Mrs. Mike Page 4

  "I'm Mildred MacDonald," she said. "And you're Katherine Mary. You're very pretty. You don't resemble your uncle John at all. I would have come over earlier, but I was in Calgary. Do you like it here? Have you seen Johnny Flaherty? Can you ride?"

  I said, "Yes," meaning I could ride. As for the other questions, I'd lost track.

  I guess she'd lost track too, for she snapped back, "Then let's go. That's my pony outside. Name's Squaw."

  "I'll go get Rosie," I said. "It'll just take a minute."

  Mildred went into the kitchen to talk to Johnny, and I went to the stable to saddle Rosie.

  Rosie was a red-and-white Indian cayuse, and Uncle John had told me Rosie was mine for as long as I stayed with him. But he hadn't told Rosie. She was more trouble than a bag of wildcats. Some days she acted as if she had swallowed a pint of pepper. She dashed here and there, trotted and galloped and jumped ditches, whether I wanted to or not. The next day she would mope. A slow walk was her fancy now, a slow walk that grew tireder and tireder and at last stopped altogether. If I kicked her, she'd go into a bumpy jog, two steps walking and two steps trot, and the moment my attention wandered, Rosie stopped.

  Hard as it was to ride Rosie, it was harder to saddle her. I threw a blanket and saddle on her back. That was easy. But the moment I threaded the end of the cinch strap through the rings, Rosie's eyes met mine, her nostrils twitched, she sucked in an enormous breath, and her stomach swelled up like a sausage balloon. Pull as I would, I could barely fasten the strap. I mounted her, out came her breath, the saddle slithered around, and the blanket worked loose. I'll be lucky, I thought, if a stirrup doesn't come off.

  It was this, I think, that lost me the race. It's a hard thing to race a horse when you're running a private race yourself to stay on her back. Rosie was faster than Mildred's Squaw, but more independent. And when Rosie zigzagged, it was all I could do to make me and the saddle zig and zag with her.

  If only Rosie had let me saddle her right, and had run fairly straight, and not stopped once to take a quick bite out of a shrub, I could have won the race long before my pleurisy got me. As it was, Mildred was sailing ahead on Squaw when my pleurisy stabbed my side and chest with long twisting pains.

  Mildred caught Squaw up short and wheeled her around. They came galloping back. She reined the pony in. "What's the matter, Katherine Mary, don't you feel good?"

  "I'm all right," I said. "I'm just not used to riding. I bounce all over." I slid off Rosie's back. I felt shaky, and the pains were still in my chest.

  "Put the reins forward over her nose." Mildred got off Squaw. "They think they're tied then and won't bolt for it."

  "Will they just graze here?"

  Mildred nodded. She was still breathless from the chase. I sat down with a rock to lean against. The meadow and the sky were fuzzy, as if they were made out of cloth, and they leaned at a queer angle. I closed my eyes, and when I looked again, the meadow was level and the sky was where it ought to be.

  Mildred flopped down beside me. "That was fun. I love to ride. So does Dick." She stopped, looked at me, and laughed.

  "Who's Dick?" I asked, because I saw I was supposed to.

  "Dick is Richard Carlton. He's a lawyer with brown eyes that I'm going to marry."

  "Are you really going to get married?" She seemed more wonderful to me now than ever.

  "He lives in Calgary, and we've been engaged for three weeks."

  "How do you have to feel about someone, to marry him? I mean, do you think about him all the time and try to remember how he looks and what he's said . . . ?" I stopped. Mildred was looking at me in a strange way.

  "Are you in love?" she asked.

  I felt my cheeks getting hot. "Of course I'm not in love. Why, I don't even know what it feels like. That's why I asked you."

  "Well, you gave a pretty good description of it."

  "I just thought you'd have to feel something like that if you were going to marry someone." I felt I was stumbling around so I quit talking and watched Rosie and Squaw munch grass, then amble slowly, still chewing, to a more tempting spot, pull up and digest the most tender of the young blades.

  "Dick has his practice in Calgary," Mildred went on. "I was in last week with Mother, and he took us to lunch. Dick knows your uncle John."

  "Does he know a lot of people?"

  "Oh, Dick knows everybody."

  "Well," I hesitated, "does he know Sergeant Michael Flannigan?" There, it was out and said. Mildred didn't seem surprised. It was just conversation.

  "Of course he knows Mike. So do I, so does everybody in Alberta, I guess. In fact, Mike and I had a long talk about you in Calgary."

  "Oh!" I tried to seem casual. "What does he do in Calgary?"

  "He's on some sort of detail work. Anyway, he said I was going to have a girl friend, a very pretty one, at that."

  "Oh, he didn't! He thinks I'm skinny."

  "I'm just telling you what he said, Katherine Mary."

  "Well, he thinks I'm skinny too, because he called me a little chit. As a matter of fact..." I pulled two wide grass blades, placed them together and tried to whistle through them, but it didn't work.

  "As a matter of fact, what?" Mildred asked.

  "Oh, nothing. I was just going to say I don't think much of Mike Flannigan."

  "Why not?"

  I considered. "Well, for one thing, he's too cocky."

  "And he's a big brute of a man too."

  "Oh, I like a man to be big." Then I saw she was teasing me. "Mildred," I said, "don't you ever tell him I said that."

  She smiled. "I won't, Kathy. Why, I'd bite my tongue off before I'd repeat a thing like that to Mike Flannigan or any other man. They're conceited enough as it is." She squeezed my hand. "But you do like him a little, don't you?"

  I thought about that for a while. "Well, I like some things about him."

  "What things?"

  "His eyes."

  "They are nice," she agreed.

  "Mildred, they're so blue you could swim in them."

  Three

  We WERE IN the kitchen. Johnny had shot a deer and was skinning it. It was bloody and messy, and I tried not to look. Johnny tossed a piece of fur at Juno, who dragged it into a corner and worried and fought it.

  The other men would go off on long hunts, be gone all day. But not Johnny. He'd go out to the ravine about a mile behind the house and just sit there until a deer came by, and then shoot it. He was telling me that moose meat was better, that it tasted like beef, and that next time he'd bring down a moose.

  "Especially the nose; great delicacy, the nose."

  "I don't think I'd like to eat anything's nose," I said.

  "Yes, you would. You'd like moose nose. An Indian dish, great delicacy. Another favorite with the Indians is bear paw. They bring in beautiful bear skins to the Hudson's Bay Company, but all the paws are cut off. Could get a lot more for their skins if they wouldn't mutilate them—but they'd rather take less and eat bear paws." He took the carcass outdoors. Juno and I followed him and watched with great interest as he tied it in a tree.

  "Keep the flies from it."

  "Don't they fly as high as that tree?" I asked.

  But Johnny was more interested in food than in flies. "Tell you something else that's a great delicacy, that's beaver tail. Yes, sir, that tail is real sweet. On the other hand, a porcupine tastes terrible."

  I followed Johnny back into the kitchen.

  "Ever make a mulligan stew?" he asked.

  I had to admit I hadn't. "What do you put in them?"

  "Everything. You can watch me." He took pride in his cooking,

  just as any artist would, and it was a treat to watch him. He let me collect the vegetables for him while he cut up the meat. Everything in one pot. That was the principle, Johnny explained. I watched enthralled as caribou, grouse, pork, rice, potatoes, dehydrated corn, canned tomatoes, macaroni, and celery followed each other into the pot. J
ohnny laughed.

  "The more the better. Everything flavors everything else in a real mulligan." Johnny stopped talking to stir. Soon the smell of it was in the air, and the look on Johnny's face was one of reverence.

  "What about the deer in the tree? Is it going to be a mulligan too?"

  "No, it's going to be pemmican."

  "What's that?" ,

  "Just dried moose or deer meat."

  "I haven't seen Mildred for ten days." I said "Mildred" but I was thinking "Mike" and there must have been something in my voice because he stopped stirring and looked at me.

  "Is a moose like a deer, only bigger," I asked quickly, "with bigger antlers?" That wouldn't have fooled a woman, but it fooled Johnny. He was right back on moose.

  "They're not the same thing at all, different animals. Take a moose, now. It will never gallop like a deer. Just swings along at a sort of pacing trot. But it can outdistance the fastest horse go-ing."

  Had Mike gone back to the country he'd come from without stopping to see my Uncle John? Or was he still on duty in Calgary? Would he be coming by the ranch again? I suddenly realized that Johnny had stopped talking. The last word I'd heard had been "moose," so with a great deal of interest in my voice, and none at all in me, I asked, "Is a moose a clever animal?" It sounded like a stupid thing to say, even to me, but it was enough for Johnny to be off again.

  "Well, now, clever—it's hard to say. It's got poor sight. But it's clever enough when it comes to smelling or hearing." He interrupted himself to put a spoonful of mulligan in his mouth.

  With his cooking and eating and eating and cooking, it's a wonder to me so much ever came to the table.

  I began to think of the time that I had cooked and Mike had eaten. But it was hard to think around Johnny when he was telling stories, and he was telling one now.

  "It was a blizzard storm I was out in. Mighty trees such as fir and spruce crashing down and branches breaking off and flung by the wind great distances. It was in such weather and on such a day that I was stalking a giant moose with an antler spread of fifty to sixty inches. Now, mind, he was over a hundred yards from me at the time, and all around were the trees and the branches crashing to the earth. And here I was sneaking up on him, trying to get my sights on him. But there was too much brush between us, and he was taking cover in it, not because he suspected I was around, but because that's their instinct. Well, I was moving gently as I could through that gale—but didn't my foot step on a twig and snap it! Well, it was a little twig, and mighty trees were splitting and falling, but the big fellow heard that twig and he let out a 'bell' and was out of sight before I could get my gun to my shoulder. That's a true example of their powers of hearing."

  I guess it was true, all right, and a little more than true. But that's the way Johnny tells things.

  "Help me dish out the mulligan." And Johnny reached down three bowls.

  "There's only two of us." I started to put back the third bowl, but he stopped me.

  "Mildred's here," he said.

  "What!" I ran to the window. She was tying Squaw to the porch. I turned and looked at Johnny. He was grinning.

  "Heard the pony," he said. "Our men would've come in all together."

  "Johnny, you've got hearing like a moose."

  Mildred came in and ate mulligan stew with us. It was wonderful because, as I said before, Johnny was an artist. He would no more let anyone drop a vegetable in his stew than Michelan-

  gelo would have let a student sculp the finger of one of his statues. No, you could not help Johnny cook. About dishwashing he wasn't so much of an artist. He let Mildred and me help him. And then pretty soon he was off altogether.

  We were glad to have the kitchen to ourselves. Up to then we'd just been skirting around things and giggling when we got too close to the important ones, as when Mildred said, "Done any more swimming, Katherine?"

  Johnny said, "What do you mean—any more? There ain't no place to swim around here."

  We both laughed, and Johnny looked kind of disgusted, and that's when he said he had chores.

  Mildred was just waiting for me to ask her something, and I wouldn't. Finally she had to say it herself. "I was in Calgary again to see Dick."

  "How is he?"

  "Who? Dick?"

  I thought that was mean of her. "Of course, Dick. Isn't that who you were talking about?"

  Mildred smiled. "Oh; he's fine; in fact, he's wonderful. Mother and I shopped in town all day for my trousseau. And then in the evening Dick took me dancing. Oh, it was fun!"

  It sounded like fun. I imagined myself shopping with Mother and picking out a beautiful filmy white gown because Mike and I were going to be married. And then in the evening Mike took me dancing.

  "You're so quiet," Mildred said. "What are you thinking about?"

  I realized I'd been drying that bowl for an awfully long time. "Nothing. Just about what a good time you must have had."

  "Oh, and guess who we saw?"

  My lips formed the word "who," but I don't think I ever got it out.

  "Ted Russell. Oh, that's right, you don't know Ted, do you? Mike Flannigan was there too."

  "Where?"

  "At the dance."

  Words, just plain words, strung together in a sentence can slash to pieces the make-believe and the dreams. They cut into mine. The black wavy hair and the tall red coat were the same. But those eyes, those blue eyes that had been smiling at me, smiled now at someone else.

  "What was she like?" I must have asked out loud because Mildred answered, "What was who like?"

  But now I didn't want to know. What did it matter whether she was tall or short, thin or fat? I wasn't she, and never would be. It would be this girl I didn't know, but who was much prettier than I, who would bandage Mike when he came in wounded. It was she, this girl who maybe had wavy black hair and blue eyes too, who would cook surprises for him, who—

  "Katherine Mary, who were you talking about?"

  "Nobody," I said and threw a shower of knives and forks into the drawer. "Let's go out on the porch." I thought this would change the subject, but I was wrong.

  We were out there and sitting on the swing when she asked it again. "I know you were talking about somebody. Now who was it?"

  "I was just wondering about the dance, and what you wore and what Mike's girl wore."

  "Mike's girl?" She gave me a blank look.

  "Well, you said he was there, didn't you?"

  "But he didn't bring anybody. He just called the dances. Why, he didn't dance once."

  Words, it was just words again. Or maybe it was in myself. I had made the unhappiness, and now I made the glad feeling that was all through me. I thought about it for a while. Words that I could spell, and a few that I couldn't, were back of all feelings that anyone in the world had ever felt.

  "Mike asked about you." These words were so wonderful that they bounced me right up in the sky.

  "He did?"

  li ! ffl

  "Yes, he thinks you're awfully pretty/'

  "He does? Did he say so?"

  "Well, he didn't say it exactly like that. He said he'd never seen such a head of hair on any female."

  I was a little disappointed.

  "But, Mildred, that doesn't mean he thinks I'm pretty. That just means—well, that I've got a lot of hair. And anyway 'female' isn't a very nice word."

  "What's wrong with it?"

  "I guess there's nothing wrong with it. It just sounds like animals, that's all."

  Mildred laughed. "You should be glad 'cause that shows he doesn't go around saying nice things about all the girls. 'Cause if he did, he'd know how better." I thought that was a very fine bit of reasoning and my affection for Mildred increased considerably.

  "He said something else, too."

  "What?"

  "He said your eyes were as gray as the breast of a dove."

  That was poetry, and it thrilled me. "Did he real
ly, Mildred?"

  Mildred hesitated. "Well, he said gray as a whisky-jack."

  "A what?"

  She looked at me helplessly. "A whisky-jack; it's a bird too."

  "But not a dove?"

  She admitted that it wasn't a dove, but a thief and a scavenger.

  "Wherever did it get such a name as whisky-jack?" I asked.

  "It's the kind of call they have. It sounds like they're asking for whisky."

  Well, I didn't know whether I liked Mike's compliments or not. Of course, you had to take into consideration that he was a woodsman, and it would be natural for him to compare a girl with things he knew. He'd probably never seen a dove, and a whisky-jack he saw every day. Even so, working hard at it, I couldn't make myself like it. Then, suddenly a terrifying thought struck me, and I looked at Mildred. Why had he mentioned my eyes, the color of my eyes, unless . . .

  "Mildred, you didn't tell him?"

  "Tell him what?" She asked it right out, as if she had nothing

  to hide. But now the suspicion had entered me, I could not be sure. "You know, what I said about his eyes being so blue you could swim in them."

  Mildred looked hurt. "Why, Katherine Mary, you know I'd never breathe a word. Why, I'd bite my tongue off first."

  The way she said it made me feel very ashamed and unworthy of her friendship. But still I couldn't help thinking it was funny he'd said anything about my eyes.

  Mildred stayed all night. I was supposed to ride her back in the morning, but we slept pretty late. And then Johnny took his gun and went toward the ravine. It was a perfect chance. We decided to make apple pies. I knew how to do that. Mother had taught me. I intended to make twelve of them all at once. I figured I'd have to, with that many men eating them.

  "We've got a case of apples, Mildred. How many do you think are in a case?"

  "About thirty pounds," Mildred said.

  I looked inside and held up a very wrinkled-looking object.

  "Is this an apple?" I asked Mildred.

  "Of course. It's a dried apple."

  I'd never used dried apples before, but I proceeded as if they had been regular apples like the ones Mother bought in Boston. I put the thirty pounds of apples into the washtub in relays and soaked them. Then I put them on to boil.