The man was unarmed. A table was between him and the wolf but that was his only protection. The animal waited for the man to attack. When he did not, when he made no move, the wolf moved forward.
The man retreated, reaching behind him for a weapon, but finding none. He dared not turn around to search and thereby put his back to the wolf who favored, above all else, such a target. The man kept groping behind him as he retreated, until at last his hand felt a chair. He clutched it firmly, his eyes on the wolf. Just as the man gripped the chair, the beast made his move.
The wolf leaped in a ravenous rush, forepaws outstretched to throw the man, fangs bared to rip him. The wolf soared up, all the way up, and over the table, his slavering mouth wide for the kill. But the man had the chair. As the wolf came on, he stepped adroitly to one side like a matador eluding a raging bull. Setting himself in a firm stance, he hit the wolf with the chair, swinging it in a wide arc from right to left, stopping the wolf in mid-air.
The chair shattered, the wood splintering against the beast's skull. The animal fell heavily to the floor of the cabin.
The man finished his swing and, without pausing, launched another, bringing what remained of the chair down upon the still fighting wolf. Finally only a chair leg remained in his hand.
He hit the wolf a third time, carefully keeping his back to the camera as he had been instructed.
"CUT!" shouted the director excitedly.
Wearing the puttees and whipcord breeches that were standard equipment in movie circles in 1910, the director dashed out from behind his protective steel screen. For this was a movie set. The cabin had no roof, the snow was shredded cotton, the wind was a huge fan. Only two small items were real: the wild wolf and the courage of Tom Mix, who had just dropped him.
"Great job! Great!" the director enthused, seizing the chair leg. "They've never seen anything like this. I'll make history with this picture. A real wolf!"
"I don't know if he's dead," said Tom Mix, the star of the picture.
"Of course he's dead!" the director shouted. "He's as dead as a doornail! We'll start riots with this one! Killing a live wolf with bare hands!"
"I used a chair," Tom Mix objected.
"Chair! Did you have a gun? No!"
One of the property men, thinking the wolf was dead, moved over to scrutinize the beast. At that instant the wolf recovered consciousness. It had not been killed. It sank its fangs in the leg of the property man, who pulled away and ran off scene screaming with pain.
"Out of the way!" shouted Tom to the director and crew, frozen with terror.
Tom darted forward and pushed the table over on top of the wolf. He tore a leg from one end of the table. As the wolf emerged from beneath the board, Tom hit him between the eyes, again and again, until at last the beast lay still.
It wasn't the last time Tom Mix was to dispose of an evil adversary. When the man who was to grow in popularity until he became the world's greatest cowboy movie star had finished with an enemy, the wretch was dead for always!
There were other harrowing scenes to be shot that day, and it was a long time till the director dismissed his cast and crew. As Tom Mix and I drove home, Tom chatting as cheerily as if he were a different sort of person and had settled a big deal over the telephone from behind an executive's desk in a luxurious office, I wondered once again whether I had been married for nearly a year to a real human being or to some fabulous demigod, and I couldn't help thinking back to the day in St. Louis when I had first laid eyes on Tom Mix.
Will Rogers grinned and extended one hand to me as he scratched his head with the other in his fashion so familiar to me and which was to be known all over the world in later years.
"Olive Stokes! What in the world are you doing here?
"I'll have you know that I'm having an exhibition of one of my pictures at the Fair," I replied.
"You can always bet on a Stokes!" he exclaimed. He had been very close friends with my parents out in Oklahoma. We both carried Cherokee blood in our veins as a further bond between our families.
He turned and beckoned to a dark, slender and very handsome young man who was standing nearby practicing with a lasso.
"Come here, Tom," he called.
When the young man came up, Will Rogers chuckled.
"Here's how they grow them in Oklahoma, Tom. As pretty as the country itself. Olive Stokes, this is Tom Mix."
Tom's dark eyes seemed to bore through me as he shook my hand and muttered, "Howdy, ma'am."
I suppose I may have blushed-for girls did blush in those days-but if I did, it was more because this unexpected introduction had disturbed my mood, than because I felt any immediate attraction to Will's friend. My father, whom I adored, had died just a few weeks before, and the shock of losing him had plunged me into an abyss of grief from which I was just emerging. It had changed me from a carefree and sometimes intransigent ranch child, as wild as the country of my birth, into a sober girl reaching for maturity.
As the three of us sauntered over to a bench in front of a sign reading ZACK MULHALL'S WILD WEST SHOW, I found myself ignoring Tom and practically forgetting he was even there-although I did notice how he kept playing with the rope he was holding. Later I learned that he couldn't sit still without doing something with his hands.
My trip to St. Louis- I had come there to receive an award for a painting of mine that was being exhibited in the Indian Territory building at the Fair- was my first real venture into the world since that awful period of sorrow.
Will was soon making me laugh again. "I'm going to take you to dinner," he announced, "and tomorrow show you the Fair."
"That wouldn't be right," broke in Tom.
As he spoke the rather embarrassing realization dawned on me that he hadn't been given a chance to say much within the last half-hour. I discovered later that he wasn't a heavy talker on any occasion. "I'd be pleased if you'd do me the honor of showing you around the Fair," Tom added.
"Reckon we can trust him, Olive?" Will winked.
It was show time by then, and the two men left me to get ready for their entrances. I took my place in the audience of the Mulhall Wild West Show. Both Will and Tom gave thrilling performances, though they were only in their middle twenties then, and the great years of stardom for them were yet to come. To me they were as great as Buffalo Bill had ever been.
Already I was sorry my visit to St. Louis was only for one day. The following afternoon I would have to return to school in Nashville, Tennessee. I did not have much time to become properly acquainted with either Tom or Will.
Will took me to dinner that evening, and we had a gay time talking about our beloved northeastern section of Oklahoma. He recalled how my father would sit with a pair of binoculars in his little office in our ranch house and keep watch on everything that was going on, and how he kept large sums of money in a tin box in his desk drawer without the slightest fear of anyone stealing it.
Promptly at nine Will returned me to the Jefferson Hotel, where Lyman T. Hay, the manager, was waiting to see me safely in for the night. My unchaperoned trip to St. Louis had been made possible only because Lyman, an old friend of my fathers, had promised to keep an eye on me.
As Will and I stood in the lobby chatting for a moment before he left, I ventured: "Do you think Mr. Mix was just joking about showing me around the Fair tomorrow? "
"Don't think you have a bit of cause to worry about that," Will replied, his bright eyes twinkling.
I discovered that this was true enough. When I came downstairs for breakfast the next morning, Tom was in the lobby waiting for me. It wasn't until a good many years later that Will told me Tom had waited there for me all night. But by then I too knew of his determination to accomplish any purpose that he set out to achieve!
I must honestly admit that I was more interested in the Fair itself that day than in my slender "tall, dark and handsome" escort. Forest Park was alive with excitement and swarming crowds.
There was a refreshing international air about the buildings of French-classic design and the foreign and domestic exhibits.
In my exuberance to try to see everything-an impossible feat to accomplish in one short day-Tom was led a chase around the park that would have left a less physically endowed man puffing and irritated.
Although I thought myself a full woman, probably Tom looked upon me as a country child, taking a city sabbatical.
Later in the day, when we finally paused for breath at the Cherokee exhibit, I realized that I'd been babbling all day about myself and had learned almost nothing about my escort.
I laughed. "We haven't much time left for you to tell me about yourself."
His face lit up with a wonderful, meaningful smile that seemed to come up from deep inside him. In the future I was to learn that everything Tom did came from deep inside him. He was a man of feelings and actions, not fancy words.
"I think you're going to learn all about me some day," he said.
That was all.
The man of mystery, I decided. Rather an exciting thought!
Before I knew it, the time arrived for me to leave for the station. We rushed to the show tent for a breathless farewell with Will. He apologized for not being able to go with me to the train, but some business had come up to prevent him. I didn't know then that Tom had contrived this "business" excuse with Will.
We barely made the train on time.
"Thank you so much," I said to Tom, raising my voice above the commotion on the station platform. "And it's been so nice meeting you." I felt warm with excitement. "In case I don't see you again-well, I want to wish you luck."
He smiled. "You'll be seeing me again."
Then we shook hands, longer than was necessary. The train shrieked its final warning and I couldn't delay another moment.
Tom followed my car down the platform as the train moved out. I kept waving and he kept smiling. I kept my nose pressed against the window glass until he disappeared from view. Slowly the remainder of the people on the platform moved past the window. Streets with trees, houses and roads flowed past, fastest near the car, slower farther away. I sank back against the red plush upholstery of the seat and closed my eyes. Probably, I thought, I will never see him again!
For the next four years (1904-1908) I was busy completing the long process of becoming a woman. Then when I had completed my formal education I returned to our ranch to assume part of the managerial responsibilities. My mother, who since the death of my father had grown more and more bewildered by business details, needed my help.
Our ranch, where I was born in 1890, was in the northeastern section of Oklahoma, an extension of the Ozark Plateau, a beautiful region of richly timbered hills, green valleys, clear streams. It was a man's country and I had sensed the masculinity of it in my childhood, when I had been a fearful tomboy. My mother, of Cherokee Indian and Scotch-Irish antecedents, had once asked me: "Olive, don't you want to grow up to be a fine lady? You can't," she added, "act like a boy and expect to end up a great lady."
But it was a country to be a man in, and I wasn't particularly interested in Mother's hopes for me. I was going to be a male in spite of petticoats.
When I was six years old my temerity led me to climb on a bronco from the corral fence. The ride was brief and lively, and the broken collarbone I ended with was very painful.
"She'll grow out of this wildness," my father said in consoling my mother.
My brother Dick Stokes and my Uncle Pete had the greatest influence on my development during those early years. They managed to lead me into most of the trouble I got into. Dick was four years older than I, and Pete was seven years older. Pete was my father's youngest brother and had lived with us since I was very tiny. The two were in collusion, it seemed, to make life a series of agonies for me.
"Now don't you follow us today," they would say to me as they ran off on their long legs.
And I would promptly follow them.
I was six when they presented me with a black furry carcass at the sawmill.
"Poor dead kitty," said Dick with a very solemn face. "Why don't you take it home and bury it, Olive? "
I did. I went marching into the kitchen with that dead skunk. My mother instantly lost her serenity. It was the only time I ever heard her shriek. The skunk was disposed of promptly and I found myself in the bathtub before I could turn around. Under Mother's unflagging eye I spent a great part of the following week becoming sterilized.
The boys hollered with glee over that.
But I didn't learn. Among other things, the boys sent me home one day with dead rats tied to my belt. I thought it was very funny at the time, but Mother didn't. And she saw no humor either in my deathly experience with chewing tobacco. The boys had told me it was a kind of candy and shoved a great handful into my mouth.
However, my mother didn't completely lose patience until the boys tied me to an unappreciative calf one day and I ended up with another broken collarbone.
"She'll grow as wild as the Cherokee Strip if we don't steady her," my mother told Father.
"I guess it is high time she's sent off to school," he admitted with a touch of melancholy in his voice. "That'll plant some tameness in her."
Life on the ranch left a deep imprint that could never be displaced by any number of frilly early-century dresses or finishing schools. I wouldn't have wanted it that way. There was a rich scope to life in those days that has never been exactly paralleled since.
It was a life full of breathtaking beauty, of majestic landscape and fresh loveliness, especially in the spring when the ranch burst with redbud, dogwood and wild blue indigo. It was a life of energy and ceaseless dawn-to-dusk work, with quiet evenings of singing around the great stone fireplace in our parlor. For some- for the new settlers- it was a life of lean times until the discovery of oil in 1903 changed the entire complexion of the region.
I found I was growing up. My brother and uncle treated me with new respect when they found I could outride both of them, either bareback or in saddle. After proving my ability to kill rattlers with the same bold finesse they used, I was suddenly no longer "little sister" and "little niece." I had arrived. By the time I was ten, the ranch hands, by conspiracy or otherwise, were calling me "Princess" and treating me like one. My woman's heart must have been developing in me, for I was very pleased with it all.
Now I look back upon these younger years of mine, I like to think I see a plan superior to mine present in them and directing them. For without them I should never have been able to meet on common ground, and share the life of, the man who as my husband was to complete my life.
For when I returned to the ranch I, like all other girls, had dreams of love and marriage. At times in the past I had thought about Tom Mix and lived in hope that some day a letter would come from him. But none came.
Evidently he had completely forgotten me and yet I could never forget what he had said: "You'll be seeing me again." They were his last words when the train pulled out of St. Louis. Strangely, this man of silence and mystery kept lurking as an intriguing vision in my mind.
In December, 1908, 1 took the long trip to Medora, North Dakota, to buy some horses for the ranch. Old friends of our family who lived there had written about some excellent horses that could be purchased very reasonably.
Nels and Katrine Nichols had not seen me since their visit to our ranch years before. When they met me at the station in Medora, Nels greeted me with a smile. "For land's sake, how you've changed!"
I was shivering as they helped me into their buggy, despite my heavy fur coat. I had been forewarned of the sub-zero temperatures of western North Dakota, but wasn't wholly prepared for the icy blast that swept in from the ranges and penetrated to my bones.
"You'll get used to it," laughed Katrine as we drove off.
Nels and Katrine got me settled in their big rambling house on the outskirts of the town. I quickly plunged into a round of familiar activities. This was frontier country too, and though the terrain was different from Oklahoma, the way of living was much the same as that I had been used to.
Nels Nichols reminded me of my father-not that he looked like him, but he had the same kind heart and trust in humanity. Katrine was a bubbling, effervescent little woman, a dynamo of energy. She was always planning parties or dances and was very concerned that I did not seem to have any particular interest in men.
It was on a sparkling bright day about a week before Christmas that Nels, Katrine and I went to the railway station to meet Luke Bells, an assistant overseer at our ranch, who had come to Medora to help me in the final selection and shipment of the horses I was going to purchase.
Luke was on the train all right, just as expected.
And a tall, slender, smiling man got off right behind him.
"Tom Mix! " I sputtered.
I knew I must be blushing furiously, for everyone laughed at my utter confusion.
Tom, grinning now, moved right up to me and swept off his hat. "I told you we'd be meeting again some day. And here we are-and you're all grown up."
At that moment I wasn't quite sure of my feelings. Perhaps I was a little angry with him for bowing into my life so briefly four years ago, and then stepping out of it until now, with no word in between.
I could not deny that I was glad to see him.
"Tom's here because he wouldn't give me any peace until I let him come along," explained Luke. "He was at the ranch looking for you."
Nels told Luke and Tom that the best place to stay would be the Cowboy Hotel and apologized for not having room for them at the ranch.
"Some of the ranch hands even have to sleep on the floor in the kitchen," he explained.
Before anything else, Tom and Luke had to come to the Nichols home for dinner. Katrine, with the help of Mattie, her housekeeper, prepared a special dinner of Norwegian dishes: lutefish, a cod dish which was her specialty; lefse, unleavened potato bread; and fattigmand, a delicious Norwegan pastry fried in deep fat.
Tom had about three helpings of everything, although he had eyed the food suspiciously when it was first served to him.
He winked at Katrine. "How about Olive?" he asked. "Can she cook? A woman ought to be able to cook."
"Of course I can cook, Tom Mix! " I said a little testily, and then remembered that Tom had a great deal to learn about me- and I certainly had even more to learn about him.
We started our "education" right the next morning when we rode out to the ranch of a big horse-raiser, Sam Short, to look at his stock. It was a harrowing ride through the craggy, hole-ridden badlands, that enormous stretch of buttes and eroded land that fans out from Medora. The badlands are beautiful with their shifting colors and sweeping, lonely vistas; but they are terrifying too, when you are caught on them in the midst of a swirling, blinding blizzard as we were that day.
I was proud of the way I handled my horse and myself through that exciting journey, and made no protests even though my heart was hammering.
When the storm finally abated, Tom said, "You're quite a woman, Olive."
If my face hadn't been almost frozen, I probably would have colored.
"Go on with your folderol," I said, trying to make light of it. But there, out in the midst of those desolate, freezing badlands, I was suddenly feeling warm.
We were given a most gracious welcome at the Short ranch and immediately drawn into the family. Nels and Katrine were due for a visit in a few days to enter into the Christmas festivities. Luke came out early and he, Tom and I spent the mornings riding out on the snow-swept plains to look over the horses. Soon it got to be just Tom and I, and I was sure it was Tom who had suggested to Luke that he make himself scarce. For Luke was always missing when we were ready for our ride.
But I didn't care. I guess it was the way I wanted it too.
I kept wondering if there would be an awakening some morning to find that Tom had vanished from my life again. He seemed to be a restless man, and our relationship certainly wasn't a clearly defined thing to me at that point.
I skidded around the subject. "How long are you planning to stay in these parts, Tom? "
He gave me one of those slow, meaningful smiles of his. "Till my plans are settled," he replied. "That might be any time now."
What did he mean by "plans"? Was I to be included in them? Or did he look forward exclusively to his work? Before he had come to Medora he had finished a long run with the Miller Brothers' 101 Ranch Wild West Show. During our rides he would tell me about that tremendous ranch with its half-million acres of land.
He told me that while he was in training for the 101 Ranch Show, he was strolling down the street of the nearby town one night, and as he walked along kept practicing the art of making a quick draw with his gun and "throwing it down" on imaginary targets. When he came to an alley, to his surprise, two rough-looking men came out with their hands up! As it turned out they were a couple of robbers at work on the back door of a hardware store! Through sheer coincidence he had drawn his gun, pointed it directly at them, and thus held them for the law.
Aside from glimpses of his past at that time I only got one other episode out of him-about his career as one of the Rough Riders in the Philippines. He told me that he was with a detachment sent out on a scouting trip into the jungles. There they were set upon by the enemy and several of them were killed. It took Tom days to make his way back to camp. When he arrived he found his buddies, who had assumed him either killed or captured, dividing up his personal possessions among themselves.
"I got about half sore when they did that!" grinned Tom.
During Christmas week Tom scarcely left my side while we participated in the exhausting but exhilarating celebration that lasted from Christmas to New Year's Day, and encompassed almost the entire ranching community before we were finished.
The celebration began with a big square dance. I was itching to show off my dancing accomplishments to Tom and was in a state of feverish anticipation while the guests kept arriving on horseback all day in groups of two to ten. They traveled through an endless snow falling from leaden skies. In the winter people did not travel alone in the badlands. But they did travel, under any conditions, when there was fun to be had or work to be done.
It's hard to believe that the dance lasted almost twenty-four hours. We danced in relays. After a two- or three-hour sprint on the floor we would lie down and rest while another group wore themselves out on the mountain waltzes and polkas and the stamping of square dances that rocked the ranch house.
I whirled and pranced joyously in Tom's arms while the caller sang out such typical calls of those days as:
I thought it was going to be the perfect night.
"Olive," Tom said during an intermission, "what do you expect to do with your life? "
Here it comes, I thought somewhat fearfully.
"That depends," I said evasively. I had visions of Tom kneeling on the floor and asking for my hand.
"I suppose you'll be getting married one of these days," he said. "That's about all women think about, isn't it? "
I flushed. I didn't know whether he was laughing under that stony expression or not. "Maybe some women do," I said.
"But not you, huh?" he said tauntingly. "Well, I guess there are advantages to staying single too-even for a woman. Single life sure doesn't hurt a man much."
I was furious as I looked at his unrevealing face. But his dark eyes were twinkling provocatively as he swept me off to another dance.
The game of evasion went on until New Year's Day, when the week-long celebration at the Short ranch came to a roistering end. By that time, I had completed my selection of the horses I was going to buy from the Shorts. Bill McCarty, who had been a guest at the Shorts' all week and who was an old friend of Tom's, invited me then to spend a week at his ranch to look over his stock.
"I don't expect you'll be needing me over there," laughed Luke, as he left to return to Medora with Nels and Katrine.
Everyone, it seemed, already thought it a foregone conclusion that Tom and I were a "pair" and that the ultimate outcome was inevitable. Everyone except me. I was in a state of complete confusion.
If Tom ever was going to say anything, the "short" twenty-mile ride along the Little Missouri River to Bill's ranch should have provided the opportunity. Midway, I reined up to rest.
"This is certainly a lonely looking country," I remarked while gazing around at the vast endlessness of the snow-shrouded buttes. In that bleak dead whiteness it seemed hardly possible that this treeless land was a myriad reflection of red, blue and yellow mustard in the summer and that the nutritive matting of buffalo grass that supported the vast stock-raising ranches would once again appear in the plains.
"No country's really lonely when you're around your own kind of people," Tom remarked.
I nodded in agreement and waited for him to designate me as "his kind of people." But nothing came. The heat of anger rose in me, despite the cold weather, and I heard Tom chuckle under his breath as we rode on.
Our week at Bill McCarty's place was a week of languid, gentle quiet, with one exception. One morning Tom, Bill, and I were out moving around the corrals when I spotted a beautiful black horse alone in a small enclosure, moving with great grace and nervous energy. When it reared its handsome head, I said to Bill, "There's a horse I'd like to have."
He grinned. "Not that one. He's a killer! Nobody's ever been able to break him yet and one of the boys went to the hospital with a broken back trying to do it. I'm thinking of turning him loose when the weather warms up."
Tom moved over to the enclosure and eyed the horse.
"Have your men saddle him up and get him out of the corral," he said. "I can break him for you."
Bill shook his head. "I don't want you to get hurt, Tom. He's a demon has a habit of rearin' up and falling back on his rider."
The upshot was that the horse was finally saddled and with the help of two men taken outside of the enclosure for Tom to show his stuff.
"Never try breaking a horse like this in a corral," advised Tom. "Maybe that's one reason your boys couldn't do it."
Several of the ranch hands and Mrs. McCarty had gathered around to watch.
Tom moved over and with lightning speed jumped into the saddle. At the same instant he gave a piercing yell and banged the horse's head with his sombrero.
The horse was so startled at Tom's method that instead of rearing up and doing its tricks, it started off across the plains as though trying to escape from the devil.
Tom and the horse disappeared behind a clump of trees. About a half-hour later he came back on a very different "black demon." The stallion was flecked with white froth from what had very evidently been a long and strenuous gallop. Apparently it was as gentle as a kitten.
"Well, I'll be danged! " I heard Bill McCarty mutter.
Tom rode the horse into the corral, and after giving it a soothing pat on the neck and a few words of friendship, came over to me with a grin. "You can buy him now, Olive."
In the afternoons Tom and Bill generally had target practice on the brown prairie chickens that rested in clusters on the stockade. Tom was a crack shot.
The evenings were full of song, a frontier tradition I was used to and loved. We sat before the great roaring fire while Bill played the banjo and his hired man Mack strummed a guitar. We must have covered every old favorite that week. Tom was partial to Stephen Foster and he sang the famous ballads in a rich baritone voice full of emotional nuances.
The McCartys had a pet hog, a big Poland China they called Charlie. It would come to the kitchen door, grunt and push at it. Someone would let it in and it would go over and lie down in front of the fireplace.
One evening Tom looked over at the sleeping hog and said, "Let's sing one for Charlie. It'll save getting up and putting him out." But the singing did not cause Charlie to budge. In fact, he seemed to like it.
At last the final selection of horses had been made and there was simply no excuse for me to stay on at the ranch house. Tom and I returned to Medora, where we were swept up in another round of activities. Nels and Katrine seemed to be in conspiracy to keep us so busy that Tom and I scarcely had a moment to be alone together.
I was due to go home on January 20, 1909, and the calendar turned with a swift, cruel rush toward that date. Each day my hopes fell another notch.
The crowning blow fell on January 19, the day before I was to leave. Nels and Katrine had arranged a big farewell dance for me that night at the Cowboy Hotel and I assumed, of course, that Tom would be my escort.
I was amazed and furious when Tom announced to me that he was taking a Medora woman-a young widow-to the dance.
"I kind of have an obligation to her," he explained with a perfectly straight face. "She was the wife of an old friend of mine. Hope you don't mind."
My face blazed, then blanched. "Mind?" I forced a weak smile. "Why should I mind, Tom? "
I heeled quickly and flew to my room, thinking bitterly that when I left on the following day I would have to start putting Tom Mix out of my mind and heart for good. I was too angry even to be suspicious when Luke asked me to go to the dance with him. Despite my quavering emotions, I determined to have a good time. If it was the last thing I ever did, I would show Tom Mix that I simply didn't care!
I took supreme pleasure in informing Tom, when he asked me to dance, that my program was filled, entirely filled!
Right after that he disappeared and so did Nels Nichols. I had not as yet seen the "widow" Tom had taken to the dance. Had he gone out with her somewhere?
I flitted around the ballroom floor, laughing brightly and telling myself that I was having the best time of my life. When I speak of "ballroom" it was really the dining room of the Cowboy Hotel, but the chairs and tables had been pushed back against the wall and the floor had been waxed, and there were plenty of lanterns and bunting to bring gaiety and color to the place.
While Luke was waltzing with me, he saw me looking around the room.
"What's the matter, Olive?" he asked. "Looking for someone? "
I sensed he was trying to be cute. "No. Just wondering what happened to Nels and Katrine."
The moment came for the playing of "Good Night, Ladies," and Luke and I got our coats and left the hotel.
It was bitter cold outside, but there was a full moon and the stars glittered like diamonds. The Nicholses" house was only a short distance from the Cowboy Hotel. The dance had left me tired and moody and I paid little attention to Luke's occasional remarks.
We reached the house and Luke bade me good night. As I started up the steps I heard the sound of talking and laughing, and turned to see Tom, Nels and Katrine come up the path.
Nels bustled up to me. "Come on, Olive," he boomed. "We've got business to take care of in the kitchen."
He led me through the immense living room and into the spacious kitchen. As usual some of the ranch hands were sleeping on the floor along the walls, snuggled up in their round-up beds and apparently utterly oblivious to anything.
When I entered the kitchen, followed by Tom and Katrine, Mattie, the housekeeper, was placing a big cake on the kitchen table which was already laden with cold cuts of meat and different edibles. Something over my head attracted my attention and I looked up to see some Chinese lanterns dangling from strings tied to the beamed ceiling.
"What's this? " I demanded. "Who's celebrating what?
Katrine looked as if she were about to cry, and Tom looked very stern.
Nels Nichols walked over in front of a big sideboard which stood against the wall.
"All right, Tom," he said. "You and Olive stand over here in front of me. Katrine, you stand next to Olive."
Tom reached out his hand to me. I went over and stood next to him facing Nels Nichols.
Another fun game, I decided. I started to giggle.
"Don't laugh, Olive," Tom said. "This is serious business!"
Somewhere in another room someone was playing the Mendelssohn "Wedding March" on the piano.
Nels started reading from a little black book. I didn't pay much attention to what he was saying until he asked solemnly: "Do you, Olive Stokes, take this man to be thy wedded husband, to live together under God's ordinance...?"
As Nels Nichols pronounced the words I stared at him and then looked at Tom. He was gazing very sternly at Nels. I glanced around at Katrine. She was wiping her eyes.
"All right," I decided to myself, "I'll go along with the fun." So I replied in a loud, firm voice, "I do!" and smiled to show I could be a good sport.
"... I now pronounce you... man and wife…."
"What's next?" I asked with a little laugh. At that instant Tom reached over and put his arm around me and kissed me.
I pulled back, my face crimson. "Say...!" I sputtered, not knowing whether to be mad or what.
"Come on, everybody!" exclaimed Tom, as he shoved me toward the table. "Let's eat, drink and be married! "
Later that night when I discovered something I had never known before- that Nels Nichols was a Justice of the Peace and that his brother was County Clerk- and that the reason Tom, Nels and Katrine had left the dance was to carry out a put-up job of getting the marriage license and prepare for the wedding- I was too dazed to think straight.
The whole world was a peculiarly weird and yet somehow lovely maze. A voice kept saying: "You're married to Tom.... You're married to Tom....
But I did manage to say to him, "The least thing you could have done was to say you loved me!"
Olive Stokes Mix, with Eric Heath, The Fabulous Tom Mix, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc.), 1957, pages 1-21.
© 1999, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)
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