“What letter?” I asked suspiciously.
“The letter that the major was invalided stateside.” Turtle was evading now and he knew I knew it even if the major didn’t.
Obviously I wouldn’t get Turtle to come clean with the major hanging on every word. Whatever was going on between those two did concern me. Of that much I was sure. How, why, I hadn’t an inkling but I wasn’t going to leave this house until I found out. I had the feeling it also concerned Dad. But, if Dad were involved and he had never been anything but a good soldier, why wouldn’t Turtle level with me? Unless, of course, the major had antiquated ideas about helpless females or me blabbing about company business.
“Well,” I said, rising abruptly, “with two guardians, one of them totally above reproach, I can stay on here.”
“No!” they chorused explosively.
“Now you two knock it off. I don’t know what gives between you but I want you to know, you’re not fooling me for one split second.”
“This isn’t a woman’s concern,” Laird answered hotly, the ridges of his scars reddening.
“Women. Ha! Have you men done so well with the world?” I asked with fine scorn. I turned on Turtle who had the grace to look abashed. “I’ll bet you never even stopped to eat in town,” I accused him. Turtle shook his head in quick affirmation.
“Well, I’ll fix you something to eat,” I offered grudgingly. “Get some clean socks from the major. You both appear to wear the same size shoe when your feet aren’t in your mouths.” I flounced out of the room, slamming the door with a satisfactorily resounding crash.
I’d get it out of Turtle in my own way and the hell with the major. I poked unnecessary wood in the range, burning my finger on the hot plate-iron top. With more caution, I pulled the coffeepot onto a front ring and hunted in the icebox for the Dutch kettle. I knew we hadn’t consumed all the stew last night. Turtle was very partial to stew. The idea of Turtle trying to put one over on me, I muttered to myself.
The stew was not, absolutely not, in the refrigerator. Congealed messes, improperly covered, and some partially molded over, two bunches of good carrots and four limp stalks of celery, a half-gallon metal can of milk almost full, a huge wheel of butter, a bowl of eggs, a slab of bacon, and an indecent quantity of beer completed the inventory of the box, but no stew.
“If I were stew, where would I go?” I asked myself a la Stanislavsky.
Merlin whined at the back porch door. I guessed that the men had let him out the study door. Exasperated, I let him in.
Now I can’t say he overheard me muttering, but as I opened the door I caught sight of the iron kettle perched on the shelving on the back porch. I peered inside and the contents were frozen solid. Naturally, important things like beer should be kept at a proper degree of refrigeration, I muttered to myself, whereas relatively unimportant items like a meat stew, not to mention the chickens I had also observed in cold storage and the hunk of meat, would be left to their own devices against the weather. First things first.
By the time I had washed up the backlog of dishes, the stew had thawed and was simmering. There was more than enough for all three of us to eat our fill. The major’s culinary skill seemed limited to making up quantities of one thing that would last for days. That might be all right for him, himself alone, but not this li’l chile.
I gave a chow yell and heard Turtle hop to with a “Yo.” He padded down the corridor in, I hoped, fresh-stockinged feet. I heard his oath as the steaming hot water in the bathroom sink caught him by surprise.
When he and the major entered the kitchen, they both had that look about them which meant they’d confirmed their idiotic boy scout pact. They made a determined effort to forestall any reopening of the subject while I was equally determined to ignore the whole ploy.
I served Turtle first, grinning at the gusto with which he attacked the meal.
“Major,” he said around a generous mouthful of meat and potato, “you make the best goddam stew this side of the Divide. That includes hmmmmah all Europe.” He pointed his fork at me, waving the potato speared on it like a baton. “Bit, you shoulda tasted the rabbit stew the major scrounged up near Montcornet.” (He mutilated the French pronunciation.) “Jeeezuz but that tasted good.” He smacked his lips retrospectively. “Marty got the rabbit. Big bastards over there, they are.”
“Was it Landrel or the Bum who liberated the vegetables?” the major asked, grinning.
“The Bum,” and the curt way Turtle answered indicated both men were now dead.
“That one could scrounge from St. Peter,” was the major’s admiring accolade. Turtle nodded his head, his mouth too full to speak.
“Bosworth swapped K rations for some vin ordinaire as I recall,” and there was nothing wrong with the major’s accent. Regan Laird took up the tale, “and M. LeMaitre loaned us a pot against his wife’s better judgment.”
Gravy spilled out of the corners of Turtle’s mouth as he grinned at the memory. He caught the gravy deftly with a hunk of bread, then popped bread and all in his mouth, licking his fingers.
“And then,” and Turtle shook with malicious mirth, “the mutts in the village cornered Warren and he never did get anything to eat. Then he tried to get the colonel to give us hell because we weren’t supposed to be bivouacking in the village, annoying,” Turtle snorted with contempt, “annoying the inhabitants. Annoying? Hell, they adopted us!”
Mention of Warren was sobering. It improved my opinion of the major that he shared our dislike of Major no, damn it, Colonel Donald Warren.
I had always hated Warren myself. No one ever succeeded in convincing me that he hadn’t poisoned Merlin’s litter brothers. He was irrationally frightened of dogs, any dog, down to and including a Chihuahua. And I knew for certain he had been instrumental in putting away Morgan le Fay, Merlin’s dam. Warren could swear and allege all he wanted to but I’d never believed Morgan had bitten him. She had more sense. She’d’ve got blood poisoning. Dad had been off post at the time and, because Marian Warren was toadying up to the C.O.’s wife, neither Turtle, I, nor the Dowrtingtons, who owned Morgan, could change the edict.
It infuriated me that Warren had assumed Dad’s command, however briefly, after Major Laird had been wounded. It was intolerably bitter to me that Donald Warren still walked the earth and my father was under it. War is not only hell, it is too damned indiscriminate in its victims.
“I always wanted to know, Bailey,” the major was saying, his eyes twinkling, “if you and Casey had anything to do with the bedroll problem?”
“Bedroll .” Turtle was seized with a violent paroxysm of choking, complicated by a fit of laughter that brought tears to his eyes.
“Bedroll?” I asked suspiciously.
Regan Laird’s grin threatened to break open scar tissue. Chuckling, he managed to explain.
“Ah, Major Warren seemed to have trouble keeping his bedroll free of ah .”
“Messages?” I cried, delighted.
“Messages,” Laird agreed. That set Turtle off again so I had to pound his shoulder blades before he choked to an untimely end. Laird managed to straighten his face before he continued. “DeLord was of the opinion the dogs homed in on him. That right, Bailey?”
Turtle choked again, turning bright red, and this time Major Laird swatted him smartly on the back. Turtle finally got his breath back, downing a full can of beer to set things right.
“That
DeLord,” he gasped finally, belching noisily. ” ‘Scuse it. That DeLord! I can’t figure him.”
“Why not? Damn good officer. Thought on his feet.”
“Yeah. Well, guess who got mighty thick with Warren after you got clobbered?”