The Rose Legacy (15 page)

D.C. looked like he’d swallowed feathers, so badly did he want to question Quillan’s decision. Quillan gave him no opening until the deal was concluded and the money exchanged.

Slow Jim and Morty took their leave, and Quillan stood with a forced grin and held out his hand to Cain. “Well, partner?”

Cain gripped it weakly. “You ain’t got time for a dawg, but you got time for a mine?”

“I can’t work it, Cain. You’ll have to hire on someone to help D.C. My share’s an investment.”

“What if there’s no ore like they said?”

“There is no ore.” D.C. wiped his face and threw down the towel. “I tried to tell you, Daddy.”

“But there might be. Deeper in.”

D.C. shook his head. “That’s what they all say. All the fools who don’t know when to stop.”

“And plenty of fools stopped too soon when the real pay dirt was only a few feet away.” A vein stood out in Cain’s temple.

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to tunnel it all day in the dark with nothing but a candle on your hat and another on the wall, and dank air in your lungs, your hands worked to the bone.”

Cain scowled. “What would you rather do?”

“Anything!” D.C. threw up his hands. “I’d rather drag a plow behind a mule than dig in a hole like a varmint. I want out, too, Daddy. I want out so bad I could spit.”

Quillan laid a hand to his shoulder, gripping perhaps harder than he needed to. “Consider carefully what you’re saying, Daniel Cain. You’re turning your back on something your father’s put a lot of his life into.”

“Then let him dig the hole! Let him blow his other leg off looking for ore that ain’t there!”

Quillan’s fingers dug harder. D.C. didn’t know how good he had it with a father like Cain who cared for him. He saw the tightening of Cain’s lips, the grim look of the eyes, almost opaque, a mask to cover the pain.

“You want to walk away, boy? Go ahead.” Cain’s voice was stronger than Quillan expected. “Go ahead and push a plow, or get drunk and gamble your life away.”

“Need money for that.” D.C.’s chin was dropped so low to his chest he growled it.

“In the box. You can take all I got. I only wanted it for you anyhow.”

Quillan stiffened as D.C. pulled away and grabbed the money box from the crate. He took out a thin stack of bills and ruffled them. With a frown, he put several back inside but kept the majority. Then he looked up at his father. “I just can’t do it anymore.”

Cain nodded. “Then don’t.”

As D.C. pushed past him and left the tent, Quillan felt defeated. Why had he spoken up? Cain would have been better off with new partners or leaving town with D.C. Why had he jumped in and given D.C. an excuse? Now what? They would have to hire men to work the mine, and Cain would need to oversee it himself.

“Are you up to this, Cain?”

Cain shrugged, letting himself down on the cot. “I’m gettin’ too old to wonder what I’m up to, don’t ya know.”

Quillan sat down on an upturned crate, elbows to knees. “Maybe he’ll come to his senses.”

Cain shook his head. “Not sure he has any to come to.”

Carina shrank back from the window, sickened by the violence she’d just witnessed. The brutality. And just under her window, so she could hear the thudding fists against the young man’s flesh, the grunt of his breath, and his cries. Snatching her shawl, she ran down the stairs.

“Hey there! Where are you going?” Mae blocked her path.

“A man’s been hurt.”

“It’s not your affair.”

Carina tied the shawl on her shoulders. “He’s just outside. You must have heard it, too.”

“Doesn’t matter what I hear or don’t hear. I mind my own business.”

Carina stared. Mind her business? She could ignore such a thing? “He’s hurt. Badly.”

“What’s that to you?”

Carina drew herself up. “My papa is a physician. I know a little medicine. I cannot leave him there bleeding in the street.” “Well, you’d better leave him.”

“As you left me when I fell senseless on your porch?”

Mae pressed her hands to her hips. “That was different.”

“How different? He’s been beaten and robbed.”

“That’s right. It’s the roughs. And if you run out there, you’ll be next.”

Carina stared at the back door. Just beyond it a man lay, gagging on his own blood. She hardened her jaw. She would not leave him lying there. She had seen the men run off—brutes, big and ungainly. Carruthers? The thought jellied her spine. But she walked to the door, turned the knob, and pulled it open.

In the darkness she could hear him crying. Her heart twisted. Did a man cry? Even a boy so grown as he? She almost turned back inside, then remembered her bold words to Mae. She had to see it through now. She had no choice.

“Here. Don’t cry.” She hurried to his side. “Are you maimed? Is something broken?”

He groaned. “Leave me alone.” He spoke through a thick and fouled nose. Broken surely. “I wish they’d finished it.”

“Well, they didn’t. But they might if you stay here crying.”

He yanked his arm away. “Leave me alone.” Then his eyes found her in the dark, and he wretched. “It was my daddy’s money. Almost everything he had, and him all crippled up on one leg.”

Carina felt her jaw drop. The same boy. The same one she’d seen only days ago with the old man on the crutch. The pair who had left her feeling so alone. She grabbed him by the shoulder. “Get up now. You need tending.”

“I don’t deserve it.”

“Maybe not. But you need it.” She tugged ruthlessly, and he struggled to his feet, wincing. She half dragged him inside, then kicked the door shut behind her.

Mae had a sheet spread on one of the long tables. “Set him there. How bad is he?”

“I won’t know until we clean the blood off. I think his nose is broken.”

Mae snorted. “So is most of the camp’s.” She strode away and returned a minute later with a basin of warm water and a towel.

Carina washed his face, wincing when fresh blood flowed from the nose unchecked. Though he screamed, she reformed the nose between her hands. She tore two small pieces of muslin from a roll Mae held, rolled them tight like cigarettes, and pushed them into the nostrils in spite of his hollering. They would hold the cartilage in place and keep the passages open while stanching the blood. He would have to breathe through his mouth.

She mopped the remainder of his facial cuts clean. None were severe enough to need sewing. “Help me with his shirt.” Her fingers worked the buttons loose.

Mae frowned, but the man sat still and stopped complaining, likely dazed.

“I must see if there is bleeding inside.” Carina pulled open the shirt. “Bring the lamp closer.” She pressed his stomach with her palm and examined the ribs, then walked around to his back, again pressing with her palm and watching the flesh. “I don’t think your organs are damaged.”

“How would you know? Are you a doctor?” He spoke thickly through his blocked nose.

“Are you in need of one? Or simply of someone with better sense?”

He scowled. “I don’t have to take this.”

“Didn’t you learn the last time not to walk alone at night?”

His head came up abruptly. “The last time?”

“The last time you lay in the street and your papa came for you.”

He jerked around to face her. “What are you, a spy?”

“Not a doctor, nor a spy. It takes neither to recognize a fool.”

He pushed her away and stood, his legs shaky, but his expression firm in spite of the cloth protruding from his nose. “I told you to leave me alone.”

“You would prefer to lie down again in the street?”

“By Jove, I would!”

“Then by all means …” She waved her arm. “Your bed is made. Go sleep in it.”

He staggered toward the front door, gripped the knob, and nearly fell out when it opened. Without a backward look, he went out and slammed the door.

Carina raised her chin. “
Buona notte
.”

Mae’s laugh was so deep and full it choked her. “Land sakes, Carina. He’d rather face the roughs than your tending.”

“So let him.” She looked down at her blood-soaked blouse, all the thanks she’d get for her trouble.

“Is your father really a doc?”

“Yes.”

“Not a poor man’s doctor, I’d wager.”

Carina raised her chin, reminded of Quillan’s remarks. “He has served a king.”

Mae let out a low whistle. “Well, well.”

Carina softened. “He has also tended any who came to his door and many who couldn’t come. And sat by the deathbeds of some too desperate to own a decent bed to die in.” She met Mae’s violet eyes, daring her to scoff, to ridicule her pride in her papa, her heritage.

Mae smiled. “Let’s have a cup of tea. A toast to your victim.”

“
I
did not break his nose.”

“No, but you certainly put it out of joint.” Mae caught Carina’s arm through hers and laughed.

“It was his own stubbornness.”

“And you’d know nothing about that.”

Carina opened her mouth, but Mae had caught her squarely. Had not stubbornness and injured pride brought her to Crystal? No. It was heartbreak and … hope? Was hope, as Quillan said, only for fools?

Quillan reached for the gun holstered by his bed. “Who is it?” The voice was unrecognizably thick and muffled.

“Who?”

“D.C.”

Quillan swung his legs over and strode to the opening of his tent, gun in hand. He pushed the flap open. “D.C.! What have you done?”

“Nothing. Can I come in?” “What’s that in your nose?”

D.C. pawed the swollen flesh. “Cloth. Some woman shoved it there.”

“Woman?”

D.C. scowled. “At Mae’s. Some woman at Mae’s.”

Carina DiGratia. “She did this to you? Broke your nose?” Quillan wouldn’t put it past her, though why D.C.’s and not his own he couldn’t say.

D.C. shook his head and sank into the caned chair. “It wasn’t her.” He dropped his face into his hands and sobbed. “They took the money. They took Daddy’s money. I didn’t even spend one cent of it. They took it all.”

Quillan went cold inside. Part of him wanted to punch D.C. himself, part of him seethed at the roughs who preyed on the men of Crystal. Even those like D.C. who almost deserved it. It had to stop. “How much was it?”

“I don’t know. I never counted it. I never touched it, not since I put it in my pocket.” He groaned. “I can’t go back.”

“No, I wouldn’t think so. Cain would add broken ribs to your broken nose.”

D.C. hung his head. “I wish he would.”

“Wouldn’t get the money back. Only one way to do that.”

“How?” D.C. looked up at him exactly as Cain’s mottled dog did.

“Work. You work for it.”

“But how?” D.C. spread his hands. “If I go back to the mine …”

“No. You’ve taken your stand. Now keep to it. You can work for me.” Quillan tossed a rolled blanket to the floor of the tent. “Get some sleep. In the morning you learn the freighting business.”

T
WELVE

A single moment of joy can slake the throat of a dying spirit. An act of kindness, no matter how small, becomes a mercy drop from heaven.

—Rose

A
S SHE WALKED TO
Mr. Beck’s office the next morning, Carina was surprised to see the boy she had tended seated high on Quillan Shepard’s wagon. She stopped on the walk and stared. The daylight was less kind to the young man than the lamp had been. His nose was enormous, his eyes masked with blue swellings. He sat slouched and sullen, but whole.

He did not look up from the reins to see her, but Quillan Shepard did. His face was set, offering her nothing, not even his anger. But she knew it was there. Beneath his mask of indifference was the bitter fury that had frightened her so. She turned into the office, suddenly eager to see what work Mr. Beck had left her.

Closing the door brought instant relief. Mr. Beck’s desk was cluttered as though he had tossed the papers there, then shuffled them about with his hands. Maybe he’d searched for something before leaving and had no time to put them in order. But then, maybe he had considered it her job to bring order. She sighed and took her seat.

Thankfully, she had the next few days to herself. What was it Quillan had said?
“You read only the dates?”
Perhaps it was time she learned better what it was Berkley Beck did. She took up the first page and started to read. It was tedious language at best, and after four or five pages, she lost interest. Better to file them and be done.

After the first several miles, D.C. was squirming on the box. Quillan wasn’t surprised. A youth like that would chafe every mile of solitude. But it might give him the chance to think. Quillan could hardly blame him not wanting to be shut away from the sun day in and day out.

No wonder he was pallid and whining. Who could want to spend his life in a hole? Still, there were lessons for D.C. to learn, like appreciating what Cain had tried to do for him. It wasn’t easy raising the boy alone, him coming so late in their lives that the mother had died in the birthing. What man could be father and mother both?

Quillan saw D.C. wince at the bump of the wagon but said nothing. It was for the kid to mention if he needed to. It was time he learned to be a man. Quillan hadn’t planned to be the one to teach him, but it seemed to have fallen out that way. He supposed it was good D.C. had come to his tent last night. It would have broken Cain’s heart to see him.

Quillan frowned. Somehow, some way, the lawlessness had to be stopped. But how? Marshal O’Neal had resigned the position. His constables ran the other way when it came to trouble with the roughs, and none of the miners seemed willing to stick their necks out and make themselves a target. If no one stepped up, there would be no opposition to the roughs at all.

But Miss DiGratia had stepped up. She had gone out into the dark and fetched D.C. inside for doctoring. He’d gotten the whole story last night from D.C.’s point of view, which probably wasn’t far from the truth, especially her sharp tongue. They ought to elect her marshal and let her scold the roughs out of town.

He chuckled to himself, and D.C. looked over with a questioning brow raised.

“Just drive, D.C. Just drive.”

Carina blew the straggling hair off her forehead and laid down the last paper in a neat stack. After lunch she would file them, now that they were sorted and the corresponding leaves put together. She pushed back the chair and stood, but her skirt snagged on the floor and pulled her back down.

She bent beneath the desk and freed it from the loose board that slapped back into place. No wonder Mr. Beck lost his pen nibs in the crack. The board had lost its nail. She held her skirt free and stood.

Her stomach was hungry enough for even Mae’s fare. And they had begun a habit of lunching together, as few of the men came in for the noon meal. Most took the remains of their breakfast in packs to hold them until dinner. That left Mae and Carina to share a quiet, leisurely meal, her favorite of the day.

She met Èmie on the corner of Drake and Central. Though she had no intention of immersing herself in Crystal’s social life, she had developed a fondness for Èmie Charboneau. She couldn’t help pitying her, living with the dour, cross uncle and working in the hot springs. “Have you left your cave?”

Èmie nodded. “I snuck away. If Uncle Henri knew, he’d send me back directly. But I can’t spend every minute in there. Some days I think I might as well be a miner.”

Carina pictured the dark bath caves, the narrow tunnel between. She almost smelled the sulfur steam and heard the trickling on the walls. “At least your tunnel is clean.”

“True. But it’s dark and dank. I wish the springs opened to the air.”

Carina caught her arm. “Come with me for lunch with Mae.”

“I don’t have money for it.”

“You’ll be my guest.”

Èmie shrugged. “The worst she can do is throw me out.”

“She won’t. She likes too well to have the dishes washed for her while she dozes in the sun.”

Èmie held out ragged hands. “I know well enough how to wash dishes.”

“Then come along. Your sink awaits.” The day that had started ruefully with the sight of Quillan Shepard and the damaged boy had suddenly grown bright. Carina looked upward. How had she taken for granted the brilliant blue of the sky, the warmth of the sun? She thought of Èmie sneaking away just to breathe the air outside, worrying her uncle might find out. Her heart moved for her friend. Yes, her friend.

“I think we should picnic,” Carina stated. Èmie needed the sunshine, the brisk mountain air. When they reached the kitchen door, Carina pulled it open. “Mae, we have a sun swept canopy we can’t waste. We must eat outside today.”

Mae looked askance, then shrugged. “It’s no skin off my nose. Eat wherever you like.”

But Carina caught her arm. “You must join us. Just listen to the birdsong.”

“That’s a crow’s caw.”

But Carina tugged, and Mae carried their plates outside. Sitting together with Mae and Èmie on the back stoop after eating, Carina talked, pouring out her family history, her memories. She told tales of her brothers’ escapades with skilled artistry, making them larger than life until Èmie’s eyes shone. She spoke of Papa’s work, his rise in Italy, his move to Argentina and on up to California, his importance in the community, yet his generosity and compassion.

“Not only does he doctor the people who can pay generously, but also those who bring only a loaf of bread or nothing at all. He takes his oath to heart and refuses care to no one. He is a great man.”

She spoke of Mamma’s beauty. “Even after seven children she is shapely, and that’s no easy thing with such brutes of brothers as mine. Tony was the size of a young ox at birth. Mama called me a runt, coming after that. But either way, she was back in her skirts in weeks. She is the envy of all the aunts, as beautiful now as she was when Papa chose her.” That wasn’t strictly true, but very nearly.

“That’s where you get it, then.” Èmie smiled shyly. “My own mother was plain like me, but gentle and warm. I always remember how warm …” Her eyes brightened suddenly with tears.

Surprised, Carina wrapped an arm about Èmie’s waist, and they rested their heads together. Mae wore a distant look, thinking perhaps of family, perhaps of Mr. Dixon. “Family’s important. Sometimes I wish I’d had one.”

Èmie sniffed. “Sometimes I wonder if I ever will.”

Carina suddenly ached so strongly for her loved ones she squeezed Èmie. “We must be family to each other.” Fervent tears stung her eyes. She needed it so much.

Mae laughed. “Will you look at us? And in plain sight of God and all the world.”

But Èmie and Carina held each other tightly. Carina raised her face to the sky. “Let them see. We are women. We are not meant to be alone.”

That evening, Carina took some of Mae’s load as her own. After keeping Mr. Beck’s business through the day, she ate with the men, then scrubbed the tables and benches and swept the floors. The next morning before she went to Mr. Beck’s office, she rubbed down the woodwork, chasing the never ending dust. Mae told her neither yea nor nay but accepted the help with silent gratitude.

And as they lunched in Mae’s parlor, Carina was rewarded by Mae’s own tales. How different they were, her stories of life in the camps and gullies she’d prospected. “Then there was the time winter surprised us in June. We were at the front of our provisions, so there wasn’t much chance of starving. But mine was the only cabin, as I was the only woman. It took about two hours of blizzard before the men abandoned their chivalry and packed in with me. Didn’t even need a fire, there was so much body heat inside my walls.” Mae’s buttery voice warmed at the telling.

“Each one had a pretty apology for barging in, but not a one offered to leave, even when night fell. That was in a time when getting caught with a fellow after dark meant disgrace or matrimony.” She glanced at Mr. Dixon’s picture on the wall. “I told them they’d have to ante up to see which one would get me, but they just guffawed and said, ‘Heck, ma’am, we’ll all marry you.’ ”

Carina’s eyes widened.

“That made forty husbands, and what would the Mormons think of that? ‘Course, not a one of them meant it, and I knew it and they knew it, and we all had a good laugh and spent the night warm and chaste. No, there was only one man for me, and him not much in some eyes. But that’s how it is. The heart sees what the eyes miss.” Her voice caressed the portrait of her plain husband.

“But listen to me going on.” Mae pushed her plate aside. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you’ve bewitched me.”

Carina spread her hands. “There’s no magic here.”

“Maybe not. But that’s the most I’ve carried on in years.”

Carina smiled. “Carry on, Mae. It’s good for the soul.”

When Mae laughed deep in her chest, Carina laughed, too. She felt a lightness inside that she hadn’t known since arriving. And the lines on Mae’s face seemed to smooth and lessen. Her labored breath came easier, and Carina wondered if she truly had worked some magic on the woman.

Only that night, when she trimmed the lamp and lay down in the darkness, did the aching loss return.
Oh, Flavio
. And when she slept, she dreamed her heart was an eye watching Flavio caress Divina’s face and bury his fingers in her hair.