Sisters (13 page)

"How did you know?"

"Some things never
change. Whether it's New York or Wyoming. What I've never understood
is what they want to do that they can't do when women are around.
Spit on the floor? Read the newspapers naked?"

James laughed. "I
think they just feel more relaxed without women around, freer to
speak their minds or not talk at all, if that's what they want. Women
get together in the same way. They wouldn't want a man to invade the
sewing circle, would they?"

"James, I have never
in my life been in a sewing circle, I wouldn't have the vaguest
idea."

"A reading group,
then?"

She shook her head.

"A charity group? A
church group?"

"Nothing like that.
And it's as well for me, I suppose. I've never learned to feel quite
comfortable when there are only women around."

"If you know that, you
must have tried it."

"Only after dinner now
and then when the men retire for cigars and brandy. When it does
happen, I feel extremely awkward and out-of-place. It's as though I
don't know the language. One of the women will say, 'It was a lovely
day last Wednesday,' and someone else will say, 'Wednesday,' in a
knowing way, and there'll be general laughter. I'll think there's
been a double entendre I've missed somehow, but there never is. The
laughter, the little noises ladies make of happiness and sympathy
when they're together, don't seem to me to be a part of rational
discourse."

"It sounds to me as if
you don't like women."

She immediately objected,
but even as she did so, she wondered about the accuracy of his
observations. It was true that, given her preference, she would
always choose the company of men.

Seeming to sense he had
made her uncomfortable, James changed the subject by walking over to
where an engraving was hanging. It showed towering mountains above a
lush valley. "The Big Horns," he said. "If Bierstadt
had just set his easel up a few miles north, you could see the XVH."

"Your home ranch."
As he nodded, she asked, "What do the initials stand for?"

"XV is for fifteen; H
is for Hussars. My father was in the Fifteenth Hussars."

"That's the second
time today you've mentioned your family, and I don't think I've ever
heard you speak of them before."

"Everyone else does."
He smiled. "I hardly need to."

"Americans are
impressed by titles."

"In about the same way
they're impressed with mermaids and Hindus."

"How do you mean?"

"All things they don't
understand. I'll wager I've had to explain a hundred times why it is
I won't ever be a baronet even though my grandfather was. Americans
have a devilish time with primogeniture, so I'm always explaining
that my father was a second son, and so he got no title, no land, and
damn little money when my grandfather died. Nothing personal, just
the way the system works. My uncle's the baronet now, as his eldest
son will be after him."

"What did your father
do with his life? Besides the Hussars?"

"He took the shocking
step of making quite a lot of money. He did it in railways. And then
he further shocked the world by having his fortune divided equally
among my brother, my sister, and me upon his death."

"And they're still in
Scotland."

He nodded.

"But you came here.
Why?"

"The tales I heard
from my grandfather. I had to see it."

"But you stayed."

He smiled. "I suppose
the truth of it is, I like a country where no one understands a
titled aristocracy, a place 's new and open and offers each man a
chance to make what he can of it. It doesn't matter what his birth
order was."

"This afternoon you
were saying something quite different. You talked about having the
'right people' in control of the West, a small select group. That
sounds very much like an aristocracy to me."

He raised his eyebrows,
surprised at her objection. "But not an aristocracy according to
one's birth. A man should rise and fall according to his talent, his
ability, his willingness for hard work."

"And that includes the
Wilsons."

"Of course. And in a
fair fight, the people I'm talking about will triumph over the
Wilsons every time. What I object to is having the rules of the
struggle altered in Wilson's favor. That's what happens when Eastern
newspapers trumpet to the world how villainous the big cattle owners
are and then Eastern politicians follow mindlessly along, passing
laws and issuing decrees harmful to big ranchers. Or, right here in
the territory, take the juries. They render verdicts on the basis of
how much or how little a man owns rather than on the basis of
justice." He paused a moment. "At the very least, no one
should be too indignant if we alter our strategy to meet the new
rules."

Over his shoulder, Sophie
could see the doorway from the dining room, and as James was
speaking, Jake Rodman came through it. As soon as Rodman saw Sophie,
he leaned against the wall and fixed his eyes on her. "And is he
part of your new strategy?" Sophie asked James.

James turned and looked.
"Jake Rodman? No. Well, he's been working for the Stock Growers'
Association about a year now. But we've been hiring detectives for a
long time."

"The man looks like a
hired thug."

"Sophie, is he
bothering you? I will speak to him."

"No, no, there's
nothing to warrant that." It had, after all, been barely
twenty-four hours since James had seen her overreact to the Widow
Bellavance, and she feared that having him confront Rodman for her
would fix in his mind forever an image of her as an easily flustered
female.

But she did want some
relief from Rodman's staring eyes. "James, could you excuse me
for a few minutes?" She left the reading room by the hallway
door and began to look for the ladies' dressing room. The first woman
she asked told her there was none. Since women were admitted to the
Cheyenne Club only on occasions like this, why would they have such a
thing? Sophie finally discovered, however, that a "Ladies"
sign had been hunt on the door of the downstairs dressing room for
the evening. As she entered, she was glad to have a sanctuary where
Jake Rodman couldn't follow. But she also wished she had not let him
unnerve her. He was trying to bother her, she was sure of it. And she
had let him succeed.

Anna May Bellavance and two
other women were in the dressing room. They were standing close
together near one of the marble sinks, and except for Anna May's
somewhat distracted greeting, there was a heavy silence in the air
when Sophie entered. It was obvious she had interrupted a
conversation the women felt uneasy about resuming in her presence.
She went to the other end of the room, sat down at a table in front
of a mirror, and busied herself with a search through her evening
bag. She wanted to think, and she hoped the women would ignore her,
forget about her. Sophie found she couldn't ignore them; she was
unable to help overhearing their conversation. One of the women, a
small birdlike creature, was speaking very excitedly. "We should
leave!" she was saying. "At the very least we should do
that. If they're going to drink, we should walk out!"

"We wore our ribbons,"
Anna May said sunnily. "That lets them know how we feel."
Sophie glanced in the mirror and saw that each of the women had the
white Women's Christian Temperance Union ribbon pinned to her left
breast.

"Ribbons, do you think
ribbons do any good?" The small woman laughed. It was an
unpleasant sound, forced and too high-pitched. "We should go out
and smash the bottles, every one of them. I'd like to break them,
smash them, let that poison run into the gutter. That's where it
belongs. Then we'd do some good."

"Cleantha, you're
upset. You don't really want that. You're just upset." It was
Anna May speaking, not smiling now.

In the mirror, Sophie could
see the small woman called Cleantha hesitate. She put a hand over her
eyes and shook her head. "Maybe I was getting carried away.
You're probably right. It's just that I know what tonight will be
like. I know what he'll be like."

"It's always the same
after they drink," the third woman said in a low, intense voice.

Cleantha nodded. "Always
the same."

In the mirror, Anna May
reached out and put a hand on Cleantha's shoulder. Sophie looked
away, feeling uneasy. Quickly stuffing her things into her bag, she
put her head down and rushed out past the women. Revealed intimacies
always made her uncomfortable, and she wanted to get away. And she
had no really good reason to stay, she told herself. Was Jake Rodman
bothering her? Then she should simply tell him to stop.

As soon as she stepped into
the hallway, she saw him. He was leaning against the staircase
balustrade, and suddenly she was angry, partly for following her, but
also with herself for letting him get on her nerves. She walked up to
him, keeping her eyes fixed on his face. He had heavy lidded eyes, a
hawk nose, a jaw blue with beard. He showed no surprise at her
approach, but she doubted he ever revealed much emotion.

"Mr. Rodman, I intend
to go back into the reading room, and I don't want you to follow me."

"You think I'd do
that?" He talked slowly, barely moving his lips. He smiled a
slow, mocking half-smile.

"You have been
following me. I assume your purpose--and no doubt Mr. Huber's as
well--is to make me uneasy."

"Edgy, are you? Well,
now, I wouldn't say that's from me followin' you. I'd say you just
been worryin' too much about things that don't concern you none."

Sophie suddenly realized
why his studied economy of movement made her so uncomfortable. It was
as though he were saving himself for a quick, savage outburst in
which he would level everything near him. "I'd like you to give
Mr. Huber a message from me," she said, forcing herself to keep
a steady, firm voice. "You tell him that when this evening
began, I wasn't sure what I'd write about Wyoming, but now I've
decided. I want to thank him for that, and you too, Mr. Rodman,
because the two of you have pointed the way. When people discourage
me from looking somewhere, that's the place I inevitably find the
best story."

"Seems to me you're
getting mighty exercised, Mrs. Dymond, when you ought be thinkin'
about takin' things slow and easy. Otherwise... well, you know what
they say about this country. It can be hard on a woman, mighty hard.
'Hell on horses and women'--that's the way they say it."

She could hardly miss the
threat in his words, but she kept herself from showing any reaction
to it. "Just give my message to Mr. Huber," she said. And
she left him leaning against the balustrade.

*

When Sophie came back into
the library, she saw a small crowd had gathered. She approached the
edge of it, and someone stood aside to make room for her. James was
at the center, she saw, James and the blond she had seen him talking
to earlier. The young woman was heavily powdered, but quite
attractive, a curvesome creature, rounded at bosom and cheek. When
she smiled, even her teeth seemed puffed and rounded, like tiny ivory
pillows. When she spoke, the thick honey-colored hair gathered at the
back of her neck stirred on her shoulders.

James was seated with the
young woman behind him. She had her hands on his head and was moving
them, shifting them this way and that as if she were measuring. "I
don't have my tape," she was saying, "but it's obvious we
have a large-sized brain here, and that means great mentality."
She ran her fingers along one side of his head, pressing his skull
gently. "An abnormal spirit of daring, I would say. Great
courage and fearlessness." The young woman was skilled at using
pauses to make her words seem well-considered, and she had a flair
for the dramatic, too--which was really more important, since hardly
anyone took phrenology very seriously anymore. But Sophie did not
like her and did not like her touching James. She managed an
expression of mild amusement, however, well aware that one or two of
the ladies in the crowd were glancing at her covertly to see her
reaction.

"Caution is not so
well-developed," the young woman was saying, "particularly
when compared with the organ of combativeness--or the organ of
self-esteem."

James laughed, as did
several in the crowd. "Tell us about amativeness, Madeleine,"
a male voice called out.

"...a man of taste and
considerable imagination," the young woman was saying, her
fingers moving on.

"Amativeness,
Madeleine, amativeness." The young woman looked up and gave a
tiny shrug and smile. She put one hand on James' forehead and with
the other began a gentle probing at the base of the skull. She closed
her eyes, as if to block out all sensations except those coming
through her fingers. "Mmmmmmm," she said, "love and
regard for women are quite strong." She opened her eyes and
leaned around to look at James. Her smile was not merely admiring, it
clearly communicated an awareness of her own attractions. "Quite
strong, I would say."

There was a cheerful
whistle from someone in the crowd. "Hear, hear," a voice
called out. Then dinner was announced, people began to move off, and
Sophie approached James and the young woman, determined to be
pleasant and gracious. But the young woman gave her a glance so
archly self-satisfied, so smug, that Sophie could not resist a word
with her. She learned close and whispered, "Your hairdo is quite
lovely, my dear, but a little dangerous, don't you think?" The
young woman gave her a puzzled look. "The weight, you know,
right there on the neck. Several doctors have found women with that
style to have grossly enlarged organs of amativeness." She
smiled politely and put her arm through James'. As she let him take
her in to dinner, she regretted that she'd let the young woman
provoke her, and she also felt somewhat perturbed with James. Before
she could ward it off, the thought came: if it had been another
evening and he were with Helen, would he have let the blond woman be
so familiar?