Lost Lake House (12 page)

He still had not outlived the sensation of
that night a week ago, when at past eleven o’clock he had been
confronted in his library by the apparition of his daughter,
wearing a boy’s sweater crookedly over a bedraggled party dress,
accompanied by a strange boy and pouring out a tensely stammering
confession—of what he could not grasp at first; he could not adjust
that quickly to the notion that she had been abroad at night rather
than safely in bed upstairs.

When he conquered this amazement his first
reaction was to be brusque. “I’m afraid I don’t understand you,” he
said. He directed a sharply questioning glance at the tall boy who
stood behind Dorothy’s shoulder, watching both of them with a wary
expression. “Begin at the beginning, please. Who is this? What is
he doing here?”

“I’ll go, if you want me to,” the boy said,
half turning toward the door.

But Dorothy clutched at his arm in an almost
panicked way, stopping him. “No, please don’t go,” she said under
her breath, a tense quiver in the words. Perkins saw and heard, and
it stopped him in what he had been about to say. It struck him in
both the gesture and the tone that his daughter was actually afraid
of him.

The revelation did him good in the moments
that followed, for instead of questioning as he had intended he
stood perfectly still and watched his daughter as she tremulously
but resolutely made her confession. The Lost Lake House, the
nightly escapades, the police raid—he heard it all with an
incredulity almost overshadowed by the discovery he had just made.
Dorothy kept her head up; her chin trembled slightly and her voice
escaped her control once or twice; but she plunged on steadily and
looked him in the eye all the time. He noticed the boy watching her
from the background—his eyes fixed on her with a look of
understanding, almost as if he was silently willing her
courage.

When Dorothy spoke of Marshall Kendrick’s
part in the night’s events, the Alderman gave him a glance entirely
unlike the first one—and once he had heard Marshall’s reason for
being there, practicality took over for incredulity for the time
being. He moved into action, questioning them both as thoroughly as
Dorothy had anticipated, interrupting himself just once to place a
swift telephone call to the chief of police. When the chief himself
arrived shortly afterwards there was more cross-questioning, more
discussion and sensation, as Dorothy and Marshall between them told
their story over again. All in all, it was nearly two o’clock
before father and daughter were left alone—and as he looked at her,
a small untidy figure under the dimness of the last lamp in the
front hall, Alderman Perkins realized there were a great many
things he wanted to say to Dorothy and even more things he wanted
to know, but that two o’clock in the morning was not the time at
which to start.

“Go to bed,” he said, putting his arm around
her, and drawing her curly head against his shoulder for a moment,
“and get some sleep. We’ll have plenty of time to talk in the
morning.”

He had never realized before just how
talkative Dorothy could be. Seven days had been enough to convince
him of that.

As he stood by the edge of the porch
thinking of these things, Marshall Kendrick came up the street,
whistling a scrap of a tune, and turned in at the front walk to the
Perkins’ house.

“Good evening, Marshall,” said Alderman
Perkins, as he came up the walk. “Everything went off very
satisfactorily last night, I hear?”

“Yes sir. Sure went off with a smash,
anyway.”

“I suppose I’m biased,” said Perkins. “When
you’ve been throwing stones at a particular pane of glass for as
long as I have, it’s satisfying to hear the smash. Hurt yourself?”
He nodded toward Marshall’s right hand, the knuckles of which were
bandaged.

“Just a scratch. Nothing much.”

“I will tell you,” said Alderman Perkins,
“even though I still think you had every right to claim that
reward, that certain people I know have shed ten years over the
prospect of not paying it.”

Marshall grinned slightly. “Dorothy said
they’d be happy.” He added, with an offhand manner that did not
deceive his auditor, “Is Dorothy home?”

Dorothy’s father had seen the flick of a
curtain in a window behind him from the corner of his eye, and his
private opinion was that Dorothy was at this moment making a quick
inspection of herself in the mirror over the parlor mantelpiece,
but he kept this to himself. “Yes—yes, she’s at home. I’ll see if I
can find her.”

He turned and went into the house; and
before the screen door had swung closed, Dorothy shot through it
onto the porch and joined Marshall on the steps. “Did you get the
job?” she said eagerly.

“I sure did. I saw the foreman today, and I
start work on one of the furnaces on Monday.”

“Oh,
good!
I knew it would work out,”
said Dorothy, sitting down on the top step and clasping her hands
around her knees. “Did you see Mr. Dalrymple?”

“Only for a minute—he sent me down to the
foreman right from his office. He said a recommendation from your
father was good enough for him. I don’t know how to thank you,
Dorothy.”

“Oh, don’t thank me—it was Dad who talked to
him; I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Yes, but it was your idea.”

“No, it wasn’t. You asked Dad about help
finding work yourself, just like you said that night.”

“But you suggested the glass factory.
Anyway, if it hadn’t been for you I—”

“Oh, Dad would have thought of that anyway.
He and Mr. Dalrymple were—”

“You know, I’m getting to understand you
better,” said Marshall good-humoredly, sitting down on one of the
lower steps and leaning back with his elbows on the next one. “You
like arguing just for the fun of it. I’m not going to take it
personally any more.”

In the hall, Alderman Perkins paused on the
point of going into the library and looked back toward the
golden-lit screen door, listening for a moment to the sound of
animated young voices on the porch, and smiled to himself a touch
regretfully. He liked that boy—he had seldom met anyone he liked
better on short acquaintance—but it was a little hard having
Dorothy’s attention diverted elsewhere just as he was beginning to
think he should get better acquainted with her. Ah, well…his own
fault for being a little late.

Dorothy and Marshall sat on the porch steps
and talked as the sunset light faded slowly, and the soft
indistinctness of evening settled over the street. Marshall told
her about the final police raid on the Lost Lake House, which he
had witnessed accomplished with great chaos the night before.

“Nobody had the least idea it was going to
happen, so soon after the last one. When the police went straight
to the secret doors, everybody knew the game was up, and the whole
place went to pieces. The waiters ran like rabbits, and all the
bootlegging crew tried to get off the island. Bill Harolday got
hold of a boat somehow, but he didn’t get far—the cops were waiting
for him on the other shore. But Maurice Vernon got away. He wasn’t
on the island at all. Somehow he got wind of what happened, and by
the time the police got round to his house and his office he wasn’t
there. Nobody knows where he disappeared to.”

“I saw that in the paper,” said Dorothy. “Do
you think he suspected at all? That it was you, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Marshall. “I don’t even
know whether I hope he didn’t or not. Does that sound crazy to
you?”

“No,” said Dorothy, putting her chin
thoughtfully in her hand. “I think I know just how you feel. Marsh,
what happened to your hand?”

Marshall glanced at his bandaged hand, and
moved it half out of sight. “Oh, nothing; I just split the knuckles
a little.”

“How?” demanded Dorothy, more inquisitive
than her father.

“I hit somebody last night.”

“Last night! Good gosh, you didn’t hit a
policeman?
”

“Heck, no, a guest,” said Marshall. “There
was a lot of crowding going on in the halls, once they’d broken
open the speakeasy—I sort of shoved him, and he didn’t take it
kindly. He—well, he took a swing at me, and so I hit him. I think I
knocked one of his front teeth crooked,” he added with some
satisfaction.

Dorothy eyed him with a suspicious glimmer
of mischief. “You sort of shoved him,” she said. “Marsh, you did it
on
purpose!
”

Marshall tried to look and sound aggrieved,
but could not entirely keep the ghost of a grin from showing
through. “Well, gee whiz, Dorothy, I’ve been wanting to sock that
Sloop Jackson in the jaw ever since the first time I saw him.”

a retelling of the beloved Cinderella story set on
the windswept prairies

“Well, I don’t know, Ed, she looks awful
skinny to me,” said John Bentley.

“Don’t have to waste time running her down.
You going to buy her or not?” said Ed Strickland ungraciously.

The ‘her’ in question was an
ungainly-looking milk cow, who was probably neither so bad nor so
good as the two men’s opinions painted her. John Bentley, leaning
on the bars of the milking pen, scratched his ear. “I ain’t sure
I’d pay what you’re asking for her, even if I was sure she’d give
enough milk,” he said.

“Why take up my time then? I got a cow to
sell, and if it’s not to you it’ll be somebody else.”

“Maybe,” said Bentley, who was not quite
convinced of the latter point.

From a few yards away, Ellie Strickland
watched them unobtrusively as she scattered grain for the hens
scratching about in the yard. The subtle shadow over her face
betrayed the mortification she felt every time she had to listen to
a conversation of this sort. Every instance of her brother’s
rudeness stung her the same way, even though she had certainly
heard it enough to be used to it. It made no difference to her by
now what people thought of Ed, but he was the only member of the
Strickland family who had a chance to make an impression on
anybody, and it was knowing that she and her mother came under the
heading of the impression Ed made which hurt.

“Well,” said John Bentley finally, adjusting
his battered hat over his rough graying hair, “I guess I’ll think
about it some more. If I don’t find a better deal, I’ll be back in
a day or two.”

“Yeah, you do that,” said Ed, and he turned
away from the milking pen and headed toward the barn.

John Bentley turned to go too, and Ellie saw
the brief but expressive glance of contempt he threw over his
shoulder toward Ed as he did so. Bentley was a good-natured man,
but his opinion of Ed was plain. Nearly everyone’s was. Ed,
however, was oblivious to what anyone thought of him, or else he
simply did not care.

Bentley climbed to the seat of his wagon,
and started the team in a circle around the yard to pull back out
onto the road. He had not even noticed Ellie.

Ellie finished feeding the chickens, and
stood for a moment holding the empty basket, watching them cluck
and scratch and search in the dust for the kernels of grain. Then
she turned and walked across the yard toward the little weathered
frame house. The house, the low-roofed barn, the corrals and sheds
made a half-circle around the hard-packed dirt ranch yard, and the
garden patch lay east of the house. Sheltered by low hills, the
ranch lay down out of sight of the main road. Few people came down
the rutted track to the Strickland place. Those who did came on
business with Ed—buying a cow, as today, or perhaps to borrow a
piece of farming equipment; and they seemed to come rather of
necessity than choice. Their infrequent comings and goings did
little to affect the daily round of life. Though only five miles
from town, the ranch was for Ellie a lonely place.

It was not a particularly hard life they
lived here, though for Ellie and her mother there were often
irksome extra tasks arising from rather unnecessary scrimping and
making do. Ed was ‘tight’; he grudged every bit of new wire for
mending a broken fence; he kept his cows as short on grain as
possible and then complained when they did not gain flesh like the
other ranchers’ cattle; he would never buy a new shirt when an old
one could be patched. He was apt to grumble over small extra items
in his mother’s modest grocery lists, and Ellie had long since
given up asking for anything for herself, knowing she would only
hear the familiar response, “But what
for?
We don’t
need
it.”

Ellie sat down on the front steps and put
the basket down beside her. Ed was out of sight, and it was not yet
time to start the midday meal, so she sat still for a moment and
let the fresh breeze from off the prairie brush her face and
flutter the edge of her calico apron. It was quiet—peaceful and
beautiful, with the near-noon sun shining on wildflowers bobbing in
the long grasses stirred by the wind. But today the quiet only
served to remind Ellie that hardly anybody came down the road to
the Strickland place, and those who did come disliked Ed Strickland
so much that they never paid attention to Ed’s sister.

Ellie sighed a little, and scuffed the toe
of her buttoned boot in the dust. She was eighteen now. A lot of
the girls she had gone to school with in the little one-room
schoolhouse over on Catlin Creek had beaus by now, who escorted
them to picnics and dances and took them out for buggy rides on
Sundays. Ellie and her mother seldom went anywhere except
occasionally to church, for Ed disliked social gatherings and
didn’t like to spare the team from work for them to drive anywhere.
So they were cut off, to a large degree, from the other women in
the area, who had plenty of acquaintances among their neighbors to
keep them busy, and knew very little about the Stricklands except
what they heard their husbands and sons say of Ed. And as for young
men…well, the men that came out here usually left with a sardonic
expression like John Bentley’s, and hardly even noticed that Ed had
a mother and sister.