Heart of the West (9 page)

She turned her back on the livery stable and climbed the two sagging steps to the mercantile's front door. It was already slightly ajar, and she pushed it open, knocking into a pair of cowbells that announced her arrival with a loud jangle. She looked for a mat on which to wipe her feet and saw that it would be pointless. The warped puncheon floor was only slightly less muddy than the road outside.

She lifted her skirt to step over the high threshold and raised her eyes to find three men staring at her as if she'd just come crawling out of a bog.

Two of the men were toasting their backs before a small black pot-bellied stove. One was a tall string bean of a person with eyes as wide and serious as a barn owl's and a sunken, toothless mouth. The other was short and round. His head was as bald as a china doorknob, but his beard grew long and thick to the middle of his chest and was the flat yellow color of old wax. Because of the red clay that stained their clothes and their hobnailed boots, she thought the men must be prospectors. They both appeared to patronize the same tailor as Nickel Annie.

Behind a counter of rough planks laid between two pickle barrels was obviously the Sam Woo memorialized in fancy script on the signboard outside. He stared at her from behind a pair of spectacles, mostly hidden beneath a green eyeshade pulled low on his forehead. He had a flat-boned face and a set of ink-black chin whiskers so stiff and sparse they looked like the bristles on a horse brush.

Clementine took a single step across the threshold, and the breath seemed to leave the three men in a collective sigh.

"Well, I'll be..." the tall, thin man began.

"Damned," the small, fat man finished for him.

"Holy God," said Sam Woo.

Clementine gave them all a polite little nod, feeling shy and as though she were on display.

The Chinese man put his palms together and bowed, his long queue swinging past his waist. He spoke in an odd singsong that seemed to be mocking her. "Sam Woo welcomes you to his humble mercantile, madam. This wretched self is honored. Tell me how I may serve you."

Clementine wet her lips and swallowed. "I should only like to look today, thank you. I'm not yet sure of all that I will come to need." She waved a hand at the two prospectors. "Please, continue helping these gentlemen."

Sam Woo bowed again, the lenses of his thick spectacles winking in the dim light as he straightened. Uncomfortable with the men's goggle-eyed scrutiny, Clementine turned away, pretending interest in a wrought-iron birdcage that was still littered with the feathers of some long gone canary. After a long, uncomfortable silence, the men gave up staring at her and huddled together, bending over a dog-eared catalog that lay spread open on the counter.

Never had Clementine seen so many disparate things all gathered together in one place. Her nose twitched at the strong smells of coal oil and saddle soap, cured fish and wheels of moldy cheese. A set of checkers lay atop a stack of frypans, which in turn balanced precariously on a pile of lard buckets. Brass lanterns were displayed next to men's unmentionables, little cans of crimson paste next to boxes of Goodwin candles. Something brushed against her head, becoming entangled in her bonnet, and she looked up to see an old-fashioned crinoline hanging from the ceiling.

On the counter, next to a box advertising rose toilet soap, she spotted a pair of scales, which she knew from Shona's novels were used for weighing gold dust. She stepped up for a closer look, and the smell of attar of roses grabbed her senses and sent them spinning back into the house on Louisburg Square. Her mother's face appeared before her, and her fingers clenched around the sachet of coins that she still carried deep in her cloak pocket.

She looked around the mercantile with its crowded, splintering, and sagging shelves, its grimy window and mud-splattered floor; at the walls made of logs so rough they still had bark peeling off in places in soft gray curls. The flickering coal-oil lamp released an oily, smelly smoke, and she could hear rats or snakes or some other vile creatures scuttling around in the open rafters. She was in the middle of a wilderness, a world of nowhere and nothing, and so far from Boston she would never find her way back. She felt hollow inside, utterly alone, and for the first time truly afraid of what she had done.

She became aware that the fat prospector was shouting. It was the odd sound of his voice that first penetrated her thoughts, for it was high and squeaky like a rusty pump. But the subject was so startling that she forgot her own wretchedness and drew closer to eavesdrop.

"It ain't legal, Sam," he was saying, thumping the catalog with a gnarled finger to make his point. "Buying a slave. Don't you know how we fought a war a while back just to make the point that we're all free and equal citizens of these United States and her territories. Even the coloreds are free now. Well, the Injuns—they ain't exactly equal. And women, they ain't equal, either, bein' female. But they're all free—leastaways in a manner of speakin' they are. Dammit, Nash, did you swaller yer tongue? Explain to the man here what it is I'm tryin' to say."

The skinny prospector pulled the catalog out from beneath his partner's tapping finger and held it up to the dubious light of the window. "He's saying you can't go buying yourself a woman, Sam, not even a Chinese woman. How much she gonna cost you anyways?"

"You don't understand, fellas. I marry her, so it is a bride-price I pay her protector, sort of dowry in reverse, you savvy." Sam Woo leaned over the counter to point at a picture of a girl in a high-collared robe. The entire catalog, Clementine saw, was filled with wood engravings of women's faces. "This one here," Sam Woo said. "You like her, huh? She's a pretty bit of calico, yes sirree? A thousand dollars she would cost me."

"A thousand bucks? Crucified Jesus!"

The tall, skinny man whipped off his hat and smacked it hard across the little man's stomach, raising a puff of dust. "Watch your stampeding mouth, Pogey."

The fat man opened his mouth to protest, and his gaze fell on Clementine. He stared at her, tugging at first one ear, then the other—ears that were as big and round as one of Nickel Annie's flapjacks. "Ma'am, I don't wanna seem like a pryin' man," he said to her. "But are you one of Mrs. Yorke's new gals? I only ask 'cause you shore as hell don't look like any sportin' gal I ever seen—shit!" he exclaimed as he was slapped again with his partner's floppy hat. "What the hell you keep hittin' me for, Nash?"

"Watch your language, you ol' bunkhouse rooster."

"Watch my... hell." He rubbed his belly and cast a look full of woeful injury heavenward. "Why is it that I can't even break wind without you wantin' to issue a declaration and read me a lecture about it?"

"I'm sayin' there's a lady present. I'm saying a gentleman ain't supposed to cuss in front of a lady."

"Well, good God almighty, hellfire, and damnation. What's talk without a cussword or two for spice?"

"I'm saying if you got an itch where it ain't polite to scratch, you don't scratch."

"You don't talk sense, you know that, Nash? Not once in all the days that I knowed you have you ever made a lick of sense. At least a lady can understand what's coming outta my mouth, which is more'n a soul can say about yours. Yap, yap, yap, like a damned coyote, and not once has there ever come out of them flappin' gums of yours a single sentence that makes any goddamned sense!"

"Anyone with a brain bigger'n a pea would know what I'm saying. I'm saying you should watch your manners, Pogey. That's all I'm saying."

Whatever Pogey was going to say to that remained unspoken, for just then the cowbells jangled with the opening of the door.

An Indian girl stood poised on the threshold, tensed to bolt at any moment. She had a child of about two cradled on one hip and an infant in a papoose basket slung on her back. Her small, thin body was clothed in a simple red calico smock over leather leggings, and she wore moccasins that were decorated with dyed quills and colorful glass trade beads. A small gold papist cross hung around her neck. She was young, barely more than a child herself. But her round copper face was pinched tight, her dark gaze hollow and flickering from one man to the other.

"Please, Mr. Sam," she said, and took two tentative, shuffling steps. "Could you give me milk tins for my baby? She's sick, and my breasts don't feed her enough anymore."

Pogey scowled at the girl, giving his flapjack ear a sharp tug. "What for are you lettin' them war whoops in here, Sam?"

"I'm not letting them in, no sirree jingle." Sam Woo rushed out from behind the counter, flapping his apron and shooing at the Indian and her child as if they were chickens. "No milk without money, squaw-girl, do you hear? No money, no milk. Out, out, out!"

The girl spun around so fast her black braids flew out straight behind her and the cradleboard slapped hard against her hip. She yanked open the door, bounced off Gus McQueen's chest, and ran out into the mud-choked road.

Gus looked after her a moment, then came inside, shutting the door behind him. His gaze swept the gathering at the counter. "How, fellas. I see y'all have met my wife."

This announcement was greeted with the same stunned looks and long silence Clementine had received upon entering the store. A slow smile stretched across Sam Woo's lips. He bowed low. "It big, wonderful pleasure to meet you, Mrs. McQueen."

"Well, I'll be..." Nash's face split into a wide grin, showing off a pair of toothless gums.

"Damned," Pogey finished for him.

Gus leaned over to peer into Nash's face. "What in the blazes've you done with your teeth?"

"Huh?" Nash slapped a hand over his mouth, then tried to talk around it.

Pogey thumped him in the ribs with an elbow. "You can't talk sense, Nash, even without your fist in your mouth. Let me tell him... Nash and me, we had ourselves a go at the pasteboards with that tinhorn gambler who's put down squatting rights on a table over at the Best in the West. We staked them store-boughten teeth of Nash's to a heart flush and damned— durned if we didn't draw a deuce of clubs. But we'll get 'em back soon enough, now that we've—uhh!" he wheezed as his partner slapped him hard in the belly with his hat. "Uh, we'll talk to you 'bout that part later, Gus."

Gus gave the two men a sharp look. But when they said nothing more, only grinned at him, he shrugged. "Well, we ought to be making tracks. I got the buckboard all loaded up, Clem, and it's a good two hours yet out to the ranch." He put a hand in the small of her back and pushed her toward the door.

"It was a pleasure meeting... so many of my new neighbors all at once," Clementine said, and produced one of her rare smiles.

The door shut behind them with the clatter of cowbells, and a silence descended over the mercantile—-a silence so complete you could hear the crackers breaking in the bottom of the barrel.

"The country's goin' tame on us, Pogey," Nash said after a moment with a sorrowful shake of his head.

"Tame as a cream-fed kitten." Pogey pulled at his ear and sighed. "Drag out the bottle, Sam, and start pourin'. We're gonna need to get ourselves pie-eyed just to weather the shock."

"Makes a man want to bawl in his booze, it does," Nash said. "First come the women, and the next thing you know you got fences and schools." He shuddered. "And tea parties and church socials."

"Holy God," Sam Woo said, pulling a whiskey bottle from beneath the counter. The men contemplated the sad state of encroaching civilization in silence for a while.

"I thought Gus went back to the States to visit his dying mother," Nash said.

Pogey heaved another sigh. "Lost hisself a mother and gained hisself a wife."

"A daisy-do wife."

"A ginger cakes and lemonade sort of wife."

"Holy God," Sam Woo said. He drank straight from the neck of the bottle and passed it into Pogey's waiting hand.

"Wonder if Rafferty knows about this yet," Nash said.

"Holy God," Sam Woo said again.

Lifting her skirts high, Clementine waded into the middle of the road. The Indian girl, having to shuffle through the thick gumbo under her heavy burden, hadn't gone far.

"Wait!" Clementine called out. "Please wait!"

Gus strode after her, grabbing her arm and swinging her around to face him. "What in the blazes are you doing?"

"That Indian girl... we must give her money. She needs to buy milk."

He gave a sharp, hard shake of his head. "She's Joe Proud Bear's squaw. If he wants her to eat, he can provide. In fact, I'm surprised he isn't providing her with some of my cows, the filthy, thieving renegade."

"But the baby—"

"Besides which, if I gave her money she wouldn't use it to buy milk. She'd clean Sam Woo out of lemon extract and drink herself insensible."

His grip was hurting her, but she barely felt it. The Indian girl had heard her and was coming back, though slowly as if she sensed danger from Gus and his anger. "I don't understand," Clementine said, her throat tight.

"The saloons aren't allowed to sell to Indians, so they try to get their hands on anything with alcohol in it. If she doesn't want her kids to starve, she can take them up to the agency and collect her beef allotment. She and Joe Proud Bear are both half-breeds, not full bloods, but they got kin up there they can go to."

The girl hadn't asked for lemon extract when she was in the mercantile; she'd begged for milk. But I have money, Clementine thought suddenly. A whole hundred dollars right in her pocket. Sewn up tight in a sachet, though. She'd have to pick the seams apart with her nails. She tugged free of Gus and began ripping off her gloves. The soft kid caught on her wedding ring—

A scream pierced the air. An Indian on a piebald pony came thundering down the road from the direction of the river, throwing up red divots of mud. He was dressed in checkered California pants and a faded blue shirt and would have looked like a cowboy if it hadn't been for the thick copper bracelets around his upper arms and the tufts of owl feathers and bits of fur laced into his braids. He was young, hardly older than Clementine herself. But he looked to her like a savage on the warpath, and she went rigid with fear.