Veins of Gold

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  June 27

  Dear Gentry,

  What fantastic news! And such a surprise! Congratulations! I remember the man. Quiet fellow, stick pull. Not the blonde one, right? Winn? I really must hear the story of this change of heart. Of course I’ll help you with the wedding! You could get married right here in American Fork by Bishop Cowls. Is there a fabric shop in Dry Creek? I don’t think there is. Please come to American Fork and we’ll see to a dress. And don’t start with me, Gentry Sue. I’m talking to Willard about budgeting some fabric, but if it doesn’t work out then we’ll repurpose mine. I still have it! And we’re close to the same size, aren’t we? Or we were, before these babies came along. Come to American Fork, and we’ll get everything in order.

  Caleb is so excited! I don’t think he completely understands you’re getting married, but I’m explaining it to him. His big sister, married! He’ll be an uncle soon enough, and at two years old! How fun this will all be. Oh, and Carolyn sends her well-wishes! So do all the kids, minus Frederick. You know how he’s been lately. Moody. He’ll grow out of it, I’m sure.

  Oh, of course! Please, please tell Rooster that Willard’s found a place for him! He can start work in two weeks’ time. Willard’s got a room he can share with two other boys while they get things started, and they can finalize the pay after that—

  Gentry lowered the letter. A place for Rooster? Two weeks’ time? Shared room? Gentry skimmed the rest of the letter, seeking some answer, but there was only an invitation to attend church should she stay for the weekend. Pinching the parchment, Gentry rushed out the door and toward the stable where Pearl was brushing down Bounder.

  “Pearl, do you know anything about Rooster taking another job?”

  Pearl’s fair brows drew together. “Did the mill spot open up?”

  Gentry shook her head. Leaning against a post of the stable, she reread the letter. Pearl finished with Bounder and tried to read over Gentry’s shoulder, so she just handed her sister the note in full and walked back to the house. She could go to Hoss’s and find Rooster—but he would be home in a few hours, and Hoss . . .

  She didn’t finish the thought. She went into the house, paced to the soaking laundry and back, then went outside to check on the crops.

  Pearl jogged to her, the letter bouncing with each step. “Maybe he’s converting.”

  “He’s not converting.” Crouching, she pulled some weeds, then some more. “We’ll just have to wait. Did you finish the writing assignment I gave you?”

  “I lost it.”

  “Then copy that letter.” She ripped a weed from the soil. “Use the back of the envelope; we’re out of chalk.”

  After accumulating sore legs from the garden and hanging the laundry to dry, Gentry boiled half a head of cabbage and paced, waiting for her brother’s return. She left the door open to better see the road to Hoss’s home, and when Rooster appeared on it, she snatched the letter and ran out to meet him.

  “Ryan Rooster Abrams!” she called as she ran, stopping a pace in front of him. She shoved the letter into his chest. “What is this?”

  Brow cocked, Rooster took the crinkled letter and looked it over. “Wedding plans?” he guessed.

  Gentry pointed to the second to last paragraph. “This. What does Hannah mean?”

  Rooster’s gaze dropped as he read. His lips parted into a smile, then a grin. Yipping like a dog, he hugged Gentry and spun her around, losing the letter between them. “This is great!” he shouted, laughing, and the sound both startled and warmed Gentry. How long had it been since her brother had laughed?

  Gentry found her feet. “What? What?”

  “The printing press!” He grabbed his hat and waved it over his head. “Willard set it up last month. I mentioned something about it.”

  Gentry’s eyes bugged, and her blood buzzed within her veins. “You did not.”

  “I didn’t want to say much.” He searched for the letter and found it on the ground. He snatched it and read it over once more. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

  Gentry shook her head. “You’re going . . . to work for Willard Hinkle? In Salt Lake City?”

  “Comes with room and board, see?” He held out the letter as though Gentry hadn’t already memorized it. “I’d come home a weekend or two a month. This is perfect!”

  Gentry’s shoulders slumped. “So . . . you’re leaving?”

  Her brother blinked. “Gentry, the job pays eight dollars a week, and that’s just for start. If the paper takes off, it could be more. Up to twelve, even.”

  Gentry’s jaw hung.

  “There’s a demand for it, and more and more people are moving out west,” he explained. “Willard has a whole network planned.”

  Mouth dry, Gentry shook her head. “You’re joking.”

  Rooster grabbed a stray piece of hair framing Gentry’s face and tugged on it. “What do you think I’ve been doing all summer?” His face grew serious, and for once he looked more like their mother than their father. “You’re just like Ma, you know. Taking too much on yourself. Did you really think I was going to sit by and watch us starve? When Hoss took us to Salt Lake, I was asking around then too, and at the bonfire in American Fork, but nothing was paying—are you all right?”

  The image of her brother blurred, and Gentry blinked it clear again. “You’ve been . . . you’ve been . . .”

  Lowering the letter, Rooster put his arms around Gentry again, around her elbows, and rested his chin on her shoulder. “We’re not little kids, Gen,” he said, soft. “We’re capable, me and Pearl both. When are you going to learn to depend on us? Maybe Pa left, but we’re real family. We’re staying, always.”

  Gentry blinked rapidly to keep her eyes dry. She took in a deep breath and let it out, a laugh catching its end. Pulling back, she said, “The mortgage, it has late fees . . .”

  “We’ll pay it off.” His smile widened. “Or sell it.”

  “S-sell?” Gentry repeated. “But Pa built this house—”

  “Come on, Gen.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t you want to live around people? Don’t you want to leave the bad memories behind? We don’t have to, of course, and we gotta ask Pearl, but we could move to Salt Lake City. Maybe American Fork; be closer to work and to Caleb.”

  She nodded slowly, shivers running up and down her arms. “Perhaps. Perhaps we could.”

  Rooster’s hand moved up to her head, and he rubbed her scalp as though she were the younger sibling, then elbowed her back toward the house. Pearl came out, shielding her eyes from the sun, looking toward them.

  “What did he say?” she shouted.

  Gentry smiled—a true, genuine smile—and snatched her brother’s hand. “You tell it. It’s your good news.”

  “It’s our good news,” he countered as Gentry jerked him forward, breaking into a run. She ran, and she laughed, and for once she ate her meager supper without the slightest hint of sickness.

  Hoss answered the door on Rooster’s last day of work and leaned against the frame, seeming unsurprised to see Gentry there. Gentry opened her mouth to speak, but Hoss beat her to it.

  “He’s going to Salt Lake City tomorrow,” he said.

  Gentry pressed her lips together and nodded. Hannah’s letter was two weeks old now. Two more weeks of Rooster’s farmhand wages, two weeks to prepare him for the trip north. Two weeks to make the decision to sell the land back to the bank so, in six weeks’ time, Gentry and Pearl would go to Salt Lake City too.

  Two weeks for Gentry to pry her white-knuckled fingers off her self-declared responsibilities. Two weeks to come to the decision to break off the brief engagement with the kindest man in Dry Creek. Two weeks to forget Winn, who had been gone for two and a half.

  He knew, of course. Hoss. She saw it in his eyes, in his posture. In the way he said, “When a woman takes so long to give a man an answer, he starts to figure it out on his own.”

  Gentry wrung her index finger in her fist. “I’m sorry, Hoss.” She hadn�
�t meant to do this on his doorstep. She wanted it to be more proper—as proper as one could be, breaking a man’s heart. “I do care for you, but with all that’s happened . . . I need to do what’s best for our family. Keep what’s left together.”

  “You all could stay here,” he offered, the words weak.

  She smiled at him. “Next time you’re in Salt Lake City . . .”

  He nodded. “I’ll come knocking.”

  It shouldn’t have been as easy of a conversation as it was, Gentry thought as she walked back to her father’s house. She shouldn’t have been forgiven so easily. In the end, I don’t deserve someone like Hoss.

  A shadow passed overhead—a passing seagull. Gentry’s heart leapt as her fingers reached for the necklace already pressed against her collar. Of course, the bird had no shimmer to its feathers. God had unleashed a vigorous rain on the territory two days ago, encouraging the gulls to venture away from the lake. None remembered their magic.

  She sighed, stepped around a tumbleweed. Her stomach had settled, and now that she’d spoken to Hoss, her nerves were calm as well. But her chest ached. How odd it was, that a broken heart would actually feel like one.

  She’d hoped to forget Winn, to get over him just like the boys she’d fancied back in Virginia. But time didn’t heal her foolish heart. It infected it, and each passing hour made it ache that much more. She wouldn’t call herself foolish—had Rooster not had success with work, Hoss would have been the right choice, even if Gentry didn’t want him to be. Hoss had been her only option.

  Her step slowed, stopped, and she looked back over her shoulder, the Howland farm now just a blur behind her. Her only option. Wasn’t he?

  Trust me.

  Do you trust me?

  You’re safe, trust me.

  Gentry pinched her necklace between her thumb and forefinger. How many times had Winn told her to trust him? Didn’t she?

  Her last words to him ran through her memory and chilled her. What if I had? she thought. What if I had trusted him?

  What if she had trusted Rooster? Pearl? Hannah? Hannah had scolded her once for being prideful. Rooster had chided her for thinking she had to save them all on her own.

  Her knees weakened and she swayed, but she caught herself before tumbling. She never trusted any of them, did she? Even her own instincts. When Pa left, she had known where he was really going, hadn’t she?

  Her shoulders knotted, and she forced herself to walk. “I made the wrong choice,” she whispered, looking into the sky until the sun made her eyes water. Pretending it was the sun that made her eyes water.

  I made the wrong choice.

  Though Rooster was usually absent most of the day, the house felt strange without his presence in it. Though there was little threat to be had in Dry Creek, Gentry found herself double-checking the door lock at night. She thought to pull apart one of the window boxes just to board up the glassless window in Winn’s magic-made wall, but she’d never be able to drive nails into its brick-like surface.

  The second bed was free, but Gentry and Pearl still shared theirs. Food stretched a little farther, and nine days after Rooster arrived in Salt Lake City, he sent a letter home that had eight dollars in it, along with a note about how it was in the city and how everyone thought he was Mormon.

  That night Gentry made her ma’s recipe for velvet chicken soup—a dish she hadn’t prepared since the night Winn stayed for supper. It filled Gentry’s belly well but didn’t taste the way it should, the way she remembered it tasting. It didn’t relieve the pressure beneath her ribs or the visions of gold that laced her dreams.

  Laundry became an easier task now that it was just her and Pearl and neither of them worked in dirt as often as Rooster had. The planned move meant the crops would be left behind, so they no longer needed tending. With so much spare time, Pearl raced Bounder about in the evenings and explored the desert that led to the Oquirrhs. Gentry planned for the move and practiced fiddling—Hoss still wouldn’t take the beautiful gift back. Even when she played a cheery song, its notes were laced with guilt. When she could tolerate the sensation no longer, she used the last pages in Pa’s ledger to write letters to Rooster and Winn. Of course, she couldn’t mail the latter.

  Just under four weeks before the move to Salt Lake City, in the morning while Gentry mucked Bounder’s stall, she heard the faintest cry of a seagull. Starting, she dropped the pitchfork and turned, searching for the source. She saw nothing.

  “One moment, girl.” She rubbed Bounder’s nose before venturing out of the stable. No recent rains, but it wouldn’t be the first time she heard the ghostly sound of Winn. Still, her pulse quickened, and she searched the landscape for any glimmer of wild magic.

  She found the creature on the back of the stable, perched on the corner. It took off just as quickly, but Gentry thought, maybe, she saw a shimmer at the tip of its wing.

  She held her breath, watching the white and gray bird until it grew too small to see. It could have been just a trick of the morning sun or a blur from flapping, but Gentry dared to hope. Could the bird be one of Winn’s? Could he have forgiven her?

  “And why would he?” she asked herself, punctuating the words with a sigh. She hadn’t apologized. As far as Winn knew, she had already wed Hoss. And better for him to believe that too. Were his arms ever to open to her again, how would she explain that she wanted him for him, and not because Rooster’s prospects had changed their fortunes?

  She returned to mucking the stall, her thoughts gliding on the breeze left by the seagull’s wings. How could she tell him? Even if Winn ever did decide to visit Dry Creek, she wouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t know where to find her if he cared to look. She couldn’t post him a letter. She could hardly ride west and hope to stumble upon the Hagree and leave a message with them, praying Winn might fly by again and receive it. Gentry had been a stupid and self-centered woman, and now she had to pay the price.

  Gentry’s pitchfork stilled. She stared at the fresh shavings half scattered in Bounder’s stall.

  The price.

  She touched her necklace.

  Wild magic. It’s always here, if you’re in the right place.

  Gentry might be useless when it came to protecting her loved ones from the throes of the mine, but perhaps she could do this.

  She hurried to the house, where Pearl drew on her slate. Poking her head into the front room, she said, “Pearl? I’m going on a walk. Will you be all right?”

  Pearl nodded, focused on her work.

  Closing the door, Gentry focused on the Oquirrh Mountains. She saw nothing magical about them now, but when wild magic did cross her vision, it was almost always near them. Winn had warned her about feeding gold to the ethereal creatures, but if they helped her, it would be worth the risk.

  So she walked. She didn’t ride; she didn’t want to risk missing something. She walked away from the house, away from the invisible border of Dry Creek, until the sagebrush thickened and the soil roughened. Night beckoned magical things more than day did, but Gentry certainly wouldn’t be able to see where she was going in the dark, not to mention the chance of running into something far more harmful than an earthy spirit. She studied the branches of each sagebrush and tree she passed, studied a mouse as it scurried across her path and the flight of a bee searching for its next flower. She stopped where her self-made path grew rocky and scanned the area, searching, hoping. Seeing nothing, she changed course. It wouldn’t be hard to get back home with such low and sparse vegetation around her. Nothing to block her view of town, but perhaps that was the problem. She was too close to town. She kept climbing, the sun shifting slowly with her, as if trying to get a better look at where she was headed.

  She reached a small copse of trees, studying their leaves to see if any shimmered like the branches at the Hagree camp did. Wiping sweat from her forehead, she sought out birdsong and examined wrens, but their feathers were free of magical glow. Her legs cramped as she trudged into her second hour of hiking, but
on she searched, wandering closer to the mountains and up a foothill.

  Had she not developed such an aversion to the creatures, she might not have noticed the black insect the length of her thumb sitting beside a patch of wild grass, its long legs crooked and ready to jump, its dark body reflecting the now afternoon sunlight. Sunlight that morphed into a halo surrounding it.

  Gentry held her breath and took a few steps away from the bug, not wishing to startle it. Crouching, she watched the creature, its antennae twitching, mandibles sputtering around a blade of grass. Magic, and not wild.

  It’s bribery and imagination, Winn’s voice whispered in her memory. They hear your thoughts, when you want them to.

  Would this creature listen to her?

  Hello, Gentry tried, attempting to think the word loudly. Can you hear me?

  The locust continued on as normal.

  “Hello,” she tried again. “Little locust, can you help me?”

  The bug nibbled its lunch.

  “You said anyone could do it, didn’t you?” she whispered, her heart beating out the letters of Winn’s name. With fingers tipped with cold, she unclasped the necklace from around her neck and stretched her arm forward, letting the locket dangle.

  The locust’s antennae stilled. In that moment Gentry knew. It was listening.

  The ability to truly listen creates a bond stronger than gold.

  Gentry closed her eyes and breathed slowly, in and out. She tried to focus on the insect before her. Tried to wash away the memories of its kind destroying her garden. She listened, hearing her own pulse and the soft rustle of sagebrush as a warm breeze stirred.

  Opening her eyes, Gentry studied the locust. She quelled her disgust and tried to find beauty in its dark form. She listened, but heard nothing. She prayed the bug would at least notice the effort.

  “If you understand me, I’ll make a trade.” She pinched the chain hard between her fingers. She thought of Winn, of his face, his hair, his clothes. His birds and his bird house. “Winn Maheux.” Gentry enunciated each syllable. “I need to find him.”