Jubilee Trail (41 page)

John smiled down at her with amusement and a touch of admiration. “You’re very determined when your mind’s made up, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose I am. Are you going to listen to me?”

“I can’t help it. Go ahead.”

She spoke vehemently, though she kept her voice low. “John, I don’t know why you came to California either. And I’m never going to ask you. I can mind my own business too. But let me tell you something. Minding your own business doesn’t mean you have to treat other people like a lot of dead sticks. I think you and Florinda—and the others like you—the people who came out here all alone—I think you ought to understand each other! Because—because, John, you do understand each other’s loneliness!”

By this time John was not looking at her. He stood turning the orange over and over in his hands, as though he had never seen one before.

“But what do you want me to do about Florinda, Garnet?” he asked at length. “Marry her? I won’t, and neither will I take her on, Penrose-fashion.”

Garnet felt herself blushing. “I never thought of that!” she cried.

“I know you didn’t. I beg your pardon.”

“I just thought,” said Garnet, “that maybe there was somewhere she could stay until she got well. Where people would be good to her.”

For several seconds John was silent. He peeled a bit of the skin off the orange. Finally he asked,

“You think she’ll take care of herself after that?”

“Oh John, you know she will! Florinda has always taken care of herself. She’s never had anybody.” Garnet went on eagerly. “I hope I’m not betraying a confidence. But I’ve got to make you understand. Her father deserted her mother, and her mother was a weak stupid whining fool. Florinda didn’t tell me that last. But she told me enough for me to draw my own conclusions. Her mother spent her whole life weeping and wanting somebody else to take care of her.”

“Not the sort of person you’d admire,” John remarked with a trace of humor.

“No, you’re mighty right. But Florinda has got sense and she’s got courage, and she won’t be a burden any longer than she has to be. Please give her a hand, John.”

He smiled. “How eloquent you are. All right.”

“You will?” she cried joyfully.

“Yes,” said John, “because I’m too big a fool to say no. She’s going to be a nuisance and I’m going to wish I hadn’t promised. But set your mind at rest. I’ll tuck her away somewhere.”

“Oh, thank you!” she exclaimed. He did not answer, and she held out her hand. “Good night.”

John took her hand. “Good night. And goodby.”

Garnet was surprised at how sorry she was to hear him say it. She had grown to like John more than she had realized. The trail had made her admire strength more than gentleness. But he could be gentle too, she remembered, thinking of the time he had held her when Texas put the iron into her wound. “John,” she asked in a low voice, “when will I see you again?”

“Sometime this winter. I’m coming up to buy some cattle from Charles, to stock my rancho.”

“I’ll be glad to see you,” she said.

“I’ll be glad to see you too,” said John. She withdrew her hand and was about to turn away when he added, “Don’t forget what I told you.”

“What?”

“If Charles annoys you, tell him to go to hell.”

“Do you think I can?” she asked. She could not help feeling timorous when she thought of Charles.

“You?” said John. He gave a short laugh. But then he stood still a moment, looking at her intently, and for some reason she got the impression that he was about to tell her something else. But John dreaded getting mixed up in affairs that did not concern him. He shrugged, and said,

“I’m sorry you’re going back next year, Garnet. This country was made for people like you.”

He turned abruptly and walked off. Garnet made her way back to the house. She wondered if she had been right, or merely imagining things in the dark, when she got the impression that John had looked at her with sympathy just then, a real fellow-feeling so strong that it had almost made him break his rule of silence about other people’s business.

C
HARLES AND OLIVER’S RANCHO
lay to the northwest, at a distance of eight days’ riding. As Garnet had made up her mind to defy Charles, she began when she got up that morning. She brushed her hair till it shone, and put on a dark green riding-dress that fitted tight above her waist and spread into a big rippling skirt. When she walked toward the line of horses she knew she had never looked better in her life.

The horses were magnificent. Oliver gave her a beautiful mare, and a saddle of tooled leather, polished till it gleamed like satin in the sun. As she mounted and took her place in the train, Charles’ serving-men watched her admiringly. The traders who had come out to see them off waved and called, “Good riding, Mrs. Hale!” Garnet waved back to them, promising to see them again when the caravan met next April. She still felt quivery at the thought of living with Charles till then, but she was resolved that nobody was going to know it.

Charles looked very grand, and also, she thought, he looked absurd. Astride his great stallion he seemed more shrunken than ever. His face reminded her of a withered apple, and the brilliant eyes were like two bright-headed pins. He had on a red satin coat and embroidered trousers, and his saddle was all aglow with silver bosses. Oliver was grand too, for Charles had brought him new clothes to replace those Oliver had worn out on the trail. Oliver’s trousers were mustard-colored, with green and scarlet embroidery down the sides; his jacket was blue satin, and the buttons were made of gold coins from Peru. He had on a fine white shirt and a white silk sash with gold fringe, boots with spurs made like stars, and a wide black Mexican hat with blue silk tassels around the brim. There was a long line of pack-horses and saddle-horses; there were ten serving-men, who wore trousers of many shades, and brilliant striped serapes over their shoulders. They all set off in such richness of color and silver and thudding hoofs and tossing manes that they looked like a royal procession. Nobody would have guessed their train bore such a load of threatening emotions as Garnet knew it did.

They traveled in luxury. The horses were sleek and fresh, and the serving-men treated Garnet like a princess. Though they watched her foreign ways with curiosity, the men accepted her at once as the great lady of the rancho. As soon as the train stopped for a rest they spread blankets for her, and brought her water and wine, bowing with respect as they set down the jugs. They cooked excellent meals, beef spiced with chili, porridges of corn and beans, bowls of chocolate crunchy with flakes of a coarse brown sugar called panocha; and they spread the food before her with shy charming smiles, as though she were a goddess and they hoped she would be pleased with their offering.

The way led them through a wild country, cut with canyons and ringed about with mountains that looked like piles of crumpled dark velvet. At noon they stopped by streams lined with willows and nicotine bushes, and here and there a strong old live-oak that had been clutching for a hundred years at the crooked earth. A month ago Garnet would have liked the hills, and she would have liked the flattering feudal ways of California. But now, she was in no mood to like anything.

Charles hated her. She could see it when his eyes swept over her in her graceful riding-dress; he hated her for her health and her spirits and her proud way of carrying herself, and he hated her for being here. He rarely spoke to her. When he did, it was with a cold politeness that was like an insult.

However, she was not overly concerned about Charles. Charles alone could not hurt her. What did hurt her, more and more as the days passed, was Oliver’s attitude toward both Charles and herself. He would not have confessed it for ten thousand cattle-hides, but Oliver was scared.

She tried to understand it. Oliver had lost his parents when he was a child. Ever since then he had obeyed Charles, and Charles was an overbearing tyrant. Away from Charles, Oliver had fallen in love with her and married her. But now Oliver was like a boy who for the first time had dared to disobey a domineering father. Garnet was amazed, and baffled, and contemptuously angry.

When they lay in their shelter at night—the only privacy they had—she tried to make him be frank with her. But all her insistence was not enough to get an answer. Oliver begged, “My dearest, don’t mind Charles! I told you it would take him a while to get used to you.”

“I don’t mind Charles,” Garnet retorted. “But I do mind you. You act as if I’m something you have to apologize for.”

“Garnet,” Oliver exclaimed with a weary desperation, “for God’s sake quit pestering me!”

Then he would put his arms around her and beg her to forgive him for speaking harshly. He loved her, he loved her more than anything else on earth—wasn’t that enough?

No, Garnet thought when she lay awake at night, it was not enough. He loved her, but he did not have the courage to trust her. She wanted love. But she did not want an adoring weakness.

She slept restlessly, and she knew Oliver did too, though in the mornings he always said he felt fine. She said she also felt fine, but she did not. She felt wretched. It was not the sort of discomfort she had felt on the trail. Here there was no thirst, no killing heat, no bowls of cold pinole gritty with sand. Here there was simply Charles’ tense fury, and Oliver’s dread before it, and her own disgust with Oliver. She had no appetite for the excellent meals, and ate them only for the sake of the servants who had worked so hard to please her.

One morning they rode through a mountain pass, and there below her Garnet saw the place where she was to live this winter. It was easy to understand why Charles had called it “my rancho.” Nobody who knew the Hale brothers could have imagined that Oliver had ever had anything to do with it.

Charles had clamped his own ways upon his land. His vast property was as neat as a starched collar. You knew as soon as you looked at it that Charles was rich, not with a gay warm abundance like Don Antonio, but rich with an austerity that counted every hide and every bunch of grapes.

The main building was a large house of adobe painted white, with glass in the windows. In front of it Charles had built a reservoir with walls of stone, fed by two streams that came down from the mountains. Around the house were gardens and orchards and vineyards. They were planted in straight lines with irrigation channels between them, and no clumps of weeds to use up the hard-won water. At a respectful distance behind Charles’ house were the homes of the workers, and the storehouses and workshops. These also stood in rows, like the streets of a prim little village. Garnet saw a great many men in the fields, and a great many cattle roaming on the slopes beyond. Oh yes, the rancho was rich; smugly, nastily rich. Every acre of it proclaimed Charles’ contempt for the native ways. At her first glimpse of it, Garnet felt her stomach give a twitch of nausea. But then she felt like laughing, because as she looked at this priggery and then at the huge tumbled hills beyond it, she thought she had never seen anything so silly in her life.

Oh Oliver, she thought with exasperation, why can’t you talk back to this pompous little despot? And what, she wondered as she looked again at the rancho, what in God’s name is waiting for you here, to make you so afraid?

She did not know. They rode toward the rancho, and servants came out to take their horses. Charles spoke to them with cold authority, saying that the señora was the wife of Don Olivero and they were to see to her comfort. They were surprised, but they bowed to her politely. Charles told her she and Oliver would have a bedroom and a sitting-room for their own use. He said it as if he were speaking to a poor relation.

Life at the rancho went by schedule. There was a big American clock on a shelf in the dining-room, which struck the hours in a doleful singsong voice. If Garnet had needed any proof of Charles’ skill at tyranny, she could have found it in the way he had made a troop of easy-going Mexicans obedient to this clock. Charles’ serving-people were afraid of him. They went about silently, and even when Garnet tried to make friends with them they seemed afraid of her too.

Breakfast was at seven o’clock. Dinner was at twelve. After dinner you could go to sleep. Charles despised the custom; he looked upon it as another sign of the hopeless laziness of the native population, but not even Charles could make Mexicans work in the afternoon. Supper was at six.

After breakfast, Charles and Oliver went for long rides over the rancho and Garnet was left to amuse herself in any way she could. She went for walks, and mended her clothes, and she found a few books in the dining-room. The books were set prominently on a shelf, and she guessed that they had been put here to impress callers in this bookless land, for the leaves clung together as if they were never opened. There were three books in Spanish, and a dozen worn volumes in English that might have been stuck in to fill up space in packing-cases—essays by forgotten moralists, some old novels, and books of poetry with tattered pages. She read them, for lack of anything else to do.

Her rooms were neat and cheerless, with crisp wall-curtains and straight hard chairs. Oliver dumped a stack of ledgers and papers on the table in their sitting-room, saying he would go over them later when he heard from John. The papers made a big disorderly pile. Garnet was glad of it, for the rest of the house was so tidy that it looked as if it had been got ready for a funeral.

Except at meals, and sometimes in the evenings when Charles would follow them into their sitting-room and talk business with Oliver, she scarcely saw Charles at all. He and Oliver were always together. If they came in early from riding, they went into one of the rooms she had never entered, and talked and talked. Once, through a door ajar, she heard Oliver exclaim, “But what do you want me to
do
, Charles?” He sounded like a man in pain. She did not hear Charles’ answer.

She tried to make Oliver tell her what they talked about all day. “Oh, about the rancho,” said Oliver, “and what’s been going on since I left.” He would not tell her anything else. He kept pretending there was nothing else to tell.