Evan Hunter - The Chisholms - A novel of the journey West

“My fiancée’s still there, you know. In Yonkers.”

“I didn’t know you was betrothed,” Minerva said, kneeling.

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, that’s nice,” Minerva said, and set oven and lid on the coals.

“Miss Loretta Hazlitt.”

“Eh?”

“My fiancée.”

“How was your tub, Gideon?”

“Nice, Ma.”

“You’re not going to light that pipe again, are you?” she asked, and shook her head.

“Schwarzenbacher brought tobacco.”

“Did you now?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “She’s twenty-one.”

“Who is?”

“Loretta. Closer to my age than... well... Bonnie Sue, for example.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“I think your daughter’s very courageous,” Schwarzenbacher said, and cleared his throat. “Very courageous, ma’m.”

“Do you think so?”

“Yes, ma’m. To have defended him that way. It couldn’t have been easy for her, ma’m. I admire her for — for what she did, ma’m. I do.”

Minerva looked up at him.

“I do, ma’m.”

She was still looking at him.

“She’s only sixteen, you know,” Schwarzenbacher said.

“Yes, I know that.”

There was something in her voice, something... Gideon couldn’t fathom what. He shrugged and lit his pipe.

Kind of liked Schwarzenbacher. The man was totally ignorant of anything a body needed to know, but he liked him anyway. Sort of took pleasure teaching him little things.

“You never ate squirrel, huh?” Gideon said.

“No, never. And don’t intend to either.”

“You’re missin something fine, Schwarzenbacher.”

The dead squirrel was resting on a flat rock out back. Gideon had dusted the rock free of snow, and was now skinning and dressing the animal. Schwarzenbacher watched as he ringed the back legs with his knife and then cut around the base of the tail.

“You ought to learn how to do this,” Gideon said.

“Why?” Schwarzenbacher asked.

“Well... out here,” Gideon said, rolling the animal onto its back.

“I don’t plan to be out here much longer,” Schwarzenbacher said, and immediately lowered his voice. “This is confidential, Gideon.”

Gideon nodded. There was nothing he liked better than a secret. He stepped on the squirrel’s tail with his foot, and then yanked on the back legs. The animal came almost free of the hide. He cut off the paws and sliced the rest of the skin loose at the throat.

“I’ve been thinking of moving on to California,” Schwarzenbacher said. “I feel there’d be more opportunity for me there.”

“I’ll be heading there myself come spring,” Gideon said, and cut off the head. “When do you think the wagon trains’ll start coming through again?”

“Sometime in June.”

“Be lots of them?”

“Enough.”

“You think they’d be partial to company?”

“You’d make a welcome addition to any party, I’m sure.”

“As late as June, huh?” Gideon said, and cut off the back feet, and then began gutting the animal. Schwarzenbacher turned his head away. “I was hoping to leave earlier.”

“June is when they arrive.”

“Mm,” Gideon said. “What you do, you cut it in little pieces and dip em in flour and salt and a little pepper. They fry up just delicious.”

“Do you think Bonnie Sue might like California?” Schwarzenbacher asked.

“Bonnie Sue?”

“Yes, your sister.”

“Well, what...?”

“After the baby is born, I mean. Do you think she might consider moving west?”

Gideon looked at him.

“Well, I don’t rightly know,” he said.

“I thought to start a hardware store there,” Schwarzenbacher said.

“Hardware’s good business,” Gideon said, and wondered what in hell hardware had to do with Bonnie Sue. Why was...?

Oh, he thought.

They had cut a pine tree in the forest and decorated it with berries and candles. The scent of it filled the cabin. Beneath the tree there were presents wrapped in colored cloth and tied with ribbons. A fire burned brightly in the fireplace. There was the aroma of baking bread; it suddenly caused Schwarzenbacher to feel heartsick for the house in Yonkers. Bonnie Sue bustled about the cabin, the baby huge within her, and Minerva shouted to her to see to the grouse and the sage hen Gideon had shot the day before.

They’d fashioned the gifts themselves, or else acquired them in trade from the Indians. Schwarzenbacher was laden with presents he’d been hoarding like a squirrel, and he doled them out like a blond Santa Claus, beaming at each recipient. When he handed Bonnie Sue her gift, he said, “It isn’t much,” and she answered, “But I have none for you, Schwarzenbacher.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Please open it, and watched as she unwrapped the gift. It was a seventeenth-century toadstone ring that had belonged to his mother before her death. “I hope it fits,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, and did not look up from the carved frog on the face of the ring, and did not try the ring on.

“It was my mother’s,” he said.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. And still did not put the ring on her finger.

Minerva was unwrapping her gift from Hadley. He had purchased it from the Indians, a necklace made entirely of shells. She thanked him, and kissed him, and slipped it over her head. There was a beaded jacket for Bobbo and a pipe Bonnie Sue had paid an Indian to carve for Gideon. There were leather vests and belts and buckles and bonnets and dresses hand-sewn, and a rattle Bobbo had fashioned from a gourd and given to Bonnie Sue for the baby that was coming.

Schwarzenbacher could not take his eyes from her. She still had not put the ring on her finger. He thought for a panicky moment that she would return it to him, but he saw her put it in the pocket of her skirt and remembered her ancestry, and knew she’d convince herself it was rude to turn back a gift. She was at the fire now, tending to the birds, the flames flickering on her golden hair.

“Won’t you open your gift from the Chisholms then?” Hadley asked.

“Sir?”

“Sitting there on the mantel, Schwarzenbacher. If it were a snake, it’d bite you.”

“Thank you,” Schwarzenbacher said, and went to where a small package stood on the fireplace mantel alongside a pewter candlestick. The package was wrapped in green cloth, tied with a red ribbon. His name was on it, Schwarzenbacher, and beneath that, Merry Christmas. From the heft of it and the shape of it, he suspected it was a pocket watch, and was fearful they’d given him something too valuable, an heirloom perhaps, something he did not deserve, something that would embarrass him. His hands trembling, he slipped the ribbon off the package without disturbing the bow, and then unwrapped the cloth from it. In a small oval brass frame that had undoubtedly been carried all the way from Virginia, they had placed a delicate pencil drawing of Bonnie Sue.

“Fellow guided us to the Platte drew that,” Hadley said. “Name was Timothy Oates.”

“A better artist than George Catlin,” Bobbo said knowledgeably.

Schwarzenbacher’s heart leaped with elation; they were telling him they approved of him. And suddenly he began to quake inside. Acceptance was still forthcoming from Bonnie Sue. His rehearsed proposal all but vanished from his head. He wanted to blurt it to her now and at once, before it disappeared entirely — “Marry me, I love you!” But instead he turned to her where she was setting the table with pewter, and said, “Have you seen this, Bonnie Sue?” and she looked at the framed pencil drawing and said, “Aye. It favors me, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” he said. “Bonnie Sue,” he said, “I wonder if I might have a word in private with you.”