I shook my head, amazed she was thinking about herself when I had my whole life flowering in front of me. “You want to hear about the job? I’m going to be a scientist. He’s paying my way back east.”
“Good for you, Ned, you can clear up the situation with your mother while you’re at it. How long you going to be gone?”
“Forever, I guess.”
She stopped sewing. “Forever?” The froggy lines of her face drew down. “Don’t tell me you’re going to miss the wedding, Ned, it’s gonna be a real callathump.”
“Of course I won’t miss it. He wanted me right away, but I said I couldn’t go until after the wedding. He almost took back the offer too, but I stood firm.”
She nodded but still looked troubled. Frankly, I was thinking more of my own wedding than hers. Seeing Avelina’s cheerless face, however, reminded me I was leaving behind more than Nebraska proper. Avelina, Tilfert, even Tennessee: Would I ever hear from those friends again, or would they disappear as resolutely as my mother?
I shook off my fears. Of course I would stay in touch. I would be an important man in Connecticut. I would have status and money. I would not be trapped there as I was here. “I’ll come back on fossil expeditions in the summer. We’ll see each other every year,” I assured her, and she perked up. I shoveled in stew and spoke with my mouth full. “I gotta get going, need to tell Lill.”
Avelina nodded. “It’s for the best. She’s just not for you, Ned.”
I shook my head. “Oh, she’s for me, all right. I’m going to ask for her hand in marriage.”
Avelina dropped her sewing into her lap. “Are you addled? The last fiancé is feeding worms, Ned.”
“The last fiancé cheated on her.”
“Fer lesser crimes, she gonna charge your nose, take yer scalp?”
I glared at her. “I would think, as a woman, you’d understand.”
“Phaw! I understand plenty. That fiancé of hers was likely not worth the cotton he was stuffed with, but what’s someone worth what decides to kill a man?”
“She was young,” I argued.
“You’re young yerself, and she ain’t grown up yet.”
In the corral I dropped turnips and carrots into a cloth bag while Chin looked on. “These are for you, girl, as soon as we arrive—as soon as we both arrive, together—at Martine’s.” Chin corked her head, pummeling me with her felted nose. As soon as I pressed my backside to the buckboard seat, Chin was off, no need of direction or rein, leaving my hands free to compose a sonnet by which I would profess my love and ask Lill’s hand.
My thoughts were scattered, to say the least, and trying to write legibly in a wagon on a rutted track was close to impossible. Within ten minutes I decided I was no poet after all. The best I could do was a limerick, and even that didn’t go well.
There was a young man named Ned
and Lill he said he would wed,
then take her away
to write poems every day
and forget that she’d shot a man dead.
I laughed, then sobered. Lill would not think it humorous but a betrayal, and rightly so. I had pledged to leave her past behind. Her very happiness and her safety depended on it, and I would keep that pledge. Lill was more than a mistake she’d made, as big as that mistake might have been. I balled the limerick and put it in my pocket. I would simply ask her, Will you marry me?
Chin earned her lunch, stopping only when we reached Martine’s. Taking her tractability as a portent of the day’s success, I leapt joyfully from the wagon, dumped Chin’s vegetable payoff on the dirt, and took up Lill’s hand. “It is a pleasure to see you again.” She gave me a small hug and kiss, took my hand, and led me to the house.
The Martine house had been almost entirely framed. Mrs. Martine stood inside the skeleton house watching Mr. Martine swing his hammer from a rafter. I looked at them now as in-laws and wondered how it would be to have a father again. Mr. Martine, as if he’d read my thoughts, waved enthusiastic greeting from the roof, his sot’s floridity diminished or disguised with tan. Mrs. Martine looked, if not well, better. She smiled shortly and gestured to the wall. “The sitting room, Mr. Bayard. At some point we will offer you tea, but I’m afraid we are as yet indisposed.”
I was anxious to be alone with Lill and happy to assure Mrs. Martine I would anticipate a future cup but could wait for the environs to catch up to the lady’s admirable standards.
Mrs. Martine inclined her head and glanced at the pistol at my hip. “I trust we will not have a repeat of last visit’s gunplay, Mr. Bayard?”
I must have looked crestfallen. Lill took my arm. “We are going for a ride, Mother, a picnic. I did tell you.”
Mrs. Martine worried her fingers. “Don’t go far.” She looked me over. “And watch for wolves.”
Lill whistled for her palomino. I climbed into the wagon and protested. “We’ll drive.”
She laughed. “Bump over the prairie in a freight wagon? Unhitch Chin and ride your elephant, Omar.”
I gauged Chin’s mood. She had finished her vegetable kickshaw and dozed, head drooped to her knees. I desperately wished I’d kept turnips back for just this sort of emergency. “Chin’s a wagon horse, I’ve never ridden her. I don’t have a saddle or bit … and even if I did, I doubt she’d let me on.”
Lill swung up on her own horse bareback. “Grip the mane, it’s easy.”
I stood beside Chin, not wanting to disappoint Lill, either with the day or with me, certain one was inevitable. Chin woke to look at me with an obstreperous look in her eye. The mesa of her back formidably high. “She’s a mountain. I can’t possibly reach.”
Lill took hold of one of Chin’s ears, led her to a stump from which I could mount, and held her there with a sharp grip. I suspected Chin would let me on only to throw me when Lill released her sensitive hold. I flopped belly first onto the big beast, groaned a leg over, and held tight. Lill let go to remount her own horse and Chin acted as if I weren’t on her back at all, embarrassed, perhaps, at her Achilles’ ear being publicly pulled.
Chin’s back was so incredibly broad, my legs pokered from her sides like a five-year-old’s. My knuckles whitened around a fist of mane. I couldn’t possibly propose in this condition. Further, while Lill’s palomino trotted, Chin sailed along with the motion of an ocean freighter, making me somewhat queasy on the inland sea. Lill, unaware of my distress, spoke nonstop, reciting poetry she had written since we’d last seen each other, regaling me with her miserable attempt at ironing, and the barely edible meal she’d put on the table but cooked western style over an open flame.
“I am keeping a diary, Ned. At least when the occasion disappoints, the story is the beneficiary.”
I grunted agreement, jarring on Chin’s back some paces behind Lill, “As—you—said. Grit.”
After what seemed like ten miles, she pulled her palomino up, announcing, “Perfect.” Lill slipped off her horse. I tumbled thankfully from Chin, thighs chafed, feeling permanently bandy-legged.
A vast settlement of prairie dogs stretched before us, neat mounds and winding avenues, mown and tidy as any eastern burg. The gopher-like animals sat on their hind legs, sentinels on their roofs, chirping in consternation. I wondered if they had seen the like of us before.
“Lill.” I took her hand. “I have something to discuss with you.”
She grinned at me. “Lovely.” Then dropped to her belly and patted the ground beside her.
I settled myself alongside and Lill began the colony’s eradication.
I could not begin my romantic essay with a backdrop of gopher potting. They were timid things, startling with a jerk of the tail, somersaulting into their holes. Tennessee told me the Indians called the animals wish-ton-wish, after their soft cries. Chin in hand, I watched one after the other recoil and die, trying to quell the dolorous mood the fallen dogs put me in. Lill finally stopped and looked at me askance. “Didn’t you practice? No one will come if only India can shoot.”
�
��Softhearted, I guess.”
Her face grew tender and she leaned over and kissed my cheek for the second time—“That is so sweet”—then continued to lay prairie dogs low. “Have you practiced? I talked to one of the scouts at the fort. He cuts a fine figure and says he is a crack shot.”
I felt a surge of jealousy. Was she replacing me?
She fired again. “He is taking a western show on the road, Ned, and we must be competitive.”
Relieved at the we, I interrupted her next salvo. “Lill, I’ve been offered a job.”
She stopped. “A job?”
“By the most famous man in all of paleontology, head of the Peabody Museum himself, Wallace Quillan. He’s offered to train me as a scientist.”
Lill squinted down her barrel but didn’t shoot, her face unreadable. “That’s wonderful, Ned.” She held the gun still for so long I was uncomfortable. Finally she put the gun down and fixed a grin on her face. “And how does this bode for Omar and India?”
I was certain that prestigious employment trumped theatrical fantasy. Now looking at her crestfallen demeanor, I wasn’t so sure. “This will be better than Omar and India, Lill.” I fiddled with the walnut handle of my gun. “Professor Quillan wants me to go to New Haven with him.”
She looked shocked. “Right away?”
“No, not right away. I have some time left.”
She got to her feet slowly. “Some time. Well, that’s good, at least there’s some time.” She looked around her as if she were lost and searching for a landmark. “Let’s ride.”
I had to talk to her. “Let’s walk.”
We strode along for some time, silently. I could see she was upset, but I could not make out if she was angry, mournful, or heartbroken … and I was afraid to say the wrong thing because of it.
Finally she turned to me. “Edward Turrentine Bayard, you promised me Omar. I won’t have you throw away what we have together. What job is so important to take you away?”
“It is not only a job but an education. Professor Quillan has promised I will attend Yale University. It’s an astounding opportunity, a chance to regain all I’ve lost, my name, my fortune, my honor, a promise for a real future.”
She sighed. “Oh, Ned.” Our hands brushed. I took her hand, her palm cool, mine hot and sweating. My heart hammered in my ears.
She twined her fingers with mine. “I was fortunate to find you, Ned. I knew it the first I saw you, a callow begrimed Don Quixote on his horse. To lose you now …” I began to protest. Lill put her finger to my lips. “Such is the way of the world. But I insist on your loyalty, Edward Turrentine Bayard the Third.”
I again tried to speak but she held a staying hand and continued.
“No matter what happens, wherever we find ourselves, we will care for each other, defend each other, the remainder of our days.”
I pulled my hand through my hair, trying to parse her declaration. Lill looked rapt. I could see Nebraska in her limpid eyes. She blinked slowly. “Do you agree?”
“I do,” I croaked.
She tucked her hand in my arm and leaned her head on my shoulder. I wasn’t at all sure if I had been turned down or accepted, or even if I had asked. Had I made my intentions clear? I cleared my throat to spell it out, but Lill straightened abruptly. She took her hand from my arm and shaded her eyes. She pointed. “Horseman.”
In the distance, the peg of a solitary rider. We watched the apparition’s approach for some minutes, straining to distinguish the rider as friend or foe, but the heat waves dancing over the grass contorted the image so that it was impossible. The rider came on. I put my hand on my pistol and wished Lill had not murdered so many of the prairie dogs. A mean price for craven gopher killing was to die for want of defensive ammunition.
Lill waved. “Halloooo!”
I stopped her hand. “Don’t draw attention!”
She slapped me away. “He’s a white man, Ned, don’t be silly.”
The horseman pulled out of a shimmer. He was a big man with a chiseled countenance, swathed in buckskin and astride a sleek ebony horse. I knew him from the fort: not someone I wanted as a third when courting. When he swept off his wide-brimmed Montana hat, Lill dimpled like all get out.
“Hello, Buck,” I said.
He gazed at Lill even while addressing me. “If it isn’t Lord Turpentine.”
I halfheartedly introduced them. “Lill Martine, Buck Mason.”
Lill lowered her eyes a bit, her lashes resting on pale cheeks. “Mr. Mason and I have met.”
I narrowed my eyes. I should have guessed the fine figure of a scout Lill referred to was Buck Mason.
Lill demurred. “But he likely doesn’t recall.”
Buck showed canines like wolf fangs. “On the contrary. That meeting was a flower in the desert of my life.”
“What a distressingly dull life you must lead then, sir,” Lill said.
“I can imagine ways to enliven it.”
“Then you must.” Lill seemed to remember I stood beside her and took my arm. “Ned and I have been adventuring. He is a marksman to be reckoned with and hardly picked up a gun a fortnight ago.”
Buck rested gloved hands on the pommel of his saddle. “Ned, I imagine, has many hidden talents.”
I ignored the emphasis on hidden and nodded toward Lill. “Miss Martine puts what little talent I have to shame.”
Lill thanked me with a charming little curtsy, then addressed Buck again. “I’ve heard, Mr. Mason, that you are no slouch with a firearm yourself.” Buck inclined his head and Lill laughed. “Now that we have thrashed each other with compliment, shall we show our cards?”
This was not at all how I had hoped things would go; so far from it, in fact, I felt dizzy. I would have chosen anyone other than Mason to ride up and interrupt my proposal. And now to have to shoot against him. I would have more of a chance at gluing feathers to my pants and vying for Lill like a peacock. From horseback, Buck could shoot the heads from prairie hens as they ran through the grass.
Buck dismounted, took a bandanna from his saddlebag, and stretched it between two juniper sticks stuck into the ground at some distance.
The three of us eyed the flag. I was somewhat confident I wouldn’t embarrass myself with a miss. Still, I wasn’t eager to begin. I extended a courtesy. “Ladies first.”
Without hesitation, Lill shot a hole through the cloth.
Buck and I took turns offering the next turn to the other until Buck acquiesced. He looked steadfastly through the sights of his gun toward the red flag. I grew hopeful at his delay. Perhaps he wasn’t the marksman he was reputed to be; he would be humiliated, leave, and I could finish my golden business.
He still didn’t shoot. I smiled broadly at Lill. “Buck, you going to shoot or sleep?”
Buck put up a hand to silence me, spoke quietly. “We have company.”
I scanned the grassland. Sure enough, a span of horsemen milled in an eerie puddle on the horizon and then individuated into six riders as they drew closer.
“Sioux. It’s trouble.”
I felt suddenly sick. Young Sioux men roamed the Platte River country, meting out retribution for land and lives taken, broken treaties, and white greed. Every terrifying Sioux story that had circulated and inflated at the fort now ran through my head. Lill looked not alarmed at all, imagining, I supposed that any Indian would be Joe and Jim, ready to admire her marksmanship and trade for coffee. She demanded, “How do you know they’re looking for trouble? Maybe they’re just traveling through.”
“Painted. Army horses tethered behind. Somebody’s come out on the dead end of the stick.”
She looked a little more alarmed but still shrugged. “Maybe they traded, bought them.”
Buck looked at the Indians again, judging the distance. “If we’re lucky, they’ve gone some distance and are sapped.” He strode to his horse and holstered his rifle. “Ride hell for leather, maybe they won’t follow.”
Lill, finally catching the dread in Buck�
�s voice, swung onto her horse with haste.
Buck looked at me. I croaked, “I might need some help onto my horse.”
Buck shoved me up on Chin, then swept onto his own mount. Lill was already flying for home; Buck thundered behind.
Chin plodded reluctantly.
I quickly lathered into panic. “Chin, go! Go! Yaaaaaaaaaw! Go! Chin!” I kicked her ribs, I slapped her neck, I pleaded. “Please, Chin, for the love of your own skin, you’ve got to hie! Lose me and who will you talk to?” She continued her easy plod. I kicked; I was practically jumping up and down on her back; I shouted. “All right, you miserable evolutionary blunder! Atavistic pile of shit! Put me through all the humiliation you want, but if you get me killed I’m going to pull every last one of your teeth, how about that?” Chin stepped up from plod to slow lope.
Growing ever more distant, Buck looked behind, then wheeled his horse. When he was close enough to be heard he shouted, “Get a move on!”
“Tell the horse!”
Buck circled back and swung leather at Chin’s backside with a whistling thwack. Chin got the message and lunged into a gallop. Buck flew ahead; Chin caught up, then passed with her ten-foot stride.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t on her. Within four of Chin’s now-spirited strides, I’d lost my feeble grip on her mane, slid sideways off her pumping flank, caught a rear hoof in the chest, and landed on my head in the prairie dirt, rendering me insensible.
When the stars cleared, six Indians on horseback, three with rifles, were shouting at me. I put up my hands as though involved in a burglary. An Indian with a lance prodded me, piercing the skin on my hammering chest. With one look at the roses blooming on my blouse, I jumped to my feet, blacked out, dropping like a sack of potatoes.
When the dark cleared again, only one Indian was mounted, while four Indians bent over me as though I were a clockwork curiosity. I was prodded again, to see, I imagine, if I would repeat the performance. I gritted my teeth and this time sat up slowly, waiting for the whirling to slow. Another few jabs and one of them spoke to me. I shook my head. “I only speak English.” A trickle of blood tickled my stomach. Another Indian brandished his knife at my face, and I almost fainted with the fear he’d take my nose or eyes. Instead, he used his knife to lift the glasses from my nose as if he were disgusted to touch me, then put the glasses on and strutted around repeating, “Cheeekin, tobaccy, moove out, it is time to be hungry,” to the delight of the others. They suddenly straightened, and the one wearing my glasses flung them to the ground.
Turpentine Page 5
