Heart of the West (83 page)

And then last night they both had given and taken, had broken and had been broken, and come together at last, and it had been so wild and so sweet and so perfect, except for the ending. And now this morning they would face each other across her table and she would say to him whatever words were needed to make the ending right.

All the things she had never said to Gus and should have. All the things she'd always wanted to say to him and hadn't dared to.

But this morning he didn't come.

She had to put on a slicker to go out to the barn, it was still raining that hard. She pushed aside the buffalo robe and crossed the threshold. For a moment she simply stood still, accepting the absence of him. It was as if a great hole had opened in the world and swallowed all the light.

Her footsteps echoed on the bare floor. She sagged down on the bed. An antique ivory cameo brooch lay on the black-and-white-striped ticking as if it had been carelessly dropped there and forgotten. Once she had given this to him so that he would never forget her. Never forget her love.

Her fingers closed tightly around the brooch. I
won't cry,
she told herself. I
never cry.
She clutched the cameo to her belly and curved her body over it, as if protecting a wound.

Drew Scully looked up at the man taking his ease on the white wicker rocker on Hannah's front porch. Rainwater cascaded off the eaves, splashing into the muddy yard. Shiloh squinted through it and tipped his bottle of sarsaparilla at the marshal. A grin flashed white in his face.

"If you're looking for Miss Hannah, she done left town."

"Left?" For a moment the word meant nothing to Drew, and then he felt the blood leave his heart.
Left town.
He had been expecting this moment for years, but he still felt as if he'd just been coldcocked with a roundhouse punch. Maybe he'd heard the man wrong, misunderstood. He'd been pretending for so long, maybe if he just went on pretending... He made himself smile. "How long did she say she was going to be gone?"

"She didn't say. But it'll be pretty close to forever, I reckon."

Drew climbed the steps onto the porch with boots that felt weighted down with more than mud. Beneath the roof's overhang the air was dry but cool. He sat down on the damp floor next to the rocker, with his bent knees supporting his elbows. He leaned back against the white clapboard siding.

She was gone.

After a time he raised his head and stared at the gin-slinger. "I suppose she made you promise not to tell me where."

"She went looking for a place where she can raise her baby and folk won't know it's a bastard or think of its ma as a whore."

Her baby.

Shiloh pushed on the floor with his foot, and the rocker creaked. "Aren't you gonna ask if it's yours?"

"I know bloody well it's mine." Drew pounded on his knee with his fist, though he would rather have been smashing it into the wall. Or maybe into his own face. "Why didn't she tell me?"

"She probably thought you'd try and talk her out of leaving. And she didn't want to take the chance that you might just succeed."

"Bloody damn right I would have talked her out of it!" He scrubbed his face with the heels of his hands, shoving his hat to the back of his head. "Shiloh... tell me where she's gone."

Shiloh met his gaze with wide-open dark brown eyes that told him nothing. "She didn't let me know where she was headed, Marshal Scully. And that's the God's honest truth. I think she was busy pretending awful hard to herself that she didn't want anyone coming after her."

"I would've married her, even without the baby. I was going to ask her..."

The rocker creaked. "Uh-huh. Well, it's a pity
going to
didn't happen yet."

Drew stared at the floor between his spread knees.
Aye, sure you were going to ask her, Drew Scully. On the grand day when
you woke up richer than she was. On the day when you could look yourself in the eye and not want to spit in it.
"It was her damn money that kept stopping me. One of the things... She has so bloody much of it."

Shiloh laughed softly. "Man, she sure enough does. She wound up owning a good part of this here town."

Drew pulled in a deep breath. His ribs hurt, as if he'd been kicked in the chest. "I just could never stomach the thought of living off her. Of living off any woman."

"Now, you and me differ on that point, Marshal. Me, I've been looking for a rich woman to support me my entire life. Once I find her, I figure on retiring and spending my days fishing and snoozing." He laughed and upended the neck of the sarsaparilla bottle into his mouth, draining it in two big swallows. He smacked his lips. "And maybe doing a little boozin', too."

He paused, turning the empty bottle over and over in his hands. The rain pounded on the roof above their heads. Shiloh's dark forehead wrinkled and pulled as if his thoughts were heavy. "There's so many ways of being a fool, I reckon a man can't expect to avoid them all. It's in the repeating of his mistakes that a fella can start to get tiresome."

"I told that woman I loved her so many times I wore out the words. Next time I see her I won't be bothering with that. I'll tell her to shut her clack and marry me."

"Now you're talking."

"Provided I do see her again. Provided I go after her."

Drew had never been one to go begging for a woman's affections. He was too proud for that, and too cock-robin sure of himself when it came to everything. He was even sure about his being a sniveling coward, for he'd sure had enough proof of that every time he went down the shafts. Maybe that was why she'd left him—because she'd seen through him to the man that he wasn't.

He remembered that night at the Best in the West, her pointing that silly boob gun at him, and him taunting her to go ahead and shoot if she was going to leave him. And that hoarse smoky voice of hers saying back at him, "I won't leave you, Drew... I love you."

So much for her promises. He should just let her go, then— aye, it would serve her bloody right. Or he could go after her and maybe have a few things said to him in that woodsmoke voice that he didn't really want to hear.

It could take months, maybe even years, to track her down, and he was no Indian scout. It would mean quitting his job and cutting Jere loose to fend for himself... Ah, hell, he was only using his brother as an excuse. Jere had his Lily now.

It was a big place out there, out beyond the RainDance Valley. A lot of empty country where a man had no choice but to come face to face with himself and find out just what sort of man he was and wasn't. He would have to face the cowardly Drew who was afraid of the dark. And the Drew who had turned himself into a bootlicker for the Four Jacks while lying to himself that he was still his own man. And at the end of the trail he just might find a woman who really hadn't wanted him after all.

Drew pushed himself to his feet, resettling his hat on his head. It was still raining. All of a sudden he couldn't remember the last time it hadn't been raining.

"Thanks, Shiloh," he said. His throat felt thick. It was a good thing he was a high-and-mighty marshal with a gun strapped around his waist and a tin badge on his chest. Otherwise he just might be crying 'long about now.

He started down the steps, then turned back. "Did she give you this house?"

The gin-slinger grinned. "Yes, sir. She said a long time ago that if she ever left, be it feet first or head first, this place'd be mine."

Drew nodded. "She's a damn fine woman."

"Yes, sir. She's the best."

Drew stood there a moment longer, looking up at the house, at the window of the bedroom where they'd shared so many nights, and then he stepped out into the rain.

Before him the road rolled long and empty out into the prairie grass. And beyond the grass, the mountains shot up into a sky that was bigger and emptier still. But none of it was so big and empty anymore that a woman with a woodsmoke voice and a head of wine-colored hair could disappear for good and all.

Especially if she wanted to be found.

Clementine looked at the rock that lay in the scarred palm of her hand. "Explain it to me again."

Pogey gave his partner a great tharrumping whump in the ribs with his elbow. "Lemme do it this time, you blathering slack-jawed jackass. You done got her head filled up now with so many buzzing syllabic words it ain't no wonder she can't hear herself think." He turned to Clementine. "I'll give it to you straight and in two pithy words, ma'am: it's the apex law."

"Them's four words," Nash said. "Five, if'n you count the apostrophe."

"Shuddup!" Pogey bellowed, thumping him again.

While the two old prospectors stood there looking pleased with themselves and dripping rainwater on her kitchen floor, Clementine rubbed her thumb over the rough-textured rock. A rock that an assayer over in Helena had just certified as being almost pure copper ore.

She'd heard of the apex law and she had a general notion of what it was. The ownership of a vein of ore was determined by the ownership of the land on which the vein surfaced, or apexed, no matter how deep or far it spread underground. Sometimes, as in the case of the Four Jacks Copper Mine, the spot where the vein apexed was never discovered. And sometimes it was discovered on land not owned by those doing the mining, and when that happened...

"You say you found this near the madwoman's soddy?"

"We didn't find it—ugh!"

"Shut your leaky mouth, Nash. Why is it every jackass thinks he's got horse sense?... Yup, Mrs. McQueen, that there chunk of rock you're lookin' at is a piece of the Four Jacks Copper Mine that's come bustin' up out of the ground on that timber-land of yourn. Which explains why One-Eyed Jack's been camped out there, making like he's logging trees when what he's really been doin' is ensuring nobody else stumbles across that apex."

And why the Four Jacks had been pushing at her so hard to sell that land, even going so far as to shoot at her children to frighten her off. Because if the copper lode was apexing on her land, then she had a legal claim to it.

"Someone else
has
stumbled across it," she said. "Who was it that gave this to you and told you to get it assayed?"

A sly grin deepened the leathery wrinkles on Pogey's face. He tugged at his ear and studied the big round toe of his boot. Outside, the wind gusted and the rain splashed against the windowpanes. "That would be confidential, ma'am. Privileged information, so to speak."

"It doesn't matter anyway." Clementine whirled and headed for the door, grabbing her slicker and hat off the wall hook on the way. "What I need to do is have a look at it for myself."

"Now hold on there," Pogey cried. "Don't go off all haywire."

"Snooping around the Four Jacks' hired guns can get you leaded," Nash added. But they were talking to an empty room.

Zach Rafferty sat in his saddle in an uncomfortable state of sogginess. His yellow slicker was so old it had developed cracks that let in water worse than an old sod roof. And the wind set the brim of his hat to flapping, sluicing cold water down the back of his neck.

He looked through the dripping, scraggly pines to the wide gray sky and the line of broken, rain-black bluffs. He shook himself hard and got rid of some of the water. But he couldn't shake off his thoughts.

He rode to the top of the highest bluff. From here he could see the madwoman's soddy and all of Clementine's timberland, mostly bald now, thanks to the strip logging. He'd ridden over every inch of that timberland this morning and all he'd discovered was a bunch of slash piles and stumps. No logging was being done here now, and hadn't been since before the heap pit altercation. Still, the Four Jacks always seemed to have at least one man around, watching over the place. Sure enough the revver had to be pulling some sort of bunco out here, Rafferty thought. But whatever it was, he was damned if he could see it.

He pushed his legs out straight in the stirrups and drew in a breath big enough to stretch his chest. The RainDance country had changed a lot since he'd first laid eyes on it. It had been grazed and mined and logged, its lonely emptiness filled up with towns and people. He supposed some would say it had been tamed.

But the jagged snow-dusted peaks still threatened to poke holes in the sky, and there were places in those mountains he knew of where the trees still grew thick enough to block the sun. And come summer, he knew, the buffalo grass would still grow as high as a man's waist, and the chokecherries would still hang fat and black on the trees down by the river.

This country... God, he loved it. Though it sure could make a man ache inside, make him feel good and sad, and a little wild sometimes. Country like this could make a man believe that anything was possible. And it could make him hurt deep inside to know how he was wasting all his possibilities.

He could feel his love for her swelling inside him, like there was another being in there trying to burst through the bone and muscle and skin, trying to get out and be the man she needed, the man she deserved.

He had just started to pull his horse's head around when he heard the gunshot.

The water roared as it rushed through the coulee. It was swollen now, as deep as a man on horseback, and it cut through the steep-sided ravine, carrying along with it rocks, chunks of earth, the slash piles, and even good-sized pine and cottonwood saplings. The rain continued to pour down in wind-tossed sheets that flattened the grass and bowed what was left of the trees.

Nash had said the ore sample was found on the hillside about fifty yards downstream from the madwoman's soddy. Clementine tied up her horse and made the climb on foot. She carried her Winchester with a round in the chamber, even though it was dangerous, what with the going so rough, the rocks greasy with rain, the mud slick and crumbling. She wasn't sure what she would do once she found the apex. Just look at it, she supposed, and savor, for Gus's sake, the sweet irony that they had been the true owners of the Four Jacks Copper Mine all along.

She had scrambled maybe halfway up the slope when the two men rose up out of the black rocks like specters out of a grave—Percivale Kyle and One-Eyed Jack McQueen. She saw the pearl-handled revolver in Kyle's hand, saw him raise and point it at her.