Larkspur (24 page)

“My housekeeper said you wanted to buy land. What do you have in mind?”

“What’s available?”

“It’s a big country out there.”

“Do you have a map?”

Kyle went to the far wall and loosened the strings that held a rolled-up canvas. When let down it showed a large map of central Montana Territory. Cleve moved closer to study the map, but Dillon backed away from the colonel. Anger and resentment ate at him. Here in this room was the man he had despised from the moment he had learned about him. He ached to slam his fist into that arrogant face. Cleve’s voice came from across the room, and Dillon tried to focus on the reason he and Cleve had come here.

“Point out the sections not already taken.”

“Any of this area. The bank will finance, but with a sizable amount of money down.”

“Where is the land set aside for the Sioux?”

“There’s not many Sioux in the area. They’ve moved out since the Little Big Horn battle in ’76.”

“How about the section called Larkspur?”

“It’s no longer available.”

“That’s a big section. Looks like it was owned by two parties.” Cleve put his head close to the map and squinted to read the small print.

“Fellow named Anderson had most of it.”

“Who owns the part that extends up into the mountains? ’Pears to me this land is boxed in by Anderson’s.”

“Fellow named Lenning owns this chunk. He’ll be giving it up when the new owners take over the Larkspur.”

“Who are they?” Cleve asked casually.

“A group of investors here and in Bozeman.”

“I may go see if they’re interested in selling. I’m fronting for a Kansas City banker who’s sending up a herd of longhorns.”

“Good grazing land over around Miles City. Land is opening up north of Helena, too.”

“He wants an area here along the Yellowstone. Are you sure the Larkspur isn’t to be had?”

“Not a chance. New owners will be taking possession in the next few days.”

“How about Lenning? Will he sell?”

“That land would be no good for what you want. You’d have to cross the Larkspur to get to it. Besides, Larkspur controls the water.”

Cleve turned away from the map to see his young friend’s eyes riveted on Forsythe and decided they had better leave before Dillon exploded. Not that it mattered much now, but it would be helpful if they could keep up the pretense a little longer.

“Well, that’s that. Thanks for your time.” Cleve prodded Dillon ahead of him out the door and down the hallway, aware that Forsythe was close behind them.

“Sorry I couldn’t help you.” The colonel opened the door and stood aside.

Dillon paused, turned, and looked at Forsythe with an expression of searing contempt.

“I just bet you are.”

“What did you say your name was?” Kyle asked, puzzled by the dislike evident on the young man’s face.

“Didn’t say.”

“Why not? You ashamed of it?” Kyle’s temper began to simmer.

“Proud of it. Just didn’t think it any of your goddamn business.”

“Then get out of my house and don’t come back.”

“Oh, I’ll be back, Colonel! You can bet your sorry life on it.”

Dillon followed Cleve out the door. He had no more than cleared it when Forsythe slammed it so hard the doorframe shook.

“Goddamn, rotten, sonofabitchin’ piece of horse-dung,” Dillon muttered.

“Cool down, son. He ain’t worth gettin’ all het up over.”

“I wanted to knock that smirky, superior look off his face. I wanted to break his . . . rotten neck.”

“If things work out right, we’ll get him where it really hurts. Let’s nose around and see what we can find out.”

*  *  *

“Impudent young pup!” Forsythe snarled. “If I had him under my command for a month or two, he’d learn some manners. He’d learn to treat his superiors with respect. Ruth!”

“I’m here, Kyle.” Ruth came halfway down the open stairway and stood beside the railing.

“What are you doin’ up there? Hiding?”

“I’m not exactly proud of my face, Colonel.”

“Then take care that you don’t provoke me again. What did they say when they came in?”

“Who?”

“Stupid bitch! The two men who just left.”

Ruth’s face flamed. Pride kept her from cowering.

“They said they wanted to see you about some land.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

“Go get Lee.”

“You want me to go out on the street? People are sure to ask what happened to my face.”

He looked at her for a full minute. She refused to look away.

“Get that idiot that hangs out back in the carriage house. Tell him to be damn quick. Another thing, Ruth. I’ve seen you sneaking him plates of food out the back door. He’s been eating as good as I have. It’s going to stop.”

“I wasn’t sneaking. You don’t pay him, Kyle. He works for his board.”

“Then throw him a bone once in a while.”

Kyle Forsythe flopped down in the swivel chair. He had an uneasy feeling about Stark and the insolent young pup. Their story didn’t ring true. If a Kansas City banker was interested in bringing a herd of longhorns up here, he would have heard about it.

They were hired guns. But who had hired them?

Chapter Fifteen

O
n his way back from the bunkhouse where he had shaved and put on a clean shirt for the burial, Buck paused to look at the black scarf tied to a nail beside the door. It was but another reminder of the differences between him and the lady who lived in his house. It would never have occurred to him to put the symbol of death on the door. But Kristin had thought it proper and had put it there out of respect for her uncle.

Even though he had cared deeply for Moss and was grieving for him, Buck would have simply wrapped him in a blanket and buried him. It was Kristin who had insisted that he be washed and dressed in black britches and a freshly ironed white shirt. She had combed his hair and placed his hands on his chest.

During the night Gilly had put together a burial box out of old wagon plank. The box had been lined with a blanket before Moss was placed in it. The coffin was now in the wagon Gilly was bringing around to the back of the house.

“Kristin, we’re ready to go.”

Dressed in her black skirt, her white blouse covered with a black wool shawl, Kristin came out into the sunlight clutching a Bible. Her face was pale and her eyes, dark-ringed from the sleepless night, were clouded with fatigue. She had wrapped her shiny braids into a crown and pinned them atop her head. She was so pretty, even in her sorrow, that Buck’s eyes were continually drawn back to her.

“I don’t have a black hat,” she said, and looked as if she would burst into tears.

“Moss would be glad. Remember how he liked to touch your hair?” Buck gently gripped her elbow and guided her toward the wagon.

“Is it far?”

“Not really, but it’s too far for you to walk today. You’re worn-out. We’ll ride here on the tailgate.”

He lifted her to sit on the end of the wagon, then sprang up beside her. When the wagon moved past the bunkhouse and the corrals, on a grassy plain beyond the ranch buildings the Sioux came into view. Several women had stopped work to watch them. Two small children squatted in the area between the two cone-shaped, hide-covered shelters. A cradleboard was propped against a tepee pole.

Kristin waved at the women. They watched, silent and still.

“Is it not their custom to wave?”

“They are a little . . . ah . . . suspicious of you,” Buck explained.

“Why? I am a woman just as they are.”

“They’re shy. I doubt that they’ve seen a woman with hair like yours. And I think they admire the way you stood and didn’t cringe away from Runs Fast when he was going to cut your braid.”

“I was able to do that because you were beside me.”

The wagon wheels bumped over the uneven prairie ground. The grass was so high that it almost reached the bottom of the wagon, and their feet, hanging from the tailgate, sliced through it. The wagon headed for a knoll back of the ranch buildings where a lone pine tree stood as a silent sentinel. At first light, Buck and Gilly had gone there to prepare Moss’s final resting place.

“Why did you choose this place?”

“Someone else chose it for a burial ground. Not long after I came here, Moss and I found a small grave covered with stones. We figured it was the child of a settler passing through. A few years later we buried one of our drovers here, and right after that a fellow who had been shot came in. We never did know who shot him or how he managed to stay on his horse. Guess he was determined not to die out there in the mountains all by himself.”

“Was the drover you buried here an Indian?”

“No. The Sioux take care of their own dead. He was a drifter who happened by and worked for his board. At the time we couldn’t afford to hire drovers.”

“You get along well with the Indians.”

“Yes. By and large they are good people trying to hold on to their way of life. But there are bad ones among them just as there are bad whites.”

“Tell me about Uncle Yarby . . . back then.”

“Moss was small, quick and wiry. Always good-natured. He could outwork a larger man and liked doing it. When I was sixteen, I was taller and heavier than Moss and had to struggle to keep up with him.

“He could spin a yarn that would last an hour; and even though you knew he was making it up as he went along, you didn’t want it to end.” He looked directly at Kristin. “I learned about the world outside this territory from Moss’s tales.”

Buck felt a pang of guilt. Moss was lying dead in the box behind him, and he was enjoying this short time with Kristin. He had never talked much, being one to hold his thoughts to himself, but it was so easy to talk to her that the words just continued to flow from his mouth.

“I could read only a little when I met Moss, or rather when he found me. He shoved newspapers, books, catalogs and even wanted posters under my nose. He forced me to read until I got to where I liked it.”

The wagon stopped. Buck hopped down and lifted Kristin to the ground. The sun was shining brightly and a slight wind moved the branches of the pine tree. The men placed two ropes on the ground beside the gaping hole and set the box on them.

“Bury him facing the east, please.”

The box was carefully turned; then, with a rope in each hand, the men gently lowered the box into the ground, removed the ropes and stepped back. When Kristin opened the Bible, they removed their hats.

She stood at the head of the grave and read a Scripture from the Bible, then closed it and held it to her breast while she recited the Lord’s Prayer in a low, trembling voice. When she finished, she raised her face toward the sky and began to sing.

“Jesus, Lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom fly, While the nearer waters roll, While the tempest still is high—”

Her eyes were on the blue sea of the sky, and she was unaware that the big man with the wild dark hair was blinking tears from his eyes.

Sunshine made her hair a bright halo around her face; the wind teased it with its fingertips, and sighed in the grasses around them. Her voice was clear and sweet, full of love and pain. It had an unearthly quality and floated over the grassy knoll like the song of a bird. Buck had never heard anything so beautiful.

Even Gilly, filled with awe and wonder, watched and listened.

There was a moment of utter silence when her song ended. She stooped, picked up a handful of soil and dropped it on the wooden box. Then she stood by, wordlessly, while Buck and Gilly filled the grave. It seemed symbolic that, at that moment, from the forest behind them came the lonely, plaintive call of the mourning dove.

Buck put the shovel back in the wagon and came to stand beside her.

“We’ll bring up a load of rock and cover it.”

“Do you suppose we could make a marker?” She looked around at the other stone-covered unmarked graves.

“I’ll burn his name in a board.”

“Someday I’d like to plant larkspur on his grave.”

“You can do that in the spring.”

There appeared to be no question in the mind of either of them that she would still be at the ranch in the spring.

Gilly climbed up onto the seat.

“No matter what happens now,” Kristin said, as Buck lifted her again to sit on the back of the wagon, “Uncle Yarby will stay on his Larkspur until the end of time.”

*  *  *

The rest of the day was filled with a strange quiet. Kristin prepared the noon meal. When Buck and Gilly came in to eat, hardly a dozen words were spoken during the meal and none of them were directed to her except to thank her when they left the table. While she was cleaning up after the meal, Kristin saw Gilly leaving the homestead. One of the Indian drovers rode behind the wagon on a spotted pony.

To Kristin it did not seem fitting that she plunge into the cleaning or other household duties on the day a beloved relative had been laid to rest. At home in River Falls only the most essential chores would be performed and the rest of the day spent in remembering.

After wandering about the quiet rooms for an hour, she put on her shawl and left the house. She walked out to the corral and looked at the horses. They appeared to her to be wild and rangy; not at all like the stocky, well-fed horses back in Wisconsin. As she stood there leaning on the top railing, an Indian with shoulder-length hair and a doeskin band wrapped about his head moved among the more than a dozen animals. It was impossible to tell his age. He was short, his face scarred, and his legs bowed. He tossed a rope around the neck of one of the horses, led it through the gate, grabbed a handful of its mane, leaped up onto its back and rode away.

The Indians here were different too, Kristin mused. Back home they had not appeared to be so uncivilized. Here they were more like the country they lived in: wild, fierce and unbroken. Not one time, as far as Kristin could tell, had the Indian looked at her, but she had the feeling that he was aware of every move she made even when she lifted her hand to shoo away a large fly that settled on her cheek.