As soon as the stallion is settled, Bump takes Isabel from my arms and holds her to the sky. “She’s okay?” he asks. “She’s really okay?”
“All better,” I promise. “I’m convinced nothing will ever stop our little bean.” Later, I’ll fill him in about Doc Henley’s heroic efforts to save her. There’s so much to catch up on.
“What’s that?” Bump finally notices the black Angus cattle in the southern pasture.
“MacMillan’s crew showed up.” I smile, still proud I was able to handle the situation without Bump or Fortner here to guide me. I’m tempted to tell him about Dutch, just to see if I can make him jealous, but I let it go. Bump moves to examine the cattle. The rest of us follow.
“They look good,” Bump says. “Any trouble movin’ ’em in?”
“Nope. Turns out, Firefly’s more than just a trick horse. She knew just what to do.”
Bump draws his head back in surprise and then moves to the barn to check the draft horse. “How’s this lady?”
“She’s doing great. Few small sores left, but she’s a fighter. Just like our Isabel.” Bump passes Isabel to Oka so he can examine the horse.
“Didn’t spread?” He turns the horse’s head to check the nodes. Oka and Fortner turn all of their attention to Isabel, making silly faces and even sillier noises. Isabel erupts in laughter.
“Not at all. I’ve kept her stalled, but I started pulling her out for ground work last week, just to get her moving again. She seems to be feeling much better.”
Bump smiles and kisses my cheek. “I never doubted you, Millie, but now I’m thinkin’ you don’t need me at all around here.”
“Not true,” I say. “I missed you every single minute.”
“What about me?” Fortner jokes.
“Yes, Fortner. We missed you, too. Did Kat track y’all down?” I ask, teasing. “She’s been on that side for the last few weeks. I just knew she’d sweep you off to the vapor caves.”
Fortner gives Bump a look and Bump turns back to the draft horse, avoiding me.
“What is it?” I ask Bump, lowering my voice. “Don’t tell me she went after you.” I laugh, but it is a nervous laugh.
“Maybe. A little.” Bump shuffles his feet and looks at the ground.
“What does that mean?” I laugh again, hoping this is all a joke.
“I don’t know, Millie. It’s nothin’.”
“You have to tell me, Bump.” I touch his arm, a hint for him to look at me.
Fortner and Oka leave the barn with Isabel, giving us room to talk.
“She’s just lonely,” Bump lowers his voice. “Grief changes people. You know that.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying. Were you … with her?” I say it a little too loud and Oka looks back at us.
Bump shuffles his feet. “Not exactly.”
My pulse is racing. “It’s either yes or no, Bump. Which one is it?”
“Millie, don’t be that way. You know how she is.” Bump moves to hug me. I pull away. I remember what Bump told me the day we left Mississippi: “I only want a girl to kiss me.” Real, unrestrained intimacy. Something I’m finally learning to give. But maybe I’m too late. Kat’s ready to fill in the gaps. Give my husband the attention he craves. I leave Bump standing by the stall and join the others back at the fence. Bump doesn’t follow.
“How could Kat do that to me, Oka? How could Bump let her?” I force the words through tears, trying to compose myself as I find Oka at the river.
“I never trust her,” Oka says, watching her line and trying to land enough fish for supper.
I shake my head. “I saw it happening. I knew all along she was after him, and I did nothing to stop it.”
“Men,” Oka says, as if they aren’t worth the trouble.
As much as I want to blame Kat for everything, I can’t believe Bump had no part in the whole situation. Since he told me she met him across the Divide, I’ve spent hours imagining the long conversations, the quiet campfire evenings, the darkest hours. Oh, I hate this. My mind goes off in a million directions, constantly crafting different outcomes, each one worse than the other.
“Bump insists it’s nothing. But I don’t know if I believe him, Oka. Fortner knows what happened. You’ve got to ask him. I need to know.”
Oka looks at me as if it’s not a good idea.
“Please?” I am desperate. I have to know the truth.
I must look as pitiful as I feel because Oka puts down her fishing pole and says, “I try.”
She leaves me at the riverside with Isabel. My daughter can scoot anywhere now, and it’s all I can do to keep her out of the water. Without Oka to help me watch her, I give up, move Oka’s pole against a tree, and take Isabel for a walk. By the time we return to the house, Oka is cleaning five fish over a cutting board in the yard. “You can outfish Fortner now,” I tell her.
Oka laughs. “True.”
“Did you talk to him?”
Oka nods.
“And?” I set Isabel on the grass to let her play. As much as I want to know, I’m also afraid to hear it. What will I do, if she confirms my suspicions? If she says my husband had an affair with my only friend?
“She a beautiful woman, Millicent.” Oka points her knife as she talks.
My nerves burn. I know Kat’s beautiful. What I need to know is how my husband responded to this beautiful creature when she showed up to seduce him on the other side of these mountains. I gesture for Oka to tell me more.
Oka shakes her head, as if the truth is too awful to say out loud. “He just a man. A good man, but still, just a man.”
My head begins to spin, and my vision blurs. I feel as if I’m losing my footing. “That’s enough.” I hold up my hands to stop Oka from continuing. I can’t stand to hear anymore. I pace back and forth a few quick turns, but then I keep walking. I leave Isabel at Oka’s feet and head for the pasture to find Firefly. I saddle her for a ride. She doesn’t resist, doesn’t even hold that extra breath Bump warned me about when we first met. She knows me well enough to understand, right now, I need to get away.
I lead her to the mountain path. She’s careful with her step, even though we hurry, and we don’t stop until we reach the top of the trail, the same lookout where I once rode with Kat and Henry. The place I first thought I had found a friend. When Kat admitted the women here had no interest in getting to know her. Now I know why.
I stare out into the valley where the whole world rests below. Stepping down from the saddle, I hold Firefly’s reins. We trace the rock circle, walking around the sacred spot until I lead her to the center, where the smaller circle forms. Oka told me this represents a hole in the sky, the route to happy hunting grounds. I’m reminded of my childhood desire for Sloth to reach down from the heavens and take me with him. I stand in the hole to heaven and try to clear my head, try to forget all about Kat and Bump and what might have happened on the other side of these mountains. I focus on thoughts much older and bigger than me.
“Can you picture them here?” I talk to Firefly. “All the people who walked this trail before us?”
Firefly nickers. The wind is fierce, a loud and constant roar slicing across the mountain’s edge. For a moment, there is nothing else. No birds. No chipmunks. No crying baby. No cheating husband. There is only Firefly. And me.
A bird nest has fallen to the ground beneath a tree, an empty bowl made of twigs and hair, with a tiny brown feather resting beneath its rim. When I move to cradle the nest in my palms, it breaks. The wind takes most of it away, scattering the pieces across the mountain. “You see?” I ask Firefly. “Just like that, it can all fall apart.”
I loop Firefly’s reins to a branch and return to the center of the prayer circle. I sit on the ground, cross my legs, and open my hands to the sky. I close my eyes, tuning in to the sounds of the wind. Erase. Erase. Erase.<
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One thing’s for sure. I’m not the first person to sit in this spot and seek help. I’m not the first to feel pain, to know loss, to fall to the earth and look to the heavens for answers. I’m not the first to feel broken, lost, alone. The wind wails, and the sun burns, and the trees fight to stand strong against the mountain’s steep slope. “God?” I ask. “What now?”
I look out into the distance. How vast these mountains are. How small I am.
By the time I get home, everyone is coming in for supper. I hurry, leaving Firefly saddled and tied to the porch. Isabel is in Oka’s arms, crying. Bump responds with a sarcastic complaint. “I see one thing hasn’t changed.” He laughs as if it’s funny, but I do not.
“You haven’t seen her in a month, and that’s what you have to say?” I’m too sad to be angry. I take Isabel outside where Firefly waits. I hold my daughter with one arm and pull up, placing Isabel in front and holding her safely against me. Firefly follows my signals. This time, we take a long, slow ride, staying near the fencerow out past the pasture. The sky is dark, and the coyotes squeal in the distance, their frantic, high-pitched yelps an eerie warning for us all.
Isabel babbles and swings her feet, pumping her arms with glee as she points to the moon, the stars in the freckled sky. I pull Firefly to a halt and look with Isabel into the heavens. “What do you see up there, Isabel? See the stars? See the big, round moon?”
Isabel follows my point to the heavens.
“That’s right.” I reward her with a kiss. “Moon.”
Firefly swishes her tail as if she could brush away all the secrets. All the lies. All the choices that led us here, tonight. But even Firefly can’t tell me which sins outweigh the others.
Chapter 27
Wildfires have been burning for weeks, coating the sky with a thick blue haze. Thankfully, the flames have remained twenty miles to the east of the ranch, but that’s not nearly far enough for me to relax. Bump assures me this is part of nature’s process, that dry summers, lightning strikes, and high winds lead to fires. That twenty miles is a safe distance and there’s no reason to fear. Still, I am grateful to look onto a clear horizon today. “Maybe it’s a sign,” I tell Isabel. “Maybe the worst is over.”
I carry my sweet Hofanti to the woods for a quick morning hike. At nine months of age, she’s growing by the day now and more determined than ever to move through this world on her own, crawling, exploring, putting everything in her mouth. I spend most of my time trying to keep her safe, removing sharp objects, blocking dangerous drop-offs, pulling her tiny hands back from the pecking beaks of the hens, and keeping her out of reach of the horses’ heavy hooves. We’re planning to spend the next few days in Estes Park for the Rooftop Rodeo, so I’m trying to give her extra playtime before we leave. It’ll be a challenge to keep her with me in that crowd.
“Beautiful day,” Bump says, taking Isabel from my hip and sliding his left hand into mine. It’s been two months ... two months since he returned from the other side of the mountains, two months since I learned Kat had met him there.
Since then, I’ve resisted every time he’s touched me. He’s tried, so many times, to get close to me. I couldn’t. So we’ve danced circles around each other. He’d move forward, I’d move back, trying to keep a distance, avoiding the tender places that drew pain. Now we walk side by side through the woods, where the summer leaves provide shade and sparrows flit from tree to tree. Isabel notices everything. And I try, like her, to see the beauty, not the brutality, of the world.
“She reminds us, doesn’t she?” I ask Bump softly. “What really matters.”
He is quiet at first. Then he launches right into it. He speaks quickly, as if he’s trying to get it out before I can stop him again. I’ve instantly put an end to our conversations every time he’s tried to explain. The difference is, this time he starts with an apology. I wait. I listen. “I’m sorry, Millie. Kat shouldn’t have met up with us.”
There’s nothing I can say without sounding bitter.
“She was at the ranch when we got there. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to make a scene. Couldn’t risk losin’ the stallion.”
Nothing about Kat surprises me at this point, but this seems extreme. The nerve of her, not only to track down my husband when she knew I was miles away, but to find him during such a crucial moment for our business. I listen, trying to give Bump the benefit of the doubt, hoping he’ll say what I need to hear. That he wasn’t with Kat.
“I shoulda seen it comin’.” Everything about him says he is sorry.
“Everybody else saw it.” My voice gives away my hurt, the deep burn of betrayal that has blackened acres of my soul.
Bump stops and looks at me. “Maybe it’s ’cause everybody else was lookin’ at Kat, while I was lookin’ at you.”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes. I’ve seen him looking at Kat on more than one occasion, looks I would have loved for him to give me.
He tilts my chin up to meet his eyes. “I love you, Millie. You. Not Kat. And I can’t stand this anymore. You gotta believe me. I stopped it. Maybe a little too late, but I stopped it. I don’t care about Kat. Not one bit. You. Isabel. This is my life. You, Millie. You are my life.”
Doves coo from a tall ponderosa, and I let Bump pull me into him. Kiss me for the first time in months. “I don’t like feeling like this,” I tell him. “Like I’m losing you.”
He kisses me again. “You ain’t never gonna lose me, Millie. Never.”
Isabel wraps her arms around Bump’s neck and says, “Dada!” Clear as can be.
“Did you hear that?” Bump asks, smiling ear to ear. “She just said Daddy!”
“Dada,” Isabel says again. Bump covers her in kisses and says, “That’s right, Little Bean, you’re the only person in the world who gets to call me Daddy.”
Later, back at the house, Oka and I prepare supper while the men breed the last of the mares with our prized stallion, hoping for a full pasture of marketable foals come spring. It’s a little later than our normal July cut-off, but given the circumstances, Bump doesn’t want to wait. I watch the stallion, who barely rests before moving to another mare.
“I want to believe him, Oka. I want to think he stopped it, but you know as well as I do … men bow to Kat. What makes me think Bump’s any different?”
Oka dredges venison strips in egg, then flour. “You know about Code Talkers?”
“Let me guess … you have a Choctaw story.” I laugh.
Oka laughs too and says, “Sure do.” Then she continues. “You already know how this government tell Chahta we not citizens. This government hurt us, kill us, cheat us. But then new war start. World War I. And Chahta have to choose. We choose to fight with this country. We choose to help this government who hurt us.”
I try to imagine Choctaw men in US uniforms, going to battle with the same men who had betrayed them. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.
“Then,” Oka continues. “It 1918. Big, important battle against German.” She looks at me as if she wants me to tell her the right way to say it.
“Germany?” I ask.
Oka nods as she starts again. “Chahta soldiers use our language to bring secret message. German not break that code, and that why we win. Very important. Might have different country now without Chahta. You see?”
“You’re saying the Choctaw Code Talkers helped us win World War I?” I peel potatoes.
“Yes.” Oka browns venison in the skillet and the entire kitchen fills with the sound of sizzle.
“Sorry, Oka, but … what does that have to do with Bump and Kat?” I start a pot of water to boil, trying to steer clear of the blistering oil from Oka’s pan.
Oka flips the meat. “Bump hurt you. That true. But now you have a choice. What side you on, Millicent? Who you fight for? Who you die for? Who you risk everything for? You choose.”
“Did you know Lana Turner was here in ’41?” Bump asks, reading the pamphlet for the Rooftop Rodeo. We’ve just arrived in Estes Park, where we hope to sell some of our best stock. Get Mr. Tucker’s name in sync with high-quality broncs and ranch horses.
I look at the small arena surrounded by a few hundred seats and assume Bump’s trying to fool me.
“Says right here.” Bump taps the program. “She’d been shootin’ some fancy magazine cover, and they talked her into bein’ the Rodeo Queen. They even got Humphrey Bogart to be Parade Marshal.”
“Can’t be true.” I smile.
“It’s true,” Bump says, brushing his fingers through Isabel’s dark hair. “Maybe you’ll be queen someday, Isabel.” She smiles up at him and offers pure, unfiltered love. I try to do the same.
“Camille would be thrilled to know I’m sitting somewhere Lana Turner once sat. I can’t wait to write her.”
“Did you know the Millers want to buy a horse for Camille?” Bump asks.
“What about Poison?” Bump basically assigned the black pony to Camille and spent hours training her how to ride. By the time we left Mississippi, Camille was about as attached to Poison as I was to Firefly.
“Sold her,” Bump says, clicking his tongue and shaking his head as if he can’t believe Mr. Tucker would have done such a thing.
“What?” I’m shocked to hear Poison isn’t at the barn anymore. “When?”
“Month or two back, I think.”
“How do you know all this?” Isabel leans stiffly, but I can’t put her down on the ground or she’ll be trampled in the crowd. I pass her to Bump just long enough to give my arms a break.
“Called Mr. Tucker from that ranch out west. When I purchased the stallion. Had to connect him with the breeder, finalize the deal. He mentioned the Millers were interested in Firefly.”
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