Nelson Nye: Rafe

Bunny appeared with a bowl and some crackers. She could see he was riled, and looked at her father. The old reprobate grinned. "He was fixing to get up and put on his duds."

"Oh, he mustn't," Bunny cried, hurrying over, blue eyes reproachful. "Why, you're weak as a kitten." She put a hand on his forehead. "He's burning up!"

"It's the exposure," Pike wheezed. "He'll feel better when some of that broth gets into him."

She set the bowl and the crackers on a stool and bent to lift and prop the pillows back of him. She got an arm under his shoulders. "Scrooch up a little. There ... that's more like it."

The clean woman smell of her was like an ambrosia, albeit somewhat disconcerting with so much of her so close. Rafe, self-conscious as a cow in bloomers, ungraciously growled, "I can feed myself!"

"Well..." she said, stepping back, "go ahead." She handed him the bowl and the crackers and a spoon, still hovering over him, blue eyes dark with concern. The old tub, watching, chuckled silent as an Indian. Then his look winnowed down. "What's the matter with that hand?"

Seemed for a moment Rafe wasn't going to answer. He couldn't conceal his awkwardness and apparently his pride was touchy about it. Then his glance, crossing Bunny's, kind of yawned away. "Arm wasn't set right. Horse rolled on it."

Bunny's eyes got awfully big. "In the war?" she whispered.

Rafe testily nodded. He managed to get the bowl anchored with the paw, transferring the spoon to his good left hand. "Didn't waste much pains on us Rebels up north."

"Daddy could fix it."

Rafe nearly missed his mouth with the spoon. Way he looked at Pike he would sooner have sawed the arm off. "Reckon I can live with it."

"If he's pig-headed enough, I guess," Bunny said, "a man can live with anything."

When Rafe didn't back off enough to open his mouth, her chin came up. "Dad was the best man on bones in Grant's army!"

Rafe crumbled the crackers into his broth. With his eyes on the bowl he began spooning it into him.

Bunny glared resentfully. Her father cleared his throat. "How long did they keep you out of circulation?"

"Till the end of the war—two years," Rafe said, his tone making it plain he'd had enough on that subject.

When the bowl was empty Rafe held it out. "That wasn't half bad," he gruffed, "for a sample. If you got any more, how about throwin' in a couple dozen dog bones?"

It began to appear that Bunny might have a bit of temperature herself. Never in all her born days, she was thinking indignantly, had she come up against a more uncivilized specimen. If this hadn't been one of her most cherished bowls—the only one left of Great Aunt Delia's orange blossom set—she'd have been mightily tempted to wham it right down on his shaggy-haired head.

She shot a glance at her father.

"Why not?" Pike shrugged. "Wasn't that mutt of Pearly Smith's digging a while ago in that bed where you set out those rose cuttings? If two years in a Yankee prison wasn't able to put this joker out of business, a dirty old bone isn't likely to bother him. Go ahead and get it."

It was a pity to find all this irony wasted. But what could you expect of an unreconstructed Rebel? You could go on and talk till you were blue in the face but there wasn't any law that impelled them to listen. That exasperating man had his mouth open, snoring!

II

No sooner had they gone than Rafe, turned quiet, cautiously opened one eye. By the bend and color of the sun coming in it was apparent the evening was pretty well along. He looked around for his clothes. "A pretty kettle of fish!" he growled when, unable to discover them, he shoved his legs out from under the bedding. Whatever this pair had in their minds for him it boded no good, he was convinced of that.

In the light of past experience he could hardly be blamed for his dark suspicions. Over in West Texas a law-abiding Rebel didn't have no more rights than chicken has drawers. Carpetbaggers was all over that country, grabbing and yanking like a clutch of snapping turtles, confiscating ranches and every sort of business that might be bludgeoned into yielding faintest sign of a profit. What couldn't be snatched by sheer push and beller they picked up through the courts at twenty cents on the dollar. Any God-fearing native that cared to keep up his health had to learn to eat crow and bow and scrape like a lackey while they took away his substance and made tramps of his women. Rafe was almighty sure this redhaired Delilah and her overgrown moose of a father hadn't done what they was doing out of plain Christian charity or the milk of human kindness. There was a long sharp hook tucked away in this deal some place.

He had felt a sight better in that bed than he did on his feet. With the sweat cracking through the pores of his skin he shook like a shaft of wheat in a windstorm, swaying and jiggling bad as Pike's three chins. The room dived and rocked like a cork in a millrace while the broth sloshed inside him till he expected any moment to find it spewed on the floor.

He took hold of the bed with both hands, locking his teeth until the room settled down. He hadn't come nearer groaning in the war with that horse on him. He couldn't figure how he come to be so danged poorly, so paperbacked and gut-shrunk, without that pair had poisoned him.

Holding fast to whatever was handiest he finally got as far from the bed as the chest with the tin-framed Mexican mirror hung over it. Maybe they'd stashed his clothes in here. At least he might come across a weapon, something to give him hope of getting clear.

The first drawer he looked in was empty except for a sachet of scent and a flutter of bright colored frilly squares hardly bigger than gunpatches that it finally got through to him must be some kind of dandified nose blowers. The next drawer stuck. When it finally came loose he jumped back white as chalk.

It was no snake made his eyes bug out like knots or the breath so rattly sounding in his throat. With cheeks red as fire he slammed the drawer shut, remembering the curtains, wildly staring at the bed, seeing now the God Bless sampler, the embroidery on the pillows; knowing at last, aghast, the girl had given up her room, indeed her very own bed to him!

Catching a glimpse of his face in the hand-rolled wavery glass of the mirror he staggered, clammy, on legs that seemed no firmer than rubber till, finding the bed against the backs of his knees, he collapsed with a quaver.

Never had he felt more mortification or been prey to such a host of conflicting emotions till it abruptly came over him that these people were Yankees. He got the sheet up, covering his nakedness and, thus reminded of it, felt a little better; even then he couldn't get halfways comfortable. Putting him here was just a part of the trap—they sure as hell figured to get something out of him.

With this salubrious thought his punished flesh overcame him and he slipped down a dark spiral into the black of exhausted sleep.

*****

He felt more nearly himself the next time he roused and found her hand on his forehead. It looked to be mid-morning, the room filled with sunshine and delectable odors which he shortly discovered to be emanating from the tray reposing on a nearby stool.

Bunny, cheerfully smiling, voiced a friendly good morning, helped him sit up, bunched the pillows behind him. Then she fetched up the tray which she laid across his lap, whisked off the cloth and advised him to pitch in.

Rafe didn't wait for additional urging. He was hungry enough to bite a bear with the hide on. Bacon and eggs, a great heaping plate of them. Coffee in a pot. Toast with real butter, and strawberry preserves. "If there's anything else you want, just holler."

He contained himself till the door shut behind her, then he grabbed up the fork. The bacon and most of the eggs went down like a jugful of syrup being poured through a sieve. And the first cup of java. The third piece of toast took a little longer; when he got it inside him he was filled to the gills. He did eventually swallow a little more of the coffee. He was glad to lean back and let her pick up the tray.