by Nevada Barr
“It gets dark so early now.”
Imogene didn’t reply.
“Nate Weldrick came by to see Wolf today.”
“Ah. How paternal. Where is Wolf now?”
“Napping.” Sarah came over to perch on one of the boxes beside Imogene. “We went out for a ride with him. He gave me those.”
Imogene glanced at the bowl of dried apricots on the table. “Did you have a nice time?”
“I’m scared of horses, I didn’t want to ride it. It was one of those big ones that rolls its eyes at you.” Sarah stared out the window as she talked.
“Do you like Mr. Weldrick?”
Sarah pulled her thoughts back from the riverbank to look at her companion. The teacher’s face was carefully composed and gave no clue to her thoughts. Sarah picked up Imogene’s hand and pressed the scarred palm to her cheek.
“You’re so cool. It feels good.”
“Are you feverish?” Imogene asked in alarm.
“No, it’s from the stove. I don’t think I like Mr. Weldrick,” she went on, to answer Imogene’s original question. “He was nice, though. Not to Wolf. If I didn’t know already, I’d never guess he was Wolf’s pa by the way they act around each other. But maybe I like him okay. He’s a man.” Sarah waved her hand as if this explained all.
“Your brother and Mac are men; Lutie’s Fred is a man too,” Imogene reminded her. “If Mr. Weldrick is boorish, his sex is no excuse.”
“I don’t know.” Sarah played with Imogene’s fingers, arranging them, crablike, on her knee. “He said it was unnatural, two women alone with nobody to talk to—you know.”
“Yes. I do know. No man to talk to. How empty our lives must be without the intellectual stimulation that the likes of Mr. Weldrick could provide. I suppose his sparkling wit and fascinating manner kept you spellbound?” Imogene had risen to stalk about the room; she snapped a picture book shut and turned to Sarah.
“No-o,” Sarah said carefully, choosing her words, “but I know what he meant. We’re just women.”
Imogene said nothing.
“It’s unnatural.”
Imogene forced herself to be still and returned to the chair beside Sarah. “Do you like him?” she asked gently. “Being with him, does it make you happy?”
“No,” Sarah said.
“Then there’s an end to it.”
Sarah bit her lip and gazed out through the dying light to the river.
24
SNOW WAS FALLING IN TINY DRY FLAKES, A DUSTING OF WHITE already on the ground. The wind swooped down from the mountain slopes in sudden gusts, sending the snow into white whorls and pushing wavelets of white across the frozen lawn. Slate-colored clouds hid the mountain peaks, and the Truckee River ran gray in sympathy.
Sarah watched out the window, the snow quietly cloaking the brown grass and leaving a white tracery on the tree branches.
Wolf pushed up beside her, nudging under her arm. “Can we play at Mrs. Whitaker’s today?”
She stroked the coarse black hair. “Not today, today is for staying indoors. Home.” She looked around, eyes soft with contentment. The bare makeshift look of the rooms was gone, and homely touches warmed the house: a rag rug on the floor, crocheted doilies on the chair arms, white-and-blue sprigged curtains in the windows. “I like being inside when it snows; I always have, even when I was a little girl. I could be warm and snug and look out the window and watch the snow come down.”
“Can I go outside?”
“A little later. Imogene has half-day on Saturdays, maybe she’ll take you out when she gets home. If the snow gets deep enough, maybe we’ll make a snowman.”
The snow was ankle-deep by the time Imogene, red-nosed and smiling at an all-white world, came home from school. She and Sarah bundled Wolf in sweaters, coats, and scarves until he could scarcely move, took him out near the banks of the Truckee, where the drifts were deepest, and taught him to make angels in the snow.
Nate’s clayback stallion was tethered in the drive when they got home. Around the horse’s hooves the snow had been churned black, and a blanket was thrown over him. Wisps of smoke came from the stove pipe, rising straight up until they were as high as the main house, then feathering off sharply to the east.
Imogene shifted Wolf to her other hip; he’d been too tired to walk. “Evidently Mr. Weldrick is here. He’s been to call on Wolf a half-dozen times since the new year. Fatherhood seems to have hit him hard, if rather late.”
Sarah looked confused and depressed, an expression she often wore when Nate Weldrick came to call. “He’s not on the porch.”
“It seems he’s invited himself in and built a fire,” Imogene said sourly. She strode to the front door and jerked it open, banging it against the side of the house. Nate, who was crouched before the stove, poking kindling into a growing fire, started at the crash.
“Mr. Weldrick. What a surprise.” Imogene stood in the doorway without coming in.
“How do, Miss Grelznik.” He reached to take his hat off but it wasn’t there; he snatched it from the chair beside him. “Come in, come on in.”
“Thank you.” She was painfully polite.
“I nearly froze to death riding over from Carson. Just got here maybe a quarter of an hour ago. You gals were out, so I just kind of let myself in.”
“So I see.”
“Didn’t figure you’d mind, what with it snowing and all.”
“You’re here, it seems, so it would certainly be a waste of time to mind. If you’ll excuse me, Wolf is wet and tired. We all are.” Imogene carried the boy into the room he shared with Sarah, and closed the door.
Quietly, Sarah shut the front door and lit the lamps. A lamp flared, brightening her cheeks and eyes for a moment before she turned down the wick.
“You look real pretty. That’s a pretty coat,” Nate said.
“Imogene made it for me.”
“You look pretty in it. You ought to wear it more often.”
“I wear it when I go outside.” Sarah fingered the fur on the collar, then, at a loss for anything else to do, took it off, though the room hadn’t taken any warmth from the fledgling fire.
“That blue looks good, better than all the drab gray stuff she’s got you in most of the time. You ought to get yourself some bright-colored things.”
Sarah hung up the coat and smoothed the sleeves of her charcoal-colored gown self-consciously. It was another of Imogene’s dresses cut down and resewn to fit Sarah’s slight frame.
“Get yourself something pretty.” Nate dug into his pocket and took out a small leather purse.
“Please, Mr. Weldrick.” Sarah glanced anxiously toward the bedroom door.
“You’re afraid of her, ain’t you?”
Sarah laughed, a light surprised sound.
“She don’t like me much, does she?”
“I don’t know. We never talk about you.”
Her answer seemed to annoy him.
It was late when he finally left. Imogene stood in front of the stove, heating sausage cakes in the skillet. At the kitchen table, perched on a stool, Sarah peeled and sliced boiled potatoes. Neither had suggested supper while Nate Weldrick was there.
“Wolf never got his supper,” Sarah said. “Should I wake him, do you think?”
Imogene pushed at the sausages with a wooden spatula. “I think not.”
Sarah dropped the potatoes into the hot grease and watched them brown. A companionable silence flowed around them, warmed by the sizzling.
“Mr. Weldrick thinks you don’t like him. Do you?” Sarah asked.
Imogene spooned their dinner onto the waiting plates. “I don’t think he’s a good father,” she replied carefully. “But mostly I suppose I don’t care for him because he makes you so unhappy.”
“Mr. Weldrick’s nice to me,” Sarah protested.
“Yes and no.”
Sarah waited.
“He’s pleasant and complimentary,” Imogene continued, “and he seems to care for you, after
his fashion. But since we’ve moved to this house you have come so far. I remember those first months at the Broken Promise—you are so much stronger now, more sure of yourself. Mr. Weldrick takes that away from you.”
“I don’t know,” Sarah said, suddenly tired. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
Imogene looked up at the hollow sound of her voice—the confusion, the depression. “Demonstratum est,” she said.
Before Sarah could reply there came a sound of bells, of pots and pans crashing together in the icy air, of shouting and the beating of makeshift drums. Faint at first, a long way off, then growing louder, the din swelled as the noisemakers came up Virginia Street to the river. Hooting and wild laughter cut through the winter night.
Grabbing wraps, the two women stepped outside, leaving their supper to grow cold. Addie Glass was on her back porch, a heavy dressing gown thrown over her bed clothes. She was carrying a lantern.
“Miss Grelznik, Mrs. Ebbitt—I was just coming to fetch you,” she called excitedly, waving them over. “I thought, being so new to the West, you maybe hadn’t seen a charivari.” The lantern cast ample light and they hurried over the snow.
Addie led them through the dim corridors of her house and into the front parlor. “It’s better if it’s dark,” Addie said when they reached the bay window overlooking the street, and blew out the lantern. In its last light her weathered face looked as rosy as a young girl’s, and her eyes shone. “They’ll be by in a few minutes. I remember my charivari like it was yesterday. Rupert was the drunkest of all.” She laughed at her memories. “My Rupert was the sweetest drunk in the state. He loved everybody. If I’d come late, he would’ve married the best man.”
Across the water, the first dancing lights came into view, and individual voices could sometimes be distinguished from the general tumult.
“They’re grander here than anywhere,” the old lady said. “The Chinese sell fireworks beforehand.”
The parade of torches and lanterns snaked like a dragon along the road following the river. Snatches of song floated out across the water. Addie Glass leaned forward and opened the window. “Never mind the cold,” she said. “Look, there’s the bride and groom.”
Pushed along at the dragon’s head, a buckboard covered in homemade decorations carried the newlyweds. Running alongside the groom were the loudest merrymakers, whistling and banging spoons and pails against the wagon. The bride, all in white, her veil falling off, clung to the seat, radiant even across the width of the Truckee. The buckboard was pulled by a mass of men in lieu of horses. Those too tired or too drunk would stagger away to be replaced by fresh pullers.
“Look at them!” Addie said. “Just look at them! That’s the way it ought to be.”
Entranced, Sarah watched the torches weaving and dipping through the night like winter fireflies, mirrored by running reflections on the river’s surface.
“Like it should be,” she murmured.
Throughout the spring and summer, Nate came to call on Sarah, and though she showed little pleasure at his attentions, she always received him. For Wolf’s sake, she said.
Imogene would sniff and purse her lips and say nothing.
25
ELMS AND OAKS WERE FROSTBITTEN TO RED AND GOLD, AND THE warm yellow autumn leaves of the cottonwood trees lined the streets. Imogene stepped out of the stationer’s and heard a train whistle in the distance. “Most trains will be carrying Bishop Whitaker girls,” she said to herself. “They’ll be trickling in all week.” The thought brought a smile.
A gust of wind fluttered her shawl. She looked to the west, where the tips of stormclouds were visible beyond the mountain peak. As Imogene watched, the front grew and darkened. She hurried along the boardwalk.
McMurphy was lounging against the side of the stable across the street from the Wells Fargo office, his back against the sun-warmed wood. He jerked his hatbrim as she approached. “Afternoon, Miss Grelznik.”
“I haven’t seen you since August, Mac. Have you gone back to prospecting?” Imogene asked.
“No, ma’am, I got put up from stablehand to swamper. I been mostly on the run to Pyramid and Round Hole.”
“What does a swamper do?”
“This one reads.” He pulled a yellowed magazine out of his hip pocket, showing off to his teacher. The cover featured a cowboy and several dozen Indians. “I’m reading right now.” He tapped the magazine.
“After a fashion,” Imogene said dryly.
Mac laughed and folded the cowboy book back into his pocket. “What I do is ride along on the stage and see to the livestock, changing teams, hitching, unhitching, and feeding and whatnot. We’ve got horses at every stop, pretty near.”
Lightning flashed to the west, a great forked tongue licking down the mountain side. Half a minute later the rumble of thunder reached their ears.
Mac sniffed the air. “Whoo-ee! We ain’t long for it now.”
“It looks as if I’d best be going.” Imogene pushed her hatpins in. “Congratulations on your new position, Mac.”
“I hope you’re not thinking to go home,” Mac winked.
“Why not?” Imogene asked.
“Not more’n twenty minutes ago, Nate come by. He was slicked up and pomaded till a skunk wouldn’t have him. I asked him if he was going courting. He said, ‘Not today I ain’t. Today I’m going asking.’ He wasn’t just beating his gums, neither, he meant to do it. Figured he could talk little Mrs. Ebbitt around if they was alone. She’s a docile little gal. Maybe you want to hole up over to the office for a while, let them kids do their lovemaking. The judge’s got the stove going.”
Sarah was behind the house on the path, collecting colorful sprigs of leaves, when she heard Nate’s claybank on the drive. She stood poised for an instant like a doe ready to run, her basket of branches under her arm. Gusts heavily scented with the coming rain blew fire-colored leaves around her skirts.
Nate rapped smartly on the door. There was no answer and he opened it partway. “Anybody home?” Silence. He closed it and came around the end of the house. “Hello! Guess you didn’t hear my hullabaloo. I figured you might be to the outhouse.”
Sarah blushed. “I was collecting leaves, Mr. Weldrick.” She showed him her basket.
“Be your last chance, this storm blowing up’s going to pound them off.” He walked with her back to the house. In the closeness of the living room the smell of his pomade was overpowering. Sarah started to open a window and then stopped, embarrassed.
Nate grinned. “Guess I’m pretty ripe, ain’t I? I told the barber I was calling on a lady and he got kind of heavy-handed with the stinkum.”
Sarah smiled. She looked at the clock over the bookcase.
“You expecting Miss Grelznik home anytime soon?”
Sarah dropped her eyes. “Not for another hour or two.”
“Where’s the kid?”
“He was cranky. I think he was feeling a little peaked, so I put him to bed.”
Nate absorbed this information, nodding. “I’ll get right down to what I come about. I been calling pretty regular these past months, haven’t I?” He looked at Sarah. “You’ll give me that?”
“Yes, that’s so. You come to see Wolf.”
“You know that ain’t it; I come calling on you. You know that the same as you know I’m sitting here.”
Sarah didn’t say anything.
“What do you say to that, Sarah?”
It was the first time he had ever called her by her Christian name, and she looked up, startled.
“The way I figure it, I got no call to go on calling you Mrs. Ebbitt. Either Mr. Ebbitt’s dead or run out on you, and either way, according to my way of thinking, he’s lost his claim. You leave a property unmined for a while and pretty soon your claim’s no good. It’s anybody’s. So I figure you’re just plain Sarah Ebbitt now.” Nate was loud, argumentative.
Sarah sat in the straight-backed chair by the stove, pleating and unpleating her skirt between her fingers.
“You ought to have a husband and kids of your own,” he went on. “Not living with a dried-up old maid, keeping house for her and raising a half-breed Indian kid. You ought to have a man to look after you.”
A war look came into Sarah’s eyes. “I like keeping house with Imogene.”
“That ain’t the point!” He made a chopping gesture and banged the end of his little finger on the chair. “Damn.” He thrust the injured pinky into his mouth and got up to pace in front of the window. The storm had hit; rain drummed against the glass, obscuring the trees on the far side of the yard behind wavering curtains of gray. There had been no single drops to herald the downpour; it had come all at once, dinning on the roof and ringing down the stovepipe. It was dark enough to light the lamps, though it was just after two o’clock.
The bedroom door opened a crack, then all the way, and Wolf came out. “Sarie? I’m having bad dreams.” Sarah’s relief was evident as she turned her attention to the sleepy child. She knelt and pushed the lank hair from his face.
“What’s the matter, Wolf?” She laid the back of her hand on his forehead.
Nate turned from the window. “Damn it, Wolf, go on, get yourself back to bed. Don’t be bothering us now.”
Sarah folded Wolf in her arms. “Your pa doesn’t mean it, honey. What kind of dreams?” When she talked to the child, her shy, uneasy look evaporated, and her hazel eyes were warm, her small mouth soft. Wolf nuzzled into her shoulder.
Nate picked the boy bodily off the floor out of the comfort of Sarah’s embrace. “Come on, kid. This ain’t the time.” To Sarah he said, “You stay put. We ain’t done talking yet.” Before she could say a word he was out the door, Wolf with him.
The storm had broken before Imogene was halfway home, and she ran, her shawl pulled up over her head. Her skirts were heavy with water in a moment, and rain streamed off her face. Wet leaves blew against her, brown with the rain, clinging like seaweed.
