Corral Nocturne (2 page)

“That’s late,” said Ed, squinting one eye in
a dissatisfied manner.

Cole shrugged, and leaned an elbow on the
fence. “Well, it takes a while to do everybody on the Creek, you
know, and we always work north to south. Are you in for it?”

“I don’t see as I’ve got much choice,” said
Ed darkly. “Not if that’s the way you’ve got it figured.”

“That’s Nate’s look-out; he just asked Dad to
tally up the names for him. Anyway, they tell me he’s been doing it
this way for years.”

Ed grunted as if he doubted it, though he
knew Cole’s observation was correct as well as anyone. Ed was, not
surprisingly, the last person to let Cole’s status as heir-apparent
to the Newcomb empire have the slightest effect on his manners.

“That’s a long time to go pitching in on the
other jobs, too. Dunno how I’m going to manage with just the one
team if I’ve got to wear ’em to death threshing all summer before
we even get to my wheat—besides doing all the cultivating, hauling,
feeding…” Ed’s voice trailed away in a discontented grumble.

“Well, we could loan you another team if you
need it,” said Cole. “We’re sure to have an extra one, and we’d be
glad to let you have it for a few weeks.”

He had made the offer as easily and simply as
he would have done to anyone else along his route that morning, and
from the tenor of Ed’s previous remarks he expected him to take it
up at once. Instead Ed scowled at him, his upper lip curling in
something like disgust, and uttered a short disagreeable laugh.

“I may be spread thin, but I’m no mark for
charity yet,” he said. “Thanks for being so considerate, but I can
get along all right without your team.”

Cole did not answer at once, for he was
looking past Ed’s shoulder at something else. He had happened to
look that way just as Ed spoke, and glimpsed the stricken look on
Ellie’s face—the painful color that flushed her cheeks and the
shame in her eyes, not at having met his glance, but at her
brother’s rude words.

He shifted his gaze back to Ed and looked at
him for a minute—looked him up and down as if considering
something, and then gave him a dryly pitying smile. “If that’s the
way you feel about it—then we’ll leave you to it,” he said, with no
change in the pleasantness of his voice. “Shall I tell Nate Barker
you’re in on the threshing, or not?”

“Yeah, tell him.” Ed flapped a hand as if he
wanted to be rid of the whole bothersome matter.

“All right,” said Cole. “I’ll be seeing you,
Ed.”

They parted, Ed to stride back to the corral,
and Cole to walk back to his horse. But he paused when he reached
it, and looked over again at Ellie. She was still working at the
well. She was pumping a bucket full of water, slowly, and he
thought there was a disheartened look about the way her shoulders
bent to the task. The bucket filled, she lifted it from under the
pump with both hands and started across the yard toward the garden,
some of the water sloshing over onto her apron as she went.

Cole watched her for a minute. Then on
impulse, born of that pained look he had seen in the girl’s eyes
which had both startled and affected him, he left his horse with a
thoughtful pat on the shoulder and followed her.

She had not yet seen him when he caught up
with her, almost at the edge of the garden patch. “Can I give you a
hand with that?” he said.

Ellie looked up at him, a little startled,
almost losing her balance with the heavy bucket as she set it down.
“No,” she said, a little note of surprise in her voice; “no thank
you, I can do it all right.”

“Are you sure?” said Cole.

Ellie nodded. She bent over to pick up the
bucket again, and shifted it a few feet toward the first row of
vegetables. Then she paused, still looking down, and bit her lip,
and Cole could tell she was hesitating over something. Then she
straightened up and looked at him again. “I’m sorry about—I mean, I
want to apologize for—Ed. I know he was awfully rude to you. It
wasn’t because of anything you said or did; he—he talks that way to
everybody.”

“That’s all right,” said Cole, smiling down
at her. “You don’t have to worry about me. I didn’t mind him.”

“Nobody ever does mind him,” said Ellie with
an odd resignation in her voice. She got down on her knees on the
ploughed ground, and tipped the bucket to pour water over the roots
of the vegetables. “That’s the trouble, I think—everybody just goes
on not minding him, and they don’t—oh, well.” She gave a short
sigh, and righted the half-empty bucket. “And he doesn’t even care
that nobody likes him.”

“But you don’t have to apologize for him—it’s
not your fault.”

“No,” said Ellie, sitting back on her heels
for a moment, her hands resting on the rim of the bucket.
“But—well, I get so tired of having to hear Ed talk that way, and
knowing what people must be thinking of—of all of us. I hate having
them thinking—I just didn’t want you to think that Mama and I would
stand for seeing people treated that way, if we could help it.”

“Why would I?” said Cole, half laughing, as
if the idea was ridiculous, but his smile faded even as he spoke.
Ellie glanced up at him again, smiling a little in a response she
could not help, but there was something in her eyes that belied
it.

She said simply, “I don’t get a chance to
apologize to everyone who comes here.”

“But they don’t have any reason to think that
of you. They know you,” said Cole, squatting down on his heels
beside her. Ellie had gone on with her task of weeding and watering
as they spoke.

She gave a brief little shrug as if trying to
pass over something quickly. “Not really. There’s no reason for
them to speak to me—it’s only men that come to see Ed. Mama and I
don’t really know anyone other than to say hello to, if we happen
to be nearby. Mama’s always busy anyway.”

Cole was silent for a minute, twisting a
wilted stalk of grass in his fingers. He looked at the girl’s
profile, with the loose wisp of chestnut hair drifting forward on
her temple and the smudge of dirt across her cheek. He was
beginning to understand. It had begun to come home to him that he
had never met her before. She must have been just a kid when he
went away to college, he reflected; and he could not remember ever
having seen her at any of the picnics or dances held at the various
ranches during his summers at home. He had a good memory for faces,
and Ellie’s had no place in his recollection. She must have been
out here all the time, he thought…

“Don’t you see much of the other girls around
here?” he said, watching her face as he spoke.

“No,” said Ellie. “Not since I finished
school. We don’t have the time to—I mean, we’re not—”

She stopped work for a second and turned to
look straight at him. “Oh, what’s the use of pretending. I know
nobody likes us, because Ed is all anyone ever sees. Mama and I
don’t go much of anywhere, except church sometimes when he’ll let
us use the team. The girls don’t come here—why should they, when
they don’t know me? I don’t mind so terribly, most of the time,
but—” Her eyes met his with a sudden quick, plaintive longing that
rang in her impulsive speech: “If it just goes on like this, for
years and years, how are we ever going to have any friends? How am
I ever going to meet—anyone?”

Cole understood—perhaps even understood the
unspoken meaning of the last word. He looked down at the ploughed
ground, for he had no answer. He understood too well. Even in a
crowd, on one of those rare outings she spoke of, Ed Strickland was
the kind of person whom people would give a disgusted look and then
go off to talk to somebody else; and his pretty but quieter young
sister and hard-working shadow of a mother, neither of the
personality to put themselves forward, would remain unnoticed.

Ellie had gone back to her work, on her hands
and knees thinning out radishes, and there was no sign on her face
of self-consciousness at having spoken out to him this way. In
truth, seeing so few people had made her regard the presence of any
human being in the same light—she had spoken to Cole Newcomb in a
direct, natural way that might never have been hers if she had been
more accustomed to the society of young men. Perhaps this was one
of the reasons for the tug of sympathy that Cole felt toward her.
He was at all the disadvantage of a handsome and well-off young man
in that girls were often extra bright and sweet of manner around
him, which he occasionally found trying. Ellie’s simplicity was
refreshing. It was a shame, he thought, that a nice little girl
like her had to be stuck away out here alone, when plenty of the
young people he knew would have been glad to have her around if
they’d only had a chance to meet her—

A curious smile slowly crossed Cole’s face.
An idea had come into his mind. He looked at Ellie again.

He could do it…it would be the easiest thing
in the world.

Yes, he could…Not at once, though; that would
be too obvious.

He had it all planned when he stood up. “I
wouldn’t feel too badly, you know,” he said, looking down at Ellie.
“People might not be fooled by somebody like your brother, but
they’re not likely to miss marking out the right sort either.” He
paused. “Well, I—wait a minute, I don’t believe I know your
name.”

“It’s Ellie,” she said, looking up at him
again with clear, frank eyes.

“I’m Cole Newcomb,” he said, “and I’m glad to
have met you. I hope I’ll see you again some time.”

She smiled, a smile with a sad little droop
at the corners of her mouth that seemed to say she would like that,
but did not have much hope that it would ever happen. Cole read
this thought and his own smile broadened a little, knowing
something that she did not.

“Well, goodbye,” he said, and he turned and
walked away toward his horse. He reached the fence and untied the
bay, swung up easily in the saddle, still smiling a bit to himself,
and headed his horse up toward the road at a lope. Over in the
garden patch, sitting among the radishes, Ellie watched him go.

Ellie pushed up the bar latch on the barn
door, took hold of it and pulled the creaking door open, leaning
back to use all her weight against it. The empty milk pails that
hung from her left hand scraped against each other. It was early
morning, and there was little sound on the ranch except the notes
of a prairie songbird twittering somewhere out between
dawn-silvered hayfield and dim sky. Even the cows waiting to be
milked in the barn had not yet made their presence known. So the
hoofbeats came even more crisp and distinct through the stillness,
almost startling in both sound and unexpectedness. Ellie turned in
the barn doorway, still holding the latch, to see Cole Newcomb on
his bay horse coming down the track from the road.

The surprise was enough to make her drop the
milk pails with a clatter that effectually startled all the cows
into alertness and run out of the barn to meet him at the gate,
quite without thinking what she was doing. To have the first person
she had really talked to in months turn up again so unexpectedly
soon made her spirits give a little leap that felt unfamiliar—she
had almost forgotten the feeling of it.

The dew still lay on the ground, and the
weathered gatepost was damp as she laid both hands on it, catching
herself up short in her unpremeditated flight. Cole reined up his
horse beside her, the tall bay’s nose bobbing above the level of
Ellie’s head. “Good morning!” he said. “I guessed I’d find you up
already.”

“Find
me?
” said Ellie, frankly
staring. “Didn’t you—I mean—Ed—”

“No, I didn’t come to see Ed, and I don’t
mean to see him if I can help it,” said Cole, grinning. “I came out
here to see you. Listen, there’s going to be a picnic this Saturday
afternoon, up on Catlin Creek. Nothing fancy; just a dozen or so of
us are going to take a picnic lunch, and sit out on the rocks up
there, but it’ll be a lot of fun. Would you like to go?”

It took Ellie a few seconds to get her
breath. “
Me?
” she said again, even more incredulously. “Do
you mean—”

“What I mean is, I’ll take you if you want to
go, and I came to ask you if you’d go with me,” said Cole, leaning
an arm on his saddle horn and looking down at her, and thoroughly
enjoying the rapturous look in her eyes. “Will you?”

“I—I’d like to,” said Ellie, her mind
beginning to work again as the reality of the question settled in
upon her. “Yes, I will—if Mama says it’s all right. I’m almost sure
she will,” she added with an earnestness that gave Cole a hard time
keeping his countenance for a moment, “but I’ll just have to ask
her, so—yes.”

“All right, then I’ll come for you at noon on
Saturday. Suit you?”

“Yes,” said Ellie a little breathlessly,
holding on to the old gatepost as if she thought it might fly away
with her.