The Colonel's Lady Page 18

  Gorgan came around again that afternoon.

  “There's a mail stage coming through from Tucson,” he said. “Due tomorrow morning, according to the telegraph operator.”

  The news would cause great excitement in some quarters—to the people who were expecting mail. I nodded.

  “The Colonel's widow will be going back with the stage,” he said.

  I nodded again.

  “What are you going to do, Reardon?”

  I didn't know. I hadn't thought about it. “I guess I'll stay here at Larrymoor,” I said. “Until my hitch runs out, anyway.”

  “And after that?” No more mention of Caroline.

  I looked at him. “Where else is there to go? You said yourself that a man gets used to this country, and then he's not fit for civilization.”

  Gorgan grinned. He sat back and stretched his legs, a look of self-content in his faded eyes. “I thought maybe this country would get you,” he said. “It gets a lot of us, men and women too....”

  But not Caroline.

  “Supper tonight, Reardon? My wife says to invite you, if you feel like coming.”

  His wife or Sarah? Outside, I could hear the escort wagons pulling away from Caroline's house. They would be on the road the first thing in the morning. Everything at Larrymoor that was Caroline's would be gone.

  “All right,” I heard myself saying. “I'll be there.”

  Major Burkhoff dropped the charges against me after he took over the regiment, and my striker was more cooperative after that. He drew some water for me and set it in the sun to warm, and that afternoon I bathed as well as I could with a bandaged arm. Toward nightfall I heard a commotion on the parade and the striker came around to say that the mail stage had arrived early. It would be heading back to Tucson, he said, the first thing the next morning.

  I didn't bother to see if I had any mail. I waited in the hut until well after dark thinking that Caroline might have some last word to say before she left. But I guess she knew as well as I did that whatever had been between us was dead now. I had my striker help me into my dress jacket, and I went up the row to Gorgan's.

  “My husband tells me you're in a way of being a hero, Mr. Reardon.” Gorgan's wife smiled.

  “I don't believe so, ma'am,” I said. “There were some heroes out there, but they didn't come back.”

  I saw that I had said the wrong thing. The women of Larrymoor didn't talk about the men who didn't come back. They thought about them, maybe, and cried about them, maybe. But they didn't talk about them, and the men never knew—or pretended that they never knew. For the women of Larrymoor it was a fearful game of waiting, and praying, and hoping. And keeping silent and not showing what they felt. I began to understand that it took a special kind of woman to be an Army wife in a place like this.

  Gorgan, it turned out, had a reason for throwing this little party of his. Major Burkhoff, he said, was putting him in for captain. If he was aware that he would probably be the oldest captain on the frontier, he didn't show it. Grinning, he filled our glasses with Monongahela whisky that he had gone in debt for at the sutler's store.

  “What shall we drink to, Reardon?”

  “The twin silver bars you'll soon be wearing?”

  He shook his head. “It's too small a thing for a country as big as this. Let's drink to Arizona Territory—the last outpost.”

  After supper Gorgan was still feeling good—so good that he decided to go down to the sutler's store and go in debt some more for a bottle of New Orleans brandy that had lately been shipped in.

  “I'll go with you,” I said.

  But Gorgan was afraid I would want to pay for something, and the party was his. I went to the porch with him and waited there in the darkness, listening to the small sounds of a fort getting ready to go to sleep. I sat on the railing and looked up the row toward Caroline's house. It was dark. Tomorrow Caroline would be gone, and Major Burkhoff and his family would move in, and a big part of my life would be a void. I wondered if Caroline felt that way about it.

  After a while the screen door opened and Sarah Gorgan stood framed in the lighted square of the doorway. Ever since that night we had been very formal: Yes, Mr. Reardon. Thank you, Miss Gorgan....

  I could see now that she was remembering too. She stood in the doorway for a long moment, as if she were afraid to step into the darkness. Afraid to be alone with me.

  “Mr. Reardon.”

  I straightened in the deep shadows of the porch. “Yes, Miss Gorgan.”

  She came out then. She closed the screen door carefully and came toward me, but not too close. “There... there's something I thought you would want to know,” she said quietly.

  I waited. She didn't seem to know how to go on. At last she said, “I was out in the lean-to a while ago. I saw someone go into your hut, by the back door.”

  “It must have been my striker, Miss Gorgan.”

  “It was Mrs. Weyland,” she said.

  I didn't move. I could only think: Caroline's Waiting for me. She wants to see me. And for a moment the old passion rose up burning and almost choked me. But it was a brief thing. It burned itself out and left me empty and without feeling.

  I still didn't move, and I knew that I wasn't going to move. I said, “Sarah, I think you've got a right to know something. You were right that day when you told me I loved her. Ever since I can remember, almost, I've loved her. But the thing finally burned itself out of its own heat and violence. Do you understand that?”

  She said nothing. I wasn't sure why I was telling these things to Sarah Gorgan, but it suddenly seemed important that she should understand.

  “Do you understand that, Sarah?” I said.

  “Yes. I think so.”

  Then it was almost that first night all over again. I almost reached out to take her shoulders and pull her against me. I could look at her now and not see Caroline. I could kiss her, if I wanted to, and never think of Caroline. And I suddenly wanted to, but I didn't.

  I sat on the railing again and looked out at the night. It was a strange feeling, having control of my own thoughts again, and it would take some time to get used to it. The wind was soft and the stars were out in great numbers. The night was very quiet.

  She said, “I'll go inside now.”

  I looked at her and began to understand that I liked having her there. I said, “You said once that the desert had beauty. Maybe you'll stay a while and tell me about it. There are a lot of things, I guess, that I don't know.”

  I saw a light flare in the window of Caroline's house. Caroline had given up. After a while the light went out. I half listened to what Sarah Gorgan said, and I felt comfortable and the world seemed all right for a change.

  Let the old fire die, I thought, and then start again, slowly. Sarah Gorgan seemed to understand that. It takes longer than a day to change the world. Or a man. It takes time to adjust yourself to a comfortable warmth when you've been used to white heat for so long.

  We saw Gorgan coming across the dark parade with the brandy. “Is that you, Reardon?” he called. “Sarah?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We're just beginning to get acquainted.”

  The End

  Table of Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  TABLE of CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

 

 

 
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