by Julie Weston
The meaning of her words stunned Nellie. Then she remembered Mrs. Bock’s statements about how Gladys hated Jack—that he abused her—as well as Gwynn Campbell’s lowdown opinion. A man like they described could do anything.
Mrs. Smith’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I did go to Ah Kee. He ended that problem.” She looked up at Sammy. “And he helped with Jack’s . . . passion. Said if I fed him small doses of opium, he wouldn’t bother me again. That’s what they did with Chinese railroad workers.”
Sammy nodded and looked at the gun in his hand.
“It worked. But Jack found out what I was doing. Said he’d kill Ah Kee. Then he said he’d kill me.” A sly smile hovered on her lips. “So much for that.” She stood up clumsily.
“But why would you want Ah Kee dead?” Nellie asked reluctantly. The story was already terrible.
“The inscrutable Celestial told my secret.” Mrs. Smith spat the words. She lunged at Sammy this time, but he merely sidestepped her and she dropped to her hands and knees. She might have been a religious supplicant, groveling. “And he made my brother an opium-eater. Doomed him.”
You did that, Nellie thought. What a tangled web. Quiet descended, disturbed only by Rosy’s harsh breathing. Mrs. Smith on the floor, Nell with her axe in front of her, Sammy with his hand on the gun. Moonshine waiting.
What to do now? She couldn’t hogtie Gladys Smith, nor grab the gun from Sammy. “We’re stuck here until the storm abates,” she said. She laid the axe close by, lit a match and started a fire in the stove, lifted the pump handle, and then remembered the pump was contaminated. From under the sink, she drew out a deep pan with her left hand, picked up the axe in her right, and headed for the door. “We need snow for water.”
Gladys creaked to her feet. “I’ll get it.” Nellie decided it was safe to let her out. The storm still raged.
“How did you get here, Sammy? I waited for you as long as I could.” The gun still worried her.
“I work. Then come. She say you steal auto. Pay me . . . drive. I wait.” He shrugged. “She not come back, so I follow.”
“Where is your mother?” Heat was beginning to radiate from the stove and Nellie sat down to wait for the snow. It was taking Mrs. Smith a long time to get a panful.
“At house.” Sammy continued to watch Rosy, who lay still. Even his stertorous breathing had stopped, but he still wheezed.
“Did your father tell Mrs. Smith’s secret?” Nellie asked.
“No,” Sammy said. “Honored mother. She jealous of Mrs. Smith—told innkeeper.”
“Oh dear.” Mrs. Ah Kee may have realized her indiscretion cost her husband his life.
Where was that woman? Nellie went to the back door. Soft light from the windows lit squares in the snow, but Mrs. Smith was nowhere in sight. Damn!
“Sammy.” The Chinese man was leaning close over Rosy, his ear to the prone man’s mouth. “Oh no! Is he gone?”
“Shhh!” He listened, motionless. Then shook his head. “He breathes.” He sat down again and took the gun from his waist and placed it on the bed.
“You have to find Mrs. Smith. I shouldn’t have let her out. Now she’s gone, and there are coyotes out there. We can’t let her escape. I can’t go. I’m too tired.”
Still, Sammy sat on the chair.
“You must go.”
He narrowed his eyes, pressed his lips together, and continued his vigil.
“Your mother would agree with me. You can’t let this woman go. Maybe she didn’t kill your father, but she surely killed her brother. Rosy got caught in the middle. I’m sure he didn’t do it. I’ll watch him. Please. Here, take the flashlight. Leave the gun. I might need it.”
He stood up, pulled on his coat, and brought out gloves and a hat. “I go.” The words sounded threatening, but Nellie just said, “Thank you.” Then she picked up another pan to collect snow. “Be careful,” she called into the darkness, as she watched a beam of light follow the trail north along the river. Snow continued to fall and the flakes were bigger. Inside, Nellie put the pot of snow on the stove and waited for water.
When the water was hot, she threw in coffee from a can that Rosy must have brought out, swirled it around, then filled a cup. She went to the bed, sat where she could hold Rosy’s head up, and tried to get him to drink, saying his name over and over. Then she remembered that his real name was Ross. “Ross, wake up. Ross, don’t die. Ross, wake up.” Even Moonie helped, making long half-moaning, half-squealing noises.
Nellie, recalling what the sheriff had done for her, put down the coffee and pushed Rosy into a sitting position. She sat beside him and placed her arms around his chest, hoping to push him to a standing position. She wanted to get him up, make him walk, but could not do it. In the mine, he had been able to hobble. Here, his weight and sinking warmth made him feel so close to the edge of life.
“Tell me about Lily. What are your boys like? Do they look like you or like her?” She couldn’t see his face, but his jaw began to move. “Tell me where you worked, Rosy, and how you came home at night. Tell me about summer here at Last Chance Ranch.”
A long sigh escaped Rosy. He shifted of his own accord and his eyes fluttered, his mouth worked. He wanted to talk.
“Matt. Dark, quiet. Like his Pa. He’ll be . . . good’un. Black . . . ice.”
Nellie wondered if she was understanding his words. She hugged Rosy tighter. “And the other one?” Moonie decided life was in order again. He curled around a circle and lay down.
“Mine. Like Lily. Ice like son . . . bitchin’ Campbell.”
“Now you sound more like the Rosy I know.” She kept her arms around him, and placed her cheek on his whiskery face, trying to warm him even more. “And Lily, was she pretty?”
He nodded. His whiskers burned, but she wouldn’t let go.
Another mournful sigh. “Docky. Tried to save her.” A long shudder and Nellie grew aware of wetness on both their cheeks. Rosy was crying; perhaps she was too.
“Who is Docky?” Then she knew. Doc Kee.
“Goddam pain. Can’t stop. Better . . . this way.” The pitch of Rosy’s voice moved higher. “Ancestors hold her. Comfort her.” He turned slightly, his voice lower. “Who’ll comfort boys?”
And who comforted Rosy? Drink and opium, she guessed. “And Doc Kee?”
“Son . . . bitch Jack killed him!” Disbelief and outrage colored his voice. “What’d you do that for you fuckin’ . . . !” His eyes opened and he reached out. Nellie pulled her head back and looked up. He was awake. She tried to help him stand, but he wouldn’t get up. He continued to rave. “Didn’t know. My fault. Tried to help the fool. All he wanted—” Rosy grew so agitated, he broke Nellie’s grip and almost stood up by himself.
“Fuckin’ Jack. More dope. All he wanted.” Rosy lay back against her and sobs shook his body. Nellie was afraid he was going into convulsions. She crawled around to hold him from behind, moving her legs up on either side of him. She managed to roll both of them down onto the bed and she lay next to him, hoping to calm him, warm him.
After a while, he whispered, “Didn’t mean to kill Jack. Knocked him into the drink. Fished him out. Took him to the ranch and left him.” He shook his head. “Dead when I got back.” He slumped hard against her. “And there you was. Lookin’ like Lily. Brave and young. Headin’ to the cabin. Didn’t have my wits about me. Shoulda stopped you ’stead of followin’ you. Shouldn’t have told Gladys. She mucked everything up. Told Sammy.”
They lay close together. “Don’t marry no old man.” The wind echoed his voice, rising around the chimney. Moonie jumped on the bunk and lay down at their feet.
“Tell Charlie. . . .”
The moan outside grew and the logs of the cabin groaned and creaked. Nellie hoped Sammy had caught up with Mrs. Smith and they had found cover and weren’t freezing. Surely they went back to the auto. Just when she thought Rosy was asleep, he stirred and spoke again.
“. . . raise ’em both. Bring ’em home.”
After a while, he wheezed again and she thought to get more water, but her arms were around him and he held her hands and wouldn’t let go. His words haunted her.
CHAPTER 27
The loss of warmth eased Nellie awake. At first, she was disoriented and could not find herself in time or place. Darkness surrounded her and no sound interrupted it. Gradually, she became aware of a soughing sound, like snow falling, and then the even softer sighs of someone breathing. She moved her legs and felt the weight of the dog at her feet. His breath.
Only then did she remember. “Rosy?” He should have been next to her. He hadn’t died. “Rosy!” Her voice sounded hollow.
Still mostly clothed from the day before, Nellie scrambled out of the narrow bed. She felt her way to the kitchen area and brushed her hand over the table and the sideboard, almost tipping over the kerosene lamp base. She found matches and the bottle with the candle. The stub wasn’t going to last long, but it shed enough light for her to search. She found Rosy upstairs on the lower bunk bed, curled into a ball for warmth. The Chinese robe wrapped around him. The fireplace chimney stood just outside this room and it retained some heat from the fire of the night before, but chill was seeping along the edges. His breathing had settled down from the earlier wheezing.
Nellie touched Rosy on the head, feeling responsible for his welfare, but not sure how to carry it out. She saved him from the cold. Could she save him from demons? No, only he could do that. She squatted down to study him in the low light.
Rosy opened his eyes and they stared at each other.
“I’m alive, ain’t I?” he croaked.
“Barely.”
“I’m thirsty. Musta turned my insides all out.”
Nellie nodded. “It wasn’t a pretty sight. Want to try refilling?”
He thought that over and closed his eyes. After a while, Nellie pulled herself up by using the bed frame. Her body ached. She might as well let him sleep.
On the main floor, Nellie looked over the fuel situation. Half an inch of kerosene sloshed when she picked up the base. Morning crept through the windows, turning dark to gray and then daylight, muted with falling snow. Firewood was low.
What happened to Mrs. Smith and Sammy? If they had reached Ketchum, help would have arrived by now. She hoped they had not frozen on the trail north. Moonie clambered down from the bed and scratched at the back door. She opened it and snow fell in.
“Wait. I’ll open the front. At least there’s a porch.” Moonie barked and followed her. Outside, he stepped into the shallow layer blown in by the wind. His paws left large petals for tracks. He looked over the field, sniffed the air, glanced back at Nellie with a puzzled expression, and took several more steps. “Difficult to know where to go, isn’t it?” And what was she going to do? First, start a fire, then look for a chamber pot. The outhouse near the woods was not possible.
“We can’t get out. We have to heat the cabin to wait out the storm.”
A frisson of fear crawled up her back. They certainly had ample water if it didn’t get too cold to melt the snow before they ran out of wood. She found as many containers as possible and filled them with snow, lining them up—cans on the stove, empty jars on the sideboard. She heated the coffee from the night before, taking a cup to Rosy. He still slept, snoring lightly, so she left the cup there.
Her camera pack and gear sat below the window where she’d first heard the dog tapping. Sammy must have rescued everything from the sled along the trail, because she had left it there to freeze. Bless that man. An idea came to her. She found the last lavender sachet in her coat pocket. There was enough left for a weak tea. She’d brew it up for Rosy. It was the only herb available to her and it might be better for him than coffee.
The crackling fire cheered Nellie and she hummed as she fed it, one stick at a time, and waited for water to boil. Many cans no longer had labels. Some were replaced with handwritten papers, but the rubber bands holding the labels were mostly rotten and broke when she touched them. Peaches. Pickles. Lamb. Applesauce. Each name in a pretty schooled script. No dates.
Apples seemed the best bet—they were acidic to begin with. She wondered how old they were. What had her mother told her about botulism? Painful death was all she recalled. Their rescuers, if anyone ever showed, might find three bodies: Rosy, Nellie, and Moonshine. Pickles sounded all right, too. The lamb—no, she wouldn’t eat the meat. There were a few tins marked as green beans. She opened one and it was beans. That looked best of all. She dumped them in a pan to heat.
Upstairs, Rosy sat up, sipping cold coffee.
“Come down. I’m warming up some food and I’ve made lavender tea.”
Rosy looked about as grizzled as the first day she met him, probably the day after all the tragedy there at the ranch, or maybe the same day. It seemed a lifetime ago, but it wasn’t much more than three weeks or so. The moon would be full again soon.
“We been through the wringer. Leastways, I have.”
“You look like it.” She sat down beside him. “I have, too.” She patted his leg, feeling the silk of the Chinese gown. “This suits you.”
“Think so?” He sat up straight.
“Let’s go down and eat something.”
“Where’d everybody go? Last I remember, Gladys was having hysterics all over the place and Sammy was gonna shoot me.”
“For all I know, they’re covered with snow. I’ll catch you up. And you can catch me up.”
One of Rosy’s crafty looks crossed his face like a cloud over the sun. He sighed. “All right, girlie. Help me up. I’m an old, old man.”
With the fire flickering low, Rosy confessed the sad tale to Nellie. Nellie freed Rosy from the guilty burden he’d been carrying: He didn’t cause Jack’s death. “Maybe Gladys killed Ah Kee, too, but I don’t think we’ll ever know, unless she confesses.”
After Rosy ate and drank the tea, he laid on the couch and slept again. Night descended in the late afternoon. Nellie found another candle, placed it in the window upstairs, and checked on it every hour. When the yipping began outside, she knew the coyotes were back. The firewood was low, so she let the fire burn to bright embers before she placed more wood on it. This night would use the rest. When Moonie wanted out again, she waited in the doorway with the kerosene lamp. The snow had finally stopped. In the morning, she could try to make it to the road herself.
While she and Moonie sat by the fire, she let her mind wander. She would send her photos to San Francisco. She would try to implement some of the ideas she’d already conceived: photograph miners and sheepherders and men working. And women working. She forced herself to think about the scene with Mrs. Smith and what Rosy had said the night before. When Rosy took Jack to the cabin must have been when Gwynn Campbell saw Ah Kee in the snow. Did he see Rosy too?
The boys. “Black ice” had become black eyes during the night. “Blue ice” and “black ice.” Nellie surmised Charlie Azgo was the father of the first boy. Did he know? She could no longer think of him only as “the sheriff.” He was, instead, a man. Maybe she and Goldie could talk Rosy into bringing the boys home. With two fathers, and a grandfather, there would be plenty of people to care for them.
The fire burned low and a sudden downward gust blew ashes into the cabin. A tendril of smoke leaked toward her, reminding her of another image the night of the moonshadows. She might never know the source of all she saw in the light of the moon.
Yipping from the coyotes drew closer. Nell retrieved the gun from beside the hearth where she’d left it. Although she had no idea how to fire any kind of weapon, perhaps a shot would scare them off. Through the window, she saw a dark shadow cross in front of the porch. “They’re right there, Moonie!”
Nellie tugged the door open. She raised the gun high in both hands, pointing it straight out. “Get away!”
The explosion blasted her ears and the recoil shoved her back.
“No no, Missee! No shoot!”
Two bulky figures stomped across the porch and
into the cabin. Sammy and Charlie. She didn’t know which one to hug first.
CHAPTER 28
“The night before I went back out to Last Chance Ranch, I figured out some of what happened, although not all of it,” Nellie admitted to her landlady after Sammy delivered her back to the boarding house. He took Rosy on to a medical clinic in Hailey. “The skis in Mrs. Smith’s room told me she had been out there—I’d seen ski tracks when I went with the sheriff—and she and Rosy knew what happened. My first suppositions were wrong, of course. That maybe Gwynn killed the Chinese doctor and he wanted my negatives to throw blame on the sheriff, who took Ah Kee out there. Or that maybe the sheriff killed Three-Fingered Jack to throw blame on Rosy, wanting to get even with him for marrying his sweetheart. But as I grew to know Gwynn and the sheriff and talked with you and Rosy, I knew none of that was true. It was Jack who killed Ah Kee because he wanted opium and didn’t get any. Finding the snow glasses gave me the last link. Gladys killed Jack and told Rosy that it was his fault. She could help him if he would hide the body’s identity so no one would ever know Jack was dead, but just left town. My photograph ruined that plan.”
The two sat by the fire in the dining room; the rest of the big old house was wrapped in silence. When Nellie arrived home, she’d begun shivering almost the minute she was in the door. Having Mrs. Bock care for her allowed Nellie to let down. She described finding Rosy and how Moonie had saved them from wild animals.
“I knew that woman suffered,” Mrs. Bock said. “I knew she’d been to see Ah Kee, more than once. Jack deserved what he got.” She was silent for a moment, shaking her head. “She shouldn’t have blamed the doctor. Had to blame someone, I guess.”
A log dropped in the fireplace. One of the housemates walked along the upper hall to the bathroom. Nellie shifted the blanket around her shoulders. “Why did Rosy let his sons go?”
