66
PARTISAN REVIEW
hadn't been showing up. Elsa twisted her fingers, eager to get in
touch with him. But it was like trying to ring the devil to find
Bill. The hands winked at each other. The boss was in it too,
seemed to have been behind the silo during the fight. And Mule,
his arm harnessed up in a sling, had been butted by the bull:
But even before the excitement was over, the boss wrote
to his niece. He wanted one of the family to come down
to help him in his cidermill fight. The Gun Hill girl came down.
She was stiff as a poker to Elsa, had big red lips like a· burn,
could cook and clean. Now that she had lost her job in the Gun
Hill Five and Ten she might as well
be
his permanent house·
keeper, teased the boss.
Mule sat at the table glaring at his thumbs as though if he
could ge the boss and girl on them he would fix them both.
His brother talked to the boss that night. The boss said,
"You don't have to tell me Elsa's got no home. I'd keep both
if I could. The more the merrier. But I'm caught. Her dad
and the 3 boys are handle end in trouble in their hardware store
in Gun Hill. Those stinking chickendrop farmers there got the
storekeepers by the crop if they don't side with them. Maybe,
rhey'll sell out and come down here. There's nothing like the
family taking care of the place."
Steve kept cudgeling his brain how to get rid of the girl and
slap Elsa's wonderfully easy rich body his way. Finally when
the niece went out riding, he loosened the axle nut on the buggy.
The wheel slipped off, the girl grabbed the lines and wasn't
hurt. He covered the barn floor trapdoor with hay when she
went hunting eggs. She fell thru only to be slightly jarred. He
slipped some poisonous henbean, used for the cows, into the
sandwiches she was taking to the Sunday school picnic. Her
lips swelled. Elsa had to lash her hands with towels to the bed
during her convulsions.
Right after the niece was taken back to Gun Hill, Steve
felt the coast was clear. He offered the boss to pay another
cook to help Elsa during harvest.
The boss laughed in his swivel chair, clognosed. "You talk
like you was ready to marry her."
"I been thinking," stuttered Steve. "We been knocked
around till the stitches is flying loose. Maybe we could fix that
old milkhouse for us ..."
The boss sagged as if the bone were all taken out of him.
"Don't know what to say. The little girl sick, the cider mill, it's
