With Love from Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #2) (22 page)

“Now this is more like it!” Gladdy exclaimed, glancing around. “It is quite civilized. For a frontier, that is. I can see several stores, and that looks like a lawyer’s sign . . . and there’s some kind of mill over there on the hillside—”

“Can you see a hotel, Miss Bright Eyes?” Kerry was staring up at the bowl of a sky that seemed to defy description for color and size.

“Oh, say, young man—” Gladdy was calling in her new voice as mistress of herself and director of her own life, “over here, if you please!”

A towheaded youth, cap askew, boots clattering on the station platform’s planks, galloped their way, a grin of willing cooperation on his freckled face. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Can you tell us, my good lad, if there’s such a thing as a hotel in this, er, city?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Yes, ma’am, you can tell us, or yes, ma’am, there is?”

“Yes, ma’am, I can tell you, and yes, ma’am, there is—and it’s right up Main Street. In fact you have your choice—”

“Take us to the one that you would want your sister to stay in if she needed a room.”

“Ain’t got no sister.”

“Your mother . . . your aunt, anybody you feel responsible for,” Gladdy explained patiently, obviously enjoying the role of being in charge. “Now these are our things, here, and here, and over there.”

“I’ll get the wagon, miss,” the young man said, still grinning but a little more respectfully now to Gladdy’s satisfaction and Kerry’s amusement.

With their goods and chattels loaded and Kerry and Gladdy seated on the high spring seat of the wagon, the young man standing in front with the reins in his hands, they bounced their way up a very rutted street toward town.

“Wait!” Gladdy ordered, and the driver hauled back on the reins with a surprised look on his face. Kerry’s face was as surprised as the lad’s.

“Look, up that side street—isn’t that a boarding house? We’d be better off there, Kerry, if there’s room. It would be more homelike, and we could probably take meals there, too. How about that place, young man?”

“If’n you want to, we’ll drive there and ask.” So saying, he turned the wagon and in a matter of moments hauled it to a halt in front of a large, three-story house, well-built, freshly painted, and with crisp curtains at every window.

“Pilgrim Boarding House for Men,” was the sign’s discreet disclosure. The young man’s grin widened.

Perhaps it was the grin; at any rate Gladdy said, “Hold this rig still, young man. I want to get out.”

Kerry looked on in amazement as Gladdy clambered down, smoothed her hair, straightened her skirts, and marched up the walk to the front door. There she knocked, and Kerry watched while Gladdy engaged in a brief conversation with an aproned woman.

“‘The stranger did not lodge in the street; but I opened my doors to the traveler,’” Kerry murmured, quoting the ancient Job, while the young man’s freckled face grew puzzled, a reaction Kerry was prepared for, having conjured it up in many faces across the years of Scripture quoting.

To Kerry’s surprise, Gladdy was counting money out into the landlady’s open palm.

“Well, what are you gawkin’ at?” she demanded as soon as she had marched back to the rig. “Get out and come in.”

“How did you do it?” the lad Gus asked, obviously awed. “That’s for men only.”

Gladdy only sniffed. Kerry refrained from asking at the moment, but Gladdy could see the question in her eyes. When Gus opened the tailgate and began carrying their bags toward the open front door, Gladdy explained.

“I offered to work in the kitchen. She’s short of help right now. That way, we can have the hired girl’s room on the third floor. I don’t imagine you’ll refuse the lodgings, will you?” Gladdy gave Kerry a keen look.

“Not at all,” Kerry said quickly, remembering her roots and the boarding house of her early years. Life had made a circle, it seemed.

As she paid off the young man, Kerry asked, “Gus . . . do you know the community of Bliss?”

“Heard of it—it’s east a’ here about nine miles.”

“Would you be available to take me out there say, day after tomorrow? In,” she added hastily, “a buggy?”

“Could,” Gus answered, laconically. “Will, too, if you say so.”

Arrangements were settled, drayage costs paid, and Kerry followed Gladdy toward the boarding house and a climb of two long flights of stairs to the small room under the eaves. Here Gladdy was already making her “nest,” removing her hat and gloves, opening bags, laying out certain items, preparing to wash in the enamel basin that was all, obviously, a hired girl rated. Having been a “hired girl,” most of her life, Gladdy was right at home.

“Not bad,” Gladdy said, “considering.”

“Considering?”

“Considering that I have gone back into servitude.” And Gladdy made a small grimace.

“I paid Mrs. Pilgrim for a week’s rent and for two meals a day during that period. I’ll work out the rest. You can pay me your share—in cash.” Gladdy was a sharp businesswoman. “It’s nice and clean, at any rate. And I’m used to the climb, you may remember. . . .”

Kerry was paying no attention to her traveling companion and roommate; rather, she stepped to the low window, bent, and peered out. The window faced east. Out there, about nine miles away, was a false-hearted blackguard, unaware of the fate that awaited him.

“First step accomplished,” she said half aloud, with satisfaction. “Step number two coming up day after tomorrow. It shouldn’t take more than six or seven steps, and it will be
fait accompli.
Connor Dougal, enjoy your last few carefree days!”

A
side from Gladdy’s chores, which dealt mainly with the preparation and serving of meals, Kerry and Gladdy were free, the day following their arrival, to get themselves and their clothes in order. Rinsing her hair for the third time, Kerry remarked, “I feel like I’ll never get all the smoke out! Some of those men in that car smoked like chimneys. Ugh! And any time anyone opened a window to try and get fresh air—”

“Or throw up!”

“—smoke from the engine came in, even cinders.”

“We wiped dirty smudges from our faces more than once.”

“Yes, and our handkerchiefs may never be white again. Have you talked with Mrs. Pilgrim about using her tubs and lines and doing some laundry?”

“It’s a good thing water is abundant; this is a land of waters—blue, blue waters. You’ve used enough of it on your hair alone to bring on a drought! Yes, I’ve made arrangements with our landlady, and when I finish my morning chores tomorrow, I’ll do up our laundry while you take yourself off to this . . . place of Bliss.”

“If there’s one thing it’s not,” Kerry said darkly, “it’s blissful. At least as far as I’m concerned. I don’t expect to get any fun out of the ordeal. But satisfaction? You can be sure of it!”

Then, like an orator breaking into impassioned speech, she delivered feelingly, “‘What indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge!’”

Gladdy’s reaction surprised both of them. Not a church girl by any means, still Gladdy said, uneasily, “Are you sure you always quote these amazing verses at the proper time and give them the proper meaning?”

“They’re just words, Gladdy, wonderfully expressive words, nothing more.”

“I suppose so,” Gladdy said. “Well,” she continued eventually, “how will you go about this vengeance? Travel to Bliss, ask for this Connor Dougal, and go confront him? And then what?”

“I’d like to smite him hip and thigh, but I suppose that wouldn’t do. I’m not big enough for one thing. Secondly, it would be over too soon. No. That man,” she brooded, “is going to suffer.”

Gladdy sighed. Now that they were here and it was all so beautiful, so unspoiled by man, it did seem a shame to sully it.

“First of all,” Kerry said, “I’ll find a place in Bliss where we can board for a while, if that’s possible in such a small burg. We’ll move out there, and then take it day by day.”

Making their plans, the girls took turns combing out each other’s curls: Kerry’s still thick and dark and curly, worn tidily and fashionably up but always prone to small curls slipping out of control and ringing a face that even in early adulthood retained a certain pixielike quality; Gladdy’s still bushlike, curly as frazzled wool from a lamb’s back and violently red, an unusual head of hair that got fascinated attention wherever she went. Now, freshly washed, it sprang up like a tumbleweed and heartily resisted every effort to tame it.

“Leave it be,” Gladdy said eventually with resignation. “I’m doomed to go through life looking like a mop-head. It’s a cross to be born.”

For an hour that afternoon the girls wandered over the town and were pleased to find several general stores, at least two hotels, a druggist, a couple of hardware stores, most all of them located on River Street. There were other stores specializing in novelties; there was a boot and shoe store in combination with a furniture store; there were two dentists, a watchmaker, four lawyers, sign painters, several schools, a newspaper office, sawmill, flour mill, and more.

The “Palace Saloon of the North West,” known to local citizens as “Woodbine Billiard Parlour,” invited all to “come where the woodbine twineth and the whangdoode mourneth for her young.” Interest greatly piqued, still the girls scurried past the place of entertainment, which they were certain would not have been given a stamp of approval by Aunt Charlotte. Even here, decency and order must prevail.

At the appointed time, Gus pulled up to the boarding house in a shiny one-horse phaeton. The rig was their best, he solemnly informed Kerry as she prepared to step aboard. She could have told him that it was “hung very low, the bottom step being but fifteen inches from the ground.” She could have pointed out its “black and gleaming body,” its gear “dark Brewster green with suitable gold stripe.”

Being Kerry, she couldn’t refrain, finally, from “This phaeton comes with ‘whip socket, Brussels carpet, anti-rattlers, and shafts.’”

Gus was indignant. Any blind man would know it came with a whip socket and shafts! But the anti-rattlers and Brussels carpet? He was impressed in spite of himself and slid Kerry a speculative glance out of the corner of his eye, then said cautiously, “And the horse? What can you tell me about the horse?”

“I’m ignorant about horses,” Kerry admitted. “All I know is that this one is . . .”

About to identify the sex of the horse, she caught herself, colored richly, and finished lamely, “that it’s red.”

“Roan,” he said firmly. Then, his self-confidence somewhat restored, he shook the reins, clucked in a businesslike manner, turned the rig, and they were off.

“We’ll keep a good pace—a
spanking
pace,” he said with aplomb, “and get there by noon. Did you bring a lunch?”

Kerry looked properly abashed. “I never thought of it,” she confessed. Never before had she been so far from civilization but that services were available.

With his manhood and superiority now fully restored, Gus could afford to be kind. “You can have some of mine. Ma fixed a couple’a san’wiches and stuck in some cake. We’ll get some milk offa somebody, maybe buy it at the store. That is, if Bliss has a store.”

Bliss had a store. But its wonders were not revealed until Kerry had absorbed the glories of a ride in springtime bush. She was exhilarated by the fresh breeze, noting again its fragrance. Unpolluted by any act of man, sky and land and water and awakening greenery combined to produce a potpourri so distinct that it would remain forever the mark of the bush in Kerry’s mind.

“I love the breeze,” she rejoiced, removing her hat and allowing the wind to have free play with her hair.

“Wind—it’s the most persistent element of our weather,” Gus said, perhaps quoting someone wiser and better informed than he. “Even hot summer days are made pretty comfortable by the breezes we generally get. But winter—that’s another story!”

“Bad, eh?”

“Below-zero weather can become almost unbearable when a strong wind blows, I can vouch for that for sure. I’ve had frozen cheeks, frozen nose, frozen toes. Enjoy this while you can.”

And with these words of warning and admonition, Gus gave himself to other descriptions of the land, its weather, its birds,
its wildlife, its sloughs sparkling and rippling in the sun and breeze.

I believe,
Kerry concluded almost immediately,
that I could come to love this land, this wild land, this untamed land.

But people were doing their best to tame it. Clearings appeared in the bush with some regularity, and the sounds of human presence and influence were heard—the chopping of an axe, the lowing of a cow, the far, faint cackle of a hen. And from time to time a man or woman crossed a farmyard, looked toward the passing rig, and waved.

“Now,” Gus said eventually, “from here on I think it’s called Bliss, though we’re still a few miles from the town—hamlet, I guess you’d say. The district round about is also known as Bliss.”

Breaking out of the enveloping curtain of green—such a fresh, new, tender green—they came directly upon a clearing with a few buildings. It appeared as if Bliss had one street only, with a few small buildings on either side of that street, on wandering lanes.