Corral Nocturne Read Online Free PDF

done nothing to disrupt the commonsense
outlook with which he had been raised.
    Of the rest of the Newcomb family Ellie had
heard a good deal, but had not yet met any of them. Cole had
sisters, all younger than himself, but the eldest, near Ellie’s
age, had been away at school and was spending part of the summer
with a schoolmate’s family in the East, and the other two were too
young yet to go to dances and parties. Mrs. Newcomb had slightly
delicate health and did not go out too often, and her husband was
either at home with her or riding out over the far-flung spread of
his ranch superintending the working of cattle and horses.
    And so things went on. No hint of the
direction in which they were tending seemed to have come to Cole as
yet. It was summer, one of those lazy, sunny summers where life
seems to stretch out ahead in contented repetition of itself, with
the rest of the future indefinitely on hold. Not only had he
forgotten his original motives, he was unconscious still of any
present ones. But there were flashes.
    When Ellie innocently observed one afternoon,
“Fred Jackson came by the other day and asked me if I’d go with him
to the Kennedys’, but I told him you were taking me,” some of the
shock Cole felt must have communicated itself to the horses, for
they leaped gaily and ran for half a mile. When he had got them
stopped Ellie was laughing, clinging to the buggy top with one hand
with her hair blown in loose wisps about her face the way he liked
it and shining in the sun; and between noticing this and trying to
get the horses under control and processing his indignation at the
remark that had started it all, Cole’s state of mind for a minute
or two was unenviable. Fred Jackson, indeed!
    And Ellie?
    Perhaps she did not know yet exactly what she
felt about Cole Newcomb. As someone to talk to and spend time with
she liked him immensely. Beyond that perhaps she did not allow
herself to inquire to closely into her own thoughts. Life had made
her practical; she never looked too much into the future—she was
not given to dreaming.
    But there were some warm June nights when she
lay awake, her mind fluttering too restlessly for sleep, moving
inconsequently from one thing to another. Often she would find
herself at some point thinking of Cole, and afternoons they had
spent together and things they had talked about. That seemed only
to be expected. Yet other times, for seemingly no reason, out of
nowhere she would see his face; the absorption in his dark eyes
when he was thinking of something, or the unexpected turn of his
head to look at her; and a queer shivery feeling would crawl
through her stomach. And she would roll over in bed and pull the
quilt up over her shoulder and try not too successfully to think
about something else.

 
IV

     
    One evening near the middle of June, just as
twilight was falling, they drove down the lane to the Strickland
place, and Cole reined the team to a stop just outside the gate.
The chestnuts had taken exception to standing in the yard since the
day a chicken had flown up in their faces and nearly caused a
disaster just as Ellie was getting out between the buggy
wheels.
    Tonight she stepped down nimbly, keeping her
skirts clear of the wheel with one hand. As she turned around near
the gatepost, Cole, gathering the reins and buggy whip in his
hands, leaned from his seat to speak to her. “Say, Ellie, there’s
something I wanted to ask you,” he said. “Will you go with me to
the Fourth of July dance in town next month?”
    For a second Ellie’s eyes flashed with
surprise and eagerness. The Fourth of July dance! The dance and
celebration was an annual affair, the biggest of the year. Held on
a gaily decorated open-air platform near the edge of town, the
dance ran all night long, with a potluck supper beforehand and
fireworks at midnight. Ellie had not been to the celebration on the
Fourth for several years, and the prospect of going again was one
of unmixed delight.