“Mick was afraid of Indians, but I wasn’t. We’ve lived here a long time and have never been bothered at all. Papa always said that if we leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone. Poor Mick. He was afraid of everything, his father most of all, because he believed that he was a disappointment to him. Mick was small and thin and had the reddest hair you ever saw. He wanted to make beautiful jewelry out of the rocks he found. He called them agates. Chip ridiculed him and let the men make fun of him. I will never forgive him for that.
“The present was a silver bracelet Mick had made from one of his mother’s silver spoons. He had hammered it flat and etched it with a floral design. It’s beautiful. Mick had the makings of a wonderful artist.
“That summer we met six times. He told me about his father and how Chip would hold James up as an example because by the time James was twelve he was doing everything from riding the rafts to high-climbing. Mick liked art and reading, while James hated school and did as little as possible. One day Mick came to our meeting place with a bruised face and cut lips. A bully had jumped him and Chip had just stood there and let the boy beat him. I think that hurt Mick most of all. He was so heartsick he cried. We held each other and comforted each other… and it… just happened. We both knew it was wrong, but it… just happened,” she said again.
“Understand that I’m not apologizing for what I did. Because of that, something wonderful happened to me. I got Jeanmarie. How could I be sorry?
“The next time I saw Mick he was lying face down beneath the tree where we met.” Dory looked at Ben with huge tears in her eyes. “He was trying to get up the courage to leave. Mick was a sweet boy. He didn’t deserve to die like that.”
Ben reached across the table and covered her hand with his. Dory turned her hand palm up, interlacing their fingers.
“Months later I discovered that I was pregnant. Child that I was, I didn’t know until I talked with Mrs. McHenry. The news spread across the country like a forest fire. People knew that I had been meeting Mick because I was the one who found him.
“Marie saw my baby when she was six months old. I thought she would swoon. Mrs. McHenry had sent word for me to come to the store. Later I learned that she had arranged the meeting. Since that time Marie has seen her granddaughter once or twice a year. Chip saw her one time. I was so scared he would snatch her up and take her away from me that I almost died right there on the spot.”
The flesh of the hand in his was warm and soft. Ben looked down at it and then at her face. Her green eyes were clouded with worry.
“Now James wants you to take her to the Malones’,” Ben said. “Why?”
“Marie is very sick and wants to see her granddaughter. But I’m afraid I’ll get there and they won’t let Jeanmarie leave. You have a daughter, Ben. Wouldn’t the thought of losing her tear you up?”
“Of course. Does James plan to go with you?”
“He’ll go. He would not consider our going if he thought the Malones would try to keep Jeanmarie. But he’s only one man. Chip has dozens of men working for him. Rough men that will do most anything for money, and Chip has plenty of that.”
“James must trust Malone to keep his word.”
“I don’t know if his word is good. Chip’s, I mean. My mother used to say that he was wild and reckless, but that deep down he was a good man. She just loved my papa more than she did him.”
“Would you feel better about it if I went along with James?” Then he added with a teasing twinkle in his eyes, “We could take Wiley and his shotgun.” Ben had wondered briefly about the wisdom of getting more involved with the Callahans, then had tossed caution to the wind when he had seen the look of misery on Dory’s face.
“Oh, Ben. Would you?” Her eyes shone like stars through her tears. “I’d feel so much better if you were there.”
“It will take a week for me to finish up my job with the engine. By then Odette should be well enough to travel.”
“Where will you go when you leave here?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“I wish that you… and Odette could stay.”
“It wouldn’t work, Dory.” Ben felt her grip his hand tightly. “If I stay around your half-brothers, I would kill one of them or they would kill me. I had an inkling of it the night I came here. The weather was bad and Odette was tired or I would have gone on to Malone’s.”
“But you left her here with me in spite of what Louis said.”
“I wasn’t completely sure about you then. But I knew Odette. She wouldn’t be easily led into something she knew was wrong.”
“Are you—”
“—Sure now?” he finished for her when she couldn’t say the words. “I’d stake my life on it.”
“Oh, Ben, thank you.” A tear escaped from the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek. “Doggone it! I hate it when I bawl.”
Ben nudged her chin so she would look at him.
“I suppose you’ve had plenty in your life to bawl about.” He put his hand on the top of her head, allowing her hair to curl around his fingers. “But this isn’t one of them.”
“Women cry at the craziest times. I wouldn’t cry in front of Milo or Louis if my life depended on it. And here I am bubbling like a fountain in front of you.”
“Well, dry it up before James comes down. He’ll think I caused it and knock my block off.”
“Oh, you—”
Dory went to the washstand and wiped her face with a wet cloth. She felt light, as if pounds had been lifted from her shoulders. Ben didn’t think she was a loose woman. He said he would stake his life on it. She was going to enjoy each minute she had with him and try not to think about his leaving. When she turned, she was smiling.
“I feel so much better about everything. Thank you, Ben.”
“You’re the thankingest woman I ever met,” he said, chuckling. “I’d better go up and see Odette, then head for the bunkhouse.”
“And I’ve got to put Jeanmarie to bed.”
They went out into the hallway and up the stairs. Ben felt a strong urge to take her hand but suppressed it. At the same time, Dory wished he would take her hand and was disappointed when he didn’t.
They stood in the doorway. If James knew they were there, he paid them no attention. He was sitting on the floor beside Odette’s chair. She had the tablet in her lap and was watching James’s mouth as he spoke.
“I know that,” James said, looking into her face and pointing to something on the page. “But I don’t know that.” His finger slid down the page. “I don’t know the sixes.”
“It not hard. Two sixes are twelve. Three sixes are eighteen. I’ll write them down.” A head of blond hair and a head of dark auburn bent over the tablet in Odette’s lap. “Four sixes are twenty-four. Or think two twelves and you get the same.” Odette talked aloud as she wrote.
James smiled when he saw Ben and Dory. “She’s teaching me to cipher. I never did learn to multiply past the fives. She knows up to the twelves and can figure fractions and board feet. Did you know that?”
Ben was speechless for a moment. Odette, relaxed and smiling, was completely at ease with James and was carrying on a conversation as if she heard every word he said.
“I knew it.”
“She’s going to write the tables out for me.”
“I’m sure you could find them in a book, if you really want to learn them.”
The tone of Ben’s voice as well as his words told both Dory and James that he was not pleased at finding his daughter and James in this cozy situation. James stood. He lifted Odette’s chin with his finger so she would look up at him.
“I’m going. Thanks for the lesson.”
“I’ll write the tables for you, James.”
“All right. I’ll get them the next time I’m here.” James left the room and Ben moved into it.
“Feeling better?” he asked, after he had squatted down on his heels beside Odette’s chair.
“Much better, Papa.”
<
br /> “That’s good. I’ll see you in the morning before I go back to the mill. Good night, honey. Good night, Dory.”
Ben left the room and went down the stairs and through the kitchen to the porch. James was standing there.
“You didn’t like me being there with Odette. Did you think I was going to rape your daughter while you and my sister were in the kitchen?” His tone was belligerent.
“No, I didn’t like it,” Ben said in an equally belligerent tone. “I don’t want you playing flirting games with her. She won’t understand it and might take you seriously.”
“I wasn’t playing a flirting game. I like her. She’s pretty, and… sweet.”
“And not for you, bucko. Leave her be.”
“Goddamn you! I was good enough when she was sick—”
“And I appreciate it. There are things here that you don’t know, James. Things I can’t tell you about.” Ben’s tone had softened. “It’s nothing against you.”
“Like hell it isn’t. You think I’ve got bad blood because of Milo and Louis.”
“I’ve never believed in bad blood. If I had, I would have given up trying to make something of myself long ago.”
“I would never do anything to hurt her.”
“I believe you would never intentionally do anything to hurt her. But because she reads the words on your lips and does not hear the tone of your voice, she could take something you say teasingly in a different way. I won’t risk having her heart broken.” Or risk her marrying a man who could be blood kin.
James stood on the end of the porch looking up at the night sky. He had met the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. She was peace, goodness. He had wanted to lay his head in her lap and feel her fingers in his hair. In the short time he had known her, she had taken over his heart—and he had not even seen her standing on her feet. Now a man he had come to like, to admire, was telling him to keep his distance. Life was hell sometimes.
He turned to Ben. “I’ll not hurt her.”
“Thank you. James,” he said, as James stepped off the porch. “Dory told me about the Malones. I’ll go with you if you want me to go.”
“I’d be obliged. It’d make Dory feel better.”
James walked off into the darkness, leaving Ben standing on the end of the porch hating what he had done, what he’d had to do.
In the room at the mill where the Callahan brothers lived when not at the homestead, Milo sat on the side of his bunk, swearing and nursing his head in his hands. He complained to Sid Hanes, who was sitting on the other bunk, that he had what was the grandpappy of all headaches. He had just come in from outside, where he had retched violently.
“Oh… shitfire! My head is killin’ me. Where’d ya get that rot-gut ya gived me?”
“It’s from the same batch ya always get. Ya jist downed the whole jugful is all.”
“I’ve drunk a jugful before,” Milo grumbled.
“Ya’ve been mad as a peed-on rattler since ya got back from the house. Ya guzzled her down too fast. Makes a feller sick ever time.”
“That goddamn bitch tried to kill me, ya know that, Sid? She come at me with a knife.”
“Ya told me.” Sid lifted the lid on a squat wood stove and spit a chaw of tobacco into the flames.” ’Bout a dozen times,” he muttered under his breath.
“She ain’t gettin’ away with it. I’ll tell ya right now. I’ll get her an’ Waller too. That sonofabitch hit me when I wasn’t lookin’.”
“He did, huh?” Sid wasn’t fooled by Milo’s account of the fight but was smart enough not to say so.
“Betcha him an’ old Whory Dory is havin’ a high old time ’bout now. He ain’t come back, has he?”
“No. What ya reckon he’s doin’ down there?”
“What’a ya think, ya dumb shit? What would ya be doin’ if ya was there?”
Sid ground his teeth in frustration. Since the first time he had laid eyes on Dory Callahan, he had wanted her. She was the reason he had become one of Milo’s cronies. It certainly wasn’t because he admired the man. He was a means to get what Sid wanted. Dory’s shares in the company were an added bonus, but he’d take her without them. Yeah, he thought. He’d take her and take her and take her. Just thinking about her made him hard as a stone.
Sid realized Milo was talking again and expected him to listen and side in with him.
“I ain’t forgettin’ that damn Tinker either. Bastard pulled me off a that machine. It ain’t his’n. He ain’t workin’ here no more. I fired his ass.”
“Ya’ve the right. Yo’re the owner. Hell, I’m as good a sawyer as Tinker. ‘Nother thing, Waller ain’t no mechanic to my way a thinkin’. If he was, he’d a had that engine goin’ by now. He’s too busy sniffin’ ‘round Dory is what he’s doin’.”
“Well, if yo’re wantin’ Whory Dory so bad, why don’t ya get her on her back and plow ’er good? Then we’d take us a half-ass preacher down there. Gol’ damn! Wouldn’t that be rich? Old Whory Dory’d be wed to ya afore she knowed what end was up. It’d serve the snotty bitch right for what she done.”
Sid’s grin was wide, but it suddenly vanished.
“James’d be fit ta be tied iff’n she warn’t willin’. That sucker ain’t got no quit a-tall when he digs in his heels.”
“Don’t worry none ’bout James. I’ll take care of him. You take care of Whory Dory.”
“It’s what I been tryin’ to do. What with that old man with a double barrel breathin’ down my neck, and Louis poppin’ down there all the time, I can’t get to her. You’d think Louis was keepin’ her fer himself way he hovers ’round.”
“Hush up that kinda talk.” Milo shielded his eyes with his hand as he lifted his head to glare at Sid. “That’s trash talk. I said she’d wed ya and she will. We’ll go down there one of these nights and give ya a chance at her. I aim to have me another go at that dummy.”
“Her pa’s tougher than a boot an’ got a short rein on his temper. He’ll kill ya.”
“Not if I kill him first,” Milo said matter-of-factly. “I ain’t forgettin’ what he done.”
Sid was elated at the turn of events. He would be a member of the Callahan family. By God, the men would sit up and take notice—or else. Tinker would be out on his ass, that was sure. Next to go would be that uppity Steven, with his clean shirts and slicked-down hair. Hell, Steven was just a hired hand like the rest of them. With Steven gone he’d use that fancy cabin when he was here at the mill, which wouldn’t be often. He’d be boss. He’d live down in the big house—
“Louis go down the mountain, or to the house?” My house, Sid almost said.
“How the hell do I know?”
“Did ya hear ’bout the whores that was killed—one down on the Saint Joe, the other’n near Pitzer?”
Milo stared at the floor. “What of it?”
“Maybe we could pin it on Waller.”
“Shit! He ain’t got the guts ta cut a woman’s throat.”
“How’d you know they was cut?”
“I heared it.”
Sid started to say something, then clamped his mouth shut. He had heard the news barely an hour ago while Milo had been lying flat on his back, dead to the world.
Suddenly the door was flung open so hard it bounced back against the wall. The noise cut through Milo’s aching head like a knife. With hands cupping his head, he sprang to his feet and glared at Louis standing in the doorway.
“Goddammit! Can’t ya see my head’s ’bout to fall off?”
Louis’s small bright eyes swung to Sid. “Get out.”
Sid picked up his hat, scurried around behind Louis and left. Louis slammed the door shut.
“Damn you, Louis. I said—”
“—Shut up an’ listen to me.” Louis shrugged out of his coat, then threw it and his hat on a chair. “What the hell were ya tryin’ to fire up that donkey for? Ya’ve been liquored up fer two days and two nights. Soon’s I turn my back yo’re raisin’ hell ’round here.”
“Suppose Steven was fillin’ yore ear,” Milo sneered.
“Steven ain’t wantin’ that engine, or the carriage or the donkey to be buggered up. It’s money outta his pocket too.”
“He ain’t got no say. He ain’t owner here.”
“He knows that if we don’t make it this year, we’re liable to be took over by the bank.”
“Shit. He says that ever’ year.”
“We got the means now to get the river clogged before Malone gets there. I ain’t havin’ ya a-fightin’ with the crew an’ gettin’ ’em all riled up. Hear?”
“That’s all ya think ’bout—beatin’ that goddamn Malone.”
“Malone’d burn us to the ground if he got a chance.”
“Where ya been? Over spyin’ on ’em?”
“What if I have?”
“All night an’ all day? Must a been a lot goin’ on.”
Louis grunted, sat down on the bunk and unlaced his shoes. His eyes caught the edge of something under the bunk. He pulled out a shirt, stiff with dried blood.
“What’s this?”
“Gimme that.” Milo yanked the shirt out of Louis’s hand, lifted the lid on the stove and dropped it inside.
“Why’d ya do that for?”
“It ain’t no good no more.”
“That was blood on that shirt.”
“Yeah. I beat the shit outta a smart-ass peeler and he bled all over me.”
“Yeah?” Louis looked down at his brother’s bent head. His faint smile was as cold as his eyes.
CHAPTER
* 13 *
The honeysuckle and bridal wreath, once black and brittle from winter’s freeze, were green again. The tops of the Ponderosa pines surrounding the homestead swayed in a light, warm wind. A robin was building a nest in a sheltered place beneath the eave of the outhouse, and sparrows, busy searching for nesting material, flitted from ground to branch with beaks stuffed with dry grass, bits of string and horsehair.
It was Sunday. James and Ben had come down the night before and both agreed that this was as good a time as any to make the trip to the Malones’.
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