True Grit - "With No Lodestar In Sight", Mattie/LaBoeuf, T
Title: With No Lodestar In Sight - 10/12
Author: lindentree
Rating: T
Character(s): Mattie Ross/LaBoeuf, Rooster Cogburn
Word Count: 7,027
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.
the content of my heart
Mattie’s fever felt like being trapped in a great, rambling house. The house was warm and comfortable, familiar and strange at once, a grand waiting room where nothing was expected of a body, and where one could dwell forever, dull and quiet and unperturbed. She wandered its many rooms day and night, searching. She did not know for what she searched. At times it seemed to her that there were figures in the rooms, but they were indistinct, and when she tried to follow them, they disappeared. One, she was certain, was her father, and she wanted badly to go to him.
Another figure she could not identify until she recognized the bright ringing of his spurs as he walked. It was LaBoeuf. She wanted to go to him as well, but she had a notion that he would try to lead her out of the house and she was not certain she wanted to go. And so she wandered the endless, cavernous halls and corridors for what felt like days or perhaps weeks, the light that shone in through the windows growing ever dimmer as she moved, until one day she began to hear voices. Perhaps they were from the figures, or perhaps they came from some farther place. She could not find their source.
“Do not fear, Mattie. We have sent for your mother. She will come as soon as she is able. She is coming, I swear to you, and we are watching over you until she arrives.”
“Whoa there, girl. Come on, hush now. You just hold on, baby sister. Ain’t no piddly fever gonna lick you.”
“Oh, Mattie. I despair over you. Look what has happened. I do not understand why you cannot be easy, why you must involve yourself in these ugly affairs rather than letting the lawmen do their duty. I wish your father was here. He would know what to say to you to make you understand, darling girl.”
“Mattie, your mother is in hysterics. In your fever you talk aloud, and what you have said has upset her very badly. I do not know whether you can hear me now, but come back to us. You must come back to us. If you can battle this, you must do it. If you do not or cannot, I am not certain your mother will survive the grief. That is no bombast. And as for me, Mattie... God damn that bastard Cunningham. God damn him.”
There was something blessedly cool on her forehead, and something warm gripping her fingers like a vice. The sensations drew her gradually out of the house. Mattie became aware of a small, dark room, and a bed. There was candlelight and a heap of quilts on the floor, dampness and the smell of coal oil and vinegar. A woman was weeping. People spoke constantly in low voices, and Mattie wished they would be quiet, for her head swam and ached endlessly. There was a stranger in a dark coat who prodded her arm and touched her face.
Mattie. Mattie. Come back to us. Mattie. You must come back to us.
The haze began to withdraw like fog dissipating at the break of day. Mattie opened her eyes. They felt swollen and ill-used, and the sunlight in the room stabbed her head with pain. She squinted to shield her eyes. A shadow moved in the room, and she saw that a man stood at the window, looking outside. She blinked in an effort to force her eyes to focus. The man was LaBoeuf. He leaned on the windowsill. He wore only his fringed trousers and suspenders, and a faded chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
Mattie was lying on her back, and she tried to shift and open her mouth to speak. Her whole body was stiff and aching, her joints aflame, and she must have unwittingly uttered some sound, for LaBoeuf turned abruptly to look at her. He was at her bedside in an instant, and he seemed astonished.
“Praise God, we thought you were lost,” he said. His voice was hoarse. Now that he stood closer, Mattie could see that he was dishevelled and exhausted, his face peppered with stubble and dark circles under his eyes. His hair was not even combed.
Mattie swallowed and tried again to speak, but her mouth was too dry. She frowned, maddened, and LaBoeuf seemed to return to himself. He leaned down and slid an arm under her back, careful not to pull on her loose hair, and settled her up against the pillows. He tucked the quilt about her waist, and went to the bedside table, where he poured water into a tin cup. Mattie tried to take it from him when he brought it near, but she found she could scarcely lift her arm. With more care than she would ever have expected of him, he held the cup to her lips and helped her drink, not spilling a drop.
“Hurts,” Mattie managed to squeak, once he removed the cup.
“Ah,” LaBoeuf said, and retrieved a small brown glass bottle and a teaspoon from the table. He measured out some of its syrupy yellow contents, and helped her to swallow it. It was bitter, tasting of pine needles and some sharp, burning liquor. Mattie grimaced. “It is morphine suspended in some sort of distillation, I believe. It is the doctor’s own concoction and he thinks it may help, but I do not know.”
Mattie leaned back into the pillows, exhausted by these small efforts. She watched as he sat down in a wooden chair at her bedside, his knee pressing against the coverlet.
“Your mother is here,” LaBoeuf said. “We sent a telegram when you fell ill. We would have sent you home on the train, but they would not have you, and the doctor advised against it. We have all been shut up here this entire time, in fact, as a precaution, but no one else has taken ill.”
“What is it?” Mattie asked, her voice scarcely a whisper.
“Typhus,” LaBoeuf replied. His expression was drawn and sober as he looked at her. “It seems you likely caught it from that devil Cunningham. The coroner found signs of it on his body.”
“How long?”
“You have been delirious with fever for nearly a week now,” he said. He looked at his hands, which were clasped in his lap. “The doctor gave us little reason to hope for your recovery. He reckoned your previous injury, in addition to what rigours you have undergone these past weeks, had weakened your constitution too much. He instructed your mother to commence planning your funeral. We all... Well, she was inconsolable, as you can imagine.”
He fell silent, and fixed his gaze down. Mattie examined his downturned head, his uncombed cowlick sticking up. Finally he cleared his throat sharply and looked at her, the strangest expression on his face. Mattie did not know what to make of his bright, tired eyes and flushed face.
“I reckon you must be like a cat, with nine lives,” he said. Mattie frowned, for she was no great admirer of those tricky beasts. LaBoeuf smiled. “I never would have thought I would be saying such a foolish thing, but it heartens me greatly to see that sour expression on your face once again.”
“Mama,” she rasped, “where is she?”
LaBoeuf reached for the tin cup and helped her drink once more. “She is resting. She was up most of last night with you, and when your fever worsened in the wee hours of this morning she became somewhat hysterical. The doctor gave her something to induce sleep.”
“Poor Mama,” Mattie said.
“She is a sweet and gentle lady, and you ought not to worry her so,” LaBoeuf replied. His tone was rather sharp, Mattie thought, and she gave him a reproachful look. “You are too cavalier with your own life at times. You forget that there are people who depend on you. Who love you.”
“I did not contract typhus deliberately,” she replied slowly.
“I know it,” he said. He regarded her with a frown on his face which was more sad than annoyed. Mattie would have liked to needle him and raise his ire, but her head swam dizzily and she found her eyes wanting to close again already. LaBoeuf reached over and placed his hand against her forehead. It felt wonderfully cool and surprisingly soft. “Your fever has broken, at least,” he said.
Almost of its own volition, Mattie’s hand lifted from the bed and she weakly grasped his wrist and held the palm of his hand against her cheek. She held his surprised gaze for a moment, until he looked down and pulled his hand away.
“Your fever has broken, but perhaps not your delirium,” he said. He reached for a book on the bedside table. “Here, I will read aloud to you until you fall asleep. It is The Prince and the Pauper, by Mr. Twain. Have you read it?”
Mattie shook her head, and LaBoeuf nodded, clearing his throat. He opened the book and flipped ahead several pages.
“‘In the ancient city of London,’” he read, “‘on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him...’”
Mattie closed her eyes and settled back against the pillows, and let LaBoeuf’s low voice lull her into a deep and untroubled sleep.
***
When Mattie awoke again, hours had passed. The room had dimmed considerably, but there was a fire in the little stove, and a lamp lit so that it threw sharp shadows against the wall. There was the sound of a throat being cleared, and Mattie turned her head to find Rooster in the chair at her bedside, smoking a cigarette and nursing a bottle of whiskey.
“You awake there, sis?”
“I am,” she replied. She gave consideration to sitting up, but her body felt as limp as a wet dishrag, and the mere thought of the ordeal was enough to overwhelm her. Instead, she rolled stiffly onto her side and watched him.
“Anything you need?”
“I am all right,” Mattie said. “Where is my mother?”
“She is downstairs, taking some supper. She has been tending you much of the day. Once Mr. LaBoeuf shared the good news that you were awake and talking sense, we were able to convince him that he needed some rest himself.” Here Rooster paused and regarded her in the lamplight for a protracted moment. Mattie thought he was waiting for her to speak, but finally he cleared his throat and said, “LaBoeuf has been your most stalwart watchman. He has hardly left your side since you came down with this fever.”
Mattie did not know what to say to this, nor what to make of the thoughtful expression on Rooster’s face.
“I suppose catching a fever and rapping on Death’s door is one way to give him some encouragement,” Rooster continued. “It appeals to the thwarted dime novel hero in him.”
To hear LaBoeuf’s character so reduced at this moment annoyed Mattie, and she scowled at Rooster. “Mr. LaBoeuf may be vain and arrogant, but he is a good man and a true friend, and you have no call to mock him.”
“That is not what you have called him in the past, if I recall, but I reckon it is possible for an opinion to be changed. Especially a woman’s.” Rooster stubbed the butt of his cigarette in a china saucer on the table. It was full of such leavings. “Your mother is considerably impressed by him. Perhaps she is searching for a husband, if you are not.”
“If you are only here to harangue me, I will ask you to leave,” Mattie said. “I do not mind your company when you are congenial, but if you are in an argumentative mood I would rather you left. I am too tired for this.”
Rooster stared at her, a surprising degree of contrition creeping into his expression. He leaned back in his chair, looking down at the bottle clasped in his hands, and did not say anything for several moments.
“Doc says you’re likely to make a full recovery,” he said eventually. “We was all mighty relieved to hear it.”
“I am sorry to have worried you all,” Mattie replied. “It was not my desire to do so.”
“I weren’t much worried, myself. Saw plenty of typhus in the war and knew you weren’t the type to succumb to it so easy. You’re made of tougher stuff than that.”
“Death comes for us all, regardless of whether we are made of ‘tough stuff’ or not.”
“Reckon that’s true,” Rooster said. He cleared his throat. “Glad you’re on the mend, anyhow.”
Mattie was about to respond when there came a tentative knock at the door. Mattie croaked out a greeting, and the door opened to reveal her mother.
“Oh!” Mama said, one hand flying to her mouth while the other gripped the door knob. “Oh, I could hardly believe it, but here you are - awake at last!”
“I’ll leave you,” Rooster said. He stood and took his hat off the bureau, nodding at them both before departing.
Mama closed the door behind him and turned around. She stood in the middle of the room, holding her handkerchief to her mouth and looking lost. She stared at Mattie with a careworn expression. Finally she sighed and came to sit in the chair Rooster had vacated, and wrapped one arm around her own waist, as though she had to hold herself together.
“Oh, Mattie!” Mama sighed after a moment. “How you worry me, leaving home like that! I do not know what I should do with you.”
“There was no other reasonable course,” Mattie replied.
“No, I do not suppose it occurred to you that it might be best to stay at home and allow the authorities to deal with a violent fugitive as they saw fit,” Mama replied, shaking her head ruefully.
“It was suggested to me by Mr. LaBoeuf,” said Mattie.
“Yes, I am well aware that Mr. LaBoeuf was unaccommodating of your attempts to follow him,” Mama said. “I do not hold the man responsible. I am certain that nothing short of tying you up and locking you in the cellar would have prevented you from following him, and I can only guess what damage you would have done him had he attempted such a thing.”
Mattie owned that this was likely true, and did not disagree. She watched in silence as Mama’s soft brown eyes examined Mattie’s face. After a moment, she reached out and cupped Mattie’s cheek.
“I am so glad that you are all right,” she said, her voice rough and tearful. “If anything more dire or permanent had befallen you, if you were taken from me, I do not think I would be able to bear it.”
“We can bear any loss so long as we have the Lord near,” Mattie replied.
“No,” Mama said. There was a quiet steeliness in her voice that took Mattie aback. Mama shook her head. “No, I would not have borne it. Not after everything we have lost, after what we have withstood. Mattie, you do not have a beloved daughter. You cannot understand... No. No, I would not have borne it, Mattie, whatever you may think.”
Mama’s hand wrapped around Mattie’s, and she squeezed. Mattie went to cover Mama’s hand with her own, stopping short when she recalled with a pang that she had only one. She swallowed.
“I am sorry to have worried you, Mama,” Mattie said honestly.
Mama sighed. “It is not the first time. I suppose I ought to be accustomed to your wildness by now.”
“Wildness!” Mattie protested. “I am not wild. I am the opposite of wild, in fact.”
“Your friends tell me you fought this fugitive man off with nothing but a hunter’s knife. That is not wild?” Mama asked, a hint of a smile in her tone.
“Not at all,” Mattie replied. “I think it is very civilized, in fact.”
“Perhaps one man’s wild is another man’s civilized,” Mama said, smiling. A sly look entered her expression.
“Perhaps,” Mattie replied. She frowned, eyeing her mother suspiciously. It seemed she was making a joke of some kind, although Mattie was not sure what it was.
“You will have to ask your friend Mr. LaBoeuf what his opinion is, when next you see him.” With a soft laugh, Mama stood and pressed a kiss to Mattie’s forehead. “You may tell me about all of your adventures later. For now you must rest,” she said. She turned and left the room, closing the door behind her.
Mattie did not fall asleep right away. She stared up at the beadboard ceiling for some time, trying to determine what Mama had found so amusing.
***
A day passed before Mattie was able to consume anything more than weak clear tea. Two more days passed before she was able to convince Mama that she be allowed out of bed. It was another day yet before she was permitted downstairs to eat with the new boarders who had taken rooms once the doctor declared that there was no longer a risk of Mattie infecting anyone. Mama helped her down the staircase, for when Mattie tried to walk unassisted, her legs quaked beneath her. She had lost weight, and was weak as a newborn foal. It was a hateful feeling. She was not able to stay downstairs longer than the duration of the meal. Exhaustion quickly overwhelmed her, and rest was her only recourse.
Mattie pushed herself to get well as quickly as she could, for the great expense she and Mama garnered at the boarding house the longer they malingered weighed heavily on her mind. They did all right at home, but they did not have the money for such trifling things as two week sojourns in boarding houses.
When she nearly swooned one afternoon forcing herself to walk without help to the privy outside, Mama scolded her gently before admitting that she had been working off much of their room and board by helping Mrs. McNabb in the kitchen. The two widows had become fast friends.
Slowly, Mattie got well and regained her old strength. LaBoeuf made a point of coming to visit her each afternoon, when he would read to her from novels he borrowed from Mrs. McNabb and some of the other boarders. Mattie did not know what he and Rooster did with themselves all day except take up space in the local taverns, she supposed, and she did not understand why they had not yet gone home. One afternoon Mattie told LaBoeuf that he need not bother with the reading anymore, for she was well enough to hold up a book and read on her own, at least.
LaBoeuf stared at her over the top of Treasure Island for a long moment. “That is not why I come here and read to you,” he said finally, and then continued with the story as though she had not interrupted him.
Rooster also visited her regularly. He would sit by her bedside and smoke cigarettes and tell her long, meandering tales which may have happened in his life, or someone else’s. He would talk until his cigarette burned down, say, “well,” and then stand up and leave the room without another word.
One morning a full three weeks after she fell ill, Mattie washed and dressed herself in her brown calico dress, which was a full inch too large for her now, allowed Mama to pull her hair back into a handsome knot at the nape of her neck, and then walked downstairs to the dining room for breakfast without any assistance.
As she passed through the foyer, she caught sight of two figures outside on the wide front porch. It was Rooster and LaBoeuf, smoking in the early morning light. Mattie paused there, watching them, and she felt pleased that they truly had put their differences aside and become “pards.” She approached and, opening the screen door, caught the end of what Rooster had been saying.
“-wouldn’t think it, lookin’ at her, but if you come on too strong, she’ll spook on you, and make no mistake.”
LaBoeuf nodded, but did not reply immediately, and so Mattie interjected. “Are you considering the acquisition of a new horse, Mr. LaBoeuf?” she asked. “You cannot be talking about Sal. Never have I met a steadier horse with a lesser tendency toward spooking.”
Rooster and LaBoeuf both turned and looked at her, apparently surprised to see her standing there.
“By God, girl,” Rooster said, “nearly strangled and beaten and shot to death and on Death’s door from typhus besides, and here you are looking as hale as can be.”
“It is a true pleasure indeed to see you back to your old self,” LaBoeuf added.
“I was just going to come up there and say farewell,” Rooster continued.
“Farewell?” Mattie asked. “Are you heading somewhere?”
“It is time I moved on,” he replied. “Money’s run out.”
“Oh,” Mattie breathed, the brightness of the morning dimming considerably in her eyes as she contemplated saying goodbye to her friend. At least this time he was allowing her to say her goodbye, rather than sneaking off when she was delirious with fever.
LaBoeuf cleared his throat. “I will leave you to it. Cogburn, it has been an honour and a pleasure.”
“An honour and a pleasure, pard,” Cogburn replied, grasping the brim of his hat.
With that, LaBoeuf turned and went inside, leaving them alone on the porch.
“I suppose I should not be surprised that you are leaving,” Mattie said. “We have been here for weeks. Now that I am well again I am sure Mama and I will return home shortly. I do not know why Mr. LaBoeuf remains here. I am sure he too will be returning home soon.”
“Maybe not so soon,” Rooster replied, removing a bottle of spirits from his coat and taking a considerable swig. “Well, whatever you do, only do what you think is right. Folks like to say otherwise, but the truth is, don’t matter what anyone thinks of you. Only opinion that matters is yours, and the Almighty’s. No need to do a thing or not do a thing just ‘cause some fool-headed son-of-a-bitch says you ought to, or ought not to.”
“Marshal Cogburn,” Mattie scolded. She frowned, unsure what had brought this on. She did not know what he was talking about at all.
“Hm,” he said, eyeing her. “Reckon you’ll be all right. Ain’t steered yourself wrong so far. He better just hope you want to steer in his direction.”
“Perhaps you ought to wait until you are sober to depart,” Mattie suggested, baffled by his words. “It seems foolhardy to ride off alone, in strange country, in your current disposition.”
Rooster gave a gruff cough. “You look after yourself, you hear? And your Mama, too. She is a good woman. You ought not to worry her like you do, gadding about all adventuresome,” Rooster said.
“Mr. LaBoeuf has already taken the liberty of scolding me on this topic, so you need not trouble yourself. But what about you? Who do you worry when you ‘gad about all adventuresome’?”
“Hm,” Rooster replied, a ghost of a smile tugging at his mouth. He did not seem eager to respond to this, and there was a long pause before Mattie spoke again.
“Will you write to me, at least?”
Rooster regarded her for a moment, and then nodded. “I doubt any letter I write will be up to snuff as far as you’re concerned, but if you would like a letter all the same...”
“I would,” Mattie replied. “Do not be a stranger, Rooster. I will always like to know how you are faring, wherever you are.”
He eyed Mattie for a moment longer, and she thought he might have something more to say. Instead, he turned abruptly from her and walked down the stairs to where Whiskey Jack stood, his head hung low. Rooster mounted, and without a wave or a farewell, he trotted off down the street, heading west.
When Mattie went back inside, she found LaBoeuf standing at the bottom of the staircase, examining the band of his hat with a frown on his face. His head was tilted down, and his cowlick was sticking straight up. Mattie wondered whether he ever bothered to attempt to wrangle the thing, or whether it was simply so stubborn that it would not be combed.
Mattie closed the large oak front door behind her, and LaBoeuf looked up.
“He has gone, although I do not know how far he will get, given the state he is in,” Mattie said.
“That is Rooster Cogburn for you,” LaBoeuf replied. “I expect he is more accustomed to riding while intoxicated than riding while sober.”
“I reckon you are right about that,” Mattie sighed. They regarded each other in silence for a moment, and then LaBoeuf cleared his throat.
“Mattie, there is something...” he trailed off here, a look of frustration on his face. Mattie stared at him, trying to uproot the problem. His eyes met hers, and he swallowed. “Tomorrow is Sunday,” he said.
“It is,” Mattie replied.
“Are you planning to attend a service?”
“I am,” she nodded. “Mama tells me there is a Presbyterian church on the next street that looks as though it will suit me. I do not think Mama will come. She does not favour a strange congregation. I do not see why it should matter, but that is her way. Why do you ask?”
“May I accompany you?”
Mattie looked at him sharply. “Mr. LaBoeuf, I did not know you were a Presbyterian.”
“Well,” he paused, frowning, “I am not a Presbyterian, but it has been a long time since I have attended a service of any denomination, and I would like to attend with you, if you do not mind my company.”
“I suppose I do not mind it.”
“All right,” he said, looking tremendously relieved. Clasping his hat in one hand, he held his injured arm out to her. “Shall we go eat?”
Mattie peered sceptically at the proffered limb. “How is your injury?”
“If it is still injured,” he said, tucking her arm into his and leading her towards the dining room, “I do not feel it.”
***
After breakfast the following morning, Mattie cleaned up, and then met LaBoeuf on the porch. When she came out the door, she found him leaning a shoulder against one of the whitewashed posts holding the porch roof up, smoking his pipe. When she appeared, he straightened up and tapped the ashes out of his pipe.
“You look very handsome this morning,” he said.
His regard made her self-conscious, and she smoothed her hand over her hair, which Mama had pulled back into a tidy knot at the back of her head. She had no hat, or else she would have worn it.
“I would not know if I was or was not,” Mattie said finally in reply, not knowing what else to say.
LaBoeuf nodded, and they departed, walking down the street in silence. Mattie noticed that although he was dressed in his usual ostentatious buckskin, he had left his gun belt and his spurs behind, and so cut a slightly less conspicuous figure as they walked to the church.
They arrived in plenty of time and found seats near the front of the church. Mattie was pleased to find herself at a Presbyterian service after so many weeks of going without, and quietly thanked God for seeing her through her recent trials.
LaBoeuf, meanwhile, fidgeted and sighed with regularity during the service, and Mattie wondered why he had bothered to come along at all. Perhaps he worried that she would swoon on the sidewalk once more. The thought annoyed her.
“Did you enjoy the service?” he asked as they left the church once the service had ended.
“Yes, very much,” she replied. “It is pleasant to once more be in a civilized place where such things are available. Did you enjoy it?”
“It was all right,” he said. He cleared his throat sharply, and began talking of the weather, placing her arm once more into the crook of his. They walked down the sidewalk that way. LaBoeuf did not seem to be in any great hurry to return to the boarding house, for his steps were leisurely. It made Mattie impatient.
Eventually they arrived back at the boarding house. Mattie extracted her arm from LaBoeuf’s and was about to go inside to scold Mama for not coming along when LaBoeuf grasped her gently by the wrist and stopped her.
“Mattie,” he said, his voice taut and quiet. “Mattie - may I speak with you a moment, here, in private?”
“All right,” she replied. LaBoeuf walked to the end of the porch and leaned on the railing, looking down at the dried brown lilac bushes which lined one side of the house. Mattie waited for him to speak, but he said nothing for some time.
Finally Mattie grew impatient and she cleared her throat. LaBoeuf turned around to look at her, his hat in his hands.
“I am going to retire from the Rangers,” he said. He spoke the words in such a strange voice, with such a sombre frown on his face, that Mattie guessed that he had only recently come to this decision, and that this was likely the first time he had said it aloud.
“But your work means a great deal to you,” Mattie replied, unsure whether he was in a mood to be congratulated or consoled. She did not think herself adequately equipped for either.
“Yes, it does mean a great deal to me,” he said, meeting her eyes. “You understand that.”
“Of course I do.”
“Of course you do,” he repeated. He looked away from her, out over the street, still frowning. “My mother always desired for me to become a lawyer, but I did not think I had the temperament for it. I wanted to be more than a cog in the machine of justice. I wanted to be at the very head of it, I guess you could say.”
Mattie regarded him, thinking what a good lawyer he would have made, with his thorough knowledge of the law and his capability for high sentence. “Although I have only borne witness to two endeavours of yours,” she said, “if you have conducted yourself in the rest of your undertakings with the seriousness and commitment to duty which I have seen in you, then I think you have fulfilled your ambitions tenfold.”
LaBoeuf met her eyes and fixed her with a look Mattie could only describe as tender. She felt a strange shock in the pit of her stomach at the sight of it, and she swallowed.
“A former colleague of mine with the Rangers has started up a bail bonds business in Ysleta,” LaBoeuf continued, “and before I left to pursue Cunningham, he asked me to join him. I think I will take him up on his offer when I return.”
“That is serendipitous,” Mattie said. “I am sure that new occupation will suit you very well.”
“Thank you. I believe it will, too.” LaBoeuf abruptly reached and clutched her hand in his for a moment before releasing it and turning away from her. He cleared his throat. “I own a piece of land south of Ysleta whose western limit is the Rio Grande. There is a small pecan grove there, and some pasture land along the river. I have not yet built a house on it, but I think one day it will make a fine little farm.”
Although Mattie had never been to El Paso or any place similar to it, she could almost picture the place LaBoeuf described. She imagined barren, dusty land, and then the green shade of a stand of pecan trees, like a little oasis. “I am sure you are right about that. Do you plan to build a house and live there soon?”
LaBoeuf turned back to face her. “I do. Only I do not relish the thought of living there alone.”
He paused here with great significance, and Mattie stared at him.
“Being so adept at managing a cotton farm, I wonder whether you would like to try your hand at pecans,” he continued.
Mattie frowned. “I do not understand you.”
“I am asking if you will come to Texas with me, as my wife,” he said.
Mattie gaped at him, her throat abruptly gone dry. “I do not... That is, I am not... What do you mean by this?”
LaBoeuf tilted his head at her, his brows drawn together in exasperation. “Mattie, why do you think I have lingered here? I was expected back at my post weeks ago,” he said. “But I could not leave your side until I knew you were well. When I realised how essential your health and your happiness have become to my own, there was only one conclusion I could reasonably draw, which was that I love you most sincerely, and that I want you to be my wife.”
“Oh,” Mattie replied, the word a mere exhalation of breath. She did not know what to say to him.
“We would not marry right away,” he continued. “You must return home with your mother, and we will make the necessary arrangements in due course. As I said, I do not yet have a house built on that land, and I would not expect you to tolerate my current accommodations, which are modest, and suitable only for a bachelor who is seldom at home. Naturally I would have a house for you to live in before we could marry.”
Mattie stared at him, reeling with the implications of what he was asking. He meant for her to leave Yell County, leave the Arkansas River and her wide cotton fields, leave her barn and her corncrib, leave her house with Papa’s desk, leave Mama and Little Frank and Victoria. He wanted her to quit her home and go live with him in a far-flung place where the land and the customs and the people were strange to her. He would be the only familiar thing. Looking at his imploring face, Mattie’s thought was that he was not nearly familiar enough for all that.
“But what of my mother?” she stammered. “Who will look after her, if I am not there to do it?”
“Your mother would not want to deny you happiness for the sake of some imagined duty, would she?”
“’Imagined duty’? Duty to one’s parents is no fever dream, Mr. LaBoeuf.”
“Of course not, but you are not her only child. Surely your sister and your brother share in the responsibility for your mother, young as they are. Anyhow, your mother is hardly feeble,” he replied.
“I will grant you that that is true. But you and I would exhaust one another with our bickering! There would never be peace,” Mattie said.
“I swear to you we will have peace, if only you will let me win from time to time.”
“Let you win? Such phrasing implies that you are not capable of winning on your own merit. I see you have less faith in your mulishness than I do.”
“I have great faith in the mulishness on both our parts,” LaBoeuf replied, in a tone that implied that his foolish words were endlessly reasonable. “I do not see this as a point against us. Rather it is one of several reasons why we would make an ideal match. If you paired either one of us with some gentler, less gritty person, we would trample the poor creature.”
Mattie was exasperated at his persistence. He would not see reason, and so she pressed on in the most candid way she knew how. “Perhaps there is some strange similarity in our temperaments, but I do not think I would be much good to you as a wife. You must want children to carry on your name. I cannot cradle a baby with but one arm.”
LaBoeuf appeared stricken by this remark, and stared at her in bewilderment for a moment before speaking. “Mattie, do you think that you are deficient, or that I find you so?”
Mattie looked down, unsure how to answer. She did not think herself to be deficient, but she knew herself to be incomplete in a way that she had come to believe excluded her from the realm of courtship. Even before losing her arm, her looks and demeanour invited little attention, and in the intervening years, she had learned that her injury only solidified her unsuitability as a wife. What she had told LaBoeuf before had been the truth - she did not mind, for she found the majority of young men to be foolhardy creatures, and never wanted to find herself hitched to one as to a lazy mule for the rest of her life.
“There is little purpose in pussyfooting around the thing,” she said slowly, meeting his inquiring gaze. “I get along all right at home, but I would not be able to do everything a wife must do in order to keep house. As I said, I cannot cradle a baby with but one arm. My sewing is extremely slow and not particularly artful. I cannot mend your clothing or make you new things. We will have to get store-bought clothes, which is a foolish waste.”
“I can mend my own things, and yours as well.”
“Now you are being ridiculous, and mocking me also. What kind of woman allows her husband to go around in clothes he has mended himself?”
“I did not know there was a law in place against such things,” LaBoeuf replied, cocking his head. “Certainly there is no such law in Texas. Does such a law exist in Yell County?”
Mattie did not care to acknowledge his sarcastic remarks. “Yell County is my home. I do not wish to pull up stakes and find myself living on the bald, dusty plains in Texas.”
“You know little of Texas. It is not so bad as all that, as Cogburn might have you believe. I think you would like it.”
“You do not know that. What if we married in haste and went to live in Texas, and I detested it altogether? What is your smart answer for that, I wonder?”
LaBoeuf huffed a frustrated breath. “What if the sky falls down on our heads tomorrow? You are looking for trouble where there is none yet to be found.”
“I am attempting to treat the question practically. You have lost your wits altogether, I fear. I do not know what has prompted you to lose them when they have been dependable enough in the past.”
“You prompted me to lose them,” LaBoeuf said, taking a step closer to her and clasping her upper arms in his hands. He looked down at her, an expression on his face which surprised her with its intensity. Suddenly he pulled her close and kissed her, his hands pressing her stays into the flesh of her back in a most distracting manner.
Mattie tolerated him for a moment, and then pushed him away. His face was flushed and she feared hers was, as well. “Mr. LaBoeuf, it is Sunday,” she scolded him.
LaBoeuf cleared his throat and had the decency at least to look contrite as he stepped back to put a respectable distance between them.
They regarded one another in silence for a moment, and Mattie felt a pang in her chest at his hopeful expression. She had a sudden reckoning of what he must have looked like when he went off to fight in the war when he was barely 15 years old.
“Mr. LaBoeuf, can we not proceed from this moment as friends, as though this discussion never came between us?”
LaBoeuf did not reply immediately, and in his face Mattie could see his frustration and his sadness. She wanted to look away but could not, would not. She would not be cowardly. Not even now, when she felt a foreign weakness urging her to run from him.
“You cannot always have your way in every little thing, Mattie,” he said. “You may feel nothing for me and tell me so, and you may refuse my offer. But you cannot stop me from voicing the content of my heart to you. You cannot stop me from feeling what I feel, from loving you. You do not have to agree to what I have asked you, but you cannot stop that, whatever your answer is.”
“I believe that my answer is no, Mr. LaBoeuf,” she said softly.
His eyes searched hers for a moment, and then he shook his head. “Do not say that. I know that once you have chosen a course there will be no moving you from it, so I must ask that you do not say no. Not yet. Think the thing over, and speak to your mother. Please, Mattie. Just do not say no, outright.”
LaBoeuf entreated her with such sincerity that Mattie found she could not say no. She nodded silently at him, wondering at her own lack of starch. The trouble was his eyes. If only he would not look at her so, she could be as firm as she ought to be.
She left him standing there on the porch with a promise that she would consider his offer. She frowned at the feeling in the pit of her stomach; it was as though she had swallowed a brick. She did not know whether her promise had been a lie or not.
As she opened the door and went inside, she could feel his eyes on her back as surely as a touch.
Chapter 11
Author: lindentree
Rating: T
Character(s): Mattie Ross/LaBoeuf, Rooster Cogburn
Word Count: 7,027
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.
the content of my heart
Mattie’s fever felt like being trapped in a great, rambling house. The house was warm and comfortable, familiar and strange at once, a grand waiting room where nothing was expected of a body, and where one could dwell forever, dull and quiet and unperturbed. She wandered its many rooms day and night, searching. She did not know for what she searched. At times it seemed to her that there were figures in the rooms, but they were indistinct, and when she tried to follow them, they disappeared. One, she was certain, was her father, and she wanted badly to go to him.
Another figure she could not identify until she recognized the bright ringing of his spurs as he walked. It was LaBoeuf. She wanted to go to him as well, but she had a notion that he would try to lead her out of the house and she was not certain she wanted to go. And so she wandered the endless, cavernous halls and corridors for what felt like days or perhaps weeks, the light that shone in through the windows growing ever dimmer as she moved, until one day she began to hear voices. Perhaps they were from the figures, or perhaps they came from some farther place. She could not find their source.
“Do not fear, Mattie. We have sent for your mother. She will come as soon as she is able. She is coming, I swear to you, and we are watching over you until she arrives.”
“Whoa there, girl. Come on, hush now. You just hold on, baby sister. Ain’t no piddly fever gonna lick you.”
“Oh, Mattie. I despair over you. Look what has happened. I do not understand why you cannot be easy, why you must involve yourself in these ugly affairs rather than letting the lawmen do their duty. I wish your father was here. He would know what to say to you to make you understand, darling girl.”
“Mattie, your mother is in hysterics. In your fever you talk aloud, and what you have said has upset her very badly. I do not know whether you can hear me now, but come back to us. You must come back to us. If you can battle this, you must do it. If you do not or cannot, I am not certain your mother will survive the grief. That is no bombast. And as for me, Mattie... God damn that bastard Cunningham. God damn him.”
There was something blessedly cool on her forehead, and something warm gripping her fingers like a vice. The sensations drew her gradually out of the house. Mattie became aware of a small, dark room, and a bed. There was candlelight and a heap of quilts on the floor, dampness and the smell of coal oil and vinegar. A woman was weeping. People spoke constantly in low voices, and Mattie wished they would be quiet, for her head swam and ached endlessly. There was a stranger in a dark coat who prodded her arm and touched her face.
Mattie. Mattie. Come back to us. Mattie. You must come back to us.
The haze began to withdraw like fog dissipating at the break of day. Mattie opened her eyes. They felt swollen and ill-used, and the sunlight in the room stabbed her head with pain. She squinted to shield her eyes. A shadow moved in the room, and she saw that a man stood at the window, looking outside. She blinked in an effort to force her eyes to focus. The man was LaBoeuf. He leaned on the windowsill. He wore only his fringed trousers and suspenders, and a faded chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
Mattie was lying on her back, and she tried to shift and open her mouth to speak. Her whole body was stiff and aching, her joints aflame, and she must have unwittingly uttered some sound, for LaBoeuf turned abruptly to look at her. He was at her bedside in an instant, and he seemed astonished.
“Praise God, we thought you were lost,” he said. His voice was hoarse. Now that he stood closer, Mattie could see that he was dishevelled and exhausted, his face peppered with stubble and dark circles under his eyes. His hair was not even combed.
Mattie swallowed and tried again to speak, but her mouth was too dry. She frowned, maddened, and LaBoeuf seemed to return to himself. He leaned down and slid an arm under her back, careful not to pull on her loose hair, and settled her up against the pillows. He tucked the quilt about her waist, and went to the bedside table, where he poured water into a tin cup. Mattie tried to take it from him when he brought it near, but she found she could scarcely lift her arm. With more care than she would ever have expected of him, he held the cup to her lips and helped her drink, not spilling a drop.
“Hurts,” Mattie managed to squeak, once he removed the cup.
“Ah,” LaBoeuf said, and retrieved a small brown glass bottle and a teaspoon from the table. He measured out some of its syrupy yellow contents, and helped her to swallow it. It was bitter, tasting of pine needles and some sharp, burning liquor. Mattie grimaced. “It is morphine suspended in some sort of distillation, I believe. It is the doctor’s own concoction and he thinks it may help, but I do not know.”
Mattie leaned back into the pillows, exhausted by these small efforts. She watched as he sat down in a wooden chair at her bedside, his knee pressing against the coverlet.
“Your mother is here,” LaBoeuf said. “We sent a telegram when you fell ill. We would have sent you home on the train, but they would not have you, and the doctor advised against it. We have all been shut up here this entire time, in fact, as a precaution, but no one else has taken ill.”
“What is it?” Mattie asked, her voice scarcely a whisper.
“Typhus,” LaBoeuf replied. His expression was drawn and sober as he looked at her. “It seems you likely caught it from that devil Cunningham. The coroner found signs of it on his body.”
“How long?”
“You have been delirious with fever for nearly a week now,” he said. He looked at his hands, which were clasped in his lap. “The doctor gave us little reason to hope for your recovery. He reckoned your previous injury, in addition to what rigours you have undergone these past weeks, had weakened your constitution too much. He instructed your mother to commence planning your funeral. We all... Well, she was inconsolable, as you can imagine.”
He fell silent, and fixed his gaze down. Mattie examined his downturned head, his uncombed cowlick sticking up. Finally he cleared his throat sharply and looked at her, the strangest expression on his face. Mattie did not know what to make of his bright, tired eyes and flushed face.
“I reckon you must be like a cat, with nine lives,” he said. Mattie frowned, for she was no great admirer of those tricky beasts. LaBoeuf smiled. “I never would have thought I would be saying such a foolish thing, but it heartens me greatly to see that sour expression on your face once again.”
“Mama,” she rasped, “where is she?”
LaBoeuf reached for the tin cup and helped her drink once more. “She is resting. She was up most of last night with you, and when your fever worsened in the wee hours of this morning she became somewhat hysterical. The doctor gave her something to induce sleep.”
“Poor Mama,” Mattie said.
“She is a sweet and gentle lady, and you ought not to worry her so,” LaBoeuf replied. His tone was rather sharp, Mattie thought, and she gave him a reproachful look. “You are too cavalier with your own life at times. You forget that there are people who depend on you. Who love you.”
“I did not contract typhus deliberately,” she replied slowly.
“I know it,” he said. He regarded her with a frown on his face which was more sad than annoyed. Mattie would have liked to needle him and raise his ire, but her head swam dizzily and she found her eyes wanting to close again already. LaBoeuf reached over and placed his hand against her forehead. It felt wonderfully cool and surprisingly soft. “Your fever has broken, at least,” he said.
Almost of its own volition, Mattie’s hand lifted from the bed and she weakly grasped his wrist and held the palm of his hand against her cheek. She held his surprised gaze for a moment, until he looked down and pulled his hand away.
“Your fever has broken, but perhaps not your delirium,” he said. He reached for a book on the bedside table. “Here, I will read aloud to you until you fall asleep. It is The Prince and the Pauper, by Mr. Twain. Have you read it?”
Mattie shook her head, and LaBoeuf nodded, clearing his throat. He opened the book and flipped ahead several pages.
“‘In the ancient city of London,’” he read, “‘on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him...’”
Mattie closed her eyes and settled back against the pillows, and let LaBoeuf’s low voice lull her into a deep and untroubled sleep.
***
When Mattie awoke again, hours had passed. The room had dimmed considerably, but there was a fire in the little stove, and a lamp lit so that it threw sharp shadows against the wall. There was the sound of a throat being cleared, and Mattie turned her head to find Rooster in the chair at her bedside, smoking a cigarette and nursing a bottle of whiskey.
“You awake there, sis?”
“I am,” she replied. She gave consideration to sitting up, but her body felt as limp as a wet dishrag, and the mere thought of the ordeal was enough to overwhelm her. Instead, she rolled stiffly onto her side and watched him.
“Anything you need?”
“I am all right,” Mattie said. “Where is my mother?”
“She is downstairs, taking some supper. She has been tending you much of the day. Once Mr. LaBoeuf shared the good news that you were awake and talking sense, we were able to convince him that he needed some rest himself.” Here Rooster paused and regarded her in the lamplight for a protracted moment. Mattie thought he was waiting for her to speak, but finally he cleared his throat and said, “LaBoeuf has been your most stalwart watchman. He has hardly left your side since you came down with this fever.”
Mattie did not know what to say to this, nor what to make of the thoughtful expression on Rooster’s face.
“I suppose catching a fever and rapping on Death’s door is one way to give him some encouragement,” Rooster continued. “It appeals to the thwarted dime novel hero in him.”
To hear LaBoeuf’s character so reduced at this moment annoyed Mattie, and she scowled at Rooster. “Mr. LaBoeuf may be vain and arrogant, but he is a good man and a true friend, and you have no call to mock him.”
“That is not what you have called him in the past, if I recall, but I reckon it is possible for an opinion to be changed. Especially a woman’s.” Rooster stubbed the butt of his cigarette in a china saucer on the table. It was full of such leavings. “Your mother is considerably impressed by him. Perhaps she is searching for a husband, if you are not.”
“If you are only here to harangue me, I will ask you to leave,” Mattie said. “I do not mind your company when you are congenial, but if you are in an argumentative mood I would rather you left. I am too tired for this.”
Rooster stared at her, a surprising degree of contrition creeping into his expression. He leaned back in his chair, looking down at the bottle clasped in his hands, and did not say anything for several moments.
“Doc says you’re likely to make a full recovery,” he said eventually. “We was all mighty relieved to hear it.”
“I am sorry to have worried you all,” Mattie replied. “It was not my desire to do so.”
“I weren’t much worried, myself. Saw plenty of typhus in the war and knew you weren’t the type to succumb to it so easy. You’re made of tougher stuff than that.”
“Death comes for us all, regardless of whether we are made of ‘tough stuff’ or not.”
“Reckon that’s true,” Rooster said. He cleared his throat. “Glad you’re on the mend, anyhow.”
Mattie was about to respond when there came a tentative knock at the door. Mattie croaked out a greeting, and the door opened to reveal her mother.
“Oh!” Mama said, one hand flying to her mouth while the other gripped the door knob. “Oh, I could hardly believe it, but here you are - awake at last!”
“I’ll leave you,” Rooster said. He stood and took his hat off the bureau, nodding at them both before departing.
Mama closed the door behind him and turned around. She stood in the middle of the room, holding her handkerchief to her mouth and looking lost. She stared at Mattie with a careworn expression. Finally she sighed and came to sit in the chair Rooster had vacated, and wrapped one arm around her own waist, as though she had to hold herself together.
“Oh, Mattie!” Mama sighed after a moment. “How you worry me, leaving home like that! I do not know what I should do with you.”
“There was no other reasonable course,” Mattie replied.
“No, I do not suppose it occurred to you that it might be best to stay at home and allow the authorities to deal with a violent fugitive as they saw fit,” Mama replied, shaking her head ruefully.
“It was suggested to me by Mr. LaBoeuf,” said Mattie.
“Yes, I am well aware that Mr. LaBoeuf was unaccommodating of your attempts to follow him,” Mama said. “I do not hold the man responsible. I am certain that nothing short of tying you up and locking you in the cellar would have prevented you from following him, and I can only guess what damage you would have done him had he attempted such a thing.”
Mattie owned that this was likely true, and did not disagree. She watched in silence as Mama’s soft brown eyes examined Mattie’s face. After a moment, she reached out and cupped Mattie’s cheek.
“I am so glad that you are all right,” she said, her voice rough and tearful. “If anything more dire or permanent had befallen you, if you were taken from me, I do not think I would be able to bear it.”
“We can bear any loss so long as we have the Lord near,” Mattie replied.
“No,” Mama said. There was a quiet steeliness in her voice that took Mattie aback. Mama shook her head. “No, I would not have borne it. Not after everything we have lost, after what we have withstood. Mattie, you do not have a beloved daughter. You cannot understand... No. No, I would not have borne it, Mattie, whatever you may think.”
Mama’s hand wrapped around Mattie’s, and she squeezed. Mattie went to cover Mama’s hand with her own, stopping short when she recalled with a pang that she had only one. She swallowed.
“I am sorry to have worried you, Mama,” Mattie said honestly.
Mama sighed. “It is not the first time. I suppose I ought to be accustomed to your wildness by now.”
“Wildness!” Mattie protested. “I am not wild. I am the opposite of wild, in fact.”
“Your friends tell me you fought this fugitive man off with nothing but a hunter’s knife. That is not wild?” Mama asked, a hint of a smile in her tone.
“Not at all,” Mattie replied. “I think it is very civilized, in fact.”
“Perhaps one man’s wild is another man’s civilized,” Mama said, smiling. A sly look entered her expression.
“Perhaps,” Mattie replied. She frowned, eyeing her mother suspiciously. It seemed she was making a joke of some kind, although Mattie was not sure what it was.
“You will have to ask your friend Mr. LaBoeuf what his opinion is, when next you see him.” With a soft laugh, Mama stood and pressed a kiss to Mattie’s forehead. “You may tell me about all of your adventures later. For now you must rest,” she said. She turned and left the room, closing the door behind her.
Mattie did not fall asleep right away. She stared up at the beadboard ceiling for some time, trying to determine what Mama had found so amusing.
***
A day passed before Mattie was able to consume anything more than weak clear tea. Two more days passed before she was able to convince Mama that she be allowed out of bed. It was another day yet before she was permitted downstairs to eat with the new boarders who had taken rooms once the doctor declared that there was no longer a risk of Mattie infecting anyone. Mama helped her down the staircase, for when Mattie tried to walk unassisted, her legs quaked beneath her. She had lost weight, and was weak as a newborn foal. It was a hateful feeling. She was not able to stay downstairs longer than the duration of the meal. Exhaustion quickly overwhelmed her, and rest was her only recourse.
Mattie pushed herself to get well as quickly as she could, for the great expense she and Mama garnered at the boarding house the longer they malingered weighed heavily on her mind. They did all right at home, but they did not have the money for such trifling things as two week sojourns in boarding houses.
When she nearly swooned one afternoon forcing herself to walk without help to the privy outside, Mama scolded her gently before admitting that she had been working off much of their room and board by helping Mrs. McNabb in the kitchen. The two widows had become fast friends.
Slowly, Mattie got well and regained her old strength. LaBoeuf made a point of coming to visit her each afternoon, when he would read to her from novels he borrowed from Mrs. McNabb and some of the other boarders. Mattie did not know what he and Rooster did with themselves all day except take up space in the local taverns, she supposed, and she did not understand why they had not yet gone home. One afternoon Mattie told LaBoeuf that he need not bother with the reading anymore, for she was well enough to hold up a book and read on her own, at least.
LaBoeuf stared at her over the top of Treasure Island for a long moment. “That is not why I come here and read to you,” he said finally, and then continued with the story as though she had not interrupted him.
Rooster also visited her regularly. He would sit by her bedside and smoke cigarettes and tell her long, meandering tales which may have happened in his life, or someone else’s. He would talk until his cigarette burned down, say, “well,” and then stand up and leave the room without another word.
One morning a full three weeks after she fell ill, Mattie washed and dressed herself in her brown calico dress, which was a full inch too large for her now, allowed Mama to pull her hair back into a handsome knot at the nape of her neck, and then walked downstairs to the dining room for breakfast without any assistance.
As she passed through the foyer, she caught sight of two figures outside on the wide front porch. It was Rooster and LaBoeuf, smoking in the early morning light. Mattie paused there, watching them, and she felt pleased that they truly had put their differences aside and become “pards.” She approached and, opening the screen door, caught the end of what Rooster had been saying.
“-wouldn’t think it, lookin’ at her, but if you come on too strong, she’ll spook on you, and make no mistake.”
LaBoeuf nodded, but did not reply immediately, and so Mattie interjected. “Are you considering the acquisition of a new horse, Mr. LaBoeuf?” she asked. “You cannot be talking about Sal. Never have I met a steadier horse with a lesser tendency toward spooking.”
Rooster and LaBoeuf both turned and looked at her, apparently surprised to see her standing there.
“By God, girl,” Rooster said, “nearly strangled and beaten and shot to death and on Death’s door from typhus besides, and here you are looking as hale as can be.”
“It is a true pleasure indeed to see you back to your old self,” LaBoeuf added.
“I was just going to come up there and say farewell,” Rooster continued.
“Farewell?” Mattie asked. “Are you heading somewhere?”
“It is time I moved on,” he replied. “Money’s run out.”
“Oh,” Mattie breathed, the brightness of the morning dimming considerably in her eyes as she contemplated saying goodbye to her friend. At least this time he was allowing her to say her goodbye, rather than sneaking off when she was delirious with fever.
LaBoeuf cleared his throat. “I will leave you to it. Cogburn, it has been an honour and a pleasure.”
“An honour and a pleasure, pard,” Cogburn replied, grasping the brim of his hat.
With that, LaBoeuf turned and went inside, leaving them alone on the porch.
“I suppose I should not be surprised that you are leaving,” Mattie said. “We have been here for weeks. Now that I am well again I am sure Mama and I will return home shortly. I do not know why Mr. LaBoeuf remains here. I am sure he too will be returning home soon.”
“Maybe not so soon,” Rooster replied, removing a bottle of spirits from his coat and taking a considerable swig. “Well, whatever you do, only do what you think is right. Folks like to say otherwise, but the truth is, don’t matter what anyone thinks of you. Only opinion that matters is yours, and the Almighty’s. No need to do a thing or not do a thing just ‘cause some fool-headed son-of-a-bitch says you ought to, or ought not to.”
“Marshal Cogburn,” Mattie scolded. She frowned, unsure what had brought this on. She did not know what he was talking about at all.
“Hm,” he said, eyeing her. “Reckon you’ll be all right. Ain’t steered yourself wrong so far. He better just hope you want to steer in his direction.”
“Perhaps you ought to wait until you are sober to depart,” Mattie suggested, baffled by his words. “It seems foolhardy to ride off alone, in strange country, in your current disposition.”
Rooster gave a gruff cough. “You look after yourself, you hear? And your Mama, too. She is a good woman. You ought not to worry her like you do, gadding about all adventuresome,” Rooster said.
“Mr. LaBoeuf has already taken the liberty of scolding me on this topic, so you need not trouble yourself. But what about you? Who do you worry when you ‘gad about all adventuresome’?”
“Hm,” Rooster replied, a ghost of a smile tugging at his mouth. He did not seem eager to respond to this, and there was a long pause before Mattie spoke again.
“Will you write to me, at least?”
Rooster regarded her for a moment, and then nodded. “I doubt any letter I write will be up to snuff as far as you’re concerned, but if you would like a letter all the same...”
“I would,” Mattie replied. “Do not be a stranger, Rooster. I will always like to know how you are faring, wherever you are.”
He eyed Mattie for a moment longer, and she thought he might have something more to say. Instead, he turned abruptly from her and walked down the stairs to where Whiskey Jack stood, his head hung low. Rooster mounted, and without a wave or a farewell, he trotted off down the street, heading west.
When Mattie went back inside, she found LaBoeuf standing at the bottom of the staircase, examining the band of his hat with a frown on his face. His head was tilted down, and his cowlick was sticking straight up. Mattie wondered whether he ever bothered to attempt to wrangle the thing, or whether it was simply so stubborn that it would not be combed.
Mattie closed the large oak front door behind her, and LaBoeuf looked up.
“He has gone, although I do not know how far he will get, given the state he is in,” Mattie said.
“That is Rooster Cogburn for you,” LaBoeuf replied. “I expect he is more accustomed to riding while intoxicated than riding while sober.”
“I reckon you are right about that,” Mattie sighed. They regarded each other in silence for a moment, and then LaBoeuf cleared his throat.
“Mattie, there is something...” he trailed off here, a look of frustration on his face. Mattie stared at him, trying to uproot the problem. His eyes met hers, and he swallowed. “Tomorrow is Sunday,” he said.
“It is,” Mattie replied.
“Are you planning to attend a service?”
“I am,” she nodded. “Mama tells me there is a Presbyterian church on the next street that looks as though it will suit me. I do not think Mama will come. She does not favour a strange congregation. I do not see why it should matter, but that is her way. Why do you ask?”
“May I accompany you?”
Mattie looked at him sharply. “Mr. LaBoeuf, I did not know you were a Presbyterian.”
“Well,” he paused, frowning, “I am not a Presbyterian, but it has been a long time since I have attended a service of any denomination, and I would like to attend with you, if you do not mind my company.”
“I suppose I do not mind it.”
“All right,” he said, looking tremendously relieved. Clasping his hat in one hand, he held his injured arm out to her. “Shall we go eat?”
Mattie peered sceptically at the proffered limb. “How is your injury?”
“If it is still injured,” he said, tucking her arm into his and leading her towards the dining room, “I do not feel it.”
***
After breakfast the following morning, Mattie cleaned up, and then met LaBoeuf on the porch. When she came out the door, she found him leaning a shoulder against one of the whitewashed posts holding the porch roof up, smoking his pipe. When she appeared, he straightened up and tapped the ashes out of his pipe.
“You look very handsome this morning,” he said.
His regard made her self-conscious, and she smoothed her hand over her hair, which Mama had pulled back into a tidy knot at the back of her head. She had no hat, or else she would have worn it.
“I would not know if I was or was not,” Mattie said finally in reply, not knowing what else to say.
LaBoeuf nodded, and they departed, walking down the street in silence. Mattie noticed that although he was dressed in his usual ostentatious buckskin, he had left his gun belt and his spurs behind, and so cut a slightly less conspicuous figure as they walked to the church.
They arrived in plenty of time and found seats near the front of the church. Mattie was pleased to find herself at a Presbyterian service after so many weeks of going without, and quietly thanked God for seeing her through her recent trials.
LaBoeuf, meanwhile, fidgeted and sighed with regularity during the service, and Mattie wondered why he had bothered to come along at all. Perhaps he worried that she would swoon on the sidewalk once more. The thought annoyed her.
“Did you enjoy the service?” he asked as they left the church once the service had ended.
“Yes, very much,” she replied. “It is pleasant to once more be in a civilized place where such things are available. Did you enjoy it?”
“It was all right,” he said. He cleared his throat sharply, and began talking of the weather, placing her arm once more into the crook of his. They walked down the sidewalk that way. LaBoeuf did not seem to be in any great hurry to return to the boarding house, for his steps were leisurely. It made Mattie impatient.
Eventually they arrived back at the boarding house. Mattie extracted her arm from LaBoeuf’s and was about to go inside to scold Mama for not coming along when LaBoeuf grasped her gently by the wrist and stopped her.
“Mattie,” he said, his voice taut and quiet. “Mattie - may I speak with you a moment, here, in private?”
“All right,” she replied. LaBoeuf walked to the end of the porch and leaned on the railing, looking down at the dried brown lilac bushes which lined one side of the house. Mattie waited for him to speak, but he said nothing for some time.
Finally Mattie grew impatient and she cleared her throat. LaBoeuf turned around to look at her, his hat in his hands.
“I am going to retire from the Rangers,” he said. He spoke the words in such a strange voice, with such a sombre frown on his face, that Mattie guessed that he had only recently come to this decision, and that this was likely the first time he had said it aloud.
“But your work means a great deal to you,” Mattie replied, unsure whether he was in a mood to be congratulated or consoled. She did not think herself adequately equipped for either.
“Yes, it does mean a great deal to me,” he said, meeting her eyes. “You understand that.”
“Of course I do.”
“Of course you do,” he repeated. He looked away from her, out over the street, still frowning. “My mother always desired for me to become a lawyer, but I did not think I had the temperament for it. I wanted to be more than a cog in the machine of justice. I wanted to be at the very head of it, I guess you could say.”
Mattie regarded him, thinking what a good lawyer he would have made, with his thorough knowledge of the law and his capability for high sentence. “Although I have only borne witness to two endeavours of yours,” she said, “if you have conducted yourself in the rest of your undertakings with the seriousness and commitment to duty which I have seen in you, then I think you have fulfilled your ambitions tenfold.”
LaBoeuf met her eyes and fixed her with a look Mattie could only describe as tender. She felt a strange shock in the pit of her stomach at the sight of it, and she swallowed.
“A former colleague of mine with the Rangers has started up a bail bonds business in Ysleta,” LaBoeuf continued, “and before I left to pursue Cunningham, he asked me to join him. I think I will take him up on his offer when I return.”
“That is serendipitous,” Mattie said. “I am sure that new occupation will suit you very well.”
“Thank you. I believe it will, too.” LaBoeuf abruptly reached and clutched her hand in his for a moment before releasing it and turning away from her. He cleared his throat. “I own a piece of land south of Ysleta whose western limit is the Rio Grande. There is a small pecan grove there, and some pasture land along the river. I have not yet built a house on it, but I think one day it will make a fine little farm.”
Although Mattie had never been to El Paso or any place similar to it, she could almost picture the place LaBoeuf described. She imagined barren, dusty land, and then the green shade of a stand of pecan trees, like a little oasis. “I am sure you are right about that. Do you plan to build a house and live there soon?”
LaBoeuf turned back to face her. “I do. Only I do not relish the thought of living there alone.”
He paused here with great significance, and Mattie stared at him.
“Being so adept at managing a cotton farm, I wonder whether you would like to try your hand at pecans,” he continued.
Mattie frowned. “I do not understand you.”
“I am asking if you will come to Texas with me, as my wife,” he said.
Mattie gaped at him, her throat abruptly gone dry. “I do not... That is, I am not... What do you mean by this?”
LaBoeuf tilted his head at her, his brows drawn together in exasperation. “Mattie, why do you think I have lingered here? I was expected back at my post weeks ago,” he said. “But I could not leave your side until I knew you were well. When I realised how essential your health and your happiness have become to my own, there was only one conclusion I could reasonably draw, which was that I love you most sincerely, and that I want you to be my wife.”
“Oh,” Mattie replied, the word a mere exhalation of breath. She did not know what to say to him.
“We would not marry right away,” he continued. “You must return home with your mother, and we will make the necessary arrangements in due course. As I said, I do not yet have a house built on that land, and I would not expect you to tolerate my current accommodations, which are modest, and suitable only for a bachelor who is seldom at home. Naturally I would have a house for you to live in before we could marry.”
Mattie stared at him, reeling with the implications of what he was asking. He meant for her to leave Yell County, leave the Arkansas River and her wide cotton fields, leave her barn and her corncrib, leave her house with Papa’s desk, leave Mama and Little Frank and Victoria. He wanted her to quit her home and go live with him in a far-flung place where the land and the customs and the people were strange to her. He would be the only familiar thing. Looking at his imploring face, Mattie’s thought was that he was not nearly familiar enough for all that.
“But what of my mother?” she stammered. “Who will look after her, if I am not there to do it?”
“Your mother would not want to deny you happiness for the sake of some imagined duty, would she?”
“’Imagined duty’? Duty to one’s parents is no fever dream, Mr. LaBoeuf.”
“Of course not, but you are not her only child. Surely your sister and your brother share in the responsibility for your mother, young as they are. Anyhow, your mother is hardly feeble,” he replied.
“I will grant you that that is true. But you and I would exhaust one another with our bickering! There would never be peace,” Mattie said.
“I swear to you we will have peace, if only you will let me win from time to time.”
“Let you win? Such phrasing implies that you are not capable of winning on your own merit. I see you have less faith in your mulishness than I do.”
“I have great faith in the mulishness on both our parts,” LaBoeuf replied, in a tone that implied that his foolish words were endlessly reasonable. “I do not see this as a point against us. Rather it is one of several reasons why we would make an ideal match. If you paired either one of us with some gentler, less gritty person, we would trample the poor creature.”
Mattie was exasperated at his persistence. He would not see reason, and so she pressed on in the most candid way she knew how. “Perhaps there is some strange similarity in our temperaments, but I do not think I would be much good to you as a wife. You must want children to carry on your name. I cannot cradle a baby with but one arm.”
LaBoeuf appeared stricken by this remark, and stared at her in bewilderment for a moment before speaking. “Mattie, do you think that you are deficient, or that I find you so?”
Mattie looked down, unsure how to answer. She did not think herself to be deficient, but she knew herself to be incomplete in a way that she had come to believe excluded her from the realm of courtship. Even before losing her arm, her looks and demeanour invited little attention, and in the intervening years, she had learned that her injury only solidified her unsuitability as a wife. What she had told LaBoeuf before had been the truth - she did not mind, for she found the majority of young men to be foolhardy creatures, and never wanted to find herself hitched to one as to a lazy mule for the rest of her life.
“There is little purpose in pussyfooting around the thing,” she said slowly, meeting his inquiring gaze. “I get along all right at home, but I would not be able to do everything a wife must do in order to keep house. As I said, I cannot cradle a baby with but one arm. My sewing is extremely slow and not particularly artful. I cannot mend your clothing or make you new things. We will have to get store-bought clothes, which is a foolish waste.”
“I can mend my own things, and yours as well.”
“Now you are being ridiculous, and mocking me also. What kind of woman allows her husband to go around in clothes he has mended himself?”
“I did not know there was a law in place against such things,” LaBoeuf replied, cocking his head. “Certainly there is no such law in Texas. Does such a law exist in Yell County?”
Mattie did not care to acknowledge his sarcastic remarks. “Yell County is my home. I do not wish to pull up stakes and find myself living on the bald, dusty plains in Texas.”
“You know little of Texas. It is not so bad as all that, as Cogburn might have you believe. I think you would like it.”
“You do not know that. What if we married in haste and went to live in Texas, and I detested it altogether? What is your smart answer for that, I wonder?”
LaBoeuf huffed a frustrated breath. “What if the sky falls down on our heads tomorrow? You are looking for trouble where there is none yet to be found.”
“I am attempting to treat the question practically. You have lost your wits altogether, I fear. I do not know what has prompted you to lose them when they have been dependable enough in the past.”
“You prompted me to lose them,” LaBoeuf said, taking a step closer to her and clasping her upper arms in his hands. He looked down at her, an expression on his face which surprised her with its intensity. Suddenly he pulled her close and kissed her, his hands pressing her stays into the flesh of her back in a most distracting manner.
Mattie tolerated him for a moment, and then pushed him away. His face was flushed and she feared hers was, as well. “Mr. LaBoeuf, it is Sunday,” she scolded him.
LaBoeuf cleared his throat and had the decency at least to look contrite as he stepped back to put a respectable distance between them.
They regarded one another in silence for a moment, and Mattie felt a pang in her chest at his hopeful expression. She had a sudden reckoning of what he must have looked like when he went off to fight in the war when he was barely 15 years old.
“Mr. LaBoeuf, can we not proceed from this moment as friends, as though this discussion never came between us?”
LaBoeuf did not reply immediately, and in his face Mattie could see his frustration and his sadness. She wanted to look away but could not, would not. She would not be cowardly. Not even now, when she felt a foreign weakness urging her to run from him.
“You cannot always have your way in every little thing, Mattie,” he said. “You may feel nothing for me and tell me so, and you may refuse my offer. But you cannot stop me from voicing the content of my heart to you. You cannot stop me from feeling what I feel, from loving you. You do not have to agree to what I have asked you, but you cannot stop that, whatever your answer is.”
“I believe that my answer is no, Mr. LaBoeuf,” she said softly.
His eyes searched hers for a moment, and then he shook his head. “Do not say that. I know that once you have chosen a course there will be no moving you from it, so I must ask that you do not say no. Not yet. Think the thing over, and speak to your mother. Please, Mattie. Just do not say no, outright.”
LaBoeuf entreated her with such sincerity that Mattie found she could not say no. She nodded silently at him, wondering at her own lack of starch. The trouble was his eyes. If only he would not look at her so, she could be as firm as she ought to be.
She left him standing there on the porch with a promise that she would consider his offer. She frowned at the feeling in the pit of her stomach; it was as though she had swallowed a brick. She did not know whether her promise had been a lie or not.
As she opened the door and went inside, she could feel his eyes on her back as surely as a touch.
Chapter 11