Spring for Susannah (33 page)
Dying is so cold . . . It hurts so bad.
M
rs. Rose flapped out the door like an agitated duck, her russet and umber dress reminiscent of a female mallard's plumage. “Mrs. Mason! Woe is me! Sorrowful times!” Tears dripped off her beaklike nose onto her heaving breast. Susannah could make out only a few words among the sobs. “Gold-field widows . . . regret the day . . . Black Hills . . . scalp-hungry savages . . . trailing your husband.”
Susannah frowned. The day's entire agenda depended on whether or not she could drag this woman from the pit of hysteria. Susannah wrapped an arm around the older woman's shoulders and shepherded her into the deserted store. When Mrs. Rose paused to blow her nose, Susannah jumped in. “Mrs. Rose, perhaps you could settle an argument between Mr. Mason and me.”
The transformation was instantaneous. The woman's face lit up in anticipation of a recitation of marital discord.
“Mr. Mason thinks your husband runs the store and you merely help him out. I think Mr. Rose is the brawn, but you're the brains behind this emporium.” Susannah discarded her mental picture of Mr. Rose, rail-thin and pale, and offered up a brief silent prayer of remorse for the fib.
“Oh, Mrs. Mason, I knew from the moment I first saw you. Smart as a whip, I said, A-1.” Mrs. Rose dried her face and wadded her handkerchief into her apron pocket. “Just between us ladies, Mr. Rose isn't much help around here, other than bookkeeping.”
With a swish of her bustle, Mrs. Rose resumed her place behind the counter. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Mason? I thought you'd have gone back to Detroit by now, city girl. Surely you don't plan to stay out on that claim by yourself while Mr. Mason goes prospecting?”
“Prospecting? I'm sorry, ma'am, but I believe you're misinformed. Jesse went to Jamestown for carpentry work.”
“Ha!” A crumpled slip of paper flapped from the woman's apron. She crossed her arms over her bosom.
“Dearest Susannah,” Jesse had scratched on the back of a used ticket. “No work in J'town. Carpenters make $5/day in Bismarck. âJ.M.”
Her heart sank. He had gone even farther away. “But this says nothing about gold.”
“Humph.” This time the apron produced the August 12 issue of the
Bismarck Tribune
.
“GOLD!” the headlines shouted. “Expedition Heard From!
Gold and Silver in Immense Quantities, Gold Bearing Quartz Crops Out in Every Hill, Custer's Official Report!”
Susannah scanned the front page. “Sounds like there's gold just lying around.”
“Hear tell they're bringing out a hundred dollars a day. Which is why our foolish husbands went chasing after it.”
“But Jesse's not a miner.”
“Neither is Mr. Rose.”
And neither was the neighborhood dairyman who left for the Montana gold fields in 1860, or the milliner's husband who lit out for Virginia City in '63. Susannah held her breath.
Don't cry
.
Don't
think. Concentrate on this moment
. “I need to find out if Mr. Mason ordered grain before he left.”
“You poor girl, so brave.” With a dramatic sniffle, the older woman slapped open an account book. “No grain orders this month. How much do you need?”
“Fifty bushels of middlings, please. Also, do you know where I might sell a steer?”
Mrs. Rose extended her bottom lip sympathetically. “Seems like everyone's trying to sell and no one's buying. That comes to $45, leaving the Mason account with $14.93.”
What? Jesse had nearly sixty dollars' credit with the Roses? Susannah handed over her letter to Ellen. “Have I received any
other
mail?” she asked, unable to keep the edge from her voice.
“As a matter of fact, you have.” The shopkeeper hefted a large box. “Looks like your sister-in-law sent books for your school.”
“What school?”
“Mr. Mason told us, and we told those new people north of here. They're Norwegian, so like as not they didn't understand. I thought for sure you'd want the money, seeing as how Mr. Mason has no income from wheat. We settled on twenty-five cents a week for each child. That would be eight dollars a month, but I doubt we'll have that long before the snow hits. We went ahead and fixed up the army mail station.”
Jesse volunteered her to teach? No, more likely Mrs. Rose had run the idea over him like a locomotive. Susannah swallowed. “Army mail station?”
“Before the railroad, the army carried the mail through here. They left the building behind. Nothing fancy, just some benches and a stove, and a loft for you to sleep in. I said we could put you up.” She tossed her steely curls in the direction of the family quarters upstairs. “But Mr. Mason insisted you stay at the school.”
“Did my husband happen to say what I should do with the livestock?”
“As if I'd have any idea.” Mrs. Rose waddled to the back door. “Robert? I know you're out there. Come help your teacher with her books.”
The freckle-faced boy who had driven Jesse's wagon back to the Volds' hauled the box across the hard-packed dirt yard, then ran off. After the soddy, the army shanty seemed almost too bright, too loud. Sunlight streamed in through windows on three sides and reflected off whitewashed walls. No musty odors or spider-webs; the building had been aired and swept recently. Someone had nailed together a couple of pine benches and topped them with a stack of broken slates. A squat two-lid stove, rusty from insufficient blacking, emptied its pipe into the north wall. A ladder led to a loft with a new straw pallet.
Susannah settled on the only chair and studied Jesse's note. He had dashed it off in pencil, probably as the eastbound pulled into the station. How had it gotten here? If one of the men from the section house had brought it, he could tell her if Jesse was in good health and sober. When did it arrive? And what else had Mrs. Rose hidden in her apron?
Susannah pried open the box. On top was a recent issue of the Ann Arbor newspaper with a question mark inked beside an article about the grasshopper plague. The insects had eaten everything from Dakota Territory to Kansas. Their bodies had piled up on the tracks, stopping trains. Perhaps this wasn't a curse from God after all but simply the kind of challenge that comes to both the just and the unjust. She wished Jesse would come home so she could talk to him about it. Or about anything.
The box contained a book of poetry, ten novels, and assorted back issues of
Harper's
and
Leslie's
. Bless Ellen; no materials for teaching but a welcome respite from reality. Her letter shared about their children and new church but no mention of Susannah's inheritance.
Susannah had never taught, not even Sunday school, and never helped with the younger grades, but she had been a student for ten years. How difficult could it be? And the location couldn't be better. She'd be near the railroad when Jesse returned. And far from Abner Reece.
Susannah stood and headed back to the store. She'd need slate pencils, a lamp. A map would be niceâ
“Ivar!” Susannah almost bumped into her neighbor.
“Come.” He grasped her arm above the elbow and steered her to his wagon. “There's to be a burying. Those people north of here, their baby died. Marta's with them already. Get in.”
“But I don't know them.”
“No one does. So. Everyone will come.” As soon as she took her seat, he shouted and slapped the reins. They climbed the ridge above the river, cutting through unbroken prairie grass.
“They're Norwegian. Perhaps only you and Marta should go.”
“What? You think Norway is some puny country where I know everyone?” He made a growling noise in his throat. “They are from Iowa. Marta and I are from Wisconsin.”
Susannah's teeth rattled as one wheel jolted through a hole. “Jesse said you didn't speak English when he first met you, so I thought you'dâ”
“Just got off the boat?” Ivar finished. “Good storyteller, your husband. No, I left Norway eleven years ago. I was too old for school in America. Served in Wisconsin's Fifteenth Volunteer Regiment, most all Scandinavians. Didn't learn much English until I came out here. Jesse talked like a river in spring flood. I had to learn or drown.”
He eased up on the reins and the team settled into a steady walk. “Work all day, talk all night. Everything from how to build outhouse to how to get to heaven. Sometimes laugh, sometimes cry. Why are we born? Why do bad things happen? What kind of woman is best?”
“I disappointed him, didn't I?”
Ivar growled again. “No. Sundays after lunch, while you and Marta walked, Jesse bragged on you. No afternoon nap for me until I heard how smart, how brave, how good you are. I half never seen a man more proud of his wife, or more in love.”
“Mrs. Rose thinks Jesse caught gold fever.”
Ivar's bushy eyebrows twitched. After a long moment, he conceded, “Maybe,
ja
, the way he is about money.”
Susannah's heart sank even further. “But that area's full of Indians. General Custer took hundreds of soldiers for protection. How far away are the Black Hills?”
Ivar shrugged. “Past where the railroad ends, but not so far as California.”
Two white shapes broke the horizon line. One became the cover of a heavy wagon, similar to a prairie schooner, the other a tent, pitched in a neat square of cut grass. Their oxen and a Guernsey milk cow grazed with two horses. A chestnut stallion and mare, their sleek conformation more appropriate to racing than farmwork. A breeding pair? These people must be well-to-do.
“Jesse should be here. He would know what to say, what verses to read. These people expect
me
to talk at the grave.” Ivar retrieved his Bible from under the seat and shoved it into her hands. “Look up some verses for me.”
“I can't read Norwegian.”
He snatched the book from her and slapped the reins into her hands. “You drive, then.”
“Try Job, the Psalms, Isaiah 49, First Thessalonians.”
“The Psalms? There're 150 of them. Which one?”
Susannah parked the wagon so the oxen would be shaded by the tent. Introductions and directions swirled around her, the unfamiliar names fusing with other incomprehensible words. After a whirl of activity, she found herself alone inside, holding a basin of water and a washrag.
There on the pallet, under a drape of netting, lay the baby. Balancing the basin between clumps of grass, Susannah knelt, touching her finger to the tiny fist already drained of warmth and color.
“So small. You must have been born during their journey.” Indignation raced through her. “Couldn't they have waited, stayed in Iowa where your mother wouldn't have had it so hard?”
Susannah dipped the rag into the cool water, wrung it out, and wiped the baby's face, starting with the tears she had dripped onto the tiny forehead.
“I don't even know your name, or if you're a boy or girl.” She unwrapped the blanket. “A boy. Little boy, when you get to heaven, you can play with my baby. I can't tell you who to ask for or what my baby looks like. Check the choir.”
Susannah washed his round back, the tiny folds at the base of his neck, the creases of his legs. She dressed him in a clean diaper and rewrapped him in the blanket, tucking in his hands and feet, leaving only his pale face visible. She nestled him in her arms and willed some of her body heat into his still form.
The opening of the tent darkened. A man brought in a packing crate, resized to fit. For a second their eyes met, then Susannah looked away, unable to see her pain reflected and amplified in his face.
“I couldn't find any clothes for him,” she said, because she couldn't think of anything else to say. She placed the baby in his long pale hands. The first words of his hoarse-voiced reply she recognized as “Thank you,” but she lost the rest of his message.
He laid the body in the box and smoothed the blanket around ears smaller than his fingertip. He fitted the lid, then raised his mallet. It landed with a thud and Susannah flinched. The man swallowed, adjusted his grip, and finished the job. Stooping under the ridgepole, he carried the coffin out.
Susannah dried her face, then followed him into the noon sunshine. She blinked. It should be November gloomy, not early September bright.
Ivar handed Sara to her. “Where in Isaiah?”
“Try chapter 49. About mothers remembering their babies.” Susannah embraced Sara with both arms. The child was so warm. So wiggly. So alive.
“
Ja
. Here it is.” Ivar clamped his hand on her shoulder, then hustled up the slope to join a cluster of mourners.
Susannah trailed behind, pausing to pick some feathery stalks for Sara to hold. The prairie grass shimmered violet, crimson, and bronze in the wind; winter would arrive soon.
Mournful music pulled the group tighter. The dirge emanated not from the violin Susannah expected but from an instrument similar to a bagpipe. It rested on the lap of a curly-haired man with close-set eyes. He pumped the device with movements of his right elbow.
“Uilleann pipes,” a voice behind her whispered. “Irish excuse for a bagpipe.”
Susannah turned to find the hotel keeper. “Mr. McFadgen. How do you do?”
His apron had been replaced with a frock coat and matching vest. “The musician is my partner, John Morrison. Fool is playing a tune lamenting one of the many defeats of the Irish at the hands of the Vikings. Hope these Norwegians don't recognize the song, just hear the sadness.”
He nodded at the group of men removing their hats across the circle. “Appears the whole town has turned out. Saloon must have closed. There's Pat Flood, the section boss, Hendrickson Lee, John Olson, and Pat Burns from the section house. The other Irish is the pumper, Connors, but I can't remember if his given name is Pat or Mike. Colonel Marsh wants to build a mill on the Sheyenne. Frank Wright has a claim north of here. He's from Jesse's neck of the woods.”