The Long Valley (20 page)

“Don’t be big fool, now,” he said. “Jelka is Slav girl. He’s not like American girl. If he is bad, beat him. If he’s good too long, beat him too. I beat his mama. Papa beat my mama. Slav girl! He’s not like a man that don’t beat hell out of him.”

“I wouldn’t beat Jelka,” Jim said.

The father giggled and nudged him again with his elbow. “Don’t be big fool,” he warned. “Sometime you see.” He rolled back to the beer barrel.

Jim found soon enough that Jelka was not like American girls. She was very quiet. She never spoke at first, but only answered his questions, and then with soft short replies. She learned her husband as she learned passages of Scripture. After they had been married a while, Jim never wanted for any habitual thing in the house but Jelka had it ready for him before he could ask. She was a fine wife, but there was no companionship in her. She never talked. Her great eyes followed him, and when he smiled, sometimes she smiled too, a distant and covered smile. Her knitting and mending and sewing were interminable. There she sat, watching her wise hands, and she seemed to regard with wonder and pride the little white hands that could do such nice and useful things. She was so much like an animal that sometimes Jim patted her head and neck under the same impulse that made him stroke a horse.

In the house Jelka was remarkable. No matter what time Jim came in from the hot dry range or from the bottom farm land, his dinner was exactly, steamingly ready for him. She watched while he ate, and pushed the dishes close when he needed them, and filled his cup when it was empty.

Early in the marriage he told her things that happened on the farm, but she smiled at him as a foreigner does who wishes to be agreeable even though he doesn’t understand.

“The stallion cut himself on the barbed wire,” he said.

And she replied, “Yes,” with a downward inflection that held neither question nor interest.

He realized before long that he could not get in touch with her in any way. If she had a life apart, it was so remote as to be beyond his reach. The barrier in her eyes was not one that could be removed, for it was neither hostile nor intentional.

At night he stroked her straight black hair and her unbelievably smooth golden shoulders, and she whimpered a little with pleasure. Only in the climax of embrace did she seem to have a life apart, fierce and passionate. And then immediately she lapsed into the alert and painfully dutiful wife.

“Why don’t you ever talk to me?” he demanded. “Don’t you want to talk to me?”

“Yes,” she said. “What do you want me to say?” She spoke the language of his race out of a mind that was foreign to his race.

When a year had passed, Jim began to crave the company of women, the chattery exchange of small talk, the shrill pleasant insults, the shame-sharpened vulgarity. He began to go again to town, to drink and play with the noisy girls of the Three Star. They liked him there for his firm, controlled face and for his readiness to laugh.

“Where’s your wife?” they demanded.

“Home in the barn,” he responded. It was a never-failing joke.

Saturday afternoons he saddled a horse and put a rifle in the scabbard in case he should see a deer. Always he asked, “You don’t mind staying alone?”

“No. I don’t mind.”

At once he asked, “Suppose someone should come?”

Her eyes sharpened for a moment, and then she smiled. “I would send them away,” she said.

“I’ll be back about noon tomorrow. It’s too far to ride in the night.” He felt that she knew where he was going, but she never protested nor gave any sign of disapproval. “You should have a baby,” he said.

Her face lighted up. “Some time God will be good,” she said eagerly.

He was sorry for her loneliness. If only she visited with the other women of the canyon she would be less lonely, but she had no gift for visiting. Once every month or so she put horses to the buckboard and went to spend an afternoon with her mother, and with the brood of brothers and sisters and cousins who lived in her father’s house.

“A fine time you’ll have,” Jim said to her. “You’ll gabble your crazy language like ducks for a whole afternoon. You’ll giggle with that big grown cousin of yours with the embarrassed face. If I could find any fault with you, I’d call you a damn foreigner.” He remembered how she blessed the bread with the sign of the cross before she put it in the oven, how she knelt at the bedside every night, how she had a holy picture tacked to the wall in the closet.

One Saturday of a hot dusty June, Jim cut oats in the farm flat. The day was long. It was after six o’clock when the mower tumbled the last band of oats. He drove the clanking machine up into the barnyard and backed it into the implement shed, and there he unhitched the horses and turned them out to graze on the hills over Sunday. When he entered the kitchen Jelka was just putting his dinner on the table. He washed his hands and face and sat down to eat.

“I’m tired,” he said, “but I think I’ll go to Monterey anyway. There’ll be a full moon.”

Her soft eyes smiled.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “If you would like to go, I’ll hitch up a rig and take you with me.”

She smiled again and shook her head. “No, the stores would be closed. I would rather stay here.”

“Well, all right, I’ll saddle a horse then. I didn’t think I was going. The stock’s all turned out. Maybe I can catch a horse easy. Sure you don’t want to go?”

“If it was early, and I could go to the stores—but it will be ten o’clock when you get there.”

“Oh, no—well, anyway, on horseback I’ll make it a little after nine.”

Her mouth smiled to itself, but her eyes watched him for the development of a wish. Perhaps because he was tired from the long day’s work, he demanded, “What are you thinking about?”

“Thinking about? I remember, you used to ask that nearly every day when we were first married.”

“But what are you?” he insisted irritably.

“Oh—I’m thinking about the eggs under the black hen.” She got up and went to the big calendar on the wall. “They will hatch tomorrow or maybe Monday.”

It was almost dusk when he had finished shaving and putting on his blue serge suit and his new boots. Jelka had the dishes washed and put away. As Jim went through the kitchen he saw that she had taken the lamp to the table near the window, and that she sat beside it knitting a brown wool sock.

“Why do you sit there tonight?” he asked. “You always sit over here. You do funny things sometimes.”

Her eyes arose slowly from her flying hands. “The moon,” she said quietly. “You said it would be full tonight. I want to see the moon rise.”

“But you’re silly. You can’t see it from that window. I thought you knew direction better than that.”

She smiled remotely. “I will look out of the bedroom window, then.”

Jim put on his black hat and went out. Walking through the dark empty barn, he took a halter from the rack. On the grassy sidehill he whistled high and shrill. The horses stopped feeding and moved slowly in toward him, and stopped twenty feet away. Carefully he approached his bay gelding and moved his hand from its rump along its side and up over its neck. The halter-strap clicked in its buckle. Jim turned and led the horse back to the barn. He threw his saddle on and cinched it tight, put his silver-bound bridle over the stiff ears, buckled the throat latch, knotted the tie-rope about the gelding’s neck and fastened the neat coil-end to the saddle string. Then he slipped the halter and led the horse to the house. A radiant crown of soft red light lay over the eastern hills. The full moon would rise before the valley had completely lost daylight.

In the kitchen Jelka still knitted by the window. Jim strode to the corner of the room and took up his 30-30 carbine. As he rammed cartridges into the magazine, he said, “The moon glow is on the hills. If you are going to see it rise, you better go outside now. It’s going to be a good red one at rising.”

“In a moment,” she replied, “when I come to the end here.” He went to her and patted her sleek head.

“Good night. I’ll probably be back by noon tomorrow.” Her dusky black eyes followed him out of the door.

Jim thrust the rifle into his saddle-scabbard, and mounted and swung his horse down the canyon. On his right, from behind the blackening hills, the great red moon slid rapidly up. The double light of the day’s last afterglow and the rising moon thickened the outlines of the trees and gave a mysterious new perspective to the hills. The dusty oaks shimmered and glowed, and the shade under them was black as velvet. A huge, long-legged shadow of a horse and half a man rode to the left and slightly ahead of Jim. From the ranches near and distant came the sound of dogs tuning up for a night of song. And the roosters crowed, thinking a new dawn had come too quickly. Jim lifted the gelding to a trot. The spattering hoof-steps echoed back from the castle behind him. He thought of blond May at the Three Star in Monterey. “I’ll be late. Maybe someone else’ll have her,” he thought. The moon was clear of the hills now.

Jim had gone a mile when he heard the hoofbeats of a horse coming toward him. A horseman cantered up and pulled to a stop. “That you, Jim?”

“Yes. Oh, hello, George.”

“I was just riding up to your place. I want to tell you—you know the springhead at the upper end of my land?”

“Yes. I know.”

“Well, I was up there this afternoon. I found a dead campfire and a calf’s head and feet. The skin was in the fire, half burned, but I pulled it out and it had your brand.”

“The hell,” said Jim. “How old was the fire?”

“The ground was still warm in the ashes. Last night, I guess. Look, Jim, I can’t go up with you. I’ve got to go to town, but I thought I’d tell you, so you could take a look around.”

Jim asked quietly, “Any idea how many men?”

“No. I didn’t look close.”

“Well, I guess I better go up and look. I was going to town too. But if there are thieves working, I don’t want to lose any more stock. I’ll cut up through your land if you don’t mind, George.”

“I’d go with you, but I’ve got to go to town. You got a gun with you?”

“Oh yes, sure. Here under my leg. Thanks for telling me.”

“That’s all right. Cut through any place you want. Good night.” The neighbor turned his horse and cantered back in the direction from which he had come.

For a few moments Jim sat in the moonlight, looking down at his stilted shadow. He pulled his rifle from its scabbard, levered a cartridge into the chamber, and held the gun across the pommel of his saddle. He turned left from the road, went up the little ridge, through the oak grove, over the grassy hogback and down the other side into the next canyon.

In half an hour he had found the deserted camp. He turned over the heavy, leathery calf’s head and felt its dusty tongue to judge by the dryness how long it had been dead. He lighted a match and looked at his brand on the half-burned hide. At last he mounted his horse again, rode over the bald grassy hills and crossed into his own land.

A warm summer wind was blowing on the hilltops. The moon, as it quartered up the sky, lost its redness and turned the color of strong tea. Among the hills the coyotes were singing, and the dogs at the ranch houses below joined them with broken-hearted howling. The dark green oaks below and the yellow summer grass showed their colors in the moonlight.

Jim followed the sound of the cowbells to his herd, and found them eating quietly, and a few deer feeding with them. He listened long for the sound of hoofbeats or the voices of men on the wind.

It was after eleven when he turned his horse toward home. He rounded the west tower of the sandstone castle, rode through the shadow and out into the moonlight again. Below, the roofs of his barn and house shone dully. The bedroom window cast back a streak of reflection.

The feeding horses lifted their heads as Jim came down through the pasture. Their eyes glinted redly when they turned their heads.

Jim had almost reached the corral fence—he heard a horse stamping in the barn. His hand jerked the gelding down. He listened. It came again, the stamping from the barn. Jim lifted his rifle and dismounted silently. He turned his horse loose and crept toward the barn.

In the blackness he could hear the grinding of the horse’s teeth as it chewed hay. He moved along the barn until he came to the occupied stall. After a moment of listening he scratched a match on the butt of his rifle. A saddled and bridled horse was tied in the stall. The bit was slipped under the chin and the cinch loosened. The horse stopped eating and turned its head toward the light.

Jim blew out the match and walked quickly out of the barn. He sat on the edge of the horse trough and looked into the water. His thoughts came so slowly that he put them into words and said them under his breath.

“Shall I look through the window? No. My head would throw a shadow in the room.”

He regarded the rifle in his hand. Where it had been rubbed and handled, the black gun finish had worn off, leaving the metal silvery.

At last he stood up with decision and moved toward the house. At the steps, an extended foot tried each board tenderly before putting his weight on it. The three ranch dogs came out from under the house and shook themselves, stretched and sniffed, wagged their tails and went back to bed.

The kitchen was dark, but Jim knew where every piece of furniture was. He put out his hand and touched the comer of the table, a chair back, the towel hanger, as he went along. He crossed the room so silently that even he could hear only his breath and the whisper of his trouser legs together, and the beating of his watch in his pocket. The bedroom door stood open and spilled a patch of moonlight on the kitchen floor. Jim reached the door at last and peered through.

The moonlight lay on the white bed. Jim saw Jelka lying on her back, one soft bare arm flung across her forehead and eyes. He could not see who the man was, for his head was turned away. Jim watched, holding his breath. Then Jelka twitched in her sleep and the man rolled his head and sighed—Jelka’s cousin, her grown, embarrassed cousin.