Mrs. Mike Read online

  A middle-aged woman with a dirty dressing gown flapping around her opened the door. "Yes?"

  "We'd like to see Mrs. Neilson."

  I could see the woman's eyes light up with curiosity. "She's in her room. I'll show you."

  "If it's the same one, end of the hall, I'll find it."

  I followed Uncle John down the hall. The woman muttered something as we passed. Uncle stopped in front of a door. He turned and said, "Now remember, Katherine Mary."

  What was I to remember? I didn't find out because the door opened, and a beautiful young woman stood looking at us.

  "Mrs. Neilson ..." my uncle began, and then stopped.

  She was staring at me with large startled eyes.

  "I'm Katherine Mary O'Fallon," I said.

  "My niece," Uncle added.

  Her eyes dropped to her hands. She wore a delicate little wedding ring. She turned it around and around. "Come in." And she smiled in a way that made my heart go out to her.

  The room was dark and shabby, and I felt bad that she had to stay in it. But, as my mother would have said, she was a lady. She treated us as though we were in a palace.

  When we were all seated, my uncle reached inside his coat, and then inside his jacket, and finally inside his shirt and took out an envelope. "It's your ticket."

  She smiled.

  "Your ticket," he repeated.

  "You've been very good to me, Mr. Kennedy."

  Uncle John didn't seem to know what to say to that. He took out his pipe and then put it away again. He cleared his throat. "Well, you'll be getting back, Mrs. Neilson. And that will be a good thing."

  "Where are you going?" I asked.

  "She's going to New York," my uncle said.

  "I've been there. Mother took me."

  "We were married there." She said it very softly.

  "Is your husband there, or is he here, too?"

  "He ..."

  I looked at Uncle John, and then I knew it was my fault no one was talking.

  Margaret Neilson reached over and took my hand. Hers was like ice. "It's hard. It's a hard country. Men fight it. Men like to fight, but a, woman ..." Her voice got small and then stopped altogether.

  Uncle stood up. "Mrs. Neilson, it's time we started. I'm taking Kathy up to the ranch."

  She walked to him and took hold of his arm. "Don't go. Not yet." She looked at him in a pleading kind of way. "Have some tea first. I insist."

  Uncle John sat down, a little limply I thought.

  "Thank you, that will be real nice."

  She smiled at that and hummed a little tune while she put the water to boil. Uncle took out his pipe, remembered, and put it back again. This time she saw him. "Mr. Kennedy, smoke your pipe. Please, I like a pipe."

  She poured out the tea and served it to us in broken china cups. And then I saw it wasn't tea, just hot water. She must have forgotten to put the tea in.

  "Sugar and cream?" she asked my uncle. "Or do you take lemon?"

  "Lemon, please."

  And there she was squeezing lemon into the hot water, and there he was stirring it around. Shouldn't someone mention that there was no tea in it, or was that impolite?

  "And you, Katherine Mary, how do you like yours?"

  With tea, I almost said. But I was glad I didn't, she enjoyed entertaining us so much.

  "I'd like sugar," I said. And she gave it to me, two spoonfuls. I glanced over at Uncle John. He was drinking his. So I began to sip mine. And, holy St. Patrick, there's nothing worse tasting than hot water with two teaspoons of sugar in it.

  Then she got her own cup and sat down. It's so silly, I thought. Now she'll find out, and wonder why nobody said anything. She'll think we're crazy, sitting here drinking hot water. I looked away just as the cup reached her lips because I didn't want her to see me staring. I waited for her to say something. She did. She said, "You must take Katherine Mary to the hotel tonight. Then she'll be fresh for the trip up tomorrow." She took another sip, and this time I watched her. She didn't seem to notice anything.

  We sat around drinking our hot water and not saying much until it was time to say good-bye. She kissed me, and there were tears in her eyes when she did it. "I couldn't pull him out," she told me. "I couldn't."

  We left early the next morning for Uncle John's ranch. Uncle tucked me into the cutter and started the horses on a fast, silent trot over the snow-packed road. For a long time I said nothing. I watched the clouds light up and the sun rise slowly and the snow gleam. I saw tracks of wolves and mountain lions crossing the road. I showed them to my uncle. He sucked at his pipe and said, "Rabbits."

  I felt the inside of the buffalo robe that wrapped me and wondered how it felt on the buffalo. I breathed the sharp morning air and smelled the horses. But all the while in the back of my mind I was troubled. "Uncle John," I said, "... about last night..."

  "Yes?"

  "I felt strange in Mrs. Neilson's house. Didn't you?"

  "No."

  "Mrs. Neilson seemed so dreamy, and I always had the feeling - she didn't hear a word we were saying."

  "No great loss," said my uncle John with a puff of smoke. This shut me up for a while, and I took to looking up at the clouds and figuring out animals and ships and islands there. The cutter skimmed along more like a sailboat than a sleigh, and the wind blew in our faces. I watched my uncle's pipe to see if he was angry, and finally I asked, "Have you known Mrs. Neilson long?"

  "Eight months."

  "Was she always like this?"

  "No," Uncle John said. "People change." The road began to wind uphill. The horses slowed to a walk. "She was a bride when she came," my uncle said. "Neilson was a strong man, but stubborn. Did things his own way and never asked advice. Capable, though. Did everything himself. Wife adored him."

  I nodded eagerly, but it was several minutes before my uncle went on. I tried to picture Mr. Neilson, the strong man but stubborn. I could see his big shoulders and heavy hands, his square chin. Did he have light hair or dark? I never knew.

  "Built his barn himself, no help. And a kind of shed, a milking stand on the west wall. People laughed at him for wanting the cow to get up on a stand to be milked, but Neilson was stubborn. He did things his own way. And after a while nobody gave him advice.

  "Well, he went back East for a girl. You've seen her, Kathy. Pretty, but delicate, with scared eyes. Those women are not made for this country. Anyway, the house was all ready, and he brought her out to Lesser Slave Lake, and one night there was a blizzard. Snowed three days without a letup. When it snows like that, you can stick your head out of the window and all you see is the nearest snowflake. You can walk two steps out your door and never find your way back to the house. But the stock in the barn have been three days without feed, so Neilson gets up and says he's going to the barn. His wife doesn't say anything, just looks at him scared. So he gets a little angry because he doesn't want to catch her fright, and he says in that stubborn way he has, 'There's two horses and a cow and a steer and two pigs—and I'll be damned if they'll starve!' Now she looks at him, pleading with her eyes. I suppose she wants to say, 'Forget the animals, I want you!' But you can't say that to a farmer. He'd die twenty times for those matched bays. He opens the door. Now, most of the fellows up here run a rope from the house door to the barn door during the blizzard season. When you have to tend to the stock, you don't need eyes; that rope is your compass, your chart, and your navigator. Neilson didn't rig a rope. I don't know, maybe he was too stubborn. Maybe he thought he was being kidded. A lot of'the men around here were mad at his stubbornness, and they'd tell him things to do, like to plant wheat under the Northern Lights for a big crop, or to set out bowls of milk for the bears so they wouldn't pick up chickens, and a lot else, to see if he would bite. So when they told him about that rope, I guess he laughed and said he'd seen snow before."

  My uncle John looked down at me. "Comfortable?" he said.

  "Go on," I said. "Th
at's not the end. Go on."

  He smiled. "All right. Neilson opens the door. He can't see the barn, but he knows exactly where it is. He's been to that barn ten thousand times. He pictures the barn. He pictures the door in the barn. He pictures the road to the door. And then he runs as fast as he can, so he won't swerve. . . . After two steps he disappears, and the snow is blowing in her face and she can't see or hear him, so she closes the door. She sits down, but her eyes never leave that door. She didn't even get a chance to kiss him or smile at him before he ran out.

  "In her mind she follows him down the path to the barn, and she sees his hand reach out for the door, pull it open, pull himself in; she hears the horses whinny a welcome. 'Don't come back,' she prays, 'don't come back. Stay in the barn till it blows over.

  Stay where you're safe.' Two hours go by, and he doesn't come back. And suddenly she begins to tremble. She knows he isn't in the barn, he's lost, he's crying for help. She leaps up; she puts on her sweater, her coat, her boots, her gloves, her hat, she opens the door. . . . She stops. She almost laughs. He is there, he is surely there, safe in the barn. And here she was going to lose herself, wildly, uselessly. She can see him coming back slowly to the house in the final ebb of the storm to find her lying frozen in the drifts. Taking command of herself, she closes the door, sits down on a straight chair, and tries not to think. But after a while she knows he is dead, long dead, and she moans, and sobs, and screams. And there are still eight hours of night left.

  "At seven in the morning the wind died. Half an hour later the snow stopped. Mrs. Neilson buckled on her snowshoes and went out. In a drift about four yards from the barn door she saw a boot. She pulled at the boot, but it wouldn't come. She went into the barn, harnessed a horse, and brought it out. She tied a rope to the horse and looped it around the boot. When we came by that afternoon, checking up, she was still trying to get him out."

  It took us two days to get to Uncle's ranch. We were almost there when I noticed a difference in the air. It seemed warmer, and the sky flushed a deep rose. The glow spread over everything. "Uncle John," I said, "my face feels warm."

  Uncle smiled. When I say he smiled, I mean he smiled with his eyes. They twinkled and wrinkled, and that's about as much of a smile as he could manage. "It's going to chinook," he said.

  "What's that?"

  "You'll see soon enough, Kathy." After three days I knew my uncle well enough to know I'd hear no more about chinooks. I puzzled over the word a long time. It sounded Indian, I thought. Or maybe Eskimo.

  "Well, we're here," Uncle said.

  I looked around. We had turned off into an icy path, and I could see a fence. But that's all I could see.

  "Up ahead." Uncle pointed.

  Yes, there was smoke. Soon I was able to make out a large square house, log-built. A man waved and shouted and ran up to us. Juno began to bark excitedly.

  "Hello, Jim," my uncle said. "Where's Johnny?"

  Jim didn't answer. He was grinning at me. He even started to remove his beaver cap. Uncle looked at me with twinkling eyes. "I thought it better not to tell your mother that there's only one other white girl in these parts. This is Jim, one of the hands. Miss O'Fallon, my niece."

  "Pleasure to meet you, I'm sure." Jim was still grinning.

  We got out of the cutter, and it felt good to be standing on solid ground.

  "Where's Johnny?" Uncle asked again.

  Jim's smile broadened. "Out celebrating the Boer War."

  Uncle grunted, and we went into the house. The contrast in temperature between indoors and outdoors was so great that I ripped my furs off before I said a word or looked around or did anything else.

  Uncle showed me over the house. It had two bedrooms, a big kitchen, and a front room. It was very comfortable. Uncle had ten hands working the place, mostly looking after cattle. "They sleep in the bunkhouse," he said.

  "Is one of them named Johnny?" I asked, because I was wondering about what Jim had said.

  "No." Uncle took out his pipe and lighted up. "No, Johnny lives here with me. Does the cooking."

  "Where is he?"

  "You heard what Jim says, he's out celebrating."

  "But Jim said he was celebrating the Boer War."

  Uncle John puffed a while. "Yes," he said at last, "that's right. You see, we were in it together. That's where I knew Johnny."

  I thought of all the snow outside, and the miles and miles of nothing. "But how does he celebrate?"

  "Humph!" Uncle said. And that's all I could get out of him about Johnny.

  * * *

  I HAD gone to bed with Juno and a four-stripe Hudson's Bay blanket. Uncle had given me a white one because the Indians said the white were the warmest. But that night it chinooked, and I threw off all my blankets, for it blew hot and warm. The red glow deepened in the sky. In twenty-four hours the snow disappeared. I was glad to see the last of it, but that was because I didn't know.

  "Uncle," I asked, "what's happened? Over night it's spring."

  "Chinook," he said. "It's a current of air from the west, warmed by the Japanese current. It moves in over our mountains and down. It gets warmer and drier as it comes. And when it reaches the prairie, the thaw sets in."

  At first I ran around and looked at everything. The earth was bare, with little grass blades pricking at it. What I had thought was field melted, and the Red Deer River ran its course. Juno and I took a long walk along its banks, looking into the swift, turbulent waters and listening for the different tones as it rushed at stones and boulders. We watched the ice break and disappear. The larger chunks were carried past like white rafts. It would have been a wild journey for anyone riding those ice cakes, for they whirled and stuck . . . and for a moment lay in the shelter of the shallows before another eddy spun them on again.

  We left the river and wandered up near the cut banks. They were low beds that once had been mountain streams. Now they were dry, and cattle were grazing there, thousands of them. Juno barked and barked, but not one of the shaggy heads lifted to look at us. It is very fertile in these canyons, and the cattle graze all year around, even in the winter, for the long thick bull-grass comes right up through three feet of snow.

  But today the snow had gone. Everywhere, from all things, there fell a constant drip: from branches, from roots, from boulders, from eaves. I went to sleep my second night on the ranch to the uneven rhythm of that wet, pattering sound. In the morning the sun shone on the moisture-soaked earth, and a rainbow was made. The sound of wet air shaking itself into the Red Deer torrent made a subtle kind of counterpoint. This magic land. . . this was the North.

  I walked again to the river. It was much higher than the day before. In some places water ran over the prairie, keeping pace with the strong current of the river. I saw men at a distance, driving cattle. They shouted and waved at me. But the wind carried their words away, and I couldn't hear. One of the figures separated itself from the group and came riding for me. It was Uncle John. "Back to the house," he yelled. "Get back to the house."

  I wasn't used to being shouted at. Without answering, I turned and walked back.

  No one was in the house. No one came for lunch either. I got awfully hungry, and when I couldn't hold out any longer, I looked around the kitchen and ended by eating some dried fruit. It was four o'clock by then, and I was feeling very lonesome and neglected. Even Juno was no company. He kept whining, and every once in a while let out a sharp bark. That made me nervous.

  At first I thought I imagined it, but then I sat very still and listened, minute after minute. I was not mistaken. A low mournful sound vibrated through the house.

  It was after dark when the men came trooping back, tired and silent. I'd been mad at all of them, but when I saw them, the anger went out of me. I put some coffee on the stove. It was hot and black, and the men relaxed.

  "How many you reckon we lost?"

  "Hundred head, maybe."

  "MacDonald's lost more," Uncle said.


  "What happened?" I felt I could ask it now.

  Uncle John gulped down more coffee. "Stock drowned."

  "Drowned?"

  "The men have been rounding them up for three, four days, since we first knew it was going to chinook. But there were a couple thousand head to get out."

  I still couldn't understand. "But how'd they drown?"

  "Ice jammed. Blocked the river. Flooded the prairie. We were working in three feet of water, and it was rising all the time."

  I tried to shut out the picture of thousands of beasts helpless in the flood.

  "Let's have more coffee, Katherine Mary."

  I filled up the cups all around. They drank and warmed themselves for a few minutes. Then Uncle John went on, "You know how water seeks its level. Well, it did this time. Went rushing and foaming into the canyons where the herds were grazing. We rounded them out at fast as we could. Got most of them. Got more than some. MacDonald lost five hundred head."

  I closed my eyes.

  "Happens every year, Miss," one of the men said. "Most times we get 'em out. Sometimes we don't. It's the chinook does it."

  I felt sick. Only that morning I'd seen them in the arroyos, red and white patches of them going on for miles.

  I knew now what that strange monotonous vibration had been—the lowing of panic-stricken cows and steers struggling for a foothold, thrashing and churning till the water turned muddy. Men shouted at them, horses nudged them, water lashed over them, and their fear burst loose, stampeding them. The young fell and were trodden. The muddy waters turned red. They cried their soft low cry of terror, and the walls of the room had sounded with it. I looked at the eleven men sitting there in soggy boots. This, too, was the North.

  Two

  I WAS in the kitchen, making seven berry, pies. They were currant—dried currants, at that. I'd never done this much baking before, and I was up to my elbows in flour. There came an awful knock at the front door, as though someone were kicking instead of knocking. I walked into the living room and stood uncertainly looking at the door. The thumping continued.

  "Who's there?" I asked. An extra kick was the only answer. I didn't know what to do. Uncle was out shooting, and I was alone in the house. "Who's there?" I asked again.