by Moonwitch
With Trevor, too, she had changed. Several times during June he rode out to visit her, to invite her to dinner or to some affair or other at the Coreville Theater Hall . . . and each time she gently, regretfully refused. Her excuse had been that she needed to stay near home, in case someone needed her. That someone was Hope.
On the Fourth of July, however, she delighted him by accepting an invitation to a performance of skits and ribaldries, as the program promised, by a troupe of traveling actors .
Beforehand there would be an outdoor dinner in front of the refurbished and garishly painted barn; afterward, for those young folks who were still awake, a display of colored rockets brought directly, so Reverend Campbell said, from the mysterious empire of China. Alex and Hope were going to stay at home, Alex successfully, though hurriedly, resisting Hope's pleas that she wasn't a cripple. Most of the others, however, were going into town , and the procession that swung onto Main Street just before dusk consisted of five buckboards and three carriages carrying virtually every one of the families, and at least half the hands, who lived and worked on the reaches of Four Aces.
Sophie, standing on the balcony that overlooked Main Street, lined her "children" up to wave at the impromptu parade, as men and women dressed in their Sunday best, children already dusty from staying out of trouble, and a few men with hastily fetched instruments, joined the line of march. Flags were flown from porches and doorways , the church bells tolled, and when Trevor leaped from the hotel porch-covered with bunting Nate had saved from the end of the War Between the States--onto the front seat of the wagon Amanda was driving, he looked around him in amazement.
"Is it always like this?" he asked, nearly shouting to be heard over the raucous, good-natured laughter. .
Amanda shook her head, grinning. The grin grew even broader when she saw the expression on his face as his gaze caught what she was wearing. She knew he'd assume she'd be in one of her simple, beauty-enriched gowns, and the surprise that flashed across his eyes was worth all her fears of offending him. Thanks to some advice from Sam and fast needlework from Fae, she had resurrected an outfit she had not worn since she had left the Mississippi: a flowing tunic of white deerskin fringed from shoulder to wrist, across the chest and around the hem. Sunbright colors embroidered deer, eagles, and cougar on her breasts and back, and a necklace of silver circlets hung around her neck. Her skirt was the same, and her high boots seemed cowered with gems that had their birth in spring dreams. Her hair was center-parted, and her headband was fashioned of leather with silver studs.
She knew that she presented a curious figure, one that was at once striking and uneasy. There were many in Goreville who still resented the troubles the Plains Indians had caused them, and the family losses they had inflicted; yet they also knew who and what Amanda was, and once their initial surprise was over, she could feel waves of reluctant admiration sweeping over her.
The gamble had been taken and had been won.
Now all that remained was a definition of the stakes.
Since early afternoon the Theater Hall had been surrounded by children and adults in varying numbers immersed in games either invented on the spot or guided by Reverend Campbell. No one bothered to begin to estimate how much food had been consumed, how much beer and ale had been drunk, nor did anyone keep track of the scrapes, the bruises, the lacerations and bumps that had been inflicted by one means or another. There was no pain; there was too much joy. And the arrival of the groups from Four Aces and the other farms and ranches swelled the crowd to a size not seen since the first steaming locomotive had pulled into the station.
Not only was it the 106th birthday of the country; it was also the fiftieth anniversary of the day Daniel Lee Core had ridden across the flatlands and decided that this would be his home, for himself and his family. He had set up a trading post to deal with the Indians, had written more letters than anyone could possibly count to lure the railroad to a land he'd promised would bring them profit, and boasted that he was one of the first men in creation to settle permanently in Wyoming.
There were no Cores left in the town, however. His wife had died of pneumonia after their thirteenth winter, and his three sons, all of them coming home after the war had finally ended, had later been killed in a riverboat explosion.
It was, upon reflection, a sobering testimony to the character of the townspeople, that they had continued after their leader had died-of a broken heart, it was said, when word of his sons' deaths had reached him a month late. The handful who had remained did not surrender to the melancholy of their founder. They strove, they fought, and they celebrated every year, not only as a memorial to Daniel Core and his ill-fated family, but also as a reassurance that they would continue.
Amanda listened to the town's history being recited by Mayor Kurtz standing on a makeshift platform festooned with bunting, and she squirmed as she stood in the center of the audience. Though a steady, low northern breeze blew across the open space on the far side of town, the press of bodies had raised the temperature until it seemed as if the sun had not bothered to set. Kurtz, however, knew his people and he knew their attentions' limitations. He kept his speech short, his platitudes for God and country brief, and his praise for Coreville lavish and unstinting. And when he took a brief and sudden bow to mark the end of his moment-with a sly and witty reference to the coming November's mayoral elections--the applause was loud, the cheering deafening, and the crowd's dispersal a matter of seconds.
Trevor immediately took Amanda's arm and led her away, unprotesting, behind the structure that had once been a barn to a makeshift field where determined men and boys, prancing and preening in front of an admiring throng of women, attempted to finish their game of baseball before it grew too dark.
"It's unbelievable," she remarked as they moved on toward a line of poplars a hundred yards away.
"What?"
She looked back over her shoulder at the game. "That," she said. "A silly game that's bound to give Bill Manley at least one broken arm and a few cracked heads, and not a hundred miles from here there are still a few of Sitting Bull' s people sniping at miners and taking scalps when they can. It's like we're in a different world."
"We are, Amanda, " he said. "Times change. The talk in Denver is less about the Sioux and the Cheyenne these days than the word from down south. Apaches boiling out of the mountains to take forts and scalps." He shrugged. "People don't change, Amanda. People don't change. "
She would have liked to contradict him, but she did not want this day to be spoiled by arguments and by insinuations. Instead she hugged his arm tightly and let him take her into the deepening shadows, turn her around, and kiss her lightly on the lips.
"Has a woman ever been a chief of your people?" he asked her as he embraced her.
"I doubt it," she said into his chest.
"Should have been. You, for example. "
She laughed. Beyond the hall she could hear the stirrings of music. Fiddles and drums, horns and fifes. They sparked stars into the night sky and brought out the moon.
"This is a special day," he told her after they had kissed again.
"Oh?"
He grinned and released her, sensing that while she would grant him her lips, all else was in abeyance until she was ready. "Yep . " He reached into his waistcoat and pulled out a delicately engraved gold watch. Thumbing back the lid, he frowned up at the moon. "About two hours from now, my employer will be returning to Coreville. For good, he says. "
She stepped back from him quickly. His face, masked by swaying shadow, was unreadable. But there had been something in the tone of his voice that she could not place; it was neither pleasure nor irritation, but somewhere in the region between.
"You mean, I'm actually going to get to see him?"
He looked surprised. "You mean, you never have?"
She shook her head. "Don't look so astonished. I have work to do, you know. I can't spend all my time looking for strangers."
He shrugged.
"We'd better go back," he said; and before she could respond, he'd cupped her elbow and was leading her away.
She felt, then, an odd sense of disappointment. Though she would not have allowed him to go beyond the simple kissing, she had thought she'd known him better, had thought he would have at least made an effort to . . . She sighed to herself. Wrong again, Amanda; those "powers" are still gone.
The evening's entertainment, however, prevented her from feeling too sorry for herself. The music was spritely, the laughter contagious, and it wasn't long before she was sitting on a hardwood bench set in front of the hall with a few hundred others, waiting for the show. Lights had been strung on poles leading from the double doors in the building, and the platform Mayor Kurtz had used for his Fourth of July speech had been moved to the foot of the steps. She was glad they did not have to go inside. Not only wouldn't there have been enough room for everyone, but the heat would have been stifling, the need to leave overwhelming. As it was, the wind had dropped to a feathered breeze, and no one could have asked for more comfortable surroundings beneath the dome of the stars.
She was sitting with Grace and Abe Burns on_ her left, Fae and Bert Willard on her right. Trevor, after taking her through several dances in a manner she thought curiously preoccupied and mechanical, had left to meet Ephraim Wilder, promising that he would return as soon as the man was either ready to join his new home or was settled down for the night.
"Don't hold much on actors ," Bert was saying. "Crooks, most o'them."
"And a little odd," Abe growled and grunted when Grace put an elbow in his side.
"The two of you could use a little education," Grace told them. "It wouldn't hurt to see how the other half lives ."
"My half does just fine ," Bert said and gave Fae's thigh a sudden squeeze. Fae slapped his shoulder, and Abe laughed, his great bald head thrown back until Grace silenced him with a withering glare .
Amanda, however, did not listen to the good-natured banter nor the rustlings of the rest of the audience as they waited for the performance. She was trying without success to find Doug Mitchell. She had not seen him when they'd ridden through town, nor was he in evidence anywhere on the grounds of the hall. It had not occurred to her that she wanted to see him, in fact, until Trevor had first kissed her. That, like his dancing, was preoccupied and stilted, and while she was willing to grant him a certain degree of nerves because his new employer was arriving, it did not excuse the lack of feeling she had sensed. She could not even find a small part of his mind given over to her, and it stung.
She shifted uncomfortably.
A small boy raced across the makeshift stage, chased by an exasperated mother wielding a threatening left hand. The audience laughed uproariously, and such encouragement brought several other children out of the shadows to prance, to mime, to make faces, until the white-maned giant named Angus Campbell stomped onto the platform and silenced them all with a blank stare.
Fae wished aloud Alex and Hope could have come, voiced her opinion that Hope was spoiling Bess beyond control.
Grace snapped a retort .
Amanda heard nothing. Instead, acting on impulse, she rose from her place and, saying nothing to the others beyond a brief shake of her head, apologized her way to the end of the row and hurried up the aisle, threaded her way through the horses, wagons, and carriages, and stood in the middle of the road, staring down at the town.
Lights broke through the darkness that had enveloped the buildings. The saloons were still open, and several lamps burned in the windows of nearby houses. A quick twenty minute walk would take her to the first home, she thought . . .and thought no further. She did not really know why she had left the hall behind, did not know who it was she was looking for-Doug or Ephraim Wilder. She had been acutely aware as she'd walked past the last rows that Harley and Olivia were sitting there, watching her. But she had not even glanced at them; in fact, if it were possible, she had stiffened her back even more and practically glided over the hard ground and out of the light.
Earlier that day she had overheard someone calling her a princess. She had smiled then, and had turned around and saw a small boy and a taller girl standing beside a scrawny workhorse. They appeared too shy to talk to her directly, so she had walked over to them-feeling Trevor's bemused stare following-and bent down to the children.
"Are you new?" she asked them.
The boy had said nothing, only ducked to hide behind the girl's plain but clean skirts. The girl herself had returned her gaze frankly.
"Are you an Indian?"
Amanda nodded.
The boy poked his head around on the girl's waist. "You're pretty," he said and disappeared again.
Amanda had laughed quietly. Then she reached into a pouch Fae had sewn into her waist and pulled out two coins. She took the girl's hand and opened it, dropped the coins into her palm, and closed her fingers over them. "There's a place over there," she said, "where you can get rock candy."
The girl looked doubtful, and Amanda asked her if anything was wrong, if she thought her parents would mind her taking the money. The girl shook her head, slowly. "I know you," she said finally. "I heard at the store. You're a witch."
"Princess," insisted the boy's voice.
Amanda's smile widened. "Are you frightened?"
The girl shook her head vigorously this time, then frowned and pulled her brother out where he could be seen.
"Where do you come from?" the girl asked, her forthright manner somewhat disconcerting.
"Moon," the boy said before Amanda could answer. He looked up at his sister as though to tell her she should have known better. He reached out and poked at the fringed tunic. "See?" Then he pointed at the faint white orb stealing through the twilight.
"Don't be silly," the girl said. "That's where the birds go at night. "
They had run off then, suddenly shrieking with delight, and Amanda had watched them as she now watched the town--a mixture of incomprehensible wonder . . . and a sense of something lost.
A thunder of applause filled the air behind her. She turned and could make out dimly several figures in capes and elaborate gowns posturing on the stage. She looked back, considered, and was about to return to the hall when a shadow separated itself from a stunted oak alongside the road and intercepted her.
"Doug," she said when she had recovered her breath.
"Been a long time," he told her. He reached out to pluck at a leather fringe, "Very . . . beautiful. "
Thank you.
She could see in the moonlight that he was wearing his working clothes, and though she feared it, she did not catch the scent of whiskey on his breath.
"You going to the show?"
She smiled. "Is that against the law?"
His gaze leveled with hers, his hands brushing his sides, his thighs, finally resting in a fold across his chest.
"Doug, " she said suddenly, "why didn't you tell me you weren't getting married?"
He stiffened, and his arms dropped. "Who said I was?"
She could not believe her ears. Was it possible that Carla had not said anything to him? Didn't he remember telling Hope he didn't know what she was talking about when she'd asked him? Then, suddenly, she saw that he had. His eyes had flattened, his lips grew taut, and his chest rose and fell with menacing slowness.
"I don't understand how you could have believed her," he said at last, his words chosen carefully and laced with acid melancholy. "I really don't understand, Amanda. Did you dislike her so much that you'd believe anything she said? Did you hate me so much that you would believe a woman like that?"
"Doug, listen-"
He shook his head slowly, sadly. "You just took her word for it, Amanda. Damn, you didn't even bother to ask. "
Stunned, and too upset to say a word, she could only lift a hand plaintively and then drop it uselessly back to her side.
He started to walk away from her, then. He hesitated and stopped, starin
g for several seconds down the long, dark street before he looked back over his shoulder at her. "Amanda. . . " He was groping, and she could not help him but could only stare after him helplessly as he punched a weak fist at the air and walked slowly back to town.
A chill raced down her spine, a flush climbed to her cheeks. Idiot, she told herself angrily, punching at her legs and not feeling a thing. Idiot! What did you have to say that for, huh? Why didn't you at least . . . God, Amanda, sometimes you can be such a goddamned fool!
Then don't compound it by standing here like a jackass, a deeper voice scolded.
She stood there indecisively for a long count of ten, watching his dark form slide in and out of the shadows as he strode down the center of the road, watching his arms swing at his sides, watching his head held high and knowing that his gaze was darting from side to side to take in what he was passing.