by Danni Roan
"How long do you think I'll need to do this?" he asked as the light on the night stand was put out.
"We'll just have to see," was her simple reply.
A familiar silence rolled into the small living space, bringing with it the stillness of a warm summer's night. Although tired, Deeks couldn't get to sleep so lay there on his back, counting the planks that made up the roof of the building.
"They used to call me Rachel," Ray's voice was soft in the quiet night.
"Hm?" Deeks questioned.
"That was my name. I wasn't always Dusty Ray. My name was Rachel."
"That's a right purty name," Deeks said not knowing what was wanted from him.
"I was married once." Another statement tumbled into the night like a falling stone. "My Danny was a wonderful man: handsome, strong, good." She paused for a long time before adding, "The war took him from me."
Deeks could tell that Ray, no, Rachel, needed to talk, and he lay there silently listening with care.
"I was sixteen when I married Danny. He was just a simple farmer and my daddy despised him for it. My Daddy had money you see, he was what you called a gentleman farmer. I lived in a big house with servants and other people worked the land for us." She was silent for so long that Deeks thought she'd drifted off to sleep, but then her voice came through the night again.
"I met Danny at a church social and was smitten the first time I laid eyes on him. My family disowned me when I married him." Again a heavy silence held the room.
"I was useless as a wife." She laughed slightly, "I couldn't cook or clean or anything, but my Dan didn't care. He helped me with everything, waiting patiently for me to learn. Then he went off to fight in the war and never came back. I muddled through a little while on my own after that, but by the time I turned eighteen I was in a fix. I didn't know how to farm, either to grow my own food or to make enough to live on." The silence that followed seemed to stretch out in anticipation of her next words.
"That's when Gibbs showed up." The voice that had been soft before grew hard. "He said he loved me and that I should marry him and we'd go west to make our fortune. It all sounded too good to be true but I married him, or at least I thought I did, and we started west. I didn't like the group we traveled with, all rough men with coarse manners and lewd dialects. It was on that very trail I had my first taste of what was to come."
Something in Deeks chest grew tight as he listened to the woman's words, dreading what came next.
"Gibbs said we were out of money and would starve to death. He said the whole train would leave us to die if we didn't get some cash quick. He promised it would be alright just once." She grew quite again before her final words fell into the night. "I cried the whole time."
Anger roared in Davrum Deeks' ears as his hands curled into fists. It was beyond him how any man could mistreat a woman, but to completely betray her trust, to use her in this way; his anger burned like the coals in his forge.
“When we got to Missouri is when I found out the whole truth,” Rachel continued, unaware of the feelings of the man she had married. “Gibbs and I weren’t legally married. The whole thing had been a sham and now I was a ruined woman.”
Deeks felt his eyes burning with sorrow at what this woman had been through. “Why didn’t you leave?” he asked before he could help himself.
“I did, or at least I tried. He broke my foot, just a few toes to slow me down. In the end there was no place to go, anyway.” Her voice sounded so resigned that he wanted to crawl up off of the floor and wrap his arms around her, but somehow he knew that would be the wrong thing to do. This conversation wasn’t for his benefit, though it helped him understand so much about the hard woman he’d married. This was her need to walk through her past, and, he hoped, put it behind her.
“I tried twice more to get away after that, but in the end they beat me down.”
The old blacksmith thought of the condition she’d been in when he’d found her in Casper, and wondered at the abuse she’d taken.
No more words came from the bed, but Davrum Deeks lay awake for a long time staring into the darkness. With silent words he lifted a prayer heavenward, pleading that somehow the woman that he now shared his name with could at least have a few years of peace and maybe even joy.
Deeks didn’t bring up the conversation of that night again. He left the woman to her own devices, hoping that over time she’d come to accept him as a friend.
Her garden, on the other hand, was something else entirely. He brought her a hoe and a garden rake to use and showed her how to plant the small sprouts and sprigs he’d gleaned from the big garden. The whole thing was a mish-mash of different items. She kept her rows neat and it was obvious she didn’t know a weed from a carrot, but she seemed to like working in the garden, and if it got her outside, he was happy to leave her to it. The one thing everyone noticed, though, was that if anything had a flower on it, she let it grow.
More than once Deeks caught Bianca shaking her head at the whole thing, but he didn’t care. Rachel left everyone else alone to do whatever they liked; he didn’t see any reason to keep her from doing something she wanted. He would often come home to find her standing in the garden, her bare toes buried in the warm black earth, leaning on her hoe and gazing off into the distance. Sometimes he wondered what she was thinking, but he left her to herself, content that she at least seemed healthy.
“Rachel,” Deeks began; he’d been using her proper name ever since that night two weeks ago. “Josh would like you to come up to the house for the Bible reading today,” he finished casually as he ate his breakfast at the battered table.
Rachel’s blue eyes sparked fire and a pinched look settled around her mouth. “Don’t be trying to bring in any of that religious nonsense,” she snapped, her back stiff. “I don’t need anyone prattling on to me about a loving God or hell fire and damnation. I’ve already been there.” Her voice was a harsh bark.
“I just thought now that you had a home an’ all…” he paused for a moment, “that’s all in the past now and this is a new life.”
“Just because you brought me out here and gave me a place to live doesn’t mean you can expect me to be like you. I’m old and used up and have no time for this so called God. If you can’t take me the way I am, then you shouldn’t have brought me from Casper.”
For a moment Deeks gaped at the woman. “You would a’ died if I’d left you there,” he stated dumbly.
“Well, maybe you should have let me,” Rachel’s voice was bitter, sharp like the edge of a blade as she rose and collected her plate, putting an end to the conversation.
The old blacksmith hung his head over his plate but didn’t push any further. He had hoped she was ready to join the family, but apparently that was not going to happen.
“Bring me some more books,” the woman, now clattering breakfast dishes loudly in the wash basin, called in a snipped tone as he walked out the door.
“I asked, Josh,” Deeks said after lunch that day. “I did, but she’s hardened her heart, and some of me can understand why. She’s been through hell on earth and the best we can do is try to let her be. She ain’t hurtin’ no one or takin’ anything that ain’t alright.”
“I understand Deeks. We can only do our part; the rest is up to God. You’ve given her a home, a place where she’s safe, where she can heal her mind and body; maybe someday her heart will heal as well.” The lean cattleman rested a hand on his friend’s shoulder. Even with the pain in his eyes, Josh could see a change in Davrum. He seemed to suffer less from his back pain than he had before, even if his soul ached.
Chapter 7
1889 rolled into 1890 quietly, and things went on at the Broken J as they had for years, but with many more blessings and the addition of a new family member when Katie had her own baby girl, Mary Bridgette, in February. The women were overjoyed and the tiny bundle was completely inundated with new clothing and other items that had been knit or sewn in anticipation of her arrival.
/> Clayton and Meg took on the job of looking for a market for the wheat that Josh wanted to start growing, and were more than happy to travel on business for the Broken J. Meg, once surly and downright aggressive toward the handsome black-haired cow hunter, seemed more full of life than ever.
By spring of 1890 the ranch was alive with new activity. Hank and Fiona’s house was well under way. New colts, several of whom sported the dark coat and smooth rounded confirmation of their sire ‘The Duke,’ were seen prancing in the distant fields as the herd of horses grew, and new calves soon ambled along beside their long-horned mothers through the securely fenced pastures of the sprawling ranch.
Rachel and Deeks didn’t talk about God or attending the Bible reading again, but they did talk of the everyday activities on the ranch. Through the long winter, the woman had filled out a bit, her hips now rounded, fuller. She wasn’t a tall woman, and sometimes when Deeks looked at her across the table he could see the beauty she must have once been. Her hair, when she was young, had been the color of corn silk, but now that the heavy dyes had grown out of it, he could see that it was more silver than gold. Her face had lost the softness of youth, but the smooth angles of age hadn’t completely robbed her of her looks. He guessed she must be in her late forties, though she never said.
Throughout the winter Rachel had worked on different projects in the apartment they shared. She hadn’t canned any of the produce from her small summer garden, but had told Deeks to take it to the other women in the big house. She had however, attempted to learn to knit, and to mend with mixed results, and had even made an apron and a new dress for herself; neither item was what you would call pretty, or even truly straight, but they were serviceable.
As April showers began turning the prairie green once more, Eric and Scooter helped the Broken J’s blacksmith put in the small garden on the side of the bunk house, and this time planted as many herbs as they did vegetables. Putting the garden in at the same time as the large kitchen garden meant it had a longer growing season this year, and Deeks hoped that Rachel would be more successful this time.
Over the long winter months, when the weather was cold, Deeks had slept in his own bed, next to the woman he called wife. It was a strange situation, as she’d often rise in the night and move around the cabin or go outside into the dark cold of a Wyoming winter. But now, as summer came into full swing, she convinced him to sleep on the floor again, and he had to admit that between the hard planks for a bed and her nearly nightly rub down of his aching spine, his old injury didn’t seem as painful as it once was.
For the most part Deeks let Rachel do what she wanted. He was generally near by the ranch, since his job required him to put in long hours at the forge, so he could check in on her and see if she needed anything. It seemed that the only other person she ever spoke to was Chen Lou, who he was sure helped her with the laundry each week, and on rare occasions Mae, who would stop in to say hello and look at the garden, when she wasn’t racing around on her tan and white calico pony.
Rachel stood in her garden, her stained toes digging into the warm loam of the small patch of earth she called her own. It was the only thing she ever felt truly belonged to her and yet she wondered if anyone could ever really own the earth. She knew that if she left her little vegetable patch untended for even a week or two, it would soon be overrun by grass and weeds and eventually return to its original wild prairie form.
She smiled softly to herself. Who would have ever thought that a stupid, spoiled girl from Richmond, turned harlot, would like grubbing in the soil of Wyoming? Yet here in this little square of garden she felt free. She felt as if heavy shackles had been pulled from her limbs, making her light enough to float away.
Leaning on her shovel, Rachel Deeks looked off toward the far mountains. They’d turned green again with summer’s warmth, and only the far reaches still held snow. Their gray granite faces thrust defiantly into an azure sky so big, it seemed like it had no end. When she’d first come to the ranch, she’d felt overwhelmed and exposed by the wide vistas. After so many years shut up both physically and by society in a small saloon or flop house, the sheer size of the plains had nearly devastated her. She’d retreated the only way she’d known how, into her bottle of laudanum and the four walls of the space she shared with the ranch’s blacksmith.
She’d forgotten that nature could be beautiful, and little by little the fresh air and the blue sky reminded her of a childhood spent gazing at the green hills around her Virginian home. She had put that part of her life out of her mind, only revisiting it in her dreams over the years, yet now the visions that were once hazy echoes of her youth came to mind. Rachel, the Rachel she’d once been, had loved walking near the old mill pond on her parents’ property. She smiled, remembering sneaking away to meet Danny and have a picnic in that green space. Recently those memories were less painful to her and standing here, looking away to the wide open sky, somehow brought back a connection to the earth.
As she stooped to flick a creeping plant from her pristine garden - this year she knew the difference between a root vegetable and a weed - two young men came walking around the south side of the big gray ranch house, bed rolls over their shoulders and a pregnant cur dog waddling at their heels. Both young men tipped their hats politely, one exposing a head of hair as red as a Herford steers hide, but Rachel only glared at them, hoping they’d realize she like to be left alone. More often than not, young men like that were nothing but trouble.
After they’d passed the door to her simple home and turned in at the door where the single men of the ranch lived, she turned back to her garden, carefully prying out the offending plant with a flick of her shovel. Somehow, down deep within her, Rachel realized something was changing and although she refused to acknowledge it, somehow the earth itself seemed to reach up and fill her with its essence.
That night when Davrum returned to their apartment with their evening meal and told her about the two farm boys from Pennsylvania who’d arrived to join the Broken J’s crew, Rachel had only huffed and muttered something about “young fools racing all over the country” and returned to working in her garden.
When news of Isabella’s impending wedding arrived, however, he asked if she would please attend, just as she had Meg’s. Each of the James daughters were precious to Deeks. Isabella and her twin sister had been born right there on the Broken J and had called the blacksmith uncle since they could speak. He wanted his wife to show them at least some degree of acknowledgement.
“If it means that much to you. I’ll go, but I’m not staying,” she had replied.
The wedding was a festive one, especially since they were not only celebrating a marriage, it was also the Fourth of July and they had finally received word that in just a few days, Wyoming would officially be a state. Deeks was actually pleased to stand next to Rachel at the wedding. She’d put on her new dress of brown gingham and she’d even combed out her hair, which she never put up, for the occasion.
Brion Blakely and his family had arrived from the Wind River Range, along with four wild hogs he and his son Sean had killed hunting in the far off hills. Brion, the tall Irish brother-in-law of Joshua James, was a little disconcerted at the sudden interest Deeks' strange wife had taken in the large animals he'd hung from single trees from a rack just behind the bunk house.
“What’s that thing you’ve got the hogs hanging from?” she’d asked, peering at the heavy carcasses suspended by their back legs, her blue eyes bright with interest.
“That’s called a single tree,” Brion had answered, trying to reduce the impact of his brogue. “It’s what you use to connect the harness of a horse to the shaft of a wagon tongue.” By threading the back hooves of the boar through the O-rings on the trees and securing them, the animals would hang straight and could easily be butchered.
His answer seemed to satisfy her as she scurried off to the right-hand side of the bunkhouse.
With a shrug of his brawny shoulders, Brion turned back to th
e work of butchering the hogs with the help of his son and Chen Lou, and soon had one cooking over a pit fire on a long spit.
"Just try it," Rachel said a few days later, agitation beginning to show in her voice.
Deeks studied the contraption Rachel had strung up over the rafters of his apartment.
"You want me to put my feet in that wooden bar and let you haul me up by my heels?" He questioned again, looking at the woman like she'd gone completely around the bend.
"Yes."
"No."
"Davrum Deeks, you are a stubborn old man who hasn't got a clue how to take care of himself." Rachel's words were blunt. "I didn't go to the trouble of rigging this up for you to refuse." She glared at him, her eyes sparking for the first time since he'd known her. "What can it hurt?"
Deeks ran a protective hand over the crook in his spine and squinted at what looked like a miniature oxen yoke attached to a rope and a pulley system. He had to admit that sleeping on the floor, at least when it was warm, had helped with his back. Years ago something had slipped in the wrong direction when he was shoeing a tough horse, and had been a problem ever since.
"If it gets too painful, I'll lower you back down real easy," Rachel chided.
Deeks nodded his white head just once and sat down on the floor. To his great surprise, the small woman he'd married over a year ago pulled him easily up into a hanging position in very slow increments. He could feel a long draw on the tight muscles of his back but it wasn't painful.
"I feel like a complete fool hanging here." He grouched, his arms crossed over his chest. "What if I git dizzy?"
Rachel huffed. "I'll let you down in a minute." She said, her hands still firm on the rope that suspended him. After only a few minutes, the woman gently lowered him to the floor.
Quickly he pulled his booted feet out of the wooden stocks. "I still think it's crazy," he growled. He didn't know why he gave in to the woman, but on the other hand she seldom asked for anything, so he felt it didn't hurt to humor her. Somehow throughout the year he'd gotten accustomed to the taciturn woman. Was that a smile playing about her lips?
