Amethyst

by Lauraine Snelling

  “But you didn’t lose any livestock?”

  “Not here on the homeplace. Rand hasn’t said anything about the range cattle, but I can tell he’s worried.” Ruby looked to Opal. “Would you please check on Per? He finally fell asleep after I gave him more cough medicine and rocked him.”

  Opal pulled her boots off at the jack by the door and padded down the hall. She could hear Per’s breathing. It sounded like the leaky bellows the blacksmith used to have. Poor little guy. Lord, please clear his throat and chest. His cough made her own chest hurt.

  She slid her feet into the fur-lined moccasins Little Squirrel had made for her in the fall. They were far warmer than her boots. She’d rubbed enough bear grease into her boots that they were waterproof, but the smell if they warmed up was a bit hard to take.

  When Per whimpered and opened his eyes, she picked him and his quilt up and carried him in to his mother, who smiled her thanks.

  Least I did something right, she thought as she rubbed her hands over the heat of the kitchen stove and joined Charlie and Ruby at the table.

  “If the weather holds through Sunday, we can have a service at the schoolhouse. Maybe Jacob Chandler will lead it and give the sermon.”

  “He’s agreed to be our pastor?”

  “Not sure of that, but he seems to be leaning that way. Can’t say I feel bad giving up my Scripture reading.”

  “You’ve done well, and we all appreciate it.”

  “Who’d have thought that an old barkeep like me would be reading the Holy Word on Sunday mornings? My mother must be dancing on the heavenly clouds.” He looked over to Opal and shook his head. “I remember the first time I laid eyes on the two of you there in the storeroom of Dove House. Ruby had you tucked behind her, ready to take on the world. Old Per died a happy man, knowing his two daughters were there to see him off.”

  “I wish I had known him for longer than a couple of hours.” Opal reached for a piece of gingerbread and bit into it. “And Captain McHenry brought me a horse to ride. I thought that was the greatest thing anyone could do.”

  “When I think on it, Ruby, you brought the greatest change when you came and took on Dove House. Look how blessed we all are. Married now, with families and a growing town.”

  “Makes me wonder how Belle is. She’s the only one who missed out.” Opal licked her finger and picked up gingerbread crumbs with the tip, then set them on her tongue.

  “Opal.”

  “Oh.” She flinched. “Sorry.” Ruby fully expected good manners at all times. Even when no one else was around.

  Charlie pushed back his chair. “Well, thanks for the warm-up and the coffee. I better be gettin’ on back. Left McHenry off at the Robertsons’, so I’ll pick him up on the way home. He said to tell you he’d be out to visit one day soon. He was planning on coming out here, but they got to talking. He’s thinking about settling south of here where that good bottom borders the river.”

  “Another neighbor. What is this land coming to?” Ruby widened her eyes as though she didn’t really believe it. Per lay against her chest, his head tucked under her chin, eyes trying to close but for the valiant effort he made to keep them open. He seemed to be breathing more easily. At least Opal couldn’t hear him wheezing from across the room.

  “Greet everyone from us, and we’ll sure be looking forward to church. Tell Captain McHenry…” She paused when Charlie cleared his throat. “Oh, that’s right. Mr. McHenry.”

  “I wish I could go with you,” Opal whispered as she saw him out. “I’d love to see someone else. Being cooped up in the house and listening to that wind howl is enough to drive anyone right around the bend.”

  “Heard tell of an old woman up north wandering out in the middle of the blizzard. Her husband said it drove her right crazy, and they haven’t found any sign of her yet.” Charlie shook his head. “These blizzards ain’t something to joke about, that’s for sure.”

  Opal shuddered. “I think I can understand that now.” Add in a sick little boy and a new baby, and the situation worsened. She’d rather be out herding cattle any day—even in the rain.

  You should be grateful you got outside and saw some new faces. That little voice inside could sure be obnoxious some times.

  That night the blizzard returned with banshee winds and cold that drove through the walls.

  “We better move the beds back in here,” Rand said, watching the deerskin he’d hung over the window sway in the draft. With that accomplished, they crawled in bed—Per next to Opal and Mary with her mother and father.

  Opal shuddered when the house did. Surely this was worse than before. Even with Per coughing in his sleep, she finally fell asleep, thankful for the coyote pelts that warmed them. It felt as if she’d just closed her eyes when Ghost, who slept on a blanket behind the stove, barked and scrabbled her way to the door. At the dog’s insistent barking, Rand rose and opened the door but heard nothing other than the wind. “Must be wolves,” he muttered as he shut the door and crawled back in bed.

  Opal lay straining to hear the wolves howl, but the wind drowned out everything. Ghost returned to her blanket, and Opal could hear her turn around trying to get her bed just right. The dog had just settled down again when she flew from her bed, her barking shrill and deafening. When Rand didn’t get up immediately, she ran and tugged on his covers.

  “All right. What is it?” Rand opened the door just in time for Linc, with Little Squirrel in his arms, to stagger in.

  “Help.”

  Rand caught Little Squirrel in his own arms as Linc collapsed on the floor.

  Ruby hurried to light the lamp while Rand turned to lay Little Squirrel down.

  “Here.” Opal threw back the covers and lifted sleeping Per out of her bed, taking him over to the other one. When she turned, she covered her mouth with her hand. “Rand, there’s blood.”

  “Roof fell in.” Linc pushed himself to his feet, blood dripping from a gash on his forehead.

  “Here, let me—”

  “No!” He pushed her hand away. “Beam fell on us. Help. Baby.”

  As Rand laid Little Squirrel in the bed, her back arched, legs thrashed, and a keening cry broke from her throat.

  Please, God. Please, God, matched the pounding of Opal’s heart.

  “Ruby, there’s more blood.” Opal sank down by the side of her bed and stroked Little Squirrel’s hand. “All down Rand’s leg.”

  Ruby knelt on the other side of the bed. “Rand, put more wood in the stove. We’ll need hot water and—” She stopped when Little Squirrel convulsed again, her moan guttural. A huge gush of blood puddled on the sheet, and the baby slid from her body. “Oh, dear God.” Ruby laid the inert form on Little Squirrel’s chest.

  “Little Squirrel.” Linc clutched his wife’s hand and held it to his cheek, his lips moving.

  She sighed and was gone.

  “N-o-o!” He cupped her face in his hands, then laid his cheek against her forehead, his tears mingling with the blood from his wound and dripping on her face. “No, don’t go. Please, please, don’t go.”

  Opal watched through a veil of tears, but when the sobs shook her body, she came around the end of the bed and threw herself into Ruby’s arms. Rand stood behind them, his hand on Ruby’s shoulder, tears flowing. “Dear God, please help us all.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The chinook wind arrived sometime between midnight and sunrise on March 5, 1887.

  Jacob heard it in his sleep and woke to the music of water dripping off the icicles that hung from the roof of the line shack. He stared out the one window of the ten-by-twelve, tar paper–covered shack. Far as he was concerned, he’d gotten the best of this duty because Rand wanted a man at the Robertson place during the worst of the winter, no matter what Cora Robertson said about the matter, and Jacob was elected. Or appointed, as the case may be. He’d not been offered a choice. Until this stint. He’d finally insisted on manning a line shack, since the winter had let up some. And Linc had asked to work so
mewhere else.

  Beans had told him about the warm chinook wind that would blow in one day, but when blizzard after blizzard came instead, Jacob had begun to think Beans was pulling his leg. Everyone said this was the worst winter they’d had since the white men came and recorded things like weather and grasshopper swarms and range fires, all of which had happened in the months since he’d come west.

  He heated up the beans and coffee from the day before and ate looking out the window until he thought of sitting outside on the stoop. The sun shone so warm he shucked his jacket and lifted his face to the heat-filled rays. Now, how could this be? One day the wind was doing its best to rip his coat off his back, and the next the sun threatened to raise a sweat. If only Opal were here to enjoy the sun with him. The thought was no surprise. No matter how hard he tried to keep his thoughts in line, they strayed to that goldenhaired, steel-willed young woman whom he couldn’t court until she turned sixteen, fourteen months away. He had promised to not even mention love until then. What a hard—nay, near-impossible—bargain he had agreed to. How could he stop his eyes from wooing her or trying to comfort her? Watching Little Squirrel and the baby die was more than she could bear—seeing her looking like an injured puppy about broke his heart.

  The line shack and the fierce weather had been good hideouts. But, Lord, am I running again? It seemed so to him. Yet he’d felt God telling him to come out—out here, where he had to listen. The icicle music caught his attention.

  From what Beans had said, this warmth didn’t necessarily mean spring was here to stay. “Lord, we’ve got such capricious weather in this part of your creation. But let me tell you, the sun shining like this makes praising you far easier than the blizzards did.” He’d tried to describe the wind in a letter he wrote to Mr. Dumfarthing but figured he failed miserably. He never would have believed the wind himself had he not fallen asleep to the frenzy of it more nights than he cared to count.

  The pack of letters he’d written in the hours alone in the shack had grown considerably. Letters were a good antidote to the lunacy that wind and cold induced. Many times he’d been writing bundled in quilts and elk hide next to the stove, since five feet away water froze.

  He thought about the letters he’d written to Opal. Would that someday he would be able to give them to her, for they described the state of his heart far better than his stuttering spoken words would. Why was it that he could preach in front of a congregation, but the thought of explaining his feelings to a certain young woman turned him into a mass of quivering jelly? His words of comfort had sounded preachy even to him. He’d written a letter to Joel, telling him all of his story to be read someday when he’d be old enough to understand. Jacob knew his family would be glad to receive the letters he wrote them.

  He tossed the dregs of coffee grounds from his cup into the snowbank and returned to the dim interior of the shack. Best get to riding the line, although he’d not seen sign of any live cattle for days.

  At midmorning he saw another rider coming toward him, recognizing it was Chaps by the high-peaked hat he wore. It reminded Jacob of a mountain he’d seen in a picture once, one steep peak with a rounded shoulder. As he drew closer, they both waved.

  “Ya better get on back before the crust thaws and the horses sink in to their bellies,” Chaps called across the glistening snow. “Cattle won’t be movin’ much either. If there are any left.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Make early morning trips while the snow is still froze from the night.”

  “I see.”

  “We’ll most likely get another storm or two. Rand usually pulls us in when the chinook comes, but this has been one strange winter.” Chaps reined his horse around. “See ya.”

  Jacob waved and did the same. He was near the shack when the snow crust gave way and his horse lurched forward. The gelding reared back on his haunches and fought the entrapping snow and ice. Dismounting, Jacob tried to lead the horse forward. After a few leaps and bucks the animal stood belly deep, his sides heaving.

  “Lord God, what do I do?” Jacob walked around the horse, catching his own breath and letting the animal rest. He measured the distance from the horse to the shed. A hundred yards, perhaps. He knelt down and pulled the strap to the cinch loose, but the snow under the horse’s belly held the cinch in place so he couldn’t pull the saddle off. Picking up the reins, he walked ahead of the horse and helped pull him out. One foot at a time, move a horse length, and rest. When they hit a patch where the snow was only a couple feet deep, the horse walked on out and into the shed. Jacob threw him some of the fast-dwindling stock of hay and hauled the saddle into the shack.

  “Thank you, Lord, we got that close before the problem. Sure hope Chaps got back without this happening to him.” He’d gotten so used to talking aloud, just to hear a voice, that he laughed when he hauled in more wood and dug in the banked stove for some live coals. Taking his knife, he shaved curls of wood off a pitchy piece he kept for this purpose and within moments was blowing on the smoking coals until an orange flame burst into sight. The steady drip of snow melting off the roof kept his thoughts company. Please, Lord, comfort Linc. Jacob thought back to the wedding just before Christmas. Little Squirrel had come so close to dying then.

  That night he ran out of kerosene for his lamp, so using light from the stove, he set about getting ready for bed. For a change his breath didn’t show as fog right near the stove, as it had for the last weeks.

  Within two days bare dirt showed in the places where the wind had blown some of the snow away before the chinook. Watching spring come in with warm winds, gentle songs, and flying birds that dripped pearls of sound encouraged him to leave his jacket behind as he took out the ax to split more wood. What he didn’t use could be kept for next year. Before long his arm and shoulder muscles screamed at the effort of lifting the heavy ax again and yet again, so he switched to hauling and stacking. When he fell into bed that night, he thanked his Father for the blisters on his hands despite his leather gloves, the pull of tight muscles, and the joy of breathing air that didn’t sear his lungs. And a few hours without trying to figure out God’s purposes and plans. Sometimes the only answer was, “I will praise the Lord.”

  A horse and rider coming across the melting snow caught his attention the next day.

  “Git packed up,” Beans ordered as he drew near. “Time to go on home.”

  “None too soon. I’ve run out of butts to split. The coffee’s hot.”

  “Good.” Beans stepped to the ground. “I brought you some cookies, compliments of Mrs. Harrison. She said she thought you line guys might be hankerin’ for something sweet.”

  “Anything besides beans will be a treat.”

  “Usually we trap rabbits or bring down some grouse when we’re out here, but I ain’t seen hide nor hair of game of any kind.”

  “What about the cattle?”

  Beans shook his head. “Worse’n bad. Carcasses stacked in the draws like cordwood. Some carcasses up in the cottonwood trees even. They was eatin’ the tops and got trapped. Never seen the like in all my born days. The wolves and coyotes are so fat, they can hardly waddle.” He poured himself a cup of coffee and watched as Jacob gathered his things, rolling his clothes in the bedroll and stuffing his papers and books into his saddlebags.

  “Leave what food’s left in the tins so the mice don’t get it.” Beans took a cookie from the bag, and it disappeared in two bites. “That woman sure can cook.” He took another cookie. “Let’s get outta here.”

  “What about Chaps?”

  “I stopped there first.”

  Jacob threw his saddlebags over his shoulder and tucked his bedroll under his arm. Stopping in the middle of the room, he turned in a circle, studying to make sure everything was back in place and he was leaving nothing behind. He rattled the grate one more time to shake the coals loose. He should take out the ashes.

  “Come on. I want to be back in time for dinner.”

  “Coming.” Jacob
shut the door behind him, making sure it was snug. Then he dropped the hook into the bent nail to latch the door and headed for the shed.

  “Pa!” Joel leaped from the porch of the Robertson house and came charging across the mud to reach him.

  “Hello to you too.” Jacob leaned down, grasped his son’s outstretched hands, and swung the boy up behind him.

  “So how you been?”

  “Good. School started again. Mister Finch said he isn’t coming back in the fall.”

  “Really?” At the soddy they dismounted, and Jacob flipped the reins over the hitching rail.

  “Said he ain’t never seen such a winter, and he don’t never want to see one again.”

  “Ain’t? Did he really say he ain’t never seen such a winter?”

  Joel thought for a moment, then shook his head. A grin tickled his cheekbones. “Prob’ly not.” He took the bedroll after Jacob untied the latigos, holding it behind the saddle.

  How’s Opal? Jacob wanted desperately to ask the question. “Careful, don’t drop all the stuff I have in there.” He untied his saddlebags and his scabbard. Not that he’d needed it or the rifle in it. There was nothing out on the range to shoot. They pushed open the wooden door, and the odor of packed dirt greeted them. Jacob had forgotten the smell after living out on the open prairie like he had the last weeks. He set a chair in front of the door to keep it open and let the room air out. The woodbox yawned empty, and the hay-filled ticks on the wooden beds needed plumping.

  “Mrs. Robertson said to tell you to come on up to the house for dinner. She has plenty of leftovers. We ate about an hour ago.”

  “How about you put my horse away, and I’ll get a fire started. When the sun goes down, it can turn mighty cold.”

  “Sure. I’ll bring my bedroll down after supper. You going back up on the line?”

  “No. Beans says we’re done for this year. What has gone on while I’ve been up there?”

  “Well, school, chores…Ada Mae brought home a lamb, a bummer someone gave her. We keep it in the house ’cause it’s too little to go in the barn yet. We’re feeding it with a bottle.”