I finally decided to tell them the truth, or the greater part of the truth, since I couldn’t bring myself to confess I was not really Gamble’s wife. Long ago Carmella had spent a night with Ward in exchange for his allowing us to leave Wildoak, where we were being held prisoner. It had been expedient. I had not condemned her. In a way my living with Ward was expedient too.
In the letter I finally drafted to Carmella I explained why I had married Gamble: that I had thought she and Miles had deserted me; that I needed to have Page in school, that I respected Ward Gamble as a true gentleman.
You must know that everything I do is motivated by my desire to see that Page eventually takes his rightful place as owner of Wildoak. . . .
I did not expect to hear from Carmella after that. But I did:
... I should be beyond shock at whatever you do by now. Perhaps you love this man, though you made no mention of it. Be that as it may, rest assured that Miles will never sell or deed Wildoak to anyone unless Page himself decides otherwise. You must trust your uncle, dear. I know that trust is a word you seem to have eradicated from your vocabulary. . . .
It was true. My father, my mother, Harry Page, Beasley, Ian, all of them in some way or other had betrayed me: my father by dying; my mother by going to pieces, Harry Page by leaving me; Beasley by treating me meanly; Ian by boasting of our lovemaking. Now Carmella was asking me to put blind faith in Miles. But in that same letter she had also mentioned that they now had a son, Christian. To me that complicated matters. A son, a Falconer, might someday want Wildoak for himself. Would Miles forget his word and put Christian ahead of Page? Would he feel that the strong ties of his own flesh and blood took precedence? I couldn’t be sure.
At least Ward, whatever his other faults, could always be counted on. He may have lacked tenderness and warmth, but he was reliable, strong, and loyal. I could have loved him for that alone. I suppose that was why I went on, year after year, staying with him. Perhaps I had grown fonder of him than I realized.
As predicted, the gold seekers began to appear on the horizon, traveling across the prairies to the Black Hills, first a trickle of them, then a stream, and finally a torrent. We were too far north at Lincoln for most to pass our way, but we read about the rush of these eager questers in the little paper we received once a week from Fort Pierre, which lay directly in the path of thousands pouring in from the East. A perceptive reporter with an ironic turn of mind recorded their passage.
They are a mixed lot, nearly all young, hardened, sun-blackened prospectors, sprinkled in with dandies in tight fawn trousers, clerks in high-button shoes, shopkeepers, lawyers, school-teachers, and yes, members of the clergy still in their frock coats, butchers, farmers, laborers outfitted in new, squeaky boots and shiny denim carrying their packs and their shovels and pans, dreamers who don’t realize how ill-equipped they are for our bitter winters and torrid summers or for mining the gold which lies hidden in convoluted veins, unyielding to the simple pickax.
But come they did.
The United States Army tried to honor the government’s treaty with the Sioux by removing the intruders. Still hundreds slipped by. Then the political nabobs in Washington offered the Indians $6 million dollars for the Black Hills, a sum they haughtily refused. After that, all pretense vanished; the authorities threw up their hands, and the gold stampede began in earnest. By mid-December of 1875 the town of Custer boasted a population of 10,000. Further north, where a new strike had been made, Deadwood City swarmed with 25,000 people, all squatters on Indian land.
Rumors of Indian unrest grew. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, chiefs of two nontreaty tribes, were reported to be urging the Sioux to fight. Aside from sporadic attacks on lone settlers or small groups of miners, the Indians had not yet mounted a real battle. General Sheridan augmented our forces at Lincoln, girding for confrontation. Among the newly arriving officers was a Lieutenant Berryman and his pretty wife, Lucile.
She had dark hair, a white skin, and a pouting mouth and looked older than the twenty-eight years she admitted to. But she was good company, light-hearted, witty, and surprisingly well read. A Chicagoan born and bred, she told me that her family had been acquainted with the Gambles for many years. “The old man drank,” she confided. “Died of it.” Though she must have known about Ward’s real wife and realized that he and I were not married, she never commented on it.
Then one chilly afternoon as we sat by the fire in the parlor drinking sherry, she had one glass too many and she lost her customary reticence.
“I hope you don’t mind my asking, Deirdre, dear,” she suddenly said, the words a bit slurred, “but how in the world did you ever get Ward Gamble to marry you?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
“Why, that old ploy of his—about having a sick wife.” She gave me a lopsided grin. “You don’t know how many females he’s put off with it.”
“You must be joking,” I said starchily. “Either that or it’s the sherry.”
“Not at all. I haven’t had that much.” The grin vanished and she suddenly became sober. “Deirdre ...” She leaned forward, scanning my face. “Deirdre, he hasn’t . . . ? He hasn’t told you the same?”
For several long, painful moments I held her gaze as her words sank in. Finally, too stunned to speak, I nodded in the affirmative.
“I’m so sorry, Deirdre, dear.” She patted my hand. “I thought you knew he never had an ailing spouse.”
I shook my head.
“Of course, not many people do.”
“But, Lucile, you—”
“Yes, I knew. You see, I fell in love with him when I was quite young. Ward was attracted to me, too, but he said he couldn’t marry me, because he already had a wife. He had married her secretly, against her father’s wishes, a girl of an inbred New England family, and shortly afterward she lost her mind. It was a terrible shock for me. I had been so dreadfully in love and sure that eventually he would ask for my hand. But then ...” She sipped at her sherry while I stared at her as a child stares at a frightening shadow, hoping it will change into a familiar shape.
“After he told me about his wife,” she continued, “I went into what is known as a decline. It was the sort of silly melancholia adolescents sometimes sink into. I refused to eat or to go out, suffered through sleepless, sobbing nights, and swore I would never marry anyone else. My father, prodded by my worried mother, made inquiries concerning this mad-woman Ward had tied himself to. And lo and behold! There had been no marriage, no wife. Papa confronted Ward, who confessed it was true. He said he could not afford a wife on a lieutenant’s pay. Because he had the highest regard for me, he thought this story of a wife was the best and least cruel way to discourage me.”
“But he may have married since,” I said, still hoping.
“Another ‘mad wife’? I doubt it. He once told my husband that he would never marry. That a career army man shouldn’t.”
Still struggling against acceptance, I said, “But why hasn’t anyone revealed this to me before? Surely other people, men as well as women, must have known.”
“They may have thought, as I did, that Ward had given up on his fantasy wife and finally taken a real one.”
I picked up my glass, marveling at the steadiness of my hand while everything inside was splintering, crashing, and crumbling under the onslaught of outrage and shock.
“Are you all right?” Lucile asked.
“Yes, of course.”
I had to believe her. She had no reason to create such a tale. Ward had no wife. He’d never had one. I had been taken in, like the other silly females he had “put off.”
“You look rather pale, Deirdre.”
“I have a slight headache. Sherry does that.”
I recalled how the house on Bay Front Road—except for that incongruous triple-mirrored dressing table—had lacked any sign of a former female occupant. Not a single memento had been left behind, no lacy handkerchiefs tucked into drawers, no pressed flowers betwee
n the pages of a book. And how secretive Ward had been when questioned about his wife, giving me blank looks, evasive answers.
“I hope I haven’t upset you,” Lucile said.
“Not at all.”
My whole relationship with Ward was based on an enormous lie. The passionate kisses, the monumental jealousies, were only a farce and his stilted “I love you” the last, the ultimate, falsehood.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything, Deirdre. I’m sorry.” “Please don’t be. I would have found out sooner or later.” I didn’t want her apologies—or her sympathy. It wasn’t her fault, but I wished she’d leave. I desperately needed to be alone.
Instead, she poured herself another glass of sherry. “Well, then, to go to a more pleasant subject. Did I tell you we’re entertaining two Englishmen tonight?”
As if I cared.
“Representatives of a company called—let me see, yes— British Metals,” she went on. “All very hush-hush, but I’m sure they’re here to investigate the gold strike.”
I had to say something, anything. “Most likely,” I murmured, dragging my wounded thoughts back from Ward. “So many foreign firms have shown an interest in the Black Hills. A group of Australians were visiting the Custers only last week, no doubt with the same purpose in mind.”
“Yes. I met the Aussies and thought them rather dull. But these two are charming. Do you think you and Ward could come for dinner? I realize this is a last-minute invitation, but it would be nice to have you.”
“Dinner? Thank you, Lucile, but I’m afraid not. Ward said he’d be detained this evening.” Any excuse would do. “Some other time, perhaps.”
“Very well.” She got to her feet. “I must say you are taking Ward’s deception rather well. If it were me, I would be stamping my feet or throwing dinnerware.”
I shrugged. “I’m good at taking things.”
It was not entirely true. I could shoulder the aftermath of natural disasters—war, flood, and fire—with a fair amount of jaw-clenching stolidity, but betrayal shattered me.
“Good-bye, dear.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. When she had gone, I went back to the fire and stood staring at it, my bitterness giving way to a mounting anger. Wrenching Ward’s ring from my finger, I flung it into the flames. I watched as the fire licked at the gold band. The ring didn’t burn, didn’t melt, but retained its shape, gleaming malevolently at me. Oh, curse the day I ever set eyes upon him!
Sitting down, I poured myself another sherry but let it stand without touching it. I got up again and moved to the window, gazing out at the compound, where a dust devil whirled and chased itself across the packed ground. A cavalryman rode past on a spirited Morgan, his gloved hands checking the horse’s gait. From the barracks I could hear the faint strains of the band’s rendition of “Garry Owen,” the Seventh’s musical signature.
I returned to the fire, clasping and unclasping my hands.
I didn’t know what to do. Ward would be home in an hour. I thought of the angry words I would hurl at him, the accusations.
I thought of his imperturbable features, the eyes that so rarely gave anything away. And suddenly I knew I couldn’t face him.
I hurried upstairs. There I changed into my riding habit, my fingers trembling with haste as if Ward would walk in at any moment and detain me: gloves, a shawl for my shoulders, feathered hat pinned firmly to my chignon. I clattered down the stairs and had my hand on the doorknob when Mrs. Sprockett emerged from the kitchen.
“Going out?’’
It was the sort of innocuous, self-evident question Mrs. Sprockett habitually asked, the kind that never failed to annoy me. Today it really raised my hackles. I turned.
“You knew!” I said with cold fury.
Her pudgy face went blank.
“The colonel’s wife!” I shouted into her obdurate deafness. “The sick one that never was!”
Then I slammed the door behind me.
One of the orderlies saddled my horse. I had no idea where I wanted to ride except away from Fort Lincoln. My thoughts were only on escape, flight, on putting as much distance as possible between me and Ward Gamble, leaving the hurtful lies and betrayal behind.
No one challenged me as I went through the gates. An old Indian woman wrapped in a government-issue blanket and carrying a straw basket shuffled by, her obsidian eyes resting on me in an enigmatic stare.
Taking the wagon trail, I headed northwest, skirting the remains of an abandoned Mandan village and the charred, pitted stones of its ancient campfires. The road was well traveled, packed to hard clay by the passage of wagon wheels, hooves, and pedestrian feet. White settlers and Indians alike coming in from the hinterland converged at the fort, some to do business there, others to cross by ferry to Bismark. Now coming toward me I saw a lone horseman leading a pack mule and behind him a trio of soldiers reeling back from an afternoon at Whiskey Point. Since I had no desire to talk to or even look at another human being, I struck out for the open prairie.
Kneeing the mare to a canter, then a gallop, I urged her on. Only in flight could I find release from my turbulent thoughts.
As we raced across the plain, the wind tore at my clothes, beating at me with stinging fury, bringing tears to my eyes. A sudden angry gust ripped the shawl from my shoulders and the hat from my head. I did not give them a backward glance, but fled onward. The wind whistled and shrieked in my ears, whipping at my hair, releasing the pins, lashing it into a flying mane behind me. I lifted my face to the wind, tears flowing down my cheeks. I rode until I felt the mare’s wet sides heaving under me. Gentling her to a walk, I halted beside a muddy creek where a few stunted bur oaks grew and let her drink. I looked around. As far as the eye could see, grass rippled in the wind, a tawny expanse that stretched to a treeless horizon. Buffalo and june grass, bluestem, feather bunch, all blended in, adapters to an arid climate, rustling and sighing around me. Here and there a clump of yellow golden-rod or sunflowers raised their heads. Nothing else broke that vast monotonous landscape—no house, no fence, no chimney, no sign of human presence. A brassy sun sinking behind a cloud let out one last gilded beam, then disappeared, leaving the world in gray shadows. It was a dour panorama that suited my depressed mood.
But as the sky continued to darken I realized I had better get back if I didn’t want to spend the night in the open. Wheeling the horse about I rode east, away from the horizon, where the sunset had left a smudged coral streak. After cantering at a good pace for some time I suddenly realized that I should already have reached the wagon trail.
I halted the horse and again surveyed the country. The view hadn’t changed. It was as if I had traveled no distance, or in a circle: acres and acres of prairie, limitless, wind-fluttered, a murmuring sea unbroken by a single familiar sign.
I kept on going, worried now. There were wolves in this part of the country, not to speak of hostile Indians. Or was that farther south?
Suddenly my horse shied. I never knew what frightened her, for as she went up on her hind legs I found myself arching through space, saw the ground coming up at me. Then nothing.
Chapter 11
I was lying on a cot; a deer skin had been thrown over me. I stared at it—a soft fawn color with a silky sheen—my brows coming together in a frown, trying to connect the deer skin with reality. Shifting my eyes I saw light and shadow trembling on a dark wall where a square of burlap belled over a draft. No help there.
I turned my head and the pain shooting through made me shudder and cringe. I felt bruised, beaten, and very thirsty. Closing my eyes I heard myself whisper hoarsely. “Water.” The light suddenly grew brighter and I blinked. A woman was bending over me. She held a saucer of liquid fat in which a wick burned.
“Are you awake, Miss?” She had a lined work-worn face, an angular chin, and deep-socketed gray eyes. They were kindly eyes, however, and my first moment of startled fright quickly vanished under their sympathetic gaze.
“Yes . . . I’m . . . awake. What . .
. happened?” My tongue twisted thickly around the words.
“You had a bad fall. Miss,” she said in a low voice. “My husband found you on the prairie whilst he was bringing the cows home. You was thrown, but your horse was right there beside you. She’s penned up with ours.”
A young girl in a nightdress and pigtails had crept up behind her mother and was now peeping past her elbow at me. She appeared to be about ten years old. From somewhere beyond the pool of flickering light, steady snores could be heard.
“Is it night?” I asked.
“It’s that; sundown was hours ago.”
The girl stared at me with round eyes.
“Can . . . may I have a drink?”
“Oh, yes. I shoulda asked. We see so few strangers here. Tansy, get the dipper.”
The woman lifted my head tenderly as I drank, and the cool and wonderfully delicious water slid down my throat.
She waited, watching as I wiped the moisture from my lips with the edge of my camisole.
“I got lost,” I explained, remembering. “I was riding out from the fort, Fort Lincoln, and couldn’t find my way back. My name is . .
I hesitated and shut my eyes as the whole painful truth rushed back on me. I wasn’t Mrs. Gamble. The name had never been mine. Mrs. Gamble did not exist. And suddenly I had a strange longing to go back in time, to be Deirdre Falconer, as I had been before the war: Deirdre in a striped, white muslin summer dress, turning slowly in front of a mirror while my younger sisters looked on with envy. . . .
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