Mary Shura: Gabrielle

The woods were alive with the songs of birds. She always loved leaning on the deck rail and watching everything along the river-bank, but she loved the birds best. She only wished she could tell them apart, maybe even know one song from another. They hid so cleverly among the leafy greenery that she seldom saw more of them than a swift flash of color.

The woods gave way to an open pasture with mounds of drying hay here and there on the prickly golden stubble. Getting under the fence was easy, since it was only rude logs supported now and then by a brace. She located the closest farmhouse by a trailing wisp of blue smoke rising above another stand of trees. She had heard many stories, most of them supposed to be funny, about bulls. Since the stories had sounded more scary than funny to her, she looked carefully to see that the pasture was empty before she cut across it to reach the house.

A dog barked as she drew near, and a woman appeared at the door, shading her eyes against the sunrise behind the approaching figure. Gabrielle paused at the gate until the woman shouted the dog to her side, then she walked across the barren yard in swift graceful steps.

"Goodness," the woman said, smiling with delight. "You’re the little actress from the Levee Princess . My, we did so enjoy that show last night." She paused. "Come on in, dearie." She led Gabrielle into the house without ever stopping to catch her breath. "That was an exciting play. For a minute there I thought my husband was going to take after that man with the mustache when he started mistreating you."

Gabrielle laughed. "It was only a play."

The woman paused and looked at Gabrielle, then reached out and lifted a strand of the waving black hair that had escaped Gabrielle’s ribbon. "My! How pretty you are. They never seem like plays when they’re going on. And the way he threatened you!"

Gabrielle smiled at her. "His name is Judd Harper and he’s really a very nice man as well as being my friend."

"He didn’t come off as very nice last night. My heart was pumping until the hero came and got rid of him."

A dark-haired baby slept in a wooden cradle by the fire, and the warm kitchen smelled like cinnamon. So this is how it would be to live on land, Gabrielle thought wistfully.

The woman stood beside the cradle, too, staring at her child. "He’s a boy," she told Gabrielle. "The fourth one in a row. I keep hoping I’ll have myself a girl. Like you."

At the woman’s insistence, Gabrielle sat on the kitchen bench and ate a cookie still warm from the oven. "I do my baking early, before it gets too hot," the woman explained. "I’m surprised the showboat isn’t gone already. Usually they are off and downriver before we get up in the morning."

"The river is running high with lots of loose logs being carried along," Gabrielle explained. "It would be dangerous to leave while it’s that way. Is there a town near here, in case we need more supplies?"

The woman nodded. "Only a few miles west. It’s really a nice place, one of the nicer towns around, I guess." She smiled hopefully. "You might think of calling up another show if you stay over. I, for one, would pay to see it again. Sometimes it’s a year or more between entertainments that my mister and I think are suitable for the boys. I like those songs singing in my head when I work."

With the side of bacon wrapped in a strip of muslin, Gabrielle started back toward the river. She stared into the woods as she passed. The trees were all shapes and sizes, some with heart-shaped leaves and others with murderous thorns and clusters of fruit that looked like tiny apples. When she saw two cottonwood trees standing a little apart in a clearing, she set the bacon in the fork of another tree and got out the poster she carried to look at again. In the picture the countess (wearing those pants her father had found so shocking, with a ruffled blouse and a top hat) was walking along a long, high rope carrying a parasol.

Gabrielle had to search a long time before she found a long, straight branch sturdy enough to support her weight. It was the matter of a few minutes to cut away the limbs with her bowie knife and make it into a fairly even pole. Since she didn’t have a parasol, she chose a lighter, straight pole to use for balance.

The first time she couldn’t even walk the pole lying on the ground. At the end of a half hour she had the knack of it. But the sky, which had brought early sun, was darkening. Let it rain, she thought. Rain would keep the river high! Let it really rain so she could come back and practice again and again. She couldn’t wait to tell Flossie how well it was going. Maybe Flossie could even find her two broomsticks.

Flossie! She had forgotten all about the time! They had breakfast to fix, and her father would be studying the river bank with a scowl. Worse than that, he might even send that Stephen DuBois after her.

She snatched the bacon from the tree and ran to the bank of the river to board the boat.

Flossie would find her broomsticks, she knew she would. Then all she needed would be two fairly matching forks in the trees and she could really start practicing.

Mademoiselle Gabrielle!

She could see the wonderful handbill Bony Rogers would print up as they started on downriver. Then let’s see that arrogant Stephen DuBois walk out on her act with that sneering look on his face!

Flossie put the bacon on at once. It smelled wonderful, almost as good as the biscuits she had already rolled out before Gabrielle got back. She frowned as Gabrielle told her about the tree limb.

"You will be careful, won’t you?"

"Oh, Flossie, don’t you start that. You do have broomsticks, don’t you?"

"No," Flossie said firmly. Her eyes twinkled. "How about mop sticks? Think they’ll do?"

Gabrielle helped Flossie clean up the breakfast mess and got her to promise to tell only the captain where she had gone. With two mop sticks under her arms, Gabrielle started down the gangplank again. Stephen popped out of nowhere and stood staring at her.

"Lose something on shore?" he asked.

For once his tone was more curious than insolent. "As a matter of fact, yes!" she told him, starting off without looking back.

She had lost something ashore: her last doubt that she could learn to walk a tightrope if the' river stayed high long enough for her to practice.

The rain came and kept coming. The supplies ran out and Flossie had to go clear into town to buy more. Although the river continued to rush by the Levee Princess in a murderous torrent, the sky cleared for a few hours every afternoon. Every day, as soon as that patch of blue appeared, Gabrielle leaped from the end of the gangplank and carried her mop sticks into the woods to practice.

She simply ignored the way Stephen DuBois stared after her, frowning sullenly. And her father kept his promise not to tell anyone what she was up to. But he couldn’t hide his concern. "You aren’t taking any chances?" he asked.

"With the ground this soft?" she countered. The ground indeed was soft, but she very quickly learned how to avoid falling. Every day she set the mop sticks higher, until, by the end of the second week, she had to climb the cottonwood tree to reach the forks where she set the mop stick she walked on. The stick in her hands worked every bit as well as a parasol would have. By carrying it with both hands, she could balance herself as she crossed the clearing on the strip of wood set higher than the top of her own head.

The river current began to slow on a Wednesday. That night the stars shone. "Another day like this and we can push off downriver," her father told Pud Swallow at breakfast.

Flushed with the excitement of her success, Gabrielle had already been tempted several times to ask her father to come to the woods with her. Since she could see how much she improved with every day’s practice, she kept putting off asking him so she would be that much better. Now that she knew when he planned to push off, she could do her regular practice and then take him to the woods the next afternoon.