The Lost Wagon Part 44

"Yes. There are meadows back here where we'll find them if there are any around. They stay there because of good gra.s.s and it's out of the wind.

If we find a herd, take those on the outside first."

A little while later Ellis held up his hand because it would be unwise to speak, dismounted, and tied his horse to a tree. Joe slid off the mule and tied her. He followed Ellis through the pines and looked down on an open meadow.

Sixteen buffaloes moved sluggishly about while they sc.r.a.ped for gra.s.s with ponderous hoofs. Ellis Garner's rifle came up as easily as though it were an extension of his own arm. He sighed, shot, and a buffalo dropped heavily. Ellis indicated another cow that stood on the fringe of the herd and reloaded.

They shot six before the rest scented blood and pounded clumsily away in a cloud of flying snow. Ellis watched the fleeing herd until it was out of sight. Joe warmed to him. Whatever Ellis might be, he was no deliberate killer. He had shot buffalo because it was part of his job, not because he loved to shoot. Joe suspected that a flying buck or lurking elk would have been game much more to his liking.

Ellis asked, "Want to bring a sled up while I skin these? If we both leave, they'll be nothing but wolf bait."

"I'll help you."

"It's no job. You just slit them up the belly and around the legs, cut a slot for a rope, and let your horse pull the skin off. I'll be done by the time you're back."

Joe said, "Tad shot a buffalo on the way to Laramie and it took us a long while to skin it. Where'd you learn this trick?"

"Jim taught me."

Joe rode the mare mule back to the post, harnessed the team and hitched them to one of Snedeker's bobsleds. He followed the tracks they'd made going in and saw the six buffalo carca.s.ses, rawly naked already freezing. Ellis was walking about, beating his hands together to warm them.

"Better take some of the humps," he said. "It's one of the best parts."

Joe scratched his head. "I heard that too, but I couldn't even cut it out."

"I'll show you."

There was a ridge of bone over the hump, but it did not go clear through. Ellis inserted his knife, cut deftly, and lifted out a three-pound chunk of meat. Under Ellis's direction, Joe did the next one. They took the humps, the livers, half a dozen hind quarters, the loins and the tongues, and laid them on the fresh hides.

While they loaded the meat on the bobsleds, Joe was silent, preoccupied by his confused feelings about Ellis. The young man was undoubtedly a hard worker when he wanted to be, and he was friendly and respectful--when he wanted to be. But always Ellis gave you the feeling he was going to do exactly what he wanted, and if that thing happened to be unfriendly, why that was the time for a person to watch out. He had an impulsive way of speaking and acting. Ten to one he'd tell you just what he thought about something, even if the telling might cause some folks real embarra.s.sment. That was honesty, of a kind, but it could be cruelty, too, and Joe wasn't exactly sure which it was in the case of Ellis. As for Barbara, Ellis seemed smitten, sure enough, but would he be respectful and take good care of her on the jaunt to Laramie? Emma seemed confident, but Joe was deeply uncertain, and the uncertainty made him grim and silent as they loaded the last of the meat.

The next day they cut wood, and Joe glanced questioningly at the sky.

The sun still shone, but there was something in the air that Joe could not a.n.a.lyze. It was a faint but startling thing, like the sudden rustle of a leaf when there is no wind, and it seemed to grow stronger as day followed day. But there was only an uneasy feeling and nothing tangible to furnish evidence that something grim and terrible did lurk behind the sun.

On the last day of the year, the rest of the Towers watched Ellis, riding his horse, and Barbara, mounted on one of Snedeker's with her dancing dress carried in a pack behind the saddle, start down the Trail for the New Year's dance at Laramie.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Barbara and Ellis

When Barbara Tower mounted Snedeker's blaze-faced brown horse, she was a little afraid. All her life she had been accustomed to farm animals of various kinds, and she had an inborn understanding of them as well as deep sympathy for them. But her riding had been confined to the placid farm horses of Missouri, and now she felt this high-strung creature quivering beneath her and eager to go. Holding the horse in, she bent down as though to examine the length of her stirrup.

She was not afraid of the horse, but she trembled lest she do something wrong while Ellis was watching. Expertly, he wheeled his horse and came to her side.

"Shall I shorten the stirrups?"

"No, I was just looking. I think they're about right."

She warmed to this young man who thought it his place to offer her small courtesies. Except for Hugo Gearey, all the other young men she'd ever known would have waited while she herself did whatever was necessary.

Experimentally, she reined the horse about and he responded at once.

That restored her confidence. The horse was spirited but he was thoroughly broken and without being forced he would heed the wishes of his rider. She fell in behind Ellis and they walked their horses out to the Trail. They turned to wave good-by to Barbara's watching family, and the Towers waved back.

The weather was crisp and cold, with a steady north wind that crimsoned both young people's cheeks. But they were not cold because they were dressed for the weather--Barbara wore her heavy brown coat, cut down trousers, and had a wool scarf over her head--they were young, and the prospect of an exciting dance provided its own spiritual warmth.

At least once a week and sometimes oftener, cavalry patrols had been down the Trail. The patrols always stopped at Snedeker's, but they were always commanded by some non-commissioned officer with a strong sense of duty and a stronger realization of what would happen if he was in any way derelict in that duty. Therefore, much to the chagrin of the young privates who made up the body of the patrol, and who wanted to stay near Barbara, they never stopped for very long. However, because of them the Trail was packed, and Ellis dropped back to ride beside Barbara.

He wore a buffalo-skin coat, heavy trousers, and loose moccasins over two pairs of wool socks. Behind his saddle was a parcel with necessary toilet articles and a change of clothing, and Barbara had noted that too. The men of Missouri went to dances and parties in their work clothing, and civilians who attended dances at Fort Laramie seldom bothered to change greasy buckskins or whatever else they were wearing.

But Ellis was going to make himself presentable and she knew he was doing it for her.

Many things about Ellis appealed to her, yet when she asked herself how she felt about marrying him, no answer came to mind. Actually, although they had been together a great deal, they had not talked very much and she knew relatively little about him. He seemed outspoken enough with her mother and her father, but when he was alone with Barbara he tended to become tongue-tied. And since she herself had trouble with words in his presence, their conversations were usually halting and uninformative.

She could not help thinking, from time to time, of Hugo Gearey's witty and fascinating talk, of the hours when he had regaled her with countless stories and anecdotes. She remembered, too, although she brushed the thought angrily aside, the feeling of his arms about her, of his lips on her lips. He was a horrid person, but she could not deny that he had remained in her mind, and his poise and charm, deceptive though they were, made Ellis's long awkward silences more disturbing than they otherwise would be. On the other hand, when Ellis looked at her with his whole heart in his eyes she tingled. She was woman enough to be thrilled by his devotion, even though she wasn't at all sure of her own feelings toward him.

Ellis's Kentucky thoroughbred, a sleek and powerful animal, kept its head high and ears forward as it looked interestedly at everything on both sides of the Trail. Though he was not boastful, Ellis could not conceal the pride he took in his horse and occasionally Barbara wondered whether he would ever take that much pride in anything else. The wool cap she had knitted for him was pulled down over the left side of his face to shield his cheek from the wind, and he turned toward her.

"How do you like it?" he asked.

It was meant to be a gay and informal question, but somehow it was stilted and formal. Barbara tried to respond gaily and for the moment could not.

"This is fine!"

She smiled, and when he smiled back she could not help thinking that he had a warm and nice smile. Yet she felt restrained, and could not understand her feeling. When Ellis asked her to go to the dance, it had seemed a wonderful adventure and she had gone to bed each night hoping that he would get her father's and mother's permission. Now that they were actually on the Trail and started toward Laramie, she had misgivings. She had gone out with young men before, but never for overnight, and she wondered suddenly what her friends back in Missouri would say if they could know. The thought should not disturb her but it did. For the moment the young man beside her was almost a stranger, and she thought that she had been ill-advised to go with him at all.

She shifted her hands, and when she did so the rein brushed her mount's neck and he turned half around. Barbara knew a sudden rush of embarra.s.sment. She had been holding the reins too loosely, and not paying enough attention to what she was doing. As a consequence she had blundered, and in Ellis's eyes she must be less than perfect. But when she turned to explain her error, he was looking the other way. Barbara began to relax.

A coyote flashed out of a copse of brush and raced down the Trail. With a spontaneous whoop that startled her momentarily, Ellis was after it.

Barbara reined her horse to a slow walk and watched, her eyes shining.

Ellis rode his big horse as though he were a part of it, with every move of horse and rider perfectly coordinated. She watched the coyote outdistance him. Laughing, he came back. Barbara laughed, too, and suddenly it seemed that all the ice between them had melted.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you that a horse can't outrun a coyote?"

"King could. I was holding him back. Didn't want to frighten the poor little coyote to death."

They laughed wildly, as though at some huge joke, and the horses bobbed happy heads as they went down the Trail at a fast walk. Ellis turned to watch six elk disappearing into a pine thicket. Barbara stole a covert glance at his profile.

She'd given Ellis a great deal of thought. Certainly she wanted to get married. But there should be more to marriage than the simple act of a man and woman exchanging vows and living together. Her own parents'

marriage was far different, she reflected, than other marriages she had seen among their neighbors in Missouri. Her parents had a special kind of feeling for each other that was much more than physical, more even than their satisfaction in sharing their home and their children. They laughed together and they worried together, and one could be happy for no reason except the other had enjoyed himself, the way Emma was happy when Joe would come back refreshed from an evening at Tenney's store. It was a kind of blending and merging, with each one willing and eager to give up his own private world in order to build a sort of combination world. She couldn't quite get it into words, but it did seem like a real melting and fusing of two destinies into one destiny. Barbara herself had never met any man who made her feel like blending and merging her life that way, and she wondered whether something might be lacking in her.

Barbara remembered vividly the night Ellis proposed to her. When they'd first arrived at Snedeker's, she had heard Jim Snedeker refer to Ellis as a woman chaser and she had thought little about that or about Ellis.

Most of the boys she knew chased girls. But as day followed day, unaccountably she had found herself watching for Ellis. Working in the cabin, she would glance out the window to see if he was around. When he asked her to go walking with him, she was happy to go.

They were strolling on a dark, moonless night when--and she still did not know how it happened--she was in his arms and his lips were on hers.

Ellis's embrace was not like Hugo Gearey's and his lips had a different meaning in them. She could yield to this kiss and still feel safe, and somehow deeply stirred in a new way, a mysterious way. Barbara felt her knees tingle, and her body went strangely limp. A thousand times since, in memory, she had heard his whispered,

"I love you, Bobby! Will you marry me?"