Sweet Boundless

by Kristen Heitzmann

  He must have startled her, disturbed her with his own regret. “It’s all right,” he said again, voicing the lie.

  She looked at him. “Quil-lan.” This time it was unmistakable.

  He leaned forward, searching her face. What was she saying? What did she want from him? “Yes. Yes, it’s Quillan.”

  “Quillan.” Tears started and streamed from her eyes.

  His hand shook as he held her shoulder, searching himself for some response. What did he feel? Did he care that she knew him, that the knowing brought her pain? Slowly, hating himself for weakness, he folded her into his arms. Her fingers dug into the tendons across his shoulders as she sobbed.

  “It’s all right.” And now he meant it.

  She softened in his arms like a bird growing limp. Babbling, she petted his arm, playing with his name. “Quil-lan, Quillan, Quillan.”

  He said nothing, only let her stroke him until she pushed back, catching his face between her palms. Her mouth hanging, she studied him, her eyes almost cognizant. Then, as though a shutter closed, she looked away to the window and grew rigid, picking at the shawl.

  Quillan let go of her and stood. Whatever had passed between them, it was over. He left her staring and wandered out into the front room of the house. Should he tell the reverend what had transpired, that she’d recognized him and spoken his name? Did she have lucid moments with her husband? Would he regret that he had missed it?

  Quillan sighed. He’d done all he could there, made whatever peace he could with his past. Now it was time to consider his future. He looked out at the sky breaking up into ragged strips of cloud. He could leave today. He went into the room he’d slept in these last days and gathered his things.

  Carefully, he lifted his mother’s journal. DeMornay. Where were her people? His family? Denver? Should he try? He swallowed the swelling in his throat. Maybe someday. Now he would go to Crystal. If Carina was still there . . . His stomach clutched. He felt an urgency for her. Something was changed, as though a vacuum inside had opened up and only Carina could fill it. Let her be there!

  He heard the door before he’d finished tying his pack around his meager belongings. The reverend was home, and they could say their good-byes. Quillan shouldered the pack and went out to take leave of his foster father.

  The reverend seemed to know what Quillan meant to say. Maybe the pack on his shoulder, maybe the look in his eyes. Reverend Shepard shrugged out of his coat and hung it on his hook, then turned with a sigh. “You’re going, then?”

  Quillan nodded.

  “And did you find what you were seeking?”

  “Not what I came for.” Quillan glanced toward the bedroom where Mrs. Shepard sat picking her shawl and jumping at shadows. Not the satisfaction of confronting and attacking. “But maybe what I needed.”

  The reverend nodded, raised a hand to Quillan’s shoulder. “God bless you, son.”

  Quillan looked into the gray-brown glassy eyes. He could tell the reverend he wasn’t his son. They’d never seen fit to make him so. But in a sense he was. He carried inside him the lessons the reverend had impressed upon him over years of tutelage, and they hadn’t all been learned at the end of a rod.

  Quillan pressed the old man’s hand. He glanced again at the room where Mrs. Shepard sat. “She knew me. She spoke my name.”

  Slowly the reverend smiled, just a faint crinkling of the eyes, a slight upturn to the mouth. He nodded, and Quillan saw the reverend’s eyes grow bright with tears. He pressed the old man’s hand again and turned away. Shouldering the pack, he opened the door. “Good-bye, Reverend.”

  His foster father raised a quivering hand in farewell.

  EIGHTEEN

  For my impulsive nature I make no excuse. God did not create us all tortoises to contemplate each step. Yet if I have acted wrongly, I pray the Lord will forgive. It was my heart which dictated the deed.

  —Carina

  CARINA KNEW THE MEN were trouble when Èmie first showed them to a table. They could only have gotten their names on the list since the trouble with the mines had alienated some of her former customers these last two weeks. There had been no lack of others to take their places, but these four had the look of the roughs who had previously terrorized the town. She knew. She’d seen enough of the roughs in her dealings with Berkley Beck.

  Though washed and dressed appropriately, they were unmistakably different from her usual clientele. Did everyone else notice? She could be mistaken, but Alex Makepeace seemed to have been disturbed by their appearance. Did he know them or guess something of their manner? Had he tried to catch her eye?

  They had hardly spoken since she’d demanded he follow her orders. She knew things had grown difficult for him. The relations between his operation and others were strained. Even Joe Turner. And all because of her impulsive act. She sighed. It was better to let things settle on their own, but she missed their chats. She missed his smile. It was not so easy these days, nor so genuine.

  Carina passed Èmie in the hall. It was Èmie’s first night back to work since her wedding, and they’d hardly had a moment to talk. She was aching to share in Èmie’s happiness, just to hear her talk of her husband and the expansion of their cabin and the plank floors he was putting down. But she was busy, so busy. She should be thankful. Such success! Yet the uneasy feeling wouldn’t leave her. What is it, Signore?

  She had little time to ponder it, though, between carrying trays and serving up plates. Celia was up to her elbows in dish suds, and Elizabeth looked like a rabbit hopping back and forth between tables and kitchen with the used dishes. Lucia carried pots of coffee and bowls of sugar. There was no cream.

  Carina carried four bowls of steaming minestrone for the men who had concerned her and were now seated in the center of the room. They eyed her darkly as she approached, and again her senses sharpened. Where was the courtesy to which she was accustomed? Did they mean to provoke her?

  “You smell somethin’?” One squint-eyed man sprawled in his chair, his arm dangling down the back.

  The man across from him made a show of sniffing the air. “Smells like dago.”

  Carina’s breath hitched, and she stopped, tray suspended. She had heard the word before, but not in Crystal, at least not in her presence.

  “Sure does.” The lumpy man crowded the table. “You suppose they got dagos in Crystal?”

  The first man snorted. “Got dagos everywhere. Like rats. They move in and breed.”

  Her breath came out hard. They hadn’t looked at her, but she knew every word was directed her way. Then the speaker did look at her, and she saw a calculated cruelty she recognized all too well. Her heart hammered furiously. It was not only for herself that she seethed, but for Lucia, who stood frozen some few steps away, and for all the Italian people. Such ugliness had no place in her restaurant.

  One step brought Carina beside the squinty man. “Get out.”

  “What’s that?” His head lolled to the side insolently.

  “I said, get out.”

  He curled a lip at his companions. “You hear that? She’s mindin’ my business.”

  With every ounce of restraint, she resisted dumping the soup on his head. “Get out of my restaurant.”

  “You telling me what to do? Need to learn your place . . . dago woman.” In his tone, in his face, was a taunt, a direct challenge.

  Carina started to shake. The ugliness of it appalled her, but she held her ground, burning them with her eyes, never flinching. She felt motion and saw that Joe Turner and Alex Makepeace had come to stand behind her. Whatever their frustrations with her, they were her friends. A quick glance to the sides showed Ben Masterson and Horace Fisher also standing. As she watched, every man in the room rose to his feet.

  Her chest swelled, and she returned her fiery gaze to the miscreant. “Get out.”

  The man did a quick peruse, then sneered. “Dago princess has them all by the—”

  A flick of her wrist and the minestrone bowls slid from he
r tray, scalding down the side of his face, into his lap, and crashing to the floor. He jumped up with a yell and lunged.

  Ben Masterson caught him around the chest. “Got no more than you deserved, mister. Clear out and don’t come back.”

  Carina felt a hand grip her arm. It was Alex holding her steady. Did he think she would fly at the man like a cat? Or did he show her with that simple gesture that he was there for her?

  “You’ll pay for this!” The burned man swiped his hand down his face.

  The other three scrambled up as Masterson released their friend. Together they stormed out, kicking table legs and shoving chairs as they went. Carina stood shaking. She shouldn’t have burned him. Èmie would never have burned him. She turned to Alex Makepeace. “Do you know who he is?”

  “I have my guess.”

  “He works for one of the mines?”

  “A number of consolidateds.”

  So Alex had tried to catch her eye, to warn her to tread carefully. “Why was he here?”

  The men had returned to their seats. Alex led Carina to the hall. “He was here to stir things up, to bring public opinion against you. He didn’t know how your diners feel about you. He miscalculated.”

  “Why would he want to turn people against me?”

  Alex said nothing.

  “It’s because of the families, isn’t it? Because I brought aid to the families.”

  “It’s not as simple as it seems,” he said.

  “I know I’ve caused you trouble. I never meant to.” She looked into his face, hoping he understood.

  His brown eyes softened, and he smiled. “I know that.”

  “What happens now?”

  Alex shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “I shouldn’t have burned him.”

  He rubbed the side of his neck. “It’s like the mayor said—he had it coming.”

  She didn’t argue, but her heart convicted her. She’d returned evil for evil. Would she never learn? Dio, have patience with me. Èmie came into the hall carrying the broken bowls on the tray. Carina looked at the wreckage. What a waste, for one moment of revenge. Had she changed their minds? Made them respect her? Had she brought any resolution to an already tense situation?

  Alex rubbed his beard. “Forget it, Carina.”

  Like everything else she was supposed to put out of her mind. “Thank you for standing with me.”

  He touched her hand briefly. “I’d have been outnumbered if I hadn’t.”

  She smiled, thinking of the men standing up in support. How had she won their hearts so soon after Crystal would have hung her? It warmed her, but she knew too well how capricious the sentiments could be.

  Alex lay awake with more than the hard, narrow cot and lumpy pillow to blame. His thoughts whirled. He knew all too well how ugly things could get when factions started warring. The miners demanding their dues; the owners refusing demands that would ruin them or, at the least, alienate their investors.

  The men here running the operations were the ones in the worst spot, obligated to those who’d put up monies back east, pressed to turn greater and greater profits or see the operation scrapped, and then where would the miners be? Not dead. Images of the crushed and mangled bodies they’d pulled from the collapsed drift filled his mind.

  None had survived. It was a toxic gas pocket that had exploded. Those not crushed by the debris . . . Alex shook his head. But they all knew the risks they took when they descended the shaft. Carina’s sympathy had been for the women and children. Maybe if he hadn’t been raw himself from watching one corpse after another being brought out, he would have refused.

  But he doubted it. He wouldn’t refuse Carina anything. He’d kept secret the cave that could yield untold treasures. And he’d stood with her tonight against the thugs. Next time it could be himself he was defending. Other miners were demanding aid for their families. No injury seemed too small now that the door was opened. They were using the deaths at the New Boundless as fuel for their fire. And the owners were adamant against them.

  Those men tonight had been a warning. Not just to Carina, but to him as well. James Mires was running scared, and God only knew what correspondence he was sending back to Harrold and Sterk. Alex would likely be removed by spring. And all because he couldn’t say no to another man’s wife.

  Was that it? Was God punishing him for wanting what wasn’t his? Coveting another man’s wife? I’ve not done anything wrong. Not once touched her unchastely. Not spoken one word of my feelings. Yet he’d let her color his judgment. Perhaps cost him his job, his career.

  He rolled to his back and stared at the ceiling. He was a moral man. He followed God’s tenets. If this was a chastisement for impure thoughts and desires, so be it. Well, Grandmother, I’ve landed in it now. What would you say about this one? But he knew what she’d say. He should have kept out of it altogether. He drew a slow breath and sighed. What sleep he found tonight would not be peaceful.

  At the crash, Carina jolted up, wondering if the small shattering sound had been in her dream or was real. If it were real, it must have come from the dining room, for her own room was still and dark. She groped for a candle and lit it. Threading her finger into the tin loop of the holder, she slipped out of bed and made for the door to the hall.

  What could have slipped in the night? She pictured the three painted china plates she had stood on the mantel of the fireplace for their ornamentation alone. She jumped when another crash came from the darkened room, then hurried down the hall to the doorway.

  Her candle illuminated the mantel, and she saw at once the missing plates and the fragments on the hearth and tile. How had they fallen? A chill ran up her spine. Had the ghosts of the Carruthers . . . No, she stopped that thought before it scared her further. How, then? The one remaining plate seemed steady enough in the groove Joe Turner’s men had cut there. She stooped and picked up the central part of one fallen plate with its beautiful floral design shattered. What had . . .

  She heard a whoosh, and burning pain shot through her back at the blow. Carina screamed even as the second blow took her knees from behind. She fell. The candle sputtered and went out, and in the darkness she thrashed, screaming, as blow after blow sent fire through her body. Instinctively she curled but was kicked about until she had no control.

  Something struck the side of her head. It seemed there were gunshots, but maybe the blows had broken open her skull. Her ears throbbed, and she vomited blood. There were shouts, but she didn’t hear them clearly, then a gust of cold. Blood filled her throat again and she retched. Then she felt the hot fluid run down her legs.

  “No . . .” she moaned once.

  Arms grasped her. “Carina.”

  She knew him. Alex Makepeace. With another moan, she sank against his chest.

  Voices. Darkness. A sweet smell. The taste of blood, and an ache inside worse than the dull throbbing of her body.

  “How bad is it?” Mae’s voice.

  Gruffly, Dr. Felden: “She lost the baby.”

  Mae’s voice, startled. “The baby?”

  Carina tried to argue. No, the baby’s fine.

  “It appears her husband stayed long enough for that.” A clink of instruments.

  But he doesn’t know. When he learns about the baby, he’ ll stay; he’ ll love me.

  Mae spoke thickly. “Will she have another?”

  “I’m not a fortune-teller.” Water splashing and sloshing.

  “Will she live?”

  “It depends on the internal bleeding. Now that I know there was a baby, I don’t believe it’s as extensive as I first thought.”

  Mae, softly: “I’ll sit with her now.”

  The door closed with a click. Carina wanted to call him back, to tell him he was wrong. She wanted to feel the baby inside her, to know that what she hoped for could still be. Dio! Signore! Per piacere, Signore. My baby. My baby.

  In the fading light of dusk, Quillan rubbed his grainy eyes and slipped through the doors of
the livery. He’d pushed his team hard to make Crystal before nightfall, and he had slept little for more nights than he could recall. He’d been driven by his need, the need for his wife, the need to see her, speak with her, tell her the things he’d learned, promise her . . . what? That he’d be the husband she wanted him to be? Could he?

  He sure meant to try. The full wagon of things from the Italian market was just one proof of that. Quillan rubbed a hand over his face and searched the dim horse-smelling enclosure. He’d pushed himself hard. He was cold, saddle weary, and dragging almost as badly as his horses and his dog. But he was home.

  Maybe. If she’d have him. Crystal could be home. Anywhere with Carina could be home. “Alan?” At least the old ostler would be pleased with his decision. He could honestly tell him this time he planned to stay.

  Alan Tavish came forward with a lantern, but his expression was not what Quillan expected. “Ah, boyo. Sit there.” He pointed to a barrel beside the stall.

  Quillan sat, too weary to argue, and blew on his wind-chapped hands. It was better he catch his breath before he went to Carina anyway. He ought to wash and change as well. He needed a shave or at least a trim of his winter beard.

  “I’ll give ye the way of it before ye hear it elsewhere.”

  Looking into Alan’s face, Quillan felt his stomach tighten. “She’s gone?”

  “Nay. But she’s in a bad way.” Alan gripped his shoulder. “Quillan, your wife was attacked last night.”

  Quillan jumped up from the barrel, his heart thumping inside. “What?”

  “Beaten.”

  Quillan gripped the post, wanting to find the lie in Alan’s eyes, but seeing only a deep, pitying sorrow. “Who?”

  Alan shook his head. “No one saw for sure. ’Twas dark.”

  Quillan spun. He’d thought that himself last night as he made it into Fairplay, how it was a dark and moonless night. If only he’d pressed on without stopping! One night! One night too late. He ran for the livery door, slammed it open with his palms, and pushed through.

  The frozen ground crunched beneath his boots, and the air tasted of smoke and slag. He ran to the small house connected to Mae’s, then stopped, feet frozen to the crusty snow beneath his boots. Smoke trailed from the small pipe that vented her stove, and a warm, soft light filled the window, though a curtain blocked his view of the room.