Posted 08-07-19
Revised 09-07-19
By Christopher Leeson
Chapter 3, Part 1
Wednesday, December 20, 1871
At
the next dawning, Aunt Irene rechecked Myra's measurements. When she
was finished, she folded up both their party dresses, bagged them,
and put them onto the buckboard. Because the time was short before
the Saturday party, they would have to give Teresa Diaz time enough
to make needed adjustments. Myra wasn't being forced to go back into
town this time. Instead, she'd be left to do her usual chores and to
get something ready for George's lunch. At that last instruction, a frown
wrote itself Myra' face. She would avoid going anywhere near him, if
possible. Let the annoying fellow eat his victuals out in the barn!
Down
deep, the farm girl was hoping that he'd choose not to come. If
George's pa was going to ride out into the rough lands to look for
Myron's body, chances were fair that George would choose to go with
him. At least Myra hoped so. She doubted that the boy was as hard a
worker as he liked to pretend. Who wouldn't leap at the
chance of spending a day riding around the foothills and jawing with
his fellow hunters, instead of pitching hog manure in a place where
he wasn't welcome?
Thinking
about George's invitation to the dance made her especially cheesed off. She
didn't like being talked to like a girl, and his motives made her even more annoyed. A person of his kind didn't care about the girl he was trying
to consort with. All that mattered was the way she looked. He wanted
to show her off to his friends and any fetching girl would serve him just as well. Myron had himself gone after Gilana
only because she had the prettiest face in Yuma. It was only later
on that he'd found out that she was fun to be with.
At
that point, Myra glanced up the road, hoping not to see George riding
in. Fortunately, he wasn't there.
How
could she deal with a boy who kept pushing his unwanted attentions her
way? She'd already tried by discourage him by telling him off. What
more could she do? She couldn't beat him up, considering he was so
much stronger than she was. Nor could she use a weapon, thanks to
those magical commands that her aunt had loaded on her. She
couldn't harm anyone at all, in fact, except, supposedly, in honest
self-defense. 'Some Christian Irene is,' Myra thought. 'What
Bible-believer worth her salt would use the devil's black magic to
get her way with somebody else?
After
feeding the animals, the girl went to milk the cows. Most than any
other farm chore, Myra disliked milking. It seemed like work for girls.
The books always talked about milkmaids, never milk-lads. On the
other hand, Myra fancied horses well enough, though caring for them was
messy and tedious.
Myron had become an outlaw, in part, to get away
from the hard drag of farmer's life. A farmer had to keep scrabbling
for pennies until he grew old, sick, and ready to go. By then,
he'd probably have lost his farm to the bank and would die knowing that his life
had been a total waste. It wasn't the honest worker, but the outlaw,
who got away with sacks of money, and did it without breaking a
sweat.
But she didn't want to think about that. It would make her mood even worse that it was.
Well,
sure, Gilana Hulbard seemed to enjoy life. Saloon work had had kept
away from homemaking. But not many saloon girls received as many
tips and gifts as Gilana had. She had had a way that made men want
to give her things. Oh, she had had to give out a little more than
suited her, but the cancan dancer had liked being around men and
seemed pretty well suited to the kind of life that she was living.
With
her morning chores wrapped up, Myra decided on start a different project that she had been thinking about. The farm girl had found out that George and reorganized
things around the farm more to his liking, and now it was taking her too much time to
find tools and implements that he'd moved. To fix the problem, she
wanted to go through the barn and the sheds, rearranging things in
the way that fit her own preferences. She already knew where she wanted to
start – at the old feed box. The thing was in bad shape, so it was being used for
random storage. But what Myra had in mind was to turn it into a
hiding place for her own valuables. Who knew? Maybe she could steal something and would need a place to hide it.
Opening
the large, lidded box, she saw a mass of mouse nests and scrap wood filling it.
Digging a little deeper, she revealed dry and cracking pieces of
harness, worn out horseshoes, rusty old iron, odds and ends, and also broken things that had been waiting for repairs that would
probably never come. By making a little more room, the bin could be made useful to her needs. On top of that, maybe
some of the stuff that she'd end up removing could be sold to a
junk dealer.
Myra
started sorting the refuse into piles upon the hay-littered floor. As
she rummaged deeper into the bin, she touched upon a dusty old wooden
case. Though the girl hadn't set eyes on the thing in years, she
remembered its distinct appearance. Her parents had, before Irene
had come, kept it on a standing shelf by their bed. Her mother had saved keepsakes in it – mostly personal letters. Holding the
box in her hands made Myra feel closer to her mother than she had
been able to in years.
Myra
took the case out to the light and set it on a shelf by the door.
Squinting, the girl checked the small padlock that held it closed.
The little key was not to be seen, but that was a minor problem.
Myron had learned how to pick locks from Lydon Kelsey. The youth had
learned a few slick tricks from an uncle who had done time in Kansas
state prison for burglary.
The
girl considered what sort of lock-picking tool she would need and
remembered the tin of old nails that she had already dug out of the
feed box. She went back to it and selected a strong, slender one. As Myra
turned about, she saw that the rectangle of sunlight made by the open
door was being broken by a silhouette. Its abrupt appearance wrested a
startled sound from her throat.
“George!”
she exclaimed.
“Howdy
day,” young Severin said. “I was going to start up the
pen-cleaning again.”
“I-I'm
surprised. I was supposing that you'd go out with your pa looking
for Thorn's body.”
“Oh,
he asked me if I wanted to trail along. In fact,
I wouldn't have minded that one little bit, but I'd already told Mrs. Fanning that I'd
be back today. I wish them luck, but somehow I don't think they're
going to find what they're looking for.”
“Why's
that?”
“Just
a hunch.”
“A
convenient hunch.”
“Why
convenient?” asked George.
“You
never liked Thorn. Maybe you'd prefer to have the vultures make a
meal of him.”
“Did
your aunt tell you that I didn't like Thorn?”
“No.”
“Then
why do you suppose that I didn't? How would you know anything at all? You said you
never met Myron, that you'd never even gotten a letter from him.”
“Just
a hunch,” she said in mimicry.
“As
a matter of fact, he was a hard one to like,” the boy said. “But
I'd want him to be found, so this awful thing could be put behind you
and Mrs. Fanning.”
“Nice
to hear, but we can't stand here jabbering. We've both got more
important things to do.”
“Before
you disappear, Miss Myra, there was a topic that I was a mite curious
about.”
“What
now?”
“Pa
said you told him and Mr. Grimsley that you weren't so sure that
Myron was dead.”
She
shrugged. “I was just thinking out loud. It's not important.”
“How
can your cousin being alive not be important?”
“I
guess what was only hoping out loud. But,
honestly, he couldn't last for a week out in the open -- hungry, no water, cold. And people say he was wounded. He has to be dead.”
“Well,
I look at it the same way. But what if the outlaws took him away
alive?
“They
wouldn't have done that. A wounded man would have slowed up their
getaway too much. They'd rather finish him than get themselves caught. Or so I think.”
“Maybe
so,” he conceded. “By the way, are you still going to the
party?”
Myra
was glad to talk about something other than her dead body.
“Irene is dragging me to it. I just hope that you aren't going to
make a pest of yourself while I'm there.”
He
smiled. “If you don't like having company, you're due to get a
mess of it today. Dale and Kayle are planning to come over. They got
it in their heads that you wanted to get some dancing lessons.”
“Those
silly females! I didn't ask for any dancing lessons. It was all
their own idea.”
“Yep,
that sounds like something that the two of them would cook up.”
Myra
sniffed. “For a lonely old farmstead, this place is sure gets more
than its share of visitors.” She then paused. “Why would they
take time off to teach me to dance? Did – either – of them say
that they liked me?”
George
thought for a moment. “No, I reckon not. I figure they think that
you're about as hard to like as your cousin was.” Then he grinned, as if
joking.
Sour-faced,
the girl moved toward the exit, stepping widely around the boy.
“But
whatever impression you made on the girls in town, they're still
coming over,” George called after her. “That's a good break for
you, isn't it? If you mind your manners, the three of you might
become as thick as thieves.”
She
paused and looked back. “Don't worry about my manners, Mr.
Severin. If the young ladies don't get too much in the way while
they're around, they'll be welcome. It's better to have them
chattering at me than listening to you.”
“Oh,
I'll be here for a spell, too. I'll have to stop by the house for a
bite to eat come noon, if you don't mind. I got accustomed to Mrs.
Fanning feeding me right well.”
“My
aunt told me about that already. I hope you don't have anything
against cold food. Just don't waste the time of day nibbling at it
for too long!”
Myra stepped closer to the locked box and paused alongside it. She
didn't want George to start asking questions as to what it contained.
Should she pretend the thing was nothing and leave it where it was,
not coming back for it until the hired man was outside? But, then again, if she
left the box in plain sight, he might he get snoopy and try to open
it. That couldn't be allowed. No outsider had any right to nose around inside her mother's
private memories.
She
took the case off the shelf and tucked it under her right arm.
“What've
you got there, Miss Myra?” George inquired.
“You
and your questions!” Myra flung back as she strutted away.
#
Once
inside, Myra checked the clock up on the high shelf. It was more
than an hour to noon and it wouldn't take long to dump some edibles
onto a platter, not if she didn't waste time cooking them. Myra
would much rather be tinkering with the locked box than be acting like a hostess.
Placing
the little chest on the table, the girl reached into her coat pocket
to find the slim nail that she had salvaged. Myra drew up a chair and took a turn at examining the miniature mechanism. It wasn't
cleverly made at all and, using the nail, she popped it open in just a minute. As
expected, the thing was stuffed full of letters.
Myra
opened the top letter on the stack. The return address told her that
it was from Aunt Claudelle. Sliding the Fools Cap sheet out, she
held the yellow page up to the light. It was a brief note wishing her
mom well for the Christmas season. Myra couldn't remember ever
meeting Claudelle. She had barely known even Uncle Amos. The latter
had made a visit to Pennsylvania as a sort of goodbye to his sister,
who was going West with her family. Claudelle and Abigail hadn't
come with him for some reason. It seemed that neither of her parents
nor Irene had been on easy terms with Amos' wife. Irene had hardly
ever mentioned Claudelle over the last five years. But Myra's father
had earlier let out an amusing story about Claudelle's father getting
himself into trouble years back for chicken stealing.
But
as uninformative as the missive was, it felt strange to be reading a
letter to her mother. The written lines seemed to open a window into the past,
and their words were like a voice speaking though the years.
Myra
skimmed a few more letters. Addie Caldwell's most frequent
correspondent seemed to have been Aunt Irene. Irene's letters were much
longer than Claudelle's. They told a lot about what she was doing back
East. Most of them had been written during the short time that she had
been married.
The
curious girl found one letter from her aunt that showed running ink on the
address. It didn't look like there had been a spill. The way the water had run had probably been tears. Myra had a hunch that the subject would turn out to
be the death of uncle Darby. She didn't finish the sad letter. She didn't care for the way that females couldn't resist talking about things that
made them cry. Gilana hadn't been a crybaby, luckily. She could make
a joke out of the most awful happenings, and Myron had respected that
aspect of her.
It
seemed that most of these correspondences had been written back in a very different time. Those had been the war years. The
far-away war had meant nothing to the very young Myron in those days, except that
it was an exciting subject to read about in the newspaper -- at a
time when he was new to reading. But it had been during the war that
her parents had seemed to undergo quite a sudden change. All of a sudden they often seemed
worried and sad. They started to speak very quietly at times, as if
discussing serious problems that they didn't want their son to
overhear.
The obvious secrecy had made Myron extremely eager to listen in on them from
hiding, but he rarely could catch more than an odd word here or there
-- like “money” and “Grimsley.” Funny thing. The name of
Grimsley had come up quite a bit during these secret talks. Why had
that been? They had no quarrel with the man that she knew of, not
like the run of trouble that they'd had with Tully Singer over the boundary
line. And Grimsley hadn't been the neighbor that they'd most often
socialized with, either.
What
had made her folks change? Not the war. They didn't show much fear
about what was going to happen if the Southerners won. They just wanted the
killing to stop. A couple times, she remembered, her father has said
something like, “Mark my words, the banks and the railroaders
started this war, and they're the only ones who are going to benefit
from it. I wonder how many of their pampered sons are making
bayonet charges in Virginia.”
Myra
looked at the clock again. More time had passed than she had
realized. She wanted to keep reading, even though the memories that
the letters invoked so far were not happy ones.
But the
girl needed to put together a lunch for George. If he showed up at
the door and it wasn't ready, the lazy cuss would stand around
jabbering while she was scrounging up the victuals. The less talking she
had to do with young Severin, the better. She opened a can of beans
and spooned them into a pair of sauce dishes – one for George and
one for herself. Hopefully, she could get hers eaten and be away
from the table before he came in. She next went to the pantry.
She
and her aunt kept the pantry door shut most of the time. The little window inside it was half-open, and the December air kept the space
cooler for the food inside. There were some chubs of bologna wrapped
in rags, sealed in paraffin and hung up. The fragrant smell of the
meat brought back more positive recollections. The aroma of curing
bologna had filled the entire house during the autumn seasons. That
scent still made her think of Christmas time, when everyone was
allowed to eat their fill. Most of the neighbors likewise made their
own sausage, but Myron had rated his ma's and pa's the best in the
neighborhood. For one thing, almost everybody put too much spice into
their ground meat, and spice was not something that sat well with
the boy's pallet.
Myra
found a chub that Irene had already been cutting from. Naturally,
the farm girl chose that one, since sausage left open to the air
wouldn't stay fresh for very long. She cut a portion for herself and
a larger one for George. The way, she figured, he'd stay indoors less
long if his first piece filled him up. Next, she sliced the
end off a loaf of bread, put some churned butter into a small dish, and
ladled into a fruit bowl some cooked apples from an already-opened
jar.
Myra
then stood back and took stock. It wasn't a meal. She wouldn't enjoy it herself, but she'd gotten used to forcing down rough fare while on the outlaw trail. Nevertheless, what the farm girl had put together
should reasonably be enough for a hired man's lunch. It was only missing
something to drink. Since the maid had brought in fresh milk from
her morning chores, she went to the can and filled a small pitcher
with it. She poured milk into a pair of tin cups for herself
and George.
She gave a sigh, glad to be done.
With
two lunches occupying the small table, there was little space left
for her mother's letters. Not wanting the snoopy George to take a handful and start reading them, Myra separated the ones that she'd already skimmed
from the others, creating two different bundles, and these she packed
back into the wooden case. Then the girl concealed her treasure chest
under her aunt's bed. She was still on her knees when a tapping
sounded on the pine-board door, which she had carelessly left hanging
open. Expecting that it was George, she called over her shoulder, “Yeah!”
But,
upon standing up, she saw that her callers were a couple of girls –
Kayley and Rosedale, of course. They came right in, burdened with
carry-alls. “Hello, Myra!” Dale said. Behind her, Kayley nodded
and smiled. Myra managed to smile back at them, though she was
scarcely in a mood for company.
“I
guess it is lunch time,” said Kayley.
“Come in. Do
you need a bite?” Myra asked. She preferred not to have to put
together a bigger meal, but the custom of hospitality was a very
strong one. It wasn't uncommon for a visitor who received less than
what he expected to rebuke his host to his face.
“An
apple, maybe,” said Dale, approaching the table. “Kayley and I lunched just before we
started over. We don't have to get back home until supper.”
That's
going to be a long time to put up with these two, Myra thought. She didn't look forward to acting like a girl for nearly six hours.
And what if they wanted to talk about embarrassing things, like
women's bodies? That was a subject that females tended to bring up when
no menfolk were around.
“Hey
now!” exclaimed George, stepping in through the open door. “Isn't
it nice to be having dinner with three fetching ladies –
even if one of them is only my homely little sister?”
“Homely!
You mangy coyote!” Dale answered him back.
“It's
still five minutes to noon,” Myra reminded the youth.
“I
didn't think you'd mind,” the Severin lad said. “It's probably best if I
get my chowing done quickly, so you can get on with those dancing
lessons. I know you've been powerfully excited on the subject all
morning.”
Dale
shook her head. “Men always want to make fun of people when
they're trying to learn something new.”
“Always,”
agreed Kayley. “I want to learn to drive the buggy, but my dad
talks as if I was asking him to let me break a bronco.”
“I
think you could give a bronc a good fight of it,” teased George.
“You
talk like a brother,” the Grimsley girl responded, “and that's
not a good thing.”
“How
come? Why wouldn't you want another brother just like Jeremy? What
have you got against Jeremy?”
“Nothing.
And we weren't talking about Jeremy, not until you brought him up.”
“I can drive a
buggy. I can teach you, Kayley.”
“You
can?” the neighbor girl asked.
“I've
said it, haven't I?”
“That
would be jim-dandy!” Kayley exclaimed. She looked over her
shoulder. “Why couldn't you offer to do the same for me, George?”
“The
same reason that Dale hasn't. If your pa wanted you to be driving,
he'd be teaching you himself. It's not proper for a neighbor to be
interfering between a girl and what her folks' want for her.”
“Myra
doesn't seem to care about fussy rules like that.”
“Well,
it isn't for me to be saying what Myra should or shouldn't be doing.
But remember how our folks made Dale promise not to be teaching you –
not on any subject – not unless your ma and pa say that it's all
right first. Now that Myra's spoken up, maybe they'll be coming over to
arm-twist her into giving them that same promise. They already think
that our Dale is a wild girl for starting out driving a carriage
horse at such a young age.”
“Let's
leave this sort of business for later, George,” suggested Dale.
“Your victuals will be getting cold.”
“No
rush,” her brother said. “Myra told me that she was fixing things
up cold. With a nice hot stove in here, they can only get warmer.”
“I'm
not much of a cook,” the ginger-maned girl explained.
“You
can't cook?” said Kayley. “Oh, you have to learn, Myra, or
you're not going to find the best kind of husband. Dale and I can
teach you cooking.”
“Well,
my aunt already said she's going to teach me. If everybody starts
teaching me at the same time, I'll be learning to cook from dawn to
dusk.”
“Would
that be worse than choring all day?” asked Rosedale.
“It might be,” Myra said.
“Come
on, you gals, don't try to change Myra into the mirror-image of yourselves,”
advised George. “I think she's mighty nice the way she is.”
“Oh,
yes, it's very clear how nice you think Miss Myra is,” teased his
sister. “Is she going to the dance with you?”
“She
says she'll be at the dance. Maybe I'll get her to dance with me once
or twice while I'm there,” he said.
“Perfect!”
exclaimed Kayley. “They always have square dancing. You'll
have to get ready for that, Myra. It's the hardest sort of dance for
a person to learn. It takes at least four people to teach it right.
George, can you stay and help us show Myra some dance steps?”
“I'm
not sure I should. I won't get a whole lot of the pen cleaned if I
do. Today and tomorrow are the shortest days of the year, you know.”
“If
you're nice to Myra, it could make her like you better,” suggested
Rosdale, trying to keep from giggling.
“Think
it would do just the opposite,” replied Myra.
“Oh,
pshaw! Everybody's afraid to dance at first!” exclaimed Dale. “But
I've been to lots of dances and believe me, if you know just a
little, you'll look better than most of the other people there.”
“Let's
start by showing Myra the square dance,” urged Kayley.
“I
tried some square dancing once, but it's too crazy to understand,”
complained the redhead. “It's bad enough trying to remember what
you're supposed to be doing, but in square dancing you also need to understand what
twenty different people are doing at the same time!”
“Everybody
has trouble square dancing at first, but it's the dance that's always
the most fun,” said Dale Severin. “And you aren't really dancing
with twenty people; it just looks that way. Everyone dances in groups
of four, or maybe eight, if a lot of people show up. You stay inside
your own group to dance. Because there are lots of other groups
dancing just as fast as they can, it looks more confusing than it
really is.”
George
was shaking his head.“This sounds like it's going to take a lot of
time, and I don't have time to spare.”
TO
BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 3, Part 2
