So Far from Spring. Peggy Simson Curry

have it!” The rough red head came up. The wide gray eyes were unbelieving. “Can’t have it, you say?”

      “You’re not twenty-one.”

      “What’s that got to do with it?”

      The factor shrugged. “It’s a rule the laird has: no one under twenty-one can run the shop.”

      “But I’ve tried to prove—” A pain was in Kelsey’s heart. A mist blinded him. “I’ve paid my mother’s debts. My God, man, I’ve had no young life. I’ve given up everything for the shop!”

      “No matter of proof,” the captain said, clearing his throat. “Just policy—the laird’s policy.”

      “But it’s my father’s business. It was his for years, and you can’t—”

      “Oh, we’ve a man in mind. And he’ll keep you on. I’ll speak to him about it.”

      “I’ll work for no man in the shop that was my father’s! Listen, my mother—let her keep it. I’ll go on helping her. I’ll—”

      “Your mother,” the factor said quietly, “should give up the business. I’ve been noticing things; the way she’s run the shop hasn’t suited us. There’s no need to stand here talking, Kelsey.”

      “Goddamn you! Goddamn all of you!”

      “Hold that tongue of yours, Kelsey Cameron. You’ve given us trouble enough—putting up that ugly shack on the shore right under the laird’s nose, and—”

      “You—” Kelsey’s voice broke. He turned and walked quickly away, the whole bright day blurring before him. So this was the answer to years of work to pay Taraleean’s debts, to months of planning the future with Prim. For a moment the boy in him rose above the man, and tears stung his eyes. He stopped then and stood, breathing deeply, staring toward the sea until it came clear and clean again, stretching away to the far horizon. Then he spoke passionately to the empty water. “I’ll leave Scotland! I’ll go where a man can become more than a thing to be stepped on by the lairds and their factors! I’ll go to America, the place my cousin Tommy wrote about. Yes, America!”

      And here I am, Kelsey thought, raising his head in the smelly kitchen. And things have to work out; they’ve just got to.

      He waited nervously until his cousin came in the door again. Tommy had a whiskey bottle in his hand.

      “Tommy,” Kelsey said, “do you know what that bloody factor did? Just before I sailed for this country he had the gall to come to my mother’s house and offer me a job as gamekeeper on the laird’s estate. Gamekeeper—a servant to the laird! That’s when I told him to go to hell and take the laird with him.”

      “Well, kiddo,” Tommy said, “you made a fine ass of yourself—let your fool Cameron pride run away with you, the way it always has. Jobs don’t grow on bushes, y’know. And beggars can’t be choosers.”

      Kelsey stared at him, confused and shocked. He’d crossed an ocean; he’d borrowed money to get here; he’d been certain Tommy would understand, would say to him, “You did the right thing. I’ll see you get a new start here, Kelsey.” Now, thinking of the money he had to pay back, Kelsey felt sudden fear. He wet his cracked lips and said, “You can surely use me—I mean, I’m a good worker, and I thought—” He stopped, for there was a strange expression on his cousin’s face.

      “Sure, sure,” Hilder interrupted. “We use him, eh, Tommy? He’s had bad trouble and he’s come a long way to see you.”

      Tommy said nothing, set the whiskey bottle on the table, and went to the pantry for glasses. Kelsey’s confusion mounted.

      “Your letters,” he began, “about all the chances for a young man—”

      Hilder knelt before Kelsey, a flat tin of salve in his hand. “I fix them feet. Bandage them tonight. Rubbed raw. Jesus Christ, son, you sure walked hard!”

      “Walked?” Tommy looked intently at him.

      Kelsey’s face flushed. “Oh, it wasn’t so far—just from where I got off the stage. I—I was out of money. You see, I borrowed what I thought I’d need from Big Mina Munro, Prim’s mother. She was the only person in the village had the money to give me.”

      “I got an old pair of slippers you can wear tonight. Rest your feet. You want a drink of whiskey?”

      “My stomach’s too empty, Tommy.”

      “Hell, it’s good on any stomach. Here, have a shot.” He poured two glasses half full and handed one to Kelsey. “Help yourself, Hilder, but for God’s sake don’t burn the potatoes again!” He took his drink in one quick gulp.

      “Big Mina, huh?” Tommy said, smacking his glass on the table. “Is that old sow still running everybody around the harbor?”

      “She is.”

      “And what about that bit of fluff you fancied so, her daughter?”

      “Prim? Prim’s there with her.”

      “And not likely to leave, either. Big Mina put the sign on the girl when she was hardly old enough to walk or talk—bellered and carried on about Prim tearing her apart and how she’d never be the same again. Hell, Big Mina was crippled and too fat before she ever had Prim. People used to say only the devil could have seen to the fact that Thomas Munro got Big Mina pregnant at such an age. Prim came along years and years after she’d had the two boys—and she was no spring chicken when Thomas married her.” Tommy began to laugh. “I remember once when I was just a lad and up there with my mother. Thomas was about to take off for sea again, the way he always did to get away from Big Mina. Well, the old girl threw herself on the floor and moaned and groaned that she was about to die. Thomas just stepped over her and said, ‘Go in peace, then.’ ”

      Kelsey chuckled, the whiskey hot in his throat. “He’s the only one who could ever trim her sails.”

      “And say, does Crowter the rag-buyer still hang around after Prim? When I was back there she was only a wee lassie—maybe thirteen—and Crowter was just getting a good start in his business. He must have been twenty or more, and he was always following Prim around like her shadow.”

      “Prim never fancied Crowter and never will. Besides, if she’d wanted a lad she’d have found something better. Crowter, why he’s—”

      “Beneath her? Oh, I dunno, Kelsey. What’s Prim Munro but Big Mina’s daughter? Remember how Crowter liked to whistle to Prim? He could fashion up the damnedest tunes—outta his head.” Tommy turned to Hilder, who was standing listening to all their words. “Get the meat cookin’ for supper—and see it ain’t so raw it bawls when I stick a fork in it.”

      “Go to hell,” Hilder said.

      Tommy laughed. “Worst cook east of the Continental Divide, but nobody else’ll stick in the Red Hill Ranch kitchen.”

      Kelsey was feeling lightheaded and talkative. “If it hadn’t been for your letters I’d never have had the courage to face Big Mina and borrow the money from her. I carried one right in my fist the day I had to see her, and it put a stiffness in me. She’s always hated my guts because of Prim. She talked right up to me, told me the only reason she was letting me have the money was to get me out of Scotland and away from Prim.” Kelsey took a drink from the glass Tommy had filled again. “She said”—he snickered—“she said, ‘The Indians will fancy that red hair of yours.’ I let her think it; I wouldn’t spoil it by telling her the Indians were gone and the big cattle herds—How many cattle you got, Tommy?”

      “Cattle? I don’t own no cattle. I’m foreman for Monte Maguire. Monte Maguire owns the cattle.”

      Kelsey blinked, sobering. “But I thought—When you first wrote and said you’d taken up the homestead and started a cattle herd—”

      “Oh.” Tommy cleared his throat.