by Jane Toombs
In his workshop, Shane had made the first few cuts into the wood hiding the coyote he’d found inside it—the old Trickster himself—when Grandfather eased onto the stool next to his. Shane went on with what he was doing, undisturbed.
After a time, Grandfather said, “Long, long ago, a maiden came among the people carrying a burden basket. An old couple welcomed her into their lodge, fed and sheltered her, and named her Lonely-She-Walks. Though the maiden helped the old woman with tanning hides, gathering pine nuts, and making baskets, never once did she let anyone see what was in her own basket, the one she carried everywhere she went.
“Now it happens, Lonely-She-Walks was pretty enough to attract young men. Though she was pleasant to them all, she favored none, not until the man named Hunter came back to his people after a trading trip to the west. She smiled on Hunter, and he was smitten.”
Grandfather paused and Shane, hacking away at the wood, nodded to show he was listening.
“Gray Owl, the old medicine man,” Grandfather continued, “who’d been watching the maiden since her arrival in the village, had noticed that every few days just before dusk she walked up a hill and down the other side until she was out of sight.
“One evening he took it upon himself to follow, and hidden, watched as, weeping, she took off the lid of the basket. Though nothing could be seen coming out, Lonely-She-Walks fell back as though something had pushed her over. When she finally sat up again, she was pale. She replaced the lid on the basket and rose just as the first star appeared.
“What he’d watched struck Gray Owl as ominous. When she returned to the village, he came out of hiding and crept back unobserved. When it became clear to him that Hunter meant to marry the maiden, he took the man aside and warned him he must not marry this woman until she revealed the contents of her basket to him or calamity would result.
“Hunter listened to the extent of asking Lonely-She-Walks what was inside her burden basket. But when she refused to tell him, saying if he truly loved her, he wouldn’t need to know, he ignored the medicine man’s advice and married her anyway. Gray Owl’s words, though, had entered the man’s heart, darkening it, and he determined to find out on his own what was inside the burden basket she guarded so carefully.
“Waiting until she slept, Hunter crept from the blankets to where the basket rested within reach of her hand. Lifting it, he bore the basket to the door of the lodge where the moonlight shone in. Raising the cover of rushes, he peered inside. To his surprise he saw nothing—the basket was empty. His heart unsettled, he returned the basket to its place. In the morning, he consulted Gray Owl.
“‘Inside are her ghosts,’ the old man told him. ‘Only Lonely-She-Walks can see them. Sooner or later they will suck her life away and she will die.’
“Hunter wanted to dispose of the basket, but Gray Owl warned him that the ghosts would remain. Not unless he could persuade Lonely-She-Walks that they were destroyed would she ever be free. When Hunter told his wife he knew she carried ghosts, she turned her face from him and would not speak.
“That night, when she thought he slept, she tried to leave with her basket, but Hunter was watching. Remembering what Gray Owl had told him, he grabbed the basket, flung off the top and one by one pulled the ghosts he couldn’t see or feel from the basket and tossed them onto the coals of the fire, saying, ‘I have destroyed them.”’
Shane waited, but Grandfather said no more.
“I’ve never heard that story before,” he told the old man. “I presume they lived happily ever after?”
“No man and no woman are happy one hundred percent of the time. Life sees to that. The story is a parable, as you must know if you have any brains in that thick head of yours.” Grandfather rose from the stool and left the workshop.
Shane turned the wood in his hands, seeing how the coyote would look, while he thought about the story. He understood perfectly what Grandfather had told him. But it was one clever man who could destroy ghosts he couldn’t see or feel because they belonged to someone else.
He knew Laura would leave him if he couldn’t find a way to get her to talk about what it was in her past that troubled her, making her afraid to love. No matter how he’d tried to convince himself he wanted her to stay with him out of pure lust, in his heart he understood lust was only a small part of it.
Damned if he hadn’t gone and fallen in love with the woman. She belonged here with him, no matter how she tried to deny it. The denial, he felt, didn’t come from the Laura he held in his arms, the person who responded so sweetly to him. No, it came from another Laura, one terrified of the past, one who denied love because she feared what might happen.
He whittled away at the wood as he tried to figure what to do and eventually Coyote’s laughing face stared out at him. “Trickster,” he muttered. “You don’t always win.”
No, not always, but too often.
In the late afternoon, Laura and Sage sang along with the radio all the way back from Reno. The girl’s obvious pleasure in the outing had lightened Laura’s mood, and they’d had fun together.
As they pulled into the drive, Sage said, “Shane’s truck is gone, I wonder where he went. Are you two going after the mustangs tomorrow?”
“He said something about delivering his carvings to the Outpost before noon tomorrow,” Laura told her. “It’ll probably be the day after before we ride out again.”
“Good. Maria’s having a dessert potluck party next week, and I’m supposed to bring cookies. Maybe you can help me learn to make a new kind. I want to surprise everybody.”
“Glad to help. What kind of cookies do you have in mind?”
They were still discussing cookies when they came into the house laden with shopping loot. Shane was nowhere in sight. Grandfather, though, was drinking iced tea in the kitchen.
“That little colt of yours sure missed you,” he told Sage.
She immediately dumped her packages onto the kitchen table and dashed off. Laura picked them up and brought them into Sage’s room, leaving the packages on her bed. She left her own in her room. When she returned to the kitchen she found Grandfather had poured her a glass of iced tea so she sat down at the table.
“No sugar,” he said.
She smiled.
“When you first came here you reminded me of a woman in one of our stories,” he told her. “Now, I’m not so sure. Still, you could go back to being like that woman.”
Laura raised her eyebrows. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Her name was Lonely-She-Walks.”
It took her several moments to decipher what he was getting at. “I’m not lonely,” she protested.
“Why should you be? You have Sage and me right here and you have Shane. But if you leave us, then who do you have?”
My brother, she wanted to say. My parents. The words didn’t come. The old man spoke the truth. Without Shane, what did she have? Sage and Grandfather were the bonus that came with him, but Shane was the heart.
“When we married—” she began.
Grandfather shook his head. “You both have come far past any wedding agreements. If you leave, you’ll break Sage’s heart. Still, she’s young and will in time recover. Shane won’t.”
“He doesn’t—”
“You don’t understand him. I do. He is not a man who gives his heart easily.”
Laura swallowed. “But I have commitments. I have to finish my work with the wild mustangs. In fact, I’m planning to go to Montana when I leave here. I—” she broke off, seeing Sage’s stricken face. Unknown to her, the girl had reentered the kitchen.
“You’re going to Montana?” Sage asked.
Laura nodded, planning to explain, but before she could, Sage whirled and ran from the room.
Laura got to her feet as Grandfather rose. “She’ll be with the colt,” he said. “I’ll see to her.”
Unable to decide what to do, since he’d taken away the initiative, Laura automatically took the two glasses to the sink and
rinsed them out. She hadn’t meant to hurt Sage—it was the last thing in the world she wanted to do.
Grandfather’s words about breaking Sage’s heart replayed themselves in her mind, making her feel terrible. And what had he meant about Shane?
As if thinking about him had evoked him, Shane came into the kitchen carrying a large pizza box, which he set on the table. “I figured neither you nor Sage would feel like cooking,” he said. “Grandfather said he didn’t either and that he had a taste for pizza, so here it is.”
“That’s good,” she managed to say.
“I detect a marked lack of enthusiasm. What’s the matter?”
“Oh, Shane, I hurt Sage. I didn’t mean to, but—”
“Hurt her? You mean you had an accident?”
“No, no, nothing like that. I was telling Grandfather I intended to go to Montana when I finished here. She overheard me and dashed out before I could explain.”
“I’m here. You can explain to me.”
Laura swallowed, staring at his suddenly expressionless face. His eyes looked as hard as obsidian.
“Well, you know I’m working with this federal grant, and—”
His hand slashed the air, dismissing the grant.
“I have to go where the mustangs are,” she said.
“What about the other Nevada herds?”
“Yes, I know, but it seemed like a good idea to go to Montana first.”
“Running away.”
“I’m not!” She glowered at him.
“The hell you aren’t. You’re running scared, don’t try to deny it.”
“But you know I won’t always be here. I thought I should try to get Sage used to the idea I’d be coming and going.”
“How did you plan to get her used to the idea that one of those ‘going’ times you won’t be coming back?”
“I’m fond of Sage,” she cried. “I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Or me?”
Taken aback, she stammered, “But you—you’re not a child.”
“What’s that have to do with it?”
“You’re not being reasonable. It’s not as though we promised to stay together forever.”
“Actually we did. Didn’t you hear the JP’s words when he married us?”
She’d been in a daze at the time, but she knew what the words in a marriage ceremony usually were. Till death do us part.
“But we both agreed we weren’t really married.”
He shook his head. “I agreed not to expect you in my bed until you came there voluntarily. Otherwise, to me it was and is a marriage.”
Laura stared at him.
“I knew you had this grant work to finish,” he said, “but I expected you meant to follow a logical sequence and check out the Nevada herds first.”
“I’m going to come back to do that,” she insisted.
“Are you?”
Laura drew herself up. “Of course. I promised you I’d be around long enough to ensure that you’d have no problem with keeping Sage’s custody permanent.”
“Dropping by every other weekend to say hi?”
“What’s the matter with you anyway?” she cried.
“The problem doesn’t lie with me.” He spun on his heel and left.
Later, when Grandfather and Sage came in for supper, Shane didn’t appear. “Want me to call him?” Sage asked.
Grandfather shook his head. “He’s in his workshop. He’ll eat when he gets hungry enough. If we leave him any pizza, that is.”
Though Laura tried to eat, between Sage refusing to speak to her and her own troubled thoughts, she couldn’t manage to finish even one slice of pizza. Much as she wanted to escape to her room, she felt the least she could do was clean up the kitchen. Both of them left her to it.
As she was finishing, Grandfather wandered back into the kitchen. “Maybe we need to sit on the porch and talk,” he said.
“I’m rather tired—” she began.
“No you’re not, you just don’t want to hear any more good advice from me,” he said.
That made her smile ruefully. “I’m afraid you’re right.”
“Come sit with me anyway. Who knows, it’s possible I may find some bad advice you’d like better.”
She’d never been able to resist Grandfather, so she reluctantly followed him out to the porch.
“Thinking of getting us another dog,” he said, when they’d settled into chairs. “The last one died of old age about a month before you came. Part Border collie, she was, but bigger. A good dog. And smart. You can’t keep a little dog out here. Coyotes get ’em. So the new one’ll have to be a good-sized one, at least half-grown, to be big enough to discourage a coyote.”
Laura was horrified. “You mean the coyotes kill little dogs?”
Grandfather nodded. “To a coyote anything smaller than he is becomes what nowadays they call part of the food chain. You can’t blame them, that’s their way. Earth nourishes every one of us in one way or another.”
“I suppose.” Laura didn’t care to dwell on what coyotes ate. “Hunger is a basic drive, after all.”
“For us, so is love. Why can’t you love, Laura?”
She should have seen it coming, but hadn’t. Grandfather had ambushed her again. She chose her words with care. “I love my brother. And my parents, naturally.”
“Yes, they’re safe to love because you only see them once in awhile.”
Though she wanted to deny vehemently that there was any truth in what he’d said, Laura didn’t. Actually she didn’t see her parents more than once a year and her brother maybe twice.
“I said that wrong,” Grandfather told her. “A better question is why won’t you love? Please give an old man an honest answer.”
“I don’t know if I can give an answer. It’s just safer not to get too fond of anyone, that’s all.”
“Lonely-She-Walks,” Grandfather said as if to himself. “Lonely-She-Walks, with her ghosts of the past in her basket.” He turned his head and looked at her. “Ever see a shrink?”
The time for indignation was long past. She decided to be as blunt as he was. “Yes.”
“Did she have any good or bad advice?”
Wondering how he’d decided the shrink had been a woman, Laura said, “She didn’t offer advice, she tried to pull that out of you because she seemed to believe her patients never took anyone’s advice except their own, bad or good.”
Grandfather put his head to one side, apparently considering this. Finally he said, “Did she help you?”
Laura nodded.
“But not enough,” he told her. “Tonight you will dream because everyone dreams at night. Try to remember what the dream is. Then think about it. That’s all the advice I have.”
Feeling dismissed, Laura rose, said good-night and fled to her room. She tried to read, but couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t sleep either. In desperation she tried some relaxation exercises she’d learned, and when at last sleep wandered her way, she nabbed it….
She was in a night camp somewhere in the desert, sitting cross-legged by the coals of a fire, their winking red eyes the only light. The scent of sage mingled with the faint smell of horse, so she knew mustangs had been here earlier.
In her lap she held a covered basket, her arms protectively curved around it. When a dark figure of a man stepped out of the darkness, she clutched the basket tighter as she watched him approach. He sat down beside her near the coals and she saw he was Shane.
“The fire is almost out,” he said. “There’s little time. Give me the basket.”
“It’s mine, not yours. You can’t have it.”
In the darkness a coyote began to yip. Others answered.
“They tell you to give up the basket,” he said.
“I can’t.”
The coyotes’ cries grew louder, closer. She peered apprehensively into the night and, as she did, he jerked the basket away from her.
Before she could stop him, he pulled off the lid and up
ended the basket over the coals. Though nothing came out that she could see, the coals sputtered and fizzed and sparked.
He tossed the basket aside and rose. “Now it’s up to you,” he said, striding off into the dark. She heard the singing of the coyotes fade as though they flanked him like guards.
Then there was no sound. He’d left her alone without even the coyotes. The coals winked out one by one until only a single glowing ember remained. When that one died, she knew it would mean the time had finally run out.
She rose, looking wildly about, seeing nothing, for there was nothing to see. “No!” she screamed….
And woke up with her heart pounding. Fighting free of the shards of the dream, she muttered, “Grandfather and his damn basket.”
She could trace almost every element in the dream back to something he’d said to her and so, she told herself, the dream had no underlying meaning. But she had to admit it certainly wasn’t something she was likely to forget in a hurry.
Then she couldn’t go back to sleep. Since it was still dark, there was little point in getting up. She lay there wondering if Shane was asleep in his room down the hall. How easy it would be to ease from her bed and go to his. How surprised he’d be to find her there. Not too surprised to make love to her, though, not Shane. She wondered if he slept in the nude. Imagining it made the treacherous warmth pool deep inside her, urging her to go to him.
Only Shane could relieve the ache of need.
But she would never go to his bed, no matter how much she wanted to.
Chapter Twelve
Sage was alone in the kitchen when Laura wandered out for breakfast. She smiled, hoping the girl would talk to her, but she didn’t expect Sage’s outburst.
“Am I ever glad you’re up!” Sage said, obviously upset. “After Grandfather went to the Outpost with Shane, I got a funny phone call.”
Thinking she meant obscene, Laura worded her question carefully. “Was it a man?”
Sage nodded.
“Did he say things that you didn’t want to hear?”
“No, it’s just that he asked for Shane and when I said Shane wasn’t here he asked for Howell and I sort of forgot that was Grandfather’s name ’cause no one ever calls him that. But finally I remembered and told him Grandfather wasn’t here either. So then he asked if I was Elizabeth.” Sage paused and stared at Laura, her eyes wide and frightened.