The Rose Legacy (9 page)

Quillan followed the rules. He treated men decently. Fact was, he had an overworked sense of justice. Quillan said it hadn’t used to be that way. As a youngster he’d broken every rule there was to break—a regular hellion, taking pleasure in the scowls the congregation gave the “preacher’s son.” Cain could hardly picture it.

But Quillan had a brush with the law that turned him quicker than a hornet shies a horse. What was it he’d said? The thought of doing time, of being locked into one place unable to get out, was enough to put him on the straight and narrow for good. Cain shook his head. It must be part and parcel with being such a fiddle-footed man, never staying put long enough to cool his heels.

But Cain suspected a deep tenderness in Quillan. He had seen it more than once. Quillan had a gentle hand for the dog, a keen wit with D.C., and most of all, the heart to reach out to an old man fool enough to get his leg blown off. Not to mention the way he always dug in for the underdog and those suffering some injustice. That’s what had gotten him crosswise with Berkley Beck to start with. And now he was as committed to upholding the good as he’d been to thwarting it in his youth.

He did good, and he cared. But Quillan did it all without grace. Cain opened the Bible and pictured Quillan in its pages. Some of these words had to be the key that would open his heart and let out some of the pain. Cain knew where it came from, some of it, anyhow. No one with a start like Quillan’s could be free of hardship, not in this life. Cain just wished he could help. He thought if only … But then, he hadn’t succeeded so well with his own boy either.

He swallowed that bitter truth with a familiar sadness. The Lord knew his own son, D.C., had been hearing of God’s glory all his life by Cain’s own mouth, and where was the boy now? Cain didn’t want to picture what den of sin the boy wallowed in presently. Sometimes it was just too hard.

He lay down wearily on the cot. What with the worry and the jumping ghost pains in his leg, sleep was elusive. That came with age, he’d been told. Didn’t seem to make much sense, though, when he spent so much of each day tuckered out. Unlike D.C., who didn’t seem to need sleep, not if the hours he kept were any indication.

In the first dim light of dawn, Cain strapped on his wooden leg and took up his crutch. He pulled himself up by one pole to balance on another. The sorry thing was, the wooden peg would outlast the joint in his good leg.

He limped out of the tent, ducking under the flap, and headed for Central. He’d look there before searching Hall Street. It was more likely gambling than women that kept the boy out all night. The women of Hall Street didn’t linger.

He teetered along on the crutch up the slope from the creek, past the livery, and onto the boardwalk of Central Street. It didn’t take his old eyes long to realize the dusty heap in the road was his boy. Nineteen years old and hardly the smarts of a coon. Robbed, no doubt. Beaten maybe. Chastened? Not hardly. Cain shook his head. He’d give him what-for just as soon as he cleared him from the wagon road.

E
IGHT

Time is an undying enemy. No matter how much you put behind you, there is always more. I think eternity the cruelest joke of all.

—Rose

F
ROM HER WINDOW
, Carina watched the old man shake the lump in the street. With his crutch he struck him once on the backside, and the younger man scrambled to his knees. There must be strength still in the old one’s limbs, for he heaved his companion onto the boardwalk, and she lost sight of them behind the corner of Fisher’s Mercantile.

What was she doing watching some old man pull someone from the gutter? One week in this place and she ached for home. Why was she here? If she asked him, Papa would send her money to go home. She could ride down with a freighter…. No, not that, but somehow. Dom would carry her. Anything to go home, away from this place, these strangers. To see her own people, hear their Italian voices raised in laughter and song, the warmth of their hands, their hugs.

She pressed her forehead to the grimy glass and imagined how Mamma would welcome her, tears shining in brown eyes wreathed with creases, arms strong and thick. She had dreamed all night of the ones she’d blessed and wakened with an aching longing. How they would pet her and soothe her, scold her for leaving, then crush her with hugs and kisses and cry on her neck!

Carina wanted to cry herself. But if she once gave in to the ache, she would undo all her plans and run home. Yet how could she? She held a hand to her throat where the aching lodged. If she went home now, it would spoil everything.

The old man resurfaced, pushing the other ahead of him. He, too, reminded her of Ti’Giusseppe, her great-uncle on Papa’s side. Indomitable, fearless, yet gentle as a dove. The young man wedged his head between his palms. From her vantage he looked weak, tottering, forgettable. But then it was the old man who stumbled, and the young who reached out his arm.

Coiled together like that they passed from her sight. Carina sighed, feeling alone and foreign in a way she never had before. All that she knew—the lilt in speech patterns, an expression in the eyes, shared memories and expectations, simple generations of being—all had been left behind, a thousand miles away.

She felt thrown into a stew, and she couldn’t find another of her kind anywhere in the broth. She had gone into exile—self-imposed, though not chosen. What had seemed to her bruised heart a dramatic, even romantic severing, was now only dull reality. Who was there to see her brave defiance? She had thought to make a home in Crystal. To show Flavio, to show them all, to show the world. How could she know, pampered daughter of Angelo DiGratia, that the world didn’t care?

She dropped to her knees beside the cot, folded her hands, and rested her forehead on her peaked fingers. “
Il Padre Eterno
…” Shaking her head, she closed her eyes. “Please bless Mamma and Papa and Great-Uncle Giusseppe….” Her voice broke before she could name the others. “Keep me from the Evil One.” The words were empty. As empty as her hope. “And give me back my house today.” It had become a litany.

Pulling on her boots, Carina frowned. She should buy a pair of slippers for walking in town, but she had been shocked by the prices in the stores. The choices for women were few and so high priced she had refused to spend her dwindling cash on shoes when she already had one pair of boots. But they were hot and heavy travel boots, not walking shoes. All her slippers had gone over the side with her wagon, thanks to Quillan Shepard.

Somehow the loneliness and displacement she felt this morning seemed centered on his single rash act. If not for him, she would have the things with which to make a home. She would not be living in a stall with canvas walls and changing in the dark so that her form would not show through to her neighbors. She would have her clothes and her furniture.

But not my house
. The thought crept in unbidden. Losing the house was not his doing. But it seemed possible that it was, as though he’d started the misfortune and it grew from there. If he had not destroyed her wagon, her entrance to Crystal would have been as she expected. She would not have been robbed, and maybe,
possibilmente
, the Carruthers would not have run her off.

That was the way of things. Good brought good, but evil did likewise. Once misfortune began, it stayed like an unwanted guest. Inverità, her misfortune had begun before she lost her wagon. But she would have stopped it, had stopped it. If not for Quillan Shepard, things would have happened as she planned.

She went down the stairs and found Mae kneeling in the flower bed along the porch, grunting with each thrust of the handspade into the hard earth. The clumps of bachelor’s buttons and daisies looked pale and tired, leggy in their search for air and water.

“If it don’t rain soon,” Mae spoke without looking, “this ground will be hard as mortar. Hand me that pail, will you?”

Carina lifted the pail, careful not to slosh the water on her skirt. Mae took it and poured it around the flowers. The cuts she had made with the spade sucked the water in, and Mae nodded. “That’s better.” She smeared mud across her forehead with the back of her hand. “Month of May was a running muck, but this is the driest June I can remember.”

A freight wagon rumbled by, raising a cloud of dust, and Carina recognized the long brown hair beneath the hat. Mr. Quillan Shepard, off early and about his business as usual. Frowning, she turned away.

Mae rocked back on her heels. “You know, in these parts folks need a thick skin. You can’t let one offense eat you up.”

No? Carina pinched off a broken daisy and raised it to her nose. Was it not human to harbor a hurt, to nurse a wound? She should take injury and not remember? Not return it in kind? “Quillan Shepard. You know him well?”

Mae pushed herself up, breathing hard. “Don’t know that anyone can say that, though some try, some who wouldn’t know the truth if it hit them in the face. But then, tales here grow as tall as Mount Pointe.”

“What tales?”

“Rumors, is all. Nasty rumors.”

Carina quirked an eyebrow. “Rumors start from truth.”

“Or spite.”

“Spite? Toward such a compassionate man, so charitable?” She waved a mocking hand as she spoke.

Mae rested her hands on her hips. “You have a sharp tongue.”

Carina turned away. She felt sharp this morning, lonely and cross. If people talked about Quillan Shepard, it was his own fault. “I am not deceived.”

“Then you’re a first.” Mae pinched a dried straw-colored bachelor’s button from the stem and tossed it.

“Has he been here long?”

Mae leaned on the porch railing. “He’s been freighting to Crystal for a year or so.”

“And before?”

“Don’t know much besides that he was born in Placer.”

“In Placer? Where you mined gold?” Carina turned back, curious.

“Oh, I see that look.” Mae tucked a gray, kinky strand of hair into the loose bun at her neck. “Listen, I’m not a tale spinner, especially that tale.”

Especially that tale?
Now Carina was more than curious. What was Quillan’s story? And more, how could it benefit her to know? Carina dipped her head obediently as she would to Mamma’s scolding, a look of compliance, surrender even, but inside … She turned toward the street.

“Where are you off to?”

“Mr. Beck is expecting me.” It was true. Though it was Saturday, he worked a six-day week and expected her to also. She shrugged. It would change soon. When the time was right, when things came right, she would need him no longer. Soon …

Berkley Beck rose from his desk as she entered. Carina approached with the easy confidence she had developed since Mr. Beck no longer courted her affections. It was business between them, and she knew how to conduct business.

His expression was purposely indifferent as he pulled a heavy black ledger to the center of his desk. “I’m going to be out most of the day, Miss DiGratia. This stack needs to be entered into the ledger.” He rested his hand on the papers beside the book. “You’re welcome to work here at my desk.”

She nodded, then with sudden boldness asked, “Mr. Beck, where are the city records kept?”

He tipped his head. “What sort of records?”

“Births and deaths. Claims …” She spread her hands innocently.

He shrugged. “The courthouse keeps that sort of thing. It’s public domain. If you’re concerned about your house, I can assure you—”

She raised her hand. “I know you will handle that for me, Mr. Beck. I’m simply curious. Would … the records from Placerville be there as well?”

“Placerville? Miss DiGratia, you intrigue me. What possible interest could you have in old Placerville?”

She dropped her gaze to the wood of his desk. “If someone were born in Placerville, would those records be …”

“As far as I know, the records are intact. Everything was moved here when Placer closed down.” Berkley Beck walked around the desk and leaned on it sideways. He studied her a moment, his blue eyes cool. “Two heads are better than one, as they say. Perhaps I can help.”

“Quillan Shepard.” Carina bit the words.

The blue eyes turned glacial. So the bad feelings went both ways. Mr. Beck ran a slow finger over his chin. “What’s your interest in him?”

“He relieved me of my belongings on the road.” It sounded petulant even to her.

As he nodded cognition, did she imagine also satisfaction?

“What are you looking for exactly?”

“I don’t know.” And she didn’t. As Mae said, she should leave it alone. But would she?

He spread his hands regretfully. “Had I known it was Quillan Shepard who robbed you of your belongings, I might have handled things differently from the start.”

“How differently?”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t matter now. Too much water under the bridge, as they say. Still, it never hurts to be armed. Find out what you can and we’ll see what we can do about it.”

Carina nodded. Was it not exactly what she’d thought herself? Even hoped?

“In fact, the ledger can wait.”

Though his smile was unchanged, his eyes took on a feral gleam that caught her short. But then the look was gone. She had imagined it, and his smile was as guileless as before.

“I insist. You’ve worked miracles in here.” He gave his arm a grandiose swing, then caught her hand and brought it to his lips, warm and soft, a gallant gesture. “You must know how grateful I am.”

He was close enough for her to smell his hair pomade, feel his breath on her fingers. It was beyond the boundary she had set, but Carina did not rebuke him. Mr. Beck could no more stop his courtesy than Mr. Shepard his lack thereof. Perhaps they could help each other after all.

Thinking about it as she walked to the courthouse, she became more convinced than ever. Mr. Beck had standing. He could prove a powerful ally in a place like Crystal. If she found anything worthwhile, she would tell him.

When Carina arrived at the two-story frame courthouse, the caretaker unlocked the door. The two judges and the others in the building didn’t work Saturdays as did Mr. Beck. And that was just as well. It pricked her conscience to pry. But she meant only to learn what others knew. It was public domain, Mr. Beck said, free for the knowing.

She was shown into the room off the courtroom, then the caretaker left her alone. She looked up the records for Placerville that had indeed been moved when the old camp died. The official records started in 1851, but there were no listed births. As Mae had said, Placerville had been little more than a gulch camp with a handful of men, discouraged forty-niners, and those who had never made it as far as California.

She turned the page and ran her finger down the columns, skimming to the
S
’s. No Shepards listed under births. She checked again, then went on to the next year and the next. After the sixth year, she leaned back, her brow furrowed. Perhaps Mae was wrong.

She flipped back to 1852 and went through the births from the beginning, when a name jumped out at her. Quillan. No surname attached. It was as he’d said.
Comé strano
. How strange. His parents were listed as Wolf and Rose, again with no family names. What did it mean?