by Ward, Marsha
Her knees found depressions in the hard leather cushion of the kneeler as she bowed her head, pulled her mother’s rosary from her pocket, and whispered the “Our Father.” At the end of her prayer, as the hush of the place surrounded her, her soul cried out: Blessed Mary, my papá was so good, so kind to all. Surely his soul will have ascended to Heaven by now? Oh, Holy Mother, can my little wish to stay in Santa Fe be so evil?
Half a dozen people knelt in the half-light of the church, although evening mass would not be celebrated for another hour. Amparo leaned back into the pew, worn smooth by the sliding action of hundreds of worshipers over the years. She pulled the ends of her shawl tightly across her chest, as though she was attempting to draw a cloak of privacy around herself.
After a while, her hands began to twitch from tension, and she stretched them out in front of her, opening them wide. Her beads clicked against the missal box attached to the back of the pew, and her hand closed on the nearest book. She drew it toward her, enfolded it against her breast. Her head bowed, she sank forward onto her knees once more.
Then the idea came, the offering she must make, the sacrifice she must suffer to show God her intention.
Amparo rose and placed the missal back in the box. She moved quickly across the center aisle and into the left-hand row of pews, heading toward the side aisle. Her sandaled feet slip slapped on the bare stone walkway as she moved past the confession boxes toward the front of the church where a small chapel branched off to the left.
She stopped before a large wrought iron stand containing both lit and unlit vigil candles, and dropped a small coin into the offering box before she lighted the wick of a candle on the front row. As its light flickered heavenward she slipped into the side chapel to kneel at a rail before which a metal latticework grille protected the painted plaster statue of the Virgin Mother.
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee,” she said, gazing up at the haunting sadness on the face of the Madonna and wondering if the same sadness was reflected on her own. “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, Amen.”
Amparo looked at her hands, tightly woven around the rosary and resting on the rail. Then she looked upon the Lady’s face once more. The moment had come. The vow must be spoken.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, I have no money to buy an indulgence so that my dear papá may ascend from Purgatory into Heaven,” she whispered. “To show Our Lord how much I love Him, to show my complete devotion, dearest Lady, I offer up a vow. It is this: I will obey the woman in her plan. I will go to the Territory of Colorado, and I will marry the stranger.”
Amparo paused to take a shuddering breath. Then she continued. “This is my intention, the desire of my heart, to please Our Lord Jesus enough that He will take my papá to His bosom.” Her head bowed until it touched her thumbs, and she waited for a moment, hearing the pounding of her pulse in her ears. “Blessed Virgin, let your prayers ascend to God that He may hear my petition.”
Amparo stretched out her arms in supplication to the figure of Our Lady, and she remained in that position, listening to the rustle of the wax candles burning behind her, to the click of rosary beads being told among the pews.
It seemed a very long time later that her soul found strength enough to raise her body from her knees.
Blessed Mother, I must go now. There is much to do. The woman says it is arranged that I leave in two days. Do not forget me, Blessed Virgin! Do not forget my petition, and my sacrifice!
Amparo crept with slow steps from the church, harboring a small joy in one corner of her heart because she was leaving obedience as a sacrifice upon the altar. The rest of her heart was full of unease at the thought of going into a world of strangers, like the one awaiting her in Colorado.
Chapter 3
James felt a shudder cross his frame. Pa was still talking. “Are you of a mind to tell me where you’re bound?”
Bound? Pa’s words kicked dirt over some of the fire of James’s rage, and he swallowed hard. Where was he bound? What could he do? A list of his skills ran past his mind—farmer, stock raiser, horse breaker, soldier—
“I don’t reckon there’s call for an infantryman anywhere about.” James bit his lip at voicing his absurd thought.
“Not likely.” Rod waited for a moment before he continued. “What’s your plan?”
“I’ll . . .” James looked around the enclosure, then raised his chin and exhaled. “I’ll dig out Uncle Jonathan’s mine.”
Rod was silent again for a time. He sniffed once. “It was a rich hole before it fell in on him.” He rubbed his beard again. “I’ll lend you a dollar or two to get you on your way. Take the sorrel and the mule and the mining gear.”
James looked at his hands. The nineteen-year-old palms were callused from years of work. The fingers were large and squared off at the tips. Worker’s hands. Hard work would help. He curled the hands into fists. “I’ll take the animals and the gear, but I won’t take your coin. I’ll work my way north.” James glanced up. Pa looks like I took a strap to him. He swallowed again. “Tell Ma I’ll miss her.” His voice seemed caught in his throat.
“Say your own good byes,” Rod said in a voice that was tight with emotion.
“No. It’ll spoil the party for her.”
James bent, picked up his rope, and coiled it. Then he turned his back on his father, pushed the gate open, and started for the log corral beyond the main cabin, bleakness filling his belly. Ellen was gone, yoked to Carl. Ellen, with her blooming red hair and the dusting of freckles on her nose; with her crooked smile and merry laugh—ripped from him like a piece of flesh by the foreign words of a Spanish priest. The world lost its brightness as he trudged through the dust.
To his left across a creek was a small cabin—home to his oldest brother Rulon, his wife Mary, and their two babies—and to his right stood the main cabin that housed his father and mother and the children younger than himself. He went behind the bigger log house to the corral, and stooped to get under the top pole of the fence that enclosed several grazing horses.
James whistled to a light reddish brown colored horse. It continued to crop grass, although its ears swiveled in his direction. He glanced at the sun; its rays shed no warmth on him today, and he shivered as he made a loop in his rope and pitched it toward the neck of the sorrel horse.
The loop soared over the horse’s head and settled squarely on its shoulders. James walked up the rope toward the animal, talking to it in a soothing tone. He led it through the gate to the nearby shed and saddled up. When James mounted, the sorrel bucked a few times, but he rode out the kinks in the animal, then turned it toward the big shed his father called the stable.
He roused the mule from its slumber and put a pack frame on its back. In one corner of the shed lay the mining equipment four of the Owen men had brought back from a rubble filled hole at Central City that had claimed the life of Ma’s brother.
I never had no mind to go digging in the earth, James thought, squinting at the pick, shovel, and pans. Mining sure wasn’t lucky for Uncle Jonathan. He approached the pile of equipment and gave it a kick. But then, I reckon my luck ran out today. He blew out his breath between pursed lips.
James kicked the equipment again, and figured it would take two weeks of hard riding—no, it would be more like a month, working his way—to get to Central City, northwest of Denver City. And when he got there.... I’ll have to hire out to a miner until I get a grubstake together.
James loaded the tools onto the pack saddle and tied them in place. He raided the cook shack for a handful of dried meat strips and a few hard corn dodgers. With the mule’s lead rope in his hand, he mounted, and kicked the horse toward his unfinished cabin.
A few moments later, the sight of two log walls standing head high, and two others up to his hip deepened James’s gloom. After working full days at his father’s place, he had labored by la
ntern light to fashion a home for Ellen Bates, but she had slipped from his grasp like quick silver chased across a tabletop.
“Tarnation!” he growled as he looked at the shell of the house that now represented a future that would not be. He slid from the saddle, tied the horse and mule, and ducked under the suspended wagon sheet that roofed his bed and belongings.
James changed his clothes, rolled his bedding, and packed his personal goods into the leather carryall he’d toted during the war. He stepped through the doorway, carrying the war bag and bedding. He stopped beside a mound of logs piled up against the wall and ran his hand over the length of one he’d peeled for use inside the house. Even though the color of the wood was bleaching from bright yellow tan to gray, the piece still had a silky smooth surface that reminded him of the one time he had held Ellen in his arms and kissed her.
She had stood alone on the prairie early one morning near the end of their journey, staring as the first light of dawn revealed a mountain peak in the distant west. Pike’s Peak, it was called, and Ellen was first to spot it as she stood apart from the wagons, the wind whipping her skirt, and her hair streaming loose over her shoulder. She stretched out her arms to the mountain as though she meant to embrace it.
James had felt a quickening of his pulse at the sight of her, a dryness of the throat, a quivering of the sinews that surprised him, as he hadn’t to then felt more than fondness for her. With swift, light strides he went to her and stepped into the circle of her arms. A peculiar look widened her eyes as his mouth came down toward hers, but her lashes descended and shut it away from his view.
Wondrous sensations warmed his veins as James kissed the trembling girl. His arms enfolded her. His hands crept across her shoulders and through her hair until he held her face between them. Only then did he notice her hands pushing gently against his chest. She rolled her head out of his grasp and opened her green, green eyes.
“No, James. Please don’t,” she whispered, and was gone from his arms.
She’s modest, he thought. That’s good and proper. Then he chastised himself. Do your wooing in private, James.
Since that day, he’d kept the memory of the feel of her cheeks in his fingertips, marveling at the softness of a woman’s skin. Now he would never touch her again, and cold flowed down his body as though he had stepped naked under an icy waterfall.
James pressed his lips together and drew his knife, looking at the keen edge of the blade, the finely-honed point. He drew the blade along the meat of the edge of his palm. It was sharp, as always, leaving a thin bead of crimson. A dark thought fluttered in his mind, but he pushed it away and cut the wagon sheet free of the thongs that held it in place above the log walls. He spread the canvas cloth on the packed earth, wrapped all the gear inside, and tied it atop the mule’s packsaddle. Then he mounted up and put the horse onto the trail.
North. Up through Pueblo to Denver City. Then to Central City. I got to put distance between me and Ellen’s eyes.
James settled the horse into a trot for a bit over a mile, then reined in to cross the stream that ran slowly down from behind Carl’s cabin. As he rode through the water without stopping, not looking toward the house on the wooded bench of land to his left, he glanced at his fists. They were balled tight as caterpillar cocoons.
Eyes green as the spring grass, filled with flecks of gold and maidenly modesty. Eyes to lose my soul in.
The horse scrambled up the slope of the bank, the saddle lurched back onto the horse’s croup, and James halted to check the front cinch. He dismounted, raised the stirrup leather, and adjusted the knot on the latigo, but the work didn’t quiet a rage that burned like a prairie fire within: rage against Carl, and against Pa. He cursed his father and brother. If he never set eyes on this range again, he would rest easy. But the horse wheeled when James climbed into the saddle, and his gaze caught Carl’s little house tucked in among the trees.
A chill rose up his spine, lifting the hair on the back of his neck. I am a blind fool, he berated himself, then shouted, “Girl, I would’ve loved you!”
He gigged the horse into a lope through the broken countryside. The mule followed, braying in protest. James merely tightened his grip on the lead rope and lowered his head over the horse’s mane.
James stopped twice to let the animals breathe, cool down, and drink. Other than that, he pushed forward, heedless of the approaching dusk. A last gleam of light streaked the sky, and night lay in wait to engulf the three of them when he finally turned off the trail.
He found a flat area covered with buffalo grass that lay next to a stream of water. His raw anger had abated somewhat, and he tended the animals carefully, removing saddles, packs and head gear. He checked hooves for stones, and led the animals down to the water. While he waited for them to drink, he dabbed at the dried blood on his arm with a water soaked bit of handkerchief. After he hobbled them, he turned them out to graze. When he’d eaten his handful of supper, he lay down with his hat over his eyes and fought his nightmares for an hour’s worth of sleep.
~~~
The sun climbed overhead into a cloudless, burnished bowl of a sky. By mid-morning, a tiny hammer pounded against a miniature anvil in James’s skull. As he rode through the broken hills and undulating plains toward the first big town on the trail—Pueblo City—the size of the anvil and the hammer increased until he felt sure the thud was ringing clear to Kansas.
When James at last noticed outbuildings around him, he had to force his eyes open from the squint they’d taken on to shut out the sun’s glare radiating upward from the parched earth. He rode into the welcomed darkness of the runway of a livery barn, rubbed his burning eyes, and dismounted.
“How much to put up my horse and mule?” he asked a tow headed youth lounging on a bale of hay beside the door, just out of the sun’s reach.
“Two bits,” said the boy, poking at his broken front teeth with a sliver of wood. “That includes grain.”
James put his hand into his pants pocket and pulled out his money. “Humph,” he said, rubbing the two quarters in his hand. He gave one to the boy, then stared at the remaining coin before he slid it down into his pocket again. “Can I get a meal cheap around here?”
“The saloon down the street puts out a free lunch...for customers.”
“That’ll have to do. Where can I throw my saddles?”
The boy raised his chin toward the rear of the barn. “Tack room’s got an empty corner. I won’t charge if you haul the gear yourself.”
“I’m obliged,” James muttered. “See to it the animals get the grain.” He turned to lead them away.
“Wait a minute, mister,” called out the boy.
James looked back, raising one eyebrow.
“If you could use some work, ask the bartender for Len Strummond. I hear he’s got a job open.”
“Thanks.” James began to ask what sort of work it was, then clamped his mouth shut. What did it matter, so long as it was hard work, good and hard, and didn’t give him time to think?
He tugged on the reins, and the horse and mule shuffled forward and entered a pair of stalls. When James had stripped the saddles and packs from the animals, and carried the gear into the tack room, he picked up his war bag—the ancient brown catchall with the leather crazed like old china from the neglect the urgency of war had imposed—and walked down the runway toward the sunshine. He took four or five steps along the street in the powdery dust, then heard the youth calling him.
“Mister, wait. I forgot that saloon’s full of Yankees. You can’t go in there.”
James turned half around, anger narrowing his eyes. “That squabble’s done with,” he said, his voice gravelly. Then he spun around and continued down the street.
“It isn’t over in this town,” the boy yelled. James didn’t stop. The boy shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the barn to do his work. “Oh well, what can they do, shoot you?”
James kept walking, watching for the saloon. It loomed ahead in the middle
of the block, a free-standing, unpainted lumber building, narrow in width, but standing two stories tall. Noise from the dinnertime crowd poured through two small windows in the front wall.
James shut his eyes for a moment in an attempt to ease the pain throbbing in his head. Then he pushed through the batwing doors and eased to one side of the opening, pausing to look down the long room. After a while his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the saloon, lit only by the windows and a trio of lamps hanging behind the bar.
Seven tables filled the open space of the room. Around them, diners sat in barrel and ladder backed chairs; not a seat was empty. Three or four sturdy men stood along the mahogany bar, drinking their dinner and tucking up their tails, for the crowded tables seemed to push the men against the wooden barrier. Laughter came from a door at the right of the room behind the bar, accompanied by the clink of dishware and the clatter of cutlery dropped to the floor.
The aroma of fresh baked bread teased James’s nose, and he moved into the room and threaded himself between the bar and the tables, brushing the leg of one of the drinkers with his war bag as he passed.
“Yeow!” the man yelled, gripping a half empty whiskey bottle. “That’s me sore leg.”
“I’m almighty sorry, friend. I beg your pardon,” James drawled, trying to squeeze past the man and his neighbor at the bar, who stepped into James’s path. James half-turned and backed a step into the room, facing the bar.
The first man swore, turning from the bar with a lurch. He looked at James, his eyes traveling from his hat to his boots. He spat on the floor. “Ye’re one of them ‘Suth-ren’ butternut rebels come to stink up tha place. This be a Union bar, Johnny Reb. Ye don’t come in here.”
Something cold as a chunk of river ice congealed in James’s belly as he listened to the Irish brogue that was neither pleasant nor lilting coming from the older man. As he turned to face the man’s outraged face, a chill seeped from that icy lump into every empty space in his gut, spread into his chest, then bubbled up into his shoulders and ran down inside his arms to tingle his fingertips. “The war’s over, friend.” There was a hard edge to his voice.
