by Craig, Emma
What was the matter? What was she talking about? Noah muttered, “Nothing.”
“I’ll fetch you some water, lass. You stay here and talk to Mr. Partridge.
Great. That’s all Noah needed, was to be stuck here with a little kid babbling at him. He glared at Mac, who twinkled at him. What a surprise.
All at once he felt a soft little hand on his cheek, and he almost jerked out of his skin. Before he could restrain himself he barked out, “What are you doing?”
“Petting you.”
He stared at her hard, wondering what to say or do now.
“Mommy says sometimes when people are sad, it’s nice to touch them because it makes them feel better. I feel better when Mommy holds me when I’m sad.”
Noah tried to think of something to say that would make her stop and, at the same time, not crush her. He was unsuccessful at that, as he was with so many things.
“Don’t worry anymore, Mr. Noah. Everything will be all right.”
She sounded like she was parroting lines taught to her by her mother. Noah still couldn’t think of anything to say.
“It’s almost Christmas time, Mr. Noah, and nothing bad can happen at Christmas.”
Like hell. Noah bit back a retort. The kid was only five years old. Let her find out for herself how miserable life was.
Mac came back with Maddie’s water, and she drank it down. “Thank you, Mac. G’night, Mr. Noah.”
He forced himself to say, “Good night, Miss Maddie.”
Then Mac carried her back to bed, and Noah headed out to his solitary stall at the back of the wagon yard. He kept from running only through a mighty effort of will.
# # #
Alexander McMurdo, a great one among of a race of beings who had for the most part deserted the earth long ago, stared moodily into the fire and smoked his pipe. Occasionally, for his own amusement, he made the flames assume human form and dance with each other. Once he created a cavalcade of circus animals and had them march around the parlor. Mac had always been fond of a good circus.
Finally, though, he ceased these idle amusements and turned his mind to the problem of Grace Richardson and Noah Partridge. Noah had traveled a long way down a perilous path. Even though Mac was the mightiest wizard in a long line of mighty wizards, he wondered if he’d waited too long to call the boy here to be healed.
Mac didn’t feel the disgust of humanity that the rest of his race did. He found human beings entertaining, occasionally amusing. Sometimes, as with Mr. Noah Partridge, they could be tragic.
He sighed and decided he was going to have to take a more active role in this matter. Staring into the fireplace still—it was naught but glowing coals now—he invoked a powerful spell.
# # #
Grace brushed out her hair and braided it with a hand trembling from hurt and anger.
“Imagine that awful man thinking I could give up Frank’s land for money! Imagine him thinking for so much as a minute that I would even dream of selling the land Frank bought for us!”
Frank. Frank, Frank, Frank. Why had God seen fit to snatch him from Grace and Maddie so soon? It wasn’t fair. Frank had been the most wonderful man Grace had ever known. She’d never meet another like him.
And Noah Partridge wanted to snatch the last token of Frank away from her. Buy it away from her. She felt as if he’d offered her thirty pieces of silver.
Gradually her rage turned inside out. Her trembling didn’t stop, but at last the rigidity that had held her upright as she stormed away from Noah, into her room, out of her clothes, into her night dress, and over to her dressing table, collapsed. Grace put her elbows on the table, sank her face into her hands, and cried.
“That poor man,” she whispered through her tears. “That poor, poor man.”
# # #
Noah stared at the sky, his mind whirring like a loose cog in a broken machine. What an ass he’d been. What a hash he’d made of his conversation with Grace Richardson.
Maybe he should just give up on trying to buy her property, and make an offer on one of those other pieces of land Mac had shown him. Hell, what difference did it make? As long as he had a place of his own, away from the company of his fellow man, a place where he could hide his infirmities from the world and live in peace, what did he care where that place was? Up there in the mountains near Capitan was kind of nice. Green, though. Noah didn’t much fancy green. He preferred the dry, barren plains around Rio Hondo. They suited his dry, barren life.
He mulled the matter over in his mind for several minutes, mentally inspecting the other properties Mac had shown him, and building houses in his imagination where he figured they’d go. Unsatisfied, he scattered a few head of cattle around to see if they improved the pictures thus created. He added a herd of antelope. He tossed in a deer and three or four jackrabbits. He even sicced a coyote on one poor antelope to stir his soul to emotion.
After a while he sighed heavily. It was no use. Those other places didn’t do a thing for him. That one piece of land, the one with the Pecos River running through it, the one that belonged to Grace Richardson, was the place he wanted.
He couldn’t understand it. He’d never felt a craving this strong in his life, not even before the war, when he was a whole man.
“Hell.”
All right. Noah acknowledged that Mac knew Grace Richardson a whole lot better than he did. If Mac thought she might change her mind if Noah became better acquainted with her, then that’s what he guessed he’d have to do.
His insides knotted up and he had to take several deep breaths to tamp his panic down. If he kept his goal in mind, he could do it. He told himself so over and over as he lay there and stared into a sky that looked like a black blanket somebody had dumped a bucketful of diamonds on. The stars reminded him of Mac’s infernal sparkles.
He saw a falling star and made a wish, then wondered what had possessed him to do such a thing. Frowning at himself for being a lunatic, he muttered, “You can do it. You’ve done harder things in your life.”
Offhand, he couldn’t remember when.
Chapter Six
A few mornings later, Noah awoke to a shriek of joy. He pulled the blanket down from where it had covered his face and squinted into the morning air. They sky was as gray as slate and overhung with fog. Fog? Here?. How odd. The atmosphere was nippier this morning than it had been for the last several days. It was the first week in November, and Mac had told him several times that the weather could change any day. Noah guessed it had.
When he sat up, the blankets fell down around his waist, and cold air hit him like an arctic blast.
“God damn,” he murmured when he saw the snow. It was only early November, yet a thin blanket of white covered the wagon yard. More flakes floated down from the sky like confetti, lazily drifting here and there in a slow meander to the earth. He’d never seen such a gentle snowfall. It surprised him, since he’d expected snowfalls to be rough out here where everything else, including the weather, was hard as rocks.
He realized the shrieks of joy were still going on, and he swiveled his head to see where Maddie was. He recognized her voice. A memory of the snows of his childhood tiptoed through his brain, and he smiled before he knew what he was doing. Then he saw her.
Maddie raced across the yard, swaddled from head to toe in coats and mufflers and rubber boots, leaving a trough in her wake through the formerly pristine snow blanket. The only reason Noah knew that bundle was Maddie and not someone else was because she was so short. Then her mother came into view.
Noah held his breath, fascinated. Grace Richardson was laughing with pure happiness. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen a woman in so unaffected and relaxed a mood. Or one so different from the mood in which he’d last seen her. She’d been furious when she’d stalked away from him after he’d asked to buy her property, and he’d kept to himself since.
She was a sight to behold right now. Clad in heavy boots and with a scarf wrapped around her head, he could
see only a little bit of her pretty hair. She wore mittens and a long coat, and had another scarf wrapped around her throat. The ends of it floated out behind her on the same mild breeze that made the snowflakes dance. She was almost as bundled up as her daughter, but Noah could clearly see her cheeks, pink with pleasure and exertion. He imagined her sparkling eyes.
His sex began stirring to life, and he was ashamed of himself. Lordy, when was the last time that had happened?
He couldn’t leave off staring at her, though, and when she glanced over and caught him, he got embarrassed. He saw her good humor slip for a second before she seemed to let go of restraint and waved at him, her cheery smile brightening the very air between them.
“Good morning, Mr. Partridge! What a surprise this snow is!”
He lifted his hand to wave and realized he was naked from the waist up. Quickly he grabbed a blanket and covered his chest, and then felt even more embarrassed. What a blockhead he was, to exhibit himself this way in front of a lady.
Grace laughed. Her laughter was as unaffected as her daughter’s, and it held Noah spellbound. When was the last time he’d heard such a pure, joyful sound? He couldn’t remember.
“Aren’t you freezing to death?” she called. “My goodness, I don’t know how you can stand to sleep out here in the cold. Why don’t you come inside and bed down by the fire on these cold nights, Mr. Partridge?”
Noah cleared his throat. “I—” He stopped. His voice still sounded froggy, so he cleared his throat again.·“I don’t mind the cold, ma’am.”
In truth, he craved the cold. In the summertime when the weather was hot, his thoughts crawled back to Georgia, to the sweltering, starving, stinking prison camp. Then his dreams would be full of the stench of cholera and puke and death, the sight of skeletal men and rats and wormy biscuits and peanuts—if they were lucky—and misery and blood and death. Sometimes his mind’s eye pictured the bodies. They’d pile up faster than the inmates could get bury them in the hot months, and they’d begin to rot. The wardens used to make Noah dig holes to put them in, and the stink would be so bad Noah would actually send his mind away and leave only his body there in the hell that was the prison camp. Until his extended adventure in that camp, he hadn’t known people could do that, detach their minds from their bodies.
He shivered. Not with cold, but with the soul-sickness that had been his closest companion for more years than he cared to remember.
“You’re shivering,” Grace said, laughing. “Let me bring you a cup of nice hot coffee.”
No, his brain cried. Nothing came out of his mouth. He saw her whirl around, as if this first snowfall of the season had filled her, as well as her daughter, with energy and boundless gaiety.
Aw, hell. Noah scrambled out of his bedclothes, hoping Maddie wouldn’t bounce back by and see him in his long-john bottoms. Or see his back, scored deeply with hundreds of healed whiplashes. He didn’t want to shock the kid.
He yanked on his shirt and trousers, and was tugging on his boots when Grace came back again, a huge smile on her face and a tray in her hands.
“Here, Mr. Partridge. I brought you some breakfast.” She handed him the tray, looking a little shy.
He took the tray, nodded, and forced “Thank you,” out of his tight throat.
She tucked her hands behind her back and turned her head so that she wasn’t looking him in the eyes any longer. Thank God.
“Um, I don’t want you to think I’m angry with you, Mr. Partridge. I apologize for losing my temper when we spoke last.”
If Noah hadn’t had his hands full of tray—smells from which were kissing his nostrils and making his stomach growl—he’d have made a gesture of dismissal. “That’s all right, ma’am. Reckon I caught you by surprise.”
Mac had recommended that he tell her what was in his heart. Noah tested the idea, found his mind slamming shut against it, and knew he couldn’t do it. Because he wanted to soften her up, he said, “I—ah—I’m not used to being around people much, ma’am. Reckon I was clumsy when I made my offer, and I apologize.”
Even revealing that much made his intestines cramp. He held himself upright against the pain with an effort.
Grace laughed, apparently finding their mutual apologies amusing. “Well, I won’t argue about who was wrong, but I hope you aren’t miffed with me this morning for being so stiff-necked when we talked.”
“No, ma’am.” He wondered if he’d just lied, then decided it didn’t make any difference.
“Good. Well, then, I hope you enjoy your breakfast, Mr. Partridge. I promised Maddie I’d help her build a snowman this morning, and I expect we’d better get at it, because the snow will probably be gone by this afternoon.”
Noah looked up at the sky, which remained as gray as smoke. Huge black clouds rolled across it as if the gods were angry and planned to do something destructive with them. “It’ll melt? By the afternoon?”
She laughed again, joyously, naturally. Her laughter soothed his intestines, made an unfamiliar warmth settle in his chest, and made his groin stir again. Damn.
“My goodness, yes, Mr. Partridge. It’s not unusual to get snow this early, but it’s rare to get a snow that sticks on the ground for long in November. Every now and then we’ll get a white Christmas, but not often. Two winters ago we had snows that lasted for two weeks in February, but that’s very unusual.” She gazed at her daughter, who was busily making snowballs on the far side of the yard. “That was the winter after Frank died.”
Frank. Everything in her life came back to Frank. The Frank who was dead and buried and to whom she remained loyal. Noah guessed Mac was right about her. She was staunch, he reckoned. He used to admire that quality in a person. This time it was making his life difficult, and his life was too damned difficult already.
“Yeah. Well, the snow looks pretty now anyway,” he said.
“Yes. It’s beautiful.”
“Mommy, come and help me make the snowman!”
When he glanced her way, he saw that Maddie was looking much like a snowman herself, she’d gotten so much snow on her.
“Duty calls,” Grace said cheerfully. “Enjoy your breakfast.”
“Thank you.”
She turned and walked towards her daughter, and Noah added, “It sure smells good, ma’am.”
He watched her until she got to Maddie. Then, because he figured he’d be embarrassed if she’d turned around and found him staring, he sat down and ate his breakfast. It tasted as good as it smelled.
# # #
Grace threw a snowball at Maddie, who gave another shout of laughter. “Stop it, Mommy! We’ve got to finish our snowman before all the snow melts.”
“We will, sweetheart. It won’t melt for hours yet.”
She scooped some more snow onto the pile she’d built and rolled the bottom ball across the yard, picking up almost as many twigs and pieces of dried grass as snow.
“When I was your age, we could make a snowman that was all white because the snow was much deeper. And it would last for weeks and weeks.”
“In ‘Cago?”
“Yes. In Chicago. It would last for so long that we’d all get sick of it and long for spring to come and melt it all.”
“I wouldn’t get sick of it,” Maddie declared with conviction.
“I bet you would. I think this fellow’s bottom ball is big enough now.” She rolled the ball to a stop and stood up, breathing hard and putting a hand to her back to straighten out the kinks. She’d forgotten how much energy playing took, and how hard it could be.
Maddie observed the ball with a critical eye. “All right,” she said at last. “Let’s make his middle now.”
Grace almost groaned.
“Need some help?”
Both females turned to find Noah Partridge standing there, his face as stern and unsmiling as ever. Thinking she must have heard him incorrectly, Grace said, “I beg your pardon?”
He shrugged and gestured at the big snowball. “Need some help?”
Grace’s mind went blank with astonishment. Thank heavens for Maddie, who didn’t suffer from the same affliction.
“Oh, yes! Help us, Mr. Noah. You can roll a big ball. Bigger than Mommy’s.”
Recovering from her amazement that this hard, icy man should be offering assistance in building so trivial a thing as a snowman, Grace said lightly, “Well, I like that! I almost broke my back rolling that snowball!”
Maddie giggled. Was it her imagination, or did Mr. Partridge’s eyes go soft? Grace couldn’t tell. His expression didn’t soften one iota. Poor man.
He’d dressed for the role, in a warm, fur-lined jacket and heavy gloves. He didn’t wear a hat, and Grace saw silver glints in his hair.
He was going gray. Her heart gave a little flop. He couldn’t be much more than thirty years old—scarcely older than she was—yet he was going gray. She understood that happened sometimes, to people who’d lived hard lives. Poor man, she thought again.
She’d almost fainted dead away when she’d seen him this morning, sitting up in his bedroll. He hadn’t been wearing a shirt. That was shocking enough all by itself, but what had really shocked her was the physical reaction she’d had to that bare chest of his, with the curly dark hair covering it, and the muscles that had seemed to ripple under them. Mr. Noah Partridge was a hard man in more ways than one. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him.
Seeing his naked chest had brought back memories of Frank. Of course. Everything brought back memories of Frank. Frank’s hair had been light, and his chest hadn’t been nearly as hairy as Mr. Partridge’s. This morning her fingers had itched to test Noah’s chest hair, to compare it to what she remembered of Frank’s. Good heavens, what was the matter with her?
The bitter thought that if God were a fair Divinity, it would have been Mr. Partridge who’d been struck by lightning and not Frank, occurred to her. Frank was as golden and happy as Mr. Partridge was dark and forbidding. She was ashamed of herself for harboring the unkind thought for so much as an instant.