Under a Painted Sky (21 page)

I grimace and pass to the next stone.

Maybe Mr. Trask has experienced some delays of his own. We can't be the only ones.

Water laps at my foot. I cannot stand here forever. I move to the next stone, one that requires me to leap and catch my balance again.

Problem two: West will die if he does not drink. I nearly fall into the stream but hold out my arms to steady myself and hop onto a larger rock. Pain, not just physical, seems to have stolen his sense of self-preservation. I felt the same way, not long ago.

I wobble too far to the right and step onto the next stone. Balance. Think.

Angry tears prick my eyes as I remember the assault that pulled me out of my despair. Ty Yorkshire's hand over my mouth. I inhale and pass to the next stone, a sharp one that wobbles.

Forcing Ty Yorkshire's moth eye out of my head, I replace it with West's handsome visage.
We all have secrets, don't we? Secrets that can destroy us, one way or another. Yours are buried deep, too deep for me to reach.

I pass to the final boulder. There I stand on both legs and close my eyes, not easy, I realize, when I almost fall forward. I sway again but grip the boulder more firmly with my feet.

I have kept secrets from you, and still you saved my life, twice. And now that your secrets threaten to kill you, it is my turn to save you from the fire, even if it means you will learn the truth about me.

I open my eyes and drop from the boulder into the cool stream. Time to make good on my threat.

Once I get back to camp, I kneel next to West and comb the hair off his face. His eyelashes flutter. “May you forget this, or at least forgive me if you do not.”

Then I fold my hankie into a square that I use to press down his chin.

I sip the broth and hold the salty warm liquid in my mouth. Lifting his head, I press my lips to his, not lifting my mouth until he opens his to take the broth. His moan catches in my throat as his parched mouth warms under mine. I don't care if he finds it distasteful, only that he swallows the broth.

He does.

Then I do it again.

This time, when my lips slide over his, his mouth parts easier. I release another sip, a tiny amount so I don't choke him. When I lift my head, he is gazing at me. He drops his eyes to the cup in my hand. More.

Though I think I can revert to the spoon now, I don't want to. My pulse beats fast as a hummingbird's. Did he recognize the truth when it kissed him on the mouth? The way he looks there now, his eyes soft and searching, tells me maybe. My body floods with warmth, and all my boyish resolve melts away.

Two more mouthfuls, and then three. As I feed him the last drop and begin to pull away, his lips follow mine for a fraction of a second.

The empty cup drops from my hand and lands with a tinny
thud
beside us at the same as time he collapses back onto his bedroll. Still close enough to feel his breath on my face, I open my eyes to his, shrouded in pain. He turns his head away.

CAY RETURNS IN THE LATE MORNING AS PEETY,
Andy, and I drink our coffee. We crowd around him as he slides off Skinny. His bloodshot eyes take in his cousin, sleeping again, this time peacefully. Shortly after Peety and Andy returned, West drank another two cups of soup by himself.

“They don't got a doctor, but they gave me a boatload of stuff,” Cay tells us. “How is he?”

“Better,” I say. “His fever broke.”

We unload Cay's supplies: bandages, soap, and food.

“Come here, Skinnita
bonita,
your
papi
will give you a nice brushing now. Clean your pretty hooves, too.” Peety kisses Skinny on the nose and leads her to the river.

Cay collapses by the fire, his face drawn in a way that ages him. Looking at him now, I catch a glimpse of the man he will be, still sweet, but more subdued, even reflective. A tinge of sadness dampens my mood as I realize I will not be there to see his older self. Andy pulls off his boots and socks while I beat out his bedroll. Soon, he joins his cousin in the land of nod.

“Cay must have moths in his boots. Look,” says Andy, poking her fingers through his socks.

“Or mice.”

Andy pulls out a ball of yarn from her saddlebag. “Real men wouldn't darn socks for each other, but I can't help myself.”

“The boys might if they knew how.” I wring out a warm cloth to use on Cay's dusty face and hands. Andy wants to scrape out the dirt from under his fingernails with her knitting needle, but I stop her.

Cay is still sleeping when West awakes mid-afternoon. I wrap West's arm in a sling while Andy prepares biscuits down by the stream. He flinches at my touch, though I'm uncertain whether the pain comes from his shoulder or from being near me. At least his color has returned.

After I finish, he mutters, “Don't you have anything better to do than wait on me?”

I stiffen as the sting brightens my cheeks. Andy slaps her dough loudly, then starts kneading it. West is giving off his hard look again, the one with the eyebrows of doom and the frowning mouth. He won't look at me.

I go to shower my attentions on one who has no reservations about accepting them: Paloma.

We race down the riverbank, but I can't erase West's glare from my mind.

It wasn't that horrible, was it? No one was there, and I don't have cholera or worms. So what if another boy's mouth touched yours. It kept you alive, didn't it?

Or maybe he did figure out my secret. My thighs grip Paloma too hard and she slows. Maybe he knew all along and never said anything because kissing a Chinese girl would be as indecent as kissing a boy. I can't help remembering the story West told about painting the fence. He said there were certain things about him he could never change. No matter how hard he tried, he could not get the blood out of the paint. Was he talking about his father's bigotry? West couldn't be a bigot himself, not with a Mexican as such a close friend. Not with the way he defended us against the MacMartins.

But who knows what lies beneath the glass? Father said people are like bottles of rice and water, which need heat to transform into a fine rice wine. Too little heat, and the wine is sour and weak. Too much, and the fermentation stops all together. But with patience, the mix will ripen into an exquisite drink, and only the winemaker knows when that time will come.

I pat my mule's neck and find comfort in the silky tufts of her mane. Father told me not to brood when people judged me for my wrapper, not my filling, or I would spend my whole life in the steamer.

• • •

When we arrive back at camp, West is standing with one hand on Franny's saddle. The others watch him from under the shade of the cottonwoods.

He's back on his feet again. Can I catch Mr. Trask after all? With each day that we rest, the man gains fifteen miles on us, which means we're forty-five miles farther behind. West won't be well enough to travel for another few days, which means roughly . . . a hundred miles behind.

With a heavy heart, I dismount and join the others.

Franny whinnies in reply to something West says. He removes his hand from her saddle and takes a small step forward holding her lead rope. Franny also steps forward. Then West steps backward, to the right, and to the left. Franny follows in perfect synchronicity. My mouth opens at this small miracle, despite my irritation.

“Horse is man's best friend,” says Peety, noticing my surprise. “And I got lots of best friends. That one, her mama kick her in the head when she was born. Nobody want her anymore.” He sweeps the air with his hands. “But she is the smartest one in whole remuda. You know
caballo
is for you when she reflects your soul. That is why Franny and West move like magic.”

Cay nods, his face serious.

• • •

Later that afternoon, Andy and I walk a quarter mile down the river with a pile of grayish rags for what we now call our minute-baths.

“Never doubted West was gonna make it,” she says as we undress. “He got all the angels pulling for him. Some people's like that.” She smells one of her shirts and wrinkles her nose. “Eh. Don't like grimy things.”

I smell my own shirt as she continues. “You's mind's busy lately, but you know you's still on schedule, right?”

We hop into the water and make short work of scouring ourselves. “Cay told Peety wagons got to wait their turn into the fort 'cause of all the folks twiddling their thumbs, trying to decide if they want to climb the Rockies. You gotta wait at least a week if you got wagons.” Her teeth begin to chatter.

I go still as hope seeps through my veins. Maybe I can catch Mr. Trask after all. “Thanks,” I say carefully. If Andy knew how pleased I was, she'd be even more reluctant to let me go with her.

“You's in good hands with the boys,” she says, reading me perfectly anyway.

“I already told you I wasn't going to let you go off on your own,” I grumble. “Even if it is a waterfall, what if it's not the right one?”

“Then I'll keep looking.” She steps out of the water and dries herself while I move more slowly beside her. After she presses the water out of her head with a rag, she binds herself with a clean apron tie. The tie is still bright pink despite all of Andy's vigorous beatings. I guess certain qualities are more stubborn than others.

My frozen fingers fumble with my buttons. “There could be hundreds of waterfalls around these mountains. You'd be wandering forever.”

She chews her lip as she tucks in the ends of her tie. “Well, that Calamity Cutoff ain't for another two weeks. Don't let it trouble us right now.”

She dismisses me, and I'm afraid to argue with her. Now that West's health is improving, Andy might feel free to fly away.

We beat out the rags with stones and clean them with a bit of soap.

“Take these wet things and dry 'em in the pot while I hunt down miner's lettuce,” Andy says.

As she proceeds down the river, I stare after her as if she might decide to bolt right now. She stoops and sifts her hand through long bundles of reeds, yanking out lettuce. With a sigh, I scoop up our wet rags plus Andy's second apron tie, then trudge the quarter mile back to our camp.

When I return, the boys are standing in the river. I throw the rags into a dry pot Andy left heating on the fire. She says the heat gets them cleaner, not to mention, dries them faster. I stir them around with a fork and let them get toasty. The lacy apron tie stands out amongst the grayish rags.

One by one, I hang the rags on a length of rope strung between two branches of the cottonwood. I will have to take Andy's apron tie somewhere else to finish drying.

Peety walks up, carrying his holey boots. He's rolled the hems of his trousers past the knee. The river has matted the black hair of his legs. “Hey, Chinito. Still hard at work, eh?”

“You work harder than me,” I say truthfully.

“It's not work to me.” He grins. His sunny disposition immediately lifts my spirits. “You and Andito take good care of us. I want you to know we appreciate it. We're like a big
familia,
eh?”

“Yeah, we are.”

He carefully sets down his boots, then settles on a blanket. I toss him one of the warm rags.

“
Muchas gracias,
” he says, using the rag to wipe his feet.

Familia.
Family. Peety would never let Andy go by herself to Harp Falls if he knew she was a girl. He cares for her, maybe even as much as I do. If he knew she was a girl, he would feel a lot differently about the
chico
to whom he gave a horse.

Without thinking, I reach into the pot for the apron tie, that scrap Andy uses to suppress her female form. If Peety saw this, he would wonder at its bright pink sheen and lace edges, so incongruous amongst our weedy surroundings. Questions would give way to suspicions and then realizations.

“What you doing there, Chinito?” asks Peety, studying me with my hand in the pot.

What am I thinking? Quickly, I let go of the tie. I can't betray Andy, no matter what. “Oh, nothing. Do you know where the map is? I want to look it over.” When he twists around to fetch Cay's saddlebag, I quickly stuff the tie into my pocket.