True Grit - "With No Lodestar In Sight", Mattie/LaBoeuf, T
Title: With No Lodestar In Sight - 2/12
Author: lindentree
Rating: T
Character(s): Mattie Ross/LaBoeuf, Rooster Cogburn
Word Count: 6,708
Summary: Five years after her adventure in the Choctaw Nation, Mattie Ross runs afoul of a fugitive. She soon finds herself in familiar company, if not familiar territory.
ought to have been a lawyer
The morning dawned clear and crisp, and Mattie was up with the sun.
Her body was wrapped in aches she had not felt last evening, as though during the night her whole self had become one large, tender bruise. It made washing and dressing uncomfortable, and pinning her hair up purely impossible. She settled for brushing it out and leaving it hanging down her back in one long fall. She was glad for the bright daylight which flooded the house, for it threw great, reasonable light into every corner, making her fearfulness in the night seem all the more foolish. It allowed her to go up to her bedroom and dress herself in her own clean clothing.
Dressed and scrubbed and combed as best as she could hope to be, Mattie gathered an armful of wood for the kitchen stove and got the breakfast fire going. She fetched water for coffee, and emptied the basin of bloody water down the privy. She led the horses out into their paddock, and milked the cow before letting her and the little red bullock out to graze as well. She shooed the chickens out into the yard to scratch for bugs, and collected the eggs she could find. She then filled a washtub with cold water and vinegar, and put all her bloodied clothes in to soak.
Inside, she prepared a sheet of biscuits, sliced several thick pieces of salt pork and set them to frying, and made a small pan of grits. She boiled coffee as well, for although she still did not care for it herself, she did like the perfume it gave the air as it percolated.
After all this, LaBoeuf had still not risen. Mattie was surprised; in the brief time she had spent with him on the trail of Tom Chaney, he had been the earliest of risers. She went upstairs and rapped on the door to her brother’s bedroom. Receiving no answer, she opened it, and found that the room was empty. Frowning, she came back downstairs, and as she passed the parlour doorway, caught sight of a pair of red wool socks with feet in them. LaBoeuf was laid out flat on the parlour rug, fast asleep and snoring.
Mattie paused in the doorway, observing him. He had removed his boots, his coat, and his vest, and had unbuttoned the top button of his faded chambray shirt. His suspenders were shrugged off, and he lay with his hands resting on his middle and his coat bunched under his head. His Sharps-Carbine lay next to him, neatly parallel to his body. He was perfectly still, and aside from his noisy snoring, Mattie thought he rather resembled a corpse laid out for a wake.
It was a singularly disturbing thought. She cleared her throat, and he was awake in an instant.
“Is everything all right?” he asked, sitting up and blinking blearily at her.
“Yes,” she replied. “Only you might have slept upstairs in Little Frank’s bedroom. I thought that would be obvious to you or else I would have said as much. I apologise.”
“No apology is necessary; you have not been negligent in your duties as hostess. I slept here deliberately, for I wanted to be at the ready if Cunningham returned.”
“I see.”
LaBoeuf scrubbed a hand over his face, and then paused, his face forming a quizzical expression. “Is that salt pork I smell? And coffee?”
“Yes. I thought after your days sleeping rough on the road, you would want a proper breakfast. It will be ready shortly, if you wish.” Before he could reply, Mattie turned and left the room.
She was frying eggs when he appeared in the kitchen. He helped himself to a basin of hot water and went out the back door, heading in the direction of the privy. Through the window, Mattie could see him crouching by the water pump, using a mean-looking bowie knife to shave, the way another man would a straight razor. He used a small piece of looking glass to see his work, and Mattie was unsurprised to find that he was no less vain now than he had been when they met.
Finally he finished with his preening and came back inside; his skin was pink and his hair and whiskers damp. He took the plate of food and the hot coffee Mattie handed him with a funny sort of smile on his face, as though she were performing an entertaining and unexpected trick.
Ignoring him, Mattie served herself and sat down across from him at the rough hewn table there before the cook stove. He almost dug in before her say so, but she interrupted him by bowing her head and saying aloud a prayer of thanksgiving. When she finished, LaBoeuf looked both admonished and annoyed. Mattie’s thought was this: LaBoeuf ought to spend less time bird-dogging riff-raff and more time in church if he thought himself too big and important to even say grace. They ate in silence for several minutes.
“This is very good,” LaBoeuf remarked after a time, not looking up from his plate. Mattie examined the cowlick at the crown of his head. It stood up as proudly as ever, in spite of the combing he had obviously subjected it to.
“You say that as though you are surprised,” she replied. “Did you doubt my abilities as a cook?”
He shook his head in apparent amusement. “I am beginning to think that in addition to death and taxes, one might also rely on your orneriness. A man could set his watch by its regularity. Do you not know how to graciously accept a compliment when it is presented to you?”
Mattie eyed him for a moment, and then cleared her throat. “No, I suppose I do not.”
LaBoeuf paused in his eating and regarded her across the table. “Well, you ought to learn. These biscuits are some of the best I have had. Certainly they are a mighty improvement on the meals at the Monarch in Fort Smith, if you remember. And if you disagree with me on that score, then I do not know.”
Mattie grimaced and nodded her agreement. “Yes, I always did feel cheated at that place, and I would not recommend it to anyone headed to those parts. Mrs. Floyd was kind enough, I suppose, although she did give the first free room to a newcomer when I was already doubled-up with an old woman who variously robbed me of my share of the bedclothes and infected me with a cold.”
“Haw!” he said. “I do not know whether I am heartened or dismayed to find that you are as saucy as ever you were.”
Mattie did not know how to respond to such a statement, and so remained silent and carried on eating her breakfast.
“How are your injuries treating you this morning?” LaBoeuf asked, after a spell.
“They are treating me about as well as can be expected,” Mattie replied. “My head aches some and I am sore in general, but otherwise I am without complaint.”
LaBoeuf nodded in reply to this, and then his eyes dropped to her neck. In spite of the high lace collar of her dress, the bruises which mottled the skin red and blue were still visible. Feeling scrutinized, Mattie looked down at her plate.
“I believe I will see if I can pick up Cunningham’s trail today,” LaBoeuf said, scraping up the last of the grits on his plate. “I expect he fled into the woods to lick his wounds, so to speak.”
“What is your plan?” Mattie asked.
“My plan is to see whether he survived the night, and then determine where he might go next if he is not dead.”
“I see,” Mattie said simply, and they finished their meal in silence.
LaBoeuf thanked her for the food and disappeared back to the front of the house. Mattie guessed he intended to clean his rifle or some such; she did not bother with him, for she had chores to do. After washing and wiping the breakfast dishes, she tidied the kitchen and replenished the wood and water by the stove. She was halfway across the yard with the slop pail, headed in the direction of the barn, when LaBoeuf reappeared, following her out the kitchen door. He was fully dressed in his buckskin coat and his hat, and he wore his revolver and had the Sharps-Carbine in the crook of his elbow.
“I am going,” LaBoeuf announced, looking at her expectantly. It was obvious that he wanted her to question him so that he could bedevil her with deliberately perplexing responses. Mattie figured the most certain way to disappoint him was not to question him at all. “I do not expect to be gone very long,” he continued.
“All right,” she replied, and carried on her way up to the barn, the heavy bucket of slops swinging against her leg with each step.
When she had finished feeding their two hogs, she walked back down to the house and found that LaBoeuf had gone. Mattie did not resist the smirk that pulled at her mouth. The man was as much a popinjay as the morning he appeared in her room at the Monarch boarding house and attempted to intimidate her. Big spurs and all, he had not changed.
Mattie set about dealing with her befouled clothing from the previous day. She built a large fire outside the lean-to in the yard which they used as their summer kitchen. She drew many buckets of water from the pump, pouring them into the large black iron kettle they kept for dirty, heavy jobs. It was hauled out several times a year for the making of soap, and vinegar, and for rendering hog fat. Soon the water was boiling, and Mattie fetched her blood-stained dress, her shimmy, and her corset from the house, and dropped them in. She boiled them, stirring the water occasionally with an old broom handle.
She had been stood there minding her work for some time when LaBoeuf emerged from the woods. He was encumbered with a small wild turkey, which dangled limply from his hand by its two feet.
“Hidy,” he said, laying his burden out a few feet from the fire before seating himself on a nearby section of tree trunk used as a stool. He commenced to filling his pipe with tobacco with a very satisfied expression on his face. When Mattie continued to ignore him, he cleared his throat. “I might have shot you some of those fat geese flying over if I had my bird dog with me,” he said, cocking his head in the direction of the northern sky.
“You need not be too sorry about it, for although that turkey is mighty scrawny, to add a goose or two would have been pure gluttony. There are only two of us here, unless you are expecting guests of which I am unaware.”
“You ought to get a dog,” LaBoeuf said, ignoring her criticisms. “A farm is not a farm without a dog to guard it and its inhabitants.”
“I did not know that your designation as a Texas Ranger afforded you the wisdom to make recommendations as to how cotton farms ought to be run,” Mattie replied.
“You know that I am right, but as is your way, you do not want to own to it. That is fine; we both know it, and that satisfies me.” LaBoeuf paused here and lit his pipe using a long twig he poked into the hot coals of the fire. “I found the place where I believe Cunningham made camp in the night.”
Mattie stopped turning her clothes over in the water. “You did?”
“I did. I followed the crick back into the woods, and about half a mile in, I found the remnants of a cook fire as well as some bloodied strips of sacking I guess he used to staunch his wound. In the fire were scattered the bones of what looked to be a squirrel or perhaps a small groundhog, and so I reckon he was fit enough to snare himself some supper. The ashes were cold and he was long gone, however. My guess is that he left at first light.”
Mattie regarded him for a moment, considering this. “Do you think he has gone away altogether?”
“I reckon so, yes,” LaBoeuf replied, his eyes on hers. “I do not think you need to fret that he will return to this place. You scared him off.”
“I do not fret that he will return. I am only concerned that none of the eggs or chickens go missing in the night,” Mattie said, stirring the clothes once more in the water before pulling them up on the end of the broom handle to examine them. It would be impossible to tell how the stain would affect her dark blue dress until it dried. If it showed, the dress could always be dyed a dark brown or black to hide it. The stain in the corset had come out reasonably well, and in any case the garment was old and worn, and Mama had commented recently that Mattie ought to have a new one. The shimmy, however, was a lost cause. The stain had faded somewhat, but a large, diluted brown splotch remained on its front. It would only be good for rags, or perhaps for some part of a future scarecrow.
Mattie felt LaBoeuf’s eyes on her, and she glanced up to find him watching her with an oddly soft expression on his face. It recalled the way his face looked in the moonlight that rainy night he made to leave her with Cogburn in the Winding Stairs when the Marshall decided their “coon hunt” had run its course. The look in LaBoeuf’s eyes presented her, then and now, with an aspect of him that Mattie could not figure. The gentleness seemed strange and out of place, and it made Mattie uncomfortable generally.
She looked back down at her work, removing the clothing from the water and laying it all out on the grass to cool.
“Well,” LaBoeuf said, after a protracted silence, “I guess that harkens back to my suggestion that you need a dog about this place to guard your eggs and your chickens, but I know you will not heed it.”
Mattie was on the verge of forming a response when LaBoeuf looked sharply over her shoulder and stood. Mattie turned and saw Sheriff Morris coming around the front of the house with Deputy Sutherland in tow.
“Hidy,” LaBoeuf called. Mattie pitched him a resentful look, which he missed. The man was a presumptuous fop, greeting guests on her land when he was a guest himself.
“Miss Ross,” the Sheriff nodded, coming to a halt before them. He seemed somewhat surprised to find that Mattie was not alone. “Mr. - LaBoeuf, was it?”
“Indeed,” LaBoeuf replied shortly, and Mattie could tell that he was perturbed at having his name forgotten.
“Well, I am here to tell you that Mr. MacLeod will come by this afternoon with his wagon to collect the body, but in the meantime I would like to have a look at the place where yesterday’s ugliness happened.”
“You can certainly have a look at the place,” Mattie replied, “but you should know that when Mr. LaBoeuf and I returned here last night, we found that Cunningham had risen and disappeared. It seems I did not kill him, after all.”
“What!” Sheriff Morris exclaimed, the word hauling up a string of dry, hacking coughs behind it. “What do you mean ‘risen and disappeared’?”
“I mean that the man had apparently collected himself and gone. There was no body where I had left one,” Mattie replied. She narrowed her eyes at Deputy Sutherland, who was again ogling her very openly. He seemed particularly interested in the pinned-up sleeve at her side, and only looked away when he finally felt her glare. He was not the first to stare at her arm. Nor would he be the last, she guessed. You would think people had never even heard of rattlesnakes, the way they stared.
“I searched the house and the outbuildings last night and could find no sign of the man,” LaBoeuf interjected. “I have just now returned from a search of the woods. I found a campsite up the crick where I suspect Cunningham spent the night. From my knowledge of him, my guess is that he will head downriver to hide out with family he has in Pine Bluff or Arkadelphia. He will need time to convalesce from the thrashing Miss Ross delivered him.”
“I see,” said Sheriff Morris, dabbing his forehead with a rag which was grey from many washings. “That is a shame. But there is nothing for it. This Cunningham will have to go and trouble that jurisdiction, and with any luck, he will kill a man and be caught at it so that he may be done away with altogether. For my part, we cannot spare the manpower.”
“You will not go after him?” Mattie asked.
“What, send Sutherland after him into Perry County, and every county after that as far as this Cunningham sees fit to wander? No, no. If he returns here, we will have to deal with him, but otherwise, certainly not. As I say, we cannot spare the manpower.”
Mattie glanced at LaBoeuf, and found him regarding the Sheriff disapprovingly. However, he simply said, “That is fine. I will go after him myself, anyhow.”
“Do as you please,” the Sheriff replied. “As for you, Miss Ross, if Cunningham returns, kindly fetch the law before you attempt to remove the man’s head from his body.” Then he gestured at Sutherland, and with a tip of their hats, they departed.
Mattie and LaBoeuf watched them go, and then LaBoeuf let out a sigh and said, “I guess I am bound for Pine Bluff, via the Arkansas River. I will depart in the morning.”
“I guess I am bound for Pine Bluff, also,” Mattie replied. LaBoeuf turned and fixed her with a curious stare.
“Now, what do you mean by that?” he asked.
“I am going with you. You will apprehend him, or kill him in the doing of it. I want to see it done with my own eyes, or by my own hand, if I must.”
“Mattie, I will avenge what he has done to you. You do not need to make yourself a part of it. I will take care of it. I swear on my honour.”
“You will hunt him down to collect the money on his head,” Mattie replied. “If what was done to me is to be avenged, then I will be the one to do it.”
LaBoeuf gave her an exasperated look. “Mattie, please. You cannot ask me to take you along. First, there is the danger. Second, your duty to your family’s property in your mother’s absence. Your mother would not -”
“My mother returns on the train tomorrow afternoon with my brother and sister, and they will look after the farm. My mother will understand.”
“What you are proposing is simply out of the question. I will pursue him alone, and that is an end to it,” LaBoeuf said.
“If I do not go in your company, then I will go alone,” Mattie replied. “You have no authority to tell me to stay or go. I am a grown woman, and I have my own stores, and my own horse. I am free to do as I please. You have no say in it.”
LaBoeuf glowered at her, and Mattie sensed that his view of the situation had passed beyond mere frustration and had stretched into the territory of genuine anger. “I ought to have a word or two with your mother and tell her that you would not be nearly so troublesome had she or your father ever given you a proper hiding.”
Mattie had to clench her hand into a fist to keep from slapping him across his smug face. “How dare you!” she snapped. “Not only do you speak to me as though I am a naughty child in your charge, which I am most certainly not, but you are a guest of mine here and should therefore be ashamed of saying such disrespectful things about my mother and my dearly departed father. I have never been so insulted.”
“If I ever met a mule as stubborn as you, I would shoot it dead to save all of mankind the trouble,” LaBoeuf replied, his face flushed an aggravated red. “If you do not understand that I am attempting to protect you from a harm which has already made itself known to you, then you are slow-witted as well as saucy, difficult, and altogether too proud to be tolerated!”
“Protect me! Protect me, indeed. You know I am able to defend myself if need be.”
“What I know is that you are being obtuse, and much too blithe,” LaBoeuf said, his voice lowered. “Mattie, Cunningham very nearly killed you. It was only a stroke of pure luck that he did not violate you, strangle the breath from you, and toss your broken body aside to rot in those woods.”
Mattie swallowed, recalling the feeling of Cunningham’s fingernails digging into her wrist, and into the flesh of her neck. “Well,” she said, after a pause, “there is no need to be quite so sensational about it, Mr. LaBoeuf.”
He continued to stare at her in apparent disbelief before turning away and sitting back down on the stump. He removed his hat and placed it on the ground, and then picked up the dead turkey at his feet and, grabbing the knife from his boot, neatly removed its head.
Mattie watched him for a moment, and then sat down on another stump.
“If you will gut that turkey and remove its feathers, I will roast it for our supper,” she offered. “You can take what pieces remain with you tomorrow when you depart, whether we go as ‘trail pardners’ or not.”
LaBoeuf did not reply. Methodically he removed the turkey’s innards, and began removing its feathers.
“You said once that I had ‘earned my spurs,’” Mattie said. “Do you think I have become soft in the intervening years?”
LaBoeuf looked up and regarded her for a moment before shaking his head. “Judgment Day will come and go before anyone can accuse you of being soft,” he said. “That is not the thing. Rather, it is that I do not see the necessity in putting yourself in danger when I can go after Cunningham on my own. Do you not think I can catch him?”
Mattie stared down at the grass between the toes of her black shoes, considering her thoughts on the subject and how best to communicate them to LaBoeuf. “I do not doubt your ability to bring Cunningham to justice,” she said finally. “In fact, I have every confidence that you will track him down, be it sooner or later. I have not doubted your grit since you proved yourself in the Winding Stairs.”
LaBoeuf eyed her with a curious expression on his face, as though he were somewhat surprised by her words. He cleared his throat. “What, then?” he asked.
“I do not relish the idea of staying here on this farm and growing fearful of shadowed corners and draughty stairwells. I do not wish to look over my shoulder every time I go to fetch a stick of firewood.”
“But your mother and your siblings return tomorrow, do they not?” LaBoeuf replied, frowning. “I will stay with you until then, if you like. Cunningham is injured and will therefore be slow on the track, so a day will not greatly affect the outcome. You will feel safe when you are with your family once again.”
“I will feel more anxious when they return,” Mattie replied, shaking her head. “For then I will worry not for myself, but for Mama, and Victoria, who are both gentle by nature, and even Little Frank, who is hot-headed and will not back down from a fight. My father is dead. They are mine to protect, and I do not know how I will sleep soundly knowing that Albert Cunningham could come wandering back across our fields at any moment he pleases.”
Mattie forced herself to continue to meet LaBoeuf’s eyes at the conclusion of this speech. She wanted to look away.
“I know you are not naive of the fact that the world is full of men like Cunningham, and worse,” LaBoeuf replied, his tone contemplative. “Seeing justice done to Cunningham will not, unfortunately, remove all wickedness from the world, nor will it diminish the chance of encountering it. Not even for you, who has tangled enough with evil for one lifetime.”
“You are correct,” Mattie replied. “However, if you truly believed that the insurmountable nature of collective human wickedness was reason enough in itself not to counteract it where it is found, I think you would not have chosen the vocation you did.”
LaBoeuf regarded her, and then his whiskers twitched and he began to laugh. It was a loud, hearty laugh, and soon enough he was leaning his elbows on his knees and wheezing. Mattie did not join, for she did not think she had said anything amusing.
“You ought to have been a lawyer, Mattie Ross,” he said when he was able to catch his breath. “Let us hope you would be working for the prosecution, or else us lawmen would all be in a great deal of trouble.”
He seemed to be making her the object of his fun, and Mattie grew impatient. “So you will not run me off the roadway if I follow you at a distance in your pursuit of Cunningham?”
LaBoeuf groaned and wiped at his eyes. “Do not be ridiculous. We will go together, pard. Truth be told, I could use some company on the trail, even if your company is rather like befriending a horsefly.”
Somewhat insulted, but pleased that they had come to an agreement which was to her satisfaction, Mattie merely sniffed in response.
They spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for their journey, which would take them down the south bank of the Arkansas River. LaBoeuf said he would be surprised indeed if Cunningham was headed any other place than Pine Bluff, and he immediately set about poring over Papa’s maps and asking her questions about the local terrain and what supplies could be got along the way. He then penned a letter he would not show her or discuss. Mattie guessed it was to whoever served as his master with the Rangers in Ysleta. Feeling sportive, she told him that if he was writing a silly letter to his sweetheart, she did not care to know the contents anyway. His face reddened, and he finished his letter in very short order.
Mattie, meanwhile, roasted the turkey over the fire in the lean-to, and began making lists in her head of what she ought to bring along with her. She began also to compose a letter of her own; one to her mother which would explain her absence. Mattie turned the turkey on the spit and grimaced. She could imagine her mother’s reaction to the news that her eldest daughter had gone off on another adventure. Mama would likely take to her bed for a week.
Mattie sighed. She had lied to LaBoeuf when she said that her mother would understand. Mama would not be happy, but Mattie would find a way to placate her upon her return.
While the turkey roasted, Mattie prepared food for their journey. She cooked two pones of cornbread, and then packed the last of the salt pork, some corn meal, and a lump of lard, which she wrapped in waxed paper. In the larder she found a small sack of dried apples, and stowed those. She bundled the food and the smallest cast-iron skillet and pot together, and hoped it would not be too much of a burden for Alma, her horse. LaBoeuf had taken a look at the beast and pronounced her sound in spite of her recent ailments.
Mattie thought she ought to take some money with her, but when she went into her father’s office and opened the locked drawer where they kept some cash, she found that the lock had been tampered with and one hundred dollars in cash was missing. Mattie thought it curious indeed that Cunningham had taken the time to root out the money, but had left the rifles in the office alone, in spite of the fact that he did not seem to own a firearm. She guessed he had done this before he even encountered her in the barnyard. She shivered to think of him marauding in the house while she fed the pigs, ignorant of the danger he presented.
If she had any doubt about pursuing him, the discovery of the missing one hundred dollars put it to rest. Mattie was determined to get that money back, and if Cunningham died in the process, all the better.
By the time the turkey had finished and they sat down to eat, the sun had set and they were both exhausted. They ate mostly in silence, although LaBoeuf did take the time to say that the turkey was very good. The bird was so small that they ate nearly all of it. The rest Mattie wrapped in paper and put with the other stores she had gathered.
That evening, LaBoeuf laid out his revolver, his Sharps-Carbine, her father’s Colt’s dragoon pistol, and Little Frank’s Henry rifle on the parlour floor, and commenced meticulously cleaning and checking each one. Mattie sat nearby and wrote her letter to her mother, as well as one to Lawyer Daggett, outlining what ought to be done with the farm if anything dire befell her.
“I think this piece may be more trouble than it is worth,” LaBoeuf said. Mattie looked up from her writing to see that he held her father’s pistol in his hand. It had served her reasonably if not impeccably in the past, and although Mattie decried superstition generally, she had a notion that it might do her a good turn to carry it with her on this journey regardless of its efficacy as a firearm. LaBoeuf would think this a silly and impractical view, she was aware. She opened her mouth to spin some complicated yarn that would highlight its necessity, but LaBoeuf’s eye caught hers, and he gave a little shrug of his shoulders.
“Still, it may prove itself useful. Better to have it than not,” he said, and laid it with care next to his revolver.
They worked in silence for a short while longer, before Mattie finished her letters and folded them labouriously using her one hand and a paperweight. When she was nearly done, she felt LaBoeuf’s gaze on her, and looked up to find him watching her fold the paper.
“You manage remarkably well,” he said, squaring the firearms away. With a tired sigh, he sat back in the armchair and cracked one his knuckles. “You tend the animals, and cook, and do all manner of rough work. It is commendable.”
“I manage as well as I must,” Mattie replied, rather uncomfortable. Although he meant his words as a compliment to her, his tone of condescension annoyed her. Was she expected to be an invalid without purpose or usefulness because she lacked one arm?
“What have you told your mother?” he asked, nodding at her letters.
Mattie set the papers aside and leaned against the back of the settee. “The truth, excepting a few details which will only upset her.”
“That is wise. No need to worry the poor woman any more than she will be.”
“Indeed,” Mattie replied, standing up. “I will go see to the night chores, and then I believe I will retire so that we may get an early start in the morning. Goodnight, Mr. LaBoeuf.”
“Goodnight,” he said.
A cool breeze had whipped up after sunset. By the light of a lantern, Mattie worked quickly to get the animals settled in. When she had finished, she closed and latched the barn door behind her and hurried back to the house, the wind whipping her hair all around.
She went up to her bedroom and closed the door. Taking her comb from the washstand and catching a glimpse of herself, she paused and stared. Her loose hair was a mess.
Mattie shrugged off her coat and attempted to untangle the knots, but the comb kept getting stuck. She sighed impatiently and pondered her predicament. Riding all day and sleeping on the ground at night for who could guess how many days was going to turn her hair into an absolute nest of snarls by the time she returned home. If only Victoria were here, she could assist in at least pulling it back into some practical plaits for the time being.
The sound of LaBoeuf shuffling about downstairs gave Mattie pause. She eyed herself in the mirror. Well, she thought, it is either this, or I cut it all off with that knife of his.
Hairbrush in hand, she left her bedroom and went down to the parlour. LaBoeuf was in the armchair, a cloud of pipe smoke about his head and Little Men open on his chest.
“I thought you had retired,” he said, not looking up from the book. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything is fine,” Mattie replied. “The animals are all well, and I think Sal and Alma are fast friends already. Only there is a wind outside, and as you can see, it has made a mess of me. Although combing and brushing my hair is not typically difficult for me, plaiting it and pinning it back is, but I can usually leave that to my sister Victoria.”
LaBoeuf looked up from his book then, his brows drawn together in a frown. “I am sure that is true. Why do you tell me this?”
“Would you be so helpful as to assist me in brushing the tangles out, and perhaps with pulling it back in some way? Do not think me vain - it does not need to be handsome. It is just that I cannot ride or track or easily do much of anything with my hair all blowing in my face, you see.”
LaBoeuf sat up and set his book aside, looking at her with no small amount of annoyance. “It is not enough that I am forced to chaperon you against my better judgment, but now I must also be your valet?”
“By your tone of voice one would think that I had just demanded that you walk to the ocean and back to fetch me a dipperful of water,” Mattie replied. She did not see why he needed to be so difficult about it. It was not such a hateful request.
“All right, if you insist,” he said, glowering at her.
Electing not to fan the flames of his ire, Mattie walked over and handed him the brush, and sat down on one end of the settee. She turned her back to him, but she caught his sigh as he sat down behind her.
“This seems very untoward,” he muttered, and Mattie felt his hand slide under the mass of her hair. He held it for a moment as though weighing it.
“Does it?” Mattie asked, puzzled. She could not see what difference it made, given that they had spent nearly every moment in each other’s company that day, not to mention their previous acquaintance, and that they would travel and make camp together in the coming days, as well.
LaBoeuf did not reply to that. He ran the brush over her hair so lightly that he barely caught a single hair.
“How do you expect to work out all the tangles if you are brushing my hair like you would a baby’s?” Mattie complained. “Have you never brushed out a horse’s tail? It is more like that. Start at the bottom.”
LaBoeuf exhaled noisily. “I have done this before.”
“Have you? Well, you cannot tell,” Mattie replied. After a moment, she frowned. “When have you done this before?”
“I have a sister.”
“Oh. I did not know. You do not speak of your family.” Mattie pondered the notion that somewhere, LaBoeuf had a mother and a father, a sister apparently, maybe some brothers. Perhaps he really did have a sweetheart waiting for him in Texas. He had said that he hoped one day to settle down and marry, after all.
“Yes, I have an older sister, Claudine,” he elaborated. “Before her there are my three brothers, Rufus, Everett, and Alexander. They are all older by some years, but Claudine and I are near to the same age, and so we were each other’s companions as children.”
“How nice to have a large family,” Mattie replied. She was curious and wished to know more, but LaBoeuf seemed reticent, and Mattie was not fond of impertinent personal questions herself, and so could not reasonably expect LaBoeuf to withstand them.
They both fell silent, but it felt to Mattie oddly peaceful, as LaBoeuf combed his fingers through her hair and began dividing and plaiting it. Her eyes wanted to close, and she had to fight a strange and rather alarming urge to lean back against him. She kept her spine as straight as a ramrod, digging her fingernails into her palm. Her face felt unaccountably hot despite the cool evening.
“Braid it tight and we will not have to fuss with it again,” she said.
“Yes, I know,” LaBoeuf replied. The moment he secured her long braid into a knot at the back of her head with her pins, she stood up.
“Thank you,” Mattie said, her mouth dry. “I am obliged to you for this.”
LaBoeuf looked up at her, and his eyes seemed more bright and blue than they had before. “There is no obligation,” he replied, and pressed the brush into her open palm.
“Goodnight, then,” she said, and departed.
When she passed the mirror in the hallway, she stopped and gaped at herself in shock, craning her neck to get a glimpse of what LaBoeuf had done to her. The top half of her hair was parted down the centre of her skull and pulled back and divided into two tight plaits which fell from the crown of her head. The bottom half of her hair was gathered into one thick plait at the nape of her neck. All three plaits were looped under and their ends secured in some mysterious manner which Mattie could not quite figure. She lifted her hand and felt the tidy mass at the back of her head. It was a very old-fashioned arrangement; Mattie looked like a photograph she had seen of her mother when she was a young woman. Despite its intricacies, it was very practical - all of her hair was pulled neatly out of the way into a bundle that would not come loose, but which also lay against her skull in such a way that she could still wear her father’s wide-brimmed hat comfortably. As she pressed her hand against it, she noted that what pins LaBoeuf had used did not even dig into her flesh.
Altogether, it was near the cleverest thing Mattie had ever seen. Not that she had any plans of telling LaBoeuf that, of course.
As she settled into her own bed upstairs for the night, Mattie could not help but marvel at LaBoeuf’s work. She wondered what old Rooster Cogburn would have to say if he found out that the Texas Ranger could not only ride, and track, and shoot a man off his horse from four hundred yards away, but that he could also plait a woman’s hair if a need presented itself.
Mattie guessed that Rooster would have a few choice words to say about that, indeed.
Chapter 3
Author: lindentree
Rating: T
Character(s): Mattie Ross/LaBoeuf, Rooster Cogburn
Word Count: 6,708
Summary: Five years after her adventure in the Choctaw Nation, Mattie Ross runs afoul of a fugitive. She soon finds herself in familiar company, if not familiar territory.
ought to have been a lawyer
The morning dawned clear and crisp, and Mattie was up with the sun.
Her body was wrapped in aches she had not felt last evening, as though during the night her whole self had become one large, tender bruise. It made washing and dressing uncomfortable, and pinning her hair up purely impossible. She settled for brushing it out and leaving it hanging down her back in one long fall. She was glad for the bright daylight which flooded the house, for it threw great, reasonable light into every corner, making her fearfulness in the night seem all the more foolish. It allowed her to go up to her bedroom and dress herself in her own clean clothing.
Dressed and scrubbed and combed as best as she could hope to be, Mattie gathered an armful of wood for the kitchen stove and got the breakfast fire going. She fetched water for coffee, and emptied the basin of bloody water down the privy. She led the horses out into their paddock, and milked the cow before letting her and the little red bullock out to graze as well. She shooed the chickens out into the yard to scratch for bugs, and collected the eggs she could find. She then filled a washtub with cold water and vinegar, and put all her bloodied clothes in to soak.
Inside, she prepared a sheet of biscuits, sliced several thick pieces of salt pork and set them to frying, and made a small pan of grits. She boiled coffee as well, for although she still did not care for it herself, she did like the perfume it gave the air as it percolated.
After all this, LaBoeuf had still not risen. Mattie was surprised; in the brief time she had spent with him on the trail of Tom Chaney, he had been the earliest of risers. She went upstairs and rapped on the door to her brother’s bedroom. Receiving no answer, she opened it, and found that the room was empty. Frowning, she came back downstairs, and as she passed the parlour doorway, caught sight of a pair of red wool socks with feet in them. LaBoeuf was laid out flat on the parlour rug, fast asleep and snoring.
Mattie paused in the doorway, observing him. He had removed his boots, his coat, and his vest, and had unbuttoned the top button of his faded chambray shirt. His suspenders were shrugged off, and he lay with his hands resting on his middle and his coat bunched under his head. His Sharps-Carbine lay next to him, neatly parallel to his body. He was perfectly still, and aside from his noisy snoring, Mattie thought he rather resembled a corpse laid out for a wake.
It was a singularly disturbing thought. She cleared her throat, and he was awake in an instant.
“Is everything all right?” he asked, sitting up and blinking blearily at her.
“Yes,” she replied. “Only you might have slept upstairs in Little Frank’s bedroom. I thought that would be obvious to you or else I would have said as much. I apologise.”
“No apology is necessary; you have not been negligent in your duties as hostess. I slept here deliberately, for I wanted to be at the ready if Cunningham returned.”
“I see.”
LaBoeuf scrubbed a hand over his face, and then paused, his face forming a quizzical expression. “Is that salt pork I smell? And coffee?”
“Yes. I thought after your days sleeping rough on the road, you would want a proper breakfast. It will be ready shortly, if you wish.” Before he could reply, Mattie turned and left the room.
She was frying eggs when he appeared in the kitchen. He helped himself to a basin of hot water and went out the back door, heading in the direction of the privy. Through the window, Mattie could see him crouching by the water pump, using a mean-looking bowie knife to shave, the way another man would a straight razor. He used a small piece of looking glass to see his work, and Mattie was unsurprised to find that he was no less vain now than he had been when they met.
Finally he finished with his preening and came back inside; his skin was pink and his hair and whiskers damp. He took the plate of food and the hot coffee Mattie handed him with a funny sort of smile on his face, as though she were performing an entertaining and unexpected trick.
Ignoring him, Mattie served herself and sat down across from him at the rough hewn table there before the cook stove. He almost dug in before her say so, but she interrupted him by bowing her head and saying aloud a prayer of thanksgiving. When she finished, LaBoeuf looked both admonished and annoyed. Mattie’s thought was this: LaBoeuf ought to spend less time bird-dogging riff-raff and more time in church if he thought himself too big and important to even say grace. They ate in silence for several minutes.
“This is very good,” LaBoeuf remarked after a time, not looking up from his plate. Mattie examined the cowlick at the crown of his head. It stood up as proudly as ever, in spite of the combing he had obviously subjected it to.
“You say that as though you are surprised,” she replied. “Did you doubt my abilities as a cook?”
He shook his head in apparent amusement. “I am beginning to think that in addition to death and taxes, one might also rely on your orneriness. A man could set his watch by its regularity. Do you not know how to graciously accept a compliment when it is presented to you?”
Mattie eyed him for a moment, and then cleared her throat. “No, I suppose I do not.”
LaBoeuf paused in his eating and regarded her across the table. “Well, you ought to learn. These biscuits are some of the best I have had. Certainly they are a mighty improvement on the meals at the Monarch in Fort Smith, if you remember. And if you disagree with me on that score, then I do not know.”
Mattie grimaced and nodded her agreement. “Yes, I always did feel cheated at that place, and I would not recommend it to anyone headed to those parts. Mrs. Floyd was kind enough, I suppose, although she did give the first free room to a newcomer when I was already doubled-up with an old woman who variously robbed me of my share of the bedclothes and infected me with a cold.”
“Haw!” he said. “I do not know whether I am heartened or dismayed to find that you are as saucy as ever you were.”
Mattie did not know how to respond to such a statement, and so remained silent and carried on eating her breakfast.
“How are your injuries treating you this morning?” LaBoeuf asked, after a spell.
“They are treating me about as well as can be expected,” Mattie replied. “My head aches some and I am sore in general, but otherwise I am without complaint.”
LaBoeuf nodded in reply to this, and then his eyes dropped to her neck. In spite of the high lace collar of her dress, the bruises which mottled the skin red and blue were still visible. Feeling scrutinized, Mattie looked down at her plate.
“I believe I will see if I can pick up Cunningham’s trail today,” LaBoeuf said, scraping up the last of the grits on his plate. “I expect he fled into the woods to lick his wounds, so to speak.”
“What is your plan?” Mattie asked.
“My plan is to see whether he survived the night, and then determine where he might go next if he is not dead.”
“I see,” Mattie said simply, and they finished their meal in silence.
LaBoeuf thanked her for the food and disappeared back to the front of the house. Mattie guessed he intended to clean his rifle or some such; she did not bother with him, for she had chores to do. After washing and wiping the breakfast dishes, she tidied the kitchen and replenished the wood and water by the stove. She was halfway across the yard with the slop pail, headed in the direction of the barn, when LaBoeuf reappeared, following her out the kitchen door. He was fully dressed in his buckskin coat and his hat, and he wore his revolver and had the Sharps-Carbine in the crook of his elbow.
“I am going,” LaBoeuf announced, looking at her expectantly. It was obvious that he wanted her to question him so that he could bedevil her with deliberately perplexing responses. Mattie figured the most certain way to disappoint him was not to question him at all. “I do not expect to be gone very long,” he continued.
“All right,” she replied, and carried on her way up to the barn, the heavy bucket of slops swinging against her leg with each step.
When she had finished feeding their two hogs, she walked back down to the house and found that LaBoeuf had gone. Mattie did not resist the smirk that pulled at her mouth. The man was as much a popinjay as the morning he appeared in her room at the Monarch boarding house and attempted to intimidate her. Big spurs and all, he had not changed.
Mattie set about dealing with her befouled clothing from the previous day. She built a large fire outside the lean-to in the yard which they used as their summer kitchen. She drew many buckets of water from the pump, pouring them into the large black iron kettle they kept for dirty, heavy jobs. It was hauled out several times a year for the making of soap, and vinegar, and for rendering hog fat. Soon the water was boiling, and Mattie fetched her blood-stained dress, her shimmy, and her corset from the house, and dropped them in. She boiled them, stirring the water occasionally with an old broom handle.
She had been stood there minding her work for some time when LaBoeuf emerged from the woods. He was encumbered with a small wild turkey, which dangled limply from his hand by its two feet.
“Hidy,” he said, laying his burden out a few feet from the fire before seating himself on a nearby section of tree trunk used as a stool. He commenced to filling his pipe with tobacco with a very satisfied expression on his face. When Mattie continued to ignore him, he cleared his throat. “I might have shot you some of those fat geese flying over if I had my bird dog with me,” he said, cocking his head in the direction of the northern sky.
“You need not be too sorry about it, for although that turkey is mighty scrawny, to add a goose or two would have been pure gluttony. There are only two of us here, unless you are expecting guests of which I am unaware.”
“You ought to get a dog,” LaBoeuf said, ignoring her criticisms. “A farm is not a farm without a dog to guard it and its inhabitants.”
“I did not know that your designation as a Texas Ranger afforded you the wisdom to make recommendations as to how cotton farms ought to be run,” Mattie replied.
“You know that I am right, but as is your way, you do not want to own to it. That is fine; we both know it, and that satisfies me.” LaBoeuf paused here and lit his pipe using a long twig he poked into the hot coals of the fire. “I found the place where I believe Cunningham made camp in the night.”
Mattie stopped turning her clothes over in the water. “You did?”
“I did. I followed the crick back into the woods, and about half a mile in, I found the remnants of a cook fire as well as some bloodied strips of sacking I guess he used to staunch his wound. In the fire were scattered the bones of what looked to be a squirrel or perhaps a small groundhog, and so I reckon he was fit enough to snare himself some supper. The ashes were cold and he was long gone, however. My guess is that he left at first light.”
Mattie regarded him for a moment, considering this. “Do you think he has gone away altogether?”
“I reckon so, yes,” LaBoeuf replied, his eyes on hers. “I do not think you need to fret that he will return to this place. You scared him off.”
“I do not fret that he will return. I am only concerned that none of the eggs or chickens go missing in the night,” Mattie said, stirring the clothes once more in the water before pulling them up on the end of the broom handle to examine them. It would be impossible to tell how the stain would affect her dark blue dress until it dried. If it showed, the dress could always be dyed a dark brown or black to hide it. The stain in the corset had come out reasonably well, and in any case the garment was old and worn, and Mama had commented recently that Mattie ought to have a new one. The shimmy, however, was a lost cause. The stain had faded somewhat, but a large, diluted brown splotch remained on its front. It would only be good for rags, or perhaps for some part of a future scarecrow.
Mattie felt LaBoeuf’s eyes on her, and she glanced up to find him watching her with an oddly soft expression on his face. It recalled the way his face looked in the moonlight that rainy night he made to leave her with Cogburn in the Winding Stairs when the Marshall decided their “coon hunt” had run its course. The look in LaBoeuf’s eyes presented her, then and now, with an aspect of him that Mattie could not figure. The gentleness seemed strange and out of place, and it made Mattie uncomfortable generally.
She looked back down at her work, removing the clothing from the water and laying it all out on the grass to cool.
“Well,” LaBoeuf said, after a protracted silence, “I guess that harkens back to my suggestion that you need a dog about this place to guard your eggs and your chickens, but I know you will not heed it.”
Mattie was on the verge of forming a response when LaBoeuf looked sharply over her shoulder and stood. Mattie turned and saw Sheriff Morris coming around the front of the house with Deputy Sutherland in tow.
“Hidy,” LaBoeuf called. Mattie pitched him a resentful look, which he missed. The man was a presumptuous fop, greeting guests on her land when he was a guest himself.
“Miss Ross,” the Sheriff nodded, coming to a halt before them. He seemed somewhat surprised to find that Mattie was not alone. “Mr. - LaBoeuf, was it?”
“Indeed,” LaBoeuf replied shortly, and Mattie could tell that he was perturbed at having his name forgotten.
“Well, I am here to tell you that Mr. MacLeod will come by this afternoon with his wagon to collect the body, but in the meantime I would like to have a look at the place where yesterday’s ugliness happened.”
“You can certainly have a look at the place,” Mattie replied, “but you should know that when Mr. LaBoeuf and I returned here last night, we found that Cunningham had risen and disappeared. It seems I did not kill him, after all.”
“What!” Sheriff Morris exclaimed, the word hauling up a string of dry, hacking coughs behind it. “What do you mean ‘risen and disappeared’?”
“I mean that the man had apparently collected himself and gone. There was no body where I had left one,” Mattie replied. She narrowed her eyes at Deputy Sutherland, who was again ogling her very openly. He seemed particularly interested in the pinned-up sleeve at her side, and only looked away when he finally felt her glare. He was not the first to stare at her arm. Nor would he be the last, she guessed. You would think people had never even heard of rattlesnakes, the way they stared.
“I searched the house and the outbuildings last night and could find no sign of the man,” LaBoeuf interjected. “I have just now returned from a search of the woods. I found a campsite up the crick where I suspect Cunningham spent the night. From my knowledge of him, my guess is that he will head downriver to hide out with family he has in Pine Bluff or Arkadelphia. He will need time to convalesce from the thrashing Miss Ross delivered him.”
“I see,” said Sheriff Morris, dabbing his forehead with a rag which was grey from many washings. “That is a shame. But there is nothing for it. This Cunningham will have to go and trouble that jurisdiction, and with any luck, he will kill a man and be caught at it so that he may be done away with altogether. For my part, we cannot spare the manpower.”
“You will not go after him?” Mattie asked.
“What, send Sutherland after him into Perry County, and every county after that as far as this Cunningham sees fit to wander? No, no. If he returns here, we will have to deal with him, but otherwise, certainly not. As I say, we cannot spare the manpower.”
Mattie glanced at LaBoeuf, and found him regarding the Sheriff disapprovingly. However, he simply said, “That is fine. I will go after him myself, anyhow.”
“Do as you please,” the Sheriff replied. “As for you, Miss Ross, if Cunningham returns, kindly fetch the law before you attempt to remove the man’s head from his body.” Then he gestured at Sutherland, and with a tip of their hats, they departed.
Mattie and LaBoeuf watched them go, and then LaBoeuf let out a sigh and said, “I guess I am bound for Pine Bluff, via the Arkansas River. I will depart in the morning.”
“I guess I am bound for Pine Bluff, also,” Mattie replied. LaBoeuf turned and fixed her with a curious stare.
“Now, what do you mean by that?” he asked.
“I am going with you. You will apprehend him, or kill him in the doing of it. I want to see it done with my own eyes, or by my own hand, if I must.”
“Mattie, I will avenge what he has done to you. You do not need to make yourself a part of it. I will take care of it. I swear on my honour.”
“You will hunt him down to collect the money on his head,” Mattie replied. “If what was done to me is to be avenged, then I will be the one to do it.”
LaBoeuf gave her an exasperated look. “Mattie, please. You cannot ask me to take you along. First, there is the danger. Second, your duty to your family’s property in your mother’s absence. Your mother would not -”
“My mother returns on the train tomorrow afternoon with my brother and sister, and they will look after the farm. My mother will understand.”
“What you are proposing is simply out of the question. I will pursue him alone, and that is an end to it,” LaBoeuf said.
“If I do not go in your company, then I will go alone,” Mattie replied. “You have no authority to tell me to stay or go. I am a grown woman, and I have my own stores, and my own horse. I am free to do as I please. You have no say in it.”
LaBoeuf glowered at her, and Mattie sensed that his view of the situation had passed beyond mere frustration and had stretched into the territory of genuine anger. “I ought to have a word or two with your mother and tell her that you would not be nearly so troublesome had she or your father ever given you a proper hiding.”
Mattie had to clench her hand into a fist to keep from slapping him across his smug face. “How dare you!” she snapped. “Not only do you speak to me as though I am a naughty child in your charge, which I am most certainly not, but you are a guest of mine here and should therefore be ashamed of saying such disrespectful things about my mother and my dearly departed father. I have never been so insulted.”
“If I ever met a mule as stubborn as you, I would shoot it dead to save all of mankind the trouble,” LaBoeuf replied, his face flushed an aggravated red. “If you do not understand that I am attempting to protect you from a harm which has already made itself known to you, then you are slow-witted as well as saucy, difficult, and altogether too proud to be tolerated!”
“Protect me! Protect me, indeed. You know I am able to defend myself if need be.”
“What I know is that you are being obtuse, and much too blithe,” LaBoeuf said, his voice lowered. “Mattie, Cunningham very nearly killed you. It was only a stroke of pure luck that he did not violate you, strangle the breath from you, and toss your broken body aside to rot in those woods.”
Mattie swallowed, recalling the feeling of Cunningham’s fingernails digging into her wrist, and into the flesh of her neck. “Well,” she said, after a pause, “there is no need to be quite so sensational about it, Mr. LaBoeuf.”
He continued to stare at her in apparent disbelief before turning away and sitting back down on the stump. He removed his hat and placed it on the ground, and then picked up the dead turkey at his feet and, grabbing the knife from his boot, neatly removed its head.
Mattie watched him for a moment, and then sat down on another stump.
“If you will gut that turkey and remove its feathers, I will roast it for our supper,” she offered. “You can take what pieces remain with you tomorrow when you depart, whether we go as ‘trail pardners’ or not.”
LaBoeuf did not reply. Methodically he removed the turkey’s innards, and began removing its feathers.
“You said once that I had ‘earned my spurs,’” Mattie said. “Do you think I have become soft in the intervening years?”
LaBoeuf looked up and regarded her for a moment before shaking his head. “Judgment Day will come and go before anyone can accuse you of being soft,” he said. “That is not the thing. Rather, it is that I do not see the necessity in putting yourself in danger when I can go after Cunningham on my own. Do you not think I can catch him?”
Mattie stared down at the grass between the toes of her black shoes, considering her thoughts on the subject and how best to communicate them to LaBoeuf. “I do not doubt your ability to bring Cunningham to justice,” she said finally. “In fact, I have every confidence that you will track him down, be it sooner or later. I have not doubted your grit since you proved yourself in the Winding Stairs.”
LaBoeuf eyed her with a curious expression on his face, as though he were somewhat surprised by her words. He cleared his throat. “What, then?” he asked.
“I do not relish the idea of staying here on this farm and growing fearful of shadowed corners and draughty stairwells. I do not wish to look over my shoulder every time I go to fetch a stick of firewood.”
“But your mother and your siblings return tomorrow, do they not?” LaBoeuf replied, frowning. “I will stay with you until then, if you like. Cunningham is injured and will therefore be slow on the track, so a day will not greatly affect the outcome. You will feel safe when you are with your family once again.”
“I will feel more anxious when they return,” Mattie replied, shaking her head. “For then I will worry not for myself, but for Mama, and Victoria, who are both gentle by nature, and even Little Frank, who is hot-headed and will not back down from a fight. My father is dead. They are mine to protect, and I do not know how I will sleep soundly knowing that Albert Cunningham could come wandering back across our fields at any moment he pleases.”
Mattie forced herself to continue to meet LaBoeuf’s eyes at the conclusion of this speech. She wanted to look away.
“I know you are not naive of the fact that the world is full of men like Cunningham, and worse,” LaBoeuf replied, his tone contemplative. “Seeing justice done to Cunningham will not, unfortunately, remove all wickedness from the world, nor will it diminish the chance of encountering it. Not even for you, who has tangled enough with evil for one lifetime.”
“You are correct,” Mattie replied. “However, if you truly believed that the insurmountable nature of collective human wickedness was reason enough in itself not to counteract it where it is found, I think you would not have chosen the vocation you did.”
LaBoeuf regarded her, and then his whiskers twitched and he began to laugh. It was a loud, hearty laugh, and soon enough he was leaning his elbows on his knees and wheezing. Mattie did not join, for she did not think she had said anything amusing.
“You ought to have been a lawyer, Mattie Ross,” he said when he was able to catch his breath. “Let us hope you would be working for the prosecution, or else us lawmen would all be in a great deal of trouble.”
He seemed to be making her the object of his fun, and Mattie grew impatient. “So you will not run me off the roadway if I follow you at a distance in your pursuit of Cunningham?”
LaBoeuf groaned and wiped at his eyes. “Do not be ridiculous. We will go together, pard. Truth be told, I could use some company on the trail, even if your company is rather like befriending a horsefly.”
Somewhat insulted, but pleased that they had come to an agreement which was to her satisfaction, Mattie merely sniffed in response.
They spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for their journey, which would take them down the south bank of the Arkansas River. LaBoeuf said he would be surprised indeed if Cunningham was headed any other place than Pine Bluff, and he immediately set about poring over Papa’s maps and asking her questions about the local terrain and what supplies could be got along the way. He then penned a letter he would not show her or discuss. Mattie guessed it was to whoever served as his master with the Rangers in Ysleta. Feeling sportive, she told him that if he was writing a silly letter to his sweetheart, she did not care to know the contents anyway. His face reddened, and he finished his letter in very short order.
Mattie, meanwhile, roasted the turkey over the fire in the lean-to, and began making lists in her head of what she ought to bring along with her. She began also to compose a letter of her own; one to her mother which would explain her absence. Mattie turned the turkey on the spit and grimaced. She could imagine her mother’s reaction to the news that her eldest daughter had gone off on another adventure. Mama would likely take to her bed for a week.
Mattie sighed. She had lied to LaBoeuf when she said that her mother would understand. Mama would not be happy, but Mattie would find a way to placate her upon her return.
While the turkey roasted, Mattie prepared food for their journey. She cooked two pones of cornbread, and then packed the last of the salt pork, some corn meal, and a lump of lard, which she wrapped in waxed paper. In the larder she found a small sack of dried apples, and stowed those. She bundled the food and the smallest cast-iron skillet and pot together, and hoped it would not be too much of a burden for Alma, her horse. LaBoeuf had taken a look at the beast and pronounced her sound in spite of her recent ailments.
Mattie thought she ought to take some money with her, but when she went into her father’s office and opened the locked drawer where they kept some cash, she found that the lock had been tampered with and one hundred dollars in cash was missing. Mattie thought it curious indeed that Cunningham had taken the time to root out the money, but had left the rifles in the office alone, in spite of the fact that he did not seem to own a firearm. She guessed he had done this before he even encountered her in the barnyard. She shivered to think of him marauding in the house while she fed the pigs, ignorant of the danger he presented.
If she had any doubt about pursuing him, the discovery of the missing one hundred dollars put it to rest. Mattie was determined to get that money back, and if Cunningham died in the process, all the better.
By the time the turkey had finished and they sat down to eat, the sun had set and they were both exhausted. They ate mostly in silence, although LaBoeuf did take the time to say that the turkey was very good. The bird was so small that they ate nearly all of it. The rest Mattie wrapped in paper and put with the other stores she had gathered.
That evening, LaBoeuf laid out his revolver, his Sharps-Carbine, her father’s Colt’s dragoon pistol, and Little Frank’s Henry rifle on the parlour floor, and commenced meticulously cleaning and checking each one. Mattie sat nearby and wrote her letter to her mother, as well as one to Lawyer Daggett, outlining what ought to be done with the farm if anything dire befell her.
“I think this piece may be more trouble than it is worth,” LaBoeuf said. Mattie looked up from her writing to see that he held her father’s pistol in his hand. It had served her reasonably if not impeccably in the past, and although Mattie decried superstition generally, she had a notion that it might do her a good turn to carry it with her on this journey regardless of its efficacy as a firearm. LaBoeuf would think this a silly and impractical view, she was aware. She opened her mouth to spin some complicated yarn that would highlight its necessity, but LaBoeuf’s eye caught hers, and he gave a little shrug of his shoulders.
“Still, it may prove itself useful. Better to have it than not,” he said, and laid it with care next to his revolver.
They worked in silence for a short while longer, before Mattie finished her letters and folded them labouriously using her one hand and a paperweight. When she was nearly done, she felt LaBoeuf’s gaze on her, and looked up to find him watching her fold the paper.
“You manage remarkably well,” he said, squaring the firearms away. With a tired sigh, he sat back in the armchair and cracked one his knuckles. “You tend the animals, and cook, and do all manner of rough work. It is commendable.”
“I manage as well as I must,” Mattie replied, rather uncomfortable. Although he meant his words as a compliment to her, his tone of condescension annoyed her. Was she expected to be an invalid without purpose or usefulness because she lacked one arm?
“What have you told your mother?” he asked, nodding at her letters.
Mattie set the papers aside and leaned against the back of the settee. “The truth, excepting a few details which will only upset her.”
“That is wise. No need to worry the poor woman any more than she will be.”
“Indeed,” Mattie replied, standing up. “I will go see to the night chores, and then I believe I will retire so that we may get an early start in the morning. Goodnight, Mr. LaBoeuf.”
“Goodnight,” he said.
A cool breeze had whipped up after sunset. By the light of a lantern, Mattie worked quickly to get the animals settled in. When she had finished, she closed and latched the barn door behind her and hurried back to the house, the wind whipping her hair all around.
She went up to her bedroom and closed the door. Taking her comb from the washstand and catching a glimpse of herself, she paused and stared. Her loose hair was a mess.
Mattie shrugged off her coat and attempted to untangle the knots, but the comb kept getting stuck. She sighed impatiently and pondered her predicament. Riding all day and sleeping on the ground at night for who could guess how many days was going to turn her hair into an absolute nest of snarls by the time she returned home. If only Victoria were here, she could assist in at least pulling it back into some practical plaits for the time being.
The sound of LaBoeuf shuffling about downstairs gave Mattie pause. She eyed herself in the mirror. Well, she thought, it is either this, or I cut it all off with that knife of his.
Hairbrush in hand, she left her bedroom and went down to the parlour. LaBoeuf was in the armchair, a cloud of pipe smoke about his head and Little Men open on his chest.
“I thought you had retired,” he said, not looking up from the book. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything is fine,” Mattie replied. “The animals are all well, and I think Sal and Alma are fast friends already. Only there is a wind outside, and as you can see, it has made a mess of me. Although combing and brushing my hair is not typically difficult for me, plaiting it and pinning it back is, but I can usually leave that to my sister Victoria.”
LaBoeuf looked up from his book then, his brows drawn together in a frown. “I am sure that is true. Why do you tell me this?”
“Would you be so helpful as to assist me in brushing the tangles out, and perhaps with pulling it back in some way? Do not think me vain - it does not need to be handsome. It is just that I cannot ride or track or easily do much of anything with my hair all blowing in my face, you see.”
LaBoeuf sat up and set his book aside, looking at her with no small amount of annoyance. “It is not enough that I am forced to chaperon you against my better judgment, but now I must also be your valet?”
“By your tone of voice one would think that I had just demanded that you walk to the ocean and back to fetch me a dipperful of water,” Mattie replied. She did not see why he needed to be so difficult about it. It was not such a hateful request.
“All right, if you insist,” he said, glowering at her.
Electing not to fan the flames of his ire, Mattie walked over and handed him the brush, and sat down on one end of the settee. She turned her back to him, but she caught his sigh as he sat down behind her.
“This seems very untoward,” he muttered, and Mattie felt his hand slide under the mass of her hair. He held it for a moment as though weighing it.
“Does it?” Mattie asked, puzzled. She could not see what difference it made, given that they had spent nearly every moment in each other’s company that day, not to mention their previous acquaintance, and that they would travel and make camp together in the coming days, as well.
LaBoeuf did not reply to that. He ran the brush over her hair so lightly that he barely caught a single hair.
“How do you expect to work out all the tangles if you are brushing my hair like you would a baby’s?” Mattie complained. “Have you never brushed out a horse’s tail? It is more like that. Start at the bottom.”
LaBoeuf exhaled noisily. “I have done this before.”
“Have you? Well, you cannot tell,” Mattie replied. After a moment, she frowned. “When have you done this before?”
“I have a sister.”
“Oh. I did not know. You do not speak of your family.” Mattie pondered the notion that somewhere, LaBoeuf had a mother and a father, a sister apparently, maybe some brothers. Perhaps he really did have a sweetheart waiting for him in Texas. He had said that he hoped one day to settle down and marry, after all.
“Yes, I have an older sister, Claudine,” he elaborated. “Before her there are my three brothers, Rufus, Everett, and Alexander. They are all older by some years, but Claudine and I are near to the same age, and so we were each other’s companions as children.”
“How nice to have a large family,” Mattie replied. She was curious and wished to know more, but LaBoeuf seemed reticent, and Mattie was not fond of impertinent personal questions herself, and so could not reasonably expect LaBoeuf to withstand them.
They both fell silent, but it felt to Mattie oddly peaceful, as LaBoeuf combed his fingers through her hair and began dividing and plaiting it. Her eyes wanted to close, and she had to fight a strange and rather alarming urge to lean back against him. She kept her spine as straight as a ramrod, digging her fingernails into her palm. Her face felt unaccountably hot despite the cool evening.
“Braid it tight and we will not have to fuss with it again,” she said.
“Yes, I know,” LaBoeuf replied. The moment he secured her long braid into a knot at the back of her head with her pins, she stood up.
“Thank you,” Mattie said, her mouth dry. “I am obliged to you for this.”
LaBoeuf looked up at her, and his eyes seemed more bright and blue than they had before. “There is no obligation,” he replied, and pressed the brush into her open palm.
“Goodnight, then,” she said, and departed.
When she passed the mirror in the hallway, she stopped and gaped at herself in shock, craning her neck to get a glimpse of what LaBoeuf had done to her. The top half of her hair was parted down the centre of her skull and pulled back and divided into two tight plaits which fell from the crown of her head. The bottom half of her hair was gathered into one thick plait at the nape of her neck. All three plaits were looped under and their ends secured in some mysterious manner which Mattie could not quite figure. She lifted her hand and felt the tidy mass at the back of her head. It was a very old-fashioned arrangement; Mattie looked like a photograph she had seen of her mother when she was a young woman. Despite its intricacies, it was very practical - all of her hair was pulled neatly out of the way into a bundle that would not come loose, but which also lay against her skull in such a way that she could still wear her father’s wide-brimmed hat comfortably. As she pressed her hand against it, she noted that what pins LaBoeuf had used did not even dig into her flesh.
Altogether, it was near the cleverest thing Mattie had ever seen. Not that she had any plans of telling LaBoeuf that, of course.
As she settled into her own bed upstairs for the night, Mattie could not help but marvel at LaBoeuf’s work. She wondered what old Rooster Cogburn would have to say if he found out that the Texas Ranger could not only ride, and track, and shoot a man off his horse from four hundred yards away, but that he could also plait a woman’s hair if a need presented itself.
Mattie guessed that Rooster would have a few choice words to say about that, indeed.
Chapter 3