Heart of the West (27 page)

And that kiss... She couldn't bear to think of it, of what he had made her feel. She didn't want to feel such things for her husband's brother. She was as much afraid of that kiss, of him, as she was of dying.

She didn't want to go to him, yet she found herself watching her feet as they crossed the yard, heading for the barn. It was a rainstormy day, the clouds dense and dark and heavy. And the wind... it roared through the valley, making the cottonwoods groan and give. It whipped foamy spray off the river. And it whipped up such terrible frenzied achings within her that she was sure the wolf's madness coursed through her blood.

Weak light seeped through the open doors of the barn. A swallow fluttered past her cheek and disappeared into its nest up in the dark rafters. Inside, the air was damp and cool. Straw rustled, a horse nickered softly. She had never ventured as far back as the stall where Rafferty slept when he stayed at the ranch. When he wasn't with the woman of the violet dress and red-tasseled shoes.

At the moment, he was outside the entrance to the smithy. He had his gray gelding's forehoof up on his thigh and was scraping caked mud and dung out of it with a hoof-pick. She remembered the day she'd seen him for the first time. He'd been half naked and covered with the orphaned calf's birth blood, and he had hunkered down on his heels in the yard and scratched his dog behind the ears and laughed like a young boy. And she had hated him that day. More than she had hated the mud and the sod-roofed shack and the hot, restless wind, she had hated him. She felt sorry for him now, and she thought with some satisfaction that he wouldn't like it even a little bit-— her feeling sorry for him.

She looked down at his bent back. At the play of muscle beneath the thin chambray shirt. At the way his hair folded over his collar in soft dark curls. At the way he... was.

"You found him," she said.

He was quiet for so long she didn't think he would answer. Then he straightened up and faced her. There wasn't any pain or sorrow in his eyes. There was nothing. They were flat and cold and hard. If he felt anything at all, it was buried so deep no one was ever going to find it.

"He'd gotten to be pretty much of a useless old dog anyway," he said, his voice flat and cold and hard as well. "Blind as a snubbin' post. I shoulda put him down a long time ago."

"Did you shoot him clean, like the snake?"

His shoulders lifted in a careless shrug, but she thought his mouth tightened just a little bit. "I owed him that much."

She drew in a deep breath of air that was sour-sweet with the smell of hay and dung and sweaty horse. She nodded once, then turned on her heel and left him.

If he'd done it for Atta Boy, he would do it for her.

Gus behaved as if that day at the river had never been.

He talked to her constantly about the house: "I'm giving it two bedrooms, Clem, for when the babies start to come. And we can always keep adding on rooms—if we have a baker's dozen."

And about the ranch: "I don't care what Zach says. We're never going to amount to more than a cocklebur outfit here if we don't mix some grade blood with our herd. I've sent back to Chicago for some breeding catalogs."

And only once, obliquely, about the terrible dangers that lurked in the wilderness that was Montana: "I can't be with you every minute of the day, girl. So I'm going to teach you how to use the Colt, and I want you to take it with you from now on every time you leave the cabin."

As if by speaking enough about the future he could ensure that there would be one.

But on the day his brother found Atta Boy, the dreamshine left Gus's face. He watched her go about her wifely duties that afternoon, the cooking of supper and the cleaning up afterward, as if he expected her to start convulsing and foaming at the mouth at any moment. That night, with rain thudding like galloping hooves on the sod roof, and the noise and flash of thunder and lightning, she awoke to find him leaning over her, intently searching her face. He wasn't ruthless with himself, like his brother. He allowed himself to feel, and when he did, he wasn't always able to keep it from showing.

She wrapped her arm around his neck, pulled his head down to hers, and kissed him hard on the mouth.

She could feel a fine trembling going on deep inside him. He touched his mouth where, a moment before, her lips had been.

"What'd you do that for?"

"Why were you awake and staring at me in the middle of the night?"

"Why'd you kiss me like that for?"

"I guess I must have gotten the rabies and gone crazy. Now you got it, so we can both go crazy together."

"Stop it, Clementine."

She pressed her hand against his cheek. "My husband. I love you."
I have to love you. I am going to make myself love you.
He lowered his head, pressing his face into her neck. His words were muffled by her hair. "I've been waiting forever to hear you say that, and now you have, and all I can think of is that you might die."

"I'm not going to die." She said it with conviction because she thought it to be so. Death was a stranger to her, and so she could not really believe in it.

Her hands moved over his broad shoulders and down his strong back. She wrapped her arms around his waist and held him tightly against her. Held him fiercely. "Tell me how it's going to be, Gus. Tell me how we're going to make the ranch into the best spread in all of western Montana. Tell me about the house you're building and how happy we'll be in it, you and I and all the babies we are going to have. Tell it all to me again."

She held her breath, waiting for him to speak. But all she heard was the wind and the drumming of the rain on the roof. And the drips where the sod leaked. Then she felt his chest move as he breathed, and she heard him building dreams out of words. And as she listened, she held him close to her heart, as if she could fill up the loneliness by an act of will.

"Tell me that one story, Gus. Where you are riding through a snowstorm and there's a warm fire waiting for you at home and stew bubbling on the stove and—"

"A wife with hair the color of a wheat field in August and eyes like a pine forest at dusk."

"Yes..." The trouble with dreams, she thought, was that sometimes they came true.

Lightning flashed and he raised his head. She looked up at him through a blur of memory, seeing him as she had four months ago, when she was someone else. His was a good face, with strong bones and a wide mouth framed by a mustache that was not so thick and long that it could hide his smile. And his eyes, those laughing eyes, were as blue and open as the Montana sky.

The cowboy of her dreams.

She could love him; she would make it so. And she would never allow herself to think again about that day at the river.

CHAPTER 12

Clementine tilted her head pack and looked up at the shanty's sod roof. A bed of sweet pink phlox had taken root there and burst into bloom overnight. A roof of flowers. The thought was so beautiful it made her smile.

Last night's storm had blown away, and the sun shone its heart out in a sky too blue to be real. It would have been a perfect day, but for the wind.

Clementine had taken a bucket down to the south meadow to gather the wild strawberries that grew there, before they could all be eaten by the jays and the flickers. Red juice stained her fingers, lips, and tongue. The berries had tasted as sweet as the sod-roof flowers smelled. But it was too much sweetness too early in the morning, for they had left her stomach feeling queasy.

She heard a murmur of voices now coming from inside the cabin, and she paused at the door. Gus and his brother were usually out chasing cows this time of day, trying to keep the cattle from straying off the range and Iron Nose from straying onto it.

"You sure he had it, Zach? You didn't just shoot him because—"

"He had it."

Gus let out a long, shaky breath. "Well, then, don't you reckon she'd be showing signs of it by now, too?"

"Hell, brother, how're you ever gonna know? She's always acted crazier than popping corn on a hot skillet."

She stepped across the threshold with a deliberately heavy tread. They sat at the table, nursing steaming cups of coffee. The smell of the strong brew battled with the sweet scent of the phlox coming through the open door. Gus's head snapped up as she entered. He studied her intently, as though looking for signs of impending madness.

When she walked past Rafferty she caught the glint of laughter in his eyes, and she knew he'd sensed her all along, hovering outside the door, listening...
She's always acted crazier than popping corn on a hot skillet.
Hunh. She became flustered when he teased her. Gus rarely teased her, and her father certainly hadn't ever done so. It was a strangely intimate thing, this teasing. She wasn't sure she liked it.

She could feel the men's eyes on her as she set the bucket of berries in the sink. She spun around, hands planted on her hips. "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing," Gus mumbled down into his coffee. He blew on it, took a sip.

"You got berry juice all over your mouth, Boston," Rafferty said. His eyes weren't laughing at her anymore.

A gust of wind blasted the cabin. Clementine turned back to the sink just as a big piece of sod, soaked by last night's rain and shaken loose by the wind, fell with a sodden splat into her bucket of fresh-picked berries.

"Oh,
drat
this wretched roof!" she exclaimed. Wild laughter tickled her throat and she bit her lip. The tame curse, spoken in her fine diction, had sounded silly even to her own ears.

She whirled and caught them staring at her again, although they both quickly averted their faces.

She seized the bucket and advanced on them, growling and baring her teeth like Aunt Etta's snappish little terrier. When she got close enough she lifted the bucket high in the air and dumped muddy sod and mashed strawberries on top of her husband's head.

There was a stunned silence, and then the mud and berries began to slide off Gus's head and shoulders and onto the table. He stared up at her, his eyes wide, and he couldn't have looked more shocked if she had truly turned into a rabid beast like the wolf.

A great whoop of laughter built and built in her chest. She pressed her lips together and clutched at her waist and collapsed bent over onto the coffee-case couch. But she couldn't stop it. It burst out of her, a great loud sound of joy and wonder.

She laughed and laughed. She rocked back and forth, her feet coming off the floor and kicking at the air. Her hair came loose and her face turned red and her laughter filled the cabin.

She lay back limp against the old soogan padding. Her eyes brimmed with tears as she stared at her husband, at the mud and fruit that decorated his hair. She clapped a hand over her mouth.

Gus picked a muddy strawberry off his forehead. "Well, hell. That wasn't funny, girl."

Laughter burst out of her nose in a most unladylike snort.

Rafferty cleared his throat; he looked around the cabin and then at her, his expression wary. Gus half straightened off the nail-keg stool. "Clementine, girl, are you..."

Snorting and gurgling, laughing out loud, she jumped up and ran out the door.

She ran as if she were being chased by heel flies. She had never run like this before, never picked up her skirts and run all out, stretching her legs, straining her lungs. Running, running, running, with the wind blowing in her hair, pressing against her ears, legs pumping high, until she thought that maybe she wasn't touching the ground at all but flying above it.

She ran until she reached her favorite spot on the ranch, the meadow where the buffalo grass grew as high as her knees now and the willows bent thick and heavy over the river. She threw herself down into the grass, letting the laughter come. It was as if she had waited her whole life for a reason to laugh and, once started, she couldn't stop.

She squinted against the dense sunlight. The grass seemed to tremble with the light and the wind. Strange feelings stirred deep within her belly. She pressed a hand to her stomach. Perhaps she would tell Gus that they might be going to have a baby. Now that she wasn't going to go mad.

She rolled over, burying her face in the grass, digging her fingers deep into the root-woven earth. She felt like the grass, rooted to the red Montana earth, but not so deep that she couldn't be ripped free if she wasn't careful. She pulled loose a great clump of the grass, as if to show herself how easily it could be done. She tossed it away and pressed her face into the exposed dirt. She smelled its ripeness, felt its coolness. This dirt that was Montana.

She hated this place. It was too big, this country, too raw and wild. There were times when she thought she would be crushed by it. And other times... Times when she looked out over the prairie and saw herself astride a wild cayuse, chasing her shadow over the empty miles of grass, riding and riding until she fell off the end of the world. Times when she looked at the big Montana sky and saw herself flying like an eagle, spreading her wings against the vast and empty blue and soaring on the tail of the wind. Flying high, high enough to touch the sun.

A hot-blooded woman just waitin' for an excuse to bust out.

She dug her fingers into the damp earth. She didn't want to bust out. She wanted to be safe, to belong. To have roots. She wanted to have babies, and she wanted Gus to love her, and to live a decent, moral life.

She wanted to find peace in her heart.

She smoothed her hands out, pressing them against the Montana dirt. She hated this place, and she feared it. And she loved it fiercely.

She laid her cheek on the cool earth and slept. When she awoke, the wind had died and the sun burned noon-bright and hot. She sat up, stretching, feeling languid and sore, and yet humming with an odd excitement. She had dumped a bucket of mud and berries on top of her husband's head, and laughed, and run, and slept away a morning—all wicked, irresponsible things. She knew she ought to feel guilty, but instead there was only a strange sense of wonder and repleteness that she sometimes felt after Gus made love to her.

She walked slowly back along the path she had pelted down hours before. She could almost hear the larch needles falling to earth. The sun melted and flowed over her like hot butter. As she climbed the snake fence, she saw a plum-colored shay parked in the yard and a woman speaking to Gus, a woman wearing a dress the same bright ruby red as the wild strawberries. A woman with hair like antique copper, as tarnished as her virtue.

Clementine watched them a moment through the shimmering heat ripples. She could tell by the stiff set of Gus's shoulders and the way his hands were jammed onto his hipbones that he was angry.

Gus cut off a furious spate of words as she came up to them. Hannah Yorke's gaze met hers. Two bright spots of color enhanced her rouged cheeks.

"Clementine," Gus said, "get on in the house—"

"Mrs. McQueen, wait." The woman took a step forward. She placed a hand on Clementine's arm, then dropped it immediately when Clementine stiffened. "One of the women who works for me... her little girl died of the measles yesterday. She won't let us bury her. I thought if you could take little Patsy's likeness for her to have as a keepsake it might ease things for her, help her to let the child go. I know it's a terrible imposition and a..." She looked at Gus, and bitterness pulled at her mouth. "Saphronie might be only a whore, as you say, but she loved her little girl same as any woman would."

"But of course I will come," Clementine said. She had never photographed a dead child, but she'd heard of it being done. It had been the fashion ten years ago to mount tintypes on gravestones. "It will take me only a moment to get my equipment."

But as she turned, Gus blocked her path. His face was set harder than she'd ever seen it before. "If you think I'm going to let you ride into Rainbow Springs and right up to that house of sin, sitting alongside the town harlot—"

"Gus, you can't mean to be so cruel. A woman has lost a child, her
baby.
If I can do something to help her through her grief—"

He gripped her arm, his fingers pressing through the heavy brown serge of her sleeve. "I forbid you to do this, girl."

She flung up her head and met his angry eyes. "You are hurting me."

He let her go, but that was all. "You are not going to—"

"But I am," she said. "I am going to ride into Rainbow Springs beside Mrs. Yorke. I shall go into her house and photograph that poor dead child, and you will not try to stop me."

They rode in silence all the way to Rainbow Springs, Clementine and the woman of the red-tasseled shoes. Clementine had seen those shoes when Hannah Yorke lifted her skirts high to climb into the shay. Had seen them as she braced her feet wide apart like a man, to drive the buggy over a road as rutted as a washboard. They were a harlot's shoes, yet she could not stop looking at them.

Mrs. Yorke pulled the shay up to the front gate of her house, which was by far the nicest in all the RainDance country, with its spool-railed gallery and fanciful gingerbread. She helped Clementine unload her equipment, all in silence except for a simple admonition to mind the steps.

Clementine paused on the gallery to savor the loveliness of the house. The wicker rocker with its blue-flowered cushion. The fanlight over the door, leaded with blue, red, yellow, and green glass that cast rainbows onto the painted white wood. The front windows lined with delicate lace curtains and decorated with pressed ferns on the panes. Clementine's gaze met Hannah Yorke's for a brief moment, and then she followed those red-tasseled shoes into the house of sin.

The air inside was cool and thick with the scent of lily of the valley perfume. She got a glimpse of the parlor through a green glass beaded curtain: thick wine-colored velvet drapes under tasseled valances, a medallion-backed sofa upholstered in gold brocade, a tree of life carpet. She followed Mrs. Yorke upstairs and down a hall papered in red flock and lit by a pair of fringe-shaded oil lamps. Murmurs of memories stirred within her, of other houses, of another life. Of the amenities and luxuries that she had fled from without understanding all that she would be giving up.

She passed by rooms with closed doors with shiny glass knobs. It was a large house, much too large for one person to live in alone. But then, Mrs. Yorke didn't always live in it alone. She tried to picture Gus's wild brother in this house. Rafferty, who had always seemed much too uncivilized even for the confines of a rough sod-roofed cabin.

An image flashed across her mind and was gone, like movement caught out the corner of one's eye, of that man and this woman of the red-tasseled shoes lying naked on a bed. A heat pulsated through her, and she felt the strangest awareness of her own body. Of the flesh of her thighs Ribbing together as she walked down the hall. Of her nipples, like smooth, hard pebbles beneath all her proper layers of clothes. Of a rippling deep in her belly, like a lake suddenly stirred by a gust of wind.

"She's in here," Mrs. Yorke said, and Clementine started. She blushed, sure that her sinful thoughts were as plain as the face on the moon to such a woman. A woman so worldly, so sinful herself.

They entered a small bedroom that smelled of camphor and hartshorn and, underneath, the sick-sweet stench of decay.

The dead child lay in a plain iron bed beneath a colorful flowerbasket petit point quilt. Her small golden head barely made a dent in the lace-slipped pillow. The room was quiet except for the tick of a long case clock and the sibilant whisper of a horsehair rocking chair, its curved slats rolling back and forth, back and forth, on the bare pine floor.

Mrs. Yorke knelt before the woman in the rocker and patted her knee awkwardly. The woman had her face buried in her hands. "Saphronie. I've brought Mrs. McQueen, who has kindly agreed to make little Patsy's photograph."

The woman made a strangled, mewling sound into her hands. An immense clot of pity clogged Clementine's throat. She turned away, toward the dead child in the bed.

Sunlight poured through the sheer lace curtains at the window, reflecting off the cranberry glass lamp that sat on a petticoat table beside the bed. The light gave the child's cheeks a glow of life. She was such a pretty little girl, it didn't seem possible...

A dizziness assailed Clementine, and a nausea, similar to what she'd felt after eating the strawberries. She hadn't known, hadn't understood what it would be like. She had felt sad for the woman and her loss, but only in the abstract, as one stranger thinks of another. Now she felt the woman's pain keenly. How can she bear it? Clementine wondered. How can any woman bear it?

She drew in a deep breath through her mouth as she studied the room. With the curtains pulled aside, enough light would come in the two large windows so that she wouldn't need to burn a magnesium wire, which produced a flat, harsh image. For this she wanted a gentle, soft effect. She didn't want the child to look dead in the photograph, but alive and sleeping.