The Star Garden (33 page)

That evening, Albert and Savannah, Ezra, Zack, Clover, and Rebeccah joined us. They carried everything they owned that’d put a hole in a man, but I couldn’t help thinking if it came down to pitchforks we were lost before we started. We ate biscuits and gravy for supper and washed it down with coffee and peach pie. No one talked much that supper.

I made the gravy with milk that Albert brought, and told Elsa to have plenty, as a woman expecting a baby ought to have milk. She is starting to look plump and real pretty, getting that ripe, risen-dough look of being great with child. Rebeccah was staying real close to Savannah, I noticed, and kept brushing against her mother, petting her, as if something had gone between them before they arrived. Well, time enough for family gossip later, I reckon.

We had just reached the groaning stage, pouring more coffee, when Udell drove up with a wagon, offering to get us to town. When I asked him why, he said he’d seen two dozen riders at Rudolfo’s place, armed up like
juaristas.
Elsa gripped my arm. The men all looked at each other, but Udell wouldn’t look me in the eye.

Charlie said, “Coming here?”

“Don’t know. Just came to help out if they do.”

Chess came to the parlor carrying Gilbert’s guitar. “Here, boy,” he said. “Pick us some tunes. I’m tired of this war already.” He squinted at me.

Gilbert did as he was told, sitting at his grandpa’s feet, and Chess closed his eyes, tapping his fingers on one knee to the music, lost in some thoughts far away. Well, the whole family drifted in then. I went to see if Granny had cobbled up some of her old spunk and wanted to get out of bed. Everyone cheered when she walked in and then my mama took her nightgown and made a curtsy. She came and sat on a stuffed chair, listened for a bit, and took the bowl of soup Elsa brought her. Other than the guitar’s strings, no one spoke. Reckon we were all contemplating our vision of war.

As the sun went down, Charlie spread all the weapons in the house in a circle on the floor in front of him and commenced checking and cleaning each one. He had the trigger out of his own pistol and went over the works with a rag dipped in alcohol. As I watched him, a cold, shadowy hardness took over my in-sides, and I didn’t lift a finger to help or speak a word, as if I’d been strapped to the chair.

Elsa, Rebeccah, and Granny went to bed down. Ezra and Zack nodded in their chairs but were not sent away. They were to sit up like men. The soft music of the guitar seemed to make the light in the room yellower, and the flames in the lamps danced. A sharp pain in my head beat to some awful rhythm Gilbert could not hear.

At midnight, the dogs set up a racket just as three slugs of lead hit the side of the house. We flew into readiness, all of us with guns drawn. The men and I held pistols and rifles. Charlie and Elsa took Granny to the pantry where many layers of wooden and adobe walls would protect her. We made Zack and Ezra sit in there with her.

All was quiet for a long time. A night owl trebled off in the distance. The wind blew a shutter against the window frame. Then I heard Charlie say in a strained whisper, “God in heaven, no. Come back, Elsa!”

We craned our necks from the edges of windows to see the front porch. Elsa had donned her novice’s white robes and stepped out into the wan moonlight. Under the pale light her milky gown looked as if light came from it. Her hair was long and black, flowing down her back. A thin blue shawl wrapped her head and slid to her shoulders. She held her hands forward, palms together and fingers pointed to the stars, as if she were in prayer, then spread her hands as her voice rang out, “
Virgencita de Guadalupe, quiero ser tu ferviente devota
…
In nombre de tu hijo.
Where are my friends? You men there, do not lay this sin to your count.
¿Cuanto? ¿Uribe? ¿Caldo? ¿A dónde mi amigos?”

She kept on talking, to the wind and the stars, to the shadows in the barn, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English. Horses roused and whinnied, stamping. Somewhere, a bucket overturned. A cow lowed as if the animal mourned from some dark pain of the soul. Charlie crawled beneath the window to the door, lay on his stomach, then pulled it wider ajar.

“Call yer wife in, boy,” Chess hissed.

“Too late. They ain’t shot at her; maybe they’ll listen. She ain’t one to argue with, ‘specially not now.” He aimed his rifle through the slot made by the door and its jamb, waiting for any movement toward Elsa. I nudged the window up and pushed the block of wood we kept there into the sash to keep it up and trained my Winchester to Elsa’s right, trying to wish a form out of the darkness upon which to level an aim.

Well, our crippled and scarred old dog Nip, poor beat-up fellow nearly trampled to death in the stampede last fall, wandered up from the corral to see what Elsa was doing. He came within ten feet of her, so that he faced her straight-on. Elsa didn’t move. Her arms were still outstretched. When he satisfied himself who it was, the old boy laid down, his nose in her direction, too sore and weary to move on without a reason. When Nip goes down, because of all his broken legs and ribs, it always looks as if he were making a gentlemanly bow, lowering the front first, then his back end with perfect dignity.

Maybe those outlaws saw the dog bow before Elsa as if a supernatural being were kissing the ground before a saint. No one could say, but Nip had done just the right thing at that moment. A burst of hooves clattered on gravel, and in the shadows before the barn, five horsemen bolted for the hills toward Rudolfo’s land.

Charlie flung that door wide and followed them with three shots. Then he turned on Elsa and hollered at her to get in the house, and said, “Don’t you care about me at all? How can you risk yourself? Don’t you love our baby?” until she was crying so hard I feared for her health. I wanted to calm him and comfort her, too, and lands, caught between them I couldn’t speak a word. Thankfully, Savannah put her arms around Elsa and told everyone it was time for bed; all the women would be staying together. The men would have to decide who kept watch.

Charlie grunted and pounded his fists on the kitchen table as we left the room. I was caught up in the flutter of dovelike sounds from the women’s room—Granny’s old bedroom—as we made up beds for the night. I left them to return to the kitchen and bank up the fire and found Charlie alone in the parlor.

“Others sleeping?” I asked.

“Gone south. Spying on Maldonado. Watching Udell’s place.”

“Chess, too?”

“What could have possessed her, Mama? How could she think they wouldn’t shoot her?”

“I don’t know.”

“This having a wife is the damnedest thing. Half the time I’m crazy in love and half the time she just keeps me crazy mad. Why I’d have torn a man apart with my bare hands if anyone had … I could eat nails.”

“Reckon women don’t think like men.”

“Why on earth don’t they learn how?”

I rubbed my face. “Ain’t meant to, honey.” I smiled and kissed his brow. “It occurs to us to ask the same thing. Keeps the world turning, I suspect.”

As the sun rose I put the morning’s leftover pancakes out for our penitent dog hero, Nip, and his cohort, Shiner. They were busy eating when I saw a rider coming up from the west. He circled up on the sandy ridge, disappeared for a bit, then returned. After a long, slow ride in, a stranger got off his horse.

We had a new hand on our side! Rye Miles was good to his word. He bunked in the book room where the dandy professors had slept, and all of us felt better with him there, too. Mr. Miles went with Gilbert and Charlie down to Udell’s place. They were gone about three hours and I was starting to worry when they finally came home. I went out to talk to them as they unsaddled their horses by the trough. They said they had helped Udell finish a wooden platform he has built up from the second floor with stairs and a short ladder. It’s high enough that it makes a third-floor watchtower. From there, with a long glass, they watched Rudolfo’s ranch compound. Gilbert said half of Rudolfo’s men had deserted him after the “vision” of Nip bowing before Elsa got told around.

Miles told me, in language as colorful as any I have heard and some I wouldn’t repeat, that they had a buzzard down there dressed up like a priest who took a shotgun to two of the deserters. “That’s one damned evil son of a gun,” he said.

“I know him,” I replied. “Odd scar on his face.”

Rye Miles shot a look at Charlie, who glanced at me and turned his eyes away. Both of them had the same dry expression. Charlie said, “Don’t mention him to the other ladies, Mama.”

“Well, come on in and have some beans and bacon,” I said. “Savannah’s made cornbread for an army.”

Over dinner, Savannah confessed what Udell had already hinted at. Rachel and Aubrey Hanna were to marry before Thanksgiving. Mary Pearl had been sent for and someone needed to wire a ticket to her. After two hours of the family putting in each one’s two bits of thoughts on it, our plan became simple. All the women would take the stagecoach to town. The men would stay to guard and keep up chores. Gilbert made each of us promise to call on Miss Charity.

The one person I most feared for, however, was Granny. Bandits who’d shoot through windows would have no qualms about stopping a stage and finishing the job. We had until the Butterfield came through again, to get everything ready.

Heavy clouds greeted our start to the day. We waited at Marsh Station for four hours before Pancho Dailey showed up driving an eight-hitch of mules. It was a good thing he had to trade one out, for if we’d had to board in the usual way, jumping onto a slowly moving coach, Granny would have been in danger. Five other people were on the stage, and with Rebeccah, Elsa, Savannah, Granny, and myself, it seemed right packed. I was glad it was crowded, though. Granny all but disappeared in the petticoats and wrappers, and I doubted Rudolfo or his men would guess we’d take her to town, much less on a stage when we’d always driven ourselves.

Under the dark softness of the cloudy sky, with the rocking of the coach and the constant rumble of the wheels, I felt stupefied into calm and peace that I hadn’t known in ages. I slept the entire trip away. When we stopped in Tucson, I let everyone else get off before me. As I alighted, the rain which had threatened all day finally began. I stood in the door of the stage and grasped the handles. As I did, raindrops speckled my fingertips, and I raised my face to let the fresh water touch my cheek.

We exchanged a wave with Mr. Dailey, and watched while he pulled in at the corral. Savannah hired a buggy to get to the house.

We arrived at Harland’s front door with no warning to him that we were coming. The quiet when Rachel opened the door was alarming. She welcomed us in with a finger to her lips. The children were all in bed again, this time with mumps and dysentery. It had gone through town without mercy, the dark finger of disease marking several doors of folks we knew.

We were shown to the parlor, and in a few minutes, a nurse in a uniform came to report something to Rachel. The woman’s eyes opened wide when she saw us. Elsa was obviously round, now. Elsa could not stay there, not in her condition, she said. Though the rest of us had had mumps and every other childhood ailment, the nurse feared the unborn child might take the disease somehow. It was late, and it would be another imposition, but Elsa must be sent to April’s house. I said I would take her.

Rachel said, “I think you all should go. I’ve been ill, too, along with Uncle Harland. I think this is more common than mumps, and more catching. We are worn to exhaustion nursing children. Our first round of grippe seemed to take two weeks to come and go, then Story came home with mumps. Now, this bowel complaint is dreadful. The Taylor boy, two blocks over, died last week, and one of Morris’s cousins lost a baby. April’s house has been spared. Our Blessing just began to get well when she got it again.” The end of her words brought the echo of some child upstairs, crying. “I’d better go see who that is,” she said.

Rain drummed upon the walls and the window glass, shushing the world outside. Savannah finally spoke. “You all go to April’s. I’ll stay here and help Rachel.” After a little discussion, it was agreed. I wanted to see Harland and his children, but it would be better not to take any chance of illness to April’s home with a new baby.

We got to April’s house just as they finished their supper. We were drenched. April and Morris were surprised. At least, though, it was dry indoors, and warm, and plenty spacious for Elsa, Granny, Rebeccah, and me.

The next day was Sunday. I helped my mama get dressed and she went to the parlor. While the rest of us listened, she told old stories, just like she used to do when I was a girl. She always called it “Sunday School,” though none of us knew if the stories were from the Bible or not. They always were told with fervor, though, and the plots were lessons about good and evil. While their mother left to tend baby Tennyson, April’s children, Vallary, Patricia, and Lorelei, gathered around and listened as if they’d never heard the like.

I slipped out of the room when everyone seemed intent on the story, and went to the front to peer out the viewing glass at the wet, gray world. The wind blew drops clinging to the wooden overhang and flung them against the bulbous front of the glass, further distorting what was already an odd reflection of the world on the other side. Every few seconds, a drop illuminated a distant picture right before my eyes. It was the last half of a billboard sign painted on the brick wall of a livery, just the word “Fargo” in bright green.

Singing coming from the parlor interrupted my concentration. I opened the front door and stepped outward, shielding my eyes with one hand. The sign was gone. There were no colors at all, just a dingy, smoke-colored wall of rain. Closing the door once again, the rain on the viewing glass lit up again. I smiled. This would have been one for Professor Osterhaas’s essay on cosmic elements: raindrops that can clarify a dreary world. I turned toward the parlor and halted as if my feet suddenly took root in the rug. Fargo.

I knew a way to fight Rudolfo.

Maybe there was no power bigger than the railroad. No evil greater than greed. But there was another power I could enlist. The stage company had been here since before we came. All these years I’d given Wells Fargo a sort of squatter’s right to cross below that sandy cliff. All these years I’d watered their mules and fed their drivers when they asked it. Maybe the Eastern money that fueled the coal-smoke-belching railroad was in a bigger bank, but the Wells Fargo had roots here. If the land didn’t belong to Granny or to me, but to the Wells Fargo company, then let the giants storm heaven, and I will be like Artemis and Wells Fargo will be my Apollo. I’ll never quit fighting for my land.

I thought about it all through the morning and by noon I knew just what I would do. The hardest part would be waiting until tomorrow when the bank opened up.

Well, that afternoon we were all surprised to find Savannah and Rachel at the door. Savannah explained, “I just wanted to let you all know and ease your worries. Their sickness is no different than trail fever. Bad water, if you ask me. I boiled up a dozen kettles of water and started dosing everyone with plain, clean-boiled water. Within two hours, all the stomach complaints began to calm. Tomorrow I’m going to boil the linens and all their clothes, too. April, you must boil all the water your children touch.”

April said, “Well, that probably isn’t necessary, Aunt Savannah.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because, Mother. Because, really, I hate to say it, but, well, this is a better part of town. Our water is always cool. Sometimes theirs is hot. All the best people build on this end of town.”

“But that was my house. It’s a good house. There’s nothing wrong with living there.”

“No, of course not,” April said. “It’s just that this is healthier.”

“If you asked me, I’d say the problem wasn’t the class of people living in a place but the class of plumbing fixtures they had.” I said, “Ladies? Will you join us in rescuing Rachel and her charges?”

Savannah ducked her head. “It is the Sabbath, Sarah. I didn’t mean to create work for you all.”

I patted her arm. “And if thy neighbor’s ox fall in a ditch on the Sabbath? I can be ready in two shakes. We’ve got sheets to boil.”

Elsa and Granny remained with April. The rest of us took to Harland’s house in a way that would have made prim and starched Mrs. Everly seem to be a sloven harridan. All the bedding was laid out on the back porch, rain and all. Sheets dried in rows in the kitchen, and one by one, warm and pristine makeshift pallets held the sick of the household. That evening, we sent both Rachel and Rebeccah to April’s, and Savannah and I stayed. We bathed the children and rubbed them with alcohol spirits and water, and threatened Harland with the same if he refused to have an hour’s soak in a tub of the same mixture. Of course, his children thought that was riotously funny, though I wonder if they doubted my ability to make good on the threat.

Blessing’s drawn and sad appearance was hardest to take lightly. The girl had grown thin and narrow, and her large eyes were seared with heat, staring from a fevered brow. Still, she grinned when she saw me, and after her bath, climbed into my lap and soon was fast asleep. All day as I tended my family, I thought on my plan. Calculated my acreage. Did sums in my head that would have made Miss Alice proud.

Monday morning, early, after finding Harland dressed and sipping tea, I proposed my idea to him.

“There are two parts of this, Harland. First, you know I own a few thousand acres, and leases on more. Some of it runs east of the line they have drawn across Mama’s land, although they’ve cut a swath on my property too, near where the stage line runs. But some of the best flatland is far south, beyond Rudolfo’s place and due north of the Mexican border. I figure once they get tracks laid on Mama’s land he’ll run me off the rest, too. So why not sell it? To the stage line. If Rudolfo wants it that much, someone else will, too.”

“But Sis, you have spent your life building that ranch. It’s your legacy. You’ve said as much yourself.”

“I don’t mean all of it. Just the south lease and a couple of sections north of the border. Some people keep money in a bank. I have kept mine in the ground. We can’t eat dirt and I can’t buy stock. I need to draw out some cash to keep going. That’s all. Good times, bad, they will both come again. Also, I can’t pass down a legacy to ghosts. I think Rudolfo will gladly see us all in the ground before he’ll quit. The only way I see to come out on top is to find a buyer.

“Second thing is Mama’s homestead. She doesn’t live on it nor work it, and I think she’d as soon sell it as let the railroad take it for nothing. Since we—you, Albert, and I—are the beneficiaries of it, if we agreed to ask her to sell it now—”

“But it’s the principle of the thing.”

I got my back up. Did he think principles could stop bullets? “That only holds up if both sides have the same principles, Harland.”

He took a sip from his cup of tea. “What does Albert say?”

“I hadn’t thought of this when I left home. Savannah’s here. She’d know how he would decide. She can speak for him.”

“We can’t take Mama’s place from her.”

“I’m not saying take it. She lives with me and likely always will. She’s not crazy, you know. I have seen how she aches for every one of us that has died. Each one in the ground pushes her farther into the shadows of her mind. That land is not so important and her reason isn’t so gone she can’t figure it will save us a bloody range war.”

“I don’t want any of the money from it, then.”

“No. I don’t either. It’s hers. I’ll keep strict accounts and show them to you whenever you please.”

“All right, then. It has to go to making her life as sweet as it can be for the rest of her days.”

“Anything she wants. If you’re agreed, then I’ll go ask Savannah.”

“We can ride to the bank in my new horseless carriage. I will go put the top on in case it rains again.”

I stopped at the door and turned.

“The thing is, Harland,” I said, “that I want everyone to hear us ask her and I don’t want anyone to put words in her head or push the idea. It’s got to be her free and clear choice or we’ve railroaded her, same as Rudolfo.”

“Agreed,” he said. Are you sure we’re healthy and it’s all right to go to a house with a baby?”

“Look how you all have changed with twelve hours of absolute cleanliness.” “But April won’t know about that. It’s possible she’d blame us for bringing it.” “I think it will be all right,” I said. “It has likely run its course by now.” We drove to April’s and laid our plan before our mother. Addled as she could be, yesterday with the Sunday School and singing, why Mama seemed to have lost fifteen years and was bright and sassy. She listened closely, then shut her eyes for a whole minute, nodding. Then with a pound from her tiny fist, she hollered, “Sell it all, then. Sell whatever it needs. You put yours in, and we’ll show those blackhearted thieves who’s boss.” “Agreed?” I said.