Comstock Lode (1981) by L'amour Louis

Author:L'amour, Louis [Louis, L'amour,]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2010-12-12T06:26:15.921000+00:00

Chapter XXX

At daylight, putting the last finishing touches to her hair, Grita looked around at Mary. "Have you a pistol?" she asked.

Mary Tucker looked up, surprised. "I do, Miss Redaway. I keep it by me."

"Can you use it?"

Mary smiled. "At home in Indiana there was little enough on the table and my pa worked in town. I had no brothers, so if we had meat the shooting was up to me. I kept meat on the table until I was fourteen, when the cholera took my family."

"Keep the gun where you can get it, then. I think we may have trouble."

"I will that. Is it after you they are?"

"It is. Or something I have."

"You seem very sure of yourself, ma'am." The Irish girl looked at her, smiling. "You'd think you'd been caring for yourself as I have."

Grita nodded. "I have, in a somewhat different world. When did you get into the theater, Mary?"

"When I lost them all I took a job for some people in Pittsburgh. The young man there, where I was maid, he was forever talking of the theater, and having folks to dinner from the theater. He didn't like girls much, he didn't, but he was nice and we talked a lot. One day I was speaking of one of the ladies who had been to dinner, and not knowing her name, I did an imitation of her that set him laughing.

"At supper a few nights later he told a man to look at me. 'She's the one you need,' he said. 'She will do the part better than anyone.'

"So they had me down to the theater to play a housemaid, a pert, snippy one, and they liked me. So here I am, four years older and an actress. 'Tis never rich and famous I'll be, but ''tis better than scrubbing floors."

"Do you never regret the farm?"

"I do. One day I'll put by enough to buy one, to own one of my own." She picked up her valise. "And you, miss? What will you do?"

"Who knows? Have you been in love, Mary?"

"Twice, I thought I was. Each time I came to my sense in time, thanks be to God. And you, miss?"

"No, not yet. There were some gentlemen I knew, very elegant gentlemen, too, but they were not for me. The trouble is, Mary, I'm like a lot of others. I don't know what I want."

"Who does, until you see him? And then you're like to be wrong."

Grita spoke suddenly, and without thinking. "I shall buy a ranch, Mary, and raise horses. I like the theater, and it's a challenge. There's no end to how good one can get, but none of us are good enough."

"It's good to hear them laugh."

"Yes, it is, but the crowd's a fickle beast. At least, that's what an old actor I knew often said, and I agree. Some actresses think the people love them, and that's nonsense. They love the roles you play or the way you play them, but notyou. Tomorrow it can be another.

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