by Amelia Rose
Partway into the hour, he did ask what Virginia City was like, and that I discoursed on happily.
"Sage," I said. "There's foothills and mountains, the Sierra a ways away and Mount Davidson Virginia City is built on. They call our railroad the Very Crooked and Terribly Rough because the railroad up to town is so switch backed. There are accidents there, all the time, horses running off with wagons, and sometimes you see camels."
"Camels?" He looked as if he thought I was teasing him.
I nodded empathically and felt my auburn curls trying to escape the confines of both the braids I'd rolled it into and my hat. "A businessman brought camels to Virginia City for the silver mines. No one likes them because they're mean and because they scare the horses, but they're so fantastic looking."
I told him about the snows in the winter and the places in Virginia City where they say you can see out over the valley 100 miles, though I don’t know if anyone's ever proved it. I told him about The Faro Queen my uncles had bought and saved from fire damage, and about Gold Hill, and I almost told him about Johnny, except that wouldn't be proper, nor would it be ladylike to tell him what I thought about Sissy Tompkins.
Sometime later, having realized I now felt comfortable with him, and that I had talked for about half an hour straight, I asked him about Redding.
"I've been here about two years," he said, thoughtfully. "Your new brother's been in Redding five years or so and his ranch is quite a spread, about 10,000 acres."
I tried to imagine that and failed. I'd stood and looked from C Street in Virginia City across a valley rumored to be 100 miles, but that didn't help me imagine what 10,000 acres was like.
"Mr. Kennedy's taken the cattle because there's a drought here," Mr. Lord said, pointing to the river as we passed. "Cattle die in summers like this; makes sense to sell them before that happens, when they've still got some meat on them." He said this as if it were an argument he'd made to Sarah's husband, one he'd only just won, and looked away from the road to look at me. "Water rights in this part of the world see a lot of folks in court, and a few in worse places. When they're not fighting over water, they're fighting over fences and who's responsible for keeping cattle off of whose land."
I nodded at him, thinking it wasn't that different in Virginia City, and that this place looked a lot less desert than where I'd just come from.
"So, you know much about working on a ranch?" he asked, with a smile that suggested he might be teasing me, but I wasn't certain, and I turned tongue-tied again and stammered a bit. I didn't intend to work the farm but, then, I didn't intend for my sister to just put me up indefinitely. In fact, very little of what I'd done since I'd left home three days ago had been intentional at all.
Had I known Mr. Lord, I might have asked him what he knew about silver mining, because I knew quite a bit, had grown up with it, and I understood how to run a grocery store, something I never intended to do but I'd seen my father with his store.
Mr. Lord was a stranger. I didn't feel full of sass, or confidence, or common sense. I shook my head and didn't answer, and it didn't matter then because we came out of the trees, leaving the river behind, and into the long valley and instantly saw the smoke. My heart leapt. In the desert, smoke means wildfire. I had no idea if it meant the same here.
"Is that—" I started, pointing.
"—Fire," he said. "Hold on."
Mr. Lord had two horses on the traces. He shouted them into a gallop. We weren't far away; we were close enough to run to the source of the smoke. Trees and grasses whipped by us. I held my hat with one hand, clung to the wagon with the other. The outbuildings weren't burning, at least I couldn't see any flames against the hot blue sky, and the ranch houses coming into view—one of which I assumed was my sister's and the others, probably bunkhouses for the ranch hands—none of those appeared to be burning.
"What is it?" I asked, unable to frame a question he couldn't answer by just saying, "Fire."
"The field."
I had turned my head to look at him. Now, I looked forward again, saw the flames this time because I looked closer to the ground.
It had just started and, even as we tore across the stony ground, I could hear a bell ringing frantically and the distant shouts of men. How many hands could be left on the ranch if William had taken 1,000 head of cattle north?
The wagon bounced over the dirt and stones and Mr. Lord slowed the horses before we were much closer. I jumped down without thinking, left everything I had traveled with and ran toward the flames. I could shovel dirt, if there was a shovel anywhere near, or dig and throw if I had to. I could bucket brigade, I'd done it in Virginia City when someone tried to burn The Faro Queen, or I had until I'd been caught by my brother and sent away for being a girl.
I ran hard toward the flames, catching sight of Sarah running toward me from one of the houses. She hadn't seen me yet, she was still focusing on the fire. There were men running with her, cowboys with shovels and people were shouting about priming the well and getting the buckets.
I made it to the fire line before Mr. Lord made it out of the wagon. Tongues of fire were starting to shoot up into the afternoon air and creepers were making their way through drying grass, spreading toward cottonwoods and apple trees and bushes, and everything looked dry. Everything looked like tinder.
A line of fire raced at me through the grasses and I stomped, shuffling with my boots, scratching soft meadow dirt over them, catching a toe and starting to fall. Someone caught my arm, pulled me back, and handed me a shovel. He was tall, rangy and dark, with a sun burnt neck, a red bandana around his throat and over his nose and mouth. He nodded at the flames.
As if I needed to be told. The shovel handle was splintery and old. I shoved the point into the ground, stomped on it, brought it up hard and brought up a shovelful of dirt. The creeper coming my way went out, a little serpent of fire going dark. More creepers followed and I tramped down the spots I'd shoveled dirt onto, aware that a larger conflagration burned just beyond me. I concentrated on what was directly in front of me, throwing dirt, shouting when something got by me. I beat down a couple sparks that went up into the air, saw the wind was picking up and shoveled faster.
Nearby, I could hear Sarah, shouting for others to come out. She was digging too, as were the men around her, and buckets were being filled and brought, people running with them, spilling water as they came, dirt would probably make the difference and the water would make certain the flames didn't come back.
Mr. Lord passed me, moving closer to the flames. Someone passed him a shovel and he dug faster than I could, dumped more earth than I did, and the creepers of flame stopped coming through the grass to me.
I took a breath, looked around.
Sarah stood, staring at me.
Chapter 2
Sarah didn't actually take me by the ear and drag me across the pasture between the fire line where ranch hands were still stomping and Mr. David Lord leaned on the shovel, looking amused, but she may as well have. When the fire was controlled and out, and Sarah looked up and saw me, her mouth tightened and her brow thundered. She crossed the ground between us and embraced me hard enough to drive the breath from me, then pushed me away to arm's length and said, "Come inside. Now."
My first impression of the ranch, then, was smoke and flames in dry grass, followed by a confused impression of staring men, David Lord laughing, and a number of buildings I didn't have time to count.
Sarah led me up the wide steps of the front porch, through the front door, past a parlor, down the hall and into an enormous kitchen filled with more than one hulking stove and bright pans hanging on hooks from the ceiling.
I gazed around, wanting to see everything, the house, which looked big, and the other buildings to the north, which were so close, by that I had to wonder if Sarah fed everyone meals she made in the kitchen or if someone came in to help. I wanted to give her everything I'd brought her; novels I'd picked up on a rare trip to Reno and napkins I'd embroidered for
her with her initials on them, entwined with William's. I wanted to tell her everything that had been going on and, for the first time in days, I wanted to talk to someone about Johnny. Even my mother didn't know, or rather, she didn't know from me. It was Sarah I wanted to talk to and Sarah who I wanted to have put her arms around me and tell me that, eventually, it would be alright, this was more wounded pride than a broken heart, that Johnny was a lanky, indecisive boy who would be quite sorry he had opted for Sissy Tompkins' father's money rather than Kitty Collins' heart. I opened my mouth to say a fraction of that, the sort of thing we had always shared as sisters, but she interrupted me before I said one word, standing with her arms crossed, leaning against the counter in her new, utterly unfamiliar kitchen.
"Does Mother know where you are?"
I didn't know how to answer at first, just stared at her, mouth open, head shaking, until Sarah raised her hands, exasperated, and let them smack down against her legs. "Kitty Anne, how could you?"
And then I was shaking my head fast, off the stool so fast my skirt caught on it and sent it tumbling. "No, I mean… I left a note; she'll know. I didn't just… I left her a note; I had to come, Sarah, it's—"
Her face twisted. I'd made it worse, not better.
"Is she alright? Kitty? Mother? Is Mother alright? Uncle Hutch? Maggie and Little John? Matthew and Chloe?"
She was talking so fast, I could only keep saying, "No, no, that's not it" and finally broke in, feeling the crimson climb my cheeks again, feeling younger than I ever had at 18, too young, too foolish and too cruel.
"Sarah. Sarah, listen. Everyone is alright. Everyone. Except me."
Expressions crossed her face, relief and fear at the same time. "Are you ill?"
For an instant, I almost wished I were. How foolish to have run off over a boy I wasn't sure I loved and hurt feelings and frustration. My mother must actually be frantic, and the rest of my family as well.
Mr. Overton, though. His thoughts on my marriageability still shook me, set my heart racing. I wanted to tell Sarah that, to indicate that was the only reason I had run, but I had done enough without compounding my behavior by lying or exaggerating. Turning, I righted the stool and bade her sit across from me at the high kitchen bench. The wood there was deeply scored from chopping and working. Several sharp knives hung on a board just over the bench. This was a working kitchen, my sister's kitchen, and my sister's life had changed. Whatever we had known together in Gold Hill, she had a different life here. She'd grown up, grown into her marriage.
Still blushing, I said, "Mother is engaged."
Sarah stared at me as if I were even more insane than she had suspected thus far. "I know that Mother is engaged."
I'm not that selfish, not that childish, I wanted to say, but saying so would be. So instead, I stood and moved to the kitchen window that looked out at the other buildings. While standing there, I heard someone come in, pause in the doorway and say, "Mrs. Kennedy?"
Sarah's footsteps crossed the kitchen.
"Fire's out, ma'am."
"Do you know what started it?"
"Could've been somebody smoking, but we didn't find any traces of tobacco. Could have been embers blew from somewhere. I'm sorry, there's no way to tell. We caught it fast enough."
"Thank you, Mike. I'll see you at supper."
There was a pause, as if, whoever Mike was, he was looking my way, curious. He said something and so did she, then he went away and Sarah came back.
"Kitty?" Her hand on my shoulder was gentle this time, not the way she'd held me, at arm's length, before. "What happened?"
I turned into her embrace, surprised to find I was crying and surprised all the more to find it really was for Johnny. Maybe he was all angles and maybe he didn't know the right thing to say or when to say it. He was my friend, had been for more years than he'd been my intended, and I'd lost him as a friend as well as a fiancé. I had thought I would be marrying my friend. I had thought our friendship would matter.
As for John Overton's plans, those mattered too. I didn't want to marry for convenience or money or so that Mr. Overton and my mother could keep house alone.
Leaving Nevada was reckless, thoughtless and childish, everything I'd feared since Sarah had crossed her arms and looked more like our mother than my sister. But the feelings were real and, looking at her now, Sarah was my sister, the confidante I'd longed for.
I could tell her everything.
Halfway through what I was telling her, Sarah left the kitchen briefly. During her absence, a clutch of cowboys rode through the yard. If William Kennedy was off running cattle to Oregon and all these men were still on the ranch, it had to be an enormous operation. Still, 10,000 acres was a lot of room for a lot of cattle. I found myself watching, wondering about the men as they rode by. They were dusty and loud, yelling to each other and moving fast, riding up to one of the stables, where others came out to meet them, taking the leads and going away with the horses. The four who had ridden up slapped hats against their denim-clad legs, ran hands through their sweat-slick hair, called to each other, and headed up to what I figured must be a bunkhouse. I watched them with a lump in my throat. They were attractive, rugged, alive—and not Johnny.
Sarah interrupted my reverie. "I'm going to send someone into Redding to send a message by telegraph. Mother must be frantic." She held a handful of cream-colored stationery and a pen and bit her lip as she stood by the kitchen bench, looking down at me where I still perched on the stool. Abruptly, she said, "He didn't hurt you, did he?"
For an instant, I couldn't think who she meant.
"Mr. Overton, I mean," she clarified and crossed to the huge and battered kitchen table, where she sat with the paper, pen and ink.
Confused, I just shook my head. "No, he just…" Understanding dawned. "No! Of course not. It's just what I said. I don’t want to be married off like a sack of potatoes."
Sarah smiled, one of the first since she'd seen me stomping on flames in her pasture. "I don’t believe anyone marries potatoes."
"Oh, you know what I mean." But I smiled back at her. "He's not our father. I respect him, I do, but I don’t want to be married off like that. And I thought…" My throat tightened up again.
"I know." She tilted her head, studying me from across the room. "I had my own Johnny. Remember Bill Whitten?"
"Married Rose Wardleigh, didn't he?" He'd been an odd choice, shorter than Sarah and nearly white blond. "They're doing alright," I added. The Whittens kept a small house on the outskirts of Virginia City. I thought Maggie had delivered their last child.
"So am I," Sarah said, and smiled. "I love Redding, I love the ranch, I love the mountains here and the river and the neighbors. I love William more than I ever thought I could. None of this would have happened if Bill Whitten had married me." Her gaze was distant, as if she was contemplating how different her life could have been.
"Did you love him?" I asked.
Sarah considered, the pen poised over the ink. "Yes. I did. But not the way I love William. Not the way that lights up a room when he walks in, or the need to take his hand just because he's there. Not the way when I do take his hand, it feels completely perfect. I wanted to be with Bill, I felt breathless when around him, and loved being the center of his attention. But I didn't want to spend a quiet evening reading as he did accounts, I couldn't imagine myself wanting to get up to make him breakfast, and I don’t know that I wanted to tell him every detail of my day because I'd simply missed him."
As if she'd hit me, I put a hand to my middle and took a breath. "That's what I had with Johnny. I wanted to tell him everything and I wanted to hear everything and I wanted to go do things with him."
She looked wary.
"I mean, climb trees. Ride horses. Explore creeks when spring runoff makes them big. I wanted to watch sunsets with him and read books. Does that make sense?"
Sarah nodded. "You lost your friend as well as your fiancé."
"That's what I said."
"Some things take more than one hearing to understand."
Before the afternoon became any later, two of the ranch hands went off into Redding with the careful words meant for a telegraph message to my mother.
When she sat down to write it out in her careful hand, I saw a handful of pale cream pages already inked. A couple of them slipped loose of the stack and seesawed down to the floor. I stooped to scoop them up and noticed my name atop one sheet. I didn't read it, just handed it back, but asked what it was.
"All the letters I didn't send you," Sarah said, and something in her voice, something wistful and sad, stopped me from asking. The fact she wasn't writing was part of what had sent me on my journey, the ill-advised one that had seen me arriving at her ranch without warning and, seemingly, without welcome.
I didn't ask. Her expression was too sheltered, too sad in the moments that it took to shuffle the pages and hide the unfinished letters away again.
I'd ask another time.
Big Sky Ranch was every bit as big as the name indicated. Once the ranch hand named Mike had been dispatched to take the message, Sarah relaxed. My mother wouldn't get the message for some time, but Sarah has always been of the opinion that acting means whatever needed taking care of has been taken care of, even if no one else is aware of a change having occurred.
I really had left a note right where my mother could find it. There's not a day that goes by that she doesn't have a cup of tea in the afternoon, no matter how hot the day. I reminded myself of the note and tried to work up enthusiasm for the tour of the Big Sky.
It was impressive. In Gold Hill, we had a nice sized house with a beautiful garden my mother took great care of and, whenever she was away, Maggie or my Uncle Matthew did, because neither Sarah nor I had ever been able to grow much of anything. (That's not completely true—I can make weeds spring up.)