Prairie Moon

by Maggie Osborne

  The young beauty in the photograph had stepped into the fire and vanished. A handsome woman forged by the flames of war and loss had emerged capable, independent, and no longer malleable. She’d become a sad, angry woman.

  More deeply than he could ever express, Cameron regretted that she had lost the life she had expected to live. She had been destined for balls and musicales, for silk gowns and cashmere shawls. She had expected to reign over a household of servants, and spend idle days tinkling on a piano, painting delicate patterns on china cups, reading frivolous novels, paying and receiving calls, being the heart and center of a husband and family.

  Instead, she lived alone on the edge of nowhere, working dawn to dusk on a property that was deteriorating around her. She raised pumpkins that were useless to her. And her eyes were filled with pain.

  The war had done this to her. The war, and James Cameron.

  “Supper will be ready in just a minute,” she called as he came up the porch steps.

  She’d spread a cloth across the porch table, and she’d made time to gather and then arrange a clutch of willow branches in a vase.

  Stepping inside, Cameron hung his hat on one of the pegs, then leaned in the doorway, watching her move from stove to sink. When he realized he was staring, he shifted his glance and saw something that he’d failed to notice before.

  There were marks on the doorjamb. Bending forward, he read a series of penciled notations above the rising lines. Three years. Five years. Eight years. Nine years. Frowning, he glanced toward the bookcase and the school primer atop it.

  “Would you give me a hand with the soup bowls?” She untied her apron and dropped it on the sideboard. “I already dished up the plates. I’ll carry those.”

  There were signs of a child everywhere. The items in the house. A pair of small gloves in the barn. A swing hanging from a thick cottonwood branch. But where was the child? He kept expecting her to mention the child’s whereabouts, but she didn’t.

  “It looks like you finished patching the barn roof,” she said, tasting her soup.

  Was she relieved, thinking he’d leave now? Or was she disappointed? She appeared to enjoy having company.

  Pushing aside his soup bowl, he frowned down at the plate of shepherd’s pie. He should finish his business here and ride away. Every minute that he delayed saying what he’d come to say, was another minute that he deceived and wronged her.

  Damn it to hell. He’d performed one cowardly act in his life. That was coming to Two Creeks and finding her years ago, then riding away without telling her the truth.

  This time he would tell her. Tomorrow.

  But tonight, he would warm himself in the light of her rare smiles. Would let the sound of her voice ease the tightness in his chest. When he looked at her, he didn’t feel like someone who had killed more men than he could remember. When he looked at her and inhaled her scent, he glimpsed what his life might have been.

  “You don’t talk much,” she said when they’d finished the baked apples.

  “I guess I’m out of practice.”

  “I would have said that myself, but listen to me go on.” She made a face and lifted a hand. “It’s like I’ve stored up all these words. Dull words about Daisy’s milk going sour last year, and silly words about seeing pictures in fallen leaves. I’m talking you half to death.”

  He waited until she’d fetched the coffeepot and filled their cups. “I wonder if I might have permission to ask a few questions.” Her eyebrows lifted in surprise, and he felt himself flush beneath his sunburn. “All these years . . . there are things I’ve wondered . . .”

  “Like what?”

  “Like why are you living in North Texas? I spent a year after the war looking for you in Georgia.”

  “A year?”

  “Off and on. You know how chaotic it was in the aftermath. Or maybe you don’t, maybe you were here by then. No one knew what had happened to neighbors and friends. People died, moved, were relocated.”

  “It’s a long story,” she said finally, stirring her coffee.

  “I found what was left of the Ward plantation. Months later I located a woman who said she thought the Wards had taken a house in Atlanta. It took a while, but I found the place on Peachside. Weeks later I tracked down the people who had lived across the street. A family named Beecher. Mrs. Beecher said the Wards had moved again, to a grander place, but she felt certain that you had gone west to Texas.”

  “You read my letter to Clarence,” she said, turning her face to the shadows stretching toward the road. “There were difficulties between myself and Mr. and Mrs. Ward.”

  “Because you were a Yankee?”

  “I guess they saw it that way, but I wasn’t much of a Yankee. Not in my mind.” She made a sound of dismissal. “Mama sent me to Atlanta to visit a cousin when I was thirteen. Six months later, when I was due to go home, there was talk of war. Already it was becoming dangerous to travel. My cousin advised me to stay in Atlanta until things were resolved, and Mama agreed.” She tasted her coffee. “Those were impressionable years. By the time I married Clarence, I was sixteen. All the young men I knew were Southerners. All the people I knew were Southerners. My loyalty lay firmly with the South. That’s where I saw my future.”

  “The trouble with the Wards . . . did they oppose your marriage to Clarence?”

  She clasped her hands in her lap. “Clarence never told me straight out, but it was clear later that his parents were horrified by his choice. I imagine they did what they could to change his mind. To them, I was and would always be a Yankee. It was especially hard on Mrs. Ward to have her son married to a Northerner. After the war, I came here, as far from Atlanta as I could get on the money I had.”

  “If these questions are upsetting you . . .”

  Standing, she moved to the porch rail, where he couldn’t see her expression. Her slim back was stiff and as straight as the barrel of his rifle.

  “My courtship and my wedding day were the happiest days of my life, Mr. Cameron. War raged across the South and it was all anyone could talk about. We rationed provisions, gave our horses to the army, sold our jewelry to buy uniforms for the soldiers. We read about slave revolts and cities burning. But it was all a dream to me, not real or even important. What mattered to me was that I was in love and loved in return.”

  She turned to face him. “Others talked about battles that later became famous. I talked about wedding plans. Others read newspapers and learned the names of the generals on both sides. I read romantic poetry. All around me, people saw blood on the moon. I looked at the same moon and smiled because it shown down on my beloved. Does it upset me to talk about the war years? No, Mr. Cameron. I floated happily through the conflagration without ever looking at the flames around me. Not until near the end.”

  She made herself sound shallow and superficial.

  “Clarence and I had a week together, then he returned to his regiment and I moved to the Ward’s plantation. That’s when the war became real, and yes, that part is upsetting to remember. Before the slaves ran off, we worried that they’d murder us in our beds. If the slaves didn’t kill us, we were certain the Yankees would. Except for me, of course. Mrs. Ward believed the Yankees would spare me and take me to safety. If the slaves or the Yankees didn’t murder us, we feared illness would. Dysentery and fever and malnutrition killed people by the hundreds. If illness spared us, then starvation would surely get us.”

  He’d known what it was like in the towns and countryside. But he hadn’t heard it described like this, in a flat voice and without expression.

  He cleared his throat and tried to think of something to say. “I believe I’ll start on the corral tomorrow. The poles are rotting, and many of the rails are splintered.”

  “Mrs. Ward lost her home and all her belongings to the Yankees, Mr. Cameron. The Yankees killed her only son, the son she adored. And there I was. A Yankee. In her home, under her nose. If she hadn’t needed my help so desperately, I believe she would hav
e figured out how to use Mr. Ward’s hunting rifle, and she would have shot me. I was an abomination in her eyes.”

  Standing, he set down his cup. “I thank you for a fine supper.”

  Her hands trembled and waves of heat radiated from her rigid body. “The Wards didn’t invite me to accompany them to their new home. Mr. Ward gave me the deed to this place and enough money to get here. That’s how I ended up in North Texas.”

  “I apologize for intruding into areas where I have no right to be.”

  She stared at him, then the air rushed out of her body and her shoulders slumped. She shoved back a lock of heat-damp hair.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “You asked a straightforward question. It was me who strayed into areas I haven’t examined for a while. Please. Sit down and finish your coffee.”

  Uncertain, he took his chair and didn’t protest when she refilled his cup. “It’s hot tonight.” The triviality of what he’d just said disgusted him.

  “Do you talk about the war, Mr. Cameron?”

  “No.”

  “I guess most of us don’t.” She added sugar to her coffee as if to sweeten a bad taste in her mouth. “But it’s always there. The war changed everything.”

  They sat in the twilight silence, watching shadows lengthen and occasionally waving away a mosquito or gnat. At some point Della entered the house and returned with an old palm fan which she waved in front of her face. He noticed damp patches beneath her arms and breasts, felt his shirt sticking to his back.

  “If I were alone, I’d probably go down to the creek on a night like this,” she said after a while, “and dangle my feet in the water.”

  The image made him smile. “I haven’t done something like that since I was a boy.”

  “I guessed. Going barefoot would damage your heroic image as a gunslinging sheriff and a legendary bounty hunter.”

  Narrowing his eyes, he turned to look at her, then realized she was teasing. No one teased James Cameron. After an instant of astonishment, he laughed. That surprised him, too.

  “All right, fetch a lantern and we’ll go dangle our feet in the water.”

  “Truly? Give me a couple of minutes. I need to take off my stockings and tie up my skirt.”

  While he waited, he yanked off his boots and socks and rolled up his pant legs. When she emerged, carrying the lantern, they looked at each other’s bare feet and laughed.

  The creek wasn’t far from the house, maybe fifty yards. Della placed the lantern on the weedy grass at the top of a short embankment, then she walked into the shallow creek with a sigh of pleasure. “In the daytime, it’s cooler under the cottonwoods, but at night it’s nice to see the stars.”

  It wasn’t full dark yet, but a few bright stars pierced the fringes of the sunset residue. Cameron stepped into the cool water and let it swirl around his ankles. Bending, he scooped water into his hands and splashed his face and throat while Della did the same.

  “This was a good idea.”

  “If you want to kick and splash around, I promise not to tell a soul.” Tiny droplets caught the fading light and sparkled on her face and long throat. Her feet were pale beneath the water.

  What did she see in him that others didn’t? The question intrigued him. Of all the people in the world, why did this one particular woman feel comfortable joshing with him? Absurdly, he wanted her to do it again.

  Instead she sat on the embankment, keeping her feet in the water, and unwrapped leftover biscuits that she’d brought in her pocket.

  “What would you have done with your life if the war hadn’t intervened?” She handed him a biscuit. “Would you still have come west?”

  He made it a point not to speak of the past and never to explain himself. But after his questions on the porch, he owed her more than evasiveness or silence.

  “Shortly after the war began, I sat for the bar,” he said finally. “If I hadn’t put on a uniform, I probably would have entered the family law practice back east.”

  Leaning forward, she splashed water farther up a shapely leg. “Is your father an attorney?”

  “He was a judge.”

  “Was. He’s dead, then?”

  “Both my parents died years ago.”

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “I had a sister. Celia died in childbirth.”

  “I’m prying, aren’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  She clasped her hands in her lap and tilted her head back to look at the stars. “So why did you decide to come west?”

  He turned his head to stare. “You just admitted that you’re prying into personal affairs.”

  “I know. I’m still doing it. Why did you come west?”

  Cameron thought a minute, then let his frown dissolve into a smile. He was seeing flashes of the woman-child’s barefoot charm, and understanding why Clarence Ward had defied his parents to marry her.

  “I came west because that’s where the outlaws are,” he said.

  A moment passed as she considered his statement and worked out the meaning. “You learned to kill during the war,” she said softly, not looking at him. “You’ve gone on killing.”

  Ordinarily he would have left it at that. But she had trusted him with part of her story.

  He crumbled the biscuit between his fingers. “Until the end of the war, I never thought much about killing. When we went into battle, I only saw the enemy. I didn’t see the men under the uniforms.” He supposed it was the same for everyone. Otherwise no soldier could do his duty or fire his weapon.

  “Cameron?” she said gently, touching his sleeve.

  “Then something happened. And abruptly I understood the enemy was just an ordinary man. He wasn’t evil. He was tired and hungry and he wanted to go home, just like me. He had parents and family who cared about him. He was decent and honorable. The enemy was simply a man doing his duty. The only difference between him and me was a point of philosophy and the color of our uniforms.”

  “What was the thing that happened?”

  Here was the moment. There would never be a better opportunity to tell her the truth.

  But he felt the warmth of her shoulder and her foot almost touching his beneath the water. An intoxicating scent clung to her skin and hair, the fragrance of apples, raisins, and woman sweat. At any moment she might tease him again. He wanted this interlude of closeness to last. Needed this brief experience of intimacy at a depth that shook him.

  Right now he couldn’t think about her hating him. Not yet, not tonight.

  “I intend to tell you what happened,” he said slowly, marking the second incidence of cowardice in his life, “but not now.”

  If she had pressed, he would have told her, but she didn’t push, she merely nodded.

  “I don’t know how many good, decent men I killed during the war,” he said, finishing his answer. He had detested those who kept count of fallen enemy soldiers. “I came west to even the score, to kill those who deserve to be killed for a better reason than the color of a uniform.”

  It was dark enough now that he couldn’t see her expression or judge her reaction. The woman-child in the photograph was too young to understand what he was saying, but he sensed the woman she had become did know.

  “The war will never end for you and me, will it,” she murmured. She gazed up at the stars and touched her throat. “I’ll go on hating myself for a letter that shouldn’t have been written. You’ll go on trying to atone for doing your duty. We can’t change the past, and we can’t let it go.”

  The night was never silent. Bullfrogs and crickets thrummed in the undergrowth, mosquitoes vibrated near their faces. Something splashed through the creek downstream and a cat screamed out on the prairie.

  “How badly were you wounded?” she inquired, standing. When he asked which time she meant, she reminded him, “You said the blood on Clarence’s letter was yours.”

  “That wound was superficial.” He shrugged and stood. “None of the wounds I received were
especially serious. I was lucky.”

  And he’d been lucky since the war. Dozens of times he’d faced men known to be deadly accurate killers, but the worst that had occurred had been one shot in his side and a couple of knife cuts.

  One day his luck would run out. He accepted that inevitability as a natural consequence of the path he’d chosen.

  It didn’t matter.

  Chapter 4

  Upon awakening each day, the first thing Della did was hurry to the window. She doubted James Cameron was the kind of man to ride away without a fare-thee-well, but still, it reassured her to see him.

  This morning she peeked through her bedroom curtains and watched him thumb back his hat, then frown at one of the warped rails he’d pulled from the decaying corral posts. Next he unfolded a long ruler and measured the board. Seeing him at work—his sleeves rolled to the elbows, his collar opened to the early morning sunshine— she wouldn’t have guessed that he was a famous gunslinger. If she ignored the gun belt at his waist, he looked like an ordinary man fixing up his place.

  Well, not ordinary, she decided. Ordinary men didn’t have James Cameron’s bearing or steely blue eyes. Most men weren’t as tall. And even now, focused on the job before him, something in his posture and attitude told Della that he was keenly aware of his surroundings, alert to the morning rhythms. If an unusual sound or movement occurred, he would know at once.

  His constant vigilance was a legacy from the war, of course, a habit he had carried into his present occupation. She suspected that what Cameron referred to as luck was more a highly developed instinct for survival. He might not care if he died, but neither did he intend to let carelessness hasten the event.

  She took great pleasure in knowing this about him, and in knowing what she suspected few others did, why he had come west. She loved observing the small details about him. That he was right-handed, that he shaved every morning, that he placed his knife and fork across the top of the plate when he finished eating. He drank his coffee black, he salted his food before he tasted it. He had a habit of lightly touching his palms to the butt of his guns before he dropped his arms to his sides. His horse’s name was Bold, and he talked to Bold in a low voice while grooming him and when giving him grain in the evenings.