Mrs. Mike Read online

  "Open the door—or I'll leave him on the porch!"

  My first thought was that Uncle John had been hurt. I opened the door. A tall young man in a bright red jacket strode in. He carried a man on his back.

  "Holy St. Patrick!" I cried. "Tell me quick, is he dead?"

  The young man laughed and dumped his burden down on the couch. "Smell him," he said.

  I did. The odor reminded me of John L. Sullivan, the fighter. He used to stay at our house. He had a watch with diamond shamrocks on the back, and every time he'd come in smelling like this, there'd be one less diamond shamrock on that watch.

  "Who is it?" I asked.

  "Johnny Flaherty."

  So this was the missing Johnny. "Will you turn him over, please." I wanted a good look at him. He turned him, and I saw a little man with a big, shaggy mustache and a pale face with a yellow tinge to it.

  "He needs some black coffee. You'd better be putting it on."

  I whirled around. I was five feet, four and one-half inches, but I had to look up, way up. "I thank you kindly for bringing him back, and I'll thank you to be on your way again, for I'm taking no orders from an English soldier."

  "An English soldier, am I? And what gave you that idea?" He frowned down at me, and he was very good-looking.

  "With that red coat, you're either off to a fox hunt or you're a British peeler, or maybe you're both."

  "You little chit—look at the size of you and you insulting the uniform!"

  That made me mad. He could have noticed my naturally curly hair or my eyes, instead of my size.

  "Well, if you're not an Englishman, who are you?"

  "I'm Sergeant Mike Flannigan, of the Northwest Mounted."

  I never could really have thought he was an Englishman, not with the lilt he had to his speech.

  Johnny Flaherty moaned from the couch. I had almost forgotten him.

  "Miss O'Fallon," the sergeant said patiently, "will you get the poor man some coffee?"

  I decided to let this Irish cop know whom he was dealing with. Without a word I walked off into the kitchen. I heard Mike Flannigan singing in a good, and certainly big, baritone, something that went, "Heave ho, heave ho!" at the end of every line. I paid no attention but started the coffee. In a moment he came in with Johnny Flaherty on his back again.

  "Whatever are you doing?"

  Mike backed up to the pump and slid Johnny off his back, then whirled to catch him as he sagged limply on the floor. The sergeant braced him with a knee and a hand against the wall. With the other hand he pumped. "Got to sober him up before your uncle gets back."

  The water came in a sudden stream. He pushed Johnny's head under it and continued pumping. For a moment there was no reaction except a feeble sputtering. Then suddenly Johnny let out a whoop and began thrashing wildly in all directions and using the same words John L. Sullivan used.

  Flaherty's arms and legs flayed out at every angle. The only stationary part of him was his head, which Mike held relentlessly under the pump. Profanity and water ran down the dripping mustache into the drain. And all the time Mike soothed him in a low soft brogue.

  "Shut your mouth, Johnny Flaherty, there's a lady present."

  "To hell with her!" bubbled out from the pump.

  Mike gave him a good ducking for that. But his words came all the more gently. "I'd be ashamed, Johnny Flaherty. Just as John was counting on you to help him welcome his only niece."

  "To hell with him!" yelled Johnny, getting his head free of the pump for a second and glaring savagely around with water-clogged bloodshot eyes.

  Under he went again. It was funny and sort of pathetic to see the little man squirming while the one big hand of Mike Flannigan held him under. Mike went on in a mild, reproachful voice, "So you've let him down, and now look at the sorry impression you're making on the young lady."

  "To hell with you, you son of—" He didn't get to say it. A full minute passed. He began yelling something that sounded like, "I'm drowning!" But if he was, it didn't seem to disturb Mike. He went right on pumping and lecturing. "What have you to say for yourself, Johnny Flaherty? I suppose you'll be telling me next you were out celebrating?"

  Johnny sputtered something that Mike took to be an answer.

  "Don't tell me you were celebrating an honorable historical event like the Boer War by getting completely and disgustingly drunk?"

  "That's what I was doing," said Johnny. "I was celebrating the war." His speech was no longer thick, and he didn't slur his syllables so much.

  "Yes?" asked Mike, who still held him firmly by the collar. "And what's it an anniversary of, this time?"

  "Mafeking," Johnny said. "The Battle of Mafeking."

  "Uh-uh," Mike said. "You celebrated that last time, only six weeks ago. How many times a year does a date come around?" And he began pumping again.

  Johnny watched him. "Kimberley," he said desperately. "It was the glorious Battle of Kimberley."

  Mike laughed. "I sometimes wonder if you were really there at all. Kimberley was fought in February. What month is this?" His pump hand started working, "What month is this?" he repeated evenly.

  "Isn't it February?" Johnny asked. "That's right," he screamed, with his head halfway to the pump. "It's April! Must've got mixed up for a moment."

  "You must have," Mike said, and then, in his most beguiling tone, "What did you say you were celebrating, Johnny?"

  "The victory of Magersfontein," Johnny said, and they both started laughing. I remembered vaguely from history class that Magersfontein had been a Dutch victory. Johnny grabbed a towel and started rubbing his head and face, and then wound the towel around his neck.

  He turned to me and gave me a sheepish grin. "I feel rotten, Miss Katherine. Besides which, your uncle's going to be like the black Satan for the next few days. I hope you can bring yourself to overlook the disgusting spectacle I've made of myself, and not be too hard on me."

  "She shouldn't forgive you, you old toper, and that's a fact."

  "Keep out of this, Sergeant," snapped Johnny, without taking his worried, red-veined eyes off me.

  "Mr. Flaherty," I said, "I'm sorry to learn you're a drinking man. My mother always said it was the curse of the Irish, but if you like your coffee as strong as your drink, it's ready for you."

  He seized the cup avidly in his hands. "And God bless you for this and for your forgivin' ways. It's an angel, in truth, has come to live with us." He drank the coffee down without taking breath. "I'll have a second cup, Miss, and then I'll go to bed."

  Johnny drank down his second cup, as he had his first. The front door slammed. "It's your uncle!" Johnny was terrified. "I'm in bed! Tell him I came home peaceful and went straight to bed." And Johnny was out the one door before Uncle John was in the other.

  Uncle walked right up to Mike Flannigan and shook him by the hand. "It's good to see you, Mike. What brings you into our part of the country?"

  "Well, John, rumor has it that a young lady has been seen in these parts, and I thought I'd better check on it." He laughed and flashed his eyes at me to see how I was taking that.

  "He came to bring Johnny home," I said.

  Uncle stopped laughing and his mouth clamped into a line. "Johnny home?" he asked.

  "Yeah," Mike said, but he didn't seem to want to say anything more than that.

  "Come home walking?"

  "Sure," Mike said.

  "Sergeant Flannigan," I began, "you know very well—"

  "I'm not saying he didn't need a little assistance," Mike put in, and looked at me in a way that made me know I'd better shut up. I did.

  But Uncle John was mad. Plenty mad. He didn't say anything. Just walked into the room he shared with Johnny. We could hear them in there going at it. Uncle John would start quiet and end shouting, and then Johnny would shout too, so that neither one could hear what the other was saying. And that was probably just as well.

  I was embarrassed that Sergeant Mike had to be here to hear it. But he seemed to be enjoying it. Every time there was an extra loud "God damn" or "bastard," he'd throw back his head and laugh.

  I went on preparing the dinner and setting the table and pretending I didn't know what those words meant, although I did from John L. Sullivan. I was getting madder and madder at Mike Flannigan, so mad that I put two sets of spoons on the table and no forks. He noticed when I took off the extra spoons and laughed harder.

  I stopped squarely in front of him. "What do you find so amusing, Sergeant?"

  "A young lady like yourself in Alberta Territory."

  I didn't know what he meant by that, so I looked at him sharply as though I did know. "Will you please tell my uncle that dinner is ready?"

  "What about the hands?"

  "They've eaten, all ten of them." I must have sounded tired, for he went for Uncle right away.

  They came back, Uncle John not saying much. I didn't say much either because I was mad, and Mike didn't say much, because he was eating. After a while, when I'd stood it as long as I could, I asked my uncle, in a very polite voice, if he'd care for more potatoes. He put down his fork. "Katherine Mary," he said, "I think you're not too favorably impressed with my friend Johnny Flaherty?"

  "I'm not," I said.

  "Well," my uncle said, "he takes a lot of putting up with, but it's worth it to have the best cook in the Northwest."

  I remembered the mud on Johnny's clothes and hands, and his face going from green to purple under the pump. "He can cook," I said, "but it's a question in my mind if I'd care to eat it."

  The men smiled. "You're a very fine cook, yourself," said Sergeant Mike, though I noticed he hadn't touched the currant pie. "But all the women in the world and their grandmothers couldn't cook
the way Johnny Flaherty does. Why, he learned the trade from the fiends themselves, the way they cook the sinners in the volcanoes."

  They both laughed, but I turned to my Uncle John and said, "It's funny now, but a few moments ago you weren't laughing, Uncle John. You were telling Johnny Flaherty to go to—to where he learned to cook." I wound up blushing, because Mike's eyes were on me.

  "True," my uncle nodded.

  "And how often does Mr. Flaherty celebrate?" I continued.

  My uncle sighed. "Ah, there never was a war like the Boer War. A battle nearly every day, and all critical."

  "And you get mad every time they bring him home?"

  My uncle nodded soberly, but Mike was roaring at some joke I didn't see. His laughing made me angry. "Then why do you put up with it at all?"

  My uncle took a bite of currant pie. A strange look came into his eyes, and he laid the fork down.

  "Hmmm," he said. What he meant by that I don't know, only he ate no more pie.

  "If it was me," I muttered to myself, "I wouldn't let him come back."

  "Kathy," said my uncle, "do you know what a flapjack is?"

  "It's a pancake," I answered with some contempt, "made with eggs and flour, nothing very special."

  "Tell her about Johnny's flapjacks," Uncle John said to Mike.

  "My mouth waters and tears come into my eyes to think of it," said Mike solemnly, while my uncle listened with a very pleased expression on his face. "It is a pancake to make the deaf and dumb speak and the Irish women, God bless them, to eat and be silent. Johnny's cakes are as rich and fine as the food of the saints, and so light that when you throw 'em in the air they stay there. I wish I had a dozen now."

  "You may think he's exaggerating about Johnny's cooking," my uncle said, "but I'll tell you a story to prove it. Johnny and I were buddies in the Boer War. He's a little man now, and he was a little man then, and not a hair on his face but that mustache like a kind of cord to hang him up by.

  "We were out on patrol, and a Dutch column, horses and wagons, came down the road and cut us off. So we lay down behind a boulder in the field and put mud on our backs and lay still as stones, which in truth is what we seemed to be at fifty yards. Our heads and arms were up close to the boulder and pretty well hidden from the road, so after a while Johnny says, 'Are you hungry?' I snorted. 'And so what?' I asked. Johnny pointed to a flat stone at the edge of the boulder. The sun had been beating down on this stone all morning, and it was hot. 'We'll make it hotter,' says Johnny, taking out the captain's field glasses, which we had, being on patrol.

  "'What are you thinking of, Johnny?' I asked.

  "'Flapjacks,' says Johnny.

  " 'You are mad with the heat, Flaherty,' I say. 'Let's eat our condensed rations.'

  " 'Condensed rations!' says Johnny, and spits.

  "He was right, so I spat too, being careful not to move the mud on my back and legs. On the road they were pulling field pieces past, and Johnny and I kept count.

  "'Of course,' says Johnny, 'this is not the five-burner stove me mother had in Ireland, and it will not accommodate large

  pancakes. But I will roll them thin.' So he reaches into his knapsack.

  "You understand, Katherine Mary, it was the patient work of a half hour to move his hand to his knapsack. But out come dried eggs and pancake flour and condensed milk. Well, he mixed the batter in the palm of his hand, which added to the flavor, I'm thinking, and he rolled it out thin with his forefinger, and cooked it on the hot stone with the captain's lens. And they came out flapjacks no bigger than a shilling, but tasting like manna from heaven. And all this time we moved nothing but our hands and our mouths. Our hands very slowly and our mouths very fast.

  "It got dark and we started to make our way back, but there was a sniper waiting for us in a tree. The first we knew of him, there was a shot, and we both rolled into the ditch. It was not exactly a ditch, but a damp stream bed, wet and dirty.

  " 'Did you see where it came from?' says Johnny.

  " 'No.' I had not. Neither had he.

  " 'Then we stay here to eternity,' says Johnny, 'because he knows where we are.'

  "I looked at Johnny and said, 'It is not the fate of a Kennedy to spend the rest of his life with his face in the mud. I'll stand up and draw his fire, and you kill him.'

  " 'A very good plan,' says Johnny approvingly, 'but it is I who will stand up. I am a smaller man, and there are not so many places to kill me.'

  " 'That may well be,' I replied, 'but as it was my idea, it is my right to try it.'

  " 'Like a Kennedy to hog all the glory,' Johnny snickers. 'You invented the plan, I will carry it out.'

  "I began to be worried. I saw the prospect of a long, lonely hike back to camp, with nothing to eat but condensed rations. 'Johnny,' I said, 'if he kills you, there will be no one left to make the pancakes. And your pancakes are my only satisfaction in this hot and dirty land ten thousand miles from Ireland.'

  " 'And much good it will do me to make pancakes,' says Johnny bitterly, 'if you are too dead to eat them.'

  "So the argument continued, and finally we threw dice to decide it. But they were Johnny's dice, and he could make them come out thirteen if the mood was in him, so it was no surprise to see that he won and stood up and was shot in the shoulder before I brought the Dutchman down.

  "'Are you all right, Johnny?' I yelled.

  "'My left arm,' he says holding it.

  "'Praise be to the Mother of God,' I said, 'it's not your flapjack arm,' and we got up out of the ditch."

  My uncle pushed back his chair, and so did Mike. "Wait till you eat them," he said. The men stood up.

  I was getting used to my uncle's stories. I soon learned that when it came to spinning a yarn or telling a tale, he had a touch of the genius of Denny Lannon the storyteller, whose grand-nephew he is. And I suppose the reason he was so sparing with words in between times is that he was saving them up for.his next story.

  "Well," said Mike, "when are you going to teach Kathy to shoot?"

  "You mean go hunting?" I couldn't believe it.

  "Johnny bought her a twenty-two in town," Uncle said.

  "You won't be needing any ammunition," Mike said, and grinned at me.

  "Why not?" I asked.

  "Well, you can use the currants in those seven currant pies you baked."

  Was there really something wrong with the pies ? I'd been saving mine for later because I was full. But I walked to the table and took a big bite to show him. It was as if I had pebbles in my mouth. I wondered what was wrong. But I wasn't going to ask them because they were laughing at me and because my mouth was too full of that currant rock pile to talk. To spit them out would be defeat, so I made a fake gulp and tried to hold my mouth naturally as if I had swallowed them.

  Mike said good-bye. I didn't answer because I couldn't. He took my hand and leaned toward me till my hair brushed his cheek.

  "Spit 'em out," he said softly, "and next time, cook 'em."

  * * *

  I DID NO more cooking for a while. Johnny was back on the job, and he would only let me in the kitchen to sniff. But I made him promise to let me get the dinner if ever Sergeant Mike Flannigan returned.

  Oh, it was a fine revenge I was preparing for him! I would make currant pies with currants so soft and juicy they would melt in the mouths of the men, but his I would fill with buckshot. And while the others ate and enjoyed, he would break his jaws. Then I would say, not to him but to the walls, "It is weak teeth these redcoats have."

  Or maybe he'd come knocking at the door in the middle of a storm, with mud all over that fine uniform, and a slow step, and weariness in his eyes (for he had ridden night and day without rest), and bleeding from a wound in the shoulder, where a crazy 'breed had shot him. I'd help him in and take off his boots, and give him hot tea and whisky, and get him into his bunk. He'd say, "Thank you." I'd say, "Oh, I'm just a little chit." And I'd laugh carelessly to show it didn't make a penny's difference to me, one way or another.

  Sometimes I brought him home with a bullet in his shoulder and sometimes limping from frostbitten feet. But today his leg was broken where a horse fell on him. He was leaning on me and I was helping him to the couch, when a girl rode up on a pony and banged on the door.

  I opened it, and she strode in, tall and blonde and swift-moving. She was the first white girl I'd seen since Calgary.