Comanche Moon (52 page)

"I assure you there'll be an improvement in the matter of salaries," the Governor said.

"I'll raise you even if I have to pay you out of my own pocket until this crisis passes." "Let it pass--there'll just be another one right behind it," Augustus said, irritably. "It's just been one crisis after another, the whole time I've been rangering." Then he stood up--fed up. He felt he had to get outside or else choke.

"I've got to get my wife decently buried, Governor," he said. "She won't keep, not with the weather this warm. I expect I'll stay with Woodrow and go on rangering, but I ain't sure. I just ain't sure, not right this minute. I agree with Woodrow--allyankees are still Americans, and I'm used to fighting Comanche Indians or else Mexicans." He paused a moment, remembering his family.

"I've got two brothers, back in Tennessee," he added. "If my brothers was to fight with the Yankees, I wouldn't want to be shooting at them, I know that much." Governor Clark sighed.

"Go home, Captain," he said. "Bury your wife. Then let me know what you decide." "All right, Governor," Augustus said.

"I wish there was a good sheriff here. He ought to arrest those fools who are shooting off their guns in the street."

Inish Scull--Hoppity Scull, as he was known in Boston, because he was still occasionally seized by involuntary fits of hopping; they might occur at a wedding or a dinner party or even while he was rowing, in which case he hopped into the chilly Charles--was walking across Harvard Yard, a copy of Newton's Opticks in his hand, when a student ran up to him with the news that war had been declared.

"Why the Southern rascals!" Scull exclaimed, after hearing of the provocation that had occurred.

His mind, though, was still on optics, where it had been much of the time since Ahumado had removed his eyelids. He had just spent three years making a close study of the eye, sight, light, and everything having to do with vision--Harvard had even been prompted to ask him to teach a course on optics, which is what he had been doing just before news of the Southern insurrection reached him. He was wearing his goggles, of course; even in the thinner light of Boston a chance ray of sunlight could cause him intense pain; the headaches, when they came, still blinded him for days. He was convinced, though, from his study of the musculature of the eye, that his experiment with the Swiss surgeon and the frog membrane need not have failed. He had been planning to go back to Switzerland, armed with new knowledge and also better membranes, to try again.

But the news that the spindly student had brought him, once it soaked in, drove optics, in all their rich complexity, out of Inish Scull's mind. The excitement in Cambridge was general; even the streets of Boston, usually silent as a cemetery, rang with talk. Scull rarely walked home, but today he did, growing more excited with every step. He still had his commission in the army of the United States; the thought of battle made a sojourn in Switzerland seem pallid. He longed to lead men again, to see the breaths of cavalry horses condense in white clouds on cold mornings, to ride and curse and shoot under the old flag, Bible and sword.

When he flung open the door of the great house on Beacon Hill, the house where he had been born and been raised, the sight that greeted him was one to arouse ardor, but not of a military kind.

Inez Scull, entirely bored with Boston, was striding up and down the long, gloomy entrance hall, naked from the waist down, slashing at the Scull family portraits with a quirt.

Lately she had begun to exhibit herself freely, mostly to shock the servants, good proper Boston servants all, very unused to having their mistress exhibit her parts in the drawing room or wherever she happened to be, and at all hours of the day, as well.

Hearing the door open, Entwistle, the butler, appeared--old Ben Mickelson had been sent to the house in Maine, to dodder and tipple through the summer. Without giving Madame Scull so much as a glance, Entwistle took the master's coat.

"So there, Inez, I hope you're satisfied," Inish said.

"I'm very far from satisfied, the stable boy was hasty," Inez said, turning her red face toward him as she continued to quirt the portraits.

"Entwistle, would you find a towel for Madame?" Scull said. "I fear she's dripping. She'll soil the Aubusson if she's not careful." "You Bostonians are so beggarly," Inez said. "It's just a rug." "Sack the stable boy, if you don't mind, Entwistle," Scull added. "He's managed to anger me while not quite pleasing Madame." Then he looked at his wife.

"I wasn't talking about the success--or lack of it--of your amours, Inez, when I said I hoped you were satisfied," he informed her. "The fact is, your imbecile cousins have gotten us into a war." "The darlings, I'm so glad," Inez replied. "What did they do?" "They fired on us," Scull said. "The impertinent fools--they'll soon wish they hadn't." At that point Entwistle returned with a towel, which he handed to Madame Scull, who immediately flung it back in his face. Entwistle, unsurprised, picked up the towel and draped it over the banister near where Madame Scull stood.

"Find that stable boy?" Scull asked.

"No, he didn't, and he won't," Inez said, before Entwistle could answer.

"Why's that, my dear?" Scull asked, noting that a whitish substance was still dripping copiously down his wife's leg. Happily, though, her quirtings had done little damage to the Scull portraits, which hung in imposing ranks along the hallway.

"Because I've stowed him in a closet, where I mean to keep him until he proves his mettle," Inez said.

"I should shoot you on the spot, you Oglethorpe slut," Scull said. "No Boston jury would convict me." "What, because I had a tumble with the stable boy, you think that's grounds for murder?" Inez asked, coming at him with menace in her eyes.

"No, of course not," he said. "I'd do it because you embarrassed Entwistle. You don't embarrass butlers, not here in our Boston." "My cousins will soon put you to rout, you damn Yankee hounds," Inez said, starting up the stairs.

"Hickling Prescott suspects you of Oglethorpe blood--did you hear me, you dank slut?" Inish yelled after her.

Inez Scull did not reply.

Before he could say more he was taken with a fit of hopping. He was almost to the kitchen before Entwistle and the parlor maids could get him stopped.

Maggie considered it a happy turnabout that she now had a position in the store that had once been the Forsythes'. She did the very jobs that Clara had once done: unpacking, arranging goods on the shelves, helping customers, writing up bills, wrapping the purchases that required wrapping.

She thought often of Clara, and felt lucky to have, at last, a respectable job. Clara, she thought, would have understood and approved. The store's new owner, Mr. Sam Stewart, was from Ohio, and a newcomer to Austin. He knew little of Maggie's past, and what he knew he ignored.

Fetching and competent clerks were not plentiful in Austin--Mrs. Sam Stewart was glad to accept the fiction that Maggie was a widow, and Newt the son of a Mr. Dobbs, killed by Indians while on a trip. Sam Stewart had a few irregularities in his past himself and was not disposed either to look too closely or to judge too harshly when Maggie applied for the job, though he did once mention to his formidable wife, Amanda Stewart, that Maggie's boy, Newt, then four, bore a strong resemblance to Captain Call.

"I'd mind your own business, if I were you, Sam," Amanda informed him. "I'm sure Maggie's done the best she could. I'll nail your skin to the back door if you let Maggie go." "Who said anything about letting her go, Manda?" Sam asked. "I have no intention of letting her go." "Scoundrels like you often get churchly once they're safe from the hang rope," Amanda informed him. She said no more, but Sam Stewart went around for days wondering what skeleton his wife thought she had uncovered now.

It was while clerking in the store that Maggie made friends with Nellie McCrae. Nellie often came in to purchase little things for Gus, but rarely spent a penny on herself, though she was a fetching young woman whose beauty would have shone more brightly if she had allowed herself a ribbon, now and then, or a new frock.

That Nellie was not strong had always been clear --once or twice she had become faint, while doing her modest shopping; Maggie had had to insist that she rest a bit on the sofa at the back of the store before going home.

Then Nellie commenced dying, and was seen in the store no more. Maggie sorrowed for her and sat up all night rocking Newt, who had a cough, when news of the death came.

She was dressing to go to the funeral when Graciela, the Mexican woman who watched Newt while Maggie worked, came hobbling in in terror--Graciela was convinced she had been bitten by a snake.

"Was it a rattler?" Maggie asked, not without skepticism--the day seldom passed without nature striking some near-fatal blow at Graciela.

Graciela was far too upset to give an accurate description of the snake; though Maggie could find no fang marks on her leg, or anywhere else, Graciela was convinced she was dying. She began to pray to the saints, and to the Virgin.

"You might have stepped on a snake but I don't think it bit you," Maggie said, but Graciela was sobbing so loudly she couldn't hear.

It was vexing. Maggie thought the best thing to do was take Newt to the funeral with her. He was a lively boy and might escape Graciela and be off--if there .was a rattlesnake around, Newt might be the one to find it.

While Maggie was buttoning Newt into the nice brown coat he wore to church, Graciela, in her despair, turned over a pot of beans--a small river of bean juice was soon flowing across the kitchen floor.

"If you don't die, clean up the beans," Maggie said, as she hurried Newt out the door.

Then she regretted her sharpness: Graciela was a poor woman who had lost five of her twelve children; she had suffered so many pains in life that she had become a little deranged.

Maggie could already hear the strains of the new church organ--it had just arrived from Philadelphia the week before. Amanda Stewart, who had some training in music, had been enlisted to play it.

"Will we see Captain Woodrow?" Newt asked, as his mother hurried him along.

"Yes, and Jake too, I expect," Maggie said. "Maybe Captain Woodrow would walk with us to the graveyard." Newt didn't say anything--his mother was always hoping that Captain Woodrow would do things with them that the Captain seldom wanted to do.

Jake Spoon, though, was always jolly; he came to their house often and played with him, or, sometimes, even took him fishing. Jake had even given him an old lariat rope, Newt's proudest possession. Jake said every ranger needed to know how to rope, so Newt practiced often with his rope, throwing loops at a stump in the backyard, or, if his mother wasn't looking, at the chickens. He thought roping birds would be safe, though he was careful not to go near old Dan, the quarrelsome tom turkey that belonged to Mrs. Stewart.

"Old Dan will peck you, Newt," Mrs.

Stewart warned, and Newt didn't doubt. Old Dan had pecked Graciela, causing her to weep for several days.

Though Newt, like his mother, hoped that Captain Woodrow would come and do things with them, the occasions when he did come frightened little Newt a little.

Captain Woodrow didn't play with him, as Jake did, and had never taken him fishing, though, on rare occasions, he might give Newt a penny, so that he could buy sassafras candy at the store where his mother worked. Jake Spoon's visits usually ended with Newt laughing himself into a fit--Jake would tickle him until he went into a fit--but nothing like that happened when Captain Woodrow came. When the Captain came he and Newt's mother talked, but in such low voices that Newt could never hear what they were saying. Newt tried to be on his best behaviour during Captain Woodrow's visits, not only in the hope of getting a penny, but because it was clear that Captain Woodrow expected good behaviour.

Newt was always a little glad, when Captain Woodrow got up to go, but he was always a little sorry, too. He wanted Captain Woodrow to stay with them--his mother was never more pleased than when Captain Woodrow came--but he himself never quite knew what to do when the Captain was there. He had a whistle which he liked to blow loudly, and a top he liked to spin, and a stick horse he could ride expertly, even though the stick horse bucked and pitched like a real bronc, but when the Captain came he didn't blow his whistle, spin his top, or ride his stick horse. Newt just sat and tried to be well behaved. Almost always, after Captain Woodrow came, his mother cried and was in a bad temper for a while; Newt had learned to be cautious in his playing, at such times.

Maggie and Newt hurried across the street and crept into the back of the church just as the brief service began.

"Ma, I can't see," Newt whispered. He didn't like being in church, which required him to be still, even more still than he was used to keeping during Captain Woodrow's visits. At the moment all he could see was a forest of backs and legs.

"Shush, you be quiet now," Maggie said, but she did hoist Newt up so he could see Amanda Stewart play the new organ. All the rangers were there but Deets, one of Newt's favorites.

Deets was skillful at devising little toys out of pieces of wood or sacking and whatever he could find. So far he had made Newt a turkey, a bobcat, and a bear. Of course, Deets was black; Newt was not sure whether he was exactly a ranger--in any case he could not spot him in the church.

Then his mother whispered to him and pointed out a thin man standing with the rangers.

"That's the Governor," she said. "It's nice that he came." Newt took no special interest in the Governor, but he was careful to squeeze his eyes shut during the prayer. Graciela had made it clear to him that he would go to hell and burn forever if he opened his eyes during a prayer.

When the praying was finished the rangers went past them out of the church, carrying a wooden box, which they set in the back of a wagon. Jake Spoon was helping carry the box; when he went past Newt he winked at him. Newt knew that winking at such a time must be bad, because his mother colored and looked annoyed.