by Moonwitch
"You know something? I just thought of this, but I've never been to Denver in my life. I've never even been out of Wyoming, for that matter. Just never had any reason to go, that's all. And you know something else, Sam? I don't know if I'm even going to like it. They say it's a pretty big place, with lots of stores and houses and things like that. I don't know if I'm going to like having all those people around me all the time. I think Hope will, though. She doesn't talk much about anything else, but like I said, I'm pretty sure she doesn't feel right about leaving right now.
"But I'm right, Sam. I know I'm right!
"Damn, but I wish there was not her way to do this. I wish I could think of something else to say. Damn.
"You know, I've been through it so many times, I could do it in my sleep.
"Damn!"
"You know something, Sam, I don't even think Guy could help us now. "
Grace walked in with the breakfast tray, knowing she could do it blindfolded: close the door with one foot, put the tray on the nightstand, and wait for her to open her eyes; lift the glass of milk and watch her head shake, lift the plate of eggs and watch her head shake; hand her a piece of hot buttered bread, and she nibbles at it like a rabbit. A sip of milk, then. Another piece of bread. Another sip of milk. Mime tasting the bacon and the eggs, and watch the eyes cloud over. Eat the last piece of bread, drink the last of the milk, and carry the food back to Fae in the kitchen who had long ago stopped crying and would shove the uneaten meal under Abe's nose. Or Bert. Anyone who happened to be in the kitchen at the time.
She kicked the door shut softly with her left foot and walked over to the bed. The curtains were already drawn back from the window, and she chided herself for forgetting to close them the night before. The storm, she thought; the storm probably kept her awake all night. Lovely. Just lovely. Now she won't even want the damned milk.
She pushed aside the lamp and set down the tray.
She turned to the bed . . . and gasped.
In her sleep the missus was never sitting with the pillows propped up behind her.
"Mr. Lions, I think you will And these papers are all in proper order. All they need is for you to take them to the judge for the correct signatures."
"Mr. Eagleton, I don't think you or Mr. Maitland quite understood me the last time we talked. I have no intention whatsoever of acting as Mr. Maitland's attorney in this matter, or in any other. I have quite enough business here, thank you, that I don't need to take on more. And, if you don't mind me saying so, I rather think I would have refused in any case. "
"Your loyalty is commendable, Mr. Lions. But don't you think you're being just the slightest bit foolish?"
"In what way?"
"Vacuums, Mr. Lions. "
"Vacuums?"
"Indeed. Whenever there is a Presidential election and the man in office loses, or choses not to run, there is a power vacuum in Washington until the next administration takes over. Here, in Coreville, Mrs. Munroe has obviously abdicated her own position, and there is now a vacuum, one that Mr. Maitland is slowly filling. Do you really want to be left out in the cold? I am given to understand there's a fair amount of money-legal money-to be made from Mr. Maitland's dealings."
"I have plenty of money, thank you. "
"You don't have ambitions?"
"Not as a grave robber, no. "
"Shall I tell Mr. Maitland you said that?"
"You can tell him any damn thing you please, Sheriff. Now, if you don't mind, I have work to do. And talking with you is making me rapidly lose my appetite for it. "
"Mr. Lions, did you know that I was reading the town charter the other night, and I found a couple of very interesting laws that have never been taken from the books. They carry rather stiff fines if broken. "
"I believe I know the books as well as anyone around here, Sheriff, and I don't think I'm breaking any laws. "
"Really? Then you obviously don't remember the one about consorting with the enemy."
"Enemy! For God's sake, Eagleton, what the hell enemy are you talking about? We're not at war, the last I heard . "
"According t o the books, Mr. Lions, the enemy i s defined as--"
"Never mind, I remember. And I doubt very seriously Nate Kurtz would fine me for working with Mrs. Munroe. "
"He's a judge. He has no choice. At least until the election next year, or until the town council meets again in the spring. Five hundred dollars, Mr. Lions, for consorting with Indians. "
Grace hurried through the living room, nodding once at Alex who was seated before the fire, smiling quickly at Hope who was knitting a sweater beside him. Neither paid attention to the · dinner tray she was carrying. It was the same every night-tray in, tray out, the cover over the steaming plates of food never seeming to move.
In the kitchen Fae snapped at Abe, who was complaining that he wasn't getting the missus's leftovers anymore.
"What are you doin'? Givin' them to the hogs?"
"None of your damned business, Abe Willard. You just eat what's in front of you and mind your tongue. Shouldn't have all that stuff anyways. You're gettin' too fat. "
"Ha! Bert, you hear her callin' me fat?"
"Well, ain't you goin' to say nothin'?"
"She ain't my wife, Abe. I don't want no skillet cracked across my head . "
"Damn. Ain't anyone on my side?"
"Abe, you stop that complainin' and eat . "
"You're a hard woman, Fae. A damned hard woman. "
The meeting was held i n the hotel dining room. The entire council was there for a change, and it seemed to Nate that half the population of Coreville had turned out. There wasn't much shouting, but as he took his place behind the long table on the platform at the back of the room, he could sense a growing anger that was primarily directed toward Sheriff Eagleton. Eagleton, however, either did not notice or did not care; he sat in a curved, ladder-backed chair to the right of the council table with his legs crossed at the knee and his hat perched precariously on his thigh. His frock coat was pushed to one side to make visible his revolver, and on his familiar white shirt the badge he had been given temporarily over a year ago caught the lamplight and held it brightly.
Kurtz wiped his neck with a garish red handkerchief, mopped his brow, and called the meeting to order.
An hour later he pounded his gavel on the block of oak in front of him, and the room quieted suddenly. It had been, for the most part, extraordinarily controlled. Eagleton said nothing until the end, then noted simply that he was only following the law, as he thought he'd been hired to do.
Tom Lions had said-rather sarcastically, Kurtz thoughtthat there was a difference between the spirit and the letter of the law, and Eagleton was bound to dispense justice by both.
Eagleton allowed as how he might have been too zealous.
There was applause.
Kurtz noted that the lawyer did not seem at all mollified.
Eagleton then rose and told the assembly that if there were laws on the books that they did not like, then they should petition the council to change them. He spread his hands and smiled. "After all, ladies and gentlemen, isn't that what democracy and Wyoming is all about? I mean, isn't this the only place in the entire nation, and very probably the entire world, where women have the vote? Change the law and I'll enforce that change. Don't change it and . . ." He smiled again.
They changed the laws.
Too many of them were losing money by not dealing with Four Aces, in spite of the fact that there were any number of rumors flying around town that Amanda Munroe had died during the summer and her son, Alex, was getting ready to leave Coreville after selling the entire spread for a pitiable dollar an acre.
After the meeting adjourned, Eagleton walked unhurriedly to his room upstairs and closed and locked the door behind him. Maitland was sitting in a chair by the window, watching the street fill and stream down toward the saloons.
"Well?"
"They changed them. "
Maitland shrugg
ed. " I thought they would. That woman has been here too long. You hear what they call her? Insane. She's no more a witch than I am. " He gripped the arms of the chair tightly. "Bitch," he whispered. "Bitch. "
Eagleton shrugged. He didn't care one way or the other as long as Maitland kept paying him so well.
"We'll have to think of something else," Maitland said a moment later.
"Anything you say, Mr. Maitland. You're the boss."
Maitland laughed. It was the one thing about him that made Eagleton cringe. It sounded to him like the angry shriek of a crow.
Grace winced when Amanda asked for the hand mirror and brush. After so long the missus's throat had gone dry, she thought, and now she sounded like a crow in a cornfield. Amanda, too, noticed the harshness of her voice, and she kept a glass of water nearby, sipping from it continuously. She had not tried to explain to Grace why she was doing this, and G race only asked her once, on the first day.
"Cougars," Amanda told her. "And eagles."
Grace had frowned. "I don't get it, missus."
"It's all right, " she said, one hand holding the pain at her throat . "In time, Grace . In time."
Now she sat gingerly in front of the mirror and brushed at her hair. It was still dull, but the tangles, the knots, the resemblance to wet cord had faded.
And when she was done, Grace helped her walk around the room, one arm close around her waist, the other outstretched for balance . In the beginning Amanda had fallen often, and wept at ghosts Grace could not see and did not understand. But as the food began to stay down and her frame began to fill out, her strength returned. Not miraculously. Not in great leaps to the flourish of trumpets; but slowly, gradually, step by painful step until she was able to move around for herself whenever Grace or Fae was not in the room.
She was never caught.
Grace pleaded at the end of the second week for Amanda to tell her children.
Amanda refused. It was not time. She still had herself to deal with; once that was done, and not before, she would face her family and tell them what had to be done.
"Nate, you old fool, I love you dearly, but don't you think this is going a little too far?"
"Eleanor, this here's goin' to be the biggest damn harvest festival this place has ever seen . Got to be. Folks around here pushin' at me to get rid of Trevor and they don't know what a good man he is."
"I don't either, Nate."
"Now, Eleanor, I admit his manner isn't as soft as . . . as--"
"Doug's?"
"Well . . . now that you mention it . . . "
"You done him wrong, Nate, you know that. You should've stood by him."
" I know. But it's too late for that."
"Too late for a lot of things, Nate. That Maitland just bought Lonny's place. Poor old man. He didn't even know Carla was dead, did you know that? Died thinkin' she was still sittin' by his side. Now I hear, speakin' of the devil, he wants Sophie's place. And Sophie ain't no one to pass up gold, no matter who it's from. "
" I heard, El, I heard. "
"Then do somethin' about it, you old fool, before that man owns the whole damned town!"
"She won't sell, Mr. Maitland. I talked with her for over an hour. She plain won't sell. "
"Trevor, sometimes you disappoint me. You really disappoint me. "
"Sorry, Mr. Maitland. "
" I took you out of that hellhole with me. I thought with a little sprucing up and some manners drummed into you you'd do right well. And you did, son, you did. Until now.
Now you're the sheriff of this goddamned place, and you'd better go back to that foul woman and explain a few of the facts of life to her. You understand me, Trevor?''
"I hear you, Mr. Maitland. "
"Good. Now. How long's it been since you last rode out to Four Aces?"
Amanda stood in front of the mirror and examined herself carefully. She would have liked another week, another month, but she realized that the tension in the house was too great now to wait any longer. She turned, checking the effect from either profile, craned over her shoulder to see the back. And she grinned as she twisted a hand around to sweep down her hair.
It was . . . fine.
And she still did not know after all this time just how she was going to explain things to them. Perhaps, she had often thought, Little Cat knew exactly what he was doing when he'd come to her that night and told her all those things. Save for one short phrase, it was nothing she had not heard before. . . but once he had told her, for the first time that she could remember, in actual words, that he loved her, she had felt as though a branding iron had been shoved into her stomach.
The pain.
So much of it that she had not slept for two days; so much of it that her hands would not leave her alone, digging at the flabby plane of her abdomen as though she would be able to uproot the burning and toss it on the hearth.
The pain, however, had diminished . . . and the dream had come.
Snippets of conversation returned to her, flashes of scenes, and she had pieced them together into a mosaic that had spelled her certain damnation, condemned her to a living hell while all about her fell to pieces.
Throughout what she had come to call her dementia, she had known what was happening. Her family injured, her home falling apart, her hold on the world slipping inexorably beyond her . . . But somehow none of it had seemed important. She was, after all, alone. Little Cat had married and was grown; Harley and Olivia were living in their own private hell; Grace, Fae, and all the others moving on because they had to.
Alone.
And then Little Cat had said "I love you. "
Strange, she thought, how some of the smallest things turn out to be the most powerful; curious, that she should remember Trevor telling her that he most definitely did not play games, Doug telling her without words of his love . . . and something not even Little Cat or Grace knew--
After Little Cat had left her, telling her he was leaving, long after midnight Sam had come into the room and had awakened her by standing at the foot of the bed and staring until she stirred. As before, he had said nothing. He had only gone to the wardrobe while she watched and rummaged for several seconds. Then he had held something up to the pale moonlight, held it until she was forced to turn away.
It was not until the next morning that she realized what he was doing.
It was her he was forcing her to see. Not her children nor her friends nor memories nor ghosts-her, what she was in order for all else to exist.
Not only had she betrayed Little Cat and Bess, Hope and Dawn, by her hiding from the enemy . . . she had betrayed herself and everything she had lived for-and in that betrayal she had allowed Maitland to defeat her.
She took a deep breath and brushed a tear from her eye.
No longer. No longer.
As she opened the corridor door, then, she remembered something Doug had said about Sitting Bull's return. And she steered it back to herself.
It was not, she told herself sternly, a good day to die.
"I don't get it," Alex said. He was standing in front of the fireplace, hands jammed into his pockets and his face a scowling mask. "I just don't get it."
Bess, trying hard not to yawn, sat in Amanda's chair. Across the low marble table on the divan were Hope-with Dawn in her arms--Harley, Fae, and Grace. Abe and Bert stood awkwardly and impatiently near the door. Olivia waited by the study entrance. Sam stood apart, wearing his buckskins.
"Grace," Alex said, "do you know what has to be done yet? My God, there's so much packing I don't know how Hope does it. And for crying out loud, look at the time. If you-"
"Hush," Grace told him gently. She looked over the back of the couch, then turned to point at Bess. "Child," she said, "go see your mother. "
Bess blinked sleepily.
"Now Grace, " Hope said angrily, "this is too much!"
"Child, do as you're told."
Bess, her hair in loose braids hanging down over her chest, pushed off the chair. S
he didn't know why everyone was so edgy, but if going in to see her mother would stop them from snapping at each other, she'd do it. She wouldn't like it, but she'd do it.
With a loud sigh, then, she moved around the couch and headed for the open archway to the hall. She stopped and felt everyone's eyes on her and felt the tears that sprang unbidden and fell untouched.
"Oh, Mother, " she said to the figure on the threshold. "Oh, Mother, you're beautiful!"