Mary Shura - Gabrielle

From the rail of the Texas deck Gabrielle and her father waved at the crowd walking away to spread along the beach. The river nudged the ship’s side and a half moon swung high above the darkened trees. Now and then a bird called or a horse whinnied a welcome to its owner.

Snatches of talk drifted back on the breeze. "That fellow sure can handle that fiddle," she heard. "And that little gal can tear a man’s heart right out of his chest."

"That was quite some singing you did tonight," her father said quietly. His tone was strange and thoughtful.

She tightened her hand on his arm. "That was quite some song," she told him, knowing that wasn’t what he meant.

She was glad to hear Flossie calling for her to help with the pickup snack for the crew. Gabrielle spread mustard and butter on bread for sandwiches with the leftover ham, feeling Flossie’s eyes on her. When she glanced up, her friend’s face was very sober. "That was what we call a dead giveaway, Gabrielle."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about," Gabrielle told her.

Flossie scoffed. "I’ve listened to you sing all your life. This was different. Something has happened to you, Gabrielle, something that has changed you."

"That’s ridiculous," Gabrielle murmured, not knowing what else to say.

"Ridiculous love may be, my dear, but it’s a fact of life. And it was there in your voice tonight. A man would have to be deafer than a stone in a raging current not to recognize the singing of a woman in love."

THAT next morning Gabrielle shivered awake in the dark cabin with a sense of unreality. Getting up, she lit the lamp and studied her face in the hand mirror that had been her mother’s. The same old wide-set blue eyes stared back at her; the familiar nose that tilted up just a little at the end; the same cloud of dark, shining hair, spilling ringlets over her forehead.

"I haven’t changed," she told herself. "I’m the very same person I always was. So why do I feel so strange, as if I were suspended, as if—as if time had slipped and wasn’t working right?"

She seemed to hear David’s voice, back in the woods, saying, "I have been waiting for just this moment my whole life."

That was it. She was waiting, but for what? To be startled again into that unaccountable mixture of joy and confusion that had now happened twice; once in her dreamlike experience with David Wesley, and then again with the stunned reaction of the audience to her mother’s song?

Her fingers fumbled with the buttons down the back of her yellow-checked dress. She wanted to cry.

Twice that morning she went up into the pilot house, hoping to talk to her father about her new act. The first time he simply told her it wasn’t a good time to discuss it. The second time that she whipped up her courage to go talk to him, Judd Harper was there talking about the way the river looked. She stopped at the door without even going in.

Strangely, Flossie gave her little or no sympathy. "Maybe you shouldn’t be so secretive about it," Flossie suggested. "Perhaps if you just came out and talked about your plans in front of the other members of the cast, they could help you convince the captain."

"You don’t understand," Gabrielle told her.

"Maybe I do and maybe I don’t," Flossie said, turning away. Gabrielle studied her friend. It wasn’t like Flossie to state things halfway like that. Had Flossie noticed how she was avoiding Stephen DuBois? Did she realize how humiliating it was to have those black eyes either laughing at her or staring coal-hard with anger?

Gabrielle didn’t dare press Flossie to explain her words for fear she would have to come out and say how she felt about Stephen. Everyone else on board seemed to like him fine, and he had certainly proved his value to the cast all over again by his performance in the new act with Pud.

The day was hot. Black clouds of insects hovered above the shallows of the muddy stream and the bird songs from the passing shore sounded listless and uninspired. It was even hotter in the galley where Flossie sat sewing ruffles on a costume for her husband while keeping the stove going until it was time to start breakfast.

Gabrielle sat across the table from her, watching her needle flash in and out of the silken material. Flossie looked up at her in alarm as the boat suddenly lurched beneath them, rattling the pans hung along the wooden wall. "What’s that?" Flossie asked, glancing at the clock. "It’s only a little after nine, way too early to put into shore."

"Maybe we struck a sand reef," Gabrielle replied. "I heard Judd asking Father about a peculiar pattern the wind was making on the water."

"Oh, glory," Flossie said. "I hope nothing’s gone wrong with this boat again!"

Gabrielle slid off the bench and ran up on deck. She saw the ruffles on the water that revealed a sand reef just beneath the surface. But they hadn’t struck it. Instead, the Katie M was nudging the Levee Princess toward the Missouri shore, where a rough wooden dock stood on piles between a couple of beached rafts. There were tying posts on the dock, which meant the boat could be fastened close to it. She wriggled her nose at the faint scent of skunk that hung in the moist, hot air, and went into the pilot house. Sometimes strange smells blew along the river, but none of them made her eyes water the way skunks and muskrats did. She waited behind her father until he had a free moment. "Why are we stopping?"

He looked over his shoulder at her and laughed. A band of sweat shone on his fine, high forehead and his shirt was open at the neck. "Because we’re so popular. I should have reminded you this stop was only a few miles downstream. We won’t have anything like last night’s crowd—maybe twenty-five at most—but I promised them here that we wouldn’t miss them on the way back downriver."

"Flossie and I haven’t even started breakfast," she told him.

"No hurry," he said. "We’ll have Tom fire up the calliope a little before eleven, then get off and play some music for the folks." That made sense. At such small landings along the river they didn’t really put on parades, but just played some lively tunes on the beach, saving the real concerts for the towns that would produce larger crowds.

Gabrielle studied him a minute. "Father, since we have this extra time, maybe you can come ashore with me and see my act."

"Gabrielle," he said, a hint of irritation changing his tone, "it’s not like you to nag. The right time will come for that, you’ll see."

"But maybe I’ll forget how to do it," she wailed.

He looked at her steadily. "If you don’t have the act any better under control than that, we’d better forget the whole thing." Outside the men were shouting at each other as the rope was thrown, missed the post, pulled back, and thrown again. "Hey, cowboy, that’s the ticket," somebody shouted as the loop of rope caught the post on the second try. The boat lurched as the rope tightened in place. Her father stood up. "Run on down and pour me a mug of coffee, please," he told Gabrielle. "I’ll join you right away."

Gabrielle heard a thud as she passed into the galley, and wondered momentarily which of the crew had dropped something.

"Who’s shouting out there now?" Flossie asked when Gabrielle had set her father’s filled mug and her own on the long trestle table in the kitchen and slid onto the bench to wait for him.

"Some boy who was throwing rocks at the boat," Stephen DuBois replied, coming in as she spoke. "As soon as we got the boat tied he began yelling for the captain to put down the gangplank so he could come aboard."

"What’s his business?" Flossie asked.

Stephen shrugged. "The captain went ashore to talk to him."

"He had to be watching for us to put to shore, because we sure haven’t announced ourselves," Flossie pointed out.