Nelson Story glanced at the busted pies. “It’s all right,” he said.
“No, it is not.”
Not in a town like Virginia City, Idaho Territory. No, it was Montana Territory now, since the federal government had carved Montana out of Idaho and who knows what other territories. She still had trouble remembering that they now lived in Montana Territory, not Idaho Territory, but Nelson always told her it didn’t matter the name, hell was hell no matter who claimed it. Ellen had been selling pies since they had arrived in Bannack City, due west, back in the early summer of ’63. She figured to earn her keep, and in this country, where a pie could sell for five bucks, a husband and wife needed to work together or go bust.
Twenty dollars’ worth of pies. Gone to dust.
She looked at the stranger, still breathing at least, and the bleeding appeared to have slowed. She remembered the shock on his gaunt face when she had told him how much a pie of hers would cost. Man had to be a greenhorn. A hundred-pound sack of flour cost twenty-eight dollars these days, and folks thought that was a blessing. A year ago, a person would have thought he had haggled his way to glory if he paid under ninety bucks for a sack. Butter still went for a buck-fifty a pound; that same price could fetch you an egg, providing it wasn’t as big as a goose egg. Onions went for forty-five cents a pound, and when Nelson had learned how much merchants were charging for potatoes, he had hitched up a wagon, driven all the way to Fort Hall, and returned with a wagonload of spuds that he sold for two bits each.
Midas touch. Nelson still had that. Sometimes, though, that touch landed a little harder. The stranger moaned.
Still wearing sleeve garters and a visor, Mr. Bagley eased his way down Jackson Street and cleared his throat before he knelt. “I’ll take care of him,” he said softly, and lowered his right hand toward the blood-soaked bandanna. He did not look at Ellen, but he nodded at Nelson. “You get Miz Ellen back home.” He slowly removed the bandanna. “Iffen he needs a stitch or two, I got some fishing line that should fix him up.” The rag returned. “Don’t worry. He won’t die. Not with a head this hard.” He winked at her husband. “Hard as you buffaloed him, Nelson, I thought you’d done cleaved his head down to his gizzard.”
Nelson rose, thanked the merchant, and extended his right hand toward Ellen. She let him lift her to her feet, and after another wave of nausea passed, she gave Mr. Bagley an appreciative nod. God bless him. Relief swept through her whole body. She could have kissed him on the streets, harelip and all.
Nelson picked up the tray she had dropped, and moved to his bay gelding, which was looking bored at the intersection of Wallace Street.
“I’ll take care of your horse, Mr. Story,” someone called out from in front of the newspaper office on the corner. The youngster weaved between a pack mule and a farm wagon, and gathered the reins. “You boarding him at Montee’s place?”
Nelson nodded. “Yes, at the Big Horse Corral. Thank you, bub.”
“My pleasure, sir. My pleasure.” Boy and horse moved down Wallace Street.
“Let’s go home, Ellen,” Story said.
* * *
As cabins went in Virginia City, theirs was, well, a cabin. This evening, it still smelled of flour and dried apples, and the winter kitchen remained a mess. As Nelson hung his gun belt on the elk horn, she pulled out her purse and laid gold dust, nuggets, silver dollars, and even some U.S. scrip on the table.
“A hundred and eighty dollars,” she announced. “Or close to it.”
He laid his hat, crown down, on the desk, and moved to the table, fingering a gold nugget.
“You don’t have to bake pies anymore, Ellen,” he said at last.
“I like to . . .” she started. She was about to say help, but Nelson would not like to hear that, so she changed her ending. “Cook.”
“Yeah.” He ran the back of his hand against his face. He needed a shave. “But maybe you’d like someone to cook for you, for us, for a change.”
She moved away from the table.
His right hand reached inside a coat pocket and slowly pulled out a leather pouch. He loosened the drawstring and shook out nuggets that spilled into the mixing bowl. The stones—much bigger than the ones Ellen had earned for her pies—glittered in the candlelight. Ellen’s lips parted, but she found no words.
Nelson laughed. “And that’s not the half of it. That there . . .” His chin jutted toward the mixing bowl. “That’s just from Alder Gulch. The half interest I put in with Ben Christenot’s claim in Pine Grove. And over at Oro Cache. You wouldn’t believe what those are assaying at. I scarcely believe it myself.”
Midas touch. In Ellen’s head, her brother John’s words rang like the Liberty Bell.
Sweeping her into his arms, Nelson kissed her hard.
Then someone knocked on the door.
He cursed softly, stared at her briefly, then crossed to the door, his hand resting on the butt of a holstered revolver.
“Yes,” he called.
“Nelson,” came the muffled voice. “It’s Ben.”
The right hand slipped off the walnut butt and moved toward the door, which he pulled open slightly, glanced at Ellen, and stepped through the opening. The door remained partly open, but Ellen did not eavesdrop. She tried to think of what Nelson had just told her. Were they rich? She fingered one of the nuggets, rubbing off sugar and flour.
Once the door opened, Nelson stepped inside, pulled on his hat, and found the gun rig. As he buckled the belt, he looked at Ellen.
“Don’t wait up,” he told her. “And pull in the latch string.”
The door closed behind him.
CHAPTER THREE
The potatoes on John Catlin’s plate were cold. Same with the gravy. Even the beef. The waitress at the La Porte Dining Palace refreshed his coffee and moved on. Catlin broke the dam of mashed potatoes with his spoon, but no waterfall broke free, no flood of brown drenched his beef, for the gravy had congealed. Which didn’t surprise him. For at least fifteen minutes, he had just stared at the food.
Chair legs scraped the floor as Steve Grover sat, uninvited, holding his own cup of coffee. Sipping, Grover shook out a copy of Daily State Sentinel. Catlin looked across the small café—Palace was a misnomer—to see if he knew anyone else in the restaurant. He hadn’t thought to look when he first sat down, but unless someone was hiding, Grover and Catlin were the only ones here. No, there was a gent with a silk hat by the table near the window that looked out onto the alley. Spooning lemon cake.
“How long you been here?” Catlin asked.
“Just got here, got a cup of water dyed with coffee. You were so focused on your chow you didn’t even hear me say ‘Afternoon, Captain.’”
“Oh.” Catlin eyed his food. Grover studied the newspaper.
“At two dollars a year,” Grover said, “a man would think there’d be something worth reading.”
“You subscribe to an Indianapolis newspaper?”
“No.” He turned the page. “Found it on a bench outside of Marston’s.”
“You getting a photograph or ambrotype taken?”
“Neither.” Grover flipped to another page. “Just walking past. He’s closed on Sundays anyhow.” He peered over the top of the paper. “You ever get a likeness made of yourself?”
Catlin nodded. “Indianapolis. Before we marched south. Tintype. Mailed one, no, must’ve been two, to Ma and Pa in Michigan. I got four. Must have kept one for myself. Don’t know what I did with the other.”
“How much did that cost?”
He shrugged. “Two bits. Four. Dollar. Don’t rightly recall.”
Grover returned to the newspaper, went to another page, looked at Catlin again. “How’d you know it was an Indianapolis newspaper?”
“I left it on the bench outside Wallace’s Grocery House.”
“You subscribe to the Sentinel?”
“No. I found it in the trash box outside of Culver’s.”
“You buying a book or crockery?” Grover asked.<
br />
“Where?”
“At Culver’s.”
“No. He’s closed, too. It being Sunday. I just looked down by chance, saw it, picked it up.”
“Wonder how it got all the way up here. The paper, I mean.”
“Drummer, I warrant.”
“Most likely. Wonder how it got from Culver’s to Marston’s.”
“That’s a mystery for sure.” Catlin looked at his plate, sighed. “You don’t read the Herald?”
“Charlie Powell don’t put nothing in his paper except advertisements for blood pills. You?”
Catlin was too late trying to cover his yawn. “Excuse me. I’ll pick one up now and then. When I find one at the grocery or Culver’s store.”
“How’d your winter wheat make out?”
“Slim. Yours?”
“About the same. Spring wheat was average.”
“Mine, too.”
“Figure this spring’ll be better.”
Catlin nodded. “If we get some decent rain.”
Silence.
“Come to church?”
“Got here too late. You?”
“I just got here.”
A month, or maybe just a minute, passed.
“Well, I know why you left this on the bench. Nothing worth reading in Indianapolis, either.”
“There’s always something worth reading,” Catlin said.
“What?”
Sighing, Catlin took the paper, turned to the second page, and tapped at the quotation below the paper’s name and the date.
THE UNION—IT MUST BE PRESERVED.
—JACKSON
Grover nodded, took the paper, and slid it to the side of the table.
Catlin plowed the potatoes with his fork, preparation, he figured, for spring. If spring ever returned.
Grover slurped. Catlin farmed the mashed potatoes. The gravy hardened. The waitress walked by without checking on either.
“You know what I like to read in any newspaper?” Grover asked.
“What?” Catlin said.
Grover picked up the paper again and tapped a column on the front page. “The railroad schedules. Bellefontaine Railway . . .” Catlin feared his friend would start reading the whole damned table, trains arriving from the east, and the west, the expresses, plus everything else, but, no, Steve Grover condensed things considerably, and even Indianapolis lacked a bevy of railroads. “The Atlantic and Great Western Railway . . .”
“You plan on taking a trip?”
“Where would I go?”
Catlin shrugged. “Lake Michigan?”
“Wouldn’t need to pay money for a train ticket to see that. Could march there if I had a mind to. I sure know how to march.”
Catlin smiled with understanding.
“You ever seen Lake Michigan?”
Catlin looked up, surprised at the question, and his answer. “Can’t rightly say I have. You?”
Grover’s head shook.
Another round of silence.
“Funny,” Grover said.
“What’s that?”
“Lake Michigan.” Grover sipped his coffee. “The two of us. We saw so much of the South. Even Washington City. And we haven’t seen a big lake that’s, what, twenty miles north of us? If that.”
Catlin grinned. “You want to go?”
“Where?”
“Lake Michigan.”
Grover shook his head. “Not in winter.”
“Maybe come spring.”
The head shook again. “We’ll be plowing.” Another taste of weak coffee. “Besides. It’s just a bunch of water.”
Catlin thought about tasting the meal he’d paid for. Decided against it.
“Ran into Missus Yoho at Alvord’s store yesterday,” Grover said.
“How’s she doing?”
“Got the catarrh.”
“I see.”
“Getting better.”
“There are remedies.”
Grover tapped the newspaper. “Papers are full of advertisements for cures. Especially in Charlie’s Herald. Last time I saw a copy, anyhow.”
“Must be an epidemic.”
“You ever caught it?”
“Don’t think so. But I don’t rightly know what the catarrh is.”
“Me, neither.”
Two months passed. Or maybe it was just a couple of minutes.
“It’s just a cold,” Grover said. “Something like that.”
“What’s that?”
“The catarrh.”
“Yeah. Congestion. Runs down the back of your throat.”
“Huh?”
“Catarrh.”
“Yeah. I know what it is.”
“Most people do.”
“Old Banash seemed to have it from Louisville to Atlanta.”
“Likely still has it. Where did he hail from?”
Grover thought. “Union Mills?”
“I thought it was Unionville.”
“Might’ve been. Union-something.”
“Or maybe Rensselaer.”
They grinned. Sipped coffee. Which still wasn’t good. Catlin wondered how his dinner would taste if he’d bother to eat. Then again, he knew how it tasted. Hell, that’s all everyone ate here whenever they came to town to splurge on a meal, something they didn’t have to cook themselves. And when they ate at home, this is the same blessed meal they’d cook.
“She asked if I’d speak to the Unconditional Union Girls of La Porte,” Grover said.
“Who?”
“Missus Yoho.”
Catlin had to reconnoiter to figure out where Mrs. Yoho came into the conversation. “Speak about what?” he asked after a moment.
Grover smiled and tapped the folded newspaper. “How I preserved the Union.”
“Oh.” Catlin wondered if the beef might be halfway decent. “I got asked to speak once.”
“To the Unconditional Union Girls?”
Catlin shook his head. “St. Rose’s Academy.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. I told the headmistress to ask me another time. After the wheat crop was in.”
“Oh. You get asked to talk a lot?”
Catlin looked at his friend. “I don’t get to town often.”
“Yeah. What brought you into town today?”
“Run some errands.”
“Not much open on a Sunday.”
“I know.”
“Is anything open in La Porte on a Sunday?”
Catlin shrugged. “The Dining Palace. Church. Livery.”
“What I figured. What errands did you run?”
“I run . . . away from the farm.”
Grover smiled. “Yeah. Me, too.”
The bell above the door jingled. Cold air came in. Hot air came out.
“See you, hon,” the waitress told the fellow with the silk hat.
The door closed. The waitress went back to reading a penny dreadful.
“What did you tell her?” Catlin asked after another season came and went.
“Who?”
“Missus Yoho.”
“Oh.” He slurped more coffee.
Catlin waited.
“Well?”
“What?”
“What did you tell Missus Yoho?”
“Nothing.” He wiped his nose. “Oh, I guess I told her to ask me next time, when I had more time.”
“It’s December, Steve. You won’t have less time than right now.”
“Well.”
They drank. Catlin gave up on his dinner and slid the plate toward Grover. “You hungry?” Catlin asked.
“You aren’t going to eat this?”
Catlin shook his head.
“Off your feed?”
“Just not hungry.”
“My pa wouldn’t let me get up from the supper table till I’d cleaned my plate.” He raised his head, suspicious. “You want me to pay for . . . ?”
“No, Steve. Eat. It’s cold. But it’s on me.”
“Wel
l, I can’t say I’m hungry.” But the plate was empty three minutes later, and Steve Grover wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his coat.
“They know how to make good roast beef and mashed potatoes here, that’s for sure.”
“It’s their specialty.”
“Maybe it’s the catarrh,” Grover said.
Catlin looked up, his face blank.
“What’s ailing you,” Grover explained.
“Nothing’s ailing me, Steve. Except . . .”
“What?”
Catlin smiled. “Boredom.”
Grover’s face surprised Catlin. His old friend—friend for something that felt like twenty years now, when it would be just four come spring—knew what he meant, when half the time, John Catlin couldn’t figure that out himself.
“Remember what you said?” Grover asked.
“When?”
“In Washington City. During the Grand Review.”
Before Catlin’s head shook, Grover answered his own question. “You said, ‘Steve, we’re going home at last.’ Remember? That’s exactly what you said.” He drained the coffee with two final slurps and set the empty mug beside the plate. “Here we are, walking past President Abraham Lincoln, Sherman, Grant, Sheridan, ladies throwing flowers at us, swooning, men cheering, and after all we’d been through, you just wanted to get home.”
Catlin smiled. “All I wanted to do was get home after we first saw the elephant.”
“Me, too,” Grover said. “Best time of my life, but I was too scared to know it.”
“Me, too.”
“Horse apples.”
Catlin looked up.
“You were born to soldier, John. Captain Sabin said you took to infantry faster than crap flowed through a goose. Made fifth sergeant before I could shoulder a musket. Captain after Atlanta. Missus Yoho ought to ask you to speak about . . .” The words trailed off.
Catlin remembered. Twenty-five years old when he had joined the fight in August of 1862. All that marching and drilling in the Indiana summer. Meeting Steve Grover. Meeting hundreds of other men.
“Lake Michigan,” Catlin said.
“Huh.”
“I was just thinking. I’d never seen anything before we enlisted. Well, Ohio. Maybe I ought to go see Lake Michigan.”
“You seen Ohio, John?”
“I was born in Ohio. Can’t say I remember much about it. Pa and Ma had the wanderlust. They’re living in Michigan now. Never seen Michigan, either. We sure saw a lot of country.”
A Thousand Texas Longhorns Page 2
