“He thinks it was the window's fault, for being so weak.”
Tipton rolled her eyes. “As soon as he gets back, we'll offer to pay for it and hope he doesn't accept or, worse, call the sheriff for what damage we've done. Then, we graciously remove ourselves. Christmas dinner is waiting.” Tipton's teeth chattered in the cold. She wondered if there was a canvas to cover the window opening.
Adora pouted. “You didn't even get to see the brooch. You could look now. That real pretty one, there.” She pointed, and Tipton paused to look.
“In his spare time, Nehemiah does silver work,” Ernest said. “The work eased his mind when he lost his wife. Why he's working on a holiday—she passed on a Christmas morning.”
“Cant imagine such a busy man having a spare minute,” Adora said. “And he's a widower?”
“We really should be going,” Tipton said.
“Oh, just look at them,” Adora ordered. “Have you become such a work mule you can't enjoy a little silver?”
Tipton sighed, let her eyes drop toward the brooches. One looked like a spur and reminded her of Tyrellie. She blinked back tears. “Let's go, Mother.”
“Can we see the one with the sapphire in it? Wouldn't that look good on my black dress?”
Ernest reached into the bay, picked up the spur, and handed it to Tipton. Silver surrounded the stone. “This one?” she said, holding it up in the fingers of her gloved hand. “It reminds me of Tyrell.”
Several other pieces graced the inside glass counter, and the young man pulled them out, swept glass shards from around them, then rearranged the polished silver with his cloth. “I carry the finest work in the north here,” he said. “Most of what sells has a nugget in the center. Nehemiah likes to use other gems. Unique things. Hand-tools the silver. I've done most of the rest.”
Ernest Dobrowsky was “a gold miner, jeweler, watchmaker, and gunsmith,” probably in his early twenties. “Been here since ‘forty-nine.”
Nehemiah returned then, carrying a basket with sweet-smelling cookies and breads and a green teapot shaped like a mushroom surrounded by several small cups.
“Are there mushrooms around here?” Adora asked.
“Indeed,” he said. “In November usually.”
“So we've missed them,” Tipton said. “But next year. I'll tell Mazy. She loves mushrooms.”
Adora smiled up at Nehemiah as he handed her a cup. Ernest came around behind him and poured. It seemed a little odd to have men serve, but pleasant. Maybe Tipton should just let herself enjoy the attention.
The scones tasted sweet, but increased her hunger instead of satisfying it. “We have friends waiting for us at the—well, your hotel, I guess it is,” Tipton said. “Elizabeth Mueller?”
“Ah, my new baker. A dandy, that one. Her daughter, too.”
“Mazy is a headstrong one,” Adora said. “Not sweet-tempered like my Tipton here.” The kind-faced man handed Tipton another scone.
“Thank you, Mr. Kossuth.”
“Nehemiah. Please.”
“If you'll tell us what we owe you, or is it Ernest here whose window we broke? I need to know how I can pay you back—over time.”
“The window is my concern, as are you with injury so near,” Nehemiah said. “It would please me, as small restitution for your troubles, if I could walk you to the hotel and—”
“Its right kind of you to offer compensation, truth be known,” Adora said. “Windows like that, old and brittle, could do real damage to fragile bones, why—”
“Mother!”
“Were you admiring anything in particular?” Nehemiah asked, nodding to the silver piece in Tiptons gloved hand. His dark eyes never left hers, seemed to search her face, almost.
“We liked—” Adora began before Tipton interrupted.
“Nothing. Thank you.”
Tipton tried to slip the brooch with the sapphire back into the window bay, but Nehemiahs hand reached over hers, holding the brooch inside her palm.
Warm hands. Gentle and strong.
“Please. Accept my work as small payment for your ordeal. Its Christmas. And your presence has been a gift that will surely bless my day.”
An exceptional day. That was Ruths description of the events from morning through the “family” meal with Adoras tale of injury and Tiptons talk of a silver brooch and their singing all the way home. Each of the women had found a simple gift to give one other. Ruth had done that too, braiding leather to decorate a picture frame; making charcoal portraits of each of them, the children included. Ned had opened up his harmonica before they left. She looked around. He must have already put it away. For Jessie, she'd had Mazy help her write a book, and Ruth had illustrated it. The girl had loved it and smiled and gathered up her skirts and pulled on boots when Ruth said it was time to go. The very first time. No nagging required.
The children slept now. The girls spooned beneath their comforter, curls mussed in sleep. The boys sprawled on their mattress. Ruth thought she heard them snoring. Maybe she could do this: raise them all together, let herself be loved. Maybe it was time to look forward instead of always looking back.
She picked up the bridle the boys had oiled for her. The scent of linseed oil and leather never failed to stir her, it was such a smell of home. She held it to her breast, then stepped to hang it beside her whip on a nail in the log wall. The picture frame beside it wasn't straight. She must have bumped it.
In the lamplight, something caught her eye. She looked closer. It was a picture of her brother and his wife, her and her nieces and nephews. She squinted, got the lantern and held it close. Her heart began to pound and her throat went dry. It couldn't be but it was— Ruth's face had been scratched completely out.
David Taylor rode in wearing a smile on his face. He looked at Oltipa as though she were a well-loved flower. Color rose on his neck when he saw her, then he turned quickly and tended to his horse and packs. Back inside, he handed her a bowl with a lily. “Chinese New Year,” he told her. “Every woman gets one.”
He stood far away from her after that and said little. She wondered if she had somehow offended him.
He whittled a sliver from a log and used it now to clean his teeth, threw the sliver in the fireplace and picked up his whip.
Something in the movement made Oltipa flinch.
“What? No, I'd never,” he said. “Just oiling it, that's all. Here, I'll put it away.”
Oltipa nodded once, forced a smile. The whip brought flashes of violent times, a burning bark house, her arms bound with rawhide thongs, her body tossed up behind the Modoc warrior as she watched the father of her child die. No. In this mans hands, the rawhide did good things. She must think of what was present, not past.
She picked up the whip, handed it to him. It was his work, and she had no right to keep him from it.
The smell of oil rubbed into leather with his fingers filled the air. She stirred up venison stew, added a precious onion he said “was the last one for sale in Shasta ‘til spring. Guess nothing'll discourage people who cant see anything but gold,” he continued, talking of white men's ways. He worked the leather, rubbed it across his thigh, looked up at her, then away. “Got some supper on, I see. I'll put this up.”
Her back ached from bending over the andiron and lifting the heavy pot. David took it from her, said, “Careful now. Don't want to hurt that baby. Oh, almost forgot.” He reached again into his bag. “It's a little painting of an eye like they do in France,” he said. “Supposed to be your sweetheart.” He coughed, pulled the small locket with a window that when opened showed an eye. “Lovers Eye, they call it. To remind you someone's thinking of you. Say, you look a little peaked. You all right?” He put the gift down quickly.
Oltipa winced and caught her breath. “Baby come,” she said and watched as David Taylor turned the color of spring leaves.
Suzanne woke with a start. She'd been having a dream, not one with Bryce but where she was standing up in front of room full of strangers. She wore nothing but an old wash
dress not long enough to cover her bare feet. People looked…expectant, as though she would perform some miraculous thing, and she could feel herself breathing fast, frightened, not being able to catch her breath. Then suddenly, she heard a raspy sound, as though she breathed through her teeth.
She sat up with a gasp, knocking the cane off the chair she had pulled beside the bed. She threw the covers back and, with her bare toes, patted around for the smooth walnut cane. Once found, she tapped it against the side of the bed as she shuffled her way to check on the boys. She breathed easier as her fingers felt Claytons chest rise and fall in sleep. She gently reached for Sason's little back. He always liked to sleep on his stomach. She heard the intake and release of breath. It must have just been her own breathing in the dream, that sucking sound, that woke her. Or maybe Pig's dreaming. She listened for the dog's slobbery sounds from the corner of the cabin. She often left him out now, with the nights not so cold.
She tap-tapped her way to the table, bumped it, found the teapot. She would give anything for a cup of hot tea then, but she didn't want to wake the boys as she fussed with the pot on the warming oven. Her hands shook.
She heard—no, sensed—something out of the ordinary, but she couldn't place it. “I'm just an old scaredy cat, aren't I, Pig?” she said, just to hear the sound of her own voice.
Back in bed, she lay awake, letting her heart calm. A dream, full of anticipation followed by fear all wrapped up in the previous afternoon.
She'd lost Clayton. He'd hidden from her—on purpose—and try as she might, she could not get him to come out of his secret place, wherever it was. Then he'd unlatched the door and slipped outside.
She could hear him giggling. “Come to Mommy, Clayton.” She thumped with the cane, stumbled at the ironwork surrounding the grave of the former owner's wife. The metal felt cold and sharp with the little arrow designs marking the perimeter. Was Clayton dressed warm? Had he hurt himself? No, he giggled! She heard him scuffling near her. She grabbed for him but couldn't catch him. She was getting cold—he must be too. Sason was alone in the house. Why wasn't Clayton letting himself be caught? She headed for the house, counted, but she didn't reach it. She'd miscounted! She felt the cold air on her face, pulled her shawl around her, called again for the child, headed back to his giggle. She shivered, confused. Focus. Think. She sat down on the damp ground and wept. Only then had her son made his way to her, patting her back. “Mommy?” he said, and she grabbed at his thin little body and held him, making his shirt wet with tears of both relief and anger—at him and her own failure to keep him safe.
She carried him in on her hip, her other hand tapping with the cane. She sniffed the air for the smell of fire from her hearth. Yes, follow that! She prayed that she was walking in a straight line, and would find either the house or the fence and follow it. Then she'd bumped into a sugar pine, her nose bruised, she was sure, but she knew where she was then, and focused on the smell of the fire. Clayton's feet were cold, and she'd wrapped him in a quilt and held him close. Sason cried, needing her, and she wondered if she had what it took to raise one child let alone two.
Now she couldn't sleep for thinking of the bad dream, scared and exposed. Maybe she should ask Ruth to let Sarah come and stay with her. Sarah could tell her if the boys had slipped out or if Clayton had thrown cold mush under the table or stuffed his bowl still half full in the bed—which he'd done more than once. He was becoming a sneaky child, with no one to hold him accountable.
Sarah was kind and gentle with the boys and could help tend them—and give Suzanne straight answers. Suzanne would still make all the decisions.
She remembered expressing a similar thought out loud to Wesley near the Chinese New Year, about bringing someone in, no one specific. “Does that mean you're ready to surrender to the direction of another, my dear? I'm certain I know a candidate who would find that of interest.” He'd touched her chin with his hand, with firmness. “Otherwise why ever would you want others pawing through your things? Now that would be a violation, I should think.”
She didn't like the way he used her words back at her, or his presumption that she should surrender. She'd gone down the next day to Hong Kong, and when she picked up baked eggs, she also asked if there was a boy who might come to start the fires for her in the morning, maybe set soup on. Those were still her hardest tasks and the most worrisome. In February, Johnnie came. “Sent to serve lady,” he said, bowing low.
She told him to make a grate of sorts around the fire opening, so Sason could not crawl too close, and put a latch high on the door, so Clayton couldn't undo it. Though she often forgot to latch it after he left. He bought food and prepared it so she had meals for the children. He took the laundry and brought it back.
Wesley had spoken as though through clenched teeth when he arrived, and Johnnie was already there one morning, fixing the fire, preparing rice.
“Having them around is risky, my dear. They'll steal from you, servants will.” Had he spoken in front of Johnnie, as though the boy couldn't hear? “They learn your habits, where you keep your money.”
“What do you suggest?” Suzanne asked.
“I could stop by each day and tend your fire. It would please me.”
“And when you have to be gone, with your investments, what then? Doesn't that take you two weeks or more, you said?”
“Do what you've always done. Make do. Practice your independence.”
“I am practicing my independence.”
She remembered that Wesley said nothing for a time, then, “Don't blame me when things come up missing.”
There ci been other pricklings of discomfort with Wesley. Little suggestions he'd made that came out threatening almost, as though if she did what she wished, she'd be unwise. She'd told him of her interest in photography and that she might set up a studio in the spring.
“My dear, you can't possibly have someone working for you. They'd rob you blind, the pun intended. Your best hope is to permit some loving man to treat you with the dignity and respect you so deserve. When you're ready, I know just who.”
She knew what he wanted. And when he held her face in his warm hands and kissed her, she did think that surrendering to his care might be what she should do. Her boys would have a home, a life. They'd all be safe. It was selfish of her not to just accept.
Something held her back.
Maybe it was his reluctance to accept her invitation to meet Mazy or his always being unavailable on Sunday when she dressed the boys for church.
“It's probably my independent streak,” she said out loud to the darkness. “Stubborn. If I squelch that, I'll wish I were dead. Just like back on the trail.”
She heard scratching against the plank floor. She felt a gentle movement of cool air and assumed the dog approached, awakened by her talking. She reached her hand out into the darkness, moved it back and forth. She touched nothing. For a moment, she thought she heard the door creak, cool air again. She gripped the cane Seth had given her, swallowed. It was just the dream making her edgy, just the wind pushing through the cracks in her wall.
13
“I ve been writing letters to the editor,” Mazy told Ruth. “But he doesn't print them. I guess they dont want people to know that some of us think this Indian policy is appalling. You used to work for a newspaper, didn't you? Any suggestions for getting myself heard?”
Ruth shook her head. The two made their way through the spring-fed meadow, stubby grasses now spearing the March air. They carried buckets of grain out to Ruths horses while Mazy checked her cows. “I never understood the politics,” Ruth said. “It had to do with advertising. If you took out ads, they paid attention to your point of view.”
“Maybe I'll do that, then,” Mazy said. “Take out an ad. For the orphans. Then I want to find an old, abandoned shed, so they can get in out of the weather. Find real homes for them instead of people just taking their free labor.” She pulled at a strand of oat grass and twirled it in her fingers. “They huddle in th
e back corners of buildings, sleeping next to garbage. It's dreadful.”
“What about the elders?”
“They help as they can.”
“No, I mean using the building. For an orphanage.”
Mazy looked at her, surprise on her face. “That's a great idea. And maybe we could raise money to hire people to care for them. In Wisconsin we fixed pretty baskets with food and sold them. All it cost a woman was her time and a little bread.”
“And spending an hour with someone you might dislike,” Ruth said.
“Maybe some of the women who work with Lura could help,” Mazy said. “Well, they dont actually work with her. They need help too. I mean—”
“I know who you mean,” Ruth said. Sometimes Mazy's charity-talk could get on her nerves. She shook the grain, held the bucket up so the horses could see it. “They might not be attracted to the drop in pay, though, even if the working conditions were better. That hat Esty wore visiting last week must have cost a fortune, all feathery and wide.”
“She made that hat,” Mazy said. “Needed seven pins to hold it, she said. Esty has other talents. She just doesn't use them.”
“You write with passion. Pen an ad about that—the orphans.”
“I should.” The ground felt damp and soft as they walked, and the earth smelled of spring. “Mother says I keep busy so I wont have to feel the old hurt. She says my ‘causes’ get in the way of true service.”
“What do you think?” Ruth asked.
Mazy shrugged her shoulders. “I don't know. My mother has lots of advice. I'd forgotten how much. Not that I'm complaining, you understand.”
“You could move out,” Ruth said.
“I could.” They stood watching as the horses made their way from across the creek running full with spring runoff. “Have you heard from Seth? I'm sure he's back, but I haven't seen a thread of him.”
“Suzanne has, but she didn't say what he was up to.”
“The pickings in the Sacramento gambling houses must have been pretty good to keep him south so long.” Mazy snorted. “He's probably out at the amphitheater at the bull and bear fights.”
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