually the seats filled because there were so many students.
After class, Professor Fairhaven asked me to ride him in my buggy downtown after schoo
l. He said, “Since you’ve been sick, I’d be happy to provide extra tutoring.” Well, a nervous blush rose on my cheeks, the way he stared at me. After a nice talk he shook my hand when I left him at the bank.
As I drove, I made a decision. It wasn’t so bad I couldn’t handle this just like I’d handled every other mountain I’ve come across. I would write Udell and tell him to wait until I had all the school I wanted. He could wait for me and I’d find a way to keep on going to school until there were no classes I hadn’t tried. I planned to stay in town this weekend to study, so he would have time to think on it before next we met.
When I got home, Harland’s household exploded in sheer pandemonium. Story and Honor had Truth’s picture book and dangled it out the attic vent just as Blessing fell off the back porch rail where she’d been trying to walk with her eyes shut. Rachel called the maid who broke into tears and nearly swooned at the sight of Blessing’s bloody neck and pinafore. I got Blessing on Baldy and jumped on behind, and told Rachel to follow us to the doctor. Yet Rachel didn’t ride, couldn’t hitch a harness, couldn’t leave the three little ruffians without them burning the place to the ground, so I, along with two nurses and a doctor, held Blessing down until they could give her a breath of chloroform while they put two stitches in her chin. The poor child felt in a terror when she awoke, and both of us were wringing wet with blood, but we had no choice but to ride through town looking a mess. The nurses were kind and gave us sheets, so we wrapped our bloody dresses in white sheets. I told Blessing we looked like we were wearing big tortillas, and she laughed, holding her chin. To keep her mind off anything sad, every few minutes I’d give her a squeeze and call her burrito, or ask her if she was a tortilla filled with beans. All the terror was over when she proudly displayed her war wounds to her brothers. The boys gaped in awe, begging permission to touch the stitches, which of course she denied.