Mrs. Mike Page 5

  "Haven't you got an awful lot of apples there?" Mildred asked as she watched me fill container after container with apples and set them on the stove.

  "Don't forget I'm feeding twelve men," I said, and that shut her up.

  I was sorry I had snapped at her, and I said, "I suppose you're a good cook yourself, Mildred."

  "I've cooked for Dick lots of times when he was up at our ranch. I think that's one of the reasons he proposed to me." She laughed, and then stopped all at once. There were tears in her eyes. "Oh, Kathy, I don't know when we'll be married."

  "Why?" I asked, slipping my arm around her. "What's the matter?"

  "Oh, nothing. It's just that—well, it's harder to marry a lawyer than a Mounty."

  "What's so hard about it?"

  "A Mounty can't marry till he's been in the service five years. And a lawyer can't marry till he can feed a wife. At least that's what Dick says. And it's hard to get started."

  "It's always hard when you're young," I said, and I said other things that we had both heard people say. They seemed to comfort her. Not the words, but that she knew I was sorry about her and Dick, and that I wished they could get married right away.

  Mildred snatched off her apron. "Come on," she said. "That's enough. You can ride me home now."

  We raced each other over the low meadowland, and that seemed to restore her spirits. But I kept thinking about something she had said—that a Mounty had to be on the force five years before he could marry. I wondered how long Mike had served.

  I didn't stay at the MacDonald ranch because of the boiling apples. On the ride back I just let Rosie lope along. I only pulled at the reins when she stopped to eat grass, which she did as often as she thought she could get away with it. Suddenly I jerked her up so hard and short she rolled her eyes and flicked her ears at me. I hadn't meant to, but coming over the hill to the north of me was another rider.

  In such wild and open country you rarely meet anyone, but it wasn't that that made me pull at Rosie. It was that even at that distance I could see that the rider was tall, and that he was dressed in red. I told Rosie that there were other Mounties in the world, and it probably wasn't Mike at all. But I didn't believe myself, and my heart pounded fast and made more noise than Rosie's hoofs.

  He was close enough now for me to see it was a uniform—red jacket, dark blue riding breeches with a yellow stripe, long brown boots, spurs, holster, beaver cap on top of black waving hair, and blue eyes, the bluest I had ever seen.

  I looked up into them and kept on looking. No words came to my head. The way I'd planned it, I was going to bandage him or feed him, but here in the hills, I couldn't do either. So I smiled the smile I'd practiced in the mirror.

  "How do you do, Sergeant Flannigan?"

  "Get off your horse," he said. That was certainly not the way to greet a young woman you hadn't seen in three weeks. I gave him what I hoped was an icy look and dug my heels into Rosie, who shot off.

  Mike wheeled his horse and took after me. It was a short race because he rode that big black horse of his right in front of Rosie. She stopped short; I went pitching forward and, would have fallen if Mike hadn't reached out and grabbed me and set me back in the saddle.

  He dismounted. "Get down," he said.

  I sat there with my lips pressed hard together, thinking things I could only have said if I'd been Johnny or John L. Sullivan.

  Sergeant Mike reached up, put his two hands around my waist, and lifted me down. For just a minute I was standing awfully close to him, and for that minute I couldn't do anything.

  But I pulled away. "Mike Flannigan," I said, "you're not to push me around and pull me off horses. I'll tell my uncle, and he and Johnny and the ten hands will ride you down and even if you are a Mounty, they'll hog-tie you and—" I had started out in a low, frigid voice, but by now I was yelling, and he stood there and watched me, slightly amused, as if I was putting on a show for him.

  "Katherine Mary, you're the hardest girl in the world to do anything for."

  I looked at him a little uncertainly. "What did you want to do for me?"

  "I want to teach you to manage a horse."

  There he was telling me again.

  "I know how to manage my horse."

  Mike laughed. "If you could have seen yourself bouncing all over, like a jack-in-the-box, you wouldn't think so."

  "Mildred says I ride very well."

  "You would if you'd tighten your cinch."

  "But Rosie—" I changed my mind. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of showing me or telling me anything more.

  "But Rosie blows out her stomach when you go to pull it tight. Is that it?"

  "How'd you . . . ?" Then I saw the grin on his face. "Yes, that's it."

  "Well, look. Here's what you've got to do." He undid Rosie's cinch and held it ready to tighten. Rosie took her usual big breath, blowing out her belly till it looked like a barrel. When she had it completely extended, Mike cracked her across the back with the flat of his hand. Rosie was so surprised she gave a sort of gasp, and all the breath went out of her. Her sides deflated like a punctured balloon, and in that moment the cinch was pulled in and tightened.

  "There," said Mike. "Now you do it."

  I tried to, but the first time I didn't hit hard enough, and the second time I forgot to pull the cinch, but finally I got it.

  "Did I do it right?" I asked, knowing very well I had but wanting a little praise out of him.

  "Now, another thing," said Mike. "You're riding English on a western saddle. You've got to let out those stirrups." He fiddled around with them and slipped them in a lower notch. "Try that," and he handed me up.

  "How is it? Comfortable?"

  I had decided to say it was all wrong, but he asked me so eagerly that I had to let him be right. "Yes, it's much better."

  He looked at me and smiled, not that teasing grin, but a sweet, gentle, kind smile.

  We looked at each other for a few minutes. Then I began to realize neither one of us was talking. And that he was looking at me in a queer way. Of course, the sun was in his eyes, and it might have been that.

  "It's a lovely day," I said, "but warm." And before he could answer, I let out a cry that startled all of us, including Rosie, who

  started off like a mad thing. I kept her going, too, urging her ahead.

  Mike never did catch up to me. He had to catch his horse first; it had bolted when I shrieked. He kept shouting questions, but at the speed Rosie was going there wasn't enough breath in my body to answer him. Besides, how could a man understand what it is when you've left your apples boiling too long!

  I pulled up in front of the house and jumped down. The dried apples met me at the door. They had boiled up and over. The floor was covered with the messy things. I stood aghast, looking and not knowing where to begin.

  Mike came up behind me and looked too. He didn't say anything, just took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and went to work. We filled a washtub and a bucket with puffed dried apples. I was embarrassed that a thing like this had to happen when Mike was here. But it was funny, and I couldn't help laughing. Mike laughed too when he saw me laughing. I guess he didn't dare laugh before, for fear of hurting my feelings.

  He reached for the last apple, but it slipped out of his hand almost at my feet. I stopped to get it just as he did, and we bumped heads with an impact that sent us both sprawling. We really laughed then. We laughed so hard we couldn't get up. Uncle John and Juno must have heard us because they came in to see what was going on. There we were, Mike and I, lying on the floor and roaring. Uncle looked down at us, and we looked up at Uncle. It was a long way up Uncle John's six-foot-three of height, and by the time you reached his face you were at a psychological disadvantage. I suppose Mike thought so too, because he got to his feet.

  "Hello, John." He said it a little breathlessly, but with one of his most ingratiating grins, which Uncle John did not return.

  "Katherine Mary," my uncle said, "you will please get up from the floor."

  Mike came forward to give me a hand, but Uncle stepped in front of him and helped me up himself.

  Mike looked upset. "We were just—er—picking apples." He

  waved toward the linoleum and repeated the word "apples." Uncle John looked at the linoleum too. But all the apples were picked up, all but the one we had fallen down over, and Juno must have eaten that because there wasn't an apple in sight. Uncle, Mike, and I stared at the blue and gray linoleum.

  "We were picking apples," Mike repeated stubbornly.

  "Hmmm," Uncle said.

  And that was all he said until dinner, when he told Johnny that in his day they picked apples from trees.

  Mike was back in a few days. He stood in the doorway holding out a present.

  "You didn't need to bring me anything," I said, but was very excited that he had, so excited that I couldn't get the string untied.

  "Here"—he took it out of my hands—"I'll do it." He snapped the cord and handed the package back to me. I opened it, looked at Mike, looked at it, and looked at Mike again.

  "Well, put them on," he said.

  I lifted out a pair of heavy mackinaw pants. "But they're men's," I protested.

  "Put them on. I'm not taking you hiking in that." And he pointed scornfully at my blue polka-dot dress.

  "Are you taking me hiking?"

  "Yes. Hurry up and change." I grabbed up the trousers and started for the bedroom. Then I remembered. After all, they were a present.

  "Thank you very much," I said. "They're lovely."

  Mike grinned. "Put 'em on."

  We tramped along a stream, past the foothills and up into the mountainous country. I liked the way Mike walked. I liked the freedom in his body. I kept up with him too because he had just said that he hated to walk with women who minced along. Mike led the way up the path. For a while I watched the tops of the tall silver trees, but I stumbled, and then I watched the ground. It was dappled with moving dark shadows of leaves and with bright sunny patches. It was a strange day. The air would be very

  quiet, and then up ahead you would see a fluttering of the leaves. A moment later the little gust of air would pass you, and it would be still again.

  We entered the gorge of a mountain stream. The sides loomed steeper and steeper. Rock ledges shot up to meet perpendicular cliffs. A sharp black shadow shrouded our path. The sun and sky disappeared and leaning out over us at a crazy angle was a giant gray bluff.

  Mike looked back over his shoulder. "Notice the sheer rock faces. See how one juts out above the other. I think the Indians must get their patterns for blankets and baskets from the design in these rocks."

  I was glad, though, when the cliff didn't hang over us, but slanted back the way it was supposed to and let us have the sun again.

  "Thirsty?" Mike asked.

  "Yes."

  He flopped down on his stomach on a low flat rock and, reaching into the stream, cupped water into his hand and drank. I lay down on my stomach too and cupped my hands and filled them with water, but the water dripped through my fingers, and by the time I got my hand to my mouth all I could do was to lick a slightly wet palm.

  Mike laughed. "I guess you'll have to get your face down in it. Inch forward a little so you can reach it."

  I looked at the frothy swirling water. "I'll fall in."

  "No, you won't."

  "My hair will get wet."

  "I'll hold it." He caught back my hair, and I got a very good drink. I stood up laughing and blinking water out of my eyes. Mike opened his hands slowly, and my hair fell back around my shoulders.

  "Is your hair red?"

  "It's auburn," I said and tossed my head a little so he could see the lights that auburn hair has.

  He turned away. "Come on."

  I followed him back to the trail. He'd thought my hair was pretty; I knew he had. Why wouldn't he tell me?

  We passed a tiny tree growing out of a solid mass of rock. "Look, Mike."

  Mike slowed down and looked. "It's got guts," he said. "In another twenty years it will be a spruce."

  We walked on again, and I swung my arms like Mike. Up ahead he stopped and held a brier that would have snapped back and struck me in the face. He watched me as I came up to him and ducked under the branch.

  "You walk like a boy," he said. I knew that was meant as a compliment, the first compliment that Mike had ever paid me. I was glad now that I had strained every muscle to keep up with those long legs of his. But after a moment I had to lean against a rock to catch my breath.

  "I wonder what makes a mountain?"

  "Upheavals in the earth, but it's the water that cuts the levels and ravines and determines the character of the mountain."

  I loved to hear Mike talk. He put himself in the place of whatever he told about. When he told about mountains, he was the mountain talking. I glanced up at him. He was shading his eyes and looking upstream. There'd been something on my mind, and for days I'd been thinking of ways to ask it. Finally I decided the best way was to ask it straight out. Then it would seem to be a question like any other, or at most a desire to make conversation. So I said it.

  "Mike!" He turned and looked at me. "How long have you been a Mounty?"

  "Since I was a kid. Let's see, it's been about seven years." He looked at me with a question in his eyes.

  "I was just thinking," I said hastily, "that that's why you know about mountains and what makes them, and things like that."

  "Well, when you live in 'em, you get to know 'em. As a person knows his house because he lives in it."

  I nodded, but I was thinking . . . seven years. And Mildred said

  all a Mounty needed was five years on the Force. I stopped myself right there. My heart pounded the blood into my face.

  "Let's go on, Mike," I said, but he caught my hand and pulled me back.

  "We've got to go quietly from here on. Follow me and don't make a sound. I've got something to show you where the stream bends up there."

  "What?" I asked, but he motioned me into silence and, leaving the trail which branched away from the river at this point, made his way silently and nimbly over the stream bed. Those wet rocks were slippery, and slimy moss grew on them, so I followed much more slowly, and he waited twice for me to come up to him. The second time he nodded toward the forest of silver trees scattered among the rocks and thickening into a dark tangle of woods.

  I looked and at first could see nothing. Then I noticed one or two and finally a dozen trees that had been felled in the oddest manner. The stumps were not sliced straight across as a saw would leave them, but were whittled into a conical shape, the tip ending in a sharp point.

  "Beavers," Mike whispered.

  "Is that what you were going to show me?" I whispered back.

  "That's the way they cut trees. One working at each side. They slice the wood through with their teeth. Their dam's just ahead."

  We crept forward a few feet more. Mike pulled me down beside him on a rock ledge, and I stared at the blockade of wood, stones, twigs, and mud that dammed the stream and turned it into a large pool.

  We were silent a long time, waiting and watching. My foot began to cramp under me, but I didn't dare move it. And then, up to the surface of the pool bobbed a beaver. He swam across, using his tail as a rudder. He scampered up on shore, and we lost him among the rocks. He was about three feet long, and one-third of him was tail. His hair started silky gray and became a coarse, thick, reddish brown. When he jumped to the rock, I saw that his hind feet were webbed.

  "We were lucky to see him." Mike's voice was very low. "In

  the spring they are usually off roving the forest, but there is a break in the dam. See, where that little trickle of water is coming through." Mike stopped talking suddenly and jerked his head toward where the beaver had disappeared. Here he was, back again. He came walking on his hind legs, carrying stones and pebbles in his paws.

  "He looks like a little man," I whispered.

  "That's what the Indians call them, 'the little people.'"

  The beaver walked out on top of the dam and, reaching over, stuffed his stones into the opening and patted mud carefully around. Mike reached impulsively for my hand. I followed his eyes, and there at the foot of a large elm was another beaver. She was chewing busily at a branch and didn't seem to be helping in the construction work at all.

  "They eat the pulp of branches, and water-lily roots, leaves, things like that, and berries too." Mike's hand was still over mine, and I wondered if he knew it.

  "How many beavers do you think there are?" I whispered.

  "Usually there are about four adults and eight young."

  "How old does a beaver get?"

  "Oh, they live to be twenty or thirty years old."

  The beaver that had been eating dropped her branch and came down to the edge of the pool to watch her mate. You could see that she carried young. The little fellow working on the dam had dived in the water. He was submerged for several minutes.

  "They have a lodge down there with dozens of rooms that are connected by water. They're very busy, these little people. They fell trees in the summer when they're building a new dam, and when the tree's ready to fall, they whack the ground, with their tails. It's their warning, like a lumberman yelling 'Timber!' Then in the fall they build their lodges. Sometimes there's as many as a hundred of them working, laying in supplies of wood for food and building material." Mike smiled at me. "In fact, they are the only creatures, besides man, that do so much building and engineering. They like to change the looks of the world, and so do we." He stared into the water. "They are very human. I have

  heard stories of Indian women losing their babies, who have suckled young beavers to bring them comfort."

  I saw the dark head of the beaver as it broke the surface. He swam the pool and climbed up on the bank beside his wife. And what a performance he went through after his bath! He squeezed the water out of his coat with his hands, much as we would wring out laundry. It was very funny to watch him, and I almost laughed out loud. Then the two of them began to tussle. They wrapped their arms around each other and rocked back and forth, then round and round, but never sideways. They looked like fat little furry men wrestling. I looked at Mike to see if he was laughing, but he wasn't. He was looking upstream, and his face was angry. He jumped up. The beavers stopped romping, stared at him, and scampered off.