Sisters of Grass (8 page)

“Margaret, if you're going to drink coffee, you should at least take cream. There's no need to drink it black, as though you're in a cowcamp.” Her father smiled and then returned to the newspaper. He didn't stop reading until plates of eggs and slices of pink ham, mounds of potatoes dusted with parsley, and high golden biscuits were placed in front of the family. Margaret thought she couldn't possibly eat such a huge breakfast, but each mouthful tasted wonderful, and before she knew it, her plate was clean. Her brother and sisters, too, had made similar short work of their breakfasts and were eager to be excused to explore the street. Jenny Stuart took them out into the morning after conferring with her husband to find out what plans he had for the day. He told her he'd arranged to meet someone at a stable down the road in order to inspect a mare. He'd take Margaret, if Jenny could spare her, because he wanted her opinion.

Margaret changed her shoes and they walked the short distance to the stable, arriving there before the man they were to meet. William knew the owner and went into the barn with him to see some saddles, and Margaret remained on the bench in front of the stable, reading the newspaper that had been left there. Each player in the capture of the train robbers had a tale to tell — the provincial constable who first met the three near the Stevens ranch and raced back to Douglas Lake for help, the Royal North West Mounted Police sergeant from Calgary who approached the three men by the fire and accused them of the crime. The paper was full of the story from all possible angles, from notes of the preliminary hearing two days earlier to an account of Bill Miner's connection to the Aspen Grove and Nicola Valley communities. Margaret was engrossed in reading every word when her father came out. She tucked the newspaper into her handbag and rose from the bench as her father said, “Margaret, come see this mare. Tell me what you think.”

William led her through the barn to some holding pens behind. A bay mare was waiting there, pushing her nose curiously in Margaret's direction. She blew air into the flat palm the girl offered her, then lowered her head to smell Margaret's dress, allowing the girl to stroke her ears and run her hands down the mare's neck to the muscular chest. She removed a twig from the forelock, which was short and brushy, like a thistle. The mare was not big, Margaret judged her to be about fifteen hands, maybe fifteen-one, but she gave an impression of vitality because of her broad chest, strong legs, healthy coat and wide clear eyes.

“She's from Cherry Creek,” William explained. “They've got a good breeding program right now, and I'd like to have a purebred mare with her size and strength. I think she'd throw a good foal if we bred her to the Bonny Prince.” The Bonny Prince was the stud that William had acquired a few years earlier, a handsome stallion gentle enough to use as a saddle horse. Margaret thought the prospect of a foal from the two was excellent, and she told her father so.

“Her legs look good, Father, no splints or spavins that I can see. Does she mind her feet being held?”

“Why don't we try her?” William climbed over the fence and approached the mare's left side. She looked at him curiously but didn't move, even when he lifted each foot in turn, examining the inner foot for thrush or damage. He ran his hands down her legs to feel for lumps or sensitive areas and was pleased to find none, pleased that the mare stood quietly for this. Putting his fingers in the sides of her mouth, he opened her jaw so that he could examine her teeth. When he'd finished she blew so hard that her lips vibrated, but still she was calm.

The horse's handler, sensing that a deal was imminent, went into the barn to leave William and Margaret alone.

“I think we'll take her, Margaret. What do you think?”

“She's lovely, Father. Do you intend to ride her home?”

William had thought about this and wondered how best to do it. “She's not in foal now, they weaned her last colt a few months ago, and she's in good condition, I'd say. What about you riding her along with the stage to the stopping house at Trapp Lake, then continuing home in the stage with the others? I'll stay overnight at Trapp Lake and finish the journey the next day. I don't want to strain her; it would be better to keep her pace a little slower than the stage's, I think.”

“But Father, I've nothing to ride in. I didn't bring clothes I could wear to ride all that way.”

William looked at his daughter, cleared his throat once, then twice. “Margaret, I was wrong about the trousers. I shouldn't have let my sister's comments make a difference in the way we conduct our lives. When she and my mother were visiting, I wanted them to approve of what I'd done, the life I'd made with your mother, and Elizabeth's outburst reminded me so much of our father and all that I'd wanted to leave behind. Not the people, if that makes sense, because I did and continue to love them, but their attitudes. And then I behaved just as they wanted me to, I don't know why. I suppose old habits are hard to break. Anyway, girl, you're seventeen now, a young woman, and it's time you stood up for yourself. I'll give you some money and you can buy yourself comfortable clothes for riding. Fair enough?”

Margaret hugged her father and then the mare. The wrangler returned and William bargained a little to bring the asking price down, then the two men walked to the Inland Club to seal the deal with a gentleman's whiskey. Margaret went shopping.

There were so many establishments in Kamloops that Margaret spent a good part of the morning window-shopping. In a druggist's window, a mannequin held a package of headache powders in one hand while the other hand was raised to her forehead as though to massage the pain away. A little pyramid of the powders sat conveniently on a table to her right, should she need more. Passing a bakery, Margaret's mouth watered at the sight of the new loaves arranged in baskets in the window. There was also a shop with photographs in its window, and she stood there for some minutes, looking deep into the images displayed against a background of painted cloth. A wedding party, solemn faces staring out, all except the bride, who was smiling a secret smile, her pale shoulder touching the dark shoulder of her new husband. Various groupings of men in formal suits being handed keys or certificates. One she found almost unbearably sad, the Chinese camp, located a distance from the main part of Kamloops. Margaret guessed that most of the residents were railway workers, but she was shocked at the rows of tents shown in the photograph, the crouched figures in their muddy clothing, one of them looking at the camera with desolate eyes, even some children to one side, up to their ankles in mud. The photograph captured lives lived in squalor and despair, all the more poignant for its placement among the weddings and civil ceremonies of Kamloops. She looked at it for some time, wondering why she felt the way she did. She hadn't known that photographs could do more than provide a picture, but this one seemed to speak a language whose vocabulary she could almost understand.

Margaret found the store she wanted at last, John T. Beaton, Clothier. A sales clerk, dressed in a lovely dress of plaid taffeta with a velvet ribbon tied at her throat, helped Margaret find riding pants of soft green whipcord and a printed broadcloth shirt to go with them. Margaret inhaled the crisp scent of sizing or starch as the clerk led her to a room where she could try them on.

“You look dashing,” the clerk told her as she came out of the room in the outfit. “Not many women have been buying trousers, but that will change. There's a lady photographer in town who wears them all the time, and I think she looks wonderful, but some people look at her as though she's committing a terrible sin. Do you need anything else?”

Margaret changed back into her shirtwaist and paid for the clothing, waiting as the clerk wrapped her purchases in brown paper and tied the parcel with string she cut from a huge roll suspended from the ceiling. She wondered if she'd be able to find her way back to the hotel, but with directions from the sales clerk, she was soon walking up to the entrance. Her mother and sisters and brother were sitting outside on chairs set under the trees, the children drinking sarsaparilla from tall glasses beaded with moisture. Jenny ordered one for Margaret, too.

“Father bought the horse, Mother, and he wants me to ride her part of the way home. She's lovely, quite the nicest mare I've seen in a long time, as nice as Daisy in temperament. And you'll never guess! He gave me money to buy proper trousers for riding.”

Jenny smiled. “So he's come to his senses about that, has he? I hoped he would.”

They sat in the dappled shade for a time, talking quietly of what they'd seen on the streets of Kamloops. Then Jenny took the children up to their rooms to help them get ready for the midday meal, which they ate in the pleasant dining room, joined by William.

“What would you like to do after dinner, Tom? Shall I take you down to the river to watch the sternwheelers?”

“Oh, yes, Father!” cried Tom, and then Jane and Mary asked if they could come, too.

“Certainly,” replied William, in an affable mood because of his new horse. “We'll give your mother and sister a break from your chattering.”

He took the children to the river, Mary and Jane each holding one of his hands and Tom racing ahead. Jenny and Margaret decided to shop for dress lengths and some notions needed for sewing, and the two walked out to the store Jenny was accustomed to dealing with.

On an autumn trip to the Nicola Valley to celebrate a wedding anniversary, my husband and I stay in the Quilchena Hotel in a room facing the golf course beyond a row of Lombardy poplars. High ceilings and a tall window make the small room feel airy and light. Because I want to know how it feels to ride a horse to the tree line, urge it to a gallop along the ridge I can see from my window, look back to the lake in its bowl of afternoon light, we arrange to rent horses for a few hours.

I have dreamed of a girl, have seen her shadow among the pines.

My husband rides Chief, a tall pinto gelding with the narrow chest of a thoroughbred, and I am given Brownie, a quarter-horse mare with a brand on her left shoulder and a sleek bay coat. While the wrangler is saddling her, I untangle a length of wild rose stem from her mane and smell alfalfa on her breath. Riding her is both familiar and exotic, my muscles remembering the shape of a horse's body but aching in the memory. Crossing Quilchena Creek, her feet toss up little sprays of cold water, but she doesn't stop to drink. Her eyes are fixed on the trail and the rump of the wrangler's horse, Minnie. Along the side of the hill, working to the top, pausing to look out at the perfectly clear sky and the patchwork of hayfield and pasture, green and gold, gold and green, threaded by tawny dirt roads on the valley bottom. Southernwood and dust are in the air, and I can hear magpies and crows squabbling down by the barn when a breeze carries their argument up. A girl riding this slope would have heard the crows, smiled at their quarrel. Her horse's feet would have turned up dust and tiny seeds, her heart might have strained as mine does with longing. My horse is willing to jog, eases into a gallop at the tree line to take me across the ridge until I'm breathless with the beauty of the air and sky. At this high point we see piles of bear scat flecked with rose hips, and there are tall firs dangling cones and aspens on the edge of turning. A hawk hangs in the sky below us.

I have so many questions and no one to ask. How bears can sustain themselves on roses, how wind can make such a subtle perfume of dust and leaves, how a young girl can age in the blink of an eye and never understand, until she is a middle-aged woman in red boots riding a borrowed horse, that something irreplaceable is lost and no one else recognizes the loss. A girl to shadow the woman, to take her hands as they walk into brilliant sunlight or under stars, to sleep beside in darkness, her back unbearably tender in her delicate nightdress. Or to dance with, alone in the grassy field, seeds caught in a strand of hair, the hem of a dress. I swing that girl by the hands, letting her fly out with her long skirt floating in wind. I don't know I've let her go until it's too late to bring her safe into my arms and she is flung into memory.

Eating dinner in the restaurant that evening, I watched from the window, hoping to see her return down the golden hill, swim up from the depths of Nicola Lake, float from the sky in the arms of the wind. No one came, though the little bats swooped under the generous eaves and geese settled in the rushes for the night.

The suite of rooms at the Grand Pacific hummed with excitement as the Stuart family dressed for the concert that evening at the Opera House. Margaret had taken her rose muslin gown out of its case when she'd arrived the night before, and its creases had been eased out with the help of a hotel chambermaid. A simple dress, it suited her dark colouring, and the single strand of milky pearls she wore at her throat was a comely touch. Jenny wore her one formal gown of grey taffeta, sewn from a length brought from Astoria by Aunt Elizabeth, with a cameo on the high collar, a gift from William's mother. She had coiled her long braid into a coronet around her head and fixed it with tortoise-shell combs.

“You will be the loveliest ladies at the concert,” William told them, admiring the two as they finished dressing.

“What about us, Father?” Jane and Mary had been ready for some time, having bathed upon their return from the river. Each of them wore a dress of fine white organdy, Mary's gathered at the waist with a blue sash and Jane's with a pale pink sash dotted with rosebuds. Margaret had brushed out their hair from their customary braids and held it back from their foreheads with bands of velvet ribbon she had purchased with her mother that afternoon.