Heart of the West (4 page)

She had seen a drawing once of such a machine in the newspaper. It was an ordinary, or a bicycle, as they were coming to be called. The advertisement had claimed it could distance the best horse in a day's run, although seeing one now, Clementine wondered how a person even managed to stay astraddle of it.

The monstrous front wheel of this ordinary was nose-high to a man. Connected to it by a curved pipelike rod was a small trailer wheel the size of a plate. The wheelman perched on a tiny leather saddle atop the big wheel, his feet pedaling madly. His mustached mouth was open in a scream of terror or laughter, Clementine couldn't tell which over the noise he was leaving in his wake. Vehicles and pedestrians all scattered before him like frightened quail.

He bounced across the tracks directly in the path of a trolley. The horses reared in their traces, and the driver's arm pumped hard as he rang the warning bell. The bicycle narrowly avoided slamming into an elegant lady in an osier wood phaeton and struck a street-cleaning wagon instead, sending the wagon up onto the sidewalk with its sprinkler spinning in a wild arc and raining water onto the shoppers in front of Harrison's Dry Goods.

Miraculously the bicycle was still upright, although wobbling now like a drunken sailor. It hit an awry cobblestone and leaped the curb onto the sidewalk, narrowly missed a whip peddler's stand, clipped the back end of a chestnut cart, and headed for Clementine Kennicutt.

She told her legs to move, but they wouldn't obey. It never occurred to her to scream, for she had been taught to retain her dignity regardless of the provocation. Instead she simply stood there and watched the giant wheel come straight at her as if someone had aimed and shot it.

At last the man noticed her in his path and tried to swerve by yanking the wheel crosswise. The ordinary balked at this rough treatment. The tire shrieked as it skidded on the granite sidewalk, and Clementine got a whiff of hot rubber before the wheelman sailed over the handlebars and slammed into her hard, knocking her flat on her back and driving the air from her lungs.

Her chest strained as she wheezed, and her eyes opened wide onto the candy shop's awning. The green-and-white-striped canvas billowed and blurred.

"Well, hell." A man's face hovered above her, blocking out the light and the awning. It was a nice face with strong bones and a wide mouth framed by a mustache that was thick and long and the golden brown of maple syrup.

"Well, hell," he said again. He pushed a big soft gray hat off his forehead, uncovering a hank of sun-tipped light brown hair. He wore a strange, bemused look, like a little boy who's suddenly awakened from a nap and doesn't know where he is. Clementine had the strangest impulse to pat him on the cheek as if she would comfort him. Yet he was the one at fault, sailing cat-in-the-pan over the big front wheel of his ordinary and into her.

She pushed herself up onto her elbows, and he grabbed her arm. "Take it slow and easy, now," he said. In the next instant he lifted her to her feet with one hand and a hard strength that she felt all the way to the bone.

"Thank you for assisting me, sir." Her plain black straw hat was tilted askew over one eye, and he helped her to straighten it. She started to thank him for that as well and then lost her thought as she stared into eyes the color of a summer sky and filled with laughter.

"I'm sorry I stampeded over you like that," he said.

"What? Oh, no, please... No harm was done."

His mouth broke into a smile that blazed across his face like the explosion of light from a photographer's flash. "Not to you, maybe. And not to me. But just look at my poor bicycle."

The big wheel's spokes were bent, and the red India rubber tire lay in the gutter. But she barely gave the ordinary a glance. I must be dreaming this, she thought. Surely she must be dreaming; otherwise how would a cowboy have found his way into Boston, Massachusetts?

His pants of rough and riveted canvas were tucked into tooled leather boots with elevated heels. His blue flannel shirt gaped open at the collar and a loosely knotted red handkerchief sagged from a throat that was strong and sun-browned. He needed silver spurs on his boots and a pair of pearl-handled six-shooters, and he could have stepped straight off one of Sho-na's souvenir cards.

He kicked at the loose tire with the pointed toe of one of those boots and shook his head, although the bright laughter never left his face. "These things have got more pitch to them than a Montana cayuse."

"Montana..." The wonder of him stole her breath. His talk was all drawl and it resounded through her blood like the pipe organ in her father's church. "What is a Montana cayuse?"

"A cow pony that can run all day and turn on a nickel, and is all wild."

He had a way of smiling, she thought, that was just with his eyes. She stared into his smiling eyes as his long brown fingers tugged loose the knot in the kerchief around his neck. He pulled it off, then leaned toward her. He took one corner of the soft cotton and rubbed it along the side of her mouth. He did it gently, like the brush of a feather across silk. "Grease," he said.

"Oh." She swallowed so hard her throat made a funny clicking noise. "Are you real?"

"Last time I pinched myself I yelped, so I guess I must be real."

"I meant are you a real cowboy?" she said, and she smiled.

Clementine had no idea what her mouth did when she smiled. The man stared at her, not moving, not breathing, looking as if he'd been hit between the eyes with his own ordinary. "I, uh... I'm... well, hell."

"And if you are a cowboy, then where are your silver spurs and your
chaparejos
and your fringed vest and your pearl-handled six-shooters? And why are you riding an ordinary instead of a cayuse?" she said, and then she smiled again so that he would know she was teasing.

His head fell back and he laughed, a wild, joyous sound. "I made a bet with my cousin that an old bronco-busting cow-puncher like me could break in a Boston bicycle and look the part while he's doing it. But if I'd've put on all those duds you mentioned, I'd be looking like a greenhorn on his first roundup."

"You make me smile, the way you talk," she said, only she wasn't smiling this time. She was looking at him, lost in looking at him.

The laughter left his face and he stared back at her for the space of three slow, thunderous heartbeats. She was surprised he couldn't hear it, the beating of her heart.

He reached up and rubbed the place alongside her mouth where the grease had been. "This cousin of mine, he's got a whole factory full of these bicycles. He's putting on a demonstration race tomorrow, and somehow I've let myself get talked into riding in it. Why don't you come along with me and watch me make a fool of myself some more?"

She had never seen a race of any kind, but she thought they must be wonderful things. Of course her father would never allow her to attend such a vulgar event, let alone in the company of a man who was a stranger to the Kennicutt family. "We haven't been properly introduced."

"Gus McQueen, ma'am." He swept off his big western hat with a flourish and performed a sweeping bow that was self-mocking and yet oddly graceful for such a large man. "I own a ranch in the middle of the RainDance country, where I run a few hundred head of scraggly cows. I also got me twenty percent interest in a silver mine, which so far as I know has produced nothing but muck and gumbo. So I guess you could say my prospects are of the promising sort, and my antecedents are... well, if not strictly respectable, at least there's none in jail that I know of."

His gaze dropped to the hat he held in his hands. He pulled the soft brim around and around through his fingers. "As for myself, the man—I don't lay claim to being a saint, but I don't lie or cheat at cards or drink whiskey or chase after loose women. I've never put my brand on another man's calf, and when I give my word, I keep it. And I..." His fingers tightened on his hat, as if he struggled for the words to impress upon her that there was more to him than the cowboy she saw. He couldn't know that what she saw she thought was wonderful.

But when he looked back up at her, his eyes were laughing. "And I'm not usually one of those mannerless rascals that cusses in front of a lady, even if you did manage to pull three
hells
out of my mouth in the space of as many minutes."

She tried to act indignant, but inside she wanted to clap her hands and spin around on her toes and laugh over the delight of him. "You are unfair, sir, to lay the blame for your sins at my feet."

"Oh, but it is all your fault, ma'am, every bit of it. For I've never in all of my life come across a girl prettier than you. And when you smile... when you smile, my, but you are truly something wonderful to see."

He was the wonder. The way he talked and the brightness of his laughter that was like a glow on his face. And the way he simply was: built tall and broad-shouldered and strong, as a cowboy was meant to be.

"Now that I've given you my name," he said, "why don't we make it a fair swap?"

"What? Oh, it's Clementine... Clementine Kennicutt."

"And will you come with me and watch me race tomorrow, Miss Clementine Kennicutt?"

"Oh, no, no... I could never."

"Of course you can."

A strange, tingly excitement bubbled inside her. She didn't smile at him again; she only wanted to.

"What time do you race, Mr. McQueen?" she heard herself ask.

"Straight up noon."

"Do you know where the Park Street Church is, just down the block from here?" The daring of what she was doing left her lightheaded, making all of her feel lighter than air, making her fly. "I'll meet you beneath the elms in front of the Park Street Church tomorrow at eleven."

He put his hat back on and he looked at her from beneath the shadowed brim of it, so that she couldn't see the expression in his eyes. "Well, I don't know if I feel right about that," he said. "Not meeting your father and getting his permission to court you proper."

"He would never give his permission, Mr. McQueen." She punctuated the words with sharp shakes of her head, while her throat grew so tight with wrenching disappointment that she could barely breathe. "Never. Never."

He looked down at her, stroking his mustache with the pad of one thumb. She waited, staring back up at him with her still, wide-open gaze. She wanted to see that race, and she wanted other things, too, things having to do with him that made her stomach clench with excitement. She wanted to see him again, to talk with him and make him laugh.

"I suppose," he finally said, "that we'll have to do it your way."

He held out his hand, and she placed hers within it. His hand was large and rough, and it swallowed hers. He rubbed his thumb over her palm, as if he knew of the scars hidden by her glove and was trying to erase them. "Just one more thing... Will you marry me, Miss Clementine Kennicutt?"

She stiffened and pulled her hand from his. Something caught at her chest, something that tore through her and hurt and left her feeling empty. "You are ridiculing me."

"Oh, no, never that. Not that I don't enjoy a good joke— there's too much pain and sadness in living not to crack wise about it every now and then. But when things get real bad..." He flashed a sudden smile. "Say I'm trailing cows through a blue norther and the snow is stinging my face and the wind is howling like a lost soul in hell, it's the dreams I make up in my head that see me through it. Dreams like having someone waiting at home for me, with a fire going and a pot of some good-smelling thing cooking on the stove. A gal, say, with wheat-colored hair and big green eyes..." His words trailed off as he stared at her face, and though she blushed, she could not look away.

He shook his head, his eyes still smiling at her. "Nope, when it comes to my dreams, Miss Clementine Kennicutt, you'll always find me a dead serious man."

"Dreams..." she echoed.

He raised his hat. "Tomorrow, Miss Kennicutt."

He lifted the battered ordinary out of the gutter as if it weighed no more than a stocking stuffed with feathers. She watched him walk away from her, watched the people in his path part before his wide shoulders, watched his gray western hat bobbing among black silk top hats and beaver bowlers, watched until there was nothing left of him to see.

She climbed the broad granite steps and passed through the columned entrance of the Tremont House in a daze. A gentleman does not ask a girl he scarcely knows, knows not at all, to be his wife. A gentleman is one who has known you forever, whose parents have known your parents forever. A gentleman wears a frock coat and a top hat, and he does not ride an ordinary pell-mell through the streets. A gentleman—

Her mother's voice, though never loud, still managed to reach her over the refined whispers and rustling silk in the hotel lobby. "Clementine, what on earth has happened to you? Your bonnet is askew and you've
dirt on
your face, and look, there's a rip in the sleeve of your new jersey."

Clementine blinked and saw her mother and Aunt Etta standing beside her. "I was struck by an ordinary," she said.

"Gracious." Julia Kennicutt expelled a sharp breath, and Aunt Etta echoed her gasp. "Those devil-driven wheels will be the death of us all," Julia said and her sister clucked her agreement. "They shouldn't be allowed on the streets. Only a hooligan would even think of driving such a... a boneshaker."

To hear slang on her mother's lips nearly shocked a smile out of Clementine. "He's not a hooligan," she said, and then a laugh did roll up and out of her throat, a laugh that was loud and rather unseemly. And quite shocking, coming as it did from a girl who rarely laughed. "He's a cowboy."

The clock on the square white tower of the Park Street Church showed that it lacked five minutes to eleven. Clementine pulled her cloak close around her neck. It was more seasonably cold than yesterday. The big elms cast deep shadows onto the sidewalk, and a stiff breeze blew in off the bay.

She paced the length of the wrought-iron fence that separated the street from the tombstones of the Old Granary Burial Ground. She looked again at the clock on the tower. A long, agonizing minute had passed.