He looked at the horse, then at Rose, who was nearly as tall as he was, and who was carrying a bag that weighed almost nothing. “You ride?” he said. “My father taught me,” she said. “Then we’ll manage,” he said. They rode two days to the New Mexico border, Caleb on his horse and Rose on a mule he traded for at the livery in Dusty Creek, exchanging his spare saddle for the animal and a day’s feed, which left him with less than he’d started with, but which was the necessary arithmetic of the
situation. Rose rode well. Her father had taught her right. She sat easy and she didn’t fight the animal and she read the terrain the way someone reads it when they’ve spent time outdoors with people who knew what they were doing. They talked in the way of people who were sharing a road and have nothing to pretend about.
She told him about her father, a man named George Danner, who had been a wheat farmer in Kansas until the farm failed, and who had loaded what remained onto a wagon and headed for Texas with the particular optimism of a man who believes the next place will be better. “He had been,” she said, “a good man.
Not lucky, but good.” “And your mother?” Caleb said. “She died when I was seven,” Rose said. “Fever.” “I’m sorry,” he said. “I barely remember her,” she said, not with coldness, with the honest assessment of a girl who has been without her mother long enough that the loss has changed shape.
I remember her hands. She had good hands.” Caleb said nothing to that. After a while she said, “What about you?” He told her, not everything, but the honest summary. He had grown up in Tennessee, had come west at 20, had worked cattle for 18 years with no fixed address and no family of his own.
Had been married once, briefly, to a woman named Helen, who had died of cholera in 1869, along with the child she was carrying. A child who would have been, by now, almost exactly Rose’s age. He had not said this to anyone in 7 years. He was not sure why he said it now, to a 14-year-old on a mule in the Texas desert.
Rose listened without interrupting. When he was done, she was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry about your wife,” she said. “And your child.” “Thank you,” he said. “How old would they have been?” she said. “The child.” He thought about it. “14, maybe 15 by now.” Rose looked at the road ahead.
“Same as me,” she said. “Same as you,” he said. They rode in silence for a while after that. The kind of silence that is not empty. The job in New Mexico existed. A rancher named Aldous Webb, outside the town of Cimarron, needed a capable hand for the fall cattle work, >> >> branding, fence repair, moving the herd to winter pasture.
The pay was fair, and there was a bunkhouse and meals included. There was, as it happened, no provision in this arrangement for a teenage girl. Caleb explained the situation to Webb plainly, because he had no other way. And Webb, who was a practical man of 50 with a wife named Clara and a ranch that had been operating for 20 years, looked at Rose for a long moment.
Rose looked back at him with her taking stock eyes. “She work?” Webb said. “Ask her,” Caleb said. Webb looked at Rose. “Can you cook?” he said. “Yes,” Rose said. “Garden?” “Yes.” “You afraid of cattle?” “No.” >> >> Web looked at his wife, Clara, who had appeared in the doorway of the ranch house during this exchange, and who was looking at Rose with an expression that Caleb recognized, the expression of a woman who sees something and has already decided.
“She can sleep in the house,” Clara Web said. “We have the room.” And that was that. The fall work was good work, the kind that fills the days completely and leaves a satisfying tiredness at the end of them. Caleb worked the cattle with Web and two other hands, and in the evenings he came into the ranch house where Clara had supper on, and where Rose had, he discovered, been useful in ways that Clara was not shy about describing.
“That girl,” Clara said one evening, “can cook better than I can. Don’t tell my husband.” Caleb looked at Rose, who was setting the table with the efficiency of someone who has been doing it all her life. “Where did you learn?” he said. “My father couldn’t cook,” she said. “Someone had to.
” She said it without self-pity, which was one of her consistent qualities. She narrated her life factually, without editorializing, which was either a temperamental thing or something she had learned from circumstances, and which he found, increasingly, to be one of the most restful qualities a person could have.
He had begun, without planning to, looking for her when he came in at the end of the day. Not with anxiety, just the way you look for a thing that you have learned to expect. The specific dark braids, the specific way she stood, which was straight and unselfconscious in the way of someone who had decided that being tall was simply a fact and not a problem.
She had, in turn, begun saving him the seat at the table nearest the window, which was the best one, without being asked. These were small things, but small things accumulated are what most of life is made of. The trouble came from town. There was a boy in Cimarron, 16 years old, the son of a merchant, with the confidence of someone who has always had enough and has never been required to develop any other qualities.
He had seen Rose in town on a supply run and made the kind of comments that boys like him make, specifically about her height, specifically intended to be heard. Rose had said nothing. She had completed the supply run and come back to the ranch. Caleb found out from the Webbs’ younger hand who had been present and who told it with the indignation of a 19-year-old who has a clearer sense of justice than the world usually credits him with.
He went to find Rose. She was in the garden, the Webbs’ kitchen garden, which she had taken over with Clara’s enthusiastic permission, kneeling in the dirt with the focus of someone doing work that requires attention. He sat on the fence. “I heard about town,” he said. “It’s nothing,” >> >> she said, not dismissively, just accurately.
“It’s not nothing,” he said. “It’s not new,” she said. “People have said things about how I look since I was 10 years old.” She kept working. “I’m still here.” He looked at her. “Does it bother you?” he said. She sat back on her heels and looked at the garden for a moment. It used to she said honestly. Now I mostly think those people don’t know me.
What they say is about what they see. What they see isn’t what I am. Caleb looked at her for a long moment. That’s >> >> he said and then stopped. What? >> >> She said. That’s a hard thing to know at 15 he said. 14 she said. Still 14 for 3 more weeks. That’s 14 then he said. She almost smiled. Actually smiled.
The quick real smile that appeared occasionally and that changed her whole face into something younger and less defended. Did you go to town and say something to him? She said. I’m considering it he said. Don’t she said. It’ll make it a story. >> >> Right now it’s nothing. Leave it nothing. He looked at her.
