Man of the Family (26 page)

28

The Sheriff Serves a Soupeeny

T
HE FIRST
few days after New Year's were almost like spring, but on the fourth of January we had a blizzard. It was snowing when I lit the lantern and went out to do my morning chores. The air was still, but it was cold enough that it made my nose smart. And the snow was that fine, powdery kind that squeaks under the soles of your overshoes.

Before I went to the barn I stopped at the rabbit hutch. Three of my best does had winter litters, and they'd all pulled so much hair from their breasts for nest lining that I was worried about them. I'd hung a gunny sack over each of their hutch sections the night before, but they weren't heavy enough to keep out very much cold. All three does were hunched against the entrance holes to their nest boxes to keep their babies warm, but they were shivering and didn't even stick their noses out when I lifted the sacks. I took their crocks to the barn with me, wrapped them in an old sack, and buried them in the manure pile to warm them up a little while I was doing my inside chores. Then I filled them with warm milk and took them back to the does before I went in to breakfast.

It was even colder when I went out to harness Lady for the milk route. The sun was just rising over Gallup's Hill, and the wind was coming up with it. Inside the barn it wasn't too bad, but I'd left Lady's bridle hanging outside the door, and the bit was so cold my finger would stick to it a little. I had to warm it under my doubled knee before I could put it into her mouth. By schooltime there was a sharp wind from the northwest; at noon it had become a gale and was whipping fine, dry snow into the front of my rabbit hutch. Even though I nailed them down, it ripped off the gunny sacks faster than I could put them up. Mother let me stay home from school in the afternoon, so that I could make a big curtain for the whole hutch out of pieces of old tarpaulin Dutch Gunther had given me.

About three o'clock I had the whole curtain laid out in the middle of the barn floor. I'd sewn all the pieces together with a curved sack needle and binder twine, and was just ready to nail on the roller bar when the door opened and Sheriff McGrath came in. He looked at though he'd just been caught stealing sheep, and he didn't even holler when he said, “Hi, there, Little Britches.”

After he'd closed the door, he pulled his gloves off and started to reach his hand into the front of his coat. Then he took it out and just stood there behind Lady's stall with both hands hanging at his sides. He didn't say another word, and I couldn't just let him stand there like that, so I said, “Cold, today, isn't it, Sheriff? I'm just fixing a curtain for the front of my rabbit hutch so the snow won't blow in. I've got three litters of new rabbits that might freeze if it gets colder tonight.”

He just said, “Yeah, yeah. Good idea,” and kept on standing there.

I knew the school had sent Sheriff McGrath after some of the fellows who had played hooky and I thought maybe they'd sent him after me, so I said, “Mother knows I didn't go to school this afternoon.”

“Your maw's to home, ain't she?” he asked.

“Of course she's at home,” I told him. “She's always at home unless we've gone to church or on a picnic.” Then I remembered how cold my hands were, and said, “And this wouldn't be very good picnic weather, would it?”

“Well, this ain't no picnic for me, Little Britches,” he said, as he walked over toward me. Then he squatted down by the edge of the tarpaulin, and said, “I want she should know this ain't no doin's of mine. A sheriff's got his duty to do and he's got to do it, like it or no.”

The top of my mouth started to get dry, and I asked him, “Is it about something I've done, Sheriff McGrath?”

He shook his head, “By George, Little Britches, I wisht it was, but it ain't. You ain't mixed up in this here business noways.”

“Well, nobody else in the family would have done anything, and we don't owe anybody a penny, so it couldn't be that,” I told him.

“Oh, it ain't nothin' none of you's did,” he grumbled, “but I got to run your maw in to the grand jury on a horse stealin'.”

I got that quick, hot feeling in my stomach, just the way I did when I thought the train was going to hit us, and I felt all chokey when I said, “You're not going to arrest her, are you, Sheriff?”

The sheriff pulled a folded white paper out of his pocket, and said, “Shucks, no! They ain't makin' me go that fer, but I got to serve her with this here soupeeny . . . and I got to give it to her personal. How 'bout you comin' along with me to the house?”

Mother didn't see us coming until I opened the kitchen door. She was sitting by the north window mending a curtain. When she looked up, her face—lips and all—turned as white as the snow on the window ledge behind her. She drew a short, quick breath, and I know she felt the same way I did when I thought the sheriff was going to arrest her.

Neither of them spoke. Sheriff McGrath stood inside the closed door and looked at the floor, and Mother sat as though she were frozen. I don't think she could have spoken if she'd wanted to, so I said, “Mother, Sheriff McGrath's brought you a paper.”

She still didn't say anything, and it must have been a full minute before the sheriff mumbled, “Line o' duty, Miz Moody; line o' duty. I want you should know I didn't have nothin' to do with this here.” As he said the last part of it, he stepped over and laid the folded paper on the kitchen table.

Mother caught her breath enough to say, “Thank you, Mr. McGrath,” as he turned and went out.

She didn't get out of her chair when I closed the door after the sheriff, and she only glanced at the paper when Grace passed it to her. Her chest went up and down in three long breaths; then she said, “Ralph, with plenty of warm clothing, could you ride out to Carl Henry's ranch and tell him I'd like to see him?”

I just nodded my head.

Mother's voice was as low and steady as though she'd been saying a response in church. “Then go to your chamber and put on two suits of underwear, two pairs of overalls, and that heavy wool shirt you got for Christmas. After that, I'd like you to bring me a burlap bag cut into three-inch strips . . . and you'd better give Lady an extra quart of grain.”

I did as she told me. When I'd brought the strips of gunny sack, she had me sit on the edge of the kitchen table while she wrapped them around my feet and legs like bandages. The only thing she said as she wound the strips on was, “Simply tell Carl I'd like to see him right away . . . and nothing more.” Then she went to the drawer in her writing desk that none of us ever touched, and brought back the fur-lined mittens she'd given Father the Christmas before he died.

Next, she got her own black wool shawl, put it over my cap, and wrapped it around my neck, so that only my face was showing. Just before I was ready to go out, she pulled Father's mittens onto my hands and up over my reefer sleeves—the knitted wristers came nearly to my elbows.

A cold blast of snow and wind came in when I opened the door to go. Mother took hold of my shoulders and turned me back toward her. She just squeezed tight for a couple of seconds, then let me go.

It was seven miles from Littleton to Carl Henry's ranch. And it was after half past three before I left home. Almost any other time, I could have ridden that seven miles in three-quarters of an hour. But with the storm blowing into our faces, we could hardly breathe, and I couldn't run Lady a step. She had all she could do to follow the road, because the snow had drifted and filled the ditches. I'd left my saddle at home, so I'd get all the warmth I could from Lady's body, but it didn't help very much. I thought I'd freeze for the first two or three miles, but after that I must have got used to it.

It was just growing dark when we turned west at Fort Logan. By that time I was sort of numb all over, and my face didn't ache much any more, but I was a little scared we might lose the road in the dark. Lady must have been able to see like a cat. She stumbled once or twice, but caught herself. I could only see a blurry outline of her head against the whirling snow.

Carl's was the first house on the road—three miles west of the fort—and I thought we'd never get there. After what seemed hours I was sure we'd passed his place in the dark, and was almost ready to turn back, when I saw a little blur of light from his window. When Lady stopped by his back door, I tried to get off, but I couldn't. My legs seemed to have grown around her, and I couldn't make my muscles lift either one of them up, so I had to holler.

I hollered as loud as I could two or three times, but my mouth was sort of stiff and I didn't make enough noise for Carl to hear, so I rode Lady close to the kitchen window. The chain lamp that hung from the ceiling was lit, and I could see that a light was burning in the dining room, but there was frost enough on the window so that I couldn't see if Carl was there. I rapped on the glass, but with Father's big mitten on, it didn't make a very sharp noise. After I'd waited a minute, I rapped again, then leaned over and put my face up close to the windowpane.

Carl's sister, Blossom, was visiting him, and she must have come through the dining-room doorway just at the moment I put my face against the glass. She screamed and jumped back. In another couple of seconds, Carl came running through the doorway with a gun in his hand. I was afraid he might shoot right through the glass, so I ducked low and began hollering again. When he jerked the back door open, I yelled, “It's me! It's me, Carl! It's Ralph Moody.”

Carl took me off Lady and carried me into the kitchen. I wasn't hurt a bit—except that my nose was a little frostbitten—but my legs had gone sound asleep and I couldn't stand on them. While Carl was taking my things off, Blossom made me some hot tea, and Carl put a good big tablespoon of brandy in it.

While I was drinking the tea, Carl said, “What in the world are you doing way out here in a blizzard and at this time of night? Don't you know that you might have lost the road and been frozen to death?”

“Sure,” I told him, “I know it, but Mother didn't when she sent me. She wants to see you just as soon as you can get there.” He asked me a dozen other questions, and he didn't seem to like it very well when I'd only tell him that nobody was sick but I thought he'd better come as quick as he could.

Just telling Carl nothing seemed to make him hurry more than anything else would have. He told Blossom to wash my face with real cold water so it wouldn't peel, yanked on his heavy clothes, and went out. As he went, I called after him to take care of Lady, but he didn't pay any attention to me.

It didn't seem more than five minutes before he stuck his head back through the doorway and said, “You stay here tonight; I'm going down to see what your mother wants.” Pins and needles were running all through my legs, but I could move them all right. And I finally had to tell him that if he left me behind, I'd follow right after him on Lady. I would have, too, and he knew it; so he waited while I got my things back on.

Carl had a pair of the meanest, jug-headed mustangs I ever saw. They'd kick you if you came within a rod of them, or bite your arm off, but they were tougher than whang leather, and could run like scared rabbits. He had them hitched to his old buckboard and tied to the windmill tower. After we'd haltered Lady to the tail gate, Carl wrapped me in a big fur lap robe and told me to lie on the buckboard floor. Then he untied the mustangs, and we started for Littleton. I hunched my head down into the robe and was almost as warm as toast, but, even with the wind behind us, it must have been colder than the north pole up there on the seat.

I knew by the turns when we drove into town, and got up onto the seat beside Carl. He didn't say a word to me and he kept the mustangs running right up to our front gate. We hadn't any more than pulled up to the gate before a light showed through the glass of the front door. Mother opened the door a crack as we came up onto the porch, then stepped back a few feet, holding the lamp with one hand and shielding the top of the chimney with the other.

She didn't say a word as we came in; just stood there looking straight at Carl's face with her lips pressed tightly together. His face looked as stiff with the cold as mine was when I got to his house. Even his voice sounded stiff when he said, “Is there something wrong, Mame? Ralph wouldn't . . .”

Mother didn't act as though she'd heard him at all. She looked down at me and said, “Are you all right, Son?” When I nodded, she said, “You'd better run right up to bed. You must be all worn out. I didn't realize how bad the storm was when I let you go.”

I told her I'd have to put Lady in the barn first, so she said, “Oh yes, of course. But then go right to your chamber. Carl and I have a matter to discuss.”

It was about half an hour before I went back into the house. I hadn't had a chance to put the new curtain up on my rabbit hutch after Sheriff McGrath brought the subpoena, so I took out some gunny sacks and wired them on the best way I could. We didn't have any blanket for Lady, but before I went in, I spread three or four heavy sacks across her back.