Heart of the West (68 page)

He gripped the cup so hard that the scalding tea sloshed onto his hands. "And if I won't bloody well accept it?"

"It still cannot be undone."

For a moment the horror of it almost choked him. He was a blind man, maimed and useless.
Blind.
He would never be able to put things back the way they were before, the way they were supposed to be.
Blind, blind, blind...
Oh, God, he was drowning in the horror of it and he wanted to reach out and cling to her. He could never have her now, now that he was so bloody useless as a man. Now that he was
blind.
Still he wanted to cling to her, to the dreams he'd once had for them.

Suddenly he wanted desperately to talk with her, simply talk with her and keep her with him for a while. "Were you sold, Lily?" he said, and the words came out rusty, raw. "'Tes that how you came to be here?"

"Yes."

He lifted his chin, stretching out his neck, trying to ease the tightness in his throat. "'Tes sorry I am."

"Why are you sorry? If my father had not sold me, we never would have come to know each other in this life."

He took a swallow of the tea, grimacing at its bitter taste. He felt with his elbow for the table beside his chair, then set the cup down. "And if your da hadn't sold you, if you'd stayed in China to be marrying some rich man, would you have felt still 'twere something missing? Would you've awoken in the silence of the night and wondered why your soul was always empty, your heart always sore?"

He didn't breathe while he waited in the darkness for her answer.

"Yes," she finally said. So softly he barely heard her.

"And would you've consoled yourself with the thought that 'twas just another one of life's treacheries?"

She punched him hard on the thigh. "How dare you mock me through the back door, you blithering baboon?"

She startled a laugh out of him. And he startled himself with the sound of it. He felt a rushing sensation against his ears and a fierce pressure in his chest, as if he were hurtling headfirst down a shaft.

She struck him again and he grabbed her wrist, hauling her into his lap with a force that punched the air from her lungs. He gripped the sides of her head and slammed his mouth down onto hers, not even getting that right, so that his teeth grated roughly across her lips. She gasped and pulled free of him. But she didn't leave him. He could feel her hovering just beyond the edge of the darkness.

Tension thickened the air until he couldn't breathe. Then her hands were sliding up his thighs, and her breasts were thrusting against his chest, and her lips were pressing against his, but gently. He opened his mouth, thinking he would die from the sweet taste of her, wanting to die so that his life would end now with this moment, this ecstasy. Her lips slipped apart and he traced their shape with his tongue. He swallowed her sigh.

He realized he wasn't touching her, except with his lips. The blood pulsed in his fingertips, and his hand shook as he pressed it against her chest. He could feel the swell of her breast beneath the thick quilted material of her jacket. She breathed and his hand lifted with the filling of her lungs.

He tore his mouth from hers. "Lily, I want..."

"Yes!" she said fiercely. And then gently, "Yes, my
anjing juren.
Please."

But now he couldn't move. He didn't think he should even be breathing, because he wanted to pant and moan like some great hungry beast, and yet he didn't want to frighten her away. If she left him now he would not be able to bear it.

So he sat stiff in the chair, one hand gripping the armrest, the other still pressed flat against her breast. His breath whistled in and out of his clenched teeth.

She took his hand and, linking her fingers with his, slowly rose, bringing him up with her. She tugged gently on his hand, and he followed her. He felt like a shuffling old man, clumsy, too big for his skin. His thighs bumped against the bed and he tumbled onto it awkwardly. But she fell with him, and they were in each other's arms, lying on a bed, and this was Lily, Lily, Lily, and he'd wanted her for so long, wanted her so desperately.

Her breath bathed his cheek and he turned his head, seeking her mouth. The coarse muslin pillowcase scraped across the back of his neck. Silk... She should be lying on a bed covered with silk, on a down mattress, not one stuffed with horsehair and straw. He wanted to tell her he was sorry he couldn't give her silk and feathers, and a man who could at least see her face to know if he was pleasuring her, but he didn't want to let go of her mouth.

They kissed for a long time and when he eased his lips from hers, it was only to slide his tongue along her jaw and down to the pulse in her throat. It leaped and throbbed against his open mouth, pumping to the hard rush of his own blood.

She leaned over him, unbuttoning his shirt, and her hair fell into his face. It was as soft as he had known it would be. As it had been so many nights in his dreams. Ah, God, if pity had brought her to this, he didn't care.

The mattress rustled as she pulled away from him. "Lily!" he cried, panicking when he reached for her and got nothing but air.

She pressed her fingers against his mouth, then they drifted over his face, stroking his beard. "Your beard is so soft. I thought it would be prickly, but it is soft, like a kitten's fur. I am only going to undress so that you may touch me. I want you to touch me everywhere."

A sob of anguish and glory rose in his throat and he almost choked on it.

He listened to the sounds she made as she undressed, whispering sounds, seductive sounds. He tried to imagine what she would look like naked. She would be small-breasted, with copper-colored nipples. Her hips would be slim, her belly concave, of a perfect shape to cradle his head once he was done loving her. The down between her legs would be the same dense black as her hair.

She lay back down beside him and he turned his head, burying his mouth in the softness of her throat. The crisp green-apple smell of her came in sweet bits and snatches. He touched her everywhere, and the feel of her beneath his hands and lips spread through his body until he ached.

He opened his trousers, desperate to fill her hands with the heavy swell of his erection, and she held him, stroked him, brought him to a quivering, shuddering ecstasy. Then she straddled him, sliding his penis into the opening between her legs. She was wet and hot and hungry like a mouth. She sucked him deep inside her.

He bucked and she rode him. Her hands caressed the taut muscles of his belly, her silky hair slapped his chest. God, he wanted to see her, to see her... She was kissing him, her mouth urgent and frantic and hot. He could feel the helpless tremors coursing through her body. He heard the blood roaring in his head. Every muscle tightened violently and he felt his seed explode within her.

She collapsed on top of him. Her breath struck his face in hot gusts. He kissed the damp tangle of her hair.

He waited for her to leave him. She sighed long and soft, her breath fluttering over his throat. It seemed he could still feel her hands in his hair.

If he'd had eyes and still been a man, he would have thrown her words in her face again. All that blather about acceptance, the way of life's treacheries. If she believed all that, then she would quit thinking she had to go back to her damn Flowery Land. She would understand that her fate had brought her here because he was here, and from the beginning of time they were meant to be together. But he had wanted so much to give her more, show her more, promise her more. And now he never would.

He touched the scarred flesh that covered the empty sockets of bone.

If he had eyes...

CHAPTER 29

In later years folk would come to speak of what happened that winter as the Great Die-Up. It was a time when the cattle dropped out on the snow-choked range like leaves after a frost.

Range horses could survive a bad winter by eating the bark off trees. But cattle would rub their noses blood-raw in a vain attempt to break through the crusty snow-ice to get at the stubby dead grass underneath. And when a norther blew in, they turned their tails to the snow and wind and drifted until they hit something that stopped them—hillsides, coulees, fences. And there they stacked up to freeze and starve to death.

That winter did seem to be one long, hard snowstorm. But on this particular day, six more inches of fresh snow had fallen in the night and blown into drifts. Gus had ridden out as soon as it was light to chop through the ice crust at the water holes and to herd what cattle he could find to those places where the wind had scoured down the snow to the brittle gray grass.

As Clementine stood on the porch that morning and watched him ride out of the yard, she thought of how like life itself a marriage was—with droughts and raging storms coming in between long sunny days filled with love and laughter.

Like on that hot, dry day last summer, when she had given him the sachet of money, and she thought he might have hated her. She would not have been surprised to return from Rainbow Springs that day to find him gone. But it was not Gus's way to quit on his dreams, to quit on her.

He had been in the corral, trying to train a yearling to the hackamore, when she drove back into the yard. She got off the wagon and went right up to the corral fence. He kept his back to her.

She had intended only to tell him about what had happened in town, about the mob blowing up the mercantile and Sam Woo's death. Instead other words came out of her mouth, words that broke with the desperation she was feeling. With the fear that she had irrevocably lost him.

"I do love you, Gus," she said.

He swung around. His mouth was tight, his eyes wary. "So you keep saying."

Tears built in her eyes. She had to blink hard to keep them from falling. "I'm sorry for... for everything."

He stared at her a long time, and then he came to her. But only as far as the corral fence that still separated them.

His gaze broke from hers. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his bandanna. "It isn't that, Clementine. It isn't a matter of who's sorry or which of us was wrong. Maybe... maybe it's just a matter of you deciding what you want."

She knew what he was trying to say: that no matter what he did for her, no matter how much he loved her, he could no longer believe she was ever going to give him all of herself in return.

She looked at him, at the way the corners of his mustache didn't quite hide the bitter curve of his mouth, at the way his eyes were more hard and brittle than the sun-baked sky. She wanted to reach through the fence and touch him. She wanted to tell him that even though he didn't have all of her, already he had more than she could almost bear to give. She loved him. She loved him enough that, for him, she had given up the only man on this earth she would ever love more.

He wrapped one of his hands around the fence rail, gripping the wood so tightly the veins and sinews of his wrist stood out. "Maybe you'd like your money back," he said, "so's you can be quit of this place. And quit of me."

Her breath shuddered in her throat. "Oh, Gus... you know I'll never leave you."

Again he stared at her hard, trying to read her thoughts, trying to see down into her soul. "I don't know whether I do know it," he finally said, "but I guess I have to believe it. If I'm going to go on."

She reached up and laid her hand on top of his. The fence was still between them, but they were touching. A drought, she thought, doesn't end with a single drop of rain. But when that one drop is joined by another and another and another, they can become enough water to turn the land green again.

"We are going to have another baby," she said.

She watched the emotions cross his face: surprise, and then that wariness again. And finally a warm and gentle joy.

For him, for his joy, she smiled. And then she realized that she was smiling for herself as well. It would be good to have another child, she thought, and she would not let herself be afraid. She would try not to let her heart dwell so often on that grave beneath the cottonwoods.

Gus slid his hand out from beneath hers to cup her face. Slowly, he lowered his head and kissed her. And although the fence was still between them, neither of them noticed it.

The rain never did come that summer to feed the land, but the drought in their marriage had ended that day. Each touch, each word spoken since, had been like so many raindrops nurturing the life they shared.

She thought of that now as she watched her husband ride off to rescue their dying cattle. She thought that in spite of the bad winter and the failing ranch, she and Gus had at last found happiness and an ease with each other.

And they had found love.

Later, Clementine was alone in the kitchen baking bread when she heard the jangle of sleigh bells. She narrowed her eyes against the snow glare. A cutter was turning off from the road into town. The driver was dressed richly, in a beaver bowler and a dark plaid woolen greatcoat. He lifted his head and turned his face toward the house.

"What is that old polecat up to now?" she said aloud to herself.

Gus was in the yard, having just come in from the range. She watched the two men meet and disappear into the barn together, then she banged out the door and set off after them without even bothering to put on a coat.

The frigid wind drove itself right to her bones and she shivered, hugging herself. Her shoes crunched over a path already cobbled with frozen footprints. The cottonwoods were popping with the cold.

The barn smelled of wet horse, old hay, and manure. A coal-oil lantern that hung on a hook just inside the door cast a murky light, glinting off scythes, oiled harnesses, and old spiderwebs. Clementine walked into a silence that was as thick as winter molasses. Gus was leading his horse into its stall and he looked up at her, but she could tell nothing from the expression on his face.

One-Eyed Jack McQueen flashed her his beguiling smile. "It is always a pleasure to find you looking so pretty, daughter-in-law." His gaze dropped to her belly, now five months swollen with child. "And you're increasing again, I see. 'Be fruitful and multiply.'" A knowing look glinted in his eye. "Yes, indeed. Pretty and fruitful, and yet faithful and virtuous as well. 'A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.' Is she a crown to you, Gustavus?"

Gus slung his bridle over a peg and swung his saddle up onto an empty stall door. "What do you want?"

Clementine produced for her father-in-law a most virtuous smile. "'He that hideth hatred with lying lips,'" she said, "'and he that uttereth a slander, is a fool.'"

Genuine delight flashed across Jack McQueen's face. He nodded, as if granting her a victory in their little skirmish, then turned his attention back to his son. He slapped his gloved hands together, shivering dramatically. "Turning out to be a bad winter, isn't it? When the sun bothers to show up at all lately, it seems as if it's only long enough to say good-bye."

Gus pitchforked a mangerful of hay to his horse. "You going to tell me what you want?"

"My, what a surly young'un you are, and after all I've done for you. Raising you up tenderly, putting food in your belly and a shirt on your back..."

Gus's lips pulled back from his teeth. "When you scalp a man more than once, you begin to run out of hair."

His father tsked and shook his head. "Such bitterness doesn't become you, my boy. But then, it's been a bitter year for you, hasn't it? And it's only going to get worse. You're looking to be about as poor as a blanket Indian come spring. I hope you weren't counting on your twenty percent of the lease money from the Four Jacks to bail you out."

Gus's hands clenched around the handle of the pitchfork. He drove it into a hay bale with such force it twanged. "I've heard the rumors."

"Well, it was hardly likely to stay a secret for long, and it won't be the first time a promising vein of silver petered out over time. The ore we've been mucking out lately has mostly been low-grade stuff, full of zinc. The cost of transportation and smelting is taking too big a chunk out of the profits, and the market's drying up. No, the sad fact is, Gustavus, the Four Jacks Consortium has decided to allow its lease to lapse."

The income from their twenty percent share in the Four Jacks had waxed and waned over the years, but Clementine knew the closing of the mine would be a sore blow to Gus. Another dream turned to dross.

"Once we shut her down and allow her to fill with water,"

Gus's father was saying, "your share will be about as useful to you as a pot of cow pee. So what do you think about selling it to me?"

Gus laughed. "When pigs fly."

Jack McQueen heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Now, why did I just know you would prove to be stubborn?" He pulled a small square leather satchel out the deep pocket of his coat. From the satchel he removed a stiff sheaf of papers. "When the latest ore samples gave such a poor showing, I hired an engineer to crawl all over every drift, crosscut, and winze. The silver
is
exhausted, Gustavus."

He held out the engineer's report. When Gus didn't take it, he set it down on the hay bale beside the pitchfork. The report had been prepared on a typewriter and was even embossed with a seal.

"I am wondering, Mr. McQueen," Clementine said into the silence that stretched between father and son, "why a smart businessman like you would want to acquire another twenty percent of something that is worthless."

He threw Gus an amused glance. "Do you always let your woman do your wondering for you?"

"Why don't you answer her?"

He waved a resigned hand through the air. "Oh, very well. I'll lay my cards on the table. I was thinking I could unload the Four Jacks onto some unsuspecting eastern syndicate. Those suckers back in New York hear the words 'silver mine' and they almost piss in their longhandles with excitement. It would be easier to swing a deal if I had a hundred percent of the whole caboodle to peddle."

Gus stopped his puttering to stare hard at his father. "That's it, huh? Cards on the table. You tell me you're going to try to swindle someone and you want me to think that someone isn't me." He grinned, showing his teeth again. "Now let me see the card you got up your sleeve."

Jack McQueen looked wounded. "What makes you think I have one up my sleeve?"

"Because you always do."

A wry smile pulled at Jack McQueen's mouth. "I always figured a pretty-pious boy like you couldn't peddle ice in hell.

Now here you go and prove me wrong. Maybe you got more of me in you than I ever gave you credit for." He paused a moment as if pondering hard, stroking his chin, then shrugged as if coming to a decision. "Well, hell. This time I really will put all my cards on the table." He winked at Clementine. "Even that ace I had up my sleeve... There's copper in the Four Jacks."

Clementine could see Gus trying to figure out what sort of bunco his father was working this time. "I thought copper was supposed to be bad," Gus said.

"It is if you're mining gold or silver. But not if copper is what you want in the first place." With two of his slender, clever fingers Jack McQueen tapped the report that lay on the hay bale. "The silver might be played out, Gustavus, but she's plumb loaded with copper. Now, you don't need to tell me copper is only selling for twelve cents a pound, which makes it hardly worth the cost of digging it out. But that's today. I'm looking to the future."

Gus poked his tongue in his cheek. "Seems like I remember hearing this patter once or twice before in my life. You got a way to make me rich, and all's I gotta do is put up a little seed money to get things rolling."

"If you don't choose to believe me, that is your prerogative, and ultimately it will be your loss. But to get this venture off the ground I'm going to need investors, big investors. If you want to keep your twenty percent share of what I'm calling the Four Jacks Copper Mine, you'll have to put up, say, two thousand dollars. And in case you think I'm cheating you, let me tell you right now that my share will be fifty thousand. So you can see I'm offering you a fine deal." He flashed his roguish smile. "You are my boy, after all."

Gus's head fell back in rafter-shaking laughter. "You think I'm going to give you two thousand dollars to invest in a copper mine that even you don't quite have the balls to claim is a sure thing. Man, it would almost be tempting just to finally be quit of you... if I wouldn't also be quit of my hard-earned money."

Jack McQueen's mouth hardened. "If the play is too deep for you, my dear boy, then deal yourself out. I'll give you that two thousand dollars right now, cash on the barrelhead, for your share to the claim."

Still laughing, Gus hooked his hip on the hay bale and picked up the report. Clementine brought the lantern closer. To her surprise he gave the papers over to her to read when he was done with them.

"You think I should sell out?" he said, looking over her shoulder as she studied the report.

"You must do what you think best, Gus."

He made a snorting noise, and then his mouth broke into a sun-bright Gus McQueen smile. "You're only saying that now so's you can point the finger of blame at me when it turns out to be a dumb-ass mistake."

Clementine looked up into his laughing eyes and that was when she knew it didn't matter what sort of deep and devious game One-Eyed Jack McQueen was playing at. They didn't have two thousand dollars to invest in the venture anyway, and they could sure use the two thousand the man was willing to pay them for a sale. Gus needed that money to keep the ranch alive, and she wanted that for him. No, she wanted that for herself. This was her home, her dream as well as his, and she would fight at his side to see it through.

Jack McQueen had slipped more papers out of the satchel. "I took the liberty of having my lawyer draw up the deal, giving me your twenty percent share in exchange for two thousand dollars. I even brought along the tool to sign it with." He shook a small cork-stoppered ink bottle. "I hope this didn't freeze on the way out here." He pulled out the cork with his teeth, dipped the pen, then carefully drained the ink from the nib before handing it, along with the bill of sale, to his son.