Heart of the West (56 page)

Gus went and knelt beside her on Charlie's grave. He tried to gather her up against his chest as she fought him, screaming and flailing at him with her fists. But somehow he managed to wrap his arms around her and he hugged her tight, as if they both might die there. Rafferty felt his stomach ball up like a fist and he looked away.

The yard looked empty. He reckoned it would always look empty without Charlie running through it, laughing. He thought of the day he had tried to teach the boy how to rope by lassoing the chickens. Tears blurred his eyes and he blinked hard, pushing them back down.

She was still crying, but now Gus was crying too, so at least they were doing it together.

Rafferty started walking aimlessly out into the prairie. A jack-rabbit darted across his path and into a barrow pit. The dry, coughing song of the grasshoppers suddenly stopped, and a magpie flew by with a flash of white-barred wings. The wind stilled a moment, then gusted hard, bringing with it the smell of burning wood. An uneasiness prickled along his spine and he stopped, squinting into the south, from where the wind was coming, and where smears of smoke rose thick and black over the hunchbacked buttes.

The smoke blanketed the sky within minutes as the prairie fire raged their way. It grew so dark the lamps had to be lit. Curled, feathery ashes brushed softly against the windows like snow. Clouds built up, but they were empty of rain, and the wind blew so hot and thick that the very air seemed to ache and burn.

The men loaded butts filled with water and piles of blankets and gunnysacks that had been soaked in the river into a hay wagon and drove it out to fight the fire. They were back for more water within an hour, their faces scorched, their hair singed, their eyes full of worry. The third time they came back to fill the barrels, Clementine pushed Gus aside and climbed onto the wagon and took up the reins herself. Gus was too tired and scared to stop her.

She drove the wagon into a boiling cauldron of heat and smoke. They met animals fleeing ahead of the encroaching flames. Thick flocks of birds flew with the blistering wind, the flap of their wings sounding like hundreds of whipping flags; jackrabbits, grouse, and quail darted in frenzied circles as if they'd lost their heads; herds of deer and antelope galloped through the crackling dry grass, white tails flashing their alarm. And their own cattle stampeded through the brush-choked coulees and draws, tongues lolling and eyes white-ringed with fright. The fire ran with the unceasing wind and everything it caught in its path, it burned.

The flames licked through the tall grass like a thousand greedy, hungry tongues. Great columns of black smoke rolled up to meet the clouds, reflecting the fire back on itself like the copper bottom of a frypan. The sky rained burning cinders, and ashes seeped down like sifted flour.

Many of the other men of the RainDance country were at the front line of the fire. The Rocking R was the first of the homesteads threatened, but they knew the voracious flames would not be satisfied with only one family's land. They spoke about how the grass had been like tinder for weeks, how when it got that dry and hot, a spark from a campfire or the discharge of a gun could set the whole world ablaze. One man joked about how they could use a few Indians to do a rain dance right about now, but no one laughed. A couple of the valley's new sodbusters brought plows, and they dug a wide furrow to create a firebreak. But the flames spread too fast, the wind blew too hard, and the grass was too dry.

Gus ordered Clementine back to the house, but she stayed. The choking black smoke burned her throat raw and seared her eyes, the stench of burning grass stung her nose, and the falling cinders blistered her skin, but she stayed. And she fought the fire, standing beyond the firebreak with the men, flailing at the flying sparks with a water-soaked saddle blanket. She hated this country too much to let it beat her, and she loved it too much to let it be destroyed.

The fierce wind sent glowing cinders flying, swirling, jumping over the firebreak to spark dozens of small, flickering fires. They ran from one to the other, trying to tamp them down with the wet blankets and gunnysacks. Rafferty lassoed one of the fleeing cows, slit it open, and dragged it by his lariat along the ground, spilling its wet blood. Clementine thought he had never looked more like the devil come up from hell than in that moment, with his soot-blackened face and fierce yellow eyes and his dark, wind-tossed hair.

Fight fire with fire, the men said. Rafferty and Gus tied ropes soaked with coal oil to their saddle horns, set the ropes alight, and dragged them through the grass of their hay meadow, sacrificing their own land for the greater good. But the wind blew hard and gusty, and the grass everywhere around them was too dry.

By late afternoon the fire had spread into the timber. With an immense roar, it jumped into the crowns of the great larches and pines. They exploded like gunpowder, and the sky erupted into a volcano of burning cones and falling branches streaming death.

"We ain't ever stopping her now!" Rafferty shouted against the roar and crackle of the flames. Through shimmering heat waves, his tall frame loomed black against the wall of red light. "We're going to have to run for it!"

The rest of the men had already fled back to their own ranches and farms, wanting to save of theirs what they could. Clementine slapped at her smoldering skirt with her scorched blanket. "No! We can't let it beat us!" A burning twig landed in her hair and she carelessly brushed it aside with her blistered hand. The heat from the fire had enveloped her for so long that she felt seared, as empty and dry as a seed husk. "I won't let it beat us!"

Rafferty grabbed her arm, shouting into her ear as he dragged her over to the buckboard. "Drive back to the house and gather up pronto what you can't bear to lose! You've got maybe ten minutes!"

She looked wildly around her. "Gus! Where's Gus? I'm not going without you. Without both of you!"

"We'll be right behind you, Boston. Now move!"

He heaved her up like a sack of hops onto the wagon seat and slapped the horse's rump. The horse, wall-eyed with fright, bolted forward with a piercing whinny, so that Clementine had to scramble to gather up the reins.

She loaded her photographic equipment into the wagon first. Her eyes stung, and she panted hard against the breath-stealing heat. She took the quilt Hannah had given her and used it like a satchel as she ran through the house, frantically snatching up things: her Bible and the silver hairbrush etched with her initials, the dream hoop made for her by an Indian girl, a pair of elk-horn candlesticks that had been a wedding gift from the man she loved to his brother, a photograph album filled with images she would never be able to look at again, a heart-shaped sachet heavy with coins that hadn't saved her from a woman's hopes and fears, a woman's yearnings and losses. She paused in Charlie's room. Everything she had left of him was here, and yet they were all only things and they meant nothing without him to give them life.

Outside, the wind roared hot and loud, as if from a blast furnace, and the horse that was hitched to the wagon reared in the traces, whistling in fear. She grabbed Charlie's old candy box full of Indian arrowheads from underneath his bed and fled the house, the lumpy quilt banging against her legs and the vast, hard emptiness back inside her heart.

She felt the first deep, clutching pain as she was climbing back into the wagon. Her breath rushed from her chest as if she'd been kicked, and she doubled over, clutching at her heavy belly. She twisted her head around and looked over her shoulder at the galloping flames that leaped and licked at the sky and at the two horsemen galloping before them.

"No!" she screamed in rage and fear. Screaming against the cramping pains, screaming against the roaring wall of fire that consumed her men, screaming against the belching black plumes of smoke that swirled like a gauzy enveloping shroud around her eyes.

Screaming against Montana.

CHAPTER 23

The heavy pounding reverberated through the still house. Hannah stumbled down the stairs as she belted a wool wrapper around her waist. "I'm coming!" she shouted, but the door continued to shake beneath the force of the blows. "Heavens, I'm coming!"

She flung open the door. Gus McQueen stood on her porch, his big shoulders blocking out the first rays of a rising sun. "I want to see my wife."

Behind him Rafferty was coming up the path, boots crunching on the frost-stiffened grass. A cold wind ruffled the river and the lemon yellow leaves of the aspens. Two saddle horses were hitched to her fence, and three packhorses.

Hannah pushed her breath out in a deep sigh. "Oh, Gus... she only just now fell asleep." And Clementine so rarely slept.

All day long she lay in Hannah's big bed, fighting for the babe that still clung to life within her womb, and she mourned. But she didn't sleep, and she rarely spoke.

"I expect she'll be wanting to tell me good-bye, though," Gus said. The lines of strain around his eyes and mouth made him look tougher, older. A muffled choking sound rumbled up from deep in his throat, as if he'd just swallowed something bitter. "But then, maybe she won't, seeing as how she's spent the last two months wishing me in hell."

Hannah opened her mouth to deny his words. Then the full sense of what he'd said struck her. "Leaving? You can't leave her now, you fool man. Damn you, Gus McQueen, where in hell are you going?" she shouted to his back, for he had pushed his way in without waiting for her to step aside and was now striding two at a time up her stairs.

"Wolfing," Rafferty answered for him.

Hannah swung around to him, shock pulling at her face. He had brought the crisp smell and cold of the late October air in with him. She shivered, drawing her wrapper up close around her throat.
Wolfing.

The gray wolves spent their summers in pairs up in the timbered mountains, where they whelped their young in caves or under large rocks. But when it turned cold they collected in big packs and migrated down to the plains to follow the buffalo, except that the great buffalo herds were mostly all gone now. Now the wolves preyed on sheep and cattle, and so there were men who preyed on them. Men who poisoned and skinned the wolves for the cash bounties the stockmen's associations paid for their pelts.

Next to whoring, it was the lowest, filthiest way to make a dollar that Hannah knew of.

Rafferty's gaze had followed his brother up the stairs, and for the flash of a heartbeat, a deep, hard-suppressed longing tightened his face.

Hannah turned away, shutting her eyes against the pressure of a thousand unshed tears.

"He's running away," she said. "Away from Charlie's death and the ranch burning and the trouble in their marriage. This wolfing is just an excuse. Gus is running, and you're running with him."

Rafferty sighed and tugged his hat lower on his head. In his long-tailed black sourdough coat, with the heavy weight of the gun hanging easily from his slim hips, with a three-day growth of beard roughening his cheeks, and with his long, dark hair brushing his shoulders, he already looked wild and mean enough to be a wolfer. Wolfers had to be mean to do what they did, and to survive a plains winter and the Indians. Indians especially hated wolfers because the strychnine poisoned their dogs. An Indian would sooner scalp a wolfer than steal a horse.

"He's just doing it to make some money, Hannah. A man's got to provide for his family, and right now he's so broke he's close to selling his saddle. If we don't come up with some ready cash by spring we're gonna lose the ranch, or what's left of it. A man's got to fight to keep what's his."

"A man should also have to spare a thought or two for his pregnant wife. You
men
are leavin' her to have that baby by herself."

She swung her gaze back to his face in time to see something flash deep in his eyes, something wild and desperate.

"You'll take care of her, Hannah," he said, and his voice cracked on her name. "You and the doc. And besides, Clementine is... she's game. Gamer than all the rest of us put together. When times get tough she prefers to look to herself to see her way through them, and she does it without a whimper."

Hannah said nothing.

Rafferty thrust his fists deep into the pockets of his coat. He nudged an umbrella stand with the toe of his boot. His restless gaze roamed her hallway, settling on a gilt-framed chromo landscape. He was being extra careful not to look up those stairs again. "I can't stop him from going, dammit. And I can't let him go alone."

"He's running," Hannah said. "That's something you
men
are all good at."

"There's a bounty paid of five dollars for each lobo pelt, Clem," Gus said.

He smacked his hands together, trying to pump more enthusiasm into his voice. "We could make maybe two, three thousand dollars if the season's a good one."

He paced the room, his boots leaving grooves in the thick Turkey carpet. From time to time he threw a look at his wife, where she lay on the big four-poster bed, braced up against a stack of pillows. Her hair was nearly as pale as the bleached linen. Her skin looked transparent against the vibrant richness of the walnut headboard and the blood-red silk wallpaper. He couldn't help but think of the years' worth of nights his brother had spent in this room, with Hannah. The sight of his wife in a whore's bed turned his stomach. The very air in here reeked of their sinning.

He stopped at the side of the bed and looked down at her. She looked back up at him with eyes that were wide and still and as remote as the moon. "You know I wouldn't leave you, girl, if I didn't have to," he said.

The fine lace and tucks on her night rail fluttered against her chest as she drew in a breath. "Of course you wouldn't, Gus." Her gaze fell to the hands she had folded limply across the heavy swell of her stomach.

He stared down at her bent head, and his fists clenched. He wanted to grab her and shake the life back into her, the love back into her. He was so afraid... God help him, he was so afraid, so filled with a gut-panic that he had lost her.

"I'm only doing it for you," he said, and his voice trembled from the weight of the failure that he felt. "I wanted so much to give you all the things, the big house and the luxuries, that I took you away from. And I will, Clem—you'll see. The fire was a setback, sure, but with a little bit of ready cash we can start up a new herd of cows next year, and I won't let Zach talk me outta getting anything but the best breeding stuff this time. And come next summer, you'll see, I'll be out there building you a new house, even bigger and fancier than the last one..." His words trailed off to be consumed by the silence.

A piece of wood collapsed in the grate with a spray of sparks. A gust of wind rattled the panes. He would never be able hear the hiss and crackle of flames or the howl of the wind without remembering the fire. It had destroyed the house he had built for her the first summer of their marriage. It had devoured nearly all of their hay meadows and open rangeland; and over a thousand head of Rocking R cattle and saddle stock had either burned to death or smothered in the thick black smoke. The fire had taken almost everything they had to give by the time it turned toward the cottonwoods and the river and the buffalo hunter's cabin, and Charlie's grave. But there the wind had shifted, and the flames had turned back and begun to consume themselves.

That night, too late, rain had fallen and the fire had died.

He sat down on the bed. He picked up one of her hands. She didn't stiffen, but he could feel her withdrawing from him, pulling away deep inside herself.

"I'll miss you, girl."

She looked across the room to the windows, where the rising sun bathed the sky with honeyed light and the mountains already showed snow. Winter was coming. But then, Montana winters always came before you were ready. "Be sure you take plenty of warm clothes," she said in that remote, polite voice that she had used ever since Charlie died and that Gus had come to hate. "And eat more than just sowbelly beans and biscuits at every meal. And try to keep your brother off the whiskey."

He swallowed hard around the lump of fear and despair that had been swelling like a goiter in his throat ever since Charlie's death, since the fire, and maybe long before then. Maybe since a time over the last four years when he had finally understood that he was never going to have this woman, not the part of her that mattered.

"Clementine..." He wanted to hold her in his arms, he wanted to kiss her mouth and touch her breasts, he wanted to lie beside her, just lie beside her and hold her close. And he wanted to tell her how badly he needed her, needed her to believe in him. How without her belief in him, without her love, he was nothing. "I love you," he said, and then he waited.

And as he waited he thought that if he had lost her, then he would find a way to lose himself. Because he couldn't bear the thought of going on without her.

Her hand stirred in his. Her fingers gripped his, squeezing, and she brought his hand up to her face and laid the backs of his fingers against her cheek.

"I love you too, Gus."

A draft stirred the green glass beaded curtains that hung in the doorway of Hannah Yorke's front parlor, making them click slowly. Hannah sat stiff and cold on her gold brocade medallion-backed sofa.

She strained her ears, as if there was a chance she could overhear the conversation going on upstairs. "No doubt he's up there right now trying to talk her into moving into my hotel," she said, "or maybe staying with one of the more respectable families in town."

She turned her head toward Gus McQueen's brother, who stood gazing out the window. The floorboards of the upstairs room creaked and groaned beneath the tread of heavy feet. "Not that he gave a thought to scandal when he brought her to my house the day of the fire, all scorched and smelling like a chimney sweep and in a panic because he thought she was miscarrying."

"She won't leave," Rafferty said, though he didn't turn to look at her, "unless she wants to."

"Not that she has anyplace to go to, except back to that old buffalo hunter's sod-roofed shanty in the middle of a burned-out ranch."

The footsteps above stopped their pacing. Hannah stared at Rafferty's silent back. "Oh, I know poor Charlie's death has hit your brother hard. And now here y'all are on the verge of losing the ranch because of the fire. Lord, even the Four Jacks must be giving him headaches lately. What with your father taking over the claim and working out a deal with the consortium to operate the whole shebang by himself, thinking to make himself the biggest toad in the puddle that is Rainbow Springs, I reckon—"

"One-Eyed Jack is the least of Gus's worries," Rafferty said, cutting into her nervous ramble.

And what are
your
worries?
she wanted to ask him. All these years she'd known him, had him in her bed, and she'd never known what was really going on behind those wild yellow eyes. Right now he leaned on the gold flock wallpaper, his head brushing the dark maroon velvet drapery, staring at Montana's great outdoors. Even through the woolly thickness of his sourdough coat, she could see the tension cording the muscles of his back and shoulders. And she could feel it. It hovered in the air around him, thick enough to spread on bread.

"Rafferty?" He raised his head and turned it slightly, though he didn't look at her.
"Can
you save the ranch?"

"Yeah, sure. Easy as driving a swarm of bees through a snowstorm with a switch." His back stiffened suddenly, and his hand clenched on the wall, and Hannah's belly fluttered with a cold, unnamed panic. "What's that digger doing hanging on your garden gate?" he said, and though his voice was soft, the words had a bite to them like an ice-tipped wind.

She shot up out of the chair as if she'd been propelled by a charge of gunpowder and went to look out the other window.

Drew Scully. He had settled against her fence, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his gaze on the ground. He was dressed for a day of work in the mines, in his rough twill pants, canvas coat, and heavy boots. He'd been courting her proper, like a regular gentleman, ever since the Fourth of July picnic, and she'd been letting him do it. And all the while pretending to herself that none of it was happening, that she didn't want it to happen.

"I don't know what he's doing out there," she said, guilt sending the blood rushing hot to her cheeks. Rafferty spun toward her with a sudden explosive movement, and she backed up a step, pressing her hand to her chest in an unconscious gesture of self-protection. "Truly I don't know!"

He dismissed her protest with a little curl of his lip. "At least he's man enough to let me know ahead of time that he's gonna move into my side of the bed soon as I'm gone."

Her head swung wildly back and forth. "No, no. You're wrong."

"It's the guaranteed article, Hannah." He took a step toward her, and she backed up two more. The distrust in his voice was thick, and his gaze was cold and mean. In this mood he was as volatile as a stick of dynamite.

Her hip bumped against a piecrust table, almost knocking over a plaster bust and a bronze dragon candlestick. She tried to scoot around the table, but she tripped over a paw of the grizzly bear rug, and he was suddenly upon her. His hand shot out and gripped her neck. His thumb pressed up beneath her chin, forcing her head back so that he could look into her eyes. Am I right, Hannah? Are you gonna leave me for that boy?"

"No!" she shouted, as if she could drown out the lie she heard in her own voice. She thrust against him, breaking free and pounding his chest with her fist at the same time. "God damn you, Zach Rafferty, don't you go turn it all around onto me! I ain't the one who's been in love with my brother's wife all these yea—"

She cut the words off, but not soon enough. His head rocked back a little as if she'd struck him. His gaze flashed toward the beaded curtain and the stairs, his face going white.

Hot, scalding tears pushed against her eyes and she dashed them out of the way with the back of her hand. "Oh, hell, Rafferty, what'd you go and make me say it out loud for?" Suddenly she needed to get close to him, to be held by him. Her hands went around his neck and she pressed the length of her body against his. She nestled her face into him, breathed against his taut skin, inhaling his musky smell. He was breathing fast, his chest rising and falling. "I'm sorry," she whispered, her lips brushing against the pulse in his throat.