OUT IN THE WEST you still come across rusted metal signs tacked to fence posts like the crosspiece on the letter T, the paint flaked off in sun and blizzard, the words hardly legible: ARBUCKLE'S COFFEE. And SLOAN'S LINIMENT.
Sloan's Liniment was thought as effective for the kick of a horse as for old joints swollen with rheumatism. HORSESHOE PLUG might be deciphered long after the chewing of tobacco and the casual — sometimes expert — expectoration of its juices was considered acceptable in the front room. They were a wandering breed who tacked the signs there, akin to the zealous ghosts who later painted JESUS SAVES on overpasses and across the bodies of abandoned cars.
The ranchers were tolerant. Some even thought the signs improved the lonely landscape, brought in something of the promise of civilization, were a link with the cities to the east and west where people ate fine foods and dressed in stylish clothes. Signs might conveniently identify a spot:
“Ed here claims there's ten head of strays about halfway between the Gold Medal sign and Trail Creek.”
But the beckoning billboards in those days before the First World War were the broad sides of barns. Arrangements had to be made, money must change hands or tickets for the circus whose agents wished to paint elephants and tigers up there and shapely ladies in tights who flew through the air.
There was no advertising on the white Sweringen barn, though its size and location in the valley was so tempting. Many an eager salesman, first in buggy and then in automobile, had stopped at the ranch to inquire and had been sent packing. The Sheep Queen had no need for a few bills. As for tickets, she would buy her own. Word got around. The salesmen no longer stopped.
She took pride in her barn. It was half again as big as the sandstone house, and long. Down its length a trolly ran overhead and on that ran a gondola that could be halted behind each stall and the manure shoveled in. At one end was a tack room for saddles and harness, big enough for the harness maker to come with his tools each year and make repairs — who, like a wandering minstrel, came with stories of other ranches in other valleys. Overhead under the vast hip roof was stored hay enough to fill the mangers below for an entire year; there were bins for grain — of metal to foil the rats and mice, and a machine to separate grain from chaff. It was a place for her children to play on rainy days, protected from the lightning by the most advanced of rods. When at last the barn was completed, the neighbors came and danced up there to the music of Ed Cronie and His Foot Warmers. Even more than the sandstone house, the white barn dominated the Lemhi Valley.
She had said nothing to Thomas about the young man Burton, and after a few days she wondered if maybe she'd only imagined he had brushed Beth's glove with his lips. The mind plays funny tricks. Beth herself had not mentioned him. That was either a good sign, or it was not.
She was now ready with plans to take the G&P over the hill to Montana to catch the Union Pacific for Salt Lake, where she did her banking. Some thought it odd and disloyal that she didn't bank in Salmon, but she had preferred sounder resources behind her and had not been surprised when the Salmon bank failed in the panic of 1907, brought on by the costly Russo-Japanese War and the rebuilding of San Francisco. That the bank reopened did not inspire her confidence. She knew old White down in Salt Lake, and he knew her.
Nobody touched the newspapers until she had read them; each evening after supper she retired with them to the bedroom upstairs where she had her rolltop desk and safe for more sensitive papers. The library downstairs was now too crowded a room for thought, contained too many distracting objects that called out to be touched or considered. The telephone might ring, somebody might want something.
She read her papers not casually for idle gossip but closely, for on them she based her strategy. She believed the march of events reveals a pattern on which to fashion the future. She noted business trends, changing habits, the shift of factories from North to South. As early as 1905 she looked closely at the international scene so often buried in the back pages as of no more than passing interest — it was difficult for some to look out on the awesome Rocky Mountains and consider the prosaic fact of Europe. But she saw a Russia humiliated after the war with Japan; she noted a France eager for revenge after Versailles, an England concerned with the new German navy, a sick and crumbling Ottoman empire and a corrupt Austria anxious to gobble up the remains. Then she noted the visit of the Czar of Russia to France; the visit of King Edward to the Czar in the port of Reval, and finally the Kaiser's visit to old Franz Josef in Vienna. These were far more than social events, dancing and cakes and ices. For then came Austria's annexation of Bosnia.
“Bosnia who?” Thomas had said, laughing. He had never heard of Herzegovina.
“Thomas,” she said. “There's going to be a war.”
He was looking out at the mountains as he so often did. He kept looking at them. “Emma, you must be crazy.”
He was too gentle a man to imagine such a thing. She could. She knew that each generation of men is bound to test its contempt for death and to exercise its bloodlust. Taking twenty years as a generation, a war was somewhat overdue in both France and Germany. A generation had grown up that had not yet moved to kill. And to kill each other, young men first, like children, dressed up in uniforms to mark this side from that side.
Whether for Jean or Fritz or Tommy, uniforms are made of wool.
They would need her wool. Why here in America in 1911 — Lord how the years fly by! — it had been thirteen years since the Spanish War. Oh, she thanked God she had but one son and that he was but ten years old. If this country went to war he would be too young to fight and the next war would find him too old.
“Where're you going, Tom-Dick?” she had asked that morning in 1911. She was about to leave for Salt Lake to borrow money to buy more sheep to grow more wool. She was certain war was coming. At the sight of Tom-Dick her mouth, as usual, softened. She felt quite a different woman in his presence, afraid she would touch him and speak in such a way she would reveal a weakness he must never know, a dangerous capacity for sentiment.
“Going fishing, Mama.”
“Watch out for snakes,” she said. He would watch out for snakes. Knew how to kill them, too. “Now God bless you, my boy.” She had to bend but slightly to touch his cheek with her lips, he had grown so tall.
She took his words with her to Salt Lake. “Going fishing, Mama,” and her lips moved as she silently repeated his simple words.
She had always avoided mirrors, and used them only as practical instruments to help remove a cinder from her eye or to see that her hat sat fairly straight on her head. As the years passed, as her acres and her sheep multiplied and the ranch prospered, she might have forgotten that she was not a pretty woman had it not been for Beth. The presence of Beth, the very fact of Beth was a reminder that beauty is an end in itself, perhaps even the most desirable end.
As for herself, she had once heard another woman say of her that she looked a deal like pictures of Madame Schumann-Heink. Alas, she hadn't Schumann-Heink's voice, only a recording of it on the Edison; she had only enough voice to sing little songs to Tom-Dick about the frog who would a-wooing go.
Mirrors had once told her she was going to be an old maid, and maybe the truth was that she had left Illinois because she was afraid of that, and that back there where everybody knew her they would pity her father for having an unmarried daughter, that maybe in the West where there were fewer women she might have a chance. Maybe it wasn't the German stepmother at all.
And then, as she saw it, Thomas's mother had stepped in. Thank God for that. Thomas appeared to be as uncritical of her appearance as Tom-Dick was of her voice.
“Going fishing, Mama.” Oh, it was all worth it.
It was hard to avoid mirrors in the Hotel Utah; there were many of them in the lobby; they reflected the stylish women who stopped there on their way north or south or east or west. Salt Lake City was to the Rocky Mountain States what Chicago was to the Midwest, what New York was to the East, what Paris was to the world, a crossroads of elegance and fashion, a city of shops and theaters — Maude Adams had come from Salt Lake City. She wondered how other women did it, how they learned to dress so, to carry themselves with grace instead of purpose. Was it a gift granted along with beauty? Suppose she had been a pretty woman?
Something had happened that morning at the bank where the tellers greeted her with the usual cordiality; they knew her name and bank account and her old friendship with old White.
She loved the smell of the bank. “Mr. White is waiting for you. Go right on in.”
Old White stood in his black suit such as an undertaker might wear; money and banking are as serious as death. He stood in his polished black Congress gaiters; he had reached an age and position where he might coddle his feet. His gold watch chain glowed against his dark vest; it proved him to be a Mason. Only his figured red-and-white cravat suggested that in rare circumstances he was prepared to take a chance.
“Ah, there, Mrs. Sweringen,” he said, and stepped forward and took her hand. “You're looking fit.”
“It's good to see you, Mr. White. You're looking top-drawer yourself.” They both smiled because they both meant it and the good old bond was reestablished, two people who understood each other.
But a much younger man had risen, too. She judged he was about her age, but men look younger — their faces are not so early damaged by the force of gravity. They have more muscle. A pity they don't live so long as women.
“Mrs. Sweringen,” old White said, “may I present Mr William Cutter? I have brought him here from San Francisco.” Old White smiled. “We can't last forever, you know.”
Mr. Cutter's hair was red. She could not recall having seen redder hair on a man; it surprised her that old White would consider so redheaded a man as his successor. Red hair hints at caprice and violence.
“Be assured it's my pleasure,” Mr. Cutter said. He took her hand but he did not shake it. He touched it, and he inclined his head as perhaps they did in San Francisco where the ships come in bringing in Lord knew what manners and customs.
“Thank you, Mr. Cutter,” she said. “My pleasure, too.” The morning light out the window on Temple Square fell on the red hair on the back of Cutter's hands.
There came a tap on the door; a uniformed waiter from the hotel across the street entered carrying a tray, a large, silver insulated pot, and cups and saucers. She wondered how he must have looked crossing the busy street. Behind him a second waiter came, bearing a folding table. After smiles and a mild confusion and the waiters had gone, old White spoke.
“I remember Mrs. Sweringen likes a cup of coffee and at about this time.”
“I do, and you are very kind.”
He turned to Cutter. “As a Mormon, of course, I should eschew coffee. But as you see, Mrs. Sweringen has taught me bad habits. I now like a cup of coffee too, about this time.”
“It won't go any further,” Cutter said, laughing. “Will it, Mrs. Sweringen?”
It was comfortable, but strange.
“Now then,” old White said. “Mrs. Sweringen, do you mind if Mr. Cutter sits in with us? I've been telling him about you. I'd like to have him hear first hand what you've got to say.”
She was surprised that old White had brought in a third party to talk about money. Ordinarily, she would have minded. “Not at all,” she said, and old White continued to stand while Cutter bowed her into the customer's chair, then turned, poured coffee and came forward with it. Cutter wore no wedding band, but nowadays some married men didn't. Thus they are not so easily identified as a married woman. They prefer it that way. They are, can be more mobile. “I'm here,” she said, “for money to buy another band of sheep.”
“Yes, yes,” old White said. “No problem there. But here — I should like Mr. Cutter to hear your reason for wanting more sheep at this time.” Old White's eyes twinkled, but he spoke in measured, didactic tones as if he had rehearsed the speech, talking like a schoolmaster, drawing her out so Cutter could learn a thing or two about those who have good reasons to do what they do. She placed her bag which served as both purse and briefcase on the heavy carpet beside her. She took a sip of coffee, set the cup down.
“Mr. Cutter, there's going to be a war.”
Mr. Cutter lifted his red eyebrows. “A war?” People with red hair sunburn easily. About her age, he was now too old to go to war. He might have a son old enough. They would have to stay out of the sun.
“I believe so,” she said, and went on to speak of the Balkan problem and of Turkey and Russia which seemed so remote when one looked out the window at the magnificent Wasatch Mountains at eleven in the morning. “There appear to be two armed camps,” and then in carefully measured words she said, “two armed camps not yet clearly defined.”
Mr. Cutter smiled. “You refer to Italy,” he said. “You don't believe Italy will side with the Teutonic Powers.”
She was pleased with him. He might have been a star pupil who reflected her good teaching. “I do not,” she said. “It's not in Italy's interest.”
Old White laughed his growly laugh. “Nor in our interest,” he said. “I told Cutter I would wager a good cigar that I knew what your reasons would be, but I didn't tell him what they were.”
“Nothing but common sense,” she said. “I'll wager that Mr. Cutter knows the Italian position quite as well as I do.” She smiled on Cutter.
“Common sense is the most valuable commodity in the world,” Cutter said.
“I'm not yet prepared to say this country's going to get into it, but if Europe goes to war, they're going to need our wool.”
“I take my hat off to you, Mrs. Sweringen,” Cutter said.
She laughed. “Keep your hat on for now. Let's wait and see.”
Cutter chuckled and then was suddenly serious. “And speaking of cigars, do you mind if I smoke?”
She was alert to the faintly old-fashioned request and could not recall another man who had asked her permission to smoke. Old White did not smoke in her presence, not because she was a woman but because he was a Mormon. He might risk a cup of coffee with Gentile friends, but a cigar, never. Her sheepherders and irrigators and hayhands took it for granted that she knew men smoked and chewed and spit and Lord knew what else.
“I wish you would,” she said. “I like the smell of a good cigar, Mr. Cutter.”
They talked of the international situation and of things they did and did not like the looks of.
“When were you last in Europe, Mrs. Sweringen?” Cutter asked.
“I have never been to Europe, Mr. Cutter. I have never been anywhere. Someday I hope to be.” Yes, she deeply hoped she would be. His cravat was of dark green. Maybe he had chosen it himself.
“Mrs. Sweringen doesn't have to be anywhere to know what goes on,” old White said. “So I shall now deposit thirty-five thousand to your account, Mrs. Sweringen.”
“Will you be much longer in Salt Lake?” Mr. Cutter asked.
She liked to take gifts to the children, nothing expensive, just some little thing from the ZCMI, the big department store that smelled so good of leather and cloth and talcum powder where everything can be bought and is owned by Mormons who own everything in Salt Lake City. Mormons were shrewd businessmen. Coming from San Francisco, Cutter was probably not a Mormon. Mormons were loyal to each other. Cutter must be a good man of business indeed if old White would bring him in over the head of some Mormon. Spoke well of old White, too, not letting his religion interfere with his business.
For Tom-Dick she bought a dozen dry flies for his fishing, all of them Royal Coachmen. There are far prettier flies than the Royal Coachman. There is the Silver Doctor, for example, but there is no fly the fish rise to as to the Royal Coachman, drab though it be. It is not what appeals to you but what appeals to the trout.
For Roberta she bought a graceful little chocolate pot of white china because Roberta had reached that age; half a dozen pretty hair ribbons for Maude and Polly because they were still that age. And then a few minutes later she was wandering — it was wandering because there she was so out of place — in the women's lingerie department.
“May I be of help?”
You could hardly have told this saleswoman from the women who swept in and out of the Hotel Utah, their hats so enormous this year you could hardly see their faces. This woman stood beautifully corseted and straight, smiling with the assurance that comes of knowing the feel of silk against the skin, how to manage scarves and folds.
“It is lovely, isn't it,” the woman said, and smiled at the garment as if it lived.
And indeed it might have had a life of its own if by life you mean the ability to move and to charm. The garment was long, a full robe of satin brocade fit for a queen, the color of rich cream. It was picked out with nosegays of violets, each petal and leaf so distinct you might pluck them, each little bunch a gift in itself, a quite useless garment to be worn in the hour before dressing or at the hour after disrobing when some woman might wish to be for a little while other than what she was on the street, or managing a household, or writing checks. Emma Russell Sweringen was acquainted with no room where that exquisite robe would be appropriate, not even in her room in the Utah.
“It's possible I have it in your size.”
She laughed. “Oh, Lord no,” she said. “I was thinking of my daughter. She's being married.”
The woman's voice softened. She must have had a daughter too. “How lovely, about to be married. Wouldn't this be a perfect gift?”
Yes, for Beth. So she bought the thing. The younger girls would have to forgive her and realize that for the time being Beth was a special person.
Now, suppose Cutter had called her at the hotel, suggested supper? But he would not. The mirrors told her so. And if he did, she would refuse, plead another engagement, for she knew long ago what her life would be, how she would manage it.
When he inquired, she had told him she would be another two days in Salt Lake, and therefore she telephoned friends, the director of the Union Pacific whose daughter had been at St. Margaret's with Beth and several times as a guest on the ranch. They urged her to have dinner with them, as they called supper. She called the wife of a United States congressman and lunched there at a great house entirely hidden by trees. They talked of Taft and the tariff.
“And do give our dearest love to dear little Beth,” they all said.
What Cutter had said was, “Will you be much longer in Salt Lake?” In his words was an implication that if he could finish whatever he had already committed himself to, why then — why else would he want to know “how much longer?” How, otherwise, would it have mattered to him?
On neither day was there a message at the desk. She could not rid herself of a sense of humiliation, nor could she put her finger on what had caused it. But the attraction she had felt had surely been reciprocated: for the magnet is no less necessary than the iron filings. Why had he touched her hand just so?
But of course it was impossible for him to have approached her since she was who she was. Old White would never have brought in a man with other than impeccable manners. Impossible for him to have approached her.
But it might have been. And had it been, she'd have refused. All that was contained for a moment in the embrace of past and present in Salt Lake City. She would never consider it again, nor Cutter's hands and the sound of his voice, the aroma of his good cigar.
All that was remote when she boarded the Union Pacific that evening. Settled in her compartment she rang for the porter to set up the folding table and to bring a deck of playing cards. As the train pulled out, she was laying out a game of solitaire; not long after, she looked up from a jack of diamonds.
“Common sense,” Cutter had said, “is the most valuable of all commodities.” Suppose he had forgot that for a moment; suppose the mirrors had told her other than they did. And suppose that mirrors could reflect the mind.
The train was passing along the edge of the sterile lake, its leaden surface reflecting the arching, empty sky. A line of Byron came to mind:
Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore,
All ashes to the taste.
Dusk washed down over the Wasatch Mountains. By and by it was night.