Prairie Moon

by Maggie Osborne

  “Do you know where to find the Wards’ plot?”

  She could have found it blindfolded. After reassuring him, she stepped away from the dust thrown up by the carriage wheels, turning toward an arched gate forged of scrolled wrought iron. For the third time she walked beneath the arch and onto the parklike grounds of the old Marshall Cemetery.

  If this had been her first visit, Della might easily have gotten lost. Narrow, graveled roads meandered in all directions, curving through stands of tall pines or dividing acres of carved stones. In some places, hedges of winter-bare lilac or verbena defined private areas; in other sections, low stone walls set off family plots.

  Della turned right—by the tall, winged angel—and climbed a hill, passing beneath the branches of several thick old oaks, until she reached a stone bench protected from the chilly breeze by a stand of leafy azaleas. The bench faced a plot delineated by white stones forming a square around a handsome granite stone with the name Ward raised in the center.

  Slowly Della walked around the square plot, examining the markers for Mr. Ward’s parents and grand-parents, reading the names of ancestors and Ward relatives. Eventually she came to a stone for Mercator Ward. His name and date of birth were already carved. There was even a Bible verse inscribed on the stone. Everything but the date of death. Beside his stone was that of Enid Ward. Beloved wife and mother. She’d been fifty-eight when she died.

  Della stood before Mrs. Ward’s grave for several minutes, not wanting to look at the next two gravestones.

  First, she let herself notice the grass on the adjacent plots. Mr. Ward must have paid someone to maintain the family plot, as the grass was clipped close for the winter months and there were no weeds. A fresh coat of whitewash brightened the perimeter stones.

  Finally she made herself read Clarence’s stone; his name, his dates of birth and death, and a listing of his rank, the two medals he had been awarded, and the battle in which he died.

  And then. Claire’s small marker was embraced by a stone angel. She had lived eight days. The verse was simple. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep . . .

  Standing very tall and stiffly erect, Della blinked at the heat behind her eyes. Then she divided her flowers and placed half at the base of Claire’s stone and half at the base of Clarence’s stone.

  “Damn it.” She could see Mrs. Ward’s grave from the side of her eye. “Damn, damn!” Knowing she would feel small and mean spirited if she didn’t do it, she took a few flowers from Claire and Clarence and placed them on Mrs. Ward’s grave. She glared at the stone. “These flowers are not because you were a nice person, Enid Ward. You’re getting them because I am a nice person.”

  For a long time, she stood looking at Claire and Clarence’s markers and thinking about a life and family that was never meant to be. At length, she removed a spoon from her wrist bag. She’d taken it from the hotel. The soil was rich and loamy at the base of Clarence’s headstone, and it was easy to dig a hole with the spoon. When the hole was deep enough, she rolled two letters and a photograph into a tube and pushed it into the hole before she replaced the dirt. Then she blinked hard and sat on the white stones at the foot of Clarence’s grave. Della closed her eyes and lifted her face to the thin morning sunlight.

  “I have to believe that you knew I didn’t hate you. You had to know that,” she said softly. “And I understand that you were hurt and angry and exhausted when you sat down to answer my last letter.” She spoke to his stone, feeling the anger and guilt leave her. Letting it go. “If you had finished writing your letter, and then posted it, I think you would have regretted that letter as much as I regretted my last letter to you. If you had lived, Clarence, I believe you would have forgiven a young wife’s self-pity and foolishness.”

  She heard Cameron’s boots crunching the gravel as he walked up the hill, and she stood. “You were a good man, Clarence Ward. I’m glad I knew you for a little while.”

  She saw Cameron’s hat first, then his face; and then his full, tall frame came into view, and she was surprised to see that he carried flowers. When he reached her, he removed his hat and held it against his chest, then he stepped forward and placed the flowers on Clarence’s grave.

  “Oh, James,” Della whispered, taking his hands in hers. Suddenly she understood. “I’ve been so blind. You’ve been searching for the same thing I needed.” She drew a breath and let it go. “I forgive you, James Cameron,” she said softly, looking into his eyes. “You were doing your duty in a war that no one wanted. And so was Clarence. I forgive you.”

  “Christ.” He grabbed her in his arms and buried his face in her hair, knocking her hat askew. “I’ve waited . . . and I didn’t even know . . .”

  When she sensed he wouldn’t mind if she saw his eyes, Della pulled back and placed her hand on his cheek. “Can you forgive yourself?”

  “Can you?” His hands tightened on her waist.

  “I never thought I could . . . but yes. The war is over, James. It’s finally over for us.” They held each other, then she turned to the gravestones and the bright flowers beneath them. “It’s time to say good-bye,” she whispered. “I loved you both. I always will. But it’s time to let go and say good-bye.”

  She let her gaze stray to Enid Ward’s grave, then drew a deep breath and silently said what needed to be said. “I’ll never forget what you did and said. But I forgive you.”

  Before the hill blocked her view, she turned back for one last look, then she took Cameron’s arm, and turned her gaze forward.

  There was nothing further to hold them in Atlanta. Della persuaded Cameron to cancel his appointment with Mercator Ward, and they dashed to the station to catch the afternoon train bound for St. Louis.

  “Ward owes you, Della,” Cameron said when they were seated in the last row of seats in the last passenger car. “Plus, you’re the only family he has left.”

  “You didn’t see a stone waiting for me in the family plot,” Della said wryly. They had brought their own box lunch from the hotel, and she peeked inside. Very nice. “I don’t want his money.”

  Cameron didn’t say anything, but she could see that he was considering her circumstances, wondering what she was thinking.

  “That was interesting what Mr. Ward said about expecting me to sell the farm. Selling never occurred to me. I guess because I’m not a businesswoman, or maybe because I wasn’t old enough or brave enough to think about starting a new life in a city. I should have. There would have been jobs in a city that didn’t require wearing a skimpy costume.”

  “Are you thinking about selling now?”

  She opened the box lunch again and slid him a thoughtful look. “I’m developing a plan.”

  “Would you like to tell me about it?”

  “Actually, I would.”

  “Well . . .” he prompted after a minute.

  She passed him a hard-boiled egg and a napkin. “I’m not ready yet. I have to decide just how selfish I can be and live with it. And there’s something else I need to be sure about before I settle on a definite plan. I hope to have everything settled in my mind by the time we reach Santa Fe. How long do you think that will take?”

  “Ten or eleven days.”

  “Good.” She knocked her egg against the bench seat, then began to peel the shell into her napkin. “I imagine you’ll start wearing your gun again when we reach St. Louis.”

  “More likely a day or so before.”

  Della nodded soberly. She had come to terms with James Cameron being the Yankee who had shot and killed her husband. And when she had watched him place his hat over his heart, then lay his flowers on Clarence’s grave, she’d known she couldn’t hate him. And she had found it in herself to forgive his deception.

  But there were other obstacles between them.

  Those problems began to surface the first day out of St. Louis. The train stopped around noon for a mail and freight pick up in a small town about fifty miles west of St. Louis. When Della suggested they
use the occasion to stretch their legs and get some fresh air, Cameron followed her outside to the platform.

  “There’s such a difference in the weather between Georgia and Missouri,” she said, adjusting a thick shawl around the shoulders of her traveling suit. “Do you think it’s going to snow?”

  “Looks like it could,” Cameron answered, but he didn’t glance at the sky. The moment they stepped outside, he’d scanned the people on the platform, his gaze coming to rest on a man standing near the station house door.

  The man studied Cameron with a slightly puzzled expression, as if trying to place why Cameron looked familiar. Eventually he would remember that Cameron had been the sheriff who arrested him for shooting up a saloon when Cameron had worn a badge for Ponca City, Oklahoma. The man had spent six days in jail and been ordered to pay the damages. It was a small item in Cameron’s memory. Maybe not so insignificant for the man standing in the doorway. Cameron could recall the incident but not the man’s name.

  He touched the gun on his hip, glad that he’d changed out of his Eastern clothes in St. Louis. Carrying a weapon in his jacket or boot wasn’t comfortable or efficient.

  Della smiled expectantly, and Cameron realized she’d asked a question. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “I suggested we go inside and buy some fresh coffee. Can you smell it? The woman in the brown hat says there’s a cart inside and the vendor brewed new coffee only an hour ago.”

  He considered passing the man standing in the station house doorway and all the possibilities for trouble. An accidental bump. The wrong expression. A misunderstood word. Cameron had seen it dozens of times—a hothead looking for a reason. There were too many bystanders on the platform to risk giving the man in the doorway a reason.

  “You go ahead,” he said to Della. “I’ll stay here and have a cigar.”

  “You are passing up a cup of coffee? You?” She arched an eyebrow. “You can smoke inside.”

  “I know. But the air feels good.”

  She shrugged and went into the station house, passing the man in the doorway without a glance.

  And in that moment, James Cameron knew he was finished as a bounty hunter and a gunfighter.

  For the first time since he’d come west, he had stepped away from the possibility of a challenge. He’d spotted trouble and evaded instead of confronting it.

  For the first time in more than a decade, he cared about dying. The realization shocked the hell out of him.

  He loved a woman and, sooner or later, loving her was going to get him killed.

  A man who didn’t care if he lived or died always had the advantage. The man who cared was too careful, too slow. He hesitated. For one critical instant the man who cared thought about dying and those whom he’d never see again.

  He brooded over his discovery as the train rolled across Kansas and then slowed as the rails rose toward the mountains. The man in the station house doorway had not boarded the train. He must have been seeing someone off. But others recognized him in the following days. Fortunately they were men looking for a handshake instead of trouble. But as sure as he was back in legend territory, trouble would come.

  “You’ve been as quiet as a brick,” Della said, lowering a newspaper to her lap. The potbellied stove behind them wasn’t working and thin ice glazed the inside of the window. She was wrapped in a shawl and had dug out her heavy riding gloves to keep her fingers warm.

  “I’ve been thinking about things.” One of the things he’d thought about was missing her every night when she went to the ladies’ sleeping car and he headed in the opposite direction to the gentlemens’ sleeping car.

  “What are you going to do, Cameron?”

  “Do about what?”

  “The conductor says we’ll reach the terminus tomorrow. Then we’ll take the stagecoach into Santa Fe. It will be supper time when we reach town, so we’ll stay at a hotel.” She looked down at her lap and a light blush flared on her cheeks. “The next day you’ll find the man you mentioned and hire him to take me back to Two Creeks.” She stared up at him. “And then, what will you do? What’s next for James Cameron?”

  He loved the sound of his name on her lips, but she only called him James in moments of high emotion.

  “That’s one of the items I’m considering. I’m wondering if prosecuting outlaws would be as satisfactory as catching them.”

  Her eyebrows soared in surprise. “You could walk away from bounty hunting and wearing a sheriff’s badge?”

  “It’s just a thought.” He narrowed his eyes, wondering if she had any idea that she had changed his life. “Hunting criminals and bringing them in to face justice has been my life for too long to stop entirely. But there are other ways to accomplish the same thing.”

  The trip to Atlanta, and everything that had happened there, had ended the war for Della. During the long days on the train, she had shared memories, speaking carefully and deliberately, testing to make certain the memories were real. She spoke calmly, sometimes fondly, sometimes with great sadness, but Cameron understood she was taking one last look at the past before she put it behind her forever.

  He couldn’t do that. Della’s forgiveness had laid Clarence Ward’s ghost to rest, and Cameron loved her for that and was grateful. He would not dream again of that day in the ditch when Clarence had appeared above him. Clarence’s face and Clarence’s death would not haunt him in the future. But there were dozens of other men in gray. Those good men who needed the score balanced.

  That had not changed and never would. He would continue trying to even the score for the rest of his life. The question had become how to do it, now that it was too dangerous and too foolish to use his guns.

  His father, the judge, would have been pleased to know the direction his thoughts were taking him. He wondered suddenly if Della was pleased.

  “Do you still hate me?” he asked. By all rights she should. He had no argument to persuade her differently. But sometimes he thought about that moment in a St. Louis park when she’d admitted that she had been falling in love with him.

  She didn’t immediately answer. First, she folded the newspaper she’d been reading and tucked it away, then she turned her face to the icy window. Darkness was falling beyond the pane.

  “No,” she said so softly that he had to bend close to hear.

  Relief and elation rushed through his body, then he caught himself. Not hating him wasn’t the same as loving him.

  As if she’d read his mind, the uncanny way she did sometimes, she let her shoulder rest against his and said, “We have some things to talk about, James.”

  When she called him by name, a hot, liquid feeling spilled through his insides. But so far the only times she called him James were when she was nervous or about to make love. He didn’t know what it meant that she’d called him James now.

  “I suspect that conversation requires privacy,” he said, glancing at the heads of passengers in the seats in front of them. “We’ll talk over supper tomorrow night in Santa Fe.”

  “We could talk then.” She kept her face turned toward the dark window. “Or . . . are you planning to rent a hotel suite?”

  “I am.”

  She nodded. “I thought we could have supper, then order some whisky sent to the suite afterward. I’m thinking tomorrow night is definitely going to be a whisky-drinking occasion.”

  That could be good or bad. Usually it was bad. At least difficult.

  He didn’t sleep well in the narrow, short train berth. At four-thirty in the morning, he gave up, got dressed, and returned to the passenger car. He lit a cigar, put one boot up on the back of the seat in front of him, then scraped the ice off the window so he could see the stars winking in the cold morning blackness.

  By now he knew better than to believe he could guess what she was thinking. But he had some thoughts of his own to talk about. Della Ward was not going back to Two Creeks, Texas. Not if he had anything to say about it. That’s what he needed to find out. If he ha
d anything to say about it.

  Della took his arm as they came out of the restaurant and crossed Plaza Square. “I wasted a lot of food and your money,” she said, tilting her head to look at the sky. It was a cold, dry night, spangled by a million stars. “I’d forgotten what an ordeal riding a stage is. My stomach is still rattling around.”

  “Are you tired?”

  “It’s been a long day.” And she’d forgotten how nerve-racking it was to be in town with Cameron. Every diner in the restaurant might have been a shooter. Every shadow on the street could signal an ambush. Cameron’s gaze constantly scanned his surroundings, and Della felt the tension in his muscles when she brushed against his body. This was no way to live.

  “I’d suggest that we postpone any serious talk, but I think it has to be done now.”

  She nodded. Neither had wanted to talk about personal issues on the train within hearing of others. Consequently they had delayed addressing questions that now required immediate attention.

  Once in the suite, Della hung up their jackets and hats and smoothed her hair while Cameron lit the lamps and poured them each a glass of good whisky. He put the bottle on the dining table and pulled out two chairs. That was where Della would also have chosen to talk. Many a problem had been thrashed out over a kitchen table. This wasn’t a kitchen table, but it was close.

  They sat down and silently studied each other. Lord, how she loved the look of this man. He seemed tall even when he was sitting. She liked the intense blue of his eyes and the way his brows slashed across his forehead. The straight, square set of his shoulders gave her that smoky feeling inside. And the way he held his mouth, with just a glimpse of white teeth showing.

  He touched his glass to hers. “I know you have things to say. I have some things to say, too.”

  That was a bit of a surprise. “You can talk first, if you want.” Suddenly, she was shy and unsure of the short speech she had rehearsed in her mind. If she had misunderstood what he’d said in the park in St. Louis, then she was about to make an enormous fool of herself.