“I have no place here.”
Rosa watched the other woman’s smile fade.
“Only met your husband a few times, Miz Audi, but he seemed a real swell gent. Workin’ so hard to set up that little store o’ his. You can be right proud o’ him. It’s a real shame you can’t stay and make a go of it.”
“We gotta be moving, Flossie,” Kase warned, his tone edgy.
“Don’t be throwing that black look at me, Kase Storm. You got more than enough time to get this little gal to the depot.”
“Mi scusi,” Rosa interrupted, “you say my husband had a store, and this he wrote to me in a letter. Is all right I see it?”
“Don’t see why not. Do you, Kase?”
Rosa thought she saw the woman’s mouth twitch as if she was teasing the marshal in some way. His face showed no hint of a response.
“Sure.”
Although he nodded in agreement, Rosa sensed he was none too happy with the outcome of their conversation with Flossie.
“Listen, Miz Audi, you decide not to leave town, you come to me and I’ll see that you don’t go hungry, hear? You can always work for me.” With a boisterous laugh, the gaily dressed woman turned on her heel and waved them on.
“She is a nice woman,” Rosa commented.
“Yeah.”
“I can see the store?”
“Sure.”
Used to men who were never at a loss for words, Rosa took the marshal’s silence for anger, but curious to see the place Giovanni had hoped to turn into a store, she picked up her pace and kept up with him as he moved on down the street. They passed a large building with swinging double doors before the marshal stopped in front of a small, squat building with one large window that fronted Main Street. The door was of solid wood, the entire place whitewashed. No lettering adorned the front at all.
“That’s it.” He stood his ground in the street beneath the boardwalk and nodded toward the empty storefront.
Rosa ignored his coolness, gathered up her skirt, and stepped up onto the walkway. She moved toward the building and tried the knob. The door swung inward.
In the eerie silence, she tried to feel her husband’s former presence, but there was not a trace. In fact, there was nothing in the room except two bushel barrels, one filled with sprouted, overripe potatoes, the other half full of onions. A thick layer of dust from the street traffic covered the pine plank flooring, and beyond the empty front room, Rosa could see a smaller room through an open door.
Her footsteps rang out hollowly against the floorboards as she crossed the room and stood staring at the small place Giovanni must have called home. A greasy stove stood against one wall, the wood box yawning empty except for a few splinters of kindling. A cot, barely wide enough to accommodate a child, was pulled up against another wall. Hooks that she assumed once held Giovanni’s things were lined up above it. The place was barren in its emptiness.
Rosa turned to leave and ran headlong into the solid wall of Marshal Storm’s chest.
He stepped aside quickly, as if she had drenched him with boiling water. She, too, increased the space between them.
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Mi scusi, I—”
They both spoke at once and immediately fell silent.
Rosa put her hand against the crown of her hat, afraid it would come loose and fall off as she stood gazing up at him.
Neither of them moved. The stillness expanded and enveloped them in the dim interior of the small, stuffy rooms. Rosa wondered what kind of a wife she was that even now, only hours after hearing that her dear Giovanni was dead, she stood staring as if paralyzed into the fathomless blue eyes of this strange, silent man. A man who obviously held her in very little regard. She heard him clear his throat, and watched his lips as he parted them to speak.
“Ready?”
“Sì.” She shook herself. “For what?”
“To go.”
She started. And licked her dry lips. “Oh. Sì. To the train.”
He turned away and began to move toward the door.
“Marshal...?”
He stopped and turned back again to face her. “Ma’am?”
“Where is my husband... how do you say it?”
“Buried?” He made a swift motion with his hands.
“Sì. Buried.” She looked at the floor and fought off a wave of dizziness.
“Outside of town, ma’am. In the graveyard.”
“There is a church?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Oh.” No priest to offer her consolation. No one to pray for Giovanni. No hallowed ground in which to bury him. Rosa sighed.
“Anything else, ma’am?” he asked after a pause.
“Sì. I would like to see it.”
“The grave?”
“Sì. The grave.” She nodded again. Didn’t she owe Giovanni this much? As much as she did not want to see his grave, as much as she wanted to hold to the dream she once had, she knew she could not deny him this. Now when she told his family of his death, she could tell them honestly that she had seen Giovanni’s grave and that she had prayed for him.
The marshal seemed hesitant to answer. She waited patiently as he made up his mind. He squinted into the sunshine and stared off down the street for a moment; then he sighed.
“You won’t make the twelve o’clock,” he said, disgruntled. “Have to take the two.”
She assumed he was mumbling about the train. “Is all right for me.”
He turned and stared down at her with a brow arched. “Is all right for you?” he repeated. He looked as if he was about to say more and then shrugged and said, “Then I guess is all right for me, too.”
Rosa had the distinct impression he was mocking her in some way, but she was uncertain how or why he would do such a thing.
He turned on his heel and started walking down the street in the opposite direction. “Come on, then,” he said over his shoulder without breaking his stride.
Rosa clasped her valise to her and hurried after him, afraid to ask him to slow down.
Fine, he thought as he led her back down Main Street. She demands I drive her out to the graveyard, but she won’t let me touch her precious valise. He had caught her eyeing him over and over and assumed she had never seen an Indian before. Let her look. All white women did, although some were more circumspect than others. He had been an exotic oddity in Boston, someone the women speculated about, some with fear, others with sexual curiosity. He had become aware of this attraction as soon as he was old enough to view women with the same regard.
No woman had ever piqued his interest romantically. His law studies and subsequent career had taken precedence over any lasting entanglements of the heart. He had had his share of affairs in the East, but had never taken them seriously because he could never rid himself of the notion that he was nothing more to any of his partners than a taste of forbidden fruit.
Besides, he could never ask a woman to suffer the prejudice that his mother had faced, and for that reason he never imagined himself in a lasting relationship with any woman. For the time being, Flossie’s girls sufficed.
As they neared the livery, Kase checked the time and then repocketed his watch, determined to have Rose Audi on the two o’clock out of town. He glanced around the empty street. This was no place for a girl like her. Not even with a husband. Any man who brought a woman to live in a watering hole like Busted Heel deserved to be shot. She would face nothing but backbreaking work and unrelieved loneliness in a town whose only luxury was a whorehouse. She deserved better and he took it upon himself to make sure she was on the train at two, come hell or high water.
They entered the cool darkness of a huge shed at the end of the street. Rosa stared up at the sign that read G. Matheson’s Feed, Livery and Blacksmith. She recognized the name Matheson as the same as the owner of the boardinghouse and wanted to ask the marshal about it, but thought better of it when he ignored her and walked up to the blacksmith working over a sm
oldering forge.
“I need to hire a rig, Decatur. Just for an hour or so.” The marshal tipped his hat back and looked around the shadowed interior of the livery.
The burly, well-muscled black man was the first of his race that Rosa had ever been so close to. She stared up at him, mesmerized by the deep ebony of his sweat-sheened skin and his tightly curled hair. He stared back.
“That her?” Decatur Davis spoke to Kase Storm as if she were not even present.
Kase nodded. “Yep.”
“She speak English?” the man wanted to know.
“Yep.” The marshal glanced at Rosa and then away.
The other man’s curiosity seemed to be appeased, for he wiped his hands on a rag at the waistband of his apron and left Rosa and Kase to wait while he readied a rig.
Rosa looked around the huge barnlike structure as she waited patiently. Sunbeams cut through cracks between the wooden ceiling, highlighting the dust motes that drifted among the rafters. Occasionally a horse nickered or stamped. Flies buzzed lazily on the warm, close air. It reminded her very much of an Italian barn. Not so different from home, she thought.
She glanced up and found the marshal staring down at her with a thoughtful expression. When she met his gaze, he looked away.
“Hey! Marshal! Where ya goin’?”
The sharp, high-pitched call of a child’s voice drew Rosa’s attention. She watched a small boy, his skin as black as the smith’s, run into the livery and pause beside Kase Storm.
The big man beside her squatted down on his haunches. “Taking the lady here out to the graveyard—and before you ask about it, no, you can’t go.”
“You bein’ rude again, G.W.?” the blacksmith called out from the rear of the barn.
“No, sun,” G.W. called back.
“Not at all, Decatur,” the marshal assured the boy’s father.
Rosa watched the exchange with interest.
The little boy squinted up at her. “You gonna live here?”
“No, she’s not. She’s leaving on the train right after we get back,” Kase Storm informed the child before Rosa could answer for herself.
For some reason his assumption made her angry. The man was positively rude. She realized it felt good to feel something other than grief, but she did not voice her anger.
Decatur Davis led a horse with a shining black buggy up to the front of the stable and held the horse while Rosa set her valise on the floorboards. Kase Storm helped her board, and within minutes they were riding down Main Street, G.W. Davis running along behind as fast as his spindly legs could carry him.
It was not a long ride, but the silence that hung between them made it an uncomfortable one. Rosa used the time to stare out at the surrounding landscape and try to acquaint herself with the place that might have been her home. The land to the west banked slowly upward toward the mountains in the distance. There was nothing to relieve the endless vista that stretched toward the east. Unlike the Alps that surrounded Corio by tenderly cupping the village amid their gentle peaks and valleys, the rugged mountains she saw in the distance looked as forbidding as the vast emptiness of the open plain.
Ahead of them Rosa saw what appeared to be a crooked fence standing on a barren rise in the land. Kase Storm must have seen it at the same time, for he nodded and flicked the reins over the horse’s back. “That’s the graveyard up ahead.”
As the horse stepped lively, her mouth went dry. Rosa clutched her hands together in her lap and tried to keep her balance in the swaying rig lest she bump against him. What had appeared to be a tiny fence on the horizon was growing larger as they swiftly drew near.
The marshal pulled the rig up to the base of the rise and tugged back on the reins. He set the brake, tied the reins, and then jumped down. Rosa started to climb down alone, then stopped when she realized he was coming after her. Because of his earlier silence, she was a bit surprised by the polite offer of his hand. She grasped his fingers as he tightened his grip to help her down.
“I’ll wait here, ma’am,” he said softly, the usual harshness missing from his tone.
She wanted to say no, to tell him that she would rather have him walk with her, but unwilling to appear impolite or demanding, she held her silence. This was something she must do alone.
The few steps up the hill to the small plot of land surrounded by a wind-twisted fence of barbed wire and weathered stakes were the longest steps Rosa had ever taken. She stopped at the edge of the graveyard and stared down at the even rows of graves that dotted the hilltop. Some of the headstones stood askew, twisted by the settlement of the earth or by vandals, she knew not which. She tried to find Giovanni’s grave, desperately made her mind focus on the foreign names and words that she did not understand.
Frustration quickly brought her to tears.
“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am, but I just remembered that you probably wouldn’t know which one it was.”
Rosa nearly fainted, he startled her so. She had not heard him approach. She glanced up to find him standing at her elbow, squinting at the graves. He pointed to a plot marked by a simple white cross without any ornamentation or markings at all.
“That’s it,” he said.
She thought he would leave her again, but instead, he remained standing beside her as she stared uncomprehendingly at her husband’s grave.
It was all so final, so simple, and so sad. Rosa could not believe that Giovanni had come to such an end. What had his life been for? she wondered. Why had he come this far, only to die so suddenly and for nothing?
She shook her head and knew that she could not go any closer. Nor could she utter a prayer now that she stood face to face with the truth. The words would not come. Rosa turned away and stared at the rig at the bottom of the gentle slope. “I am ready now,” she said simply.
The marshal stared down at her for a moment as if he had something to say. Then, without a word, he indicated with a wave of his hand that she should precede him down the hill.
Chapter
Five
All right, so the girl’s not much older than your sister and she reminds you of your mother,
The thought tripped around in Kase Storm’s mind and echoed with every heavy step he took as he made his way back down Main Street. He found himself comparing Rose Audi with Analisa Van Meeteren Storm, although Rose was quite opposite his mother in appearance. Analisa Storm was tall, blond, and Dutch; Rose was short, dark, and Italian. They were both beautiful. Just like his mother, Rose had suddenly found herself alone and grieving, abandoned in a foreign land, struggling with a new language, fighting to be brave. But there he wanted the similarities to end—before anything could happen to Rose, as it had to his mother. He took it upon himself to insist she leave Wyoming and return to her own people.
Rose Audi hadn’t appeared very courageous a few moments ago when he left her sitting at the depot. She looked as forlorn and lost as an abandoned child, stubbornly fighting back tears as she waited for the train that would take her to San Francisco.
What he thought would be an easy task had instantly turned into a debate. He had insisted she go back to Italy and had offered to pay for her trip. Her eyes flashed as she stood firm and fought his suggestion.
“I will go to San Francisco,” she had said. “There are many Italians in San Francisco. I will not go to Italy. No. Italy is no good for me now.”
“Do you know anyone in San Francisco?”
When she hesitated before she nodded yes, he knew she was lying.
“Look, Mrs. Audi, go home.”
“No. San Francisco.”
Kase sighed. Time was running out. At least San Francisco was civilized and did have a large immigrant population. He hoped she could find people of her own kind who would take her in and a decent way to provide for herself. He glanced over and saw John Tuttle watching the exchange with interest from the ticket booth.
“Fine. San Francisco it is,” Kase said, sliding the money beneath the window bars. He bough
t a one-way ticket and then handed it to her before he walked her to a nearby bench, tipped his hat, and quickly told her good-bye.
She had been unable to meet his gaze. Instead, she stared down at the ticket she held clutched in her hand. Coward that he was, afraid she was going to start crying again, Kase had left her there to wait alone.
The truth, he admitted to himself, was that he feared if he had stayed he might have sat down on the bench beside her and passed the time trying to ease her fears. He might have even gotten to know her. And for what? It was definitely better this way. He was sure of it.
“Marshal Kase?”
He felt a tug on his pant leg and glanced down.
“Hey, G.W.,” he said in greeting.
“Hey, Marshal Kase.” The boy looked up at him. “Anythin’ you be needin’ done this morning?”
Kase hated to squelch the hopeful expression in the child’s glowing eyes. “Well,” he began slowly, pressing himself to think of something, “you can go down to Al-Ray’s store and tell them to send one of the boys around to my office to fill up the water barrel.”
Intent upon his errand, George Washington Davis immediately started to run down the street, but Kase stopped him before the boy had gone ten steps.
“And, G.W., get yourself and Martha a sugarplum.” Kase tossed a penny to the boy, who deftly caught it before he continued on his way, the light pink soles of his brown feet pounding against the boardwalk.
At Paddie’s Ruffled Garter Saloon, Kase moved through the short double doors and set them swinging behind him.
“Mornin’, Marshal.” Paddie glanced up from behind the bar where he stood wiping glasses. Kase stared at Paddie’s bald head and wondered if he shined that, too. Unlike most saloons, every inch of the Ruffled Garter was sparkling clean, even to the brass spittoons. With such an undeniable lack of patrons in Busted Heel, Paddie O’Hallohan had more than enough time to keep the place clean.
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