Sweetwater (14 page)

Jenny had not considered a man in a romantic way for a long time, but when she thought about the rugged rancher, her heart thumped alarmingly. She was being foolish, she admonished herself. He had been kind and helpful.
Nothing more.
Trell McCall would not be attracted to a woman like her who didn’t know one end of a cow from the other. He’d want a helpmate.
A woman like Colleen Murphy.

Unrest settled around the region of Jenny’s heart.

All the way back to the ranch house she expected to see Whit come out of the trees on his pony. He didn’t appear, but she felt that he was nearby. The trail was flat and wound between giant oak and ash trees with short sweeps of meadow in between. At one time Jenny thrilled to see, high above, two hawks circling in amorous pursuit of each other. In the forest squirrels scampered in the underbrush and raced for a tree trunk to scold the intruder from their lofty perch.

This was real. This was basic. This was how the world was supposed to be, Jenny mused. No streets paved with brick, no tall buildings or fast rail cars, no people clambering over each other to reach wealth and position. Well, perhaps
some
of the people here might be just as power-hungry …

The team, knowing they were headed back home, wanted to go faster than Jenny found comfortable. By the time she drove into the yard, her arms ached from gripping the reins. The pain was forgotten, however, when she saw the girls and Colleen talking to a small ragged-looking man holding the reins of a long-eared mule.

“Jenny! Jenny! Jenny’s home!” With loose blond hair streaming out behind her, Beatrice came running toward the wagon.

Colleen darted after the child and scooped her up with one arm before she could reach the team.

“Ya’ll scare the daylights outta them horses, ya little scamp.” She turned the child, and Beatrice wrapped her arms about Colleen’s neck, showing how completely she had accepted the dark-haired girl into the family.

When Jenny had her feet on the ground, the child reached for her. Jenny held her for a moment and kissed her cheek.

“We got company,” Beatrice said when Jenny set her on her feet.

“I see we have.”

“Jenny,” Cassandra called. “Come meet Mr. Reginald Klein. He’s a real bona fide mountain man.”

“Bona what, gal? I ain’t no bona nothin’. Howdy, ma’am. This youngun can spout more highfalutin words than a preacher.”

“She’s a talker.” Jenny held out her hand. “Virginia Gray. Glad to meet you, Mr. Klein.”

“Likewise. Stopped and et with the Murphys a few times. Shore sorry ’bout what happened to Miles. ’Tis a shame, that’s what ’tis.”

“It was a terrible thing. The men who did it should be brought to justice.”

“Ma’am, there ain’t no justice out here less’n ya take the bull by the horns and make it yoreself.”

“Did you fix the well?” Jenny asked, seeing a crosspiece over the well with a rope dangling over it.

“Colleen and Ike did it. They wouldn’t let me watch.” Beatrice was holding Colleen’s hand.

“’Cause we was ’fraid ya’d fall in, sugar pie.”

“I know it. I’m not mad.”

Colleen smiled down at the child, then spoke to Jenny.

“It’ll do till Trell comes with a pulley. I had the rope in the wagon and Ike helped me put up the crossbar.”

“How did you make out at the store?” Cassandra asked. “Ike says they don’t have much.”

“Ike? Who is Ike?”

“Mr. Klein. He said his name was Reginald, but folks call him Ike.”

Jenny smiled at the little man with shoulder-length gray-streaked hair, bushy brows and chin whiskers. His dark eyes gleamed with mischief.

“Yo’re wantin’ to know why I’m called Ike. Well, it’s like this—I come to this country in ’52. Green as grass, I was. Met up with a couple fellers what had been to the gold fields. Fellers saved my hide more’n once. They knowed all the verses to ‘Sweet Betsy from Ike,’ and learned ’em to me. I’d never heard me no story like it and ain’t to this day. I got to singin’ that tune. Sung it in the mornin’. Sung it at night. Sung it till them fellers got tired a hearin’ ‘Sweet Betsy from Ike.’ Ever time I’d start they’d holler here comes Ike. The name stuck. I been Ike ever since.”

Cassandra’s and Jenny’s eyes caught in understanding.

“Mr. Klein, the title of the song is ‘Sweet Betsy from PIKE,’” Cassandra said kindly.

“I know, youngun. It’s what I said, ‘Sweet Betsy from Ike.’”

“It’s a wonderful story,” Jenny cut in before her sister pursued the matter further.

“Why don’t ya go on in and get outta that corset. It must be killin’ ya. Ma and Cass’ll unload the wagon,” Colleen said.

Jenny looked at her sister to see if she was going to protest the shortening of her name, but Cassandra had gone to the wagon with Colleen and was being lifted up into the wagonbed. Jenny shook her head. They had all changed since coming here. And most of it was for the good. She had not even been embarrassed when Colleen mentioned her corset in front of Mr. Klein … or Ike … or Pike!

“Put your mule in the corral, Ike, and come in. Granny will have something good for din … for supper.”

“I’ll do that, ma’am, after I help Colleen unharness the team.”

Chapter Nine

Whit was hunkered down amid the lilac bushes.

He watched as the teacher arrived. He had kept pace with her, keeping out of sight, not willing yet to face her after his humiliation at the Agency. He watched her meet the man the Indians called Crazy Swallow. They called him that because he was constantly on the move, darting here and there. The old man traveled between two worlds and knew many things about the Indian and the whites at the Agency. It was good for the teacher to know him.

The embarrassment Whit had experienced at the store had been great, yet he had known how he would be treated when he took the rabbit skins to trade. How else could he make the teacher understand the abuse he and others of his tribe endured at the hands of the agent, his woman and Sneaking Weasel, as he called the boy who lived at the Agency. Although Whit had not seen him, he believed it had been Sneaking Weasel who had gone into the school and destroyed the learning books. Someday, he vowed, he would kill him.

Whit had been angry at the sad sight of his Shoshoni brothers waiting at the corral to get the allotment of cattle to feed the camp. The cattle were meant for
them,
but they had to wait for one of the
Wasicun
drovers to open the gate so they could drive the animals to the feeding ground.

Whit remembered the stories his father had told him of the old days. When the first whites crossed their land, on their way to dig for the white man’s gold, the Shoshoni had been their friends. They had traded them meat and corn for gunpowder. They helped them to ford streams, to gather livestock that strayed, and had protected them from the Crow and the Blackfoot who hated all whites.

His father had told him the story of Sacajawea, called Bird Woman by her people. She was a Shoshoni maiden who had been a guide for the men called Mr. Lewis and Mr. Clark. It was said that she returned with them to a place called St. Louis, lived and died there, but that was not true. The tribe elders said she had come home to the northern Wind River range to live with her people. Whit had not seen her, but he had mourned with the rest of the tribe at her death early this year at the age of one hundred summers.

It was getting dark, and Crazy Swallow was still at the house with the teacher. Lamplight shone from the windows. Whit imagined they were sitting at the big table—his father’s table, eating a meal cooked by Granny Murphy. In the white world the women and the men ate together. He remembered the day when the table, chairs and several other pieces of furniture had arrived on a big high-wheeled wagon. His father had laughed and teased his mother because she thought the table was another bed to sleep on.

Whit’s stomach growled, reminding him that it had been empty most of the day, but he was not hungry enough to go back to the camp where there would be no one to greet him. Only a few would note his absence—only the boys near his age who had no parents or uncles would notice his sleeping spot was empty. He would stay here. He would take his blankets inside the school. It was as near to the home his father had built as he could get.

“I doubt if the floor had been swept this year, and dust covered everything. Mrs. Havelshell seemed uninterested in the store.” Jenny was telling about her trip to the Agency. “That boy, Linus, is rude. He treated me as if I were his enemy. It got my back up and I’m afraid that I didn’t help matters. When he kicked Whit, it was the last straw.”

“Miz. Havelshell lets him do ’bout what he wants.” Ike lolled in the kitchen as if he had been there many times. “The boy’s mad at the world. Onlyest thin’ he cares fer is that dad-blasted raccoon.”

“He came to our place a time or two,” Colleen said. “He got sassy with Pa and uncorked some pretty nasty words. Pa told him to shut his mouth or he’d give him a thrashin’. The kid left a-thumbin’ his nose.”

“Why did he kick Whit?” Cassandra asked.

“Whit came to trade his rabbit pelts. He said it was trade day.”

“He was right. Tradin’ day is first day of ever’ week,” Ike said.

“Mrs. Havelshell said it was not, but offered him one blanket.”

Ike snorted in disgust. “Kid’s skins was worth two blankets and a couple of good skinnin’ knives if not more.”

Jenny was liking Ike more and more although she was not yet sure how he fit in with Havelshell and the men who had killed Mr. Murphy. Granny and Colleen liked him; it was enough for now.

“I bought two blankets and traded him for the furs. I was afraid his stiff-necked pride would make him refuse my offer, and I really did want the pelts. We’ll make mittens and hats for winter.”

“But why did that pimply-faced saphead kick Whit?” When Cass wanted to know something, she was like a fox after a chicken.

“He told him to leave and Whit did not move fast enough to suit him … so he kicked him.”

“If I had been there, I’d have kicked him back.” Cassandra’s face flushed and her blue eyes snapped angrily.

“Hee … hee … hee!” Ike’s gleeful laugh was high-pitched. “Betcha ya would’ve, sister. Betcha ya would’ve.”

“Didn’t you do anything, Virginia?”

“Oh, yes. I told him to stop and when he got sassy, I got out my little gun and … poked him in a place where he didn’t want to be poked.” Remembering the startled look on the boy’s face, Jenny burst out laughing.

“Good!” Cassandra exclaimed then, “Where did you poke him?”

The question brought a giggle from Colleen and a snort of laughter from Ike. Mrs. Murphy rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

Jenny hesitated and Cassandra’s little, freckled face lightened as understanding dawned. She grinned and nodded her approval.

“Of course! That was quick thinking, Virginia.” She looked at Colleen and explained. “She poked him in the region of his genitals. Men and boys are very protective of their … tender parts.”

While Jenny was thinking of something to say to fill in the quiet that followed, Beatrice asked:

“Do I have … them things, Jenny?”

“What things, honey?”

“Them things boys has got.”

“No, sweetheart. Not the parts we’re talking about.” Outwardly Jenny was calm as if men’s and boys’
parts
were an everyday topic of conversation, but she dared not look at the others. “Finish what you have on your plate and we’ll have some of Granny’s cobbler. I was surprised and pleased to find canned peaches on the store shelves. I wouldn’t think they would be something the Indians would trade for.”

“’Twas a larrapin’ supper, Granny.” Ike finished his dish of peach cobbler and leaned back in his chair.

“Mrs. Murphy to you, Ike Klein. Yo’re older’n me, or I miss my guess.” Granny’s tone was sharp, but there was a twinkle in her eye.

“If’n ya wish to think such, ma’am, it be yer right. Don’t know as I ever et a finer mess a vittles cooked by sich a sightly young woman.”

“That be hogwash and ya be knowin’ it.” Granny got up from the table. “It ain’t gettin’ ya a second helpin’ of that cobbler if’n that’s what yo’re anglin’ for.”

“We thank you for the deer meat,” Jenny said.

“Yore smokehouse needs fixin’. Ya’ll be needin’ to lay in a store a meat. Won’t take much fixin’ if ya got nails.”

“I found a sack of steel nails on a high ledge in the shed.” Colleen spoke while helping Granny carry dishes from the table. She almost choked up remembering that they’d had no nails to build a burying box for her father. “Screen doors are up there, too.”

“Screen doors?”

“Two of ’em.”

“Goodness sake! Why would he take off the screen doors?”

“Same reason he took the rope and pulley off the well and dammed up the creek.”

“The … the scalawag!” Jenny looked at Beatrice, then back at Colleen and mouthed another word.

The lamplight shone on the faces of her new friends. Jenny and the girls were becoming increasingly fond of the Murphys. Granny not only knew the mysteries of the cookstove, but she was wonderfully patient with Beatrice’s small demands for attention and Cassandra’s never-ending questions.

Being partially freed from the job of looking after her younger sister, Cassandra trailed Colleen when she wasn’t scanning one of the books from Jenny’s trunk. They staked the horses out to feed, and did other chores.

Colleen cleared away weeds and debris near the cabin that a snake could take refuge in. She hated snakes, the harmless ones as well as rattlers, and was constantly warning the girls to be on the lookout for them. She was not put off by Cassandra’s superior knowledge of almost any subject nor her direct way of saying whatever was on her mind. In fact, she seemed to welcome and enjoy the younger girl’s company. To be accepted by an older person she admired was a boost to Cassandra’s self-esteem.

“Let’s take Whit some food. He’s at the school.”

“How do ya know that, Cass?” Trell and now Colleen were the only people Cassandra allowed to shorten her name.

“Because the pony in the corral kept running to the fence and looking that way. He’s nickering now. He does it every time Whit is around.”