“Hurry up, Michael, The train arrives at noon.”
“I am hurryin’, Elizabeth. Ow! Now I’ve nicked meself, you’ve got me rushin’ so. We’ll be in Grants in plenty of time.”
Elizabeth smiled when she saw the bit of sticking plaster on her husband’s chin.
“You look very fine this morning, me darlin’,” said Michael, exaggerating his brogue as he put his arms around his wife and gave her a kiss. There was a knock on the door and Elizabeth tried to pull away, but Michael kept her by his side as he called, “Come in.”
“Good morning, Mr. Burke, Mrs. Burke. The horses are all harnessed,” Gabe told them.
“Thanks, Gabe. Ye have the supplies all packed for Eduardo?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll start up after I’ve worked the colts.”
“I appreciate it, Gabe. Usually I’d send Jake, but there’s too much for him to do here.”
Gabe watched them drive off. They sure were excited to have their daughter coming home. This Miss Caitlin Burke must be something.
* * * *
Michael and Elizabeth had an hour to wait in Grants before the train arrived, and Michael spent it pacing back and forth on the platform till people started to look at him strangely.
“Michael, come and sit down next to me,” said his wife.
“I can’t sit, a ghra.”
Thank God they heard the train whistle a few minutes later, or Elizabeth couldn’t have stood it much longer.
Two drummers got off and an elderly woman. “Where is she?” muttered Michael.
At last they saw the conductor helping a very sophisticated young lady down the steps. She was wearing a burgundy lawn dress with a chip straw hat charmingly tilted to one side. She took a coin out of her reticule and handed it to the conductor and stood there, calmly waiting for someone to find her.
Elizabeth’s throat was aching. It was Cait and how happy she was to see her. And oh, how different she looked from the rough-and-tumble country girl they had sent off to Philadelphia.
Michael went up to her and tipping his hat, said, “May I help you with yer bags, miss?”
“Oh, Da!” cried Cait and flung her arms around her father.
Thank goodness she hadn’t changed that much, thought Elizabeth as she hurried over.
Father and daughter pulled away from each other and Elizabeth could see that Michael’s cheeks were wet, as were Cait’s. She opened her arms and her daughter let herself be enfolded in them. “Oh, Ma,” she said shakily, “it’s been so long.” Elizabeth nodded and hugged her daughter even tighter.
“Well,” said Michael, clearing his throat, “is this all ye have?”
“No, Da. There’s another valise that the conductor is bringing. I have a few more things coming home than I did leaving.”
“I guess so,” said her mother, stepping back and looking at Cait’s dress. “And all so fashionable they’ll put us all to shame, I’ll be bound.”
Cait blushed. “This was a going-away present from Susan Beecham,” she said, smoothing the burgundy lawn. “And I have bought a few dresses with the money I made helping out the younger girls.”
“Sure and ye’ll be the belle of the valley, Cait,” said Michael, picking up her bags. “Just wait till the next dance. We’ll have to drive off all the young men. Unless there’s one you especially like!”
“Now, Michael, we just got her back,” scolded Elizabeth. “I want to enjoy her being home first, without thinking of when she’ll be marrying.”
Cait felt a pang of guilt as she listened to her parents. It was going to be hard to tell them that they only had her for the summer and that her marriage would come sooner than they thought.
When they got to the wagon, Elizabeth said, “You sit up front next to your Da, Cait.”
“I’m fine in the back, Ma.”
“No, no,” said her mother, climbing into the back seat, “that way I can enjoy both of you.”
Elizabeth was relieved to hear Cait’s enthusiasm as she chatted about her train ride and the terribly spoiled eight-year-old who’d gotten on at Chicago and terrorized the train. And the drummers, whose attentions she’d been able to discourage quite well, thank you. And the antelope she’d seen in Kansas and the awful smell of Dodge City. “I am glad we raise sheep, Da,” she said with a laugh.
“I prefer the woolly buggers meself, Cait.”
The sophisticated eighteen-year-old didn’t completely disappear, however, thought Elizabeth as she listened to her daughter chatter on. Cait had matured and was clearly able to act the young lady, but her eyes were sparkling as she recognized familiar landmarks on the road and pointed out any changes she noticed. She was still their Caitlin and Elizabeth breathed a prayer of thanks that she was home.
They drove through town on their way to the ranch. There was a group of cowboys standing around in front of the bank.
“Who are those men, Da? They don’t look familiar to me.”
“Those are Nelson Mackie’s hands,” Michael replied shortly.
“Nelson Mackie?”
“He’s been here a little over a year, Cait,” said her mother. “He bought land west of us and runs over five thousand head of cattle.”
“Five thousand head! That’s a lot of cattle for around here, Da.”
“It is, Cait, and he’d be happy to push off any small ranchers he could to make his spread bigger.”
Cait heard the anger in her father’s voice. Just as she was going to ask him another question, she saw Mr. Turner, the banker, open the door for a short, stocky man in a well-cut gray suit. Mr. Turner shook his hand enthusiastically and Mackie, for that’s who she assumed it was, walked over to where his horse was tied. When he saw the Burke family going by he lifted his hat and waving it, started walking over to them.
“Damn the man,” muttered Michael. “Can’t he be leavin’ me alone on a day like today?” He reluctantly pulled the horses up.
“Hello there, Burke. This beautiful young woman must be your daughter just home from school. Mrs. Burke. Miss Burke.” He greeted them in a friendly enough manner, thought Caitlin.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Mackie,” Elizabeth said politely.
“Nelson Mackie, me daughter, Caitlin Burke.”
Caitlin extended her hand and Mackie shook it. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Burke,” he said. “I am sure your parents are glad to have you home from…?”
“Philadelphia, Mr. Mackie.”
“Ah, yes, Philadelphia. Well, lovely young women are scarce around here, Miss Burke. I am sure you will have no shortage of admirers.”
“Thank you, Mr. Mackie,” said Cait, with a blush of embarrassment.
“We’d better not keep the horses standing, Michael,” said Elizabeth, sensing the anger that was building in her husband. “Good day, Mr. Mackie.”
Mackie tipped his hat to them and Michael slapped the reins on his horses’ backs.
“He seems like a nice enough man, Da.”
“Ay, he seems so, Cait. But let’s not be spoilin’ this beautiful day with talk of the likes of Mackie.”
When Cait had arrived in the East, she had felt it to be almost another country. Now, although the train ride had given her another chance to absorb the change in scenery, home seemed the different country. How could one nation hold such extremes? she wondered. And how could she hold on to the memory of Philadelphia as she was claimed by the high desert that held all her memories?
“Look, Da, there’s the rock I used to climb with Jimmy Murdoch. And there’s the road down to the Begay hogan.”
“And here’s the turnoff for the ranch,” said Michael, “in case ye’ve forgotten it!”
“Oh, no, I could never forget it. Not after riding out for the mail every week.”
When they passed the far pasture, Finn whinnied at the passing wagon and trotted over to investigate.
“Are you busy training the yearlings, Da? And where’s Heathcliff? He must be ready to be saddle broke by now.”
As Michael hesitated, not wanting to tell her about the black on her first day back, Cait looked over at him and back at her mother and smiled. “It is a rather silly name for a horse, isn’t it, Ma? I’m embarrassed at what a child I was when I left.”
When you left, thought Elizabeth. And what are you now, Caitlin? She smiled to herself. Her daughter was a young woman, of course. Why was it so hard to accept how a mere two years, though it had felt like forever at the time, had changed her daughter?
“You can always change his name if you want to,” said Michael. “He’s probably in the near pasture so Gabe can work with him.”
“Gabe?”
“Gabe Hart, our new hired hand, Cait,” said her mother. “Your Da finally took my advice and got himself some help with the horses. Some good help.”
“Why, you said you’d never let any bronc buster near your horses, Da!”
“And I wouldn’t. But Gabe works them gently, like I do. He’s done a fine job, so far, halter-breakin’ the yearlings and trainin’ the two-year-olds.”
Caitlin felt cheated of something she thought was supposed to be hers. Her horse was hers to train. She’d had him following her around before she left. Of course, she hadn’t expected her father would actually ignore the horse for almost two years. He would have had to be halter-broke. Maybe lunged a little. But a complete stranger working him? She decided there and then she wasn’t going to like Gabe Hart and she most certainly wasn’t going to have him training her horse.
“Here we are, Cait.”
The long, low ranch house looked the same, with its soft, weathered cedar shingles and bright blue door and window frames. There were chamisa bushes on the side of the house and in the front, a profusion of herbs and flowers that Elizabeth had managed to grow over the years.
Inside the floors were covered with rag rugs and on the wall were hung a trio of Navajo weavings by Serena, Cait’s godmother. There was a small piece that Serena had given Caitlin years ago, and two larger ones that were more recent.
There were fresh flowers on the table and Cait turned to her mother and said, “It looks lovely, Ma. I am so glad to be home.”
“Thank you, dear, though I’m sure it’s nothing to compare to some of those fine houses in Philadelphia you’ve been visiting.”
Elizabeth made the comparison lightly, for she knew she was an inspired gardener and good housekeeper. But Caitlin was ashamed to confess to herself, as she took her bag up to her own room, that she had been making a comparison. How little they had, she thought, as she sat on her bed and gazed around her small room. Her own wall was hung with her mother’s watercolors and one of Serena’s newer weavings that showed the influence of aniline dyes and store-bought wool. There was a small bookshelf that her father had built that held her cherished three shelves of books, a few pottery shards, and the beaded pouch her father had brought back from his trip to Idaho years ago.
It was very different from Susan Beecham’s room. Even the spare room, where Cait stayed when she visited the Beechams’, was at least three times the size and luxurious compared to this. The house and her room greeted her, saying you’re home where you belong, just like her parents had. And she responded. How could she not? But at the same time, she was seeing it with new eyes. Or as a new person. The young girl she had been rejoiced to be home. The young woman she had become wondered how her mother had lived all these years with so few pretty things. New Mexico was a hard place to live, especially for women, thought Cait. I’m so lucky that I have Henry and the possibility of a richer life.