Rest and Be Thankful (42 page)

Karl listened, not altogether pleased with what he heard. Neither the prosperity of the Squeehawks nor the laziness of the Iropshaws fitted into his picture of Indians. Soon he stopped listening and just looked at the horses.

Esther Park awoke from a deep, untroubled sleep. She felt good. The air was still warm, and she lay under the tree and looked up at the sky. Then she noticed it was less brilliant and the sun was farther away. It was after five o’clock by her watch. She rose, stretching herself stiffly. The horse was still swinging his long tail restlessly, tossing his head as much as the tight reins would let him. I’m thirsty, I’m thirsty and hungry, Esther Park thought. She walked down towards the little stream. It had a silly name, she remembered, but that was all she could remember about it. The water was shallow, flowing clearly over the small, rounded pebbles; it tasted cold, cold as if the snows were just melting.

As she knelt at the edge of its bank she heard a shout. It was Chuck’s voice. They had begun searching for her. About time, too, she thought angrily. Why, they should have found her hours ago. And she would have now been sitting in the living-room at Rest and be Thankful with everyone gathered around her. “We were so worried, Esther,” they were saying. “How did it happen? Tell us.” And she would begin to speak, describing how she had ridden far into the mountains. Coming back, the horse took fright—perhaps he smelt a bear—and she was thrown. Stunned. The horse came back to her, and stood beside her. She couldn’t rise. She lay there. She must have fainted. She didn’t remember much after that until she heard a faint shout in the distance, and she revived in time to cry out weakly in answer—just when they might have gone on and never found her.

She heard Chuck’s voice again, calling repeatedly. He was farther down the stream, hidden by the small wood. Well, she wouldn’t answer him. He was the one who made fun of her. No human being ever caught distemper, she had found out. Let him search, she thought. Then she wanted to laugh. “I could have called, but I didn’t,” she said aloud. “I didn’t.” Let them all search!

Then, after she was sure Chuck had gone, she walked up the sloping ground towards the tree where she had slept. She glanced at the horse to see if he were safe. He whinnied. She must remember to untie him before the search-party found her. She wished she had something to eat, something better to drink than water. It was cruel of them to keep her waiting like this. But they were all thoughtless and selfish, all of them. She sat down on the grass, her elbows resting on her knees, and she stared moodily ahead of her. She stared over the tops of the scattered pines and birches that grew down the slope of the stream’s little valley, at the thick wood beyond the stream, at the canyons beyond the wood. The sun’s rays were less bright now. The forests round the mountains were sombre and silent, the crags became a darker, colder grey as they fell into deepening shadows. She sat, quite motionless, staring at the miles of land in front of her, seeing nothing. If they don’t come by six o’clock, she thought, I’ll get on my horse and let him take me home. I’ll come slowly into the ranch, and they’ll see how near to complete exhaustion I am. And they’ll have to admit that I’ve courage. “How wonderful of you, Esther,” Carla would say, “to be able to ride home by yourself after what you went through! Did you see the bear?”

* * *

The two Indian boys, racing their horses ahead of the others as they crossed Far Hill and reached Flying Tail territory, saw Chuck in the distance near Laughing Creek. They reined in abruptly and sat watching him. But whether it was with interest or amusement no one could have told.

“Old-timer,” the smaller boy said, looking at Chuck’s hat. He tilted his own battered felt hat still more in the style of the younger cowboys.

His cousin nodded.

They kept motionless, sheltered by three stray trees and a clump of boulders. They watched Chuck turn round and ride away, back towards the ranch.

“Why was he calling?” the younger one asked.

His cousin sat listening, slouching on his horse, his body resting. His long legs dangling against the dark streaks of sweat on his horse’s flanks. Then, without a word, he kicked his horse and pointed its head towards Laughing Creek. The other boy followed him, racing his horse too up the sloping ground to the sparse pine-trees that grew on the miniature hill above the creek.

As they rode anyone behind them would have thought they were cowboys, for they wore blue jeans and tightly fitted shirts and high-heeled boots and battered old felt hats on their heads. The hats were shaped correctly, and they were proud of them. (Their fathers and grandfathers wore their broad-brimmed hats straight on their heads, with the high crowns undented and a feather stuck in the bands. That was old-fashioned, like the long, thin plaits of hair that fell below the high-crowned hats.) But as they dismounted near the crest of the small hill, and looked round to see how far behind were the rest of their families, they were no longer cowboys. For they had slipped off the bare backs of their horses with a quickness and supple grace that didn’t belong to a paleface.

“That was a horse,” the older boy said. He nodded. He had heard a faint whinny, brought to him on the wind which came in his direction, just after the old-timer had ridden away. He had been sure it was a horse. And now he heard a restless horse no more than thirty paces away, just beyond the trees over the small ridge.

“But why search for a horse by shouting?” the smaller boy asked.

They looked at each other, each seeing a reflection of his own face. The thick black hair fell over the broad, smooth brow in straight, heavy locks. The eyes slanted, wide apart above the broad cheekbones. The flat cheeks and the heavy, broad nose added to the width of the face above the mouth. But below the lips the whole face suddenly narrowed and sharpened into a pointed chin, long-jawed. The skin was brown. The fine eyes were almost black. The older boy suffered, like most boys of sixteen, from a skin eruption. The younger cousin had inherited his family’s perpetual cold.

At this moment they were serious, sensing a mystery and excitement. But if anyone had thought this normal he would have been as mistaken as he was in guessing that two young cowboys were riding in front of him. They had been joking, laughing, yelling, giggling, for the last fifteen miles. They had been scouts for Custer—the ones he hadn’t listened to; then a Squeehawk raiding party against a Sioux village; then cavalry charging the Germans whom their uncle, Bob Big-Foot-in-the-Shoe, had beaten. And just before they had seen Chuck they had been the two bravest leaders of the Light Brigade, which they had learned in Sixth Grade English last year. Now, at this moment, they were just Cedric Slow-to-Move and Harold Running-Nose, curious, alert, eager to solve the problem that their instinct had warned them about.

Cedric, because he was six months older and half an inch taller than Harold, led the way. They tethered their horses securely and crept forward silently to the crest of the hill, taking shelter behind a clump of trees. In the open ground that sloped away in front of them a woman sat under a solitary tree. That was nothing remarkable. The Indians had always called this little hidden slope with the magnificent view the Waiting Maiden, just as the canyons ahead were called the Seven Sisters. It was appropriate that a woman should sit here and look into space. Cedric’s great-grandfather told a story that lasted three nights about just such a woman in this very place.

“Aw, nuts,” whispered Harold, in his best Sixth Grade English.

“She
didn’t neigh,” Cedric whispered back, his keen eyes searching the rest of the glade and finding the horse. He smiled.

“She could, I bet,” Harold said, looking at her closely. Then he saw the horse, and he smiled too. It was standing very still, its head high: it had sensed them. The horse has more brains than she has, he thought. He looked at Cedric, but Cedric was standing as still as the horse.

“I’ll give my bear’s roar,” Harold whispered, and he began to laugh silently. He slid on to the grass, holding his ribs, and rolled about as he enjoyed his joke. He could see it all—the bear that roared, the woman in flight, the horse that wouldn’t move because it knew what was a bear and what wasn’t. Then Harold stopped laughing, exhausted and happy, and lay watching Cedric with interest. Cedric had another idea. Horses always gave Cedric ideas.

“I bet my two-bladed knife to your new belt buckle that she would never know,” Cedric said softly. He was talking in Squeehawk now, dropping into the old language as he dropped into the old challenge.

Harold measured the distance from the group of trees to the single pine where the horse was tethered. He fingered the new silver buckle which his father, John Running-Nose, had given him only last week for killing his first bison in this year’s Big Hunt. Then he nodded his agreement. The distance was too great.

His critical eyes watched Cedric Slow-to-Move, who, after handing over the boots which he didn’t like but wanted to wear, had begun a side approach under cover of the fringe of trees, until he halted at the group of pines nearest the horse. Then he rose to his feet, stood there, letting the horse see him, smell him. He had reached it now, coming to the horse face-on, slowly, calmly. He stroked its nose and talked softly into its ear as his right hand slipped up to the knotted reins. Harold Running-Nose had to smile, even if he did lose his silver belt buckle, even if he did get a beating from his mother that would take the skin off his back.

* * *

The evening silence increased. The breeze had dropped. Nothing stirred. Even the horse was quiet. It’s lonely here, Esther Park thought. I’ll loosen the horse from the tree. Shall I begin riding back to the ranch? Or shall I wait some more? They must be coming soon to find me. She rose and turned towards the horse. But the horse was not there.

She ran up to the tree. The horse was not there.

“Where, oh, where?” she cried.

Had it smelled a bear, broken loose, gone galloping off?

“But I would have heard it,” she said. And there had been nothing to hear.

Then, because she had been thinking of bears for the last ten minutes, thinking how bravely she had lain still when she had fallen from her horse and the bear hadn’t come any nearer, and the startled horse had run away and then, later, had come back to stay beside her, she now became terrified. She was alone. She was helpless. She had no horse. The ranch was miles away. She was alone, and the forest up on the mountains was thick and menacing. She stood uncertainly. Then she gave a cry and began to run awkwardly in her heavy, high-heeled boots.

She didn’t run very far, for the wood near the stream had darkened in the lengthening shadow of the mountain. The path she had followed this morning was no longer clear. The wood was black and silent and filled with threats. She took ten paces into it. Then she knew she had lost the path. She stumbled back over a fallen tree and scattered twigs. She reached the glade again. The path was near here. But there seemed so many paths, so many openings through the trees that started closing around you once you stepped into them. On the other side of the stream there were deeper woods. Behind her was the mountain and its grim forest. A rabbit skeltered across the glade. She screamed. Then she called wildly. “Chuck, Chuck,” she called. She called the others too. But there was no one to hear. Then she screamed once more, and wept, and fell on the ground.

* * *

When the Indian camp had been made in the field overlooking Flying Tail Ranch John Running-Nose examined the horse which his son and his nephew had brought so quietly and carefully to join the others. And, like the other horses, it was hobbled to keep it from wandering.

“That’s a good one,” he said to his son. “Where did you find it?”

Harold said, “We found it near the Waiting Maiden.”

“A wild horse with a saddle growing on its back? They breed rich horses here.”

The group of old men in their high-crowned hats, and young men in low-crowned hats, burst into laughter. The shawled squaws, cooking pemmican into a broth over oil-stoves, giggled and put up a polite hand to cover their remaining teeth. The young girls, in tight blue jeans and tailored shirts, with their pretty dark hair hanging loose to their shoulders in glamour-bob style, looked up and smiled. They wore lipstick. And they didn’t have to hide their teeth, for they had grown up in orange-juice days. Then they went back to their tasks of helping the squaws, or of looking after the swarm of children that fell over each other, laughed, cried, giggled, sniffed, and fell over each other.

John Running-Nose was still waiting for an answer.

“At some distance off,” Harold said slowly, “there was a woman. She liked to sit and watch the mountains.” His father insisted on honesty between blood relations.

“He speaks the truth,” Cedric Slow-to-Move said, eyeing his father, who had the same standards as John Running-Nose.

Then John Running-Nose said to his son, “And where is your new buckle of the best silver?”

Harold looked at Pretty Smile his mother. “I lost it,” he said, and followed Pretty Smile into the family tepee, which held thirty on good nights, thirty-six at a crush.

* * *

“No sign?” Sally asked.

“Nothing,” Prender Atherton Jones said. He helped Mrs. Peel dismount. “It is almost dark now.” It is useless, his tone of voice said.

“Bert and Ned came back for lanterns. They’ve gone out again. Robb is still searching through Yellowrock Canyon.”

Carla and O’Farlan stood silently beside Sally. Grubbock had just ridden back too. He said quietly, “A human being is too small a thing to get lost in that rock pile.”

“What now?” Koffing asked.

Jackson said, “Lanterns, like Bert and Ned.”

Sally suggested, “Let’s wait until Jim finishes talking to the Indians.”

“They saw no one on their way here to the ranch,” Grubbock said. “Jim went and asked them specially, just before we rode out.”

“Well, they’ve been talking to him long enough since he came in.” Sally looked across at the barn, whose lighted doorway showed three Indians in full, resplendent dress. In the elaborate costumes they looked both majestic and terrifying. “Why have they put on their special clothes?” she asked.