And Condors Danced Read online

  “Quigley’s a bad’un,” Matt said, shaking his head.

  “Quigley’s a…” Carly could think of a word or two that she’d overheard Arthur using, but not being too sure what they meant, she decided against it. Instead she only said, “Aiii!” under her breath and kicked poor Rosemary a little harder than necessary.

  They were almost to the ranch house and Carly was thinking mostly about how late it was and if she was going to be in trouble, when Matt suddenly pulled up alongside and said, “It was Henry and Bucky that done it.”

  “Done—did what?” Carly asked.

  “Shot the condor.”

  Carly stared in amazement. “Henry? Henry Babcock? And Bucky?” Bucky Hansen was Henry’s best friend and the second meanest boy in Santa Luisa.

  “Sure,” Matt said. “Who else? Old Henry Quigley Babcock.”

  “What makes you think it was Henry?” Carly asked.

  “Well, first off, somebody tried to scratch off where it says Carlton Ranch on that there sign your pa put up. With a knife or something. You notice that? The way I figure, nobody’d do that but a Quigley.”

  Carly nodded her head. She’d been too busy looking at the poor dead condor. It did sound like a Quigley trick, and Alfred Bennington Quigley’s brat of a grandson was certainly a likely suspect. Still, there were other Quigley friends and relatives who might have tried to ruin Father’s sign. “But how do you know it was Henry?”

  “Well, Henry has a new rifle. Got it for his birthday not long before school was out and bragged about it for days. About how he and Bucky were going hunting and all the critters they were going to kill. And besides, whoever did it was using those ferns over to the west side of the pond to hide in like it was a blind, or something. The ground was all scuffed up and there was a wrapper for a jawbreaker near where they’d been waiting. And what’s more, they was playing mumblety-peg. I saw the knife marks. Don’t know of any other Quigley who eats jawbreakers and plays mumblety-peg. Do you?”

  “Matt!” Carly said. “That is wonderful. That is absolutely wonderful.”

  Matt looked suspicious. “What’s wonderful?”

  “The way you detected all those clues. Just exactly like Sherlock Holmes.”

  “That wasn’t detecting. It was reading signs—like the Indians do. An old Indian friend of Grandpa’s learned him how to do it, and he’s been learning me ever since I was a baby.”

  “Well, I still think it’s wonderful.” Carly said. “I think…” What she was thinking was that she ought to promise Matt that the next time they played he could be Sherlock Holmes, but she really didn’t want to. Not with her costume almost finished and everything. Suddenly she had an inspiration. “What was your Grandpa’s Indian friend’s name?” she said.

  “Eenzie,” Matt said. “That’s what Grandpa called him, anyways. Said he couldn’t get his mouth around his real Indian name.”

  “All right—Eenzie. The next time we play detective you can be Eenzie. Sherlock Holmes and Eenzie.”

  Matt didn’t say anything. He just handed her the Dr. Watson hat with a big grin. Carly gave him Rosemary’s reins, slid to the ground—and nearly collapsed. Her legs felt like they’d been permanently curved to fit a donkey’s back, and straightening them hurt like fury. “Aiii,” she said under her breath, as she pulled her shoes and stockings out of the hedge and started for the house at a stiff bowlegged run.

  Chapter 11

  “CARLY! GOD IN heaven, where have you been? What happened to you?” Nellie whispered fiercely. Her fingers dug into Carly’s shoulders and her eyes darted frantically from Carly’s bedraggled hair to her bare and dirty feet.

  Following Nellie’s gaze, Carly looked down at herself. She was terribly dirty, there was no doubt about that, and barefooted. But nothing worse than that. She’d almost expected, from the look on Nellie’s face, to see a bloody wound or something else as horrible. “Nothing,” she began. “Nothing happened. I just went donkey riding with Matt. I told Charles I was going. I—”

  “Shhh!” Nellie’s fingers dug deeper and she shook Carly like Tiger shaking a rat. “Get upstairs and clean up,” she whispered between her teeth. “And hurry. Dinner’s almost ready. I’ll talk to you later, young lady.” She grabbed Carly’s wrist, pulled her into the hall, and shoved her toward the stairs. “Hurry,” she whispered, “and be quiet. I’ll send Lila up to help.”

  Carly didn’t ask questions. She knew what the problem was. The problem was Father, and what he would do and say if he knew that she had gone donkey riding and come home late—and dirty—and barefooted. But he didn’t know. Not yet, anyway. Dashing up the stairs on silent bare feet, Carly sped down the hall to her room.

  In less than a minute she was out of her dress and pinafore and had poured the contents of the water pitcher into the wide china basin. In her camisole and petticoat, she dipped a washcloth into the cold water and scrubbed her face, neck, and arms. Then she lifted the heavy basin to the floor and put one filthy foot into the water while she ran the washcloth up and down her leg. The other foot followed and she was drying frantically when Lila arrived.

  Lila’s anger was as unlike Nellie’s as was everything else about Carly’s two sisters. While Nellie’s anger sizzled and spattered like frying bacon, Lila’s glowed deep and silent as coals; deep and silent and beautiful, with a fiery sparkle in her wide eyes, and the frowning tilt of her eyebrows only emphasizing their perfect arch. Gliding to the closet, she snatched out Carly’s blue dress with the sailor collar.

  “Hold up your arms, you little…” Lila’s voice was a sleek, silky threat. She jerked the dress over Carly’s head and began to button it up the back. “You selfish, spoiled little monster. Sit down here on the stool and I’ll brush your hair while you button your shoes.”

  Tears filled Carly’s eyes. Real tears, now, from real hurt. Hurt that came from the coldness of Lila’s voice as well as from the rough whacking of the stiff brush bristles against her scalp. “Ouch,” she whispered, and turned her head to let Lila see the tears. But it didn’t help. In fact, it only made matters worse.

  “Don’t try that old trick,” Lila muttered. “And stop it! Right now! If your eyes are all red he’ll want to know why. And then the rest of us will have to blacken our souls lying for you, like always, while you just sit there, not caring. Not caring,” she said again, giving Carly’s hair a final whacking brush before she retied the ribbon that pulled it back from her face. Then she turned her around roughly and stared at her. “There,” she said, starting for the door. “You’ll do. Now hurry.”

  “Wait, Lila. Don’t be mad,” Carly began, but Lila was gone.

  Father was helping Mama into her chair when Carly arrived in the dining room. Bowls and platters of steaming food were already on the table, and Charles and Arthur and Lila were standing behind their chairs. Standing because, at the Hartwicks’ table, everyone but Mama stood until after the blessing. As she moved quickly to her own place, Carly’s eyes flicked across faces, trying, as she always did, to read the secrets that hid behind eyes and lips.

  Father first. One always looked for Father’s secrets first, knowing that they would not stay hidden for long, and that it sometimes helped to be prepared for their sudden revelation. One looked for narrowed eyes and twitching eyebrows, and sometimes a particular kind of smile. Carly watched as he bent over Mama, pushing in her chair, and then straightened to look quickly around the table. He was a tall man, and something about the way he always seemed to be looking down from a high place made him seem even taller. Head up and back, his quick gray eyes moved, without stopping, from face to face. Carly stifled a sigh of relief. At least there was no eagle-eyed, bone-chilling pause on her, or Nellie, or anyone else. Moving to the other end of the table, he took his place behind his high-backed chair.

  Lila was next to Father. Her face was the hardest to read, as if her beauty formed so smooth a film that even fear or anger found little foothold there. Only the quickness with which her eyes turned away
from Carly’s told that she was still angry. If she saw Carly’s humble don’t-be-mad-at-me smile, she gave no sign.

  Arthur’s lopsided, almost invisible grin, as usual, seemed to be making fun of something, and when Carly caught his glance he lifted an eyebrow and gave his head the tiniest beginning of a shake. The shake perhaps meant, Look out, you’re in trouble, or We’re all in trouble, or maybe even Good for you, Carly. You’re the only one in this whole family with an ounce of spunk, which was something he’d said to her more than once.

  If anyone was acting strangely, it was Charles. His chair was next to Carly’s, and as she looked up at him, his tense, nervous glance flickered around her without acknowledging her presence. It was like Charles to look without really seeing, but it was not like him to see and pretend not to. It seemed that Charles was angry too.

  And back to Mama, pale and distant, her shoulders hunched as if in pain, her eyes already lowered for the blessing. She showed no sign of knowing that her youngest daughter was in trouble again. Nellie wouldn’t have told her—not unless she had asked, and it wasn’t likely that she had.

  Then Nellie came in from the kitchen with the milk pitcher, and when she had taken her place they all bowed their heads. Silence. Silent waiting, waiting to hear who would give the blessing. Carly didn’t really think she’d be the one. Father didn’t call on her very often. But just in case, she got ready, rehearsing in her mind the words to a new one she’d recently learned in Sunday School, because Father didn’t approve of always saying the same one.

  “Thank you for this food we share,” she murmured silently. “Thank you for your daily care. Thank you—”

  “Charles.”

  Father often picked Charles. Perhaps because he was oldest, or perhaps because he never seemed to be prepared. As always, he stumbled and stuttered through the Lord’s Prayer and then the “Bless this food to our use.”

  “Amen,” Father said. The rest of the family echoed, “Amen,” chairs scraped, and everyone sat down.

  Chapter 12

  CARLY SIGHED WITH relief and inhaled a wonderful medley of smells: roast beef, gravy, mashed potatoes, and carrots and peas. She was, she realized suddenly, absolutely famished. The potatoes were next to her plate and she picked them up and sniffed appreciatively. She loved potatoes.

  “Ha-rumm.” The familiar rasping sound that meant that Father was about to speak froze the food-passing process all around the table. Swallowing the hungry juices that were filling her mouth, Carly, like the others, turned to the head of the table. Father was carving the roast beef. “Ha-rumm,” he said again, and then, “Charles. One always rejoices in the familiar beauty of the Lord’s Prayer. But it does seem that piety could be less monotonous. Would it be too much to ask that you favor us with a bit more variety in the future?”

  Without turning her head Carly rolled her eyes toward her oldest brother. Charles’s secrets were never well hidden—a sudden start followed by nervous embarrassment. “Yes, s-s-sir,” he said. “I mean, no, sir. W-w-what prayer do you want me to s-s-say?”

  Father’s smile was dangerously jovial. “That’s one decision I should think you would like to make for yourself, my boy. I should think that would be between you and the Almighty.” The smile disappeared and Father turned to hand the platter of neatly carved beef to Lila. “Here you are, my girl. A fine roast. My compliments to our two lovely cooks.”

  Lila helped herself to the meat, and all around the table the passing process began again. Carly, almost dizzy from hunger, swallowed again and reluctantly passed the potatoes on to Charles, obeying the rule that when you started a dish you did not help yourself first unless it was offered back to you. She was afraid that poor Charles was in no condition to remember such polite niceties. Sure enough, still red-faced and blank-eyed, he simply spooned out a large helping and passed it on. Carly watched wistfully as the bowl started its long journey around the table. The best part, the middle of the white mound enriched by the deep well of yellow butter, would be gone by the time it came back to her.

  “Nellie,” Father said, “how did the shopping go? Were you able to get everything?”

  Nellie’s face was still flushed, either from the heat of the kitchen or from anger. “Yes, Father,” she said quickly. “Everything but the axle grease. Mr. Stone was all out, but he says he’ll be getting some more next month.”

  “Confound the man.” Father’s voice rang with anger, a sound that tightened lips and tensed muscles all around the table. “Shorting himself of grease in the middle of summer. A man as shortsighted as Abner Stone has no business trying to run a merchandising establishment.”

  A possible solution to the axle-grease problem occurred to Carly and she bounced excitedly. “Father,” she said, “Father, I think—”

  “Don’t interrupt, Carly,” Nellie said quickly.

  Father seemed to have heard neither Carly nor Nellie. But his frown seemed even more threatening as he continued, “If I’d thought for a minute that Stone’s would be out of grease, I could have gotten some in Ventura. I wish to God—”

  Lowering her voice Carly stubbornly tried again: “Father.”

  His eyes turned to Carly and all the Abner Stone-axle-grease anger seemed about to break on her head. “What is it?” he asked slowly and distinctly.

  “Woo Ying has lots of grease in the carriage house. For Aunt M.’s surrey. You could borrow some from Woo Ying.”

  Still frowning, Father returned his eyes to the piece of bread he was buttering. After a moment he nodded and said, “Aunt Mehitabel’s carriage house. Yes, indeed. I’d be very much surprised if there wasn’t a bit of axle grease among all those boxes and barrels. Saint Luke must have had Aunt Mehitabel in mind when he spoke of the ‘soul that hath much goods laid up for many years.’ Charles, you can stop at Greenwood tomorrow and see what Woo Ying can spare.”

  Father’s pale bushy eyebrows had leveled and his voice dropped to its normal range. He nodded again, and from the corners of her eyes Carly could see Nellie and Charles nodding, too, relieved that Father was no longer angry, even if his anger hadn’t been directed at them.

  Then Father asked Mama how she was feeling and she sighed and said, “A little better,” which was what she almost always said, and Father said that was good and began to talk about the apricot crop.

  There was going to be a good crop this summer, and with the unusually hot weather the pitting would be under way very soon. The workers’ campground was already beginning to fill up, and Father and Arthur had spent most of the morning dealing with the usual problems. The Hooper clan and the Garcías were squabbling already. José and his new wife had set up their tent in a shady spot by the creek that Luther Hooper’s brood had staked a claim to, and Luther was threatening to take all his womenfolk up to work at the Hamiltons’ pitting shed. Arthur, Father said, had gotten a quick education, this morning, in the problems involved in being shed boss.

  “Isn’t that right, Arthur?” Father said.

  “Yes, sir,” Arthur said. “Grammar school, high school, and college, all in one morning.” Then in a low voice, under cover of Mama’s request for a pillow for her back, he added, “Failed in every subject, I’m afraid.”

  On her way to the parlor for Mama’s back pillow, Carly couldn’t help grinning. Arthur was undoubtedly right about being a failure as boss of the pitting shed. She couldn’t imagine Arthur successfully keeping track of the boxes pitted by dozens of workers, settling their squabbles, and handling their problems, while Father was busy overseeing the crews in the orchards. But Father had already tried Charles and it had been a disaster. According to Father, every kind of mischief went on under Charles’s very nose without his even noticing. Arthur, Carly thought, would notice every bit of mischief—and be right in the middle of it. Carly could just imagine Arthur flirting with one of the pretty Mexican girls like Estrellita García, while the rest of the pitting crew quarreled and loafed and packed up dried apricots to sell to their relatives when they got
back home. So there was probably going to be another disaster—and it would be one more thing to blame on Alfred Bennington Quigley.

  It was Quigley’s fault because he was the one who had made the Hartwicks lose Carmen. For several years, ever since she was fifteen, Nellie, who was a natural-born shed boss, had worked in the pitting shed. But that was when Carmen worked for the Hartwicks, cooking and cleaning and taking care of Mama. Now, however, with money so scarce, Father had let Carmen go, and so Nellie could no longer be spared from her housekeeping duties. So the Hartwicks lacked a shed boss, just as they lacked a telephone and an indoor toilet, and all of it was because of the Quigleys.

  The discussion of the pitting-shed problems and the feud between the Hoopers and the Garcías had held Carly’s attention, but when she returned to the table with Mama’s pillow, Father had begun to talk about politics and what President Roosevelt had said about Cuba. So she stopped listening and began to think about condors, and for a while she almost forgot about being in trouble with Nellie. But when dinner was over and she was helping with the dishes, she found that she was not yet forgiven.

  Chapter 13

  THAT NIGHT, AS Carly helped with the after-dinner cleanup, neither Lila nor Nellie spoke to her or even looked in her direction. Ignoring her when she tried to explain or apologize, and even when she tried to tell them about the dead condor by the spring, they hurried through the clearing and washing. Lila finished her chores first and left, pointedly saying good night only to Nellie. Carly was mournfully drying the last of the china, when Nellie hung her apron in the pantry and came back into the kitchen. Pouring herself the last few drops of coffee, she sat down at the kitchen table.