“Ellen said they were good people and would take me west with them.”
Jesse was silent, then said thoughtfully, “I’m not so sure this is the place you should go.”
A flutter of apprehension stirred her. “Ellen said if I had money, they would take me.”
“We’ll see.”
Because she must, she believed Ellen had been speaking the truth, and sat silently, her face a blank, but surging inwardly with uneasiness.
As the buggy approached the Mormon settlement, Summer had an ominous feeling in the pit of her stomach. The women were washing clothes and didn’t raise their heads as the buggy swept by. The children were not running and playing as children usually do, but stood silently beside their mothers with averted faces. Men, who were working at various chores, neither looked up nor offered a greeting. Most depressing of all was the silence. The ring of a hammer, the buzz of a saw were the only sounds.
Jesse stopped the horse and wound the reins around the brake.
“I’ll see what I can find out. You stay put.”
Summer watched him leave. She tried to catch the eye of one of the women so she could give her a friendly smile, but there was not a single woman who did not have her eyes averted. The children were all being forcibly made to look elsewhere and were uncommonly hushed. The sight of this universal snub caused Summer to grind her teeth. They were peaceable people, Christian people. Why were they ignoring her? It was almost as if they knew!
Jesse spoke to a man working on a wagon wheel. The man had not turned from his work, but gestured toward a rear building. After a quick glance around, Jesse went behind the building.
Summer sat in confused silence, her heart racing even though it felt heavy as lead. When Jesse returned a tall, thin carrion of a man walked beside him. He was wearing a black frock-coat and a straight-brimmed black hat. A long, flowing beard rode majestically on his chest. When they reached the buggy, Jesse climbed in and picked up the reins.
The man’s pinpoint-hard eyes fastened on Summer. She felt the color drain from her face and wanted to move closer to Jesse, wanted to leave this place, wanted to cry.
“Ain’t ya gonna talk it over with the woman?” The voice was deep, booming and full of self-righteousness.
“Hell, no.” Jesse flicked the reins and the horse moved ahead. As they circled to return the way they had come, the man stood in the road, his arms raised, his powerful voice reaching them.
“I am a devout Mormon,” he shouted. “Our Prophet, Joseph Smith, was a divinely inspired man. His vision of a modern Zion in the west has been realized. We go to join him. It is God’s will that woman be used to procreate so we may multiply and spread across the land. We preach that the wages of sin are death!”
“What you want is to satisfy your own filthy lust, old man!” Jesse shouted, and to the horse, “Heee . . . eee yaw!” The animal responded with a burst of speed.
Jesse allowed the horse to run until they were out of sight of the settlement and pulled him up to a walk.
“Goddam crazy old fool!” Jesse’s face was red and sweat ran from his forehead. “Goddam crazy old fool,” he said again.
Summer’s head was spinning. She had been holding tightly to the side of the buggy but she let go now to fumble in her pocket for something to wipe her face.
What could she do now? Willing the tears not to come, she glanced at Jesse and found him looking at her.
“What did he say?”
“He said you’d have to marry him, be one of his wives before he’d take you with them.”
Summer gasped, tears forgotten in her sudden anger. “No! Never!”
“That’s what I told him,” Jesse said drily, “along with a few other things.”
Her anger died as quickly as it came. What could she do now? What in the world was she going to do? Tears would have started had she been left to her own thoughts, but Jesse was speaking again.
“I’ve met Bible-spouting lechers like him before,” he bit out. “Had my doubts about takin’ you there in the first place.” He turned to face her, and for the first time she saw him smile. “When he clapped his eyes on you, they almost laid out on his face. He thought he was about to get hisself a real choice little bit of woman.”
In spite of herself, Summer smiled in return. Then, as if she had no right to smile, she sobered.
“I’m imposing on you, Mr. Thurston, and I feel badly about it. I think it’s best for me to go to Austin. I can get a teaching job there.” She stopped, then forced herself to go on. “I can drive the buggy on into Hamilton and leave it at the livery stable, if you want to take your horse and go on to the Rocking S.”
“I’m not in that big of a hurry, Summer. Nothing at the ranch that won’t keep till night. We’ll go on into Hamilton and see when the stage runs to Austin.”
“Thank you, Mr. Thurston.”
“Name’s Jesse. Just plain old Jesse,” he said with a sigh.
Summer shivered. “I can’t help thinking about that old man, and what I’d have done if you were not with me.”
“Don’t think about him. He ain’t worth a plug of tobacco.”
“But those poor women. They all seemed so sad.”
“That’s how he keeps ’em with him, cowed and afraid.”
Hamilton’s street was teeming with several times its normal population when Jesse drew up beside the stage office. He wrapped the reins about a post and disappeared inside. He didn’t need to tell Summer to stay put this time. She sat quietly, eyeing the jostling crowd. There were drovers in their drab work clothes, former easterners in dark suits, soldiers in pieces of uniform and the usual amount of strutting cowhands laden with pistols and Bowie knives. What Summer didn’t know was that the army troop had arrived with their prisoners, and the crowd had surged into the street to watch their passing and to linger to talk about this exciting event that had jarred their usually monotonous existence.
The last time . . . For a moment, gripped by a rush of savage emotion, Summer thought she would scream. She closed her eyes and willed herself not to think of the time she and John Austin had arrived at this stage stop, and when she opened them again, Jesse was climbing into the buggy.
“Friday. The stage goes on Friday.”
“Friday? That’s . . . five days. I can’t wait five days.”
“Yes, you can,” Jesse said gently, but firmly. “You can stay at the hotel.” He was turning the buggy around in the middle of the street.
Summer’s lips trembled. She wanted to protest, but didn’t feel she had the right to burden him further.
“It’ll be all right,” Jesse said, seeing her stricken look. “It won’t be very comfortable, but you can stay in the room. I’ll come on Friday and put you on the stage.”
At the hotel, he helped her down. She could feel the stares of the men lining the benches as she stood waiting for Jesse to lift her trunk from the back of the buggy. The hotel lobby was stiflingly hot, and the odors of highly seasoned food, beer, tobacco juice and sweat mingled.
Graves, the hotel man, got up from a cot where he lay fanning himself.
“Well, well, well, Miss Kuykendall.”
Jesse drew the soiled register pad forward and scribbled something.
“This lady will take that front room with the windows on the south.” He spoke in a clipped, no-nonsense tone. “You’ll bring her meals over from Mrs. Hutchinson’s place three times a day. And you’ll keep your mouth shut.” Quick as lightning, he reached across the counter and grabbed the front of the man’s shirt, pulling him almost off his feet. “If any harm comes to her or if she’s bothered in any way, I’ll stomp you to death.” He gave the man a vicious push. “I’ll be back, and she better have no complaints.” He picked up Summer’s trunk, and with a hand beneath her elbow ushered her up the stairs.
At the door of the room he left her with the promise to return the day after tomorrow. The room was not the one she and John Austin had shared. For that she was thankful. She want
ed no reminders of a time when she was full of hope, confident that she and her brother would be happy under the protection of Sam McLean.
Sam McLean! The name lit some flame that had never been lit before. Such a burning hate and fury took hold of her that she shook with the fever of it, and every vestige of self-control went up in a white blaze of emotion. With a terrible little sob, she pummeled her stomach with her fist, blind to everything but the fact that her brother’s child grew within her.
When the storm passed, she was quiet, head bowed, a little dazed by the evidence of her own feelings. She suddenly felt terribly sick, her stomach convulsed and she removed the lid from the chamber pot just in time for it to catch the vomit that gushed from her mouth.
Weakly, she leaned against the wall and wondered numbly if her face had gone as white as it felt.
Slowly, she stumbled toward the bed, walking as if she carried a heavy load, undressed, and lay down.
With extraordinary clearness of mind, she seemed to see the entanglement clearly. Her mother had fallen in love with Sam McLean while her husband was away fighting the war, but when he returned she went back to the Piney Woods with him because it was her duty to do so. But Papa had loved her, she almost cried aloud. He loved her dearly. Sometimes, he’d pull her down on his lap and whisper to her. How could Mama have done this to him? To me?
For hours, Summer lay awake staring into the sunlit room, then into the shadows and finally the darkness that was no blacker than her own thoughts. And every minute, her despair and apprehension grew deeper. A few short months ago, she had not even known Slater existed. And then her mother had died, and by an utterly unexpected chance she was here. He had woven himself into the very fabric of her life, befogging her judgment so she could not help herself when he kissed and caressed her. And because of her wild infatuation for him—Summer’s mind stumbled over the word “love”—she had turned her back on her Christian teaching, her moral obligation to keep herself pure for her husband. She had imagined that together they could make a world of their own, a family out of their love for each other.
It is strange, she thought painfully, that God’s punishment is so vicious. Where in the Bible did it say something like, “Thy sins shall be washed away”? Where was the all-seeing Providence that was forever leaning out of the window of heaven to put things right? Was her sin the unforgivable sin? Maybe this punishment was not to last, she thought hopefully. She had missed only one of the bleeding periods that came to her every twenty-eight days. No, she told herself sternly, that was wishful thinking. She was well into what would be the second period. She couldn’t pretend that everything was all right when it was really all wrong.
She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them once more it was morning, and the hotel man was pounding on the door.
“Open the door, I got yer grub.”
Summer raised her head. The room swayed and her stomach turned over.
“Leave it in the hall,” she called.
“I’ll get yore chamber pot,” he insisted.
“I’ll leave it outside the door.” Her voice rose in agitation.
With relief she heard him set the tray on the floor and then his heavy footsteps plodding down the stairs. She leaned back weakly, and prayed that her stomach would not heave.
Bulldog rode into town shortly before noon. He was hot and tired and mildly agitated. Waiting around town wasn’t the thing he liked to do best. After he had waited for three or four days for Slater and Summer, he decided to ride up to Burleson to see a rancher who joined their cattle drive each year, thinking it would save him a trip later.
When he’d come into Hamilton almost a week ago, he had been surprised to discover the town had progressed to the extent it had its own new plank church and a skinny young fellow for a preacher. With the purpose of his trip accomplished, all he had to do was loaf about and wait for the wedding party to arrive.
Now, thinking he should check with the liveryman, he turned his horse toward the stable and inquired if anyone from McLean’s Keep had come to town.
“No, but Jesse Thurston brought that fancy buggy of Mrs. McLean’s in.” The liveryman looked expectantly, waiting for a sign to continue.
“I ain’t a carin’ ’bout Mrs. McLean or her goddam buggy,” Bulldog retorted. “I’m a waitin’ for Slater and his bride to come in to be married.”
The liveryman couldn’t believe that here was someone who hadn’t heard the big news and joyfully launched into the long story.
“It was one of the troopers what told me. Said Travis shot his ma. Said he come in a braggin’ he’d seen Slater McLean up in the hills, eyes already picked out by the crows, said Jesse dealed hisself in and the woman run betwixt ‘em. Tom Treloar, Jesse’s top man, shot the top of Travis’s head off. There’s more to it. Soldier said Slater was hurt, bad hurt. . . .” He looked at Bulldog slyly, because he was about to drop his heaviest load. “Did ya say that Slater was gonna wed up with that gal that come from the Piney Woods? Yeah? Wal . . . I wonder why she come to town with Jesse Thurston. He put ’er up at the hotel the other day.”
Bulldog almost swallowed the cud he was chewing. Without a word, he turned his horse and rode toward the main street. A feeling of importance for being the one to pass along such disturbing news caused the liveryman to hitch up his britches and grin as he watched Bulldog ride away.
At the hotel, he stomped into the lobby and bellowed:
“Graves! Where the hell you at?”
The man ambled in from the back room, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
“What you want? I let yore room out.”
“I ain’t a wantin’ yore goddam room. I’m a wantin’ to know if Miss Kuykendall is here.”
Graves looked uneasy. His eyes shifted toward the saloon door.
“Well, is she or ain’t she?” Bulldog grabbed the register and looked at it, forgetting momentarily he wouldn’t recognize her name if he saw it.
“Her name ain’t writ thar.”
“I ain’t carin’ if her name’s writ thar, ya dumb ass. Is she here?”
“It ain’t none of yore business who’s in my hotel.”
“I’m makin’ it my business, you shit-eatin’ bastard.”
Graves made a move to block the way to the stairs, but seeing the look on Bulldog’s face, shrugged and stepped aside. He’d done what he’d been told to do. It was a toss-up which one of them gents was the orneriest. It would be a good fight ta see . . . yes, a damn good sight ta see Jesse Thurston and Slater McLean a fightin’ over that lit’l bit of tail.
Summer was standing beside the window when Bulldog rode up to the hotel. She had forgotten he had come to town almost a week ago . . . come to be sure a preacher was in town, and if not to go on to Burleson or even to Georgetown to fetch one. At the sight of him, the sharp edge of terror caused her head to throb unbearably, but that was nothing at all compared to the chill surrounding her heart. She shrank against the wall, and stood there very still for what seemed an eternity.
She knew the heavy footsteps on the stairs were Bulldog’s even before he commenced pounding on the doors down the hall and calling her name. Someone opened the door and cursed him. The short, old, bowlegged cowhand spewed out a reply that caused Summer to quake. Finally, the door of her own room shook from the force of his knocking. She stood still, eyes closed, her mouth suddenly full of saliva. Time seemed to stand still while he pounded.
“Summer! Goddammit, girl, if you’re that, open the door.”
At last, at long last, he went away, and the breath left her tortured lungs. Hardly daring to move, she sidled to the side of the window and peeked out. He was turning his horse and riding down the street.
Tears she could no longer hold back came to her eyes, tears of fear and bewilderment. She sat on the edge of the bed, her weary head in her hands, and let the tears ooze between her slender fingers.
John Austin Kuykendall had never spent a day of his young life away from his sister. Th
e newness of it lasted until exactly noon of the second day, and then a lonely, scary feeling came over him. What if Summer had left him here and would never come back? She had always been there when he needed her, always encouraging him to try something new, always looked after him, fixed the things he liked to eat, sat with him when he wasn’t feeling well.
He sat with his back to the big cottonwood, the book about the Revolutionary War on his lap. Today, he couldn’t even get interested in Nathan Hale. He kept seeing his sister’s happy face when she came to tell them Slater would be all right and hearing her shouted words: “Shut up, shut up.” He couldn’t remember Summer ever saying words like that even when she was very mad. It had to be something to do with Mrs. McLean.
John Austin stared off into space, seeing nothing. He realized now that he hadn’t appreciated his sister. Sometimes, he hadn’t been very thoughtful of her. She had done most all the work, hadn’t nagged him as Sadie was doing now. That was something else he had noticed . . . Sadie. She was acting flighty, like something was bothering her. He suspected it was something to do with Summer’s going. He began to feel really scared when the thought entered his mind that maybe Summer would not come back, that she hadn’t been going to Mrs. McLean’s burying, after all. He tried to still his fears by thinking she wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t go away and leave him . . . unless she was in terrible trouble.
He carefully marked his place and closed the book. On his way to the corral, he left it on the bench on the veranda. If Summer was in trouble, the one person to fix it would be Slater. Slater liked her, liked her a lot, almost as much as he did. Hadn’t he said he was going to take care of them from now on, that they would all live together in the big house? He saddled Georgianna, climbed up on the fence, and jumped onto her back.
“Where you goin’, John Austin?” Sadie came into the yard. “Don’t you leave this place! Hear me? Come on back, I’ll play a game with you and Mary. John Austin. . . .”
Paying her no attention, he rode on toward the creek-crossing leading to the Keep.
Dorothy Garlock Page 24
