Shortgrass Song (25 page)

“A writer?” Javier said. “Do you know how to write?”

“Hell, yes, I know how. I went to school four winters in a row when I was a kid.”

“You want to write about Buster?” Caleb asked.

“Well, see, I got me this idea. Since the war, all them slaves across the South have been allowed to go to school and learn to read, ain't they? How many of 'em you reckon there are? Well, I bet there's a hundred thousand. And once they learn readin', what do you think they'll want to read? You think they'll want to read about white folks? Hell, no, they'll want to read about their own kind. So, I'm gonna write a story about a nigger hero, and Buster, here, sounds like just the feller. I guess that ought to make a writer of me. Hell, anything's better than punchin' cows.”

Buster smirked and said he would tell Sam all about his adventures some other day. “Give me the A string. Caleb!”

The boy was staring dumfounded at Sam. Anything better than punching cows? This Sam Dugan didn't have the sense of a goat.

TWENTY-EIGHT

After tuning up the instruments, Buster went to Ab's cabin and started cooking the meal for Matthew's guest. Pete, Caleb, and some of the boys sat among the leaves that had fallen from the rows of cottonwoods and waited for the arrival of Amelia Dubois. At last they saw the one-horse surrey approaching, and got up as a body to tuck in their shirts and rake their bangs under their hats.

When the surrey arrived, Caleb knew instantly that Amelia Dubois was the prettiest thing he had ever seen. He had flirted with a few farm girls at harvest festivals and risked some glances at the painted ladies who worked the sawmill dances in Colorado City, but Amelia had them all beat. Her chestnut hair hung in ringlets around her face, and her hazel eyes batted mischievously. She didn't seem all that stuck-up or crazy either.

Matthew, on the other hand, appeared to have lost his mind. He was helping her out of the surrey like some kind of gentleman. He even dressed above his means, wearing a silk suit with a red cravat.

“Good evening, boys,” he said, with Amelia on his arm.

She was trying to practice a lot of fine manners but could not hide her distaste of the rude surroundings.

“Allow me the honor of introducing you all to Miss Amelia Dubois,” Matthew said. “Amelia, this is Javier Maldonado, the manager of the Holcomb cattle interests. And these are a few of the boys: Slim Watkins, Piggin' String McCoy, and Sam Dugan, lately of Texas.”

“How do you do, gentlemen,” Amelia said in a melodic voice.

Sam's hair fell down in his eyes when he lifted his hat.

“This is my brother, Pete, straw boss of the ranch. And this is my other brother, Caleb, the hardest-working man in the outfit. He does all the work these dumb cow punchers can't figure out. Plays a lot of musical instruments, too.”

“It's a pleasure to meet you both,” Amelia said. “Matthew speaks of you so often.”

Pete said something to her, but Caleb felt too stunned to hear it. Had Matthew called him the hardest-working man in the outfit? Was that the same Matthew he had grown up with?

Amelia eyed the cabin with caution as she entered. Matthew introduced Ab as a hero of two wars and a noted pioneer of the Front Range. He styled Buster the household chef and general overseer of the Monument Park Agricultural Cooperative.

Before he would allow Buster to serve the food, Matthew asked Pete to say grace, after which he remarked, “Well said, Pete.” Then he turned to Amelia. “Pete's going to start a Sunday school on the ranch.”

Pete blushed.

“Oh, how wonderful,” Amelia said.

“Buster and Caleb grow all these vegetables on the farm. Caleb, would you pass the mashed potatoes, please?”

“Huh?” Caleb said.

“Kindly pass the potatoes.”

“Oh. All right.” Caleb didn't know what to make of it. Matthew couldn't seem to say anything offensive.

“Matthew tells me you're going to play at the Engineers's Cotillion tonight, Caleb.”

“Yes, ma'am. I mean, Miss Dubois. Me and Buster will be playin' there. And Javier, too.”

“I look forward to hearing some of the regional music. But please, call me Amelia. I'm your age, you know. There's no need for all the formalities.”

Caleb nodded and turned red. She didn't seem his age. She seemed more mature and worldly than he ever thought he would be.

“Will you be there also, Pete?” Amelia asked.

“Yes, I always go to the dances,” Pete said.

“You must be quite a dancer then.”

“I know the steps, but I can't quite step 'em like Matthew.”

“Don't believe him,” Matthew said. “He can shake a leg with the best of 'em.”

“I'm certain he can,” Amelia said with a seductive glance.

“Excuse me,” Ab said impatiently, “but let's get that fried chicken started.” He took a drumstick and said, “Just what is it your father does down there in that big house south of town, Miss Dubois?”

“He's the general manager of the Colorado Springs Company.”

“Well, just what is that?”

“It's one of General Palmer's ideas,” Matthew said. “Captain Dubois served with General Palmer in the war.”

“All right, but what does he
do?
”

“He's in charge of getting the town of Colorado Springs started,” Amelia said.

“Now, that's something you'll have to explain to me,” Ab said. “There's already a town down there. Colorado City, the seat of El Paso County. Why did the general figure he needed another town just to the south of the one that was already there?”

“General Palmer is quite an idealist,” Amelia said.

“Yes, quite,” Matthew agreed.

“He doesn't approve of the saloons, nor of the mismanagement and squalor of the common frontier settlement. So he sent my father here to organize an ideal little city. We will have parks and libraries and colleges and wonderful neighborhoods.”

“Even trees,” Matthew added. “Captain Dubois already hauled in a thousand Cottonwood sprouts they dug up on the Arkansas and planted them on the plains where the new town is gonna go.”

“And we will have a system of waterworks and irrigation, too,” Amelia continued. “In fact, I think I shall suggest to father that he send an engineer to inspect your network of ditches here.”

“I helped Buster dig 'em,” Caleb said.

Buster beamed with pride at the kitchen table by the fireplace. He normally ate with the family, but he knew the Dubois mansion employed black servants, and he didn't want to upset anybody.

“What does a town need with irrigation?” Ab asked.

“The Fountain Colony has purchased ten thousand acres around the town site,” Amelia said with little interest as she cut morsels from a chicken breast. “Members of the colony have the option of obtaining farmland in addition to residential lands in town.”

“Captain Dubois was the first member of the colony,” Matthew said. “He built the first house in town, and the biggest.”

Ab pointed his fork at Amelia. “What kind of people are they letting in this colony?”

She dabbed her mouth daintily with a napkin and virtually recited the rules of the colony. “Any person of good moral character may become a member of the colony with a contribution of one hundred dollars and may then choose such lots and lands as are available. The members win title to their lands after making the required improvements. However, there is a clause attached to each land title that says ownership will revert to the colony if the members engage in selling intoxicating liquors as a beverage. General Palmer is a staunch believer in temperance.”

“As all men should be,” Ab said, punctuating his approval with a bump of his fist on the table.

“Indeed, all men,” Matthew agreed.

Pete almost choked on a chicken bone.

“You sure know a lot about it,” Caleb said.

Amelia shrugged. “It's all very tedious, but father rambles on about it constantly.…”

With all his questions about the Colorado Springs Company and the Fountain Colony answered, Ab abstained from any further conversation around the supper table. He didn't know whether to consider the intelligence good news or not. General Palmer's railroad was going to attract more settlers than ever to the region, and with ten thousand acres removed from the public domain by the Fountain Colony, Ab was going to have trouble finding homesteads outside of Monument Park for the settlers. He figured he could pass some of them off as persons of high moral character and get them memberships in the Fountain Colony, but the majority would not have the hundred dollars needed. The general's narrow-gauge railroad was shaping up as a bag of mixed blessings.

After dinner, Matthew had to take Amelia back to town so she could get ready for the Engineers's Cotillion. As soon as the one-horse surrey rolled over the hump in the prairie to the south, Buster sat down on the porch, slapped his knee, and started laughing. “He sure forks it high for that gal!”

“Yeah, look,” Caleb said, slapping Buster on the back. “Here sits the general overseer of the Monument Park Agricultural Cooperative!”

“And here goes the hardest-working man in the outfit!”

“Y'all shouldn't make light of him,” Pete said, grinning all the same. “He's got it bad for that gal.”

TWENTY-NINE

Caleb and Buster let Matthew get a few miles down the road with his sweetheart, then piled their instruments into the former wind wagon and hitched a horse. The buggy had long since been restored to its original form, except for the holes in the floorboards where the steering wheel and mast had gone. The mast had become a roof pole for Buster's cabin, and the sail had rotted covering a stack of whipsawed lumber. The wind wagon had charted no course after its maiden voyage. Buster couldn't bring himself to sail it without Caleb.

The engineers and laborers for the Denver and Rio Grande had worn ruts in the road south, but the spring seat made the ride go easy for the musicians. Javier and Pete and half a dozen cowboys followed the buggy on their best horses. They rode past a few homesteads and beyond the rough-hewn cabins of Colorado City to the new railroad town of Colorado Springs.

Caleb played the harmonica as they traveled, his stomach fluttering with excitement. It happened every time he got ready to play for a crowd. Entertaining was routine to him by now, but still, he always felt nervous for the first two or three tunes.

The two-story Dubois house rose from the bare plains like a castle. It towered above the log Fountain Colony Building, the tents, and the small frame houses that had taken shape near the new tracks. Only furrows showed where the streets would crisscross the planned neighborhoods.

Caleb saw the one-horse surrey at the Dubois mansion but noticed Matthew's spotted mount down by the circus tent that would host the Engineers's Cotillion. There a dozen cook fires painted smoke across the twilight sky, and the smokestack of the two-ton locomotive,
Montezuma,
added its own plume of black.

“That's the puniest engine I ever seen,” Sam Dugan said. “It wouldn't even hurt to get run over by that thing.”

“You know what they use for a switch engine in Denver?” Piggin' String McCoy asked. “A mule! I swear, that's what the fellers said who was layin' the tracks!”

The D & RG and the Colorado Springs Company investors had brought their families from Denver to celebrate the laying of the tracks into the new town. What gave the occasion even more reason for celebration was the fact that the tracks had linked Denver with Colorado Springs exactly one year to the day after incorporation of the railroad.

The railroad investors congregated at one end of the tent. The laborers lounged under the other, talking among themselves, waiting for the feast to begin. About half of them were busted miners and the other half itinerant Mexicans. Caleb noticed that the two groups stayed far enough apart that Buster could have driven his buggy between them had he been of a mind to.

As the musicians began carrying their instruments to the small platform stage, one of the cooks lit lanterns around the inside of the circus tent, and others moved food to the serving table. A servant drove Amelia and her father to the tent in the surrey. Matthew appeared to help her step down. She wore a party dress of French organdy and a hat whose color clashed with Matthew's tie. She made him take the tie off immediately.

Captain Dubois told Buster to stick with the waltzes while the guests ate. “There will be plenty of time later for the quadrilles and gallopades,” he said.

As the music started, the Holcomb Ranch cowboys fell in line to get some food. The fare included oyster soup, calf's tongue, corned beef and cabbage, venison with apple sauce, minced ham with scrambled eggs, and sweet potato pie. Piggin' String McCoy piled his plate so high that Sam Dugan was moved to remark, “Damn, String, they ought to have give you a plate with sideboards on it.”

Captain Dubois made the three musicians stop playing for fifteen minutes during dinner so he could make a speech about the benefits the D & RG would bring to the Eastern Slope and about how the workers who had built the road into Colorado Springs had made history, establishing the first railroad in the region. Then he sat down to a round of applause led by Matthew, and the dancing commenced.

The railroad workers just watched. They had no women to dance with. Some of the Mexicans whirled imaginary señoritas outside the tent when the polkas played, and a few local homestead couples danced among the railroad investors. But the dance music served little purpose for anyone other than the rich folks.

Pete sat beside the stage and watched the proceedings until he saw Amelia approaching him, then he stood up and took off his hat, rolling the wide brim in his hand.

“You would enjoy yourself more if you'd dance with some of the young ladies,” Amelia said, taking his arm with a surprising familiarity.