Corral Nocturne

Corral Nocturne: A Novella

By Elisabeth Grace Foley

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Historical
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Copyright © 2014 Elisabeth Grace Foley

Table of Contents

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

About the Author

“Well, I don’t know, Ed, she looks awful
skinny to me,” said John Bentley.

“Don’t have to waste time running her down.
You going to buy her or not?” said Ed Strickland ungraciously.

The ‘her’ in question was an ungainly-looking
milk cow, who was probably neither so bad nor so good as the two
men’s opinions painted her. John Bentley, leaning on the bars of
the milking pen, scratched his ear. “I ain’t sure I’d pay what
you’re asking for her, even if I was sure she’d give enough milk,”
he said.

“Why take up my time then? I got a cow to
sell, and if it’s not to you it’ll be somebody else.”

“Maybe,” said Bentley, who was not quite
convinced of the latter point.

From a few yards away, Ellie Strickland
watched them unobtrusively as she scattered grain for the hens
scratching about in the yard. The subtle shadow over her face
betrayed the mortification she felt every time she had to listen to
a conversation of this sort. Every instance of her brother’s
rudeness stung her the same way, even though she had certainly
heard it enough to be used to it. It made no difference to her by
now what people thought of Ed, but he was the only member of the
Strickland family who had a chance to make an impression on
anybody, and it was knowing that she and her mother came under the
heading of the impression Ed made which hurt.

“Well,” said John Bentley finally, adjusting
his battered hat over his rough graying hair, “I guess I’ll think
about it some more. If I don’t find a better deal, I’ll be back in
a day or two.”

“Yeah, you do that,” said Ed, and he turned
away from the milking pen and headed toward the barn.

John Bentley turned to go too, and Ellie saw
the brief but expressive glance of contempt he threw over his
shoulder toward Ed as he did so. Bentley was a good-natured man,
but his opinion of Ed was plain. Nearly everyone’s was. Ed,
however, was oblivious to what anyone thought of him, or else he
simply did not care.

Bentley climbed to the seat of his wagon, and
started the team in a circle around the yard to pull back out onto
the road. He had not even noticed Ellie.

Ellie finished feeding the chickens, and
stood for a moment holding the empty basket, watching them cluck
and scratch and search in the dust for the kernels of grain. Then
she turned and walked across the yard toward the little weathered
frame house. The house, the low-roofed barn, the corrals and sheds
made a half-circle around the hard-packed dirt ranch yard, and the
garden patch lay east of the house. Sheltered by low hills, the
ranch lay down out of sight of the main road. Few people came down
the rutted track to the Strickland place. Those who did came on
business with Ed—buying a cow, as today, or perhaps to borrow a
piece of farming equipment; and they seemed to come rather of
necessity than choice. Their infrequent comings and goings did
little to affect the daily round of life. Though only five miles
from town, the ranch was for Ellie a lonely place.

It was not a particularly hard life they
lived here, though for Ellie and her mother there were often
irksome extra tasks arising from rather unnecessary scrimping and
making do. Ed was ‘tight’; he grudged every bit of new wire for
mending a broken fence; he kept his cows as short on grain as
possible and then complained when they did not gain flesh like the
other ranchers’ cattle; he would never buy a new shirt when an old
one could be patched. He was apt to grumble over small extra items
in his mother’s modest grocery lists, and Ellie had long since
given up asking for anything for herself, knowing she would only
hear the familiar response, “But what
for?
We don’t
need
it.”

Ellie sat down on the front steps and put the
basket down beside her. Ed was out of sight, and it was not yet
time to start the midday meal, so she sat still for a moment and
let the fresh breeze from off the prairie brush her face and
flutter the edge of her calico apron. It was quiet—peaceful and
beautiful, with the near-noon sun shining on wildflowers bobbing in
the long grasses stirred by the wind. But today the quiet only
served to remind Ellie that hardly anybody came down the road to
the Strickland place, and those who did come disliked Ed Strickland
so much that they never paid attention to Ed’s sister.

Ellie sighed a little, and scuffed the toe of
her buttoned boot in the dust. She was eighteen now. A lot of the
girls she had gone to school with in the little one-room
schoolhouse over on Catlin Creek had beaus by now, who escorted
them to picnics and dances and took them out for buggy rides on
Sundays. Ellie and her mother seldom went anywhere except
occasionally to church, for Ed disliked social gatherings and
didn’t like to spare the team from work for them to drive anywhere.
So they were cut off, to a large degree, from the other women in
the area, who had plenty of acquaintances among their neighbors to
keep them busy, and knew very little about the Stricklands except
what they heard their husbands and sons say of Ed. And as for young
men…well, the men that came out here usually left with a sardonic
expression like John Bentley’s, and hardly even noticed that Ed had
a mother and sister.

Ellie put her chin in her hand and stared
away up the double-rutted track to the main road, with the green
grass waving softly in its center strip. She was a quiet, practical
girl, who simply accepted the little trials of her life that she
could do nothing about. She did not spend her time pining for a
beau—it was not a real cause of heartache, or something that
constantly occupied her thoughts. But there were days, like today,
when the accumulated loneliness of months made her heart weigh
heavy; when she wondered wistfully how the right kind of young man
was ever going to find his way down the road to her isolated
home—and once there, what there possibly was that could make him
want to stay long enough for a second look.

“No man in his right mind would want Ed for a
brother,” she said aloud to herself, and then added as an
afterthought, “and I wouldn’t want to marry the other kind.”

And with this reflection she stood up, looked
round again at the sunny and empty horizon—empty of either kind—and
then picked up the basket and went up the steps into the house.

Cole Newcomb had not been out to the
Strickland place in the year since he had been home from college.
He had known Ed Strickland slightly, as he knew most other young
men of his own age in their ranching community, before he went
away, but had not had much occasion to think of him in the
intervening time. So it was the unfamiliarity, perhaps, that made
him look around with moderate interest as he rode down the track to
the little ranch on this particular afternoon. Cole was always
alert to new sights and impressions; he had a quick eye and an
interest in the world around him that made him sometimes stop and
look where others passed by. This attentiveness was occasionally
coupled with a tendency to overlook the obvious, which landed him
in hot water now and again.

Cole was tall and dark-haired and decidedly
good-looking, with an engaging smile that made a pleasant
impression on nearly everyone, and especially upon young persons of
the feminine persuasion. He also happened to be the son of the
wealthiest man in the county, and taking both of these
circumstances into account, it was a credit to his parents’ good
training, even more than his own forthright nature, that he had
remained decently unspoiled. The Newcombs were the nearest thing to
cattle royalty left in this part of Montana, with herds still on
the open range and several thousand acres under fence, in addition
to the finest horses for miles around and a big white-painted ranch
house with furnishings imported from the East. As their fortunes
had improved over the years, the family had become well-traveled,
their children well-educated. Cole, however, had still grown up on
the range, working among the men in his father’s crew, and was as
much at home in the saddle as he had ever been at college.

He turned into the Stricklands’ yard. Ed was
just visible over in one of the corrals, bending over fastening the
trace-chains of the team hitched to the mowing machine, and nearer
at hand, Ellie Strickland was working at the well platform, her
sleeves rolled to her elbows, scrubbing the dirt from some freshly
dug vegetables. She glanced up as Cole rode in. A few wisps of hair
had fallen down around her face, and she pushed one back with a wet
hand, leaving a little streak of mud across her cheek.

Cole touched his hat to her as he passed.
“Good afternoon,” he said.

“Good afternoon,” Ellie answered, looking up
at him with clear serious eyes.

Cole reined his swift-stepping bay horse
alongside the fence and dismounted, and looped the reins around a
post. He turned back toward Ellie. “Is Ed around?” he asked,
walking over toward the well. “I just stopped by to see him about
something. I hope he’s not too busy.” He glanced over at the
corral.

“No, he’s not. He’ll be up in a minute—he’s
just over here,” said Ellie. She gestured with her elbow, her wet
hands twisted in her apron as she wiped them.

“Thanks,” said Cole. He smiled at her and
turned away to meet Ed, who had just made an appearance round the
corner of the corral and was coming up to see who the visitor
was.

“Afternoon,” said Cole as they met. “How are
you?”

“Hey,” said Ed briefly, an unremarkable but
not too unamiable greeting.

“Dad wanted me to come see all of you out
this way who’ll have wheat to thresh this summer,” said Cole. “Nate
Barker, over west of us, is getting in a new threshing outfit, and
he asked us to figure up how many people he’ll be threshing for and
let him know by the Fourth. He’s planning on starting at the north
end of Catlin Creek about the middle of July, so he’ll be getting
to your place around the twentieth of August.”