She was a small woman, light as a feather, and he set her down on her feet but didn’t let go. With one arm around her waist, he gave her the canes and waited for her to adjust them for optimum support.
When he was sure she could stand by herself, he turned to Melody. “You’re next.” She giggled and practically flew into his arms. He cradled her there for a second or two too long.
“Letters are nice,” she said, “but this is nicer.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” he said.
Cleantha cleared her throat. Van set Melody down on her feet. She put her arm around her mother’s waist, and Van took his position on her other side. The three of them made their way down the length of the loading dock to the ramp beside the depot and the waiting sleigh.
“We need to get the luggage before the train leaves the station,” Melody said, leaning back to speak to the back of his head.
Van nodded; the sled was a few feet away. Royce stepped forward and took his wife, his arm going around her waist.
“I’ll get the luggage,” Van said.
Melody skipped to his side. “I’ll come with you. You don’t know which bags are ours.”
He took her hand. “Come on, we better hurry.” The train whistle blew, signaling they had about five minutes before it left the station.
Reaching the loading dock, Van pointed to the cargo car and the freight wagon in front of the open doors. “Good, Walt Slater’s still here, he picks up goods for the businesses in town. I’ll see if he’ll deliver luggage to my brother the veterinary. You catch the porter. Sort out which bags are going with us.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Van slipped out the back door and made his way to the stables, carriage house, and out-buildings behind Gabe and Birdie’s home. Finding a shovel inside the door of the stable, he began chopping the ice out of the water troughs. Three goats, two horses, Birdie’s pony and the little piebald mare greeted him.
The problems inside the house revolved around three invalids: Ryder with his sprained ankle, Jo’s condition, and Melody’s mother. Jo insisted she was perfectly capable of managing stairs, therefore thought the need for Birdie-Alice and Gabe to give up their bedroom ridiculous and unnecessary. Her statement prompted her husband to forbid her to go anywhere near the stairs.
Forbidding a Buxton anything was tantamount to declaring war. Van winced, realizing Ryder’s mistake, and got the hell out of there, leaving Melody and Birdie-Alice to negotiate detente.
Closing the stable door behind him and latching it, he glanced toward the carriage house. He entered the building by a side door; it smelled funny, like strong spirits. With the help of the moon behind him, he found a lantern close to the door on a shelf, lit it, and held it up to have a look around. He’d discovered Gabe’s veterinary laboratory and operating room. He knew his brother had a laboratory and operating room, but he hadn’t realized it was here in the carriage house. The operating table took up the center of the room. Around the room on the shelves were books, boxes of gauze, and bandage. And jars of disgusting things: hookworms, tapeworms, a heart, and other assorted organs sat at eye level. Van recoiled in disgust.
Melody entered the space. “Oh, my Lord. This,” she said, staring into a jar of some kind of long, white and segmented worm, “is going to be in my dreams now. And not happy dreams.”
Van turned the jar around, and the thing swirled around inside the liquid.
“Don’t do that.” Melody put a hand over her mouth, and the other clamped over his wrist. “I saw you skip out. I figured I’d find you in the stable, then I saw the light in here.”
Van set the jar back into the shadows on the shelf, and they both turned away.
“You will be happy to know the doctor has left and gave everyone the go-ahead for our plan to travel after a day of rest,” she said. “By then Ryder’s ankle, if he keeps off it and elevates it, will be practically healed. And Jo, well, Jo is so healthy and happy, she’s a bit too feisty and too much for her husband to handle. Ryder isn’t helping, hovering over her all the time. His behavior is beyond me. I’ve never seen him so unsure, so genuinely frightened, and nervous. Jo’s anxious, but excited at the prospect of going home. She really is looking forward to having her baby at the hot spring.”
Melody put her hands on his chest to look directly into his eyes. “We have to get her there, Van. She’s missed her home more than any of us will ever know.”
Her warm little body pressed against him. Held captive by her dark eyes, Van forgot all about the jars of awful. Her dress, of a dusty rose-colored jersey, fit her dainty figure like a second skin, encasing her arms, shoulders, and the graceful, gentle swell of her bosoms and hips to perfection. She smelled of soap and flowers, warm, inviting his caress. The creamy white knit shawl slipped down her back and off her arms. He gathered it up to place it over her shoulders and bent down to steal a kiss.
He’d held her in his dreams every night over the past two months; to have the real thing pressed against him sucked all rational thought right out of his head. Consequently, he didn’t hear the carriage door squeak open.
“Royce is looking for you, Van,” Gabe said from the doorway.
Melody gasped, and Van tucked her into his side, his arm around her.
“Thank you,” Royce said to Gabe, clamping his hand on Gabe’s shoulder, pushing him aside to allow him to enter the room.
Gabe cleared his throat. “Ah, yeah, well, good, you’ve found him,” Gabe said and ducked his head and disappeared into the dark beyond the door.
Her father, a scowl on his face, held the door open and waved Melody out of the room. “It’s too cold for you to be out here without your coat. Your mother would like some cocoa. And I’d like to talk to Van.”
“Daddy,” Melody said, detaching herself from Van’s protective arm, “My shawl is wool and warm enough. I delivered a pot of chocolate to mother before I came out here. I also tucked her into bed.”
Her father huffed and shook his head at her. “Damn it. All right then, get out. Please leave, I want to talk to Van alone.”
“You don’t need to talk to Van. I told you everything. You have no reason to talk to Van.”
“Melody,” Van said touching her arm, “go. Goodnight.”
Tossing her head, she turned her back to her father and smiled at Van. “We were a good team tonight getting everyone here. It was fun.” Quick as a sprite, she came up on her toes and delivered a peck on his cheek.
Nervous, Van, his hands on her arms to keep her from getting too close, nodded in agreement, unable to look away from her father’s scorching glare of disapproval.
Melody opened her mouth and paused before her father but wisely moved on, leaving a tense silence hanging heavy in the air behind her.
Royce moved around the operating table, stopped to examine a couple of jars. He moved on and fondled a lethal-looking sawblade, running the edge with the tip of his finger. He sneered and waggled his blond eyebrows at Van.
Van swallowed his Adam’s apple and squared his shoulders.
Royce laid the instrument down on the counter behind him and folded his arms across his chest. He paused and cleared his throat before speaking his mind. “My daughter, Melody, is a gladiator in the body of a mythological forest sprite. In other words, she’s an enigma. She’s reckless, fearless, naive and honest to a fault. But she has insecurities, and she hides them well behind a saucy show of independence. Your leaving like you did without saying goodbye, tapped into those insecurities. She’s twisted it around so it’s her fault you ran off. I say that’s hog’s slop.”
Van huffed and shook his head. “She said as much to me in her letters. I too call it hog’s slop. She showed me up, is what she did. Saved my hide. But that’s not the reason I left like I did.”
“No?” Royce said, more as a bark than a word. “Then tell me, why the hell didn’t you at least stay long enough to say goodbye and thank her for saving your butt? You let her think she’d scared you, disgraced you
somehow.”
Van moved a step closer to the man, fairly certain he wouldn’t get punched in the nose. But he kept the operating table between them just in case. “I’m going to lay it out, tell you where I stand.”
Royce nodded his permission to go ahead.
“I want her. I want Melody, do you understand? But…Melody is not a person one can hold onto unless she is of the same mind. I had to let her go. If I’d gone to her to say goodbye, she might’ve talked me into staying, traveling on with her. I have a hard time saying no to the lady.”
Royce’s hard glare held steady for a long moment of dead silence. He shoved his backside away from the counter and braced himself, hands on the operating table. “You want her? What the hell do you mean by that? I told you she’s an innocent, naïve, she doesn’t know anything about lust or desire. In many ways, she’s still a child.”
Van braced himself, shoulders back. “I agree,” he said. “The letter writing has helped. We’ve come to know one another pretty well now. I think. I hope she’s decided she wants me too. And I hope she understands what that means. Because my life is not even close to the life she had traveling around the country doing shows. Over the last couple of months, she’s had time to think about that. I live at the hot spring. I don’t want or need to travel. Melody enjoys performing before a crowd. I avoid crowds. I don’t know if we can find a way around our differences. But I really, really, hope we can.”
“Let me get this straight,” Royce said, narrowing his eyes, “You want my daughter? You want her permanently? Not for a quick roll in the hay, a quick conquest, but you want her as a permanent partner in your life?”
“Yes, sir, exactly,” Van said, letting the tension in his shoulders go with the expulsion of his breath. He’d avoided, like the coward he knew himself to be, coming straight out and saying the words, saying he loved Melody. He loved her and he needed her and wanted her to love him, be with him.
He called himself pathetic, rambling on, trying to try to explain himself. “The problem is Melody. I don’t know if she wants a permanent anything. I don’t know if she wants me for more than a quick roll in the hay, a quick conquest. It could be, I’m the experiment to test her feminine wiles. I can’t say. She’s got me confused and guessing all the time. So far I’ve been able to resist her advances. She’s a fast learner, sir. I’m not made of stone.”
Royce frowned and dropped his head. “She can be very persuasive,” he said. “Women are the very devil.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you drink?” Royce asked him out of the blue, throwing Van off his guard.
“No, sir. I’ll have a beer now and then.”
“Good. Do you smoke?”
“No, sir, never took up the habit.”
“I smoke,” Royce said. “I used to drink. I have a snort now and then. Right now, I need a cigarette, and I would kill for a shot of whiskey.”
“Gabe keeps a bottle of bourbon in the kitchen.”
“Is that so? You know Telt Longtree is a justice of the peace,” Royce said on their way out of the carriage house. “I think I’ll send him a wire in the morning.”
Van didn’t know what to make of that statement and was afraid to ask.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Melody scrambled to secure the space between her father and Van in the sleigh. Van had the reins, of course, as he knew the way. Her father tried to place her in the back seat with Ryder and Jo, but in the end, her small size decided the front bench arrangement.
And besides, Cleantha hated sleighs, declaring they brought forth old, unpleasant, and terrifying memories. She preferred to ride in the back seat, secure and in the center, which left Jo and Ryder on either side of her. Jo assured everyone the arrangement suited her, she had more leg room, and her view was better on the outside. Ryder preferred the outside, of course, again giving him more room to move his legs.
Gabe and Birdie-Alice would greet the remaining guests who were expected to arrive on tomorrow’s train. They, and Rafe Bollo and his wife Doreen, would provide transport to the hot spring in a couple of days.
The day, bright, crisp and cold, made the perfect backdrop for the Wallowa Mountains to the north, dressed in a coat of white against a sky of pure blue. The sleigh glided through almost a foot of fresh powder on the road. They had a small luncheon of cold ham, deviled eggs, and crusty bread a little before midday. To wash down their meal, Birdie had provided a jug of her delicious apple and pear cider.
They pushed on, and Van stopped the sleigh in the afternoon to allow those who wanted, or needed, to stretch their legs and make use of the convenient boulders for cover if one had to relieve themselves.
On the road again, with daylight fast fading, Van said, “In another mile or two we’ll be coming to the canyon.”
“I’ll be dark soon,” Royce said, glancing around his daughter to address Van.
“We’ll have a little daylight left, but yeah, it’ll be full dark before we reach the hot spring. The canyon is a special place for the Buxton family. You might have read about it in the brochure. Buck included a little history. Petra Yurvasi gave birth to my half-brother Gabe behind a granite boulder in the canyon. Buck found her there and brought her to the hot spring.
“That’s the condensed, abridged version. The longer story is Buck, my father, at one time ran a brothel at the hot spring. He brought the whores out here from Baker City in April and returned them in October. He was returning from Baker City on that October day and heard a woman’s wail of despair. It was my mother.
“Petra was on the run from two sadistic, evil brothers, Kurt and Beau Laski. They wanted her dead. She’d seen and heard too much, and they needed to silence her, but they also wanted her child, Kurt’s child.
“As the days went by, Buck and Petra became lovers and Petra confessed all she knew about the Laski brothers. Realizing they would never find peace, Buck and Petra returned to town to give Petra the opportunity to tell her side of the story at Beau Laski’s trial. The brothers had bamboozled a lot of people, murdered people, even convinced folks Kurt Laski was dead and Beau Laski was paralyzed from the waist down. At the trial, it all came down to Petra’s word against Beau’s.”
Jo bounced forward, eager to tell the rest of the story. She leaned forward a little, the better to see her husband’s face. “Petra knew the brothers had a huge fear of rats. They’d traveled as boys in the cargo hold of a ship to escape the law from their homeland in Poland. Buck used rats during the trial to extract a confession from the brothers. They were hanged for their crimes.”
“Petra and Buck and her infant son Gabriel retreated to the hot spring. They converted the once upon a time brothel into a holiday spa with cabins. They improved the bathing pool over the years. Added to the main house, corrals, and barn. It has become a modest success.
“Petra, our mother, passed away three years ago. You’ll see evidence of her love for her home in the hooked rugs and furnishings in the cabins. My father remarried last summer. Idella’s breathed new life into the place. We love her, don’t we, Van?”
He nodded his agreement, urging the team of dray horses to veer off the main road and onto a narrow track to the north. “It was this time of day Buck entered the canyon,” Van said. “Little did Buck realize Petra had lost her hearing in a mine explosion caused by the Laski brothers. They’d kept her presence in the mine shaft a secret from everyone, claiming she’d gone home to her family when in actuality they’d kidnapped her and caged her in the mine. In the blast, her cage tipped over, and she managed to escape in the back of a freight wagon headed down the mountain to Baker City. She walked, barefoot, heavy with child, all the way from Baker City and stumbled into the canyon seeking shelter. Remember it was October, cold and beginning to snow.”
The sleigh moved down between the canyon walls. The shoosh of the sled rails gliding through nearly a foot of powdery snow and the jangle of harness echoed and bounced off the walls on either side of them.
“Buck heard her screams,” Van said continuing his story. “His horse shied and stopped down there on the right, that boulder up there. The screams were coming from there. Petra had squatted down to deliver her son, fully expecting he would die and she would die. Buck carried her down off the side of the cliff. He covered her and the baby with a blanket and carried her home.
“Her hearing returned, but it was never perfect. The Buxtons love this canyon. We look upon the boulder as a monument to remind us of Petra’s bravery and courage. Most of the traffic uses the main road north of the hot spring. It leads to Halfway and Hells Canyon Snake River country.”
∙•∙
Imagining Petra’s desperate flight, her pain and despair, Melody shivered. Ahead of them, at the base of the canyon lay a wide open, rolling plain of grazing land. She caught a whiff of sulfur in the air.
“Smell that?” Van asked them. “That’s the hot spring. The wind comes up the canyon most days. We don’t get that smell down at the house very often. When we do, take cover, there’s a storm coming. We’ve made a small pool for bathing. The larger pool on the other side of the road is a favorite spot for all kinds of waterfowl during the winter. We have elk, cougar, deer, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, wolves, coyotes, fox, you name it, they visit the hot spring looking for water and something to eat. The grass and rushes grow all year round around the lowlands close to the spring. Snow doesn’t stick. A herd of wild horses come down off the mesas now and then, usually to wait out a blizzard.”
Something happened to Melody right then, an aching tug at her heart. The warmth and knowledge of it spread throughout her chest and filled her eyes with tears. Emotions, too many to identify, swept over her, but one thing, one significant realization, made her want to cry out in joy. She was home. Paradise lay before her. She’d come home, no more would she wander the land looking for the elusive something to give her an identity, bring her fulfillment; she would find everything she would ever need or want right here.
Gathering on Dance Hall Road Page 16