Corral Nocturne (4 page)

“Don’t insult my horses, Thomas,” said Cole.
“They know plenty. They know the feeling of the wind in their
manes…and they know the sight of people scrambling out of the way
when they see us coming.”

“You should see what people look like after
you’ve gone by,” said Nancy Kennedy, and everyone laughed.

Ellie’s heart warmed as the banter and the
feeling of camaraderie wrapped around her. This was what she had
missed, and by some touch of magic Cole had made her part of it. In
far less time than she had expected she was at home among the
carefree group, listening and talking and sharing in the general
laughs, as if she had been one of them from the start. She was not
an overly shy girl by nature, and in this pleasant atmosphere she
warmed and came to life. It was very much as Cole had hoped—more
than one of the young people there wondered why they had never paid
attention to Ellie Strickland before, and thought that they would
like to know her better.

The afternoon slipped pleasantly away—a
rather staggering amount of luncheon was consumed; the picnickers
strolled by the creek and sat up among the rocks; there was singing
and a good deal of laughter. Ellie had long forgotten that she had
ever been nervous, and by the end of the afternoon, when Leila
Moore got out the new camera she had brought along and convinced
the whole party to sit together for a picture, her cup of happiness
was so full that she forgot to even think of how her plain gingham
would look beside the pretty linens and poplins of the other girls
in the picture.

The drive home that evening was but another
space of enjoyment to top off the day. Any feeling of constraint
long since broken, Ellie and Cole laughed and talked together
animatedly all the way. They talked of the friends they had met at
the picnic, and Cole told her more of the people on Catlin Creek
whom she had not seen in so long; and from there progressed to
telling her a little about himself and his own family. The
chestnuts behaved, the evening breeze swept invigoratingly across
them, and the trip seemed so much shorter than the one earlier in
the day; too short, almost, for they were enjoying themselves.

As they drove the last stretch of prairie
road before the turn-off to the Strickland place, Ellie unpinned
her hat and took it off, letting the wind blow through her hair and
loosen short wisps from its coil to whip back from her face. She
gave a sigh of contentment, and turned her head to watch the sun
setting in the west in a glow of pink and gold. For a few minutes
neither spoke. Then as the buggy turned off the main road down the
rougher track to the ranch, Ellie roused herself to give another
sigh, of regret this time; regretful that the day’s pleasures were
coming to an end. “I’ve had such a good time,” she said to
Cole.

“Well, that was the general idea,” said Cole,
smiling to himself.

He drew the horses to a stop in the yard, and
gave Ellie his hand to help her down. She looked up at him from the
ground, her eyes bright. “Thank you so much for taking me today.
I’ll remember it for a long time.”

“Oh, yes,” said Cole amiably. “Until the next
time gives you something even better to think about.”

“The next? Oh,” said Ellie, laughing a
little, “I don’t expect there’ll be a next time. But I don’t mind.
This one was lovely.”

“Why shouldn’t there be?” said Cole. “There’s
a barbecue out at the Moores’ next Thursday night—you heard them
talking about it today. How’d you like to go to that?”

“Oh,
would
I!” said Ellie, the words
breaking from her involuntarily. Then she collected herself and
added, “But—”

“That’s all you need to say,” Cole
interrupted her. “I’ll come by for you at six. That is, if your
mother says it’s all right.”

Ellie laughed. “She will.”

“Six o’clock it is, then. Good night!” He let
out the reins a little, and the untiring chestnuts started forward
again.

The barbecue at the Moores’ was the next, but
by no means the last of Ellie’s good times. Spring was just turning
to summer, and one or another of the sociable ranching and
homesteading folk on Catlin Creek or the ranches to the north was
hosting a picnic, or a small dance, or a barbecue nearly every
week. After the Moores’ barbecue Cole Newcomb had asked Ellie to
the next gathering, and before many weeks were out he had driven
her to half a dozen of them; and on several lazy Sunday afternoons
when nothing was happening, he had come by to take her for a
drive.

Ellie had slipped into the social life of the
Catlin Creek young people as if she had always been accustomed to
it, and renewed several friendships among the girls. Each gathering
was still a fresh delight to her, though; the newness had not worn
off the pleasure of visiting and mixing with people and talking to
them. As for Cole, he had all but forgotten his original reasons
for inviting Ellie to go with him, he enjoyed their drives together
so much for their own sake.

On one or two particularly fine afternoons,
they had driven out further than usual, where the road crested
gently swelling hills that marked the outskirts of Newcomb range.
From the tops of these rises one could see miles of shimmering
windblown prairie, sweeping up again into further hills that met a
seemingly endless blue sky; with scattered herds of cattle dotting
the valleys between.

One afternoon Cole stopped the buggy at the
top of the hill for a moment. He leaned forward with his elbows
resting on his knees, looking at the landscape without speaking.
The horses, by some curious chance, stood quietly, the restless
breeze sweeping past them from side to side and ruffling their
manes and tails. Ellie looked silently at the view herself for a
moment, and then stole a sideways glance at Cole. His eyes were
fixed on something in the distance, but a faint smile that bespoke
some deep satisfaction hovered on his lips. Then after a minute he
drew a deep breath.

“Maybe it’s just because I was born here,” he
said, “but there’s nothing like it in the world for me. I couldn’t
live anywhere else.”

“Even though you’ve seen so much of the
country—back East, I mean?” said Ellie, curiously.

Cole nodded. “Even then. Oh, I enjoyed it, no
doubt about that. And I’m not really tied down—Dad likes to send me
in his place on business trips now, because he hates traveling.
Chicago, St. Louis—once or twice a year. But I’m always ready to
come home.”

Ellie laughed, a bit breathlessly. “The way
you can say that! Chicago—St. Louis. As if all you had to do was
snap your fingers and you’d be there.”

“Well, it’s not much harder nowadays. Step on
a train here, step off there.” He turned and looked at Ellie. “What
do you think? Would you like the city if you had a chance to see
it?”

“Well—I’d like to visit one, that’s for
sure,” said Ellie. “Just to see what it was like—and for the
excitement of it. But I think I’m like you—I wouldn’t want to live
anywhere else but here. I—I love it here.”

Cole nearly said, “Even with your brother
making your life miserable?” but luckily checked himself just in
time.

He looked at her again, given the opportunity
as she gazed out ahead of the buggy once more. The thought flitted
idly through his mind of what it might be like to show her the
bright lights and clamor of a big city, and see the wonder come
into her clear gray eyes and the color into her cheeks. He had come
to take an unusual pleasure, during those few weeks, in seeing
Ellie introduced to things that brought such expressions to her
face.

They were never short of things to talk about
on these drives. Ellie listened with great interest as Cole told
her of his experiences at college and life on the ranch. He knew
how to listen, as well, and seemed genuinely interested in what she
said; and Ellie often found herself talking more than she had done
since she was a little girl, and sharing her ideas in a way she
seldom had a chance to do with anyone—for her mother, dearly as
Ellie loved her, had often been too busy or too tired to listen to
the crowds of thoughts spinning through Ellie’s young mind, and her
daughter had instinctively spared her.

Cole used to look at her sideways sometimes,
in a kind of surprised marveling at how unexpectedly pretty and
clever she was. Ellie had never traveled far from home, and her
reading had been limited to what books she could put her hands on,
but she had a quick mind and a perceptive nature, and there was
never any constraint between them on account of the different lives
they led. Cole was, after all, the son of a self-made man, and
education and affluence had done nothing to disrupt the commonsense
outlook with which he had been raised.

Of the rest of the Newcomb family Ellie had
heard a good deal, but had not yet met any of them. Cole had
sisters, all younger than himself, but the eldest, near Ellie’s
age, had been away at school and was spending part of the summer
with a schoolmate’s family in the East, and the other two were too
young yet to go to dances and parties. Mrs. Newcomb had slightly
delicate health and did not go out too often, and her husband was
either at home with her or riding out over the far-flung spread of
his ranch superintending the working of cattle and horses.

And so things went on. No hint of the
direction in which they were tending seemed to have come to Cole as
yet. It was summer, one of those lazy, sunny summers where life
seems to stretch out ahead in contented repetition of itself, with
the rest of the future indefinitely on hold. Not only had he
forgotten his original motives, he was unconscious still of any
present ones. But there were flashes.

When Ellie innocently observed one afternoon,
“Fred Jackson came by the other day and asked me if I’d go with him
to the Kennedys’, but I told him you were taking me,” some of the
shock Cole felt must have communicated itself to the horses, for
they leaped gaily and ran for half a mile. When he had got them
stopped Ellie was laughing, clinging to the buggy top with one hand
with her hair blown in loose wisps about her face the way he liked
it and shining in the sun; and between noticing this and trying to
get the horses under control and processing his indignation at the
remark that had started it all, Cole’s state of mind for a minute
or two was unenviable. Fred Jackson, indeed!

And Ellie?

Perhaps she did not know yet exactly what she
felt about Cole Newcomb. As someone to talk to and spend time with
she liked him immensely. Beyond that perhaps she did not allow
herself to inquire to closely into her own thoughts. Life had made
her practical; she never looked too much into the future—she was
not given to dreaming.

But there were some warm June nights when she
lay awake, her mind fluttering too restlessly for sleep, moving
inconsequently from one thing to another. Often she would find
herself at some point thinking of Cole, and afternoons they had
spent together and things they had talked about. That seemed only
to be expected. Yet other times, for seemingly no reason, out of
nowhere she would see his face; the absorption in his dark eyes
when he was thinking of something, or the unexpected turn of his
head to look at her; and a queer shivery feeling would crawl
through her stomach. And she would roll over in bed and pull the
quilt up over her shoulder and try not too successfully to think
about something else.