Speak Through the Wind (42 page)

“Whadya want me to do about it?” Jewell asked, her words slurred from sleep and scotch.

“Just listen for me,” Kassandra said. “And maybe watch out the window. Holler if you see anything.”

“I’m fixin’ to holler at you now,” Jewell said, reburying her smeared face in her pillow.

Mae’s only response was to hop out of bed, run downstairs, and put a kettle on lest anyone need tea later.

Kassandra had also instructed Mae to put a lit candle in at least one window in each wall of the house. She was now wearing the big bearskin coat, and her boots crunched twenty paces out from the house. Turning west, she began walking in what she hoped was a consistent circle around the house. If she found nothing when she got back to this point, she would take twenty more paces out and repeat the cycle. All the while, she swung the lantern out in front of her, calling, “Hello? Is anyone there? Do you need help?”

She was making her third widened lap when the light from the lamp revealed a dark form in the snow, covered with a light dusting of flakes. She set the lamp down and bent beside the figure. Long skirt, long, loose hair. It was a girl, not little but young. Kassandra bent over the face, pale in the lamplight but not blue. Yet. She looked to see if any puffs of steam came from the girl’s opened mouth and saw none. Ripping the glove off her hand, she gently patted the girl’s face, but got no response.

“All right, little one,” she said, scooping the girl into her arms. “Let’s take you home.”

Kassandra had lifted sacks of flour that weighed more than this girl did, but she couldn’t carry both the girl and the lamp. Luckily, she could still see the dim light of the candles burning in Jewell’s windows, so she left the lamp to be retrieved after the thaw and headed back toward the house.

Jewell met her at the door. “Now what is goin’ on here? You’ve got Mae worked up into an absolute fit.”

Kassandra pushed Jewell aside and carried the tiny form to the parlor sofa. The girl was pale—whiter than any living person Kassandra had ever seen—with the faintest tinge of blue around her lips. Whether or not that blue came from exposure to the cold was impossible to tell, however, because the little face was covered with one bruise fading into another. Her hair was wet, and spread a damp circle on the cushion underneath it. Her dress was wet, too, with rips on the front of the skirt. She’d been crawling.

Kassandra had seen girls like this before; they turned up regularly on the sidewalks and in the alleys between the tenements back in New York. She reached out and touched the girl’s cold, cold face, letting her fingers linger just under the nose to feel for breath.

“Who do you suppose this is, Jewell?”

“Oh, my word. Tell me she ain’t dead.”

“Where could she have come from?”

“I thought I heard somethin’. Cryin’ and such. Ah, Sadie, is she goin’ to be all right?”

Kassandra took her eyes off the girl and looked at Jewell. In all the years she’d known this woman, she had never seen her so distressed. Even when Kassandra lost the baby, Jewell had been rather detached and practical. But now she stood actually wringing her pudgy hands. Had she not known better, Kassandra would have sworn that the woman was praying.

“She is alive, but she is very, very cold. We need to get her upstairs. You and Mae need to build up the kitchen fire and get the warming pans out of the beds. Heat up some water—not too hot, just warm. Bring it all to my room. I will take her upstairs and get her out of these wet things.”

Kassandra scooped the girl up in her arms and took her to her own room, pleased to see bits of movement coming from the slight, sleeping form.

“You are going to be all right,” Kassandra said, smoothing the bruised brow.

She laid the girl—child, almost—on the floor so as not to dampen the bedding. She first tugged off the wet boots, then the damp stockings. The child whimpered and made a feeble attempt to pull away, but Kassandra made soft, soothing sounds. She lifted the girl to a sitting position and began unbuttoning the bodice of her dress, only to find that many of the buttons had been torn away and the front of it merely wrapped one side over the other. It fell open at Kassandra’s touch, as did the heavy woolen chemise under it. This girl was years away from needing a corset.

Kassandra peeled away the wet clothing and saw clearly what she had feared. Bruises, deep and black, shaped with such perfect symmetry Kassandra could imagine the strength of the hands that left them behind. Still holding the girl upright, she eased the fabric off one thin shoulder, then the other, revealing open, raw-red bite marks in the hollow of her neck.

The skirt was a high-quality wool—perhaps blue, but the wetness of the material and the darkness of the room made it impossible to tell for sure. It was fastened by a single button at its back, and Kassandra lifted the girl off the floor just enough to reach underneath her to unfasten it. She knew what she would see before moving the skirt even an inch, but the foreknowledge could not prepare her for the sight. The girl wore a soft wool petticoat under the skirt. Kassandra found the tie that fastened it around the barely defined waist and pulled the skirt and petticoat off in one gentle motion.

Her legs were thin and, like the rest of her body, they were ghostly white and bruised. There were finger marks here, too, and deeper, darker marks accented by the dried blood on her inner thighs. Kassandra had seen wounds like this before, on her own flesh that morning in the alley.

Oh,
mein kleines”
she said, drawing this little one up in her arms. “Who has done this to you?”

But the girl said nothing, not even a moan, and as Kassandra felt the chill of this tiny body seeping through her clothes, she knew how imperative it was to get her warm. She wrapped the girl in her own flannel nightgown, laid her on her bed, and hollered downstairs for Jewell and Mae to hurry with the warming pans. In the meantime, she worried especially about the girl’s hands—hard and waxy. She held them in her own, careful not to rub, and waited for the warm water.

“Here’s the first one,” Mae said, bringing the bed warmer into the room. Kassandra lifted the girl up again, holding her aloft as Mae ran the hot iron pan between the sheets.

“I’m not sure if it had time to get hot enough,” she said.

“It will be fine,” Kassandra said. “We can bring up the others later.” She laid the girl back down on the mattress and tucked the sheets tight around her. “Go ask Jewell about that water. Get some towels and soak them in it, but not too hot, remember. Bring them up here to wrap her hands and feet.”

“What do you think happened to her?” Mae asked, her voice wide with awe.

“We will ask her when she wakes up.”

“And you think she’ll be all right?”

“Go see to the water, Mae. Getting her warm is the first thing.” Mae paused just long enough to touch the girl’s brow before nearly running out of the room.

The girl’s hands were already showing signs of blistering healing just from being covered by the warm blankets. When Kassandra reached under the covers to check the rest of her body however, she was worried to find it still so cold. She took off her own damp clothing and wrapped herself in her softest woolen robe. Then, she lifted the covers and crawled into bed with the girl, reaching an arm around and drawing her close, willing the warmth of her own body to reach into this other cold one.

“Get warm, little one,” she whispered into the girl’s ear, mere inches from her lips. “Get warm, but keep sleeping. Sleep as long and as deep as you want. Because nothing will be the same when you wake up.”

he girl did wake up, though she didn’t speak. Not for days, then weeks on end. She made no sound to tell them that the blisters on her hands were uncomfortable and oozing. They never knew when she was hungry; she simply ate when she came into contact with food. They never knew if she was in any pain; she simply allowed her body to be manipulated in the bed, then out, then walking, leaning heavily on Kassandra’s arm. They never knew her name, but Jewell declared she would not go around calling her “girl” all the time.

“You’re a tiny little thing,” she said one morning after the girl had been led—without protest—to join them for breakfast in the kitchen. “I’m gonna call you Biddy.”

“No, Jewell,” Kassandra said. “This one isn’t yours to name.”

“Well, we got to call her some thin’.”

“She is not one of your girls.”

“It’s all right.” They almost didn’t hear the voice; it was almost as small as the girl. “I like that name.”

“There, you see?” Jewell spoke through a mouthful of porridge and reached across to tap Biddy’s hand. “She likes it.”

Mae dropped her spoon and clapped her hands.

Kassandra just smiled. “Well, then, that is who you shall be.”

As far as Kassandra was concerned, every man in the vicinity was a suspect in Biddy’s rape, and because of that, she had insisted that none of them be admitted to the house.

“Now, that is just ridiculous,” Jewell had said. “I ain’t never in my life seen a bunch of men so uninterested in sex. Mae can’t hardly get one to go on up with her.”

“Trust me, Jewell,” Kassandra said. “I’ve known a lot of good men who were quite capable of terrible things.”

“No, you trust me. I’m gonna find out who did this. And when I do, I’ll see to it he ain’t never gonna walk again.”

With the onset of spring came the final thawing of the snow, and an onslaught of new men ready to try their luck at striking silver in the Wyoming mountains. More and more tiny shacks were being built up the side of the hill, and pack mules loaded with supplies became a regular occurrence.

These events brought the whole settlement together. Jewell set a plank across two whiskey barrels and opened up a bar in the yard. Having decided there were two things a man would pay for—and the other one was food—she bought up as much of the foodstuff as she could to assemble into meals to sell to the hungry miners before the next shipment arrived.

Biddy watched from the safety of an upstairs window, with Kassandra’s arm firmly around her.

“Is that him?”

“They won’t come back here.”

“Just look.”

“It’s not them.”

From the yard, Jewell caught Kassandra’s eye. “Psst! Sadie! What about that one there?” She pointed none-too-subtly to a tall man at the edge of the yard. His hair hung long beneath his hat, and he seemed to keep his distance from the other miners.

“MacGregan? What about him?” Kassandra said, feeling silly trying to whisper from another story

“Remember him? He was in prison when we was in South Pass. Killed a guy.”

“So what?”

“So, maybe he’s the one—”

“It isn’t him,” Biddy said quietly to Kassandra, who relayed the message to Jewell.

“Is she sure?”

Kassandra looked at Biddy who was nodding emphatically. “She is sure.”

Jewell shrugged her shoulders and walked back to the crowed of men gathered around her newly purchased keg of beer.

“I’ve told you,” Biddy said. “They won’t come back.”

“We just want you to be safe, little one.”

Their surveillance complete, Kassandra and Biddy returned to the task at hand. The room they were in was to be Biddy’s, who finally felt secure enough to venture away from sharing Kassandra’s bed. A new mattress stuffed with clean straw had just been brought up and laid on the bed frame, and a pile of linens freshly hemmed by Mae lay folded on a straight-backed chair near the window

“I’m not worried,” Biddy said, taking the first sheet and spreading it over the ticking. “The Lord will keep me safe.”

“How can you say that, knowing where you are?” Kassandra moved to the other side of the bed and tucked under the corners of the sheet.

Biddy smiled for the first time Kassandra could remember.

“Don’t you realize, Sadie? He brought you to me.”

“Me, you can count on. God? I am not so sure.”

Kassandra picked up the second sheet and unfolded it with a snap. She looked over to see Biddy’s eyes gone wide in her face, her expression grave.

“Oh, Sadie, we should never doubt that we can trust in God. If we doubt, what else do we have?”

“How old are you, Biddy?”