by Moonwitch
And she did-day after day; night after night.
Somewhere, sometime before that Christmas had passed, she had become a grandmother. Dawn Amanda Munroe. That was when her resolve finally collapsed.
She groaned and twisted her head from side to side, not wanting to remember, and unable not to. She reached out for a glass that was kept filled on her nightstand, but her fingers were too weak, and the glass fell to the floor, shattered, the explosion so loud she thought she would be deafened.
It was two days after the birth, and she had been carrying the child around while Hope slept in Bess's room, Bess having moved in with Fae Willard and Bert. For the girl it was an adventure, and for Amanda it was a promise . . . until Bob Booth had stumbled through the front door and told her that the new shaft in the mine had suddenly collapsed. Alex had been inside. No, he wasn't dead. But his leg . . . his leg. . . .
Doc Manley assured them all that Alex would be able to walk without any trouble at all. Once he got used to the limp, caused by the bones crushed below his knee, he would be as good as new.
The following morning Trevor had ridden up to the porch.
Amanda met him, lips trembling.
"What do you want now?" she asked him, refusing to plead.
Trevor bowed slightly at the waist and swept off his hat. "Just wanted to express my condolences at the misfortune of your son, Amanda. That's all. Nothing more. "
"You did it, didn't you?" she accused.
"No," he said blandly. "And even if I did have a hand, I wouldn't admit it in front of witnesses, now would I?"
She had staggered forward, then, and grabbed onto the roof post. "I . . . w hat does he want, Trevor? What does he want?"
"Well, now, " the man had said, his hand to his chin in a mockery of thought. "I really don't know what you're talking about, Amanda. But if I were to speculate on where your thinking is leading, I might be led to say that Mr. Maitland has remembered you all these years, and he's remembered all that you did for him back in Daghaven. You might say, if we were to continue this speculation-and it is only speculation mind, nothing more at all--you might say that he was believing that it was his duty to repay you for all that you've done. Kind of like an obligation, if you know what I mean."
It was as if she had been struck physically. Not that she had not considered it before, but the very insanity of the idea had driven into the farthest reaches of her nightmares-something not to be even hinted at because it was so evil.
"He wanted me to marry him , " she said softly as if thinking aloud.
"He asked you more than once, I believe. "
She nodded.
"And you refused him . "
She nodded again.
"I believe you accused him of murder, theft, embezzlement, and several other things. "
" He did all those things, " she had said weakly.
"Well, " Trevor had said after a minute had gone by, "I'll have to be going."
She blinked slowly and turned to him, astonished. "What? You mean . . . that's all? That's all there is? No threats? No rapes? That's all there is?"
Trevor smiled at her gently. "Amanda, if you recall, I warned you once before. I did my best to be sure you stayed away from Mitchell, and even considered a change of climate. You ignored me, Amanda, and I am not a man to be ignored. "
Her eyes had widened, her mouth dropped open. "You're. . . you're as crazy as he is!"
He shook his head, tsking as though to a naughty child. "Amanda, I'm ashamed of you . "
"Get off my property," she hissed a t him then.
"I'll be back," he told her.
"No, you won't."
"Don't try to stop me, Amanda. I have to. It's my job . " He had placed his hands on the saddle horn and leaned toward her slowly, his blue eyes alight with a pleasure almost demonic. "Mr. Maitland spent ten years in that hellhole of a jail, Amanda. Ten years is an awful long time for a man his age. Imagine it, Amanda. Ten of the last years of his life. He wants those years back. And he intends to get them. He has lots of money, but he wants payment in kind. "
Alex screamed in his drugged sleep that night, and Amanda had walked outside in her nightgown, looking for the moon, finding only clouds.
How much more can I take? she asked the invisible sky. How strong do I have to be?
Trevor brought her a telegram one week later.
Douglas Mitchell, it said, had been shot down by a posse while trying to break into the range where Sitting Bull was kept a virtual prisoner. He had been raving like a drunken Indian, the telegram continued in clipped, cold sentences, and the lawmen had no choice but to kill him.
From that day onward Amanda never left her shell.
She opened her eyes. It was dark. She was about to close them again when a match flared and blinded her. She groaned and threw an arm over her face until her vision adjusted, and the lamp on the nightstand was turned down to a soft amber glow.
She stared. It was Alex standing beside the bed, his shirt and trousers rumpled as though he'd been sleeping in them, his hands folded over the top of a silver-headed cane. She seemed to recall seeing him in the back, exercising under Sam's silent tutelage until, as the doctor had pledged, he was able to walk, albeit with a limp, as an ordinary man. Hope proclaimed it a miracle and had wept. Sam had only nodded.
"Mother," Alex said. He leaned closer, trying to see if her eyes were open. "Mother, it's Little Cat . "
The name touched her. She swallowed hard, and he quickly filled a glass with tepid water and held it to her lips until she pushed it away.
"Mother, I have to talk to you."
She shook her head.
"Mother!"
He nudged at her legs until she shifted to make room for him. He sat and lay the cane on the floor. Then he wiped his hands over his trousers, craning his neck as though he had a cramp, staring at the darker corners of the room before turning to face her.
"Mother, are you going to listen to me this time?"
Once a week, every week, he came to her and talked. He told her how the ranch was running, what was happening in town, how Eagleton was not making himself very popular but that Nate Kurtz had come to like him immensely. He told her everything, the good and the bad, asking for her opinion on this matter and that as though she would think it over for a while and give him her answer. It was almost like a game; but it was a game both of them knew had only one player.
He told her that Bess was doing poorly in school, and the other children were beginning to make fun of her because she was living with, they said, a witch that was a ghost.
He told her that the Circle B had undercut Four Aces in every one of their competitive markets. It was obvious that Maitland was losing money on each deal, but the old man did not seem to mind, and as a result Four Aces also lost money-lots of it, and often.
He told her that Emily Trowbridge had finally found herself a beau and the rumor was she was going to marry before this year was out.
He and Bess took turns reading her portions of Twain's newest volume, Life on the Mississippi; and Bess insisted that Twain was still silly.
Carl Davis had taken ill again--a result of his old wounds--and he asked her if she would mind if Harley took his old job back.
He once brought in Sam, and the room was silent for an hour. ,
And now, suddenly, she sensed through her comfortable and safe stupor that he was not going to give her gossip, not going to ask for her opinion. He was too busy swallowing, too busy staring at the backs of his hands.
"Mother?"
She made a sharp move of her head to show him she was listening. But she did not show him how afraid she was.
"Mother, I have talked with a lot of people." He swallowed again, and she almost frowned. "Last night Bess cried herself to sleep. She does it all the time. Dawn cries. Hope cries. Sam walks around here like he's waiting for the Spirit to take him to the Mountain. And I saw, Mother. I saw!"
His hands clenched into fists.
; "A long time ago"-and his voice was so quiet she had to strain to hear him-"I knew you wanted to die. I knew what that man was, and is, doing to you and I knew you wanted to die because it's the only way you can get away from him. Once, I even went to talk to him."
She stiffened and her hand fumbled across the blanket to reach for his side. He moved away. She almost gasped.
"I asked him how much he wanted to leave us alone. I offered him half the ranch, Mother, and all of the cattle. " He took a deep breath. "He is evil, Mother. I knew that before, but I know it now, and better. He laughed at me, called me an Indian bastard, and had one of his men throw me off the ranch. I . . . I tried to sneak back the next night and kill him. They caught me again, and they beat me. Not badly. Just enough to let me know that they were watching.
"And Mother, it wouldn't have done any good. Even if I had killed him, it wouldn't have saved you. Not . . . not the way you are now."
She struggled, then, and he turned to stare at her. She did not want to listen to this. She wanted to hear about what was happening in Casper, what was happening with President Arthur. She did not like to be scolded-someone managed to scold her at least once a day-but she sensed something different about this, and she did not like it.
He reached down and picked up the cane, suddenly cracked its head hard against the floor. "Mother, your life is your own to do what you want with it. But . . . but I'll be damned, Mother, if I'm going to sit by any longer and watch you kill my family, too. It's impossible. Hope doesn't smile anymore, Bess is . . . they all are . . . no. No, I won't have it! I will not have it!"
He pushed himself off the bed and brandished the cane at her face.
"I don't know what happened to you. I don't know what it was that finally broke you. And I'm . . . " His voice broke. He turned away from her for a moment, and she could not tear her gaze from the shoulders that shook and the deep silent sobs that tore through him. But when he turned around again, his face was impassive.
''Mother, I am taking Hope and Dawn, and Bess, and we're leaving. Harley can run this place as well as I can, and we've got enough money from Hope's selling her ranch to keep everyone well and clothed. I think it'll be Denver for the time being. I don't know. But we're going, Mother, because I don't want to see you murder more people than you already have!"
A hand that was colder than she imagined death could be took hold of her heart-and squeezed.
"Grace, " he continued when she made no response, "Grace thinks I'm terrible. So does Fae. Sam won't talk to me. But damn it, Mother, I have my own to look out for, and I wouldn't be your son if I let them stay here and rot. And that's exactly what they're doing!"
Suddenly, before she could turn her head away, he leaned over her and grabbed her chin in his hand, his eyes blazing, his teeth bared.
"And you know something that's even worse, Mother? Something that I realized only last night? Do you know what it is, Mother?"
He was practically shouting now, and she could not blot out his voice.
"You don't want to die, " he told her. "You really don't want to die. All this time we thought you were killing yourself because . . . because of that man. But you're not. If you wanted to die, you would have done it a long time ago. But you eat, don't you? You take just enough to keep yourself alive. Just enough, and no more.
"You're hiding, Mother!"
He shook her head violently until an ache began to squirm at the base of her skull.
''You're hiding, and you expect us to keep you hidden. " He waited. "Well, f m not playing anymore. I'm taking the women and "I'm getting the hell out of here before you destroy us all!"
He snapped his hand away and straightened, his chest heaving, his lips trembling. His fight for control sent a tremor through his frame.
"Mother . . . ?" He walked slowly to the door and opened it. There was no light in the corridor, and the glow from the lamp was not strong enough to contain him. He was a shadow now, a shadow with a voice that seemed centuries old. "Mother, you know I have to do this. And you know . . . you know that. . . that I love you. I've done everything I can think of, Mother, but . . . but Little Cat is tired, too. He's not as strong as you were, and he has to protect his own.
''I love you, Mother. Sleep well."
The door closed without a sound.
Amanda lay with her eyes open, listening to the wind.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The sky had shifted to the color of spilled blood, and the clouds that scuffed across it were dipped in deep bronze. There was no sun . There was no moon . A single star coursed toward the horizon and left in its wake a trail of black sparks that drifted toward the earth like a plume of ugly smoke. Geese and hawks in scattered formation plummeted out of the blood with wings tipped with iron, screaming, shrieking, talons extended and death lust in their eyes . Amanda watched them without moving from her place on the mountain, on the mountain where nothing grew but a single stunted pine . The rock was bare, scoured by the wind that raged all around her and did not touch her; and in the rock were skittering things that had no names and ate nothing but flesh and poked their heads from their bone-lined burrows to chatter at her in voices like glass drawn across glass . She ignored them . She kept her eyes on the geese, on the hawks, on the single golden eagle that hovered above the valley and fought with a tawny lion . She watched them until she heard a footstep behind her.
She did not want to turn . She felt herself turning. She did not want to look . She felt herself looking . . . and Simon Maitland, with wisps of gray hair fluttering about his dark-spotted ears, with an ill-fitting suit and a skull-topped cane, smiled at her and bowed, and swept his brushed bowler hat across his middle in a courtly long bow. And when he straightened, he was still smiling. Only this time his face belonged to Trevor Eagleton .
Amanda stepped back to the edge of the mountain and held out her hands.
Maitland bowed again, and this time he was Alex.
She felt her boots slipping on the unridged rock, and before she could find a grip in the air, she was falling-while the eagle and the cougar blooded each other, while the sky turned redder and the clouds turned black, while lightning split through the blood and black and stalked angrily across the valley with death at its heels .
Amanda thrashed her arms about, her knuckles finally slamming against the nightstand and waking her with a groan. She pulled her hand to her mouth and sucked at the broken skin, her eyes squinting in the dark room, her eyes picking up the muttering of the storm just passed. She was covered with perspiration, and her nightgown clung coldly to her frame. She plucked at it with a grimace of distaste, finally pulled it over her head and threw it to the floor.
The air was chilled. There was a hint of frost at the window that laced the edges of the pane and blurred whatever view of the night she might have had.
The fireplace opposite had settled into a dull, angry glowing, every few moments reminding itself of what it had been by spitting sparks into the chimney from a severed pine log. A single blue flame taunted the air.
She waited for the storm's return, and when it refused, she closed her eyes and waited for sleep. It came swiftly, but this time there was no blood in the sky, no battles for territory raging over her head.
This time, and for the rest of her sleeping, this time there was no sky at all.
They stood silently in front of the stable, a tall shadow and one not much shorter. There was a tension between them that was almost palpable, and it made Alex uncomfortable not to see his friend's face. Several times he tried shifting to get a better view, but the shadows shifted with him and finally he decided that the profile, however unchanging, was better than nothing at all.
"We'll be leaving at the end of the month, Sam. At least, that's the way Hope wants it. She still believes that Mother. . . ah, the hell with it. She's wrong. For all the misery she's going through now, she's dead wrong.
"Look, Sam, I know . . . I know what you've been through with Mother all these years, and I have a pre
tty fair idea of how you feel about her. It's something, I suppose, that I'm kind of jealous of now and then. You never knew that, did you? That I was jealous of you and Mother. But it was only once in a while, believe me. Only once in a while. "
He took a deep breath. He did not expect a response.
"All right. All right. But I still wish you would at least make the trip with us. You could come back when we get there, but I really wish you'd come along, Sam. I really do wish it. I would sure feel a lot safer. And I know Hope would, too.