Bittersweet

by Anita Mills

  She looked like a lost waif, standing there in that faded calico dress, resting her hands on that round belly. If he’d ever needed any proof that life wasn’t fair, he could see it in her. Tipping his hat in farewell, he nudged Clyde with his knee, turning him down the rocky slope toward the road. As sorry as he felt for her, he knew there wasn’t much more he could do to help her out. He had his own troubles to worry about.

  Wyoming: October 5, 1865

  So that was the Wind River Range of the Rocky Mountains. Slowing Clyde to a walk, Spence studied the majestic, snow-covered peaks towering in the northwest with unabashed awe. He’d thought when he went through the Laramie Plains, the mountains to the south were pretty impressive, but each successive spine of the Rockies he’d seen was grander than the last. These seemed to rise like giant, jagged shark’s teeth above gray foothills, cutting across the high plains, a welcome change of scene after ten days spent crossing through a basin so dry that grease-wood and salt sage seemed to be the only things growing there.

  Claiming he’d trapped all the way from Lodgepole Creek in the south of the new Idaho Territory to the Powder and Yellowstone rivers in the north, from the North Platte to the Green, Salt, and Snake rivers in the west, an old sutler back at Laramie had pointed out the Overland Route on an army map of the territory, saying Spence was going to miss the best places by taking it. He’d told tales of peaks high enough to touch heaven, of bottomless canyons, of cliff walls descending into deep, sky blue lakes, of hot springs spewing steam and boiling water a hundred feet into the air. A man needed to spend years out here to see all of those things, the fellow said.

  Right now, Spence didn’t have weeks, let alone years to spare. Reaching behind him, he pulled out the map and unrolled it to study it. It was still one hell of a long way to California, and time was running out on him.

  “From the middle of October on, you can start expecting bad weather,” the sutler had said. “If you ain’t got to the Mormon settlements before then, you’d better expect to stay there, ‘cause there’s not much chance you can get to the Sierras, let alone over ‘em, before winter sets in. And you still got a big desert to cross before you run into the Sierras, anyway. I know the Mormons call it Deseret, which I guess is supposed to be the Promised Land to ‘em, but I’ll be damned if I saw anything but rattlesnakes and buzzards alive between the Salt Lake and Carson City. Everything else was just bones left from things that died of thirst. When you do find water, half the time it’s got too much salt and soda in it to drink.”

  At the rate he was going, Spence wouldn’t make it to the Mormons by then. He hadn’t had anybody yet tell him he could get through to California now, he realized grimly. But he had to. He wanted his son, and there was no way to get him without going out there. And he’d be damned before he’d spend the winter as an outsider among an unfriendly religious sect he didn’t understand. Lydia had been one wife too many for him.

  No, if he waited until spring, Ross might move on, and his trail could be too cold to follow, even for the Pinkertons, Spence reasoned. And there was a good chance that Ross didn’t want Josh, anyway. With Lydia dead, he’d probably already offered the kid to anybody who’d take him.

  Or there was the other possibility, the one Spence didn’t want to think about, the one that woke him up in a cold sweat at night. Maybe Ross and Josh hadn’t made it to California. They’d both had plenty of exposure to cholera before Lydia and her Auntie Fan died. The damned stuff took the young, the old, and just about everything in between, and not too many managed to survive it. Some, but not many.

  Looking skyward, he saw several huge, redheaded black birds circling overhead—turkey buzzards waiting for something to die. His hand went to his gun; then he caught himself. No, he didn’t want to fire any shot he didn’t have to. While he couldn’t tell a Crow from a Cheyenne or a Sioux, he could go a lifetime without meeting any more of them. He’d already had two narrow escapes, and he sure didn’t want to push his luck again.

  “Come on, Clyde,” he murmured. “We’re getting nowhere sitting here.” As he jerked on the little jenny’s rope, the pack animal resisted, then fell in behind the horse.

  By late afternoon the going was rougher, and the squat brush that had dotted the land for miles and miles now mingled with a sparse sprinkling pine on uneven, rock-littered ground. Nearly a month ago, the last wagons of settlers had passed this way, and now the route was pretty much deserted. He hadn’t seen another soul since the two railroad surveyors, and they d been less than fifty miles out of Fort Laramie. By now, they’d have already gone back.

  The road was ascending into the foothills as they formed an uneven pass to the south of the Wind River. The vast emptiness, the red rock bluffs, buttes, and mesas dotting the landscape between mountains and canyons emphasized the insignificance of one man. It was beautiful and eerie at the same time.

  The faint smell of distant smoke was in the air, he realized suddenly. Somebody had a campfire somewhere, and it wasn’t likely he was a white man, so he had to be doubly careful. He couldn’t afford to make a fire of his own tonight.

  It was nearly dark before he stopped to make his camp. And once he’d fed and hobbled Clyde and Sally, he fixed himself a cold supper of hardtack, jerky, and water before putting down his bedroll in the shelter of a rock ledge. Rolling up in his blankets, he lay for a time, staring at the riffs of clouds drifting across the stars, feeling more alone now than at any other time in his life.

  Somewhere out there in that wide expanse of night, a pack of wolves hunted, yipping and howling as they cornered something; then the world went almost silent, leaving only the sound of sagebrush rolling over rock. As he finally drifted off to sleep, Spence’s last thought was how early he needed to get on the trail in the morning.

  He awoke in pitch-black darkness, shivering from the cold of a strong north wind, and he realized a heavy bank of clouds had rolled in, obscuring the moon and stars. Adding another blanket, he turned on his side and pulled the covers closer, hoping to get back to sleep. As he crossed into that netherworld again, Lydia and Ross taunted him, and he promised himself revenge.

  A cold rain ran down the overhanging ledge, spattering the rocky ground below, waking him again. This time, the dark had faded into a gray, dismal dawn. Groping for his saddlebag, he found his watch. It was almost seven, and the sky was pouring. For a moment, he lay there, thinking God had to be punishing him for some terrible, unremembered sin. Looking out across the scrub-dotted land, he noticed everything glistened. Ice. Nearby, the little jenny was huddled against Clyde, and the manes of both animals dripped icicles. A norther had blown in during the night, and he was facing a very different sort of nightmare.

  He had to go on, he told himself. The stuff would melt in a few hours. Reluctantly rolling out of the blankets, he found the bundle of Jesse’s clothes, and added two shirts to the one he already wore before he pulled on his coat. A rolled pair of socks crinkled as he pulled it apart, and several banknotes fell out.

  Chagrined, he realized it was the fifty dollars he’d given Laura Taylor in what now seemed like an age ago, and he knew she’d outwitted him. The woman was just too damned stubborn for her own good, he muttered to himself as he tugged Jesse’s socks over his own. Calling her everything from an idiot to a fool, he managed to get his boots on. Bundled in an oiled canvas overcoat, he rerolled his bedding and gathered his belongings, then quickly stuffed them under the tarp-covered packs on the jenny’s back. Retrieving a rock-hard biscuit from his saddlebag, he tried to eat it while he tightened the saddle girth under Clyde’s belly.

  He broke camp cursing the miserable weather, then headed up the road again, hoping the storm wouldn’t amount to much. It was still too early for snow to last, he reassured himself. By noon, the rain would have the last vestiges of ice washed away.

  But as he rode hunched over the saddle horn, the wind whipped his face raw and cut through the canvas coat like a knife through butter. His hands
hurt, then grew numb, as the north wind howled louder, pelting him with ice, and he knew it was folly to try to go on today. He’d have to wait it out.

  He found a hollow place on the south side of a hill and made camp there, sheltering himself and the animals by tying a blanket to scrub pines growing out of crevices in the rocks above. Using a knife, he stripped small, scraggly boughs from the trunks and piled them up behind the blanket to keep himself off the cold ground. Spreading his bedroll over them, he wrapped himself in it and tried to get warm without a fire.

  Shortly after noon, the sleet turned to snow as he watched in disbelief. He hadn’t expected it to snow for at least another two or three weeks at the earliest. The flakes were big, wet, and heavy, and as soon as the wind shifted or died down, it would melt fast.

  By three o’clock, the air was so white he couldn’t even see the road through it, and the temperature was going down instead of up. The storm was turning into a blizzard before his eyes. To save the water in his canteen, he ate snow with his hands, then made another meal of jerky, while he faced his dwindling choices.

  He was beginning to feel cursed, that everything conspired against him to keep him from reaching California this year. If he tried to go on, he risked getting lost as the storm worsened. If he turned back, it was a long way to Laramie now. And if he stayed put, the wind was apt to bury him in the drifting snow. But he had to go on, he argued. He had a son somewhere in San Francisco.

  The conflict within slowly succumbed to reason. If it was already snowing here, there was no telling how bad it’d be farther west, and the passes in the Sierras would be worse by then. If he failed to get through them, he’d probably perish, and there’d be nobody left to search for Josh—nobody left to punish Ross. He’d been a damned stubborn fool for even thinking he could do it this late, he realized bitterly.

  Staring into that snow-white sky, he fought an impotent anger. The comfortable life he’d expected medicine to give him had disintegrated, leaving him nothing but the ashes of dreams he’d once thought he and Liddy shared. Four years of war, her betrayal with the shallowest man of his acquaintance, and the loss of his son had left him with next to nothing, with no purpose except revenge. He wanted to shake his fist at the Almighty, demanding to know what terrible sin he had committed to warrant such punishment.

  Thad Bingham had always preached that God had some grand plan for every creature in the world, and Spence had wanted to believe that, but he couldn’t anymore. A God who could let Jesse Taylor die, leaving a destitute wife heavy with child, who could take everything Spence cared about from him, then keep him from finding the only flesh and blood he had left, wasn’t the loving God Bingham had believed in. There could be no good reason to let him get this far, then force him to go back empty-handed. But right now, it looked like he’d be spending the winter at either Laramie or McPherson, whether he wanted to or not.

  Nebraska Territory: October 26, 1865

  Thank God for Indian summer. This last warm spell had made it possible for Laura to work outside instead of steaming up the cabin, and she wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass. Perched on a stool, she pared soap into the big washtub, readying the water for the dirtiest batch of laundry she’d seen yet. To look at those clothes, a body’d think they came off coal miners instead of railroad men.

  With more crews coming in every day, the camp was growing, and so was her business. Last week, she’d taken in fifteen dollars, and this week looked to be even better. Stopping to rub an itching nose, she reflected that while the work was hard, it kept her too busy to fret about much else. By the time she got to bed tonight, she’d be too tired to think, much less worry about life without Jesse.

  As the last piece of soap hit the water, she laid aside the knife and went to the piles of clothes she’d already sorted. Scooping up a rank-smelling load of shirts, she carried them to the tub and dropped them into it, then stirred them vigorously with a pole. The water turned a dull brown almost immediately.

  It was going to be a lot harder to do this after she had the baby, but she’d manage. By then, the track work would slow down, and maybe she wouldn’t have so much dirt to contend with. Pausing long enough to roll up her sleeves, she counted the batches of laundry· Eleven. When the weather turned cold, it’d be hard to get all those dirty clothes and the washtubs into a one-room cabin.

  Her arms ached, and the small of her back hurt, but she returned to churning those clothes like butter, humming the tune of “My Darling Clementine” to take her mind off the backbreaking work. At least she was making enough to support herself, and for that she had to be thankful.

  The path was steeper than Spence had remembered it, or maybe his tired horse just made it seem that way. As his eyes took in the still-green grass, the bright leaves on the scattered trees, he had to wonder if he could have gone on. It didn’t matter now—he’d come too far back to even contemplate another try before May. No, he was just stuck for the winter in a godforsaken corner of Nebraska, where the only person he knew was Laura Taylor.

  Yeah, there she was. She had her back to him while she hung wet clothes on a long laundry line. She had enough men’s pants flapping in the mild breeze to outfit an army.

  “What the hell…?”

  She turned around at the sound of the horse coming up the path, and she gaped at Spence Hardin for a moment before she found her voice. “What on earth are you doing back here, Dr. Hardin?” she asked, hurrying toward him. ‘I thought you’d be somewhere in Utah with the Mormons by now.”

  ‘Ί hit snow.” Easing his leg over the saddle, he swung down to face her. She had her sleeves rolled to her elbows, her dress was wet in front where it clung to her big stomach, and her hair was a mass of wind-blown tangles, but after nearly three weeks in the saddle, she was a welcome sight. Looking away, he admitted, “I came back—I couldn’t get through, so I guess you and just about everybody else was right.”

  “I’m sorry—I know how much you wanted to go,” she said quietly.

  “Yeah, well, it looks like I’m here for the winter.”

  “Here?” Momentarily nonplussed, she looked up at him with widening eyes.

  “Yeah. I’ll probably try to get room and board at the fort, if it’s not against army regulations.”

  “Oh.”

  “So—what’s all this?” he wondered, gesturing to the sagging clothesline.

  “Washing.” As his eyebrow lifted, she explained, “I’ve got myself a business now. Once a week, the men in camp send their dirty clothes up, and I wash, dry, and iron everything.” Pushing back her hair, she added, “I’m making a living at it,”

  “It’s a damned hard living, I’d say.”

  “At least I’m surviving.”

  “Why didn’t you keep the money?” he asked abruptly.

  “I guess you must’ve found it, she replied.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “You already know why—it wasn’t mine to keep.” Stepping back, she looked toward the cabin. “I…uh…I don’t suppose you’ve got time for a cup of coffee, do you?”

  “I’ve got about six months of it, he answered dryly.

  “Well, then come on in. I’ve got real coffee now—and I’ve always got bread and jam.”

  “Anything sounds good—I haven’t eaten since Laramie,” he said, falling in beside her.

  “If you came from Laramie today, you sure made good time.”

  “I left last night.”

  “And you haven’t eaten anything in ail that time? I didn’t think a man could go that long without food,” At the threshold of her door, she stopped to turn back to him. “Maybe you’d better stay for supper.”

  “I don’t want to be any trouble.”

  “You won’t be—I’ve got to eat, too.” Holding the knob, she threw her shoulder into the door. “I don’t know how many times I’ve planed this down, but it still sticks,” she explained as it opened. ‘Tm afraid to take too much off—I
don’t want cold air coming in around it this winter.”

  The place didn’t look much like it had when he’d left nearly a month before. “I see you’ve done some fixing up, he murmured.

  “I had to. There’s glass in the windows now, and I covered the walls with newspaper before I whitewashed them, so maybe it’ll be a little warmer in here when a norther’s blowing outside.”

  “You make this rug yourself?”

  “Well, it’s just rags I braided together, but at least I can walk around with my shoes off without getting my feet full of splinters,” she said, pleased he’d noticed. “Those curtains used to be my petticoat.” As he looked around, she sighed. “I know—there’s a little too much furniture, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw anything out.”

  “No, it looks nice—real nice. I don’t know how you managed to do all this.”

  Moving to the cupboard, she took out two heavy cups, the breadbox, and the jam pot. “I didn’t want to sit around feeling sorry for myself, so I just kept busy.” Turning around in the corner she called her kitchen, she asked, “Do you still want cream and sugar in your coffee?”

  “Not if it’s real coffee.”

  “It is, but I’ve got to go outside to fetch it. I didn’t see any sense to making two fires, and I was boiling water for the wash out there.”

  While she stepped out, he continued to study the one room, thinking she’d made it pretty homey, considering what she’d had to work with. There was even a framed square of embroidered white cotton hanging on the wall. Looking closer, he could see the tiny stitches that proclaimed, “Laura Lane and Jesse Taylor, united in matrimony October 18, 1859.” Exactly six years ago day after tomorrow.