Steel Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #2, Chloe and Matthew's story)

by Rose, Amelia

  Mavis gave a contented chuckle that absolutely made me disbelieve her when she said, "Sometimes we all feel that way. You'll find your place when you're expecting your first."

  My fingers tightened convulsively on the porch railing. I didn't want to be expecting my first. Should I add that to my list of misgivings? Matthew had said of course he wanted to start a family. I had said of course I wanted to start a family. But I wasn't certain I did.

  I wasn't certain I wanted to start a family.

  "Did Jenny invite you to dinner for Saturday?" Mavis asked from behind me. Having established that the restlessness would soon pass, she had moved on to other topics.

  I went back to my seat and reclaimed my sewing, stabbing uselessly and viciously at the once-snowy linen. "She did. I was going to make a cake." I was going to buy a cake and claim to have made it, if anyone asked. Making a cake to take to any kind of celebration would be cruel. "Is she celebrating something?"

  And I made myself listen to the answer, reminding myself that I liked both Jenny and Mavis and that procuring a cake would mean journeying to the shops and that, at least, would be something to do.

  The first spike of the Nevada & Oregon Railroad was driven into the ground in Reno on May 28, a roasting hot day. Mavis, Jenny and I went and met the men there, Sam, Richard and Matthew in their capacities as engineer, mechanic and increasingly frustrated administrative accountancy support.

  A ceremony of sorts occurred, with a band playing and balloons flying, streamers tied to the trains that, as of yet, had nowhere to go that wasn't V&T line. Children drank lemonade and sarsaparilla and ate cakes and shouted and wives gossiped and the men shook hands and cut ribbons and the owners made speeches of grandeur that lacked eloquence but made huge promises of what the railroad would do for our city, the money that would be brought in, the boon to ranchers. The president of the board stood up and gave a somewhat more rational speech about the hopes and plans for the future and for Nevada and for the railroad. When he finished, it looked likely the president of the board and one of the owners of the railroad would come to blows.

  Or worse. They were armed. The railroad men walked about with Colt pistols on their hips. Most of them carried a Colt Peace Maker, a name I'd come to loathe. I didn't think carrying a .45 bred any kind of peace. But Matthew had bought one after one of the board meetings, when members had come to blows and someone had drawn a gun.

  On the night he'd bought it, he went off for a bath. I sat staring at the thing, the blue steel barrel and the walnut stock. It was heavy, smooth and deadly and, when Matthew came back, clean and damp and beautiful with that broad, silky chest and the work-roughened hands, I'd asked him to teach me to shoot.

  "Shooting's not for girls," he said, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me close.

  I pressed against him, turned my face up to his.

  "I'm not like other girls," I said lightly, but I meant it. The more I was around other wives, the more I thought there might be something wrong with me, or, if Matthew continued happy, something right with me, but something different.

  He pulled back to look down at me contemplatively. "You're not, are you? Alright, I'll teach you. Might not be a bad thing for you to know. As the lines get longer, I'll be away more, over nights and—"

  "—Shh," I said and put my fingers on his lips, then followed my fingers with my own lips. "Let's not talk about that."

  He tightened his lips together, curving them upward. His eyes narrowed as he considered. "What do you want to talk about?"

  I pretended to consider. "Who says we have to talk?"

  The next night, he took me out at sunset, driving well out of town where we could set up empty cans and bottles along a low rock wall, where only trees and foothills ranged beyond. He handed me the gun, unloaded, which I initially protested, saying I wasn't going to hit anything if I didn't have bullets.

  He pointed out he wanted to see how I aimed before he let me hit anything with or without ammunition. But it turned out this was something I could do and, throughout the sunlit evening and the lowering of the sun, I picked off targets that ranged farther and farther away and challenged Matthew to do better—which he did, but only barely.

  We went home that evening and repeated the pleasurable events of the previous evening, as we often did, lying in our bed with the cotton curtains stirring in the evening breeze that came off the cottonwoods and into our room. The sky overhead was the same bright blue Nevada sky, the endless spring-into-summer blue that made me want to run and shout and chase things the way the neighbor's children did.

  After that, I didn't hate the gun, not Matthew's Colt that he carried, but I still feared the others and the increasing violence and frustration running through the entire Nevada & Oregon Rail venture.

  So, when the first shooting came, it was anything but a surprise.

  Jenny pounded on my door. The day had gone long, shadows creeping, but Matthew home late wasn't unusual. The first spike had been pounded, the workers were hired, the railroad was underway. Spirits were high. So were tensions.

  "Chloe! Chloe Longren!"

  I ran to open the door, my hair undone and only tied back with a piece of string, my dress sleeves rolled up like Matthew did and my dress unbuttoned. May was ending and June was going to be hot. I was barefoot, having divested myself of my boots only moments earlier.

  The door flew open before I reached it; Jenny stumbled in and grabbed my hand, already pulling me out.

  "You have to come. There's been a shooting!"

  "The railroad?" Because of course it was. "Is it Matthew? Or Richard?"

  "I don't know," she wailed. Her face was streaked with tears. "Someone came by, just said there were men, fighting, guns drawn. They were shooting."

  "Is anyone shot?" We were running, flat out, hard, my bare feet pounding over street and stones and stickers, uncaring. We were only a mile or two from the railroad and maybe we should have stopped and tethered the horses to a wagon but we couldn't wait.

  "Someone's shot," Jenny said and ran harder.

  I felt my breath stop in my throat, my thoughts stop in my head. It couldn't be Matthew. There was no reason for it. He was both board and company, he was a part of everything and he'd become so much more reasonable since the insanity had started, the shouting and people threatening.

  But maybe that had been enough to get him between two other men who weren't reasonable. Or it could be Jenny's Richard or Mavis's Sam. I ran fast, breathing hard now, and around us, others were moving on horseback, dragging wagons and buckboards, running.

  The offices of the Nevada & Oregon Railroad were ahead. We saw them from some distance away because they were on fire. Flames tore up into the hot evening air, casting shadows on the assembled people.

  We ran into the crowd, heedless of who we shoved, who we yelled our way past. Other wives were arriving, frantic, just as scared as we were.

  On the ground, in a circle of men, lay Sam Elliott. Matthew and Richard were with him, surrounded by other men I recognized from the N&O and by women who fluttered and called for a doctor and men who said he was coming even now. We could hear the horses, coming from another street, close now but not close enough I feared.

  Matthew knelt with Sam's head in his lap, keeping him up so he could breathe. Richard crouched beside, holding Sam's hand, talking earnestly.

  I didn't see Mavis anywhere. "We have to go get her," I said to Jenny, "if she's not here."

  She nodded and didn't stop running forward. We needed to see and touch our men before we went anywhere after anyone else.

  The doctor arrived at the same time, shoving bodily through the massed crowd. He dropped to the ground, his bag opening of its own accord, already talking, "Get his shirt open; get the women out of here; where's his wife?"

  Jenny had moved close enough to touch Richard, who looked up at her and nodded, once, without releasing Sam's hand. She turned then, starting to run again, going for Mavis.

  But Mavis
was there. She stepped out of the crowd, breathless, having run, as we had. Hectic circles of color stood out on her otherwise chalk white face and when she knelt beside Sam, she did so by simply dropping, bonelessly, spilling down onto the ground beside him.

  He tried to smile at her, but blood spilled from his mouth. I think he said "I'm sorry" or "I love you" but I couldn't hear and she never said, then the doctor called for a wagon and men to lift him. He was carried back to the doctor's surgery, with Mavis pressed against him, and he never came out again.

  Chapter 12

  That night we spent at Mavis's small house. The children, crying, had been put to bed, where they didn't stay. No one tried to force them. Mavis mostly sat in her scrubbed and shining parlor, her face lost to confusion, as if she still didn't understand what had happened.

  Railroad men and their wives came, Peace Makers left at home. They came as they were, in dusty, oil-stained work clothes and wearing aprons because they'd been doing their baking or their washing when they heard the news. They came with cooked meals and they came to cook meals and they came to sit with Mavis and they came to talk.

  Little by little, the long night passed.

  The men went home in the deep reaches of the night. There was work the next day and the Washoe County Sheriff to deal with. The fire had burned itself out and there had been only a portion of the offices, mostly an equipment building, that had burned. There was rebuilding to do, meetings to be held. Two of the board members who had quarreled had been arrested. One of them had done the shooting, having fired on Sam, who had stepped into the fight, shouting as loud as the others.

  Matthew went home, exhausted, around midnight. He took me aside in Mavis's kitchen before he went, telling me to stay as long as she needed me and as long as I needed to, but when I begged him not to go in the next morning, he said he had to, that this changed nothing, that such a shooting could happen anywhere.

  That was hardly reassuring. I held him for a long minute in Mavis's kitchen, where she couldn't see us from the parlor. I held him because I still could; I didn't ever want to take that for granted.

  Mavis fell asleep around four, sleeping fitfully on the davenport and waking frequently, confused, feverish and weeping. In the morning, Jenny and I were there with a few other wives, dry eyed and exhausted. They'd brought food though no one cared to eat except the children. We were mostly silent, occasionally offering prayers and finding small duties to take care of. By day's end, Mavis had found some deep-rooted strength and began making plans to travel back to her home on the East Coast with her children, moving back to her parents' house. She had been a school teacher before she met Sam and she would be again when the funeral was over and the house packed up. Jenny went to the telegraph office to send word to Mavis's parents.

  The day was long and June hot. By the end of it, I only had enough energy to create a cold meal and Matthew had no real interest in eating anything more than cold chicken, biscuits and coffee.

  He was preoccupied throughout the meal. I wasn't much better company. Every so often, I'd look over my shoulder, as if I could see through the walls of the house over to Mavis's.

  It could have been Matthew. Though he was more reasonable, less volatile than Sam had been, it could have been Matthew—and maybe his thoughts weren't so very different than mine.

  At the end of the meal, I offered him a berry pie, which he declined, which was just as well. Neither of us wanted it. We took coffee and went to sit on the porch in the sweltering heat. We both glanced toward our neighbor's house more than once, feeling the need to be kind and go over there, taking a cold plate though she'd been brought more food than a woman with no appetite could eat. But neither of us wanted to go out just yet.

  Finally, as the mosquitoes whined and the sun, glaring red, set, Matthew cleared his throat and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He was sitting in a cane rocking chair, and he shoved it back and forth a little, going up on his toes and back on his heels as he did so.

  "I have to ask you something, Chloe, and, as my wife, I want you to tell me the truth. I've sworn to do right by you and I won't let you down now. But I've been thinking this last day."

  It was a formal and strange way for Matthew to start any kind of speech, and I held my breath, afraid of what he might say, until I realized he was waiting for me to respond.

  "I've never lied to you, Matthew," I said.

  That was enough, apparently. He nodded and then didn't say anything for so long, I was beginning to think about getting up and starting some bread for the next morning or going over and checking on Mavis or going to Jenny's so she'd go with me. Matthew didn't seem any more inclined to speak than the geraniums that still lined my porch.

  About the time I opened my mouth to say I was going to go do one of those things, Matthew said, "The Nevada & Oregon. It's a good idea. It will serve the cattle ranches and I've no doubt the owners will pull it off. Some day."

  "It's not worth dying over," I said fiercely, and was surprised when Matthew agreed.

  "It's a business concern. Talk all anyone wants about serving the cattle ranches and bringing people together and shortening distances and making the country move smoother. It's a lot of talk. The bottom line is money, always has been, always will be. It's what happened yesterday and Sam got caught in the middle of it and a good man is dead."

  I knew what the argument had been about. About how much to pay in maintenance of the trains meant to carry passengers, as compared to how much the owners were willing to pay for the trains that would carry cattle and ranching equipment. The latter was their bread and butter, their reason for existing, and the way they would make their money. Nothing wrong with that, except that when it came to the safety of the cars that would carry passengers, that's where they wanted to make up for the costs.

  Sam had disagreed. Sam hadn't been the first to take a stand—that had been a man named Ray Winston, who had been shot as well, when he drew on Roger Lake, one of the owners who felt money was more important than people. The two argued, guns were drawn, Sam got involved and two people were shot. One person was dead.

  I wanted Matthew out. Until this moment, I hadn't thought I had a chance. He'd been so invested, so fascinated with the trains, and I didn't want to make him walk away from something he loved.

  Now he was looking at me in the gathering twilight as if he had the same concerns.

  "We've talked about starting a family," Matthew said. His eyes were shaded, the bright blue darkened by the deepening shadows. His arms on his knees were tan and strong, his hands roughened by work he managed to do when he wasn't keeping books and ordering supplies. He loved the trains.

  He loved me. And he had lost me with the way he'd started, not just because he'd confused me but because, unexpectedly, I had sat back in my own rocking chair, as if pushing away from him, and all the while my thoughts repeated Not yet. Not yet, please, Matthew. Not yet.

  "I love you more than anything," Matthew said. "I want you to be happy. But I'm asking you now to tell me the truth: If we didn't have a baby, just yet, would you … could … I want you to tell me honest, Chloe—” Now staring at me. "Why are you smiling?"

  I didn't tell him the truth just then. I was smiling because I felt relief damn near as powerful as the relief I'd felt when I saw him kneeling with Sam's head in his lap. I didn't say that. I said, "I'll tell you the truth when you tell me what to tell you the truth about."

  He pursed his lips. "Sassy." He dry washed his hands, ran them through his curls, stood up and stalked across the porch, stopped after he'd kicked the geraniums and stared at them as if he'd never seen them before. Then, he stared at the mountains the sun had fallen behind and turned and looked at me and said, simply, "I don't want to work around trains. I want to work on trains."

  Well, I knew that.

  "I want to run them. Nevada & Oregon is just starting up and the Chinese are building it and the Americans are financing it and I don't want to push paper and order par
ts for it. I want to drive it."

  He looked happier than he'd looked in weeks.

  "There are other railways," I said simply.

  Matthew beamed at me and seemed content to leave the conversation there. "Matthew? You haven't asked me anything."

  His smile dimmed a little.

  "You also haven't explained what this has to do with children, or waiting, or anything else." Anything else, like what I was supposed to do without him. I could work, maybe, learn a trade, something women could traditionally work at. Mavis was a teacher, perhaps I could teach something. Or I could—

  I could run the trains with him, I thought wistfully. But whatever happened, I wouldn't hold him back. This made him happy. This was what he had dreamed of. If the dream changed again in a year or two, the way the mines had changed to The Faro Queen and The Faro Queen to trains, that would be all right, too.

  He recaptured my wandering, unhappy imagination by standing and moving over to me, holding out his hands and pulling me to my feet. When I was safely ensconced in the circle of his arms, he said, "I'm asking you if you can delay starting our family because I don't want to be away from you."

  My heart beat faster. I studied his face, afraid of jumping to conclusions.

  "I want you to come with me. There's no reason not to. There are passenger cars on trains and, when there aren't, you can share whatever my accommodations are. We'll have the house, if there's somewhere you don't want to go, if there's trips you don't want to make, or if you—why are you smiling now?"

  I kissed him in answer and took his hand and led him inside our house.

  "Matthew?" I asked, a long time later, as we lay in the flickering shadows cast by the only candle lit in the bedroom.

  "Mmm?" He was nearly asleep.

  "There's nowhere I don't want to go with you."

  A sigh that was almost a snore, and then he said, "What?"