The Unplowed Sky (3 page)

On the bed, she spread out her pleated blue-green rayon best dress, her other two everyday ones of green plaid gingham and checked blue chambray, two nainsook slips, nainsook bloomers, a pair of satinette for best, two broadcloth brassieres, one pair of treasured silk stockings, two pairs of cotton lisle, two ruffled, flounced muslin nightgowns, and three white aprons. She wrapped her toothbrush in a clean everyday handkerchief and tucked it in the side, along with her comb, brush, and curling iron.

All the while, tears of angry humiliation dripped on her belongings, unless she smeared them away. How dare Quentin Raford! If Daddy were alive—

Jackie had waked and watched her with solemn eyes, hugging Lambie close. “You—you going away, too, Hallie?”

“No, honey!” She stopped and hugged him. “But we're going somewhere happier than this—somewhere you can play and be around nice people.”

Beggars can't be choosers, especially not with a five-year-old along, but Hallie hoped she was right.

Look at the beautiful big trees, Jackie!” Hallie wiped the little boy's flushed hot face with her handkerchief and smoothed back the dark hair that was plastered to his forehead. “When we get to the bridge, we'll rest awhile and put our feet in the water. Won't that feel good?”

“Don't know. Are we goin' to find Mama?”

“No, honey.” Hallie tried to keep her tone cheerful though she gladly could have wrung his mother's soft, dimpled neck. “She had to go away. It may be a long time before we see her again—”

Jackie dug his fingers into Hallie's wrist and his brown eyes, so much like their father's that they stabbed Hallie deep, were wide with fear. “She—she won't die and go to God-in-Heaven like Daddy?”

“No, goosie! Your mama's fine. But she had to go away and just couldn't take you with her.” Not many men would want a five-year-old stepchild on a honeymoon. But to refuse to have him at all—and for that spineless woman to agree!

Hallie dropped her suitcase and Jackie's carpetbag beside the road, picked up the tired little boy, and carried him to the creek. Wetting her handkerchief, she washed his face and helped him off with his shoes so he could curl and uncurl his toes in the water while perching on the hull of an old cottonwood trunk.

They had walked perhaps three miles. It must be five more to town. As she gave Jackie the rest of their bottle of water, Hallie wondered whether they dare drink from the creek. She had expected to pass farmhouses, but the two facing the road had been deserted, the windmills taken away.

By some grace, the buffalo wallow they had just passed had escaped plowing even during the war, when thousands of acres of thickly entwined, deep-rooted prairie sod, graze first for buffalo and then for cattle, had been gashed deep, the ancient roots severed, and planted in the wheat that stretched in all directions except for this one haven of used-to-be.

This fringe of virgin prairie—buffalo grass, and blue grama spangled with orange globe mallow, purple coneflowers, thistles, and asters—stretched to the creek and extended westward as far as the eye could see. Along the creek, several giant cottonwoods reared eighty or ninety feet into the sky, dwarfing younger trees that had managed to thrust roots far enough down to withstand floods that scoured away weaker saplings and plants. These survivors cast the only shade for miles. Cottonwoods drank deep and thirstily, so they were usually cleared when land was broken to the plow. After all, it didn't put money in the bank for crows to chatter from the wintry limbs or for great horned owls to nest in hollows in the trunks.

Thank heaven the birds were left. To Hallie, whose grandfather had told her stories of how southwestern Kansas had been when he homesteaded after the Civil War, there was a strange, echoing emptiness about the broken prairie; a haunting absence of the buffalo that had once roamed there, of fleet pronghorns that died in snowdrifts along the fences they would not jump, of prairie-dog villages that had spread for miles, of the grizzly bears, wolves, and mountain lions that had culled the bison and pronghorn and deer. Where there were trees and mountains, it must be hard for man to completely wipe out native animals; but out here between earth and sky, there was no place to hide, though coyotes still chorused at night, and of course there were plenty of jackrabbits, kangaroo rats, and other rodents and now and then a grumpy old badger, skunk, or shadowy fox. Most of all though, there were birds and the sky no man could plow.

As they sat by the bridge, Hallie tried to enjoy wriggling her toes in the rippling current, but she was thirsty and hungry and as disgusted with herself as she was with the Rafords. Here they were, not even halfway to town, burdened with their belongings, and without even drinking water.

A fine mess she had made of it! If this was the way she was going to take care of Jackie, maybe he would have been better off with Felicity's rich cousin.

No! He was Hallie's brother. She knew their father would have wanted her to raise him if Felicity couldn't. Hallie just hoped that wherever Robert Meredith was, he didn't know that his wife had given his son away as if he were a unwanted puppy.

“Can—Can I have Lambie?” Jackie asked.

“Lambie's snoozing in your carpetbag, honey, and we've got to be going on. Why don't we let him sleep until tonight?”

“Well—if he's really asleep.” Jackie's lip quivered. Hallie's almost did. Where would they sleep that night? At least she had some money—she hoped enough for room and board till she found another job.

A pall of dust rose from the road they had traveled. It formed a halo around the long lemon yellow Pierce-Arrow that slowed down and pulled up at the bridge. “Jump in,” called. Quentin Raford. “I'll give you a lift to town.”

Just as if he hadn't ambushed her that morning, kissed her hard and brutally! And her first kiss, too. It made Hallie want to throw mud at him, mess up the vibrant gray of his hair and his smooth, unlined skin. His eyes were a hazel so deep they looked black—till he moved so the light struck them. Then they were like a hunting cat's.

Hallie kept her feet in the water and hoped she didn't look as tired and bedraggled as she felt. Safest to ignore what had happened though she burned with furious shame at the memory. “If you were going to town, Mr. Raford, why didn't you offer us a ride from your house?”

He grinned, showing the whitest teeth she had ever seen. “I thought a few miles on the road with the boy might put you in the frame of mind to consider a partnership.”

“Partnership?”

“You're too pretty to spend your time in a kitchen.”

“I have a living to make.”

“You could manage my hotel.”

“But I never have—”

“You'd learn. The salary would be twice what we agreed to pay you as cook-housekeeper. You could pick several adjoining rooms on the top floor and have them turned into living quarters.”

It would have tempted her if he'd had suggested it before this morning. Thank goodness she wouldn't be led into another trap! “I'm sure you'll find any number of capable managers, Mr. Raford.”

“I keep a suite in the hotel.” His russet eyes traveled slowly from her mouth to her throat. She felt the frightened leap of her pulse, felt exposed as if he might tear her flesh with his teeth—or kiss it again. “When I'm in town, I'd expect your company.”

“You know the answer to that!”

“Where can you do better? A nice place for you and the boy to live and a good salary?”

Still speechless, Hallie was able only to glare at him. He didn't look at all abashed. “I paid you the compliment of thinking you had better sense than to need seduction. After all, the proof that you're not a virgin is perched right beside you.”

It took her a moment to understand what he meant. A rush of blood heated her face. “Jackie is my father's child, my half-brother!”

“A good story, my dear, but you can't expect anyone to believe that you'd hamper yourself with a child if he weren't your own little accident.”

A dull rumbling that Hallie had scarcely noticed during the moments while her hopes soared high now growled like continuous thunder. A long, jaunty toot sounded over the reverberations, followed by a second long whistle and two short ones.

Hallie recognized the sound: a steam engine threshing outfit on its way to work. “Garth MacLeod!” Raford stared over his shoulder. “Now, why's he coming this way instead of heading for my fields?” Cold eyes ranged back to Hallie. “I'll just wait and talk to him. If you change your mind—”

“I won't.”

Raford smiled. “I think you will, my dear, by the time you've piggybacked the boy to town and learned how hard it is to find work that'll allow you to look after him.”

Hallie longed to bolt but there was no way she could lift her feet out of the water, let them dry, and put on her gartered stockings and shoes without exhibiting more of her legs than she wanted Raford to see.

Sudden hope filled her. Maybe the threshing outfit could give her a ride. Even a mile or two would be a big help with Jackie and their belongings.

The grumbling roar sounded like an earthquake. She could feel the earth vibrate as the machine lumbered into view. To her surprise, the steam puffing from the engine was almost clear vapor, not the dense black clouds she had seen the several previous times she had been close to an engine.

A man perched on a metal seat at the back of the engine, steering the tractor. When he saw Hallie, he grinned, tipped his wide-brimmed hat, and pulled on a cord. The whistle trilled a whole series of short little bursts, and the tall man in khaki work clothes riding on the separator called, “Best save your steam, lad!”

The huge separator that threshed grain was hooked to the engine. A house about eighteen feet long, mounted on iron wheels, was hitched to the separator, and a water-tank wagon was attached to the shack. The end of the procession was a coal wagon.

A gray-bearded older man and a boy of twelve or thirteen sat on the tank of the water wagon. The man held a gray kitten in the curve of his arm so that it was nearly hidden beneath his beard. Far enough behind this caravan to escape most of its dust was a shiny new Model T touring car with its fabric top folded back with the isinglass curtains. Behind it wheezed a much older version of Henry Ford's time-tested classic. Four men rode in one car and three in the other. Most were young. They looked curiously at Hallie. Several smiled and tipped their hats.

Uncomfortable at their scrutiny, Hallie turned and eyed the flimsy-looking bridge with misgiving. Could the threshing outfit possibly get across it? The separator must weigh a lot, and the tractor's great steel-lugged wheels looked as if they would mangle the rough planks that had been designed for nothing heavier than a team and wagon. The yellow Pierce-Arrow barred the way, but the engine didn't stop till it was only a few yards from the sporty auto.

“Where are you going with this rig, MacLeod?” Raford demanded.

The man on the separator stood up and pushed back a hat that might have been gray once but was now stained by dust and grease. Various tools protruded from his overall pockets. The wind-tousled hair was a curious shade between gold and silver.

“We're going to thresh Ed Brockett's place.” There was a soft lilt to the English that made Hallie listen closely to catch the words. “We threshed him last a year ago. Now it's his turn to be first.”

“
I'm
first.”

“You were first last year.”

“I give you more work than the rest of these two-bit farmers put together.”

“All the more reason for them not to want their crop hailed or rained on. You can take a loss, Raford. Most of them can't.”

Raford's heavy eyebrows jerked together above his broad nose. “You'll thresh my wheat first, MacLeod—or not at all.”

“That's your choice. You have enough wheat to make it worth a thresher's time to detour off his usual run.”

“But not enough for you?”

MacLeod lifted a broad shoulder. “You know how it's agreed among us neighbors. Whoever is first one year comes last the next year, unless the weather threatens. Then, so no one will lose his whole crop, I thresh a day for everyone before finishing the first neighbor's crop.”

“That's a stupid waste of time! Look how-long it takes you to get from one farm to another. That outfit can't make more than two miles an hour.”

“Two and six-tenths.”

“You're as out-of-date as your steam engine! And you've refused to sell me your farm for a lot more than it's worth.” Raford's eyes narrowed in sudden decision. “I'm going to buy a gas engine, hire a crew, and run you right out of business in this part of the country.”

MacLeod's eyes didn't flicker. “You can try.” A threshing outfit was a big investment needed only for a short time each year. That was why most farmers preferred to pay a traveling thresher. But Raford wouldn't care about money. MacLeod nodded toward the bridge.

“It doesn't look like the county fixed this bridge the way you promised it would, Mr. Road Commissioner.”

“Other projects were more important. If you obey the planking law, there won't be a problem.”

“Planking law!” The young man on the engine gave a scornful laugh. His voice, too, had that soft music. Glancing from him to the man on the separator, Hallie thought they must be brothers, the engineer some years the younger. “As if stretching planks across a bridge like yon would keep it from caving in!”

“You'd better hope it does.” Raford turned from the threshers as if dismissing them from his mind. His gaze enveloped Hallie; she felt it with shock, like a physical grasping. “Do you want a ride to town, Miss Meredith?”

“No.”

He shrugged. “Well, when you get there, come to the hotel if you change your mind about that position.”

The motor of the Pierce-Arrow roared as the long sleek vehicle crossed the bridge with a groaning of planks. Dust billowed back. “Why, that—” the engineer began, glanced at Hallie, and chuckled. “God bless him, I was going to say, miss. Is it a ride to town you're needing, you and the laddie?”