Past Promises
Page 7
“Now it’s rock. It’s fossilized coral; those little ridged cones are coralites. It lived during the Paleozoic era when red sands and mud built up on the bottom of the sea and trapped it under the layers.”
He frowned. “Is that how the prints were formed?”
“Exactly, but about thirty million years after the coral was gone.”
Myra spun around, nearly poking Rory in the neck with her umbrella as she threw out one arm and surveyed the landscape. “Can you imagine all this under the sea?”
“Not once but four times,” Jessica clarified.
He looked around the pink-hued landscape covered with short stubborn clumps of grass, sage, and rock outcroppings. Beyond were mesas dotted with piñon and juniper. He tried to imagine this land covered with miles of water.
“I can,” Myra said enthusiastically. “I can indeed imagine.”
All Rory could see was a vast stretch of empty ranch land, some fences that needed tending, and endless hours of work that needed to be done. The thought spurred him to take his leave.
“If you ladies will excuse me, I’ll be getting back to the house. I’ll send Whitey right out; he should be here in an hour or two, if I can find him when I get back.”
Remembering to weave out of the way, he shifted his weight and missed being skewered by the umbrella again as Myra swung around to face him. She sounded disappointed. “You’re leaving?”
“I have a ranch to run, ma’am, but I can get here in no time if you really need me. Just send Whitey.”
Jessica showed no such disappointment. “Thank you, Mr. Burnett. I am thrilled with the saurian tracks, and as I said, they will keep me busy for another day or two. When I’ve finished searching the area, I’ll send for you and you can help us move back toward the high mesa.”
Not if I can help it. “Right. Let me know, ma’am.” He tipped his hat to both of them and, with nothing left to say, walked toward the picket line where the animals grazed.
“SO?” SAID MYRA.
Jessica knew what was coming; still, she sidestepped. “So, what?”
“Tell me all about it. How was your sojourn in the desert with Mr. Burnett?”
Kneeling in the dust, Jessica paused with one hand on the crate that contained her excavation tools. She opened the lid and carefully removed a short-handled pick and laid it on the ground beside her. “Myra, please. Our ‘sojourn in the desert’—aside from the fact that the saurian prints are more than I hoped for—was highly uneventful.” From beneath the brim of her beige helmet, she shot Myra an accusatory glance. “Why should it have been anything else?”
“I think Mr. Burnett is an outstanding man. I thought perhaps . . . ”
Jess rocked back on her heels, took off her glasses, and shoved them into her skirt pocket. “What exactly do you find outstanding about him? You hardly know him. I hardly know him, and I’ve already spent more time with him than you have.”
“He’s a fine-looking fellow. Handsome, strong of limb, straight eyes and teeth.”
“You could be describing a healthy horse, Myra.”
Obviously irritated, Myra snapped her mouth and then her umbrella closed and leaned the latter against the table formed of crates. “I’ve made some tea.” She set out two cups while Jessica pulled out more of the items she would need that afternoon—a sack of plaster of paris, a roll of burlap, extra tissue paper.
“I think,” Myra said carefully, as if she knew the subject would send Jessica’s temper flaring, “that you and Rory Burnett might well be suited to each other.”
Jess stood up and brushed the dust and bits of weed from her skirt. “Impossible. There is not a thing that man and I have in common, Myra, and you know it. He sets my teeth grinding.”
“Exactly. He elicits a response from you even when a response is unwarranted.” Carried away, Myra spread her arms like a symphony conductor. “Sparks fly. Electricity fairly crackles. Explosions rock the very air between you—”
“Sounds like you’re describing a war, not a romance,” Jessica mumbled, deciding to locate the rest of her supplies after tea.
Her enthusiasm stemmed but not extinguished, Myra set out a sugar bowl that matched the cup and saucers, and a square, etched-glass spoon holder filled with spoons, then opened a tin of canned milk. “I would just like to see you become interested in a man before it’s altogether too late for you, dear.”
“Sage advice coming from someone who’s never married.”
“Ah, but by choice.”
Jessica removed her hat and set it on the corner of the table. “Then you should have no objection if I make the same decision.”
Myra grew serious, the lines about her usually smiling mouth deepened as she frowned. “My status is the result of a decision too hastily made, not from lack of choice.”
“I’ll fill your cup and you sit down and tell me all about it.” Jessica sat down on the bentwood chair, reached for Myra’s cup and saucer, then carefully poured in the steaming dark brew.
Sitting down slowly to allow the legs of the chair to adjust to the loose soil, Myra ignored the tea. She put her elbows on the table and leaned toward Jessica, speaking in a voice so low that Jess strained to hear.
“Myra, there’s no one around for miles. I do think you can speak up.”
After a cursory glance to be certain, Myra began again. “When I was in my late twenties, I met a man I would not normally have even been attracted to. He was attending a literary soiree at a friend’s home, and seemed highly uncomfortable, as if the very walls were confining. He did not add to or pay close attention to the discussion that day—I believe the topic was Plato. At any rate, after exchanging intense stares with him all afternoon, I was not surprised when he finally took me aside and asked in a wonderfully thick Irish brogue why I was content to sit and discuss a long-dead philosopher when I could be out in the sunshine enjoying a glorious day.
“We went for a buggy ride through the commons. What he didn’t know about literature or philosophy, he made up for in knowledge of the real world: plants, flowers, animals, human nature. I have never felt so instantly at ease. It was as if we had indeed met in another place and time and had just rediscovered each other. At no time had I ever been away from a book for so many hours. It was all so very wonderful.”
Jessica watched the wistful enthusiasm that moved across Myra’s face as she described the encounter. Racing ahead, Jessica’s mind conjured up the end of the tale; perhaps the man had been toying with Myra, for she had inherited quite a comfortable fortune from a maiden aunt As Myra’s dark eyes snapped with excitement she continued.
“He came to call three days in a row. And on the fourth, he told me he had to return to Ireland at the end of the month. I was heartbroken. He wanted me to go with him, asked me to marry him—and I can say truthfully that I was tempted. But Jessica, although I often think now that I made a tragic mistake, bade then I decided that although our souls were quite suited for each other, our present worlds were far too different to ever become aligned.”
Jessica took a sip of tea and then said, “You’ve read Corelli one too many times.”
“No, it’s true. Back then I thought our differences insurmountable; I read voraciously, he never even read the newspaper; I am hopelessly messy, he was compulsively neat; I function on a mental level, his world was physical. He was Irish and Catholic and I am American and of a very open attitude where religion is involved, as you well know.”
“It sounds to me as if you made the right decision,” Jess concluded.
“I let him go back to Ireland, but I never met another man that moved me so again. In here”—Myra pointed to her head—“I had made the right decision. But here”—she pointed to her heart—“here is where I have had to live with it ever since.”
“Why didn’t you follow him?”
“And so you never saw him again.”
“No.”
“If you had it to do over?”
“I would cast logic to the wind and follow my heart. I don’t regret the life I’ve lived, Jessica. And I know that my choice was made of my own free will, but oftentimes I can’t help but wonder . . . ” Myra gazed off toward the mesa. “You’re so young, so vibrant. The world has so much to offer you. I just don’t want to see you locked away in the basement of that museum until you wither up and die.”
“Like my father.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know you didn’t, but please, don’t try to see a romance where there is none. Aside from having nothing in common, Mr. Burnett and I don’t even particularly like one another. Wouldn’t I know if he was some sort of soul mate?”
“Perhaps not. Perhaps too many aeons have passed since you were together.”
Centering her cup on the saucer, Jess stood up. “I don’t think so, Myra. But for now I must get busy before too many aeons go by again. When Mr. Burnett’s hired man gets here, send him out to the prints. He can help me load the casts onto the wagon.”
She pulled on her gloves and put on her hat. Then she put a crate on the end of the wagon with the plaster, tissue, and two large bottles of water she wrapped in burlap to keep them from clanging together. The knapsack went in last. It took her longer than she had counted on to hitch up the mules, and by the time she was ready, she was perspiring. She wiped her dusty brow with the back of her sleeve.
Still seated at the table, Myra looked up from beneath the umbrella she had reopened. She held a book on camping open on her lap. Jess looked down at the illustrations and noted the diagrams of awnings and sun shields. “Starting a project?”
“I thought perhaps Mr. Burnett’s man could rig something up. Otherwise we’ll be forced to either sit in the sun all day or stay inside the tent, and I find this air so very invigorating that I hate to miss a moment of it.”
“If you’re so very invigorated, I should have let you hitch up the mules.”
“I would have, but I don’t deal well with mules.” Myra sounded disappointed in herself.
“I would consider that an asset. Anyway, help is on the way, isn’t it?” Jess walked past the barricade of rocks piled in a circle much like the ring that rimmed the campfire. She stared down at Methuselah, who had burrowed into a hole. “Now, take care of our friend here and I’ll see you again late this afternoon.”
As she clucked to the mules, snapped the lines, and got the animals moving, Jess thought about all Myra had revealed about her past and how she had intimated that there could be romantic sparks flying between herself and Burnett.
Ridiculous. How anyone could think that Rory Burnett might prove to be her love of a lifetime was beyond contemplation. Why, even Gerald Ramsey, the director of the museum, never provoked her as quickly as Burnett.
“Ha!” She let go and laughed aloud, grateful for the peaceful solitude of the open range. “Imagine Mr. Rory Burnett and me forming a romantic alliance. I’d rather be fossilized first.”
Chapter Five
LONG AND LOW, the wood-and-adobe ranch house blended with the landscape and beckoned Rory the way an oasis attracts a thirsty man. The place appeared deserted, but he knew good and well that Scratchy was most likely sitting in some shady corner of the back porch snoozing.
Rory skirted the house proper and rode past his mother’s former vegetable garden. Without care, the plot had withered and died almost as quickly as Martha Burnett had succumbed to what the doctor had simply described as “a woman’s ailment.” Toward the end Rory found himself praying that death would release her from her pain. Wilner had been far luckier. He had dropped dead of a heart attack. The Burnetts, always committed to one another, had passed on within six months of each other.
Rory missed them both sorely, but didn’t begrudge their going together. Wilner and Martha Burnett had been as well matched as a set of bookends, and like bookends, they always held the volumes of the ranch history and business together.
Wilner taught Rory his simple philosophy of life: “Be fair, boy, and do a hard day’s work. Keep your word. Love the land and everything will come out right.” The old man hadn’t been gone two weeks before Rory began to feel the burden of keeping the place together.
He drew his horse up in front of the corral, easily swung his leg over the saddle, and dismounted. The heavy gate opened with a creak and a groan before he led Domino in, unsaddled him, slipped off the bridle, and gave the horse a swat on the flank. As the big animal snorted and ambled toward the water trough, Rory slung his saddle over the top rail of the fence, exited the corral, and headed for the house.
Using his hat, he beat the trail dust off his pants. His spurs sang in unison as he crossed the yard and mounted the back step. The shade of the wide veranda swallowed him with its cool relief. As he suspected. Scratchy Livermore, cook and unenthusiastic housekeeper, was slouched down in an old rocker on the corner of the porch, boots on the rail, arms crossed over his chest, mouth slack. He drooled on his shirtfront.
Barely breaking his stride, Rory kicked Scratchy’s feet off the rail and startled the old reprobate awake. “I’m home. Anything to eat around here?” Tossing the words over his shoulder, he hung his hat on a wall rack outside the backdoor and bent over the dry sink on the porch. He poured water out of the bucket on the drainboard and began to wash his hands.
Dressed in what remained of faded, seat-worn woolen trousers and a collarless yellowed shirt, Scratchy unfolded his lanky frame and scratched his gray bearded chin. “Yup. ’Spects I can rustle somp’in up.” He shuffled past Rory and let the screen door bang shut behind him.
Rory knew better than to ask what that something might be. Since Martha died, he and the hands had taken potluck, which usually consisted of overdone beef, dumplings the consistency of paste, oversalted, canned vegetables, and lots of boiled cabbage. Hiring a real cook would mean sending all the way to Durango. That, coupled with the fact that a new cook would put the old man out of work, kept Rory from seeking someone out. He splashed water over his face and neck, reached out for the wrinkled towel that hung on a hook beneath the sink, and vigorously rubbed his face dry.
“Want coffee, too?” Scratchy yelled from the kitchen.
“Sure.” Rory walked into the house and paused for a moment just inside the kitchen door. “You can bring it into the office with the food. Anything happen this morning that I need to know about?”
The cook paused, scratched the yellow shirt stretched across his belly, and frowned. “Seems like there was somp’in I was ’sposed to remember . . . ” His voice trailed away. “Must not have been too important.”
“I hope not,” Rory mumbled under his breath as he turned away and headed toward the office. He passed through the sitting room that took up the entire width of the front of the house. It was dark and cool inside. The thick adobe walls held the evening’s chill even in the middle of the day. Woven blankets hung over every long, narrow window. The colorful Indian patterns were highlighted by the sunlight outside.
After Martha died, he and his father avoided the room by unspoken agreement. It was too painful to enter its confines and not see her knitting in the low rocker or fussily arranging her collection of curios and bric-a-brac scattered around the room. In the dim light, the dust that usually covered the once highly polished surface of the furnishings was barely visible. Rory paused in the doorway and squinted, unable to believe his eyes. Not only was the dust barely visible today, in some places it was gone entirely.
He stepped back into the room, bent over the library table, and swip
ed two fingers across it. A few traces of gritty dust clung to his fingertips, but they were nothing compared with the state the room had been in for weeks. Glancing around, he noticed that here and there was more evidence of a haphazard attempt at dusting. When his gaze fell on the heavy cottonwood beam that served as a mantel on the stone fireplace, he shook his head.
Scratchy had obviously waved a dust rag around, for in evidence was a photograph taken of Wilner and Martha Burnett on their twentieth anniversary. It stood upside down on the mantel beside an empty vase and a clock that hadn’t been wound for months. Rory laughed at the sight of his parents standing on their heads and reached out, righted the picture, and leaned it against the fireplace again.
He smiled wistfully at the happy couple. “I’m trying, Pa,” he whispered before he took another look around the room. “Looks like we all are.”
The office, originally intended as a nursery, was smaller than the three other bedrooms in the house. Once Rory outgrew it and Martha had failed to conceive any children, Wilner had moved his desk and ranch business into the little room. Now, whenever he was working alone in the tidy retreat, Rory often felt his father’s presence.
Before he sat down on the worn leather chair, he pulled the mail out of his back pocket and smoothed the two crumpled envelopes. Leaning forward with both elbows on the table, Rory put aside the one marked “Sears, Roebuck and Company.” He still had three payments to go on a set of cookware his father bought to outfit the chuck wagon.
He ripped open the second envelope and quickly scanned the page. It was an announcement of a cattle auction in two weeks at the stockyard adjacent to the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad Station in Durango. Rory smoothed the creased sheet until it was flat and set it on the desk. There was plenty of time to round up a good-sized herd of cattle and drive them to Durango, but it would mean long hours for everyone unless he could lay on some extra hands.
A rectangular, canvas-bound ledger rested in the center of the desk. He pulled it toward him and flipped past the meticulous entries Wilner had made until he came to his own bigger, bolder writing. His father often said that a man didn’t ranch for profit, not when he had no control over cattle disease, weather, and stock prices. A man didn’t become a rancher because he wanted to get rich, but because he loved the work and the land and wanted to hold on to a scrap of it for his family’s future.