Jubilee Trail (21 page)

“Oliver, you speak Spanish, don’t you?”

From somewhere in the dimness of the little room beyond, Garnet heard a snore. She looked past Florinda’s shoulder. Deacon Bartlett sat on the wall-bench, his head down on the table. He was quite comfortable.

“D
O GET RID
OF
these boys,” Florinda was begging Oliver. “Tell them Mr. Bartlett is all right now and I’ll take care of him and I’ve given them all the money I’m going to.”

As Oliver spoke to the boys, Garnet demanded,

“Florinda, how did you get here?”

“Over the plains, darling, about a week ahead of you. Yes, Oliver, what do they want?”

Oliver was laughing. “They say you paid them well, they weren’t asking for more money. They want to see your hair.”

“Oh, rats,” said Florinda. She had evidently heard this before.

“They heard you had long hair the color of cornsilk,” said Oliver. “They won’t go away until they see for themselves.”

“All right, but tell them they can’t touch it. They all want to make sure it really grows on my head.”

Oliver warned the boys. They promised, and watched with interest while Florinda threw back her shawl, yanked out her hairpins, and shook her hair down. The boys exclaimed. When they had had a good look, Florinda grabbed Garnet’s hand and ducked inside.

The room was small and rather dark, for it had only one window in the thick adobe wall. Mr. Bartlett sprawled on the wall-bench, his head on the table, peacefully snoring. Paying no attention to him, Florinda tossed her shawl on the table, and laughing sadly, she began to pin up her hair.

“Is that why you wear a shawl over your head?” Garnet asked.

“I don’t dare open the door without it. And on the street—the way they follow me around, you’d think I had three legs and a tail. Thanks, Oliver,” she added as he came in and shut the door behind him. “Are they gone?”

He nodded. “Don’t be too hard on them. They’ve seen tow-headed men, but men have their hair cut. They never saw billows of flaxen hair like yours.”

Florinda sighed. “All my life,” she said, “I’ve been a ravishing beauty. I had to come to
this
jumping-off place of creation to find I’m just a freak.” She tucked in a last hairpin.

Garnet was biting her thumb, looking apprehensively at Mr. Bartlett. Except for the two men who had annoyed her in New Orleans, she had never been so close to a drunken man before. “Florinda,” she whispered, “is he—is he all right?”

Florinda gave him a gentle poke with her finger, as though he were dough and she wanted to see if it had risen enough. Mr. Bartlett made no response.

“Are you going to leave him there?” Garnet asked doubtfully. Mr. Bartlett might be unconscious, but she was still afraid of him.

“I’ll drag him out of the way if Oliver will help me. I can’t lift him by myself.”

Oliver said he would be glad to help. Florinda opened a side door leading to a bedroom, and they dragged Mr. Bartlett up and got him inside. From the next room, Garnet heard Florinda giggling as she commented on Mr. Bartlett’s sad state. Florinda didn’t seem to be scared of him at all. She just thought he was funny.

Garnet sat down on the wall-bench and looked around.

The room was empty of furniture, except for the wall-bench and the table, and a chest that probably held clothes. There was an array of bottles in one corner. Everything was orderly, as though somebody had done her best to be a good housekeeper with what she had. On the table were red and blue pottery dishes, the cups neatly turned down; and at the end of the table was a tray of grapes and apples, and a red jar holding some branches with unfamiliar yellow flowers.

Yes, Garnet reflected, Florinda must live here. She could not imagine Mr. Bartlett gathering flowers, or keeping his bottles in such neat rows by the wall.

Oliver was coming back. He closed the bedroom door behind him.

“Where’s Florinda?” Garnet asked.

“Soothing her friend back to sleep. She’ll be here in a minute.”

“But Oliver, why did she come to Santa Fe?”

“I don’t know any more about it than you do. She said we were to wait, and she’d tell us.” Oliver sat down on the bench by Garnet, and stretched his legs under the table. “Well, well,” he said, “think of the deacon. I never thought he could make a conquest like this.”

“You mean she’s too good for him?”

“I mean, my dear, you saw the furs and jewels she was wearing in New Orleans. Her lovers haven’t been yokels like Bartlett.”

“But who is he, Oliver?”

Oliver grinned and helped himself to a sprig of grapes from the dish on the table. “Did you ever see a pious hypocrite?”

“Why yes, I think so.”

“I bet you’ve never seen one like Bartlett.” Oliver shook his head wisely. “Bartlett is one of the leading merchants of St. Louis. His store gets the trade of all the best people, because he’s such an uplifting influence in the community. He’s a pillar of the church, doesn’t drink or gamble, leads crusades against saloons and dance-halls and other dens of vice. He stands it from September to April. Then in April he leaves St. Louis for Santa Fe. He stays fairly sober on the trail, has to, you can’t lead a wagon train if you’re in a drunken daze, but at least out in the open he can forget his piety and use language that would send him into a coma if he heard it at home. And when he gets to Santa Fe, he really lets go and raises cain.”

Garnet was amazed. “He drinks like this all the time he’s here? But how does he do any trading?”

“He has a partner. An American named Wimberly, who lives in Santa Fe all the year round. As soon as Bartlett gets his wagons through the pass, he’s done. Wimberly does the selling, while the holiest deacon of St. Louis swaggers around the plaza with a girl on each arm, singing songs and pouring down aguardiente until he falls on his face and somebody gets him home.”

Garnet could not help laughing, though she was still puzzled. “But don’t a lot of the traders go through St. Louis?” she asked. “Don’t they burst out laughing when they see him poking around with a Bible and a temperance tract and a sanctimonious look?”

“They burst out laughing,” said Oliver, “but they don’t tell the local worthies what they’re laughing at. It would spoil the fun. And don’t you tell on him either, if you should run into anybody who knows him when we go back through St. Louis next year.”

“But where did he meet Florinda? In St. Louis?”

“I’ve no idea. Here’s Florinda. She’ll tell us.”

Florinda opened the bedroom door noiselessly, and gave them a mischievous smile as she closed it behind her. Oliver went to meet her.

“How’s Bartlett?”

“Safe in dreamland. I don’t know how long it’ll last. Thank you both for waiting. Don’t you want something to drink?” She made a gesture toward the bottles. “Red wine, white wine, aguardiente—he’s got everything.”

Oliver declined, saying they had just finished dinner. “Can I pour some for you?” he asked.

“No thanks. I don’t like any of it.” Florinda sat down, past the corner of the wall so she could look diagonally across the table at them. She glanced down, running her finger along the joining of two boards in the table. “Look, dear people,” she began, “you’re not annoyed with me for coming to Santa Fe, are you?”

“Of course not,” Oliver answered in surprise, and Garnet added,

“I’m nearly speechless with being so glad to see you. Why did you think we’d be annoyed?”

“Well you might have been. And I did want to explain. I wouldn’t like to have you get the idea that I was hanging on to your coat-tails, expecting you to take care of me.”

“I never thought of it,” said Oliver.

“I’m so glad,” said Florinda. She went on earnestly. “You see, I haven’t told Mr. Bartlett I knew you. He won’t remember how I spoke to you today, so if you want to have it that you never laid eyes on me before you got here, that’s all right. I won’t bother you at all.”

“Oh for pity’s sake, Florinda,” said Oliver, “tell Bartlett anything you please. I don’t mind his knowing about New Orleans. And I’m sure Garnet doesn’t.”

Garnet agreed, and Oliver asked,

“Did you come with Bartlett all the way from St. Louis?”

She nodded. “He asked me to come out here, and go back with him this fall.”

“You didn’t tell me you knew any of the Santa Fe traders,” said Garnet.

“I didn’t. I’d never heard of Santa Fe before you told me. I met him on the boat.” Florinda gave them a humorously intimate smile. “There’s something else I want to tell you. Oliver, is Mr. Bartlett a very good friend of yours?”

“Why no. I’ve met him here every summer for several years past, when I came to Santa Fe from Los Angeles. That’s all.”

Florinda adjusted one of the flowers in the red jar. “Then—if he didn’t know quite as much about me as you do, you wouldn’t think it was your duty to tell him?”

Oliver chuckled. “My dear Florinda, I’ve no sense of duty toward Deacon Bartlett. I’m not going to tell him anything.”

“Thank you so much. I didn’t think you would, but it’s good to be sure.”

“What don’t you want me to tell him?” Oliver asked.

“Well—” Florinda was laughing silently. “Well, you see, Mr. Bartlett doesn’t know I’ve ever done anything like this before.”

“Oh,” Oliver said with amusement.

“But really,” Florinda urged, “I haven’t hurt him. I kept him entertained on the trail, and I mended his clothes and washed them whenever there was water enough, and since we’ve been in Santa Fe I’ve put him to bed when he was drunk and made cold packs for his head and waited on him the morning after. He’s just as happy as he can be. I haven’t done him any harm.”

“My dear girl, it never occurred to me that you had. If you’re asking me, I think he’s very lucky.”

Garnet was laughing. She hadn’t meant to laugh. But when she was with Florinda, it seemed she was always laughing about things that had seemed serious before.

“Maybe I’d better tell you how it happened,” Florinda continued. “Oliver, do you mind if I say all this in front of Garnet?”

Oliver said no, and Garnet exclaimed,

“If you don’t tell me what happened I’m going to die. He doesn’t know you were the star of the Jewel Box?”

Florinda shook her head. She glanced around at the bedroom door. A heavy snore reassured her. She turned back to them.

“Well, it was like this. Here I was on the boat, all dressed up in those black clothes. And they did the job, Garnet, just like you said they would. Everybody was so nice to me. The gents bowed, and the ladies smiled at me with such sweet sympathy, and everything was just lovely. There wasn’t a soul who gave a sign of knowing me. So the second day I went up on deck for some air, like you said I could. There was a gent who had just got on that morning. He was traveling alone. He drew up a chair for me, and picked up my handkerchief, and offered me a magazine to read. All in the most respectful manner. I thought he must be a preacher, or maybe a college professor.” Her lips trembled merrily as she added, “You’d never think it to see him here, but Mr. Bartlett can be as dignified as a tree full of owls.”

“Yes, I know,” said Oliver. “Then what happened?”

Florinda gave them a wide-eyed look. “Now really,” she said, “I’ve been around quite a lot in my time, but for the first day or two he had me fooled completely. It didn’t occur to me that this noble gent was putting on an act the same as I was. He kept doing little things for me, like moving my chair out of the wind and bringing me a rug to put over my knees. I thanked him as nicely as I could. To show appreciation I even read some in his magazine. It was just awful, something about how it was everybody’s duty to set a good example for everybody else. I didn’t understand it very well. Then after a while he sat down and talked, and I’m always glad to have somebody to talk to. I don’t like sitting around by myself. He said what a pity it was for me to be left a widow so young, and to have to travel without a protector, and so forth. I told him what you had told me to say, that I had brought my husband South for his health and he had died there.”

Garnet was holding her fist to her upper lip, so she would not laugh out loud and interrupt the story. Florinda went on.

“The next time I saw him on deck he asked me to tell him some more about myself. And you know how it is—when a gent asks you to talk to him about yourself, what he means is he wants you to listen while he talks to you about himself. I tell you, that man talked for three days without stopping for breath.”

Florinda laughed as she remembered it.

“I didn’t mind listening. I like to hear people talk. He told me he was a Santa Fe trader. He said he had been down the river to buy some goods, and now he was on his way back home to St. Louis. What he said about the trail was like what Garnet had told me, so I knew that much was true. But then he started in like most gents do, telling yarns. You know what I mean—here was a good-looking woman, and he had to impress her with what a big hero he was. Lord have mercy, how that man can talk! He told me how many Indians he had killed, and every time he got into an Indian fight it seemed like he was doing it single-handed, with a whole war-party after him and stampeding buffaloes ahead of him and his wagons on fire. And he was never afraid because he knew God was going to preserve him.”

Florinda whistled softly. “Honestly, Oliver, I don’t know how he fools them so in Missouri. The men might believe that holy act he puts on, but I should think any girl who knows anything at all about gents could see through him like glass. Sometimes gents just talk like that for the fun of talking. They don’t really expect you to believe them. But Mr. Bartlett—why, he thinks you believe every word of it. And—oh dear, maybe I shouldn’t say this, but when a gent thinks you’re believing every word he says—” She paused, looking from one of them to the other.

“I think I know what you mean,” said Oliver. “He starts to believe it himself. Then he’s helpless.”

“That’s it. You can make him do anything you please.”

“So—?” Oliver prompted.

“So all of a sudden,” said Florinda, “it occurred to me that I might like to go to Santa Fe. I’d been practically cracking my head with trying to figure out what I was going to do when I got off that boat. I don’t know how to be anything but an actress, and I didn’t dare show my face in public again. I might have got a place pulling bastings for a dressmaker, but as long as that man Reese was combing the country for me I wouldn’t have felt comfortable even in the back room of a dressmaker’s shop. In fact, I was in boiling water up to my neck and I had to get out of it. I thought it would be a fine idea just to disappear for a while. Nobody would think of looking for me eight hundred miles beyond the frontier. Besides, it wasn’t like anything I’d ever done before, it would be a real adventure and it might be fun. And Mr. Bartlett was sitting there so pleased with himself. He was—well, excuse me, Garnet, but he was trying to seduce this simple-minded young widow, and with his great opinion of himself, it wouldn’t be any surprise to him to find that he’d succeeded.” She smoothed back a lock of her hair and fixed it in place with a hairpin. “So I let him persuade me to— Oliver, how do you say it in front of a nice girl?”