Rubbing the knot on her head, she said, “No, no…I’m being silly. I had a feeling someone had been here is all.”
“Are you always afraid here, by yourself?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, then shook her head, “No, not always. Sometimes, at first, when there were a lot of people camped in the yard, I didn’t sleep much. But lately, it’s different. I’m not worried about the strangers anymore. I go to sleep early so I don’t have to listen to the sounds of the night. Awake, I hear things, animals mostly, moving around. And the wind in the trees, the cabin creaking, the fire in the grate popping.”
∙•∙
“Anora,” Hank said, taking her hand in his. “Anora,” he said again, this time she put up her chin to meet his gaze. He kissed her, his hand on the back of her head to draw her forward to meet his lips. He held her there, lips touching, unmoving, simply touching. She didn’t resist, and this gave him hope. He drew back, his hand slipping to touch her cheek. “Come live with me? We need you.”
Eyes flying open, arms braced, hands holding on to the edge of the bed, she said without hesitation, “I can’t. That’s impossible. You can’t mean it.”
“If you’re objecting because of the ferry, I don’t expect you to stop working the damn thing. Go ahead, work it as long as you want. But I’m going to help you all I can, when I can, and I don’t care who objects. I understand how you feel about it. I want you to do what you want,, but Anora, I hope what you want is to be with me…always…and Isabell. It’s no good you alone down here, and me alone up there on the hill. I look out at night and think of you. Isabell’s started to pray you’ll come live with us.”
“Don’t…” she said, stopping him, putting her fingertips over his lips. “I want to say yes. It would be so easy…so wonderful…a dream come true. Shhh, don’t say anything more. You know I can’t. Paxton said it. I’m not free.”
Removing those bars to his lips, he said, “If you’re talking about that ring on your finger, I don’t believe it. When I married Lydia, we exchanged vows to love, cherish, and take care of, and protect each other. You can recall no such exchange between you and Ruben. And Ruben…Ben…certainly didn’t care or protect you. He left you alone, broken; he threw you away, and boldly took up with another woman. You owe him no allegiance. I want you for my own, my wife, Anora. I want to give you everything I have…my name…all of me.”
She sprang to her feet and paced in front of him. He reached out and put his hand on her arm to hold her still. Standing, he gave her wrist a little squeeze. “Come, let me hold you. Please.” She sighed and folded into his body. “I know…I know people will cluck and tsk, tsk, but life is too short.” He put his chin to the top of her head, his hand stroking her back. “I’ve learned that lesson the hard way. I’ve been fortunate to find two women whom I love with my whole being, and I’m not going to deny myself happiness for the sake of a lot of gabble grinders. Anora, I love you. You can’t throw this chance away.”
With her forehead pressed against his chest, arms hanging down to her sides, she said, “I don’t want to. You have to believe that. I want to go with you right now. Leave all of this. You will never know how much I wish I could, but I can’t.”
“Why?”
Pushing back, her gaze unflinching, she said, “Ruben—he’s coming back. I can feel it. He’s getting very close. I keep looking for him. I’ve felt it for a while now, but tonight…”
He took her by her shoulders and pulled her back into his embrace. “Did you think he was here tonight?”
“Yes. This…this…you and me…it’s too good…too right…I know he knows. I don’t know how, but he always knows. I feel the evil, the danger of him. You and Isabell have to stay away. Especially Isabell, Hank. Ruben is cruel, unpredictable. We can’t take the chance. He could be out there right now watching us. He could take her, Hank…take her and…”
He paced, going to the opened door, then back to stand before her at the bed. “Ruben’s a coward. He won’t kill outright. If you’re here alone, you’re vulnerable. Each of us is vulnerable, but if we’re together, he can’t hurt us, he won’t. The Rubens of this world are animals, they sneak and skulk, but they never come out in the open, and they don’t kill in a crowd. We know what and who he is, the whole town knows. Please, Anora, believe me. We give him all he needs by being afraid. We can’t give him anything.”
Nodding, she said, “There’s something in what you say, but I need time, Hank.”
Kissing her on the forehead, the nose, then finding her lips, their bodies swaying with their need for each other, he said, “Just say it, Anora, tell me…let me know how you feel?”
She opened her mouth to speak, then pressed her lips together and closed her eyes. “I don’t dare,” she said. “I don’t dare hope, dream. I have to put aside what I want, what I need.”
Placing her hands to his face, she opened her eyes and looked deep into his. “You shouldn’t want me. I can’t erase the things Ruben did, things I couldn’t stop him from doing. No man should want me. But if you need to hear the words, then know this, I found myself loving you, admiring you, yes, wanting you almost from the moment I met you. Love…Hank…at the time I couldn’t remember ever knowing love, or seeing love, until I saw you with Lydia—how you were with her and Isabell. Because of your love for them, I began to see, and remember my own mother and father. I knew my feelings were the same. My feelings for you are the same. I’d give my life for you, Hank. I live each day to see you, hear your voice.” Trembling, tears streaming down her cheeks, Hank folded her into his chest, stroking her head.
He would never say it out loud, for fear God would strike him dead, but his love for Anora was so much more than the love he’d felt for Lydia. He didn’t like to admit it. He knew himself for a traitor to Lydia’s memory. She represented what he’d thought he should be, successful, stalwart, and loyal, she’d made him be all of that, because that was what she’d expected.
Passion, yes, Lydia had inspired passion; she had been a warm, vital woman, but she hadn’t fired his soul, inspired his desires to a dizzying height. Anora, she had been his destiny all along, Lydia was the road, the way to meeting his true and rightful partner for this life and every life to come.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Gold fever hit Takenah hard. Bill Bowdin, son Homer, the two Hemphill boys, Chester and Lyle, and Emory Murdock and his son Milo, all left their homes and families for Sutter’s Mill and the American River in the space of a week. Hank and Paxton saw panic written on Theodore Gregson’s face when he heard the news.
“I’m going ahead with the stage-stop and hotel,” Paxton said to Hank. “More traffic on the river now than ever before.”
Standing outside the mercantile with Paxton, Hank nodded in agreement. “Anora’s keeping up, but at day’s end, she’s worn out. She wouldn’t appreciate me telling you that. You’re part of the reason she’s pushing herself.”
“Well, hell,” Paxton said and whipped his hat off his head and slapped it on his thigh. “She’s stubborn, I can’t do a thing about that. I know you’re doing what you can. I’ve come to her defense with the city council. But once I get the hotel up, that dilapidated ferry will have to go. It’s not safe. Everyone complains about it. Anora can’t make cable repairs or build a better raft. If there’s some way you could get her to see reason, I’d feel better knowing she’s not down there putting her life, and a bunch of other lives, in jeopardy.”
“I’m working on it,” Hank said, brows raised, trying to hold back a smirk and failing.
“Ah, so it’s like that?” Paxton said.
Hank nodded. “I’ve asked her to come live with Isabell and me. She wants to, but she’s afraid, Paxton. Afraid Ben will show up. She’d be safer with me and Isabell in our cabin. I told her she didn’t have to give up the ferry. But I’m hoping she will. I’m not going to tell her that, she’d back up on me like a Missouri mule. She said she needed time to think.”
»»•««<
br />
Each time the Willa Jane pulled in, Anora dreaded the pace—keeping livestock fed in the cribs, the wagons camped in her yard, the dust, rain, and mud took a hefty toll on her body and mind. Financially, she wasn’t making much headway. Everybody wanted to trade. Hardly anyone had cash. Most of the folks using the ferry had spent every penny they had on gold pans, tents, grub, and supplies.
At night, too tired to sleep, she rehashed what Hank had said about Ruben being a coward, and she agreed. True, she wanted to be with Hank day in and day out. And no, it didn’t matter what the rest of the world thought.
Each day Hank and Isabell came down the hill to share her morning coffee. They talked of the day ahead, and in the evening, they took their supper together. When she could, she liked to walk up in the orchard in the evenings; Isabell and Mick running ahead, darting in and out of the trees, Isabell searching for an apple or a ripe pear to munch on and Mick chasing squirrels and birds.
Hank had all his apples and pears, except those he intended to keep for himself, sold to the mercantile. “Not much of a crop,” he’d said, “but not bad for the first season, not even a full growing season.”
September ended, and October came around, and the trees, dressed in shades of russet, red, orange, and yellow reminded Anora winter would soon follow with high water, storms, wind, and sleet. The prospect forced her to come to a decision.
If Ruben came back, which Anora had seriously begun to doubt—he’d be where he could find easy prey—and that would be California. The time had come to start a new life, a better life, a life with love and kindness, laughter and joy. Self-punishment, wholly unsatisfactory, got her nowhere, except older and duller.
On October twelfth, late in the day, Anora took a wagon of eager prospectors across the river. They were in a hurry, hoping to beat the early snows in the Siskiyou’s. Seeing Paxton talking with his construction foreman, Dan Ambrose, she tied off the ferry and then walked up the rise to where they were building the new stage stop and hotel.
“Heard the saloon in Marysville burnt to the ground,” she heard Dan say, and slowed her steps, hoping to hear more.
“Yeah, I heard that too.” Paxton said. “Who told you?”
“Charley Hemphill. A fella from Marysville came in to get his horse shod. Kind of a strange fire, I guess. Started in the early morning. Found a body, a woman; nobody knows who she is or what she was doing there. Burnt up everything right down to the ground—cash box on the floor beside her, nothing in it.”
“Probably some barfly got drunk, thought she’d help herself to the till,” said Paxton.
Glancing over his shoulder, catching sight of her, he raised his hand and waved. “Hello,” he said, “haven’t seen you to talk to you since the reverend came to town. Curiosity got the best of you? Had to come up and see what’s going on up here?”
“Fine evening,” said Dan, tipping his hat to her in a friendly greeting.
“It is a fine evening,” she said, “a little cool, probably get a frost.” Dan agreed. Anora pinned her gaze on Paxton. “You’re making good progress on your stage stop, I can see that. Thought if you had a minute, we could talk some business?”
“Sure, sure,” he said to her.
To Dan he said, “Well, anything we need to talk about can wait until morning, Dan.”
Stammering, backing up, Dan said, “Oh, yeah, right, see you in the morning.”
Paxton guided her over to sit on a couple of wooden sawhorses. “Business you say? What’s on your mind?”
She made herself comfortable and removed her gloves. “You’ve, no doubt, been expecting me.”
“I have?” he asked, professing guile she did not believe for one second. “Why should I have expected you?”
“Oh, please, Paxton, let’s not play games. You know why I’m here. I want to sell to you, or the town, the rights to the ferry and five acres of land to go with it. I’ll keep the rest, the leftover twenty acres. I want two hundred dollars.”
“You don’t mess around. That’s not how it’s done, you know. You don’t just come out with what you want and how much, you have to parlay, dicker.”
“I’ll leave the dickering up to you men. I’m a woman and I know what I want, and I know how much I want. Do we deal or not?”
Paxton, looking off to the river, sat quietly, hands still, shoulders sagging a bit. Anora found his silence nerve-racking. She hesitated to breathe and squirmed on the narrow two-by-four sawhorse. “It is a lot of money. But I’ve thought it over and taken into consideration my income for a month, and the value of the land, the cabin, and barn. I think it’s a fair price. I don’t know exactly how much Ruben paid for the land and the rights to a ferry crossing. He might’ve had around five hundred dollars, that’s how much my father had in his poke to put toward a ferry. Ruben stole that money, of course. I want some of it back.”
Raising his head and drawing himself up, he asked, “I see. So, are you planning on pulling out? Leaving Takenah like the rest?”
Anora laughed at this notion. “That’s ludicrous. I’m not haring off to chase gold, if that’s what you’re thinking. What kind of fool do you take me for, Paxton? No, I’m not going anywhere.”
He came to his feet, huffed, then faced her, a hard glint in his eye. “The deed is in Ben’s name, you know.”
She also rose and faced him. “I know,” she said. “But he abandoned it. It’s an abandoned claim, been abandoned for more than six months—nearly a full year. I took it over, ran it, ran it successfully. I look at myself as his widow, and as his widow, I have a right to sell out.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know if the law would see it your way.”
He strode down the slope a ways, turned abruptly, and came back to her. “I don’t know how the law would see it, but damn, I like the sound of it, Anora.”
“I’m ready to sell. I proved to myself I could do it, I’m done. You want it or don’t you?”
He shook his head, took her hand, sat, pulling her down beside him, and putting his hand over hers, asked her, “You need cash, Anora? You don’t need to sell out to get cash. I’ll give you all you need. You know I’m always here to help.”
Anora jerked her hand away. “How like you to think I’m desperate, so desperate I’d come to you for money, of all things. I’m asking you if you want to buy, now do you or don’t you?”
Paxton sighed, hands on his thighs, he straightened his arms. “So be it. I don’t understand you, I never will, but I’ll not stand in your way.” He removed his hat from his head and smoothed a hand over his balding pate. “You’re damned right, I want it. How soon you want out?”
His question threw a cog in the wheels of her mind. She had to stop and think. Below her, the river snickered and sneered at her, daring her to leave it behind. “A week, a few days anyway, would a week be all right? I need a little time…I don’t know what for…but I guess at least a few days.”
“Deal,” Paxton said, stretching out his hand for her to shake.
Looking up the road, she saw Hank and Isabell coming on their way home. Isabell had spent the day in Melinda’s care. With Molly attending school, Isabell had to either stay at Anora’s cabin and play by herself or stay with Melinda, a circumstance she hated.
Putting her hand on Paxton’s arm, Anora said, “I’ll tell Hank, Paxton. Let’s keep this between the two of us for today. Run the deal by the city and let me know if there’s a hitch.”
“You haven’t talked this over with Hank?”
“No…I know, I’m going to tell him this evening.”
“Sure, okay, I guess. But this won’t stay a secret for long.”
»»•««
Turning down the track, headed for the ferry, Hank caught a glimpse of something moving through the tall grass and vines down at the river. He wondered if that big buck he’d spotted before, the one who liked to take his afternoon nap beside the river, had returned. He promised himself he’d bring his rifle tomorrow, maybe, just maybe, he could br
ing home venison for the table.
Except for Isabell, he’d worked very hard to keep his feelings for Anora hidden. Isabell knew, but he’d made her promise to keep it a secret. Every day she asked him if Anora had decided to come live with them. All he could do so far was give her his pat answer of, “We’ll have to wait and see, squirt. I think she wants to.”
The one thing he had discussed with Isabell, was the need to keep the possibility of Anora’s moving in with them a secret from Melinda. Vigorously nodding, Isabell readily agreed. “I don’t tell her nothing. I mean, anything. She tries to find out stuff, but I just act silly. She thinks I’m some kind of baby, Papa.”
Beside him, Isabell waved and said, “Look, Anora’s with Uncle Paston.”
“I see her, squirt, I see her.” Snatching Isabell by her coat, he held her back to keep her from falling off the buckboard seat.
He pulled the wagon up in front of the half-built stage stop and hollered to Paxton. “Think you’ll get the roof on before it starts to rain?”
Paxton rushed over to swing Isabell off the seat. “Oh, sure, maybe next week. And even if we don’t, a little rain won’t hurt too much. Should be all finished, up and running by the end of the month.”
Hank jumped down and came around the horses to say, “Heard you hired Ellen Ambrose to cook for you?”
“Yep. Best cook in the whole territory. You hear about the fire up at Marysville?”
“Yeah, I heard about that. I heard they think it might’ve been set.”
“Didn’t hear that part of the story. Dan said they found a woman in the rubble. Maybe she set it.”
Hank took Anora’s hand and offered her a smile. When she entwined her fingers with his, a rush of heat and pride set his heart to pounding. But he couldn’t let on or Paxton might see too much, so he kept up the conversation, saying, “Seems funny. If I were going rob a place, then set fire to it, I’d make damn sure I didn’t get burned up in the process.”
The Widow's Ferry Page 32
