What Once We Loved (56 page)

“Its wedged, I tell you. Its broken. Cant you see the bone? I cant get you out unless you give Ruth to me so I can cut you free!”

“What?”

Ruths man came closer, almost over him now, holding a heavy knife. He was close enough to hear even over the noise of the horse screaming, the rage of the water, and a dog barking, barking. “You 11 die unless I get your leg free. I can try to saw it off! Let Ruth go so I can reach it.”

“My leg? You want to saw my leg?”
Cut my good kg?
“I'd sooner die,” Zane shouted.
Ruth caused this, all of this. Dear Ruth.

“You will,” he was told.

Zane lunged for him then, felt searing pain from his leg to his back.

“Its wedged, I tell you! Give me Ruth, and I'll cut you free.”

The fool. Free? With two bad legs? Free? He could not carry out a plan with one bad leg; he could do nothing with two.

In that moment Zane knew what he would do.

He pushed at Ruth. The suddenness of it threw the man off balance, Zane grabbed for the heavy knife, used his own cane with one hand to hold Ruth in the swirling current, her white throat exposed.

“Ruth!” Zane heard the man yell as he struggled to stand against the current and slick rocks and roots. The man reached for Ruth, couldn't touch her.

Zane held the knife high, a warning. His knuckles on the blade were white as his broken bone. He controlled nothing now except this one thing—the thrust of a sharp knife. Then with his cane, he pushed Ruth into the stream, let his cane go. All that was left was this. With a singular force he plunged the blade deep into his chest.

Even from the bank Mazy could see Ruth's body twisting out of their reach in the water. She was faceup now, an arm tangled, then loosened. Matthew was so close, but the current pushed her out beyond his reach.

Help her, help her, help her.
She spoke the prayer, squeezing her hands against the reins, then felt the rope.

“Matthew!” she screamed to him. “I'll toss the lariat!” She flung the coil, holding one end. It fell short. Ruth groaned, the water reviving her.

Burke rode up beside Mazy. “Let me toss it,” he said as she pulled the line back in to make another throw.

But Pig had other plans. He grabbed the line being pulled back, ran partway down the shore then lumbered in, swimming with his nose high, in seconds at Ruth's side, the rope in his dark mouth.

“Ruth! Look at Pig!” Matthew shouted, and Mazy watched as her best friend's hand gripped the lariat still held by Pig.

Burke and Seth began pulling, and by then Matthew had come close enough to lift her from the waters of Daisy Creek.

“He was a bad man,” Jessie said.

“Yes, he was,” Ruth told her, holding her close back at home. A blanket draped Ruths shoulders. The rest of them stood near the stove, like stiff woolen socks drying out. “But even he couldn't stop you from getting help.”

Jessie cried then. “I was just so scared,” she said. “So scared. He hurt you. I had to make my legs work.”

Matthew came to her then, and he wrapped his arms around them both, and Ruth thought she might have heard him stifle a sob. She pushed back.

“Are you all right, Matthew?” she said. He nodded, thumbed his eyes. She pushed the section of white hair that faded into the black away from his forehead. “Thank you. Mazy said you tried to save…him, too.”

“I was trying to get to you. He…I wanted him to let you go. I couldn't get to you except through him.”

“It was like a horrible dream,” Ruth said.

“I didn't want you somehow blaming yourself for his dying in the river,” Matthew said, his words clipped short.

“I wanted him dead,” Ruth said quietly. “My being sent to jail for it would have been worth keeping Jessie…and you safe.”

“Why didn't you tell me, Ruth? We could have come up with some other plan.”

“Love means not telling all you know sometimes,” she said.

“He'd have made you into something you never could be, Ruth. This place, your life, none of it's worth the price you were willing to pay for the likes of him.”

“It wasn't for him. It was for my family. All of you.”

Matthew held her closer, his other arm rubbing Jessie's shoulder. “It
isn't ever going to be easy living with you. I've already resigned myself to that. But when I think of living any other way, I come up empty. You're all I ever wanted, Ruth. That, and family, these kids and maybe a handful of our own.”

“I should have told you what he was planning, to take half if not all of everything. Then he said he'd use the law to get Jessie, too. But I could only see one way out, and I knew you would have stopped me.”

Matthew said, “You don't have to stand up to people like that by yourself. There is always another way. We are never alone. I hope to prove that to you over the next fifty years. Even independent women have limits, Ruth. It takes a strong woman to accept that.”

They sat at the fireside, consuming the cobbler Mazy had made. The sheriff had said he'd be out later to follow up on the suicide at the creek. Just the thought of it, of this day, caused Ruth to shiver. She stood to stoke the fire when Mariah burst in.

“There's a mare foaling. She's having trouble.”

They headed for the barn, even Jessie, wobbly as a young colt. The mare was down, laboring hard.

“I massaged the mare's opening with some of ma's lard, but it didn't do anything,” Mariah wailed. “I couldn't keep her walking.”

“She can't go much longer,” Ruth said, exhausted after this day.

“You should have called us sooner. Let's try to pull the foal,” Matthew said. “Must be a big one.”

Ruth reached inside, slipping her fingers and a rawhide strand around the unborn foal's feet that they could barely see. Matthew pulled then, the twine attached to a rope that strained against his broad back. Nothing.

“I don't want her to die,” Mariah said.

“We're doing out best, Pipsqueak,”

But the mare raised her neck, snorted and moaned, lay back down.
Finally she just gave up. Mariah hovered at the horses neck, talking and crooning, urging her to hold on, but she exhaled and was gone.

“Time to let go, Pipsqueak,” Matthew told her.

“No!” Mariah said. “No!” Matthew leaned over the girl whose arms wrapped around the mares neck like a child holding a feather pillow, wanting to sink in and disappear.

“Can we save the foal anyway?” Mazy said.

“The baby wont make it,” Ruth said. “There's no sense.”

Mariah wailed again.

“We'd have to cut it out and even then—”

“You had your horse cut up after he died, so what's the diiference?” Mariah sobbed, her chest heaving against the side of the horse.

Her words pulled at Ruth's heartstrings.

“We might have a chance, Ruth,” Burke said. “If we worked fast. The nose is nearly out, feet too. I actually think the thing is breathing. On its own.”

“Keeping orphans alive—” Ruth began.

“We could try,” Matthew said. “Ruth?”

“You don't do anything unless Ruth says,” Mariah yelled at him.

“I do what I think is right, Mariah,” he said. “That's what a brother does for a sister, what a man does for his family.” To Ruth he said, “Some things are worth doing regardless of how they turn out.”

Ruth hesitated then risked. “All right. I'll try to get some of the colostrums, from the mother's bag.”

“That's my job,” Mazy said.

“Jason, round up Lura's goat. Put her up on the lard barrel there, so she's the right height for this baby to suck the goat's milk when she or he stands. If it stands. We might have enough milk to keep the baby going. Burke, can you take the rope, let Matthew cut the baby out.

Ruth and Mazy worked swiftly, the reddish milk from the dead mare filling the bottom of a bucket Ruth held while Matthew sliced up through the belly of the horse.

The foal slipped out, slick and looking more like a newborn kitten than something that would stand taller than any of them if it lived.

“Its a stud colt,” Matthew said.

Ruth cleaned its mouth with her fingers, let it suck against them. They wiped the clear sack from its coat, while she encouraged the colt to stand. Mazy poured the colostrum into a glove with a hole in it, to reward the baby as soon as it stood firm.

“Hell need to be fed every few hours, Mariah,” Ruth said. “Put to that goat, or well milk it and glove feed it.”

“He's alive,” Mariah said.

And so are we
, Ruth thought. One more rock climbed over. One more memory made.

The colt made a rocking motion as though it wanted to stand, and they helped it up, still rubbing its body with a rough towel, the way a mother might lick it with her tongue.

“I think he can do it alone,” Burke said. “Mrs. Bacon, get your glove, then lets bring him over to that goat.”

The colt sniffed and bunted. The goat bleated. And then with a little help, it jabbed against the udder of the goat that Jason held. The goat turned to look at the colt, went back to chewing the hay Ned and Sarah and Jessie had placed before it.

“You know,” Ruth said, her eyes glistening. “He looks a lot like Jumper.”

“So you'll be heading back with Seth then?” Burke Manes asked Mazy. The rain still drizzled onto the shake roof, but Mazy felt warmed by her shawl and Burke s presence as they sat beneath Ruth's porch.

“He's anxious to leave in the morning,” she said. “Someone special waits for him in Sacramento. And I have people to arrange passage for, getting them north. Lura will be a big help here when the Celestials
arrive. And those Ayrshires might just be missing me though Oltipa and little Sula and the others have taken to them too.”

“Seth said you've risked much for people you dont know.”

“Most of us don't even notice them, the Indians or the Chinese. I rail against that because each Yurok or Wintu or Hoopa or Cantonese bears something…distinct about them. To me. But others see them like similar stones they can dismiss.”

“It should make it easier to move people in and out without notice that way,” Burke said.

“I hadn't thought of that. But
yes.”
She nodded. “‘No eye has seen—’”

“‘What God has prepared for those who love him.’ First Corinthians two, nine,” Burke finished. Mazy smiled, the comfort of being known flowering inside her like the first sprouts of spring. Pig's tail brushed Lura's basil plant, the scent punching the air. “I could use some advice on my gardening, Mrs. Bacon,” Burke said. “Before you head back.”