Corral Nocturne (6 page)

“What’s all this fuss over a new dress for,
anyway?” said Ed from the corner where he was barricaded with a
newspaper, having been forced to withdraw there by the amount of
“frills and stuff,” as he put it, laid out on the table and the
hard-cushioned old sofa.

“Ellie’s going to the Fourth of July dance,
that’s what it’s about,” said Mrs. Strickland.

“How’s she going to get there?”

“Cole Newcomb is taking me,” said Ellie,
unconsciously sitting up a little straighter as she pronounced the
words. She had laid aside the catalogue, and was working on basting
a ruffle for the dress’s flounced hem.

Ed cocked his head lazily with the first
appearance of interest he had shown. “Newcomb, eh?” he said.
“Pretty swell company you’re getting yourself into there.”

“Oh, no, Cole’s not like that at all. He’s
very nice,” said Ellie absently, intent upon a delicate bit of
gathering.

Ed gave the combined grunt and sniff of the
unconvinced and retired again behind his paper. “Still watch out if
I was you. Pretty fast sort, I’ll bet, what with the money old
Newcomb’s got, and his getting educated back East, and driving a
pair of horses like that. What’s he doing hanging around here at
the Fourth, when he could have his pick out of the girls up that
way whose folks are closer to what the Newcombs have got?”

Ellie stared at her brother, letting her work
rest in her lap for a second. An oddly uneasy, sickly feeling
burned in her throat, startling her with its unpleasantness. The
ill-natured speculations cut sharply and unexpectedly into tender
places she had not known existed. But Ed was reading, apparently
only half his mind on what he had been saying, and Mrs. Strickland
was murmuring to herself counting something in her work and had not
been paying attention.

It was only a moment’s sensation, and Ellie
brushed it off with a short shake of the head to herself and picked
up her ruffle. She was not accustomed to set much store by what Ed
said anyway.

“There,” she said a few minutes later,
lifting the gathered ruffle and shaking it out lightly. “I’ve
finished basting this one, Mama. Can we put them on tonight?”

“No, better wait till tomorrow so we don’t
have to stop midway through. I declare, I’m never sure when I stop
working that old machine if it’ll ever start again. Every time it
sticks I figure it’s through. I’d rather have daylight to do those
flounces by anyhow.”

“It’ll all be done in plenty of time, though,
won’t it?” inquired Ellie very meekly, knowing it was perhaps the
tenth time she had put that question.

“Plenty. What’s the use of having it done
before your shoes get here, anyway? Then you can try it all on
together.”

Ellie smiled and sighed. “I know. I’m just so
eager for the Fourth, I can’t wait for it all to be ready! I wish
the dance was tomorrow.”

She came very near regretting that wish a few
days later.

It was a hot, windy afternoon three days
before the Fourth, and Ellie was out hanging up the wash on the
line, when she heard hoofbeats and looked over her shoulder to see
Cole Newcomb riding in. Ellie left a sheet swinging from a
clothespin at one corner and ran to the gate to meet him, as had
become her habit when he turned up unexpectedly.

Today, however, Cole was holding the bay
horse down to a trot, and the weight of something perplexing seemed
to be resting on him when he pulled up at the gate, in a marked
difference from his usual carefree demeanor.

“Ellie,” he said after they had exchanged a
greeting, “I’ve got kind of bad news for you, but it’s not as bad
as it could be. I’ve got to go out to one of our roundup camps for
Dad, and I don’t know if I’ll be back in time for the Fourth.”

“Oh,” said Ellie. Surprise, uncertainty were
in her voice, neither very overwhelming—no hint of the happy
expectations and careful plans she saw tumbling down all around
her. But Cole was speaking again.

“I don’t want you to miss out, though. I’m
going to try and get through at the roundup so that I can make it
back in the afternoon or evening on the Fourth, but I won’t be in
time to drive you to the dance. But if you can find another ride
there—if you can get your brother to take you, or go with
neighbors—I’ll be there myself a little late, and I’ll drive you
home. Do you think you can do that?”

“I’ll try, that’s for sure,” said Ellie. “I’m
almost sure I can.”

“You could have gone with my people, if they
were going,” said Cole, “but Mother doesn’t feel up to it, and
Dad’s just taking the girls into town early in the day for the
firecrackers and the bronc-riding. I’m awfully sorry about this,
Ellie.” He smiled down at her rather ruefully.

“It’s all right,” said Ellie, her spirits
rising again now she knew the night at the dance was back in the
realm of possibility, where at least she could grasp at it. “I’ll
find someone to go with. And it isn’t as if you could have done
anything else.”

Cole grinned, looking more like his old self
again. “I knew you’d be a good sport about it. I wish it hadn’t
turned out this way, though.” The bay horse shifted restively.
“Till Friday night, then?”

“Friday night,” said Ellie almost gaily,
squinting against the whipping wind and the sun in her eyes.

But after he had ridden away, a line of
mingled anxiety and resolve appeared on her forehead as she walked
back to the clothesline, where the half-hung sheet was flapping and
twisting itself around in the wind as if in agony. Ed would not
want to go on Friday; he was already a little put out about having
to go into town again on Wednesday to pick up Ellie’s new shoes at
the post office. He was haying all this week and would insist the
horses were tired. But surely some of their near neighbors were
going to the dance and could take Ellie with them. She had three
days to find out who was going and ask the favor.

Suddenly the space of time left till the
longed-for dance seemed all too short.

Cole did not know the blunder he had made.
One might argue that it was excusable enough on his part—the
ranchers who lived around the Newcombs all had good horses and
capacious buggies and were nearly always able to offer an extra
seat to a neighbor’s daughter on occasions like this. He assumed
that Ellie would easily be able to find a ride close to home. But
the plainer-living homesteaders within reasonable distance of the
Stricklands’ did not always attend Fourth of July festivities and
had not much room to spare when they did.

This thought had crossed Ellie’s mind even as
they spoke, but some touch of shyness or pride had held her back
from asking him to procure her a favor from his friends. She had
already received so many favors from his hand, and perhaps Ed’s
remarks about the Newcombs’ more well-off neighbors had hung in the
back of her mind more than she knew.

If Cole had but known the difficulty, he
would have asked the Moores or the Hills or some other of his
neighbors to take Ellie to the dance with them, without the least
hesitation—but the thought simply never crossed his mind.

Ed came back from town on Wednesday with the
parcel containing the new shoes, but when Ellie flew out to the
wagon and took it from him she hardly even looked at it. She had
extracted a promise from Ed to stop at several neighbors’ on the
way back and ask if they might take her Friday evening. She had a
feeling he was not the best emissary she could have sent to explain
her predicament, but she had not much choice.

“Ed, what did they say?” she asked, following
him around to the back of the wagon.

Ed heaved a sack of grain over his shoulder,
carried it a few steps and thumped it down before answering. “Saw
Bentley in town. They’re going early, so unless you want to be in
town all day it’s no go. Crawfords aren’t going. The Staceys are,
but they haven’t got room.”

“No room at all?”

“They’ve already got five people in a
four-seater buggy,” said Ed impatiently. “Better give it up, Ellie.
You’re not going to make it.”

Ellie leaned over the corner of the end gate
as he pulled off another sack and bent to put it down. “But you
haven’t asked everyone yet! What about the McGregors? Couldn’t they
take me?”

Ed came upright even more impatiently. “Look,
Ellie, I drove all the way out to Crawfords’ and wasted half the
morning for you. I’m not going to go all the way down to McGregors’
just to have them say no too. I haven’t got the time.

Ellie folded her lips together in an
expression that was very much a younger version of the one her
mother had so lately pioneered. She had not expected much help from
her brother, but this flat evidence of it stirred a little spark of
temper in her. “Well, I’m not going to miss what might be my only
chance just because you haven’t got the time! I’ll go down and ask
them myself.” She whirled and ran up the steps to the house with
the shoe parcel under her arm.

“How’re you going to get there?” Ed yelled
after her.

“I’ll walk!” she flung back, and let the
screen door close behind her with a crash.

“Mama, I’m going to go down to McGregors’ and
see if they can take me on Friday,” she said, laying down the
parcel on the table in passing as she headed for her bedroom to
find her hat.

“All that way? That’s a long piece to walk,
Ellie. Can’t Ed take you?”

“Ed won’t,” said Ellie simply, reappearing in
the bedroom door with hat in hand. “I don’t mind walking. I’ve got
to go, that’s all there is to it. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Ellie, wait—don’t you even want to open up
your new shoes and look at them? I thought you’d been waiting to
see them all this time.”

Ellie paused in the doorway, and gave a
rueful half-shrug. “No, you can open them. If I can’t get to the
dance I’ve got no reason to wear them, and if that’s so—well, I
think I’d rather not look at them!” she finished, with a laugh that
did not quite ring true, and fled.

Mrs. Strickland looked after her, and then
sighed as she drew the brown-paper parcel across the table to her
and began to undo the string.

It was a bright, hot midsummer day, and the
sun beat down with a vigor that went right through Ellie’s thin
straw hat as she walked the dry road down to McGregors’. The grass
by the roadside was browned and bent over, and the road itself fine
dust. Heat and dust, however, were trials of but a moment, and if
enduring them would help her on her way to the Fourth of July dance
Ellie was ready to meet them. She walked so steadily that after a
little while the yoke of her dress was damp all around the collar
and the wisps of hair around her ears were curling with
perspiration. Just
why
this dance was so important to her
Ellie did not fully know—if she had had to miss one of the other
picnics she had enjoyed, it would have been a disappointment, but
it would not have shattered her world. It wasn’t just that the
Fourth of July dance was bigger or more exciting, or even the new
dress. Somehow this night had a significance whose exact quality
she was not certain of yet—but it was there.

When at last she came in sight of the
McGregor place, picking her way a little more slowly because the
road grew rougher here, she gave a small sigh of relief—and then
stumbled and nearly turned her ankle on a loose stone underfoot.
The very idea was so alarming that she had to stop to lean over and
rub her ankle anxiously, and make sure it was all right. A twisted
ankle before the dance would have been the very last straw. Assured
that it was indeed all right, she took the opportunity to beat the
worst of the dust out of her skirt, and then straightened up and
went on into the yard.

The McGregor homestead was enough to give one
pause at first sight. Its owners were prosperous but haphazard in
their habits, and their dwelling reflected it. A mowing-machine and
a harrow reposed crookedly by the fence, looking as if they might
easily become entangled if someone tried to extract one of them;
the various outbuildings stood at odd angles and their roofs, made
up of mismatched odds and ends of board, may have been proof enough
against the elements but had a decidedly cockeyed look. The long
sod house was sprouting weeds and wildflowers at every chink, and
the clothesline, hung on poles of varying heights, gave the sheets
upon it the effect of sails on a violently pitching ship.