Rose

by Jill Marie Landis

  The marshal tossed a handful of papers out of the drawer, adding them to the confusion on top of the desk.

  “This what you’re a rootin’ for?” Zach slipped his hand beneath the pile closest to him and withdrew a wickedly sharp blade Kase used to open his daily ration of cold beans.

  “Thanks.” Realizing he would need another bowl, Kase set down the can and started to rise.

  “I’ll eat outta the can,” Zach volunteered, guessing the younger man’s intentions.

  Kase sat back down. The drawer was opened again, and this time Kase pulled out a bowl and two spoons.

  “Ain’t this the limit?” Zach watched while Kase unceremoniously dumped cold beans into the bowl.

  “You want to eat or not?”

  “I ain’t sure at this point.” Zach shook his head.

  The meal was soon divided, and Kase eased back in his chair. They ate in silence until Kase set his empty bowl on the edge of the desk and looked across at Zach.

  “If Caleb sent you to talk me into going back, you can let him know I’m not interested.”

  Zach held the empty bean can in one hand as he licked the spoon clean, then laid it on the desk. He leaned back, crossed a moccasined foot over his knee, and folded his arms across his chest. Zach stared at Kase with his faded brown eye.

  “You growed taller, boy. Nastier, too. But I could still knock you from here to Sunday, kid.”

  “You think so?” Kase stared across the desk at the man who had taught him to ride when he was six and how to shoot a gun when he was not much older. Zach had a devil of a time convincing Analisa Storm that a ten-year-old needed to learn to handle a gun. “If the boy’s gonna live out west he ought to know how not to blow his damn-fool head off,” Zach had argued. By the time the Storms moved back to Boston, Kase was more proficient with a Colt than most grown men.

  Pulling a wad of tobacco out of the pocket of his dust-coated Levi’s, Zach tore off a plug and wedged it between his cheek and gum.

  “Your ma’s a might worried about ya, boy.” The only sign of a change in Zach’s expression was a crook of his brow. He seemed determined to take Kase’s sullenness seriously.

  Kase’s gaze was drawn once more to the wood-framed window set akilter in the right wall of the jail. His stomach tensed. An expert at slipping into stubborn silence, he still could not control his inner turmoil. He could do without this.

  “It wouldn’t harm you none to write to her, let her know you’re still alive.”

  Kase could not hide the resentment in his tone. “How’d you find me?”

  Zach shifted the tobacco and spit into the bean tin. “Didn’t even have to look. The Rawlins fella that hired ya wrote and tol’ your pa that he was as happy as a flea in a doghouse that he’d run into you in Kansas City. Then”—he spat again— “your pa sent a letter out to me, askin’ quite politely, if it was convenient, and if I was between jobs, would I just happen on by a no-account town called Busted Heel and see how his boy was makin’ out as marshal?”

  His boy. Kase crossed his arms over his rib cage. He felt as if he’d just taken a punch to the gut. He wondered if Zach had known the truth all these years.

  A fly buzzed in the stillness. While neither of them spoke, the hot air in the small room seemed to close in around them.

  “You got trouble you can’t handle, Kase?” Zach met his stare straight on.

  “Nothing anyone can help me with, Zach.”

  Used to keeping his own council, Kase hesitated to open up to Zach, even though he knew the man as well as he did anyone. Zachariah Weston Elliot had been a scout for the army at Fort Sully in the Dakotas when Caleb Storm, then an undercover agent for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, moved Kase and Analisa there in 1871. But Kase knew the longer he kept silent, the more tension and anger would roil inside him. There was only one way to find out.

  “Did you know who my real father was?”

  Zach’s answer was swift, his expression one of unveiled surprise. “No. I always thought it was Caleb.”

  Unable to sit any longer, Kase stood and began to slowly pace the confines of the small office. “My real father,” he began, trailing his splayed fingers through his hair, “was a renegade Sioux who knifed and raped my mother when she was sixteen.”

  “Shit.” Zach worked his tobacco plug and squinted up at Kase. “How’d you find that out?”

  “Caleb told me.” Kase shrugged and turned toward the window.

  “What in the hell for?” Zach shook his head and asked the question more to himself than to Kase.

  But Kase had heard, and turned on the old man with a vengeance. “Because I forced him to. I prodded and pried until he told me.” He turned away again, unable to meet the old man’s questioning stare, and wished to God he had never heard the truth.

  Zach shook his head. “You and Caleb was always two peas in a pod. It was your ma I could never quite figure into the picture.”

  From the window where he stood, Kase watched a man cross the far end of the street, the image wavering like a specter in the heat waves that rose from the dry ground. Like the heat, the knot in his chest would not ease.

  When they finally came, his words were soft-spoken. “My mother’s family had just immigrated from Holland and were attacked as they crossed the plains. Her younger brother and sister were taken captive. Only Opa, my grandfather, and my mother survived. I still remember Opa, and living with him and Mother in a soddie in Iowa. I can even remember the day Caleb married my mother.”

  “Then you knew he wasn’t your real pa.”

  As he recalled the years gone by, Kase smiled wistfully. “Sure, I knew. After they were married I always called him Papa. I remember wishing it to be true, but like any kid, I was always asking questions.” His words brought little G.W. to mind. “Where’s my real pa? What kind of an Indian is he? What happened to him?”

  “And?”

  “They gave me answers that didn’t quite tally, so I kept it up. Why didn’t we live in town after the Indian went away? What was his name? Where did he go? They said he was dead, that he had been a Sioux from the Pine Ridge Reservation, that my mother never knew his Indian name. She called him mijn man, a Dutch term for husband. She never used the more familiar, more endearing echtgenoot, which means husband, too. I used to wonder how they met, how they even communicated, because my mother only spoke Dutch before I was born. Finally, all the questions must have upset her, because one day Caleb took me riding and he told me how sad it made my mother feel to remember the man, because he was dead. If I had any questions, I was to ask him, not Mother. So for a time I stopped asking. But it haunted me more and more.”

  “And in Boston?”

  “They sent me to school.” Unwilling to say more, unable to voice the bigotry and degradation he had faced, Kase returned to the chair behind his desk and stared at the scattered pages atop it.

  But knowing the reception Kase would have met in the East, Zach quickly pieced together his own story. “So you got into a few scrapes?”

  “It was more than a few. And the last one was in the law office where I worked.”

  “So Caleb told you the truth.”

  “Only after I forced him. I made him so damn mad he finally just blurted it all out.”

  It all came back to him, the inner turmoil, the seething fury he had felt as he sat in the library and refused to look up at Caleb. He knew his life would never change until he learned the truth about himself. His anger was stoked by fear of not knowing who or what he was, how he came to exist. Why couldn’t he control himself?

  In a rush of anger, Kase stood and faced Caleb toe to toe. “I’m not you, dammit! I never will be, because I’ll never know who I really am. How can I when I’ve never gotten the truth out of you or my mother?”

  Caleb had blanched. “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t see things the way you do. I don’t fit in here and I never will.”

  “You don’t want to.”

  “Not bad
enough to be stepped on, to turn the other cheek time and time again,” Kase had shouted.

  “Have you ever tried?” Caleb shouted back.

  “Do you really think I could? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you’ve never tried to see my side or what trying to fit into this life is doing to me.”

  “Kase ...” Caleb had reached out to him, put a hand on his shoulder, but Kase hit it away.

  “I’m not like you. Maybe, just maybe, I’m like him. I’m like the man you and my mother could never bring yourselves to explain. That’s what you think, isn’t it?” Kase stepped close, backing Caleb toward the fireplace.

  Caleb’s expression became one of dark denial. “Never.”

  “Who was he?” Kase pressed.

  “Forget it.”

  “Why? What are you hiding? Tell me!”

  “I can’t.”

  Kase reached out and grasped Caleb by the shoulders. “Who the hell was he? Who the hell am I?” he cried out.

  Caleb shook him off. “All right,” his eyes flashed with fury, “you want to know? Your father was a renegade Sioux who raped your mother and left her for dead.”

  As if he had taken a physical blow to the midsection, Kase tensed and stepped away. “Why didn’t you tell me before now? Were you truly afraid I was like him?” he whispered.

  Caleb shook his head, his eyes awash with unshed tears. “Never. I never thought that of you. Does it really matter so much that we wanted to keep this from you?”

  “Yes, dammit, it matters. It explains a hell of a lot. My father was a savage, a murderer. He is the reason my mother has been forced to live in shame all these years. And I am, too.”

  Caleb’s sad expression then darkened with a hint of returning anger.

  “What do you mean, all these years?”

  “If it hadn’t been for me, her entire life could have been different. She could have lived a normal life, married a—” All too aware of what he had been about to say, Kase had become silent once again.

  But in a tone as emotionless as a stone, Caleb had finished for him: “She could have married a white man. Is that what you were about to say?”

  At the sound of a gasp from the open doorway, both men turned in unison and saw Analisa clinging to the door frame with one hand while she pressed the other against the base of her throat. Eyes wide with horror, she stood in stunned disbelief.

  “Caleb? What is this?” Her gaze lingered on her husband an instant before she turned to Kase. “Kase? Wat is er aan de hand? What is going on?” Barely audible, her words reached him.

  Kase turned away from Caleb, took a lingering look at his mother, and knew a blinding hurt that ached so badly, welled up from the depths of his soul with such ferocity, that he thought he might retch from the pain. He could not speak as he fought to control wave after wave of nausea.

  Caleb crossed the room and took Analisa in his arms. She stared unmoving at her son as Caleb softly whispered, “Anja? Anja, it’s all right, love.”

  Unable to meet their eyes, Kase had left the room. A few hours later without another word, without even a good-bye to his aunt or the half sister he adored, he left them. He had no plan other than to get through one day at a time. He crawled off alone like an injured wolf seeking its lair. He had no destination until he found himself accepting the job of marshal of Busted Heel.

  Kase tried to put that terrible afternoon behind him as he looked at Zach Elliot. How could he explain what the truth had done to him? How could the old man know how he had felt when he learned he was the son of a murderer, a rapist? It was all too clear now why he had never been able to control his anger. He was certain he had inherited the blinding temper he fought so hard to keep on a tight rein, just as he was certain that he could never look his beautiful mother in the eye again without feeling all the shame she had been forced to endure because she chose to keep him.

  Zach shifted uneasily on his chair. “That explains your aunt livin’ on the Sioux reservation,” he said half aloud.

  “I grew up thinking my Aunt Meika had chosen the Sioux way of life. Now I find out she had been taken captive.” He shook his head.

  “What happened to the other one, the brother?”

  “Pieter? No one knows. Caleb tried to track him through the BIA. But he seems to have disappeared.”

  “So after you found out about your mother, you just up and left home without a word?”

  Unable to meet Zach’s gaze, Kase stared at a point across the room.

  “You ain’t seen your ma?”

  “Or my sister. Not since he told me the truth.”

  Zach’s silence was accusation enough. Kase knew what his mother must be feeling, knew that his knowing would shame her further, but to keep from going insane, he had to heal his own wounds first.

  The tension between the two men rode the hot air as close as the silence that surrounded them. Finally, to Kase’s relief, Zach abruptly changed the subject. “Who’s this Quentin Rawlins that hired you?”

  “An old friend of Caleb’s who knew him when he worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.” Kase swiveled his chair back and forth, taking his time as he gave Zach an account of how he came to be marshal of Busted Heel. “I ran into him in a hotel in Kansas City and he asked straightaway if I’d consider coming out here to keep the peace. Seems he’s worried about all the farmers moving in hereabouts, tends to think there’s trouble brewing between the ranchers and the sodbusters.”

  “He might be right.”

  “He might be,” Kase agreed, “but right now I’d say the biggest problem Quentin’s got is how to keep his hands from dying of boredom and tearing up this place when they do get into town.”

  “Had some trouble already?”

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle.” Kase finally smiled at Zach. “Just a few rowdies shooting up the town one night. Some poor little Italian fella was killed accidentally.”

  Kase paused long enough to stretch his hands high above his head and then lower them. “So,” he began again in an effort to make up for his surly greeting, “you gonna stay around for a while, Zach? Or are you just here long enough to make sure I’m alive and then send a report back to Boston?”

  “Well, I reckon I got no place to go for a while. ‘Sides, what marshal couldn’t use a deputy?”

  “This one.”

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s nothing for me to do here, let alone a deputy, but you’re welcome to stay.”

  “Where do ya bunk?”

  Kase smiled again and waited for his old friend’s reaction. “Got a room at the local pleasure palace.”

  “You such a good customer you, need to call the place home?” Zach squinted his good eye and peered at Kase.

  “Naw. It isn’t like that, just not much else available in this one-horse town. The lady at the boardinghouse didn’t take to having a ‘breed’ living under her roof. I have to admit, it’s convenient living at Flossie’s, although the decorating isn’t exactly to my taste.” He rolled up a Wanted poster lying atop the desk and used it to swat at a fly hovering above the empty bean bowl.

  “If ya got an empty cell here in the jail, that’s good enough for me for a spell.”

  Kase laughed. “Sure. Welcome to it. Nobody’s been locked up in it for weeks.”

  “In that case, I think I’ll go stretch out for a bit, ‘cause I’m as tired as a tomcat that’s been walkin’ in mud. I’ll jes’ see to my horse and bring in my gear ... Marshal.”

  “Go right ahead. It’s about time I made the rounds anyway.” Kase pulled on the gold chain that dangled from the watch pocket in his denims. He flipped open the lid of the timepiece and noted the time before he snapped it shut. He stood and shoved the watch back into his pocket. “Train’s late. Must be on account of the big meeting in Cheyenne.”

  “What for?”

  “It seems a lot of folks are pushing for Wyoming to become a state.”

  “Plan on things changin’ a mite?” Zach wanted to know.

&nbs
p; “Here?” Kase laughed and moved toward the door. “Not very likely.” He nodded toward the solid plank door with a small barred window in the wall behind his desk. “Make yourself at home.”

  Chapter

  Three

  Rosa ran a shaking hand over her hair to make certain most of it was still upswept and in place and reached down to collect her valise. The small Guide for Italian Immigrants she had purchased in Genoa slipped from her lap to the floor, and she quickly rescued it, opened the valise, and shoved the pamphlet inside.

  BEWARE OF OVERLY FRIENDLY PEOPLE.

  THROW AWAY ALL WEAPONS YOU MAY HAVE.

  SPEAK IN A LOW VOICE.

  DO NOT GET EXCITED IN YOUR DISCUSSIONS.

  DO NOT YELL OR WAVE YOUR HANDS ABOUT.

  DO NOT SPIT ON THE SIDEWALK.

  BEWARE OF STRANGE MEN OFFERING PROPOSALS OF MARRIAGE.

  The list of admonitions in the Guide seemed endless. And silly. Still, Rosa had tried to memorize them all. She intended to make Giovanni proud of her. Had he changed very much over the past three years? Perhaps, she thought, he had become as outgoing and confident as the Americans she had seen on the streets of New York.

  The train began to slow with a screech of brakes and a hiss of steam, and through the window beside her, Rosa watched the station at Busted Heel appear at last. A long platform fronted a tiny building near the railroad tracks. Beyond the depot, the town stood in profile against the empty landscape. A few ramshackle wooden buildings stood in two straight lines divided by a wide thoroughfare. As she stepped from the train onto the firm footing of the wooden platform, she took a deep breath and filled her lungs with the warm, dry air of Wyoming in summer.

  There was no sign of Giovanni on the platform.

  Disappointment assailed her, doubt that was soon followed by forgiveness as Rosa realized her husband had no way of knowing exactly when she would arrive. His only alternative to not meeting her would have been to greet every train that stopped in Busted Heel.

  The conductor stepped down to ask for the brass tag needed to identify her trunk, which was stored in the baggage car. Rosa reached inside the deep pocket of her dress until she found it. Following the man’s directions, she moved out of the sun and stood alone beneath the overhang that fronted the small building perched on the platform.