Sisters (3 page)

“Hey! Lookee here!”
he shouted. “If it ain’t James Stevenson hisself! Ladeez!
Gents!” He recovered his hat from the street and swept it
across in front of him, bowing exaggeratedly to the men and women
passing by on the sidewalk. “Let me pree-sent Mr. James
Stevenson of Edinbur-row, Scotland, big boss of the Cloud Peak Land
and Cattle Company.”

“Out of the way,
Wilson,” James said. “Get out of my way!”

“Hey, now, you musta
forgot. I don’t work for you no more. Got me my own outfit now,
run my own cows. You don’t give me orders no more, Mr. James
Stevenson of Edinbur-row, Scotland.” He bowed again,
flourishing his hat and nearly falling over.

“You’re drunk,
Wilson, a drunken thief. You know whose cattle those are.”
James was sitting forward in the seat. He held the carriage reins in
his left hand and with his right gripped the buggy whip. There was a
rapid throbbing at his temple.

“Ah, but the jury
said they was mine, Stevenson.” The cowboy took a few weaving
steps closer to the carriage and began to eye Sophie. “Well,
well, what you got here? You courtin’ again? Not too bad, this
one, but I liked that last woman of yours. That’n had a real
feelin’ for us homesteaders.”

At first Sophie didn’t
understand what had happened. She was looking at the cowboy when
there was a whistling sound of air being cut, and suddenly a red line
appeared on his face. It ran from his left eyebrow down to his chin
and was thin at first and then wider, and then there was blood.
Wilson roared in pain, clutching his face as though the buggy whip
with which James had struck him had cut it in two and he were
frantically trying to hold the halves together. As Sophie watched,
blood began to drip from beneath his hands onto his shirtfront.

Before she could react, the
carriage was moving past the white, staring faces on the sidewalk,
past the church at the corner, and then wheeling right and heading up
Ferguson Street. She grabbed onto Tom, thinking he might try to leap
from the carriage. Yipping and quivering, he strained against his
hands until finally the carriage stopped.

She turned to James for an
explanation, and as his eyes met hers, all the questions she’d
always had about him came rushing to mind. Why had he come to Wyoming
in the first place? It hadn’t been money. He had possessed
wealth before anyone understood the riches that lay in the
grasslands. And it hadn’t been simply a search for adventure.
He had stayed too long for that. He had committed himself to wife and
family and home here.

And that led to the
question which had troubled her most since first she’d seen
him. She remembered the day clearly: clouds high and fluffy in the
blue arc of sky, a cool breeze blowing in off the prairie--and Helen
standing with a tall, broad-shouldered stranger. Amid all the flurry
of greeting, Helen, cool and precise, explaining at each introduction
that this was James, her fiancé.

It hadn’t seemed
possible then, and now, twelve years later, Sophie still didn’t
understand: why had James Stevenson married her sister, Helen?

He looked away. “A
rude awakening for you, Sophie.” When she didn’t answer,
he went on, “Wilson worked for me once, then decided to go out
on his own. He filed on a hundred and sixty acres of creek bottom,
got a woman from Ida Hamilton’s to file on an adjacent parcel,
and the two of them moved out there. They bought a couple head of
cattle, three, maybe four years ago, and now they’re running
close to fifty head. They’re stealing animals, a lot of them
from Cloud Peak herds.”

“You should take them
to court.”

“I have, and the jury
found in favor of the poor beleaguered homesteader and against the
rich and powerful ‘cattle king.’” He shook his head
in disgust.

“What will a jury do
to you for what happened just now?”

“It won’t come
to that. Juries may play into the rustlers’ hands, but the
sheriff knows better. Wilson won’t even get him to call on me.”

She was quiet a moment,
thinking, “If he hadn’t mentioned Helen, you wouldn’t
have… struck him.”

He didn’t answer
immediately, and in the silence between them, there was an odd
discomfort. “That may well be,” he said finally.

“But what was he
talking about?” She spoke quickly, letting her words override
the awkwardness.

“She had changed,
Sophie,” he said, looking down at the reins as he spoke. “The
last few years, Helen had become totally caught up, almost obsessed
by… by two projects, two endeavors, I suppose you could call
them. One was trying to find your mother. You know about that.”
He glanced up, and she nodded, noting the constraint in his voice. He
didn’t like explaining. She supposed it was something a man
like him was not very often obliged to do.

“And the other,”
he continued, “was--ah, how shall I describe it--it was all to
do with women. Temperance was part of it. She joined the Women’s
Christian Temperance Union, and she was determined to clean the
whiskey out of Cheyenne.” He shook his head. “And it went
beyond that to trying to reform prostitutes and trying to help some
of the women living out in those miserable shacks on the prairie. The
woman living with Wilson was a big case for her, because she’d
been a prostitute, still is, some say, and she’s out there in a
hovel with two small children. I understood why Helen pitied those
people, Sophie, and I told her that. But it became useless for me to
talk to her finally. She wouldn’t understand. She just wouldn’t
see how those people were using her, how they’re threatening
everything we’ve accomplished in this country.”

“Using her? I…”
But before she could finish, someone beside the carriage spoke.

“What’s your
dog’s name?”

The question was so loud,
Sophie was surprised to look down and see a girl of no more than
seven or eight. She had a round, open face, a generous sprinkling of
freckles, and her hair, which had long ago lost its part, was held
back on the sides with carelessly inserted hairpins. Sophie glanced
back at James, but she could tell he wanted their conversation to be
over, so she turned her attention to the girl. “He’s
named Tom. Are you Sarah?”

“Yup, I’m
Sally.” The voice was loud as before, improbably loud coming
from such a small person.

“I’m your Aunt
Sophie.”

The child’s attention
was all on Tom. “I never seen a dog like that before,”
she boomed.

“He’s a
Pekingese. Would you like to hold him while I get down?”

The girl took Tom, and
Sophie let James help her from the carriage. “So this is your
house,” she said to Sally, who was studying Tom’s face
from perilously close range. “This is the first time I’ve
been to it.”

“It’s not so
new. We’ve lived in it three years.” These statements
were made in a moderate tone, but then the child resumed speaking at
what was apparently her usual volume. “Did somethin’
happen to your dog?” she asked loudly.

“Happen to him?”

“His face is all flat
and his eyes stick out.”

“No, nothing
happened. He’s supposed to look that way. You know, maybe you
shouldn’t put your face so close to his.”

“Why not?”

“Well, he could
bite.”

Sally gave her a look of
amused disbelief. Surely Sophie couldn’t be serious in thinking
this odd, furry creature to be a threat.

“He does bite
sometimes,” Sophie said.

Making it quite clear she
did it only to humor Sophie, the girl put Tom up on her shoulder.
Then she opened the ornamental iron gate, and they all started up the
walk.

Though Sophie was seeing
the Stevenson house for the first time, it seemed familiar to her.
Helen had written about the brick and red stone from which it was
constructed, described the stone arches over doorway and window.
There on the north front was the large round tower she had planned,
and on the south front, the flying tower she had decided on for
balance. She must have supervised the landscaping, too, Sophie
thought, so carefully placed were the trees and shrubs. The young
elms edging the sweep of lawn stood at measured intervals. A short
row of lilacs nearer the house was perfectly offset by a flowering
plum. None of the plants was mature enough yet to tie the house into
its setting, but eventually they would work that way. Already the
house conveyed a sense of permanence simply because of its size.

Sophie followed Sally up
the long curved walk and saw the carriage house and stables to the
right and rear. As they stepped into the long shadow of the main
house, she noticed pieces of thin rope scattered everywhere, and the
walk was dusty too, rather in need of sweeping. Such signs of slight
neglect about a handsome home might have made her feel warm and
welcome, might have said, “Since you’re a friend, we’ll
let you take us as we are.” But that wasn’t the sensation
she experienced as she climbed the stairs to the front porch. Helen
would never have permitted these small disorders, she thought with a
shiver. Helen had planned this house and lived in it, and now she was
dead. And this was the place where she had died.

Sally pushed Tom back into
Sophie’s arms and ran down to the end of the porch, where a boy
about her age was waiting. They had a number of wooden boxes around
them, and Sally joined her friend in scooping objects from one box to
another, counting them on the way.

“Pa, you seen how
many we got?” Sally shouted excitedly at James.

“What do you have?”
Sophie asked, walking toward the children. The objects were
everywhere, piled in soft brown heaps, overflowing the boxes.

“It’s gophers,”
Sally trumpeted. “We got better’n a hundred of ‘em!
That’s more’n five dollars!

“Five whole dollars
we can spend at the circus!” her friend joined in.

And then Sophie realized
the brown objects were animals, brown, furry animals. But they were
all so still. And the heads--there was something not quite right
about the way the heads lay. And then she knew why they were dead,
all of them dead.

“Sally,” James
said, “You know you only need the scalps for the bounty. Why
the hell do you have the carcasses?”

“I dunno, Pa.”

“Dammit, I want them
out of here. They’re going to stink! Hell, I can smell them
already. Get rid of them.”

“Ah, Pa. Couldn’t
we put them out back?”

“Get rid of them!”

“Ah, Pa, do we have
to?”

:Sally…” The
rapid pulse was beating in James’s temple again, and his fists
were clenched. The children, seeing they had pushed the matter far
enough, scurried to pack their grisly booty. As they started down the
stairs with a box full of carcasses, the front door opened and a
round gray-haired woman in a neat gray dress stepped onto the porch.
James turned as if to berate her, but instead he took a deep breath,
and when he spoke, it was with exaggerated care. “Make sure the
children take care of this, Mrs. Syms.” Then his glance fell on
Sophie. “But first see to Mrs. Dymond. Show her into the
drawing room.” He made a slight bow to Sophie. “Mrs. Syms
will make certain you’re comfortable until your things are
unpacked. Please excuse me. I have… matters I must attend to.”

Surprised by his abrupt
leave-taking, Sophie watched in silence as he went down the steps and
strode up the sidewalk. Then she followed the housekeeper inside,
into a cool, high-ceilinged hallway and through a wide doorway
opening off to the left.

“That Sally!”
Mrs. Syms was saying, her hands spread in a show of exasperation, her
eyeglasses glinting indignantly. “That child! How could I know
she’d do this!”

“Children are
difficult to predict,” Sophie said distractedly.

“As soon as she heard
about the nickel bounty on prairie gophers, she got her friends and
they started chasin’ the critters and catchin’ ‘em
with these little nooses they set around the holes. But who’d
think they’d keep the carcasses? Who’d think they’d
store ‘em on the porch? I’m sure I don’t know what
that child’ll do next!”

Sophie nodded
sympathetically, but her thoughts were on James. He’d been
angry with Sally too; no, more than that, he’d been furious
with her. Perhaps that’s why he’d left so suddenly, to
avoid another display of temper. Or did his quick departure have more
to do with Wilson? Perhaps he’d been embarrassed by that
incident and wanted to get away. But no, she didn’t think so.
For another person that might be the motive, but not for James. He
was not the kind of man for whom discomfiture was a familiar emotion.

Mrs. Syms arranged a drape
here, fluffed a pillow there, adjusted her silver spectacles, and
said she would have tea brought.

“No, not now,”
Sophie said. “Nothing now.”

The housekeeper left, and
as Sophie put Tom down to let him explore, it occurred to her that
she herself could be the reason for James’s hasty departure.
Had he wanted to avoid her questions? To ensure that there would be
no more conversations about Helen?

A wall sconce caught her
eye. Electric, she noted, and she had read Cheyenne had telephones
now too. She looked up to see if the overhead fixture was also
electric, and she saw the ceiling had been frescoed in maroon and
gold. It was skillfully done, really quite lovely. As she was near
the fireplace, she began idly to examine the objects massed on the
mantelpiece: a porcelain vase with ormolu handles, a Madeleine clock
with bronze columns, an ornate silver candlestick, and many, many
pictures.

She picked up a photograph
of Helen, fairly recent, she judged, taken within the last three or
four years. It showed a pretty but very serious woman, her hair
parted in the middle and drawn back behind perfectly sculptured ears.
The neck was thin and graceful, and so were her lips, but their set
was uncompromising. And her eyes were compelling. They had been blue,
and while you couldn’t tell that from the photo, they’d
had an odd, imperative shine about them which came through in the
photograph. It was as though the dark Indian strain in Helen had
fought against the light color, draining it and adding an opalescent
gleam.