by Penny Hayes
"You can keep the money from it."
"No, fair is fair." She was already embittered; her voice was thick with the sound. "I'll keep what the oven will sell for. The rest we'll split."
She walked away, giving Margarita no chance for further comment.
And what could she have added?
Julia was cold and distant for the three days it took Margarita to purchase all that she needed for the ride to Mexico. During that time, the gold was divided, the business as well as the tent itself sold and the proceeds divided; and from them both, the amount of dust it would take to pay back Colter Bank was converted to dollars and entrusted to Julia's care.
Belle was so disappointed the night before Margarita's departure that she could barely listen to Margarita's farewell. "Hell, woman, stay. You're making good money and for damn sure you're never gonna find a better friend than Julia. You know damn well you mean all the world to her."
All the world to Julia? It was too heavy a load for Margarita to bear, and she only replied, "I've got what I came here for. Julia will be fine."
"Shit," was Belle's answer. She turned her back on Margarita and would not speak to her again.
Early on the fourth morning, Margarita donned men's clothing, strapped a gun on her hip, checked her pack horse once more to be sure her nineteen thousand dollars in paper money was deep and secure in a pack.
Julia had not stirred in her cot while Margarita gathered her things together, but as Margarita was about to mount up, she emerged from the tent, a nightrobe pulled tightly about her. Her hair was tousled, her eyes squinting against the early morning light.
"I can't just let you ride off, Margarita. I tried. I just couldn't do it."
"I'm sorry, Julia. I never meant to hurt you."
"I should have listened harder, I guess. I just thought...that after a time ... if enough time went by...."
"I'm sorry," Margarita repeated again. She longed to be off, away from this painful parting.
Julia gave Margarita a warm hug. Margarita didn't mean to be stiff about it, but was afraid of crying, of hanging on. She only barely returned Julia's embrace before breaking away.
Quickly she mounted up, muttering some meaningless thing to fill in the gaping silence, then nudged her mount's sides, dragging the packhorse behind.
"Write sometime, Margarita," Julia called after her.
"I will," Margarita lied.
Five or six miles went by before she could stop taking the continuous deep breaths necessary to fight the tears and sobs threatening to overwhelm her.
Chapter Twenty
With winter only weeks away, Margarita had no desire to cope with raising horses through the difficult coming months even though now as the best time to purchase stock. She didn't believe she could handle the responsibility. She didn't think she was capable of anything for a while except seeing to her family and just letting the rest of the world go straight to hell.
Two weeks later she found that she had had enough of Mexico. A thousand times she had answered her mother's worried questions: Why did she ride the country alone?
How had she been treated at the mining town? Why had she not yet found someone who might take Seth's place? The children got on her nerves with their demanding presence, wanting her to play with them, to look at every new little thing they discovered, to take them for walks. She had looked forward to coming. Now she looked forward to leaving.
A few days later she did so. She remembered that whenever she had been left alone at the meadow she had been happy. It was there that she would go. Her family watched her ride away, her mother's eyes full of tears and worry, her brothers and sisters in awe of their older sister, that she lived as she did.
She traveled by day, staying always alert in the open and unknown country. She checked her pistol frequently, making sure that it hadn't snuggled itself firmly into its holster, slowing her efforts to yank it out quickly should the need arise.
She was nervous and jumpy, afraid of the Indians she occasionally saw watching her from some distant bluff or hill. Why they didn't chase her, she had no idea. She could only pray that they would not.
She swung by Loma Parda, buying three extra packhorses, and a winter's supply of grain, food, blankets, and clothing.
It was a little more than six weeks before she finally reached the creek bed of the trail leading to the old hideaway. She was relieved to be there and could hardly wait to get to the meadow.
Old habits and instincts returned as she stealthily rode the trail up through the canyon. Familiar smells and sounds assaulted her, and she felt a wave of nostalgia hit her as she neared the gate.
She didn't know what to expect. Maybe Sam had returned from Mexico. For one fleeting moment she had the insane hope that Julia might even be here waiting for her.
She dismounted to move the gate aside, drawing the animals through before resetting the barrier and mounting again. "This part of the meadow hasn't changed," she said. Her breath billowed out before her in a white smoky cloud. It would not be long before the snows came.
From where she was, she could see the buildings were still the same. A little tired looking, but not much different otherwise. And Sam had not come back. She was completely alone.
She drew up before her old dwelling and dismounted, glad to be out of the saddle. She unloaded the supplies and turned the horses loose, slapping their hides, forcing them away from the cabin. They trotted a few feet away and began to nibble on crunchy grass.
She went inside and began to put her things away with only the sounds of her own rustlings and comments she idly made aloud to keep herself company.
There was plenty of firewood in the shed, cut and stacked by the men over a year ago, and each evening Margarita would haul enough wood inside to keep the fire going twenty-four hours a day.
Night and day she fought turbulent emotions, driving them deeper and deeper into the darkest recesses of her mind, not allowing herself to ponder what tormented her. Instead she considered when she might marry. She would build a new life with her husband, raise horses, own some of the best range in New Mexico. She had the money. She could do it very successfully. She had everything she wanted now. She was long since free of the dark side of the law. Every peso she owned had been honestly earned, a bright outlook for the future.
One cold brisk morning, after an unusually sleepless night, she cursed loudly into the cistern's reflection of herself. "You stupid little fool, why do you do this to yourself?"
With this statement, new questions began to surface. She began to wonder at having left Julia. Sometimes she almost hated the woman for having made her so dependent upon her. Margarita didn't know how it had happened. She had been so careful not to let it; she laughed bitterly at herself because it had.
Had some damn woman really stolen her heart and soul after all? It was an honest question, and it made her cry.
She began to play a game with herself, one that kept her mind occupied when she was the most tired, when she couldn't sleep. She would recall each and every time Julia had ever said "I love you." She counted up the times and played with the figures at which she had arrived. In detail, she would attempt to relive every situation they had ever been in when Julia had whispered or spoken the beautiful words; the tone of her voice, the look on her face. Margarita often felt flames of shame sear her cheeks because she had never once said the same to Julia. Even if she hadn't understood that she loved her, she could have lied on the outside chance that she had been wrong.
But she hadn't given an inch. Not one inch.
By the end of February, twenty-foot drifts banked the trail's opening to the valley below, completely sealing off the meadow and trapping Margarita until spring. She kept a roaring blaze going in the fireplace during the day and let the wood burn down at night to a comfortable glowing bed of coals.
She had plenty of fuel for the lanterns, so there was no need to go to bed early. But there was no reason to
stay up. She had no books to read, there was no one to talk to. And so even before the final light of day had died she was in bed and asleep.
During her waking hours, she thought of Julia until she wanted to scream and tear her hair. She had made her decision at Dimmick's Goldfield: a life with Julia was an impossibility. She had spent hours envisioning what it might be like living with her. She could find no flaws in the partnership, no major obstacles. It was just that she could not identify with such a kinship.
So she came to a final and absolute decision here at the meadow, aware that the debate raged within her still. She would never see Julia again. She would no longer toy with the idea of a life with her, and refused to think further about her at all.
To succeed at this discipline, she did everything she could to keep busy. Several times she climbed onto the roofs of both cabins and the shed to clear them of snow. She brushed the horses' thick coats daily and kept their shelter clean enough to live in. She fashioned snowshoes out of thin green pine branches laced together with thongs. The shoes were poorly made but she managed to get around on them, daily forcing herself to walk the perimeter of the meadow. On clear days she would stand near its edge and gaze at the valley far below.
It was early June before enough snow had melted off so that she could leave. She had spent the winter planning exactly what she would do, and at first opportunity strung the horses, saddled her own, and led them all down the trail and away from her self-imposed prison.
She glanced over her shoulder for one final time at the meadow, still and quiet now and devoid of life as it waited for the last of its lingering snow patches to disappear. Soon small birds and butterflies and buzzing insects would return to a thick grassy surface and brilliantly colored flowers.
She thought she, too, might return one day. The place was hers now. She had staked a legal claim to it, building cairns at various points to identify the boundaries. She had included the entire meadow and the pool above. Without acknowledging her own motives, she had set the place up as a living monument to what she and Julia had once shared.
When she reached the stream below, the main canyon was raging with spring runoff. For a moment she wondered if she should attempt to go any further. When she hit the creek bed, it would be bad. But to turn back seemed impossible now that she had left, and so, winding the lead packhorse's rope tightly around the saddle horn, she gently kicked her mount in the flanks and continued her journey.
She had her money and enough food to sustain her until she reached Lincoln County where she would begin her new farm and raise quality horses for the army. She had had at least enough stamina not to let that dream slip away, although she didn't seem to have the same heart for it that she once had.
She dismounted and checked each animal, talking to them all, patting them firmly on the neck and scratching their ears, trying to reassure and calm them. She mounted up again and said, "All right, you haybags, let's go," and led the skittish, prancing animals slowly into the bitingly cold stream.
The water sucked and dragged at the reluctant horses' hooves and legs, causing them to pull against the lead rope, but Margarita shouted words of encouragement over her shoulder to them. Their ears flicked back and forth, the horses nervously listening to her voice and the gushing water flowing around them.
It took a half hour to get out of the energy-sapping stream. Margarita rode a short distance away before stopping to check the supplies again. Everything was still in good order. The only thing now was to head south.
She would make only twenty miles today. It was the first time the horses had traveled since late last fall and she didn't want to tire them unnecessarily; nor herself either, for that matter. She had a lot of time. All the time in the world.
She glanced northeast, the direction that Colter lay, then wondered why she did. It was just a place now. A town she had once spent some time in.
She breathed a deep, melancholy sigh, unable to make herself go forward. An overwhelming sense of despair filled her and she had to fight to refrain from crying. She leaned over her saddle horn, her hands supporting her, her head down as she fought for control.
I'm leaving the meadow, she thought. And I've already left Colter — forever. She would never see Julia again.
The words nearly crushed the life from her.
Chapter Twenty-One
Five days after she had left the creekbed, she was still reminding herself that it wouldn't hurt a thing to stop at Colter and say hello to Julia. That she herself had personal effects at the house, left behind last spring. Nothing worth picking up, but it was a legitimate excuse for being there.
As she drew abreast of the building, her heart began to pound. It was as though the past year had never occurred; a blink of an eye in time, the space of a single breath.
She recognized small things about the place she had not consciously paid any attention to when she had lived there. That loose board on the barn next to the door that still needed to be repaired, the one picket missing from the fence that extended across the front yard. Nothing had changed at all. Margarita felt the house's presence as a living thing, 'reopening a raw wound, stinging and exhausting her.
It had been a terrible mistake to come here.
As she drew up to the fence, she noticed a small sign hanging on its gate. An awful wave of disappointment struck her as she read the name: MEREDITH. Julia, married? She didn't want Julia to be married. She wanted Julia to remain single, unspoiled by a man.
She wanted Julia for herself.
Only when she read the name, did she know. It had taken her until this moment to learn what had kept her from giving herself completely to Julia: that age-old adage that women must marry; she must marry. Who had beaten that idea into her brain, searing it there? Why was the thought so ridiculously universal an expectation that it left no room for anything else? She had gotten so caught up in ancient customs and ironclad standards that she had been blinded to all else. Julia had never been. Julia had been in love with her. That was all Julia had ever needed to know. Julia had never fought with herself over it. Julia had just accepted it, not trying to understand nor to philosophize over it, nor worry over what the rest of the world did.
But because she had doubts and concerns and had stayed locked up in her own little world, Margarita was now on the outside of this house, and the married Julia Meredith was inside. Her heart cried out over her greatest misdeed.
Then she thought: Perhaps it's a tenant's name. Hope filled her heart. She rode up to the fence and dismounted.
With deliberate motions, she draped the reins carefully over the fence. Opening the gate, she stepped into the yard. She felt dreamlike, felt as if she were walking through thick molasses that dragged mercilessly at her every step, her every movement, impairing her breathing and clouding her vision.
Tentatively and timidly, she stepped onto the porch, then knocked on the door.
The door opened wide. "Margarita," Julia gasped. She stood silent after that, trying to form words, but none came.
Margarita felt a shaft of pain pierce her breast. She had been wrong. There was no tenant.
Julia looked pale and wan. She was very thin. Gone was the rosy-appled look in her cheeks and the spark in her blue eyes. Even her yellow hair had dulled a bit.
"I was in the area." Margarita spoke lightly. She would not want Julia to think she wasn't happy for her.
Julia stepped back. "Come in. I'm so glad to see you. You look... good."
She looked like hell from months of living alone and days on the trail, and she knew it. But Julia had always been kind to her.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything."
"No, come in. I'm in the kitchen."
Margarita wanted to sweep Julia against her breast, to hold her, kiss her. She kept her hands busy by tightly clutching her hat so that she would not do something foolish.
"I see you're a Meredith, now. My congratulations to you."
; Julia smiled a tight little smile.
Margarita wanted to ask when it was that Julia had married. Right after she got back? Had she missed Margarita that much? Or had it been a long romantic engagement?
Oh„ Lord, why didn't Julia reach for her? Just for old time's sake?
"I'll make you something to drink," Julia said formally.
Margarita followed her into the kitchen.
A new cookstove sat where the old one had been. On the table were piles of a man's and a woman's clothing. It was difficult to accept seeing a man's clothing touching Julia's own. And there, too, sat a small crib on the floor beside the table.
"A cradle?" Margarita asked. She stared at it, her head just a little dizzy.
"My own when I was an infant," Julia explained. She placed a fond hand on it and gave it a little push. It rocked slowly back and forth. "Soon, another will sleep in it."
Margarita could not bring herself to ask when Julia was due. She sat sipping warm lemonade while Julia folded fresh laundry taken from the back line, giving each piece a sharp whack before folding it neatly and setting it aside. She talked very little about what she was doing these days, about what she had done after she had returned to Colter from Dimmick's. Belle had come back with her and now owned a majority interest in the Low Dog Saloon. She mentioned that when she had paid their loan back, Marsh had just about had apoplexy when she returned the full amount in a lump sum. Maude still ran the drugstore and was running it into the ground, from all reports. It was obvious that Julia did not want to discuss herself. The days of their close intimacy were over.
With nothing left to say — nothing that she could say — Margarita uttered, "I must go now, Julia...." Reluctantly she rose and thanked her for the drink. At the front door she paused, awkwardly turning the brim of her hat in her hands.
Julia had followed her but made no move toward her.