The Unplowed Sky (23 page)

Shaft hoisted him up to nestle against the tied-back beard. “Hallie, would you like for us to find a little house to rent in town? I can get a job cookin' at one of the cafés. Or we'll find jobs where one of us can always be home with Jack.”

“But you—you always stay at our place!” Meg protested.

“I sure have appreciated that. But this year's different.”

Hallie didn't have to deliberate. Jackie liked all the men, but he loved Shaft; and, as for her, he was, rolled into one, father, grandfather, and friend. The sense of being deserted—cast adrift alone with her small brother—melted at Shaft's warm smile. Swallowing at the tightness in her throat, Hallie looked around at all the men who had, except for Garth, become such friends.

“I don't know how to thank you, Jim. Or you, Rusty and Luke, or you, Rich. I can tell you've been thinking about Jackie and me, and I can't tell you how much that means. But I think you'll understand that Shaft's extra special to Jackie.” She smiled at the man who had at first seemed so eccentric, but who had become so dear. “If you mean it, Shaft, we'd love to share a home with you and Smoky.”

Shaft beamed. “Never meant anything so much since I told the deputies good-bye when I jumped out that window and hit the ground runnin'.”

Everyone laughed. After a moment, Garth said, “I hope you'll cook for the outfit next summer, Shaft.”

“I hope so, too, boss.” Shaft looked straight at Garth and added slowly, “Reckon that depends on Hallie. She's the best help I ever had. Don't reckon I can manage without her—providin', of course, that she wants the job.”

At last Garth could scarcely avoid meeting her eyes, but his were so veiled that she couldn't guess his feelings. “Do you want to work another run next summer?”

If I haven't found a better job
, she should have said.
A cleaner, easier year-round place working for a reasonable human being who doesn't blame me for his runaway wife or have a daughter who thinks he belongs to her. I want to work for a man who won't think we ought to swim together in the night when he'll barely look at me by day or bawl me out for drying my hair in the wind and then act as if it were a crime to cut it off …

But her heart swelled with gladness. She would get to be with him next summer. And who knew? Perhaps with a winter to think things over, he'd be in a fairer state of mind. “Yes,” she said. She tried and failed to keep her smile from broadening into a happy laugh. “I want the job, please.”

The men cheered. Jackie clapped, jumping up and down, but Meg cast Hallie a furious glance, swung off the bench, and rushed outside, letting the door slam.

Jackie scrambled after her. “Meggie! Aren't you glad? We're going to help thresh next year!”

“I'm glad
you're
coming, sweetheart,” came her muffled voice.

Rory made a disgusted sound. He scowled at his brother. “If you don't get that lass straightened out about a few things, she's going to cause you more headaches than—” At the look on Garth's face, Rory swallowed his intended words. “She's going to cause you plenty of grief,” he amended. “And herself more.”

“You're a good one to talk,” said Garth, “considering the white hairs you put in our mother's head.”

“And of course you didn't!”

“Of course I did, but”—Garth controlled himself—“let's not wrangle. Meg's headstrong, but she's got a good heart. Look how she's taken Jackie under her wing.”

Yes, to crowd me out
, Hallie thought. But perhaps the winter would also improve Meg's attitude. At any rate, one more summer with Garth and these good friends was assured. Beyond that, she wouldn't worry.

“Since we have the cooks spoken for,” Garth said, “do the rest of you want to make the run next summer? In spite of Raford's tricks, I can pay my mortgage, and I'm expecting to still be in business.”

They all wanted to join the outfit again except for Jim Wyatt. Kneading his scarred cheek absently, he said, “If I can borrow against my veteran's bonus and get in a good season of lumberjacking, I hope I can be running my own engine next summer. If that somehow don't work out, Garth, there's no one I'd rather work with than you. I'll let you know by spring.”

“Good enough.” Garth nodded.

Hallie served another piece of pie to each man, sad at parting with them though she comforted herself that she'd see all of them but Jim next summer. Still, she was vastly relieved that she and Jackie would have a home with Shaft until threshing time. And though she knew it wasn't wise, she couldn't keep from rejoicing that, for at least one more season, she would see Garth every day, prepare his food, and help with his work.

The great cottonwoods on Garth's side of the creek gloried in the sun's last rays and beyond them, that breadth of unplowed prairie with its myriad gold and purple flowers and many-hued grasses was a different world from Raford's stubbled fields across the road, planted and harvested down to the ditch.

Raford's lands were indeed broken to the plow. As far as the eye could reach, there was not a tree, nor a thicket of sandhill plums, buckthorn, or chokecherry to gladden wild creatures. Along his side of the creek, even the low-growing willows had been chopped away. There were no tangles of wild grapes, elders, or virgin's bower to give food and shelter to birds and beasts. Raford, of course, would view foxes, raccoons, skunks, gophers, coyotes and porcupines as vermin, nor would he extend hospitality to grain-loving crows and blackbirds.

That Garth had not plowed that breadth of rich primordial prairie with its luxuriant creek fringe of trees, shrubs, and vines that gave sanctuary to wild things somehow made Hallie admire him more than anything else he had done, though she respected the way he had stood up to Raford, risking everything he owned, and the easy good nature with which he kept his crew and machinery running through searing sunup to sundown days. These things proved Garth a man of endurance and courage. But his sparing the most valuable land on his farm because it was wild and beautiful and necessary to other creatures showed a tender side of his nature that let Hallie dare hope a woman still might reach his heart.

The Model Ts rattled across the bridge. Hallie and Shaft had taken Henry's and Lefty's places in Jim's flivver. The engine, with its caravan, stopped at the bridge. Garth went to examine it, as he did every time they came to one. He made a grimace of disgust and shouted something to Rory that Hallie couldn't hear above the noise of the engine. Rory shrugged and made an impatient gesture.

“Raford's had the bridge worked on some but it still doesn't suit Garth,” Shaft said in Hallie's ear. “Still, there's not much choice exceptin' to plank it unless Garth wants to leave his whole outfit on this side of the creek, which he don't. He'll heed the engine to plant his wheat, and he always gets the separator under cover for the winter.”

The men in the flivvers jumped out to stretch the planks across the metal surface as they had done so many times during the run. This was the last one. And it was on the other side of the creek, beneath Garth's cottonwoods, that Hallie and Jackie had been resting when they first heard and saw the engine and Rory had given that whistling salute.

He was giving it again, like a challenge to Raford; an announcement that the outfit was home after completing a run that would at least keep it in business. The engine clanked across the shrieking bridge. The separator followed, Garth on the platform. The cookshack bumped across. Meg was perched on her throne, the seat of the tank wagon.

The wagon was halfway across when the groaning planks cracked as the bridge beneath gave way. To Hallie's terrified eyes, it seemed to explode in a chaos of sundered metal and wood. Some fell with the wagon into the creek fifteen feet below. Other parts flew in a rain of splinters and metal fragments.

Rusty Wells screamed. He fumbled at a jagged shard thrusting from his inner thigh. Jets of blood spurted through clothing and his hands. Garth, Rory, and some of the men were already lunging down the bank to Meg, who had not made a sound since her first horrified cry as the wagon dropped.

Hallie and Shaft ran to Rusty who had either sat down or collapsed. Luke bent over the big man, trying in vain to stop the bleeding with slender brown hands. Hallie ripped off the bottom of her slip. Shaft clutched a shattered piece of wood, took the cloth, and tied it around Rusty's leg. Bright arterial blood, pumped from the heart, still trickled through Luke's hands. Shaft slid the wood beneath the tourniquet and rotated it to tighten the cloth. The pulsing became a seep, but Rusty had lost consciousness and lay in a pool of blood, more than Hallie would have guessed to be in a human body.

“Pumped out fast through that big artery,” Shaft gritted. “We got to get him to a hospital. And Meg, is she—?”

Garth and Rory, aided by the others, trudged up from the creek with Meg stretched motionless on the wagon's tailgate. The shallow cut on her forehead didn't amount to much but her breathing was fast and labored, and her pallid face was bedewed with sweat.

“I'm afraid it's her spine,” Garth said. His face was white as his daughter's. His eyes were anguished. “Hate to jolt her over this road—”

Hallie ran for the shack. “Let's tie her in place with sheets and pillows and cushion the board as much as we can!” As she snatched bedding from the box-benches, she heard Garth command, “Buford, you go ahead with Rusty—go fast as you can! If you put him in back and prop that leg up, maybe Luke can squeeze in or lean over from the front and make sure the tourniquet doesn't slip. Tell the hospital folks we're coming.”

Hallie's throat ached and she blinked back tears as she firmed pillows on either side of Meg's curly head.
Oh, let her not be hurt much! Let her be all right
! Overwhelmed by the helplessness she'd felt at her father's deathbed, Hallie marveled at how fragile people and life could be—Rusty hearty and well one second, bleeding to death the next, Meg whistling a jaunty tune till the instant the bridge gave way.

Meg didn't stir as they bound her and the padding to the board with torn sheets. Jackie whimpered and clutched at Hallie, but Rich Mondell scooped him up and took him off to “take care of Smoky.”

Shaft heaped bedding in the backseat and crawled in on one side to steady and support the board that rested across the padded back of the front seat with Garth holding it from the passenger's side. Hallie got in back and gripped her side of the board. She knew that Rich and Baldy would look after her brother and probably soothe his fears better than she could.

Jim drove as carefully as he could, but the board seemed to jounce unmercifully and Hallie flinched with every bump. They passed the Rafords' imposing house, set well back from the dust of the road, the lemon yellow Pierce-Arrow gleaming from the garage.

With a bitter glance toward his enemy's palatial estate, Garth said, “I told Raford to fix that bridge. When I saw he hadn't, I shouldn't have gone across.”

“What else could you do, boss?” Jim shot him a startled glance across Meg's swathed form. “Wait there till they put in a new bridge?”

“I should have left the machinery and wagons on the other side and then raised hell till the bridge was safe.”

“Boss, if you start thinkin' like that, you'd never get out of bed. What is life except takin' one chance after another?”

“I had no business taking them for everybody else. If Meg or Rusty—” Garth's voice broke.

Hallie ached for him, but could think of nothing to say. Far ahead swirled the fog of dust churned by Buford's flivver. He could drive as fast as he could. Rusty had no injury except the one draining his life's blood. Rusty, who had laboriously scratched a letter to his wife each Sunday. Rusty, who had three little kids …

It seemed an eternity before they pulled up behind Buford's Model T at the back of the hospital. A gray-haired nurse came out at once, examined their first aid with a practiced eye, and said, “You've done a good job. We're short on attendants. You bring her in.”

“The man who was just brought in?” Garth asked as he and Jim lifted Meg and went through the door. “Rusty Wells?”

The nurse shook her head. “I'm sorry.”

“He—he's dead?” Hallie gasped.

“Dead when he got here.”

Oh, Rusty! And poor Luke. How will he tell his sister? How will she tell the children
? And poor Garth. Luke and Buford came down the hall, heads bowed. Suddenly Luke stopped and leaned against the wall, shoulders heaving.

Buford put an awkward arm around the younger man's shoulder. “Shaft, will you help here?” Garth gave his end of the board to the cook. Frightened as he was about his daughter, he hurried over to Luke. Hallie hesitated, torn between running to Luke or staying with Meg.

Deciding it was best to let Garth be with Luke for a little while, she followed Meg's procession into a small room. The men gently placed the board on a high, narrow bed and stood back, looking hopefully at the nurse.

“Please go to the waiting room,” she told them as she took shears and cut swiftly through the ripped sheets and Meg's clothes, lifting them away as much as possible without moving the girl and draping her with a sheet. Meg groaned and lifted her hand. “Come hold her hands and keep her still,” the nurse said to Hallie. “Are you a member of the family?”

“A friend.” Meg and Garth might not agree with that and Hallie, as she clasped the girl's chilly hands, hoped Meg wouldn't be upset if she roused enough to know who was standing by her.

“Well, you may stay if you like. The doctor will be here any minute.”

The white-coated doctor and Garth arrived at the same time. Hallie stepped back as the bearded young man applied his stethoscope to Meg's chest and abdomen and then examined her with searching fingers, checking her neck and spine and pelvis with special care.