Corral Nocturne (3 page)

Cole nodded and touched his hat to her, and
started to turn his horse. “And oh!” added Ellie, taking a step
after him, “thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Cole, who felt
satisfied already with the results of his scheme. “I’ll see you
Saturday.”

He raised a hand in farewell and let out the
spirited bay horse, and was borne swiftly away up toward the
road.

Ellie stayed leaning against the gatepost,
still a little unbelieving, and a tiny thread of nervous excitement
beginning to flutter up inside her. She lingered there a few
minutes, thinking, and then swung slowly around the post, let go of
it, and began to walk across the yard with curiously light, almost
floating footsteps. One of the cows in the barn, finally growing
impatient, gave mildly indignant voice in what was evidently meant
to be a reminder of her duty, but Ellie did not even hear it. It
was not until she reached the steps of the house that she looked
about and wondered what it was she was supposed to be doing
there—and then remembered the milking with a little start, and
turned and went back toward the barn with a slightly guilty
expression on her face.

“A picnic?” said Mrs. Strickland slowly,
queryingly, after she had listened to the quick rush of Ellie’s
request. “Well, I don’t see anything wrong with it, I guess. Yes, I
suppose you can go all right.”

“Oh, thank you, Mama,” said Ellie, who had
not breathed for those few wavering seconds. “I’m sure it’s all
right too—I just wanted you to say I could.”

“He’s a decent young man—the one who asked
you?” said Mrs. Strickland, with a hesitation that might have
seemed comical to an outsider. Thin and gray-haired, with slight
customary lines of worry etched in her forehead, she looked
uncertainly at her daughter. This situation was foreign to her, and
she felt slightly perplexed over what she ought to do and say.

“Oh, yes, I think he is,” said Ellie, a bit
of her anxiety returning. “He certainly seems it, Mama. I’ve talked
to him twice, and he’s been very nice to me, and very polite. I
think you’d like him all right.”

“I suppose so. The Newcombs are supposed to
be nice folks, I know. I remember seeing their boy a couple of
years ago. I suppose he’s all right.”

“You can meet him yourself on Saturday,” said
Ellie, “and if you didn’t like him, you could always send him
away…”

She paused uncertainly, having felt herself
bound to make the suggestion, but feeling that would be the worst
possible thing that could happen to her.

“Well, I don’t suppose I’ll have to do
that
,” said Mrs. Strickland.

At the appointed time on Saturday Ellie was
waiting, dressed in her best blue-and-white gingham, meticulously
cleaned and pressed for the occasion. There was a little
apprehension in the glances she occasionally sent up toward the
road, and a small but certain flutter of nervousness in her
stomach. Now that the moment was almost at hand she did not feel
the unqualified eagerness she had at first. She had experienced
doubts as she buttoned up the back of the blue gingham, which
seemed so plain now that she remembered the pretty dresses she had
seen the other girls wear at church; and again as she looked in the
little mirror to put on her straw sailor hat with its stiff navy
and white ribbon. Would she really enjoy herself? Did she really
belong at a party, away from home? Wouldn’t Cole Newcomb regret
asking her, if she didn’t fit in?

Ellie drew a breath and straightened her back
for the twentieth time, and mentally went over everything from her
newly-polished button boots to the handkerchief from which she was
currently crushing the fresh starch in one nervously clenched hand.
Then her carefully-marshaled thoughts flew in all directions, as
the rapid thud of two sets of hoofs and the whir of buggy wheels
pulled her attention back up to the turn off the road. Cole Newcomb
drove down into the yard, at the reins of a smart pair of chestnut
horses. They were smaller and more compact than his rangy bay
saddle horse, suggesting a touch of mustang blood, but their coats
shone and their necks arched and they were evidently at the fullest
capacity of life and spirits, every muscle as taut as the reins and
every bit of metal in the harness jingling as Cole brought them to
a snorting, pawing, reluctant stop.

“What beautiful horses!” Ellie called out,
forgetting nearly half her nervousness in impulsive admiration.

“They’re lookers, aren’t they?” said Cole,
turning his head to speak to her without loosening his hold on the
reins. “I just finished breaking them this month. I hope you’re not
nervous about a fast team, because they still like to go it
whenever I give them the chance.”

“Oh, no, I don’t mind,” said Ellie, whose
only experience of horses for a long time had been Ed’s plodding
work team. “I like them.”

Mrs. Strickland had come out on the front
steps as Cole, twisting the reins around one hand, offered the
other to Ellie to help her into the buggy. She watched him a bit
uncertainly. Cole knew he was under observation, and the look on
Mrs. Strickland’s face as she appraised the young man she had given
leave to drive off with her daughter—a look of anxiety, rather than
suspicion—only increased his liking for her, rather than annoying
him.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Strickland,” he called
to her. “Don’t worry about the horses; I’ve driven them dozens of
times without any trouble. I’ll bring her home safe, I
promise.”

Mrs. Strickland smiled a little, the worried
look almost fading out of her face, and nodded to him in a slightly
shy way that for half a second reminded him of her daughter. Then
Cole spoke to the horses, who dove forward eagerly; chickens flew
squawking indignantly away from their feet; Ellie called a
“Goodbye” to her mother that was almost inaudible between the
racket and her own excitement, and the buggy wheeled out in a wide
circle around the yard.

Ellie could not think of much to say on the
ride, and Cole did not try to get to her to talk. He guessed she
was a little nervous, and that it would only make her more so. She
was pretty, he decided, after a short but observing glance at the
glossy chestnut hair under her hat and the attractive little
sprinkling of freckles on the cheekbones beneath her clear gray
eyes—but rather inconsequently, Cole thought that he liked her
better with the loose wisps of hair round her face like the other
day. Probably not the sort of compliment a girl would appreciate
after she had gotten herself up so carefully for an occasion,
though.

He had no cause to regret his generous
impulse of the other day. In fact he was even more glad now that he
had had it. It was such an easy thing to do. The Newcombs were well
liked and respected all through the county, and Cole himself was
popular enough with the younger set that his taking Ellie would
command her at least politeness and perhaps the attention he
thought she deserved from them. The other girls could not help
liking her once they had a chance to know her, he thought, and
nobody could mind an obnoxious brother who was eight miles
away.

Prairie turned to creek bottom with small
ranches and homesteads nestled in the bends, and cattle or horses
grazing knee-deep in the thick grass. The chestnuts’ hooves clopped
quickly and smartly, the red buggy wheels whizzed, and the sunlight
flickered through the trees that shaded the road along the creek
bank. Ellie sat up straight, her hands folded on her knee and her
eyes fixed ahead, wide and expectant as they explored each new bend
in the road.

At last they reached the picnic ground. Cole
pulled off the road into the little shaded meadow where several
other buggies and wagons stood. The group of young people were
gathered by the creek bank, spreading blankets for the picnic lunch
in the grass, laughing and talking. Having secured the adventurous
chestnuts so that he could expect to find them there still when he
came back, Cole came around and helped Ellie down from the buggy,
and they headed for the picnickers together.

“But who is she?” said Leila Moore in an
undertone, leaning toward her particular chum Nancy Kennedy. They
were sitting together on a blanket unpacking the picnic hampers,
and surreptitiously watching Cole and Ellie approach. “Is she new
around here? I didn’t think—”

“If she’s new, she’s made quick work, that’s
for sure,” said Nancy. She looked for a moment, and then made a
sudden small movement of recognition. “It’s Ellie Strickland. I
wonder where
she
can have met him.”

Leila looked curiously too, but had no chance
for speech, for the newcomers were close enough now that Cole was
answering the merry greetings called out by other members of the
party.

“You all know Ellie, don’t you?” he said at
the end of the initial chatter; and between the fact that most of
them did know who she was, and Cole’s apparently easy assumption
that they knew her better (not at all unintentional on his part),
Ellie received a warm and pleasant welcome.

“Of course we do,” said Nancy Kennedy
sweetly, on the closing notes of the second welcoming chorus,
meanwhile looking Ellie over shrewdly from head to foot.

The one thing that had never even occurred to
Ellie’s knight-errant when he made his plans was the small spark of
envy likely to be felt among some of the young ladies toward the
girl lucky enough to arrive in Cole Newcomb’s buggy. But Nancy,
after taking in Ellie’s neat but plain gingham dress, lightly
freckled face and slightly shy smile, smiled once again herself and
became quite friendly. Here was no rival, she felt sure. The other
girls who had the most tendency to be jealous had likewise soon
convinced themselves of the same, and those who were uninfluenced
by such considerations, both girls and young men, were friendly
from the start.

“Ellie, I haven’t seen you in ages!” said
Susan Hill, making room for her on the blanket. Perky, plump and
rosy-cheeked Susan had been a friend of her school days, and Ellie
was glad to see her there. “Gee, what a surprise. Come on and sit
down.”

Cole indulged in a private grin of
satisfaction, and now at liberty to enjoy himself, flung himself
down on his back on one of the blankets and tipped his hat over his
eyes. “Somebody tell me when we eat,” he said. “I’ve been working
myself to the bone all week and eating’s the only thing I’ve got
the strength for.”

“Oh, yes, you look it,” said Nancy Kennedy,
tossing a napkin at him, which landed on top of the hat. “What’ve
you been doing that’s so rough?”

“Oh, riding up and down the country talking
about threshing-machines…and wrestling those chestnuts of mine.
They’re enough.”

“There’s fried chicken at your elbow, if
you’d bothered to notice,” said Leila Moore, a more practical
siren.

“Don’t anybody move it; I can see you all
from here.”

“I’ll bet you can,” said Nancy, whose favored
tactic was various forms of agreement.

“Ellie, I’m surprised you weren’t scared to
ride behind those horses,” said Leila.

Ellie, who had been helping Susan unpack a
hamper, looked up in surprise and then smiled. “I wasn’t—I thought
they behaved beautifully.” There was a laugh among the young men,
and she glanced around inquisitively. “
Should
I have been
scared?”

“Tell her yes and see what she says,” said
Susan’s brother Tom, grinning.

Ellie laughed. “No, I know you’re teasing.
But I can’t help it; I guess I’ve just never been afraid of horses
much.”

“Good girl,” said Cole, lifting the hat and
meeting the napkin unexpectedly. “Just for that I’d let you drive
them home, but I cannot tell a lie, I don’t trust them with anybody
else yet. They know their master’s voice.”

“Yeah, and not much else,” said Tom.