Rest and Be Thankful (11 page)

Sally laughed. “Thank you, darling. And what about the great outdoors? Or is it just to be a background for intelligent conversation?”

“Oh, it will be there,” Mrs. Peel said vaguely, as she led the way to the kitchen to get two carrots for Golden Boy. “It always is. But you mustn’t judge others by yourself, Sally. We don’t all throw ourselves with such abandon into the Wild West.” She glanced at Sally’s tight blue jeans and then at her own tweed skirt. Three more pounds, she thought, and I can risk it.

“Golden Boy needs exercise. Why don’t you try him out tonight?”

“I’m getting to know him first.” And she also had to finish the article in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
on Horsemanship and Riding.

They crossed the yard, passed the garage, and entered the road that would take them to the corral and the west pasture. “I’ve an idea,” Mrs. Peel announced. “I’ll let Jackson exercise Golden Boy meanwhile. That will cheer him up: he really is so gloomy these days. What can be wrong?”

“Ask him,” Sally suggested. Then she stopped short. “Good heavens! What’s this?”

This was a young girl with gleaming gold hair, narrow hips snug in tight pearl-grey trousers, green satin sleeves swinging loose from her white buckskin waistcoat, who stood near the entrance to the saddle-barn. Beside her was a black horse with an elaborate leather saddle. An enormous dog of undistinguishable breed lay at her feet, but its long coat had been as carefully brushed as the horse had been curried and polished.

The cowboys had gathered round, of course. Jackson was there too, sitting on the five-barred fence as if he had always been accustomed to perch eight feet from the ground. Ned looked as if he had found something other than calves to rope. Jim Brent was there, his horse saddled and bridled for an evening ride, but now it was tethered to the hitching-rail and quite forgotten. Mrs. Gunn and her pretty niece Norah (who had arrived from Three Springs only that morning) had come up for an evening stroll to see Ned’s calf-roping. They were trying to stand somewhat aside, and yet they too were caught into the group, fascinated by what they saw. The girl’s long gold hair, braided into two plaits reaching just below her shoulders, was tied with bright green ribbon bows. Her hat of fine white straw, broad-brimmed, with its edges curving like peregrine wings, sat as demurely as the Empress Eugénie’s over the centre of her brow. Her feet were small in the narrow pointed boots of fine green leather.

For a moment Mrs. Peel, remembering the carrots (which she knew were not the correct Western approach to a horse), hesitated. Then, holding them openly in her hand, she walked bravely on with Sally. Mrs. Gunn came to meet them.

“It’s the girl from Phoenix,” she explained quickly, in a hushed voice. She shot a glance at Ned, and shook her head. “She’s just arrived.” This time she shot a glance at the bright green car and the gleaming aluminium horse-trailer which had been parked at one side of the saddle-barn. “If she can clean as well as she can ride she’ll be good.”

“You mean she’s the nice girl from Phoenix Ned told us about? Our new upstairs maid?” Sally asked, keeping her voice equally hushed. Mrs. Peel was still fitting Mrs. Gunn’s glances into a pattern.

“That’s her.” Mrs. Gunn looked at Ned again. “I kind of think we’re lucky that Robb’s nice girl from Butte went and got married last week.”

By this time the three women had approached the group round the corral. Ned stopped his conversation to turn to them with a proud smile. “Mrs. Peel, Miss Bly, I want you to meet Miss Drene Travers.”

Miss Drene Travers put out a neat little hand and gave a fine grip. She had very large dark blue eyes, with black eyelashes and skilfully marked brows. Her skin, incredibly untanned, had the same smooth finish that the slender, straight-haired girls, forever hurrying along Lexington Avenue, in New York, with mysterious patent-leather hatboxes, always displayed as they turned a photogenic chin-line to their passing public. She smiled slowly, showing even white teeth between the deep red lips. “Hello, how are
you?”
That was all. But Sally had to admit it was devastating.

Mrs. Peel, unaccustomed as she was to public welcoming, had the feeling that a few phrases would not be out of place. The silent men around her, who had been such good hosts themselves, obviously expected her to rise to the occasion. They were presenting the newcomer to her as Ned’s friend, a stranger to be made at home, an interesting piece of decoration which would bring the bright colour and humour of Madison Square Garden to the workaday world of Flying Tail Ranch. Mrs. Peel, if puzzled by the respect with which they looked at the girl (for she had arrived too late to see Drene’s exhibition of riding, which had won even Mrs. Gunn’s admiration), put it all down to Western gallantry. She had been impressed by it from the very beginning: men here believed that you were all right until you proved you weren’t. So, as she admired Drene’s long, flickering eyelashes, she made a neat little speech hoping Drene would like Rest and be Thankful. She was conscious of the smile in Sally’s eyes, and she took the last hurdle with a crash. “Mrs. Gunn will show you where to sleep,” she ended. Now what on earth had made her bring
that
up? She added quickly, “I was just going to tempt Golden Boy.” And she smiled gaily and waved the carrots to distract all attention. She succeeded.

Drene’s black horse stretched his neck towards them. The green satin sleeve billowed as the neat little hand came smartly up and clipped him sharply over his face with the reins. Only Mrs. Peel and Sally Bly were startled. And they flinched again as the horse was pulled sharply round and struck once more. Drene’s narrow, pointed toe seemed to spring into the stirrup as she swung herself lightly into the saddle. Her shoulders were neatly held, her hips moved in understated rhythm, and her body fell into a compact, well-timed jig as the horse broke into its dancing trot. The enormous dog rose, and loped along at the heels of the horse.

Sally had only to look at the eyes of the silent audience to know this was very good, very good indeed. Ned and Robb had mounted too, and were urging their horses into a canter. The others looked as if they were ready to follow.

“She’s very good,” Sally said, watching the horse and rider as they cantered round the west pasture.

“A well-trained horse,” Bert said, and shifted his hat more over his eyes. Jackson, shifting his hat too, nodded. Chuck agreed.

Mrs. Peel held the carrots less conspicuously. But I couldn’t hit Golden Boy, she thought despairingly, even if that
is
the right way and this (she looked at the carrots) is not.

Jim Brent came over to Sally. “Like to go for a ride?” he asked.

“Not tonight, thank you,” she said, keeping her voice as casual as his. Not after that, she thought: I’d feel like a sack of flour bouncing around on the saddle. She looked at the hillsides, now veined with shadows, and persuaded herself it was much too late anyway. Margaret might have the wit not to stand there looking so damned amazed either.

At that moment, fortunately, the next distraction arrived in the long black shape of a Lincoln. It prowled up the road from the bridge with a rich, satisfying hum that drew all heads around, as if they were paper clips turning towards a magnet. The car slowed down, became undecided, stopped. A man put an excellent brown suede shoe carefully on to the roadway as if testing the dusty surface. Then he stepped out. He was tall. He wore his light camel-hair coat draped round his shoulders as if it were a cape. His hair was white and carefully waved. He shielded his eyes against the sloping rays of the sun.

“It’s Prender,” Mrs. Peel said.

“Is this Rest and be Thankful?” he called, and turned for a moment to say something to his two companions in the car. A girl’s voice laughed gaily, and a man answered jokingly.

“And I think that sounds like Dewey Schmetterling with him,” Sally said, in amazement mixed with horror.

“But what is
he
doing here?” Mrs. Peel said, and handed the carrots quickly to Jackson.

The riders had noticed the car’s arrival too. They had also decided their evening ride was over, for they came—the green sleeves first, the men rather unwillingly after—at a gallop towards the corral in a fine flurry of flying manes and tails. Yet Miss Drene Travers, as she pulled up so spectacularly beside Jim Brent in full view of the astonished newcomers, was not looking at the car. She didn’t dismount; she sat superbly in golden silence and turned her quiet eyes to the hills. Sally could only spare one admiring look for such an exquisite still-life, before she had to hurry towards the car. Margaret Peel stopped to murmur to Mrs. Gunn,
“Please
take charge.” She glanced at Drene as she spoke, but the expression on her face told Mrs. Gunn that the car had brought its own set of problems too.

Jim Brent also had noted Mrs. Peel’s expression. Just as he had noted that Sally was walking with a very firm heel-to-toe stride towards the car. She walked that way only when she was angry about something and was making up her mind to take action.

Bert said to him, “Hey! Some of these writer fellows must make money.”

“It would seem that way,” Robb said, watching another camel-hair coat step into view.

Jim nodded. He hadn’t expected this kind of arrival. Nor had Sally Bly, he was damned sure. He unsaddled his horse, turned him loose into the west pasture, and carried the saddle with its blanket and bridle into the barn. He didn’t give a second look at the car or at the girl on the black horse. It had amused him to see the reaction she caused, but he wasn’t the kind of man to prolong a joke. If she did her work to please Ma Gunn, and didn’t cause any trouble among the boys, then he didn’t object. Besides, she was a bit of brightness for the evenings when the boys gathered around with little to do. She was probably a decent kid, just another rodeo-struck girl who worked in the summers and performed in the winters. Having decided he was only taking a thoroughly practical attitude to the whole business, he walked out of the saddle-barn, gave a general good night to all of them, and started towards his cabin. He glanced briefly at the car as he passed it. The second man was young-looking, small, thin, dark-haired. He was looking towards the corral, studying the group there with obvious delight. A girl, with smooth red hair and redder lips, was standing with considerable elegance, her slender feet posed ballet-fashion in flat-heeled slippers. She wore a very wide, very long skirt, flaring from a small, belted waistline. She looked at Jim and smiled. Well, he thought, the boys are hardly going to miss the movies at all this summer. Mrs. Peel was too busy talking to notice him go by. The men were too busy looking at Drene on horseback. But it seemed to him that Sally’s smile was too small and somehow pathetic.

“We’ll leave the car here,” Mrs. Peel was saying, “and Jackson will put it away, we’ll take the luggage, the house is just beyond the trees, however did you pass its entrance, didn’t you see my little signpost at the bridge?” She ran out of breath, but if she didn’t keep talking she was going to be rude. So she talked on, angrily aware of Dewey Schmetterling, the uninvited guest. Not only uninvited, but totally unimagined. And there he was, as coolly under control as if he had been expected. He hadn’t even bothered to explain his arrival. But, then, Dewey never explained. Surely we have entertained him quite enough, Mrs. Peel thought bitterly; in Paris, in Rapallo, in New York. Why has he come here? I’m positive our charms aren’t so marked as all that.

“And is all this included with the sunset?” Dewey Schmetterling asked, watching Miss Drene Travers dismount by swinging her leg forward, across and over the flowing black mane.
“And
a perfect three-point landing. Mimi, you will have some new postures to learn, thank God. If I spend another winter at parties, tripping over girls’ splayed feet and pointed toes, I’ll abandon New York.”

“Yes, darling,” Mimi Bassinbrook said, so amiably that Sally buried her very feminine thought that ballet slippers had been out of vogue by last winter, too.

Prender, who had been remarkably silent, now became business-like as his eye counted the numerous suitcases. “What about one of these men doing this job?” He looked, as he spoke, at Jim Brent’s retreating back.

“No!” Sally said sharply, and stopped Prender’s ready command just in time. “This isn’t our territory,” she explained more quietly. “This is Flying Tail Ranch. We only pass through it on our way to ride.”

“The natives seem friendly,” Dewey said, and Mimi Bassinbrook laughed. She had a pleasant laugh to match her pretty face. Prender Atherton Jones seemed less amused. Perhaps, Sally thought, he had travelled two thousand miles with that laugh. Or perhaps (as she noted how he left the heavier suitcases for Dewey to carry) there were other reasons. Prender had a slightly ruffled air, as if he were in one of his deeply wounded moods.

“What a marvellous sunset!” Mimi said, and pointed with charming delight. Sally looked at the red hair gleaming brightly in the sun’s yellow rays. All this, she thought, and Drene too. What a summer we are going to have!

“A very grade A sunset in the very best Technicolor,” Dewey said.

Prender spoke rather sourly Mrs. Peel thought. “We’ll be in a much more admiring mood after dinner.”

“After dinner?” Mrs. Peel looked in alarm at Sally. “Didn’t you have dinner at Three Springs or Sweetwater?”

“No. It was much too early. It is absolutely impossible to digest anything calling itself dinner at six.” He glanced at his watch, and nodded approvingly. “It is not quite eight o’clock now. We’ll wash and have a quick cocktail first. Is this the house?” He stood for a moment, looking at it. “Delightfully rustic, my dear.” He opened the large double screen door and passed into the hall. He nodded approvingly once more and put the suitcases down where the servants might find them and carry them upstairs to unpack.

“Isn’t this
darling?”
Miss Bassinbrook said, glancing from the white hall into the green living-room.

“It will be, after I’ve had a couple of drinks from a tall, frosted glass,” Dewey Schmetterling said, and let his suitcases fall. He leaned against the banisters, a slender, elegant young man, and was conscious in a most unconscious way of Mimi’s admiration. Prender frowned heavily.