Sisters of Grass (15 page)

When the buggy came up the dusty lane, Margaret was waiting on the porch. Nicholas jumped from his seat and ran up the steps.

“You look beautiful! What a lovely dress! And what have you done to your hair?”

Margaret smiled. She had brushed it, that's all, and run a piece of silk over it to settle it. Had he thought she would be waiting in her riding clothes to be taken to the dance? She let him help her up into the buggy, where her relations were dressed in their finest, too, and waving goodbye to the children watching their sister in awed silence from the rope swing under the cottonwoods, she said a little prayer to herself that the evening would be perfect.

And it was. Jack Thynne was there with his banjo, two men had fiddles, and the music was wonderful. Margaret had been to these fetes all her life and knew the various dances that the musicians would play, the Virginia reel, a Spanish waltz, a polka, one man calling the dances so everyone would know what to do next. Nicholas had never been to this kind of dance and was amazed at the skill expected of all the dancers, the way groups dancing the quadrille would move from one partner to the next in perfect rhythm. During one of the breaks, he and Margaret went outside to get a breath of air. Standing a little way from the hall, he could hear loons on Nicola Lake and coyotes yipping very near. He imagined writing a letter home to describe how one moment he was dancing and the next listening to coyotes outside the hall, the stars so many and so close that they dusted the cheeks and shoulders of the girl he was with, and he wondered what his family would make of it.

“Margaret, may I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“That first afternoon I met you, I said something about the train robbers, and you got angry and said I didn't understand. I got the impression you knew something about the capture that you didn't want anyone else to know. Was I right?”

They had walked away from the hall by then, along the main road towards the Driard Hotel. Every window was lit, and from the road Nicholas and Margaret could hear two men talking quietly on the upper balcony, saw the glow of their cigarettes and heard the clink of glass as something was poured from a bottle. Margaret told him the story then, in a rush, of riding to Chapperon Lake that morning, quietly moving to the edge of the camp and seeing the three men with their simple meal by the campfire, the others confronting them with accusations, the gunfire, the scream of the man who was shot in the leg.

“You must have been terrified!” Nicholas could scarcely imagine what it must have been like for her to come upon the drama as she had, unknowing, a girl on a horse in a remote place.

“I rode away as fast as I could, I didn't really know what it had all been about until later, when the story of the capture began to be told by everyone, but I really thought that George Edwards was innocent. Now it seems he actually did rob trains. I read the newspapers in Kamloops and listened to the accounts of the trial, the first trial and then the retrial just last week, but I still find it hard to think of him as dangerous. He isn't, wasn't, a bad man, not really. How could he be, when everyone, including my father, liked him and trusted him? When he was on his way by train to prison in New Westminster, a woman saw him who said he'd spent a night in her home. This was in the newspaper only yesterday. Lots of us have something like that to say about him — we knew him, liked him, thought of him as just like any other man. And the story of the capture makes the scouting team sound brave beyond belief. But they were the ones who ambushed three men while they were eating and then shot wildly everywhere, not Edwards and the other two. Anyway, I just couldn't talk about it to anyone because I knew how worried my parents would be if they knew I'd been there. It was like a bad dream, Nicholas, and I have even dreamed of it since, often. I wake up with the awful feeling that there's no one to tell. It's such a relief to tell you, but you must promise you won't say anything to my father.”

“But were you frightened when you realized what was happening?”

“Oh, yes, I was. I remember getting off my horse and trying to calm myself by lying down in the grass. I could hear my heart beating, it sounded like a drum. I couldn't believe at first that no one had seen me, I kept expecting the police, although I didn't know then that's who they were, to come after me at a gallop, but I guess there was such confusion at the campfire that no one noticed me or heard my horse's hooves as we left.”

Nicholas put his arm around her shoulder and drew her to his side. His own heart was racing as she told the story, and he was surprised at her courage. “Did you follow the trial closely?”

“I think everyone did. We went to Kamloops just a day after the preliminary hearing to attend a concert — my father had arranged the trip long before. The newspapers were full of it, and my father asked his friend the stage driver to leave newspapers for him twice a week at the crossroads so he could read all about the trial without having to go all the way to Nicola. There was a joke, ‘Bill Miner is not so bad, he only robs Canadian Pacific Railway every two years, but the CPR robs us every day.' I thought of him being taken into Kamloops in the rain, I could see it in my mind so clearly, the wagon bringing the men to the jail on Seymour Street in the streaming rain, the street muddy, bells ringing them in, the light grey and electric at the same time. They were soaking wet and wrapped in blankets, wearing handcuffs, Mr. Edwards in the front with the second man and the one who was shot lying in the back. I could even smell the mud and the wet horses. I heard some of this in Kamloops and read some of it — I feel as if I was there, but I wasn't, really.”

Thinking of her walking in the darkness alongside a hotel that no longer exists apart from its image on sepia cards which I pin to my wall, hoping for a trick of the light to show me her shadow among those cast by slender pines, I want so much to hear her telling her story to the young man at her side. What will come to them, in the fullness of years, is sorrow, and I would take it upon myself if I could.
Give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness
. No one who has walked in darkness in the ardour of youth knows that the garment of praise is so easily put aside. Or that the spirit of heaviness, once taken on, is a weight on the shoulders forever after, a burden to be borne even during times of great joy. Or that what is remembered of a life fades to a few photographs, a receipt for train travel, some dates carved in stone propped up in a graveyard among cactus and stunted iris. In dry air, magpies remember the dead; wind carries seed from one field to another.

They returned to the dance to the opening strains of a waltz. Holding her, Nicholas reflected on how uneventful his own life had been compared to Margaret's thus far, and yet he had sailed to Europe, attended lectures by world-renowned scholars and philosophers, travelled by train across the breadth of America. After the waltz, Archie Kelly, one of the fiddlers, announced that he would play a suite of reels from his native Ireland. The other musicians sat back and listened as he lifted his fiddle and played so swiftly, so uncannily sweetly, that no one danced, no one clapped, but stood in the spell of “Scotch Mary,” “The Dunmore Lassies” and “Robbers Glen.” How ironic, thought Margaret, that there would be a piece of music about the moment at Chapperon Lake before the lawmen arrived on the scene. At midnight, the ladies brought out the supper: platters of cold beef and thin slices of cured ham; baskets of high biscuits, split and filled with sweet butter; slices of pound cake and apple pie and heaps of airy meringues dusted with sugar; urns of tea and coffee, pitchers of lemonade with slivers of ice, and ginger beer. Some of the men went outside to share swallows of rum from flasks they concealed in the buggies, in the wood pile, in the bushes. More dancing followed the supper, and at dawn the Stuart-Jackson buggy headed home along the road that clung to the hillside above the lake, Alice and Eliza asleep on the seat beside August, Margaret and Nicholas holding hands under the blanket that was hardly needed, the air still warm and dry, Venus hanging on the horizon like a tiny brilliant lamp.

The stallions of the valley run through memory, The Boss, The King of Nicola, Rothesay Castle, Bonaparte Denmark, Galloway Prince, Diamond Fire, the generations raised by John Chilihilsa and sent to the Front in France, Woodward's Peppy San, some branded with the three bars of Douglas Lake, some with the curved line over a straight from Guichons, the JL of the Lauder Ranch, the inverted V followed by an X from the Jackson Ranch, T of the Willow, and the Cottonwood's half-circle with a trailing line to represent William's lost gillnetter, its net out for salmon in a glittering sea.

And I have been examining the buckskin jacket, unwrapping it carefully from its tissue. It is so soft to the touch that I want to rub my cheeks against the sleeves. It smells warmly of skin with a recollection of sage, either from the bark woven into the fringe or the smoke used for its curing, smudges that might be ash or fine dust. And it smells of lavender, too, from the little sachet tucked into its tissue. I spend a long time just looking at it, meditating on its empty sleeves, its toggles of horn. What do textiles remember of their makers, the deft touch of their fingers, and do they carry the shape of the bodies who have worn them, the heavy absence of shoulders or the pressure of a spine? In one of the photographs there is a child dressed in buckskin leggings and an overshirt, not one of the fair children in their Sunday best, but a small girl, her black hair braided, serious eyes, and the tiniest of smiles on her lips. Beauty for ashes and a garment of praise.

SORTING AND ARRANGING, preparing and restoring; the artifacts begin to fill the small room I've set aside for preparing them. More tea towels arrive, immaculately laundered, their embroidered proverbs faded but perfectly stitched. And more quilts, a cedar cape from an elderly storekeeper who once took it in trade for tinned milk, a wedding dress made in a remote logging camp for a cook who was marrying a faller and sent up by steamship, a beaded purse, beautiful cotton sheets with fields of wildflowers delicately knotted and feather-stitched along an eyelet border, needlepoint pillow covers, sweaters knitted out of the rough, unwashed wool so beloved of those working in the weather because of its ability to hold in warmth and shed water, baby dresses smocked and pleated, more samplers, including one stitched by a child, with a log cabin overlooked by a sombre moon and a whimsical alphabet. I think of the hands, all the hands, stitching and knitting and folding and smoothing, hands shaping as they cut and turned the fabrics, fitting to bodies, adjusting, by daylight and lamplight. In this room, I seem to be assisted by ghosts as I make my entries, plan and arrange, their hands palpable but unseen, a weight on my own as I fold and smooth.

July passed in the usual way, William attending to the cattle, Jenny to the children and garden, Margaret between them and useful to both. Nicholas Byrne returned to Spences Bridge to work with Mr. Teit and sent a letter:

It is hot here, the sides of the canyon are like oven walls, but the orchards are lovely and green. I like to walk among the trees at dawn while the sprinklers are going. Everything feels cool and alive. I've seen my first rattlesnake. It was reclining in a box of Mrs. Smith's peaches, easily four feet long and with an extraordinary rattle. It looked as though it was sleeping, but then it flicked its tongue in our direction. I'll never forget the odour of it mixed with the perfume of ripe peaches. The man who helps with the irrigation removed it from the crate with a stick and cut off its head. It was fascinating to touch the snake, minus its head, of course, and to discover how dry the skin was. I expected it to be slimy, or damp, at least. I could smell it on my hands for some time after. There has been so much to do, both with Mr. Teit and in getting my bearings in this area.

A fellow took me to see the devastation left behind after a mountain slide last year. Apparently the river was completely dammed after a side of the mountain came down and landed on the Indian village across the river. A train was about to pass through but luckily stopped in time. Passengers on the train saw people and animals being swept along in the torrent of water and mud but couldn't do anything to help. I think that would be terrible beyond imagining. But you must know of this landslide, I'm sure. I've met the new chief, Charles Walkem, and have found him to be a very genial fellow, very keen to rebuild and prosper. He introduced me to the woman who makes baskets, and she is a lot like your grandmother, although I don't think her baskets are quite so fine. She has told me lots of stories, one about a sort of war between fishes and another about Grizzly Bear's grandchild. Each evening I scramble up the mountain above the Murray Creek and look down at the town, with its rivers meeting and rushing down to the Canyon. Once I came back down with a herd of bighorn sheep, and I was amazed at their agility, running down the gravelly slope while I was trying to find a toehold that wouldn't slide away under me.

How are you? I think of you always, imagining you riding your horse along that lovely river. I will come back as soon as I'm able to.

Reading the letter, Margaret remembered the news of the landslide coming to them last year from Spences Bridge. One of her grandmother's cousins had married into the Cook's Ferry band and had attended service in the new Anglican church. Walking home after the service, the group she was with saw the water rushing their way, and they scrambled to higher ground. Those who had lingered at the church, those who had remained in their houses, and children who were playing by the river were washed away. Margaret's grandmother had been very sad at the news and told her that some believed the tribe was doomed to extinction and might see this as part of the end. An entire group of wintering Thompsons had been killed by smallpox years earlier, very near to where the Cook's Ferry slide occurred. Grandmother Jackson felt it must have been an unlucky place to build a village. Yet Margaret had been to Spences Bridge with her father and had stood on the banks of the Thompson River where the Nicola swirled into it, seen the remnants of fish camps all along the shore, even a few kikulis on higher ground. She thought the location was beautiful. Mountains rising from either side of the canyon, threaded with creeks and waterfalls coming down off the cliffs like liquid silver. The air was intense and dry, pungent with sage. She could actually smell the rivers, too — the familiar Nicola with its edge of snow from its high watershed past Barton Lake, the Thompson with its flinty nose of benchlands and rattlesnakes. Margaret had been hoping to see a rattlesnake, but it was still too early for them to come out of their dens on the talus slope, though she found the sun very warm — it was early March — and watched the grass expectantly anyway.

Once Nicholas did come, but Margaret had gone with one of the Nicola ladies to Kamloops by stage for a few days. When she returned home, she was bitterly disappointed to find out she had missed his visit. It had been brief, and he'd had to return to Spences Bridge to meet with Dr. Charles Newcombe, who was travelling up from Victoria to purchase some baskets and clothing that Mr. Teit had accumulated. He left a letter for her with Jenny and promised to come again soon. Margaret went for a ride that evening, letting Daisy gallop until she was quite damp with sweat and then cooling her down by a creek that made its way down the hill to meet with the Nicola River. Margaret sat in the dry grass and let Daisy graze, holding the reins in her right hand while she wiped at tears with her left. She had never felt so lonely in her life, although the only thing that had changed was her meeting with Nicholas, and he was gone, so oughtn't she to feel as she had before he came? It was hard to fathom how a person could feel so bereft and lonesome, just because another was absent. It was not only that he was far away but that there was no possibility of an evening visit, even though there hadn't been many: the sight of dust rising on the Douglas Lake road and then the sound of his horse on the lane. Or the knowledge that he was sleeping just a few miles away, under the same sky, the same moon in its house over him. She wondered if her mother and father felt this way when her father was away in the cowcamps or the branding camps for weeks at a time. Her mother always seemed busy and never cried. Yet she was quiet in the evenings and given to looking out windows at the black night. She often prepared his favourite foods and told the children as they were eating, “Your father loves these biscuits, I hope he's eating well.”

While Margaret sat in the grass, she remembered how she had once felt the presence of the young girl here among the rocks and dry earth, and she wondered if the girl had longed for a particular young man, made excuses to be around him, watched him under shy lashes at communal events. Margaret hoped she hadn't died without feeling the sharp catch of her breath in her throat when the boy caught her eye or brushed against her. She took solace in the fact that she was alive to feel these things, not buried with a necklace of elk teeth and a drinking tube she would never use. She'd kept the drinking tube after cleaning it carefully, she'd even used it to drink from the Nicola River; how odd it had felt to taste the living water coming up through the ancient length of bone, flakes of calcium coming away against her palate. She kept it on the windowsill in her bedroom, a charm to be held and wondered at on nights when, sleepless, she stood looking at the stars. Had the girl's mouth ever touched the surface, had her tongue probed the opening, wearing the rough edges smooth over time?

The whole family helped with haying, moving up to the hay camp for its duration, while Jenny's sister Josie stayed at the ranch house to feed the chickens and pigs, milk the cow, and keep an eye on Thistle and the Bonny Prince. The hay camp was fun for the younger children, they were allowed to sleep in tents and ride with William on the mower or bull rake, depending on what he was doing. The hay, once cut, dried and raked, was stacked with the help of swinging boom stackers, moved from stack to stack as needed. Once a stack was finished, those on top who had helped to place and level the hay coming up would ride to the ground again on a sling. When William was working on the stackers, he'd allow the children up to the top of the stack to help, and then they'd ride down on the sling, shrieking with excitement as the sling dangled and swung. At night, the men would wash in the creek and sleep early, after a game or two of poker or horseshoes on the shorn field, because the mornings began at four thirty; they could be heard talking quietly in their tents or else snoring. The Chinese cook smoked in the evenings outside his cabin, the fumes of opium and the joss he burned inside hanging over the clean scent of hay like an exotic curtain. Margaret rose early to help catch and harness the horses. She loved the sight of them in the dawn field, standing in groups near a cottonwood, and their movement toward her as she rattled oats in a bucket to catch their attention, looming out of the mist, huge and sombre. She had her favourites among the working teams — a pair of Clydesdales named Bill and Florrie, who had massive feet and densely feathered fetlocks. She liked to fit their harnesses on while they held their big heads low for her, and they always stood stock still while she fastened the straps under their bellies and tails. In the mornings their cool faces smelled of grass, an occasional seed caught in the fine hairs on their lips. The way they wrinkled their lips around their teeth reminded her of the toothless old men she saw in church, working their gums while the minister preached of God and angels.

Hay camp was a pleasant diversion from Margaret's preoccupation with Nicholas. Up on the hay meadows, she stopped half-expecting to see him riding up to the house, she wasn't reminded of his mouth as he kissed her under the trees on the road to Douglas Lake, and she had no privacy in the tent she shared with her sisters to fill with the memory of dancing with him in the Nicola Hall, the pressure of his hand on the small of her back. When she did remember, it was the weight of his body against hers during a waltz, his face against her hair. It was kissing him while around them lightning crackled and snapped, the taste of his mouth. She remembered the shock and excitement in his eyes as the two of them steadied Thistle while the stallion grunted and thrust into her, his teeth bared as he released his seed into her damp mysterious body. And Margaret remembered washing herself by lamplight that evening, and how she had felt she was drowning in pleasure.

The days at the hay camp were sunny and warm, an occasional afternoon storm coming in from the northeast to cloud the skies, produce thunderheads and summer lightning, then pass as quickly as it arrived. When the hay was all stacked and the family had packed up their belongings, the wagon returned them to the home ranch, where the garden was flourishing and the redtailed hawk chicks in the big cottonwood were beginning to fly, their parents teaching them tricks of aviation and pursuit. The songbirds were fledging, too, just in time for the parent hawks to teach their young to hunt inexperienced larks, as well as ground squirrels and the marmots whistling on the rough shoulders of the erratics.

There was a letter from Nicholas to say he was coming to Spahomin for four days in early August. Before he arrived, Margaret rode to her grandmother's cabin to help her gather rose hips for drying. She tried to time her visits with a plant trip so that she could learn how and where to gather the roots, stems, and berries that her grandmother used for food and medicine. It was one thing to sit in the kitchen and hear Grandmother Jackson describe how to dig up a tuber or remove a certain portion of a tree's bark and another to walk the dry hills or creek banks with the gathering baskets and watch exactly how much bark to take or whether the berries were at the right point of ripeness. The rose hips were perfect, plump and full. They filled one basket, and then Grandmother carefully cut some stems of the rose bushes to take back to use for basket handles. They found some tall mint growing on the banks of a creek and cut many stems of it to dry for keeping bugs away from the beds.

“I'll put some of this inside the pillows,” said Grandmother Jackson. “The feathers get musty, and the mint will make them fresh.”

“Nicholas has written me to say he's coming in a few days. Do you mind him staying with you?” Margaret wanted to hear her grandmother's opinion of the man whose name filled her with such pleasure.