Smoke Through the Pines

by Sarah Goodwin

  I embraced the work of the camp as a punishment for leaving Laura. Each backbreaking load of wood, each hour standing in the snow, stirring a pot of broth, every heap of crusted pans to wash – it was all a reminder of what I had left her to. What I had reduced her to. Tom and Rachel tried to help, but I told them to take care of Laura. They waited on her, bringing pots of hot coffee to her, feeding her stove, telling stories, fragments of which I heard through the canvas.

  I was not so lost in my own guilt that I could not see a reflection of it in Rachel. I could see that she blamed herself for our late return to camp. Clear on her face was the belief that, had she not taken that tackle box, we would have returned a day sooner. I wanted to take her shoulders and tell her that we would never have arrived in time to make any difference. The damage had already been done, by me. But I couldn’t. How could I after I’d told her that doing the right the thing, meant being able to sleep soundly and look oneself in the eye?

  I’d believed I was doing right, to bring Laura north and try to build a life for us. But I was wrong. Where did that leave me? Not sleeping soundly, that was for damned sure.

  For a week this carried on. I worked all day, paying a brief visit to the tent with a pot of dinner. The other meals I had Tom come and fetch. Each time I saw Laura she seemed more sombre and could barely meet my eyes. Those few minutes each day in her company fed my guilt like seasoned logs fed the fire. In the dark wagon, listening for the rustling of errant mice as I lay sleepless, I tried to think of what to do.

  At last, tears running down the sides of my face and into my hair, freezing on the baseboards of the wagon, I made my decision. There was nothing else I could do. Come spring I would have to split the money, taking a small portion for myself and giving the rest to Laura. She would take what was left of her family and start again. It was for the best. I had ruined what was to be her new life, and now I knew she couldn’t look at me without thinking of the child I’d cost her. The pain I’d brought her.

  For too long I’d been blind to what she needed, turning my eyes from her struggles with the drudgery of our lives, looking only to the future, to the money we were notching up in our ledger. I had been a fool, and every bit the silly girl she had thought me in Indian Territory, when she’d sat across the table of a rented room, and tried to convince me to go home with Franklyn.

  Knowing finally what I had to do, I cried myself to sleep; embarrassing, gulping sobs of inconsolable grief. I felt small and childish, unable to comfort myself. In the early morning I woke to a still and quiet world, red eyed and aching with the misery I had to hold inside.

  I stood on the rear of the wagon and clutched Laura’s coat about me. The sky was a rosy colour above the dark thatch of the trees, the snow had been blown about in the night, filling the tracks of the men and carving itself into a smooth river that broke only around the trunks of trees, like black ink strokes knifing down into the brilliant white. Here and there an animal had scratched its tracks into the icy crust. I wanted to remember this, like all the mornings we’d had together since leaving the prairie. For the shortest time, hadn’t we been happy?

  I couldn’t say for sure, and the thought brought more tears to my eyes.

  I’d been happy. But Laura…how could happiness end in something as terrible as what had befallen her?

  I thought of the night we had spent together. Finally together, in such a way as I had never known to dream of. I was not so filled with shame that I could see Laura’s painful loss as some kind of divine judgement on us – I was not enough of a believer to see God’s hand in my life, His wrath in the unintended cruelties of nature. Still…that memory was tainted now. It was linked. The last night we’d spent together, and the first sight I’d had of her afterwards, wan and hollowed out.

  I had made up my mind to go over to the tent and face the sentence of loneliness and regret that I had brought upon myself, when through the trees came a high scream. Birds turned themselves loose from the inky branches and rose in cawing mayhem overhead.

  The scream was Rachel’s.

  I had just begun to hurry towards it, when a gunshot cut through the cold air. My feet faltered, then I ran into the trees, crossing into the lingering pre-dawn shadows just as a second shot rang out, then another, another – matching the crashing of my heart. Six shots in all, then silence.

  Behind me came other footsteps, but I didn’t turn to see who else might have been summoned by the scream, or the shots. Hurrying through the thick, frozen snow was almost impossible, but I threw myself onwards, feeling the thick crusted teeth of the ice scraping my legs. Rounding a thick clutch of trees I caught a whiff of gunpowder mixing with the crispness of the pine. Lighter even than the gun smoke came the scent of blood.

  Before me was the scene of a slaughter. Blood had soaked the snow in great gouts, melting and flowing as the hot liquid mixed with the thawing ice. Two bodies, dark as logs, had fallen at odds amidst the carnage. Rachel was all that I saw clearly. She stood, as if frozen, her arm still slightly raised as if it had tired slightly under the weight of the heavy revolver in her hand. At the sight of me she jumped, and the gun splashed down onto the melted snow, sending droplets of bloody water up to spatter on her skirts. As our eyes met I noticed a fine spray of blood across her face, and a growing red mark high on her cheek, like the beginnings of a bruise.

  I ran to her without thinking, shedding my coat and bundling her into it, guiding her backwards, away from the dead men on the ground.

  There came from behind me, a gurgling cry.

  A dead man, and a man yet still living.

  “He needs help!” I shouted, still clutching Rachel.

  “By God!” came a cry from behind me, and I turned to find Irish, his mouth hanging open like the knothole in a tree. Behind him were several men I knew by sight, and struggling after them, knee deep in snow and wearing only a shift and shawl against the cold, was Laura.

  I steered Rachel back the way I’d come, ignoring the men as they hurried to the side of the gurgling figure in the snow. When we came to Laura, she put her arms around her daughter and together we led little Rachel back to the tent. Neither of us said a word, and Rachel seemed incapable of speaking or moving on her own. Even her face was blank, like virgin snow.

  After the frigid air, the overheated fustiness of the tent was a welcome change. I pressed Laura back to bed, noticing that she shook with the exertion of rushing out to the woods. Rachel I bade sit on the stump of a stool, and I put a blanket around her shoulders.

  “Give her a cup of that coffee, with a tot in it,” Laura suggested.

  Reluctant to give even the smallest taste of liquor to a child, I only spooned in a great coiling mass of molasses. I made the same for Laura, but added a snifter of whisky to it from the medicinal bottle we kept with our food stores in the tent. Fortified in this fashion, Rachel thawed enough to cry. Silent tears coursed down her face and she swiped at them angrily with her reddened fingers.

  “Are you alright?” I asked, “Not hurt or…”

  Rachel shook her head fiercely. “No.”

  “Who were they?” Laura asked me.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, trying to remember if I’d seen anything familiar about those two fallen shapes. One had been wearing a matted sheepskin vest, of a kind I’d only seen once before. “Wiconi, I think?”

  “Wiconi and Gill,” Rachel said, her voice an uncharacteristic whisper.

  “Pisspot Gill?” Laura asked.

  Rachel nodded.

  I thought of the gun, heavy and old, landing in the snow like a third body.

  “What happened Rachel?” I asked.

  She shook her head, but I took this to indicate that she couldn’t believe what she had been witness to, as she took a deep breath and began to speak.

  “I’ve been following Wiconi, like I did Leehorn and Irish and Gill, and the others. I thought he might know more about tracking, being an Indian, but he told me stories instead.”

  �
��About what?” Laura asked.

  She shrugged. “About his home. He told me about his wife dying – that was right at the start, because I told him he was good for saving Ma’s life, and gave him a twist of sugar for his coffee. He was just telling me what life was like for him, I was interested. And I was telling him about how things were in England, and how we came here. He said his wife knew lots of our stories because she grew up with some Indians that’d been taught the Bible. I think he liked hearing them.”

  “How did Gill come to be with you two?”

  “He wasn’t with us,” Rachel said. “He’s asked me a few times to come walking with him, but that was before I went to town. Since we came back I haven’t spoken to him. Then today he just came into the woods after us. And he had that gun.”

  I shared a look with Laura and saw my guilt mirrored in her eyes. We had not watched close enough over Rachel. I had thought her youthful curiosity in the skills boasted by the men, in finally having people to talk to, was all there was to her time spent with the loggers. It seemed though that at least one had been trying to get more time with her, away from camp. I shuddered to think what would have happened had he succeeded.

  “He started hollerin’ and yelling at Wiconi, calling him a ‘dirty injun’ and worse – things like Mr Jamison used to say to Pa about Martha. Then he started pointing the gun at Wiconi and Wiconi put his hands out to the side and was talking really softly, like he was trying to get Pisspot to calm down.” She shook her head, “Gill smelt like liquor, he was staggering in the snow, but he kept that gun up and then he pointed it at me, calling me a whore and a bitch, so Wiconi rushed at him and I started screaming…then Gill shot him.”

  Laura closed her eyes and made a soft sound of distress. Likely she was picturing Rachel’s body in the snow, just as I was. I owed Wiconi the lives of the two most important women in my life, and I didn’t know I would ever be able to thank him at all, let alone thank him enough.

  Yet there was more to come out, and I couldn’t let it be pushed aside, or into the shadows. Not again.

  “Did you shoot Gill?”

  Rachel looked at me, her dark eyes unblinking. She nodded.

  “He looked scared, of what he’d done to Wiconi. He started looking around like he was waiting for someone to jump out of the woods and catch him. Wiconi has a lot of friends, whites and Indians. I ran over while he was looking away. I just, took the gun off him - he wasn’t holding on tightly. Then I shot him…I shot him ‘til the gun was empty. Then you got there.” She looked to Laura. “I’m sorry about Wiconi, about making Gill mad like that…but I’m not sorry I shot him.” Turning to me she clenched her hands into fists in her lap. “You told me to do good, so I could sleep right – well, I couldn’t’ve slept knowing Gill was alive, when Wiconi was dead. Not after he saved Ma, and me.”

  I couldn’t think of what to say. I had meant to teach her one of the moral lesson’s I’d had passed on to me as a child. Doing the right thing was its own reward. I did not necessarily always believe that to be true, but as a child it had made me think twice before committing one of the minor sins children are forever tempted by – stealing, fighting, bearing ill will.

  I hadn’t thought as I’d played governess, that Rachel was not a child as I had been. She was not even a child like her mother had been. Rachel had been raised for nearly half of her short life on the trail and in Indian Territory. She had seen violence and depravity – she had lived with it. She had known a father who solved his grievances with force, with weapons. She had seen, as I had on my journey west, the handbills for wanted men, for hangings. The gallows and the still swaying bodies of men being slowly picked clean by crows.

  Death was in Rachel’s life, as surely as an old friend.

  Laura’s voice made me jump. “I know sweet pea…I know you couldn’t’ve.”

  She said nothing more, as though nothing more needed to be said. I realised that, at least to the two of them, it did not occur that there would be more to say. I looked at Laura as she took Rachel’s hand and squeezed it lightly. Would she accept the murder of her husband by that same hand, just as easily as she accepted the death of a reprobate logger?

  Something told me that, yes, she would.

  But I did not believe Rachel needed anyone to tell her that what she’d done was right.

  Chapter Nine

  Laura

  All that day I kept an ear out for trouble. Gill had friends among the other men, not many, but enough to cause a fight given the chance. Leehorn had been out, hollering at his men and having the bodies of Gill and Wiconi taken from the woods to the barn. Wiconi was yet alive, but fading fast according to Tom. It was the first time I’d heard Leehorn truly angry, as he laid down the law and yelled that he would not have any more killing if people wanted to get paid.

  I hoped the almighty dollar would still the trigger fingers and knife wielding fists of any of the men sore over the deaths of Gill, or the wounding of Wiconi.

  Cecelia and Tom went in turns to the barn to see what could be done for the man who’d saved my life. I watched over Rachel and out from under Cecelia’s eye, I gave her cup after cup of sweet tea laced with whisky. She soon stopped trembling with anger and shock, and I was able to get her to rest.

  Cecelia and Tom returned to the tent several times to fetch clean sheets, whisky and to boil water on the stove. I asked them what was happening and received sorrowful looks. It was Tom who told me that the shot from Gill’s gun had torn into Wiconi’s chest, and that he was struggling to breathe. Hearing that I struggled from the tent to the barn and sat by his side, watching as Cecelia tried to make him comfortable.

  He died just after nightfall, with a sigh. Tom and Cecelia found a clean sheet from the tent and wrapped him in it, then carried him to the shed with Leehorn’s help, to put him with the remains of my child, and Gill’s body.

  Tom took a rifle and put himself on guard inside the wagon, in case anyone made an attempt at robbing us. There he could keep watch on the tent also. This meant Cecelia had nowhere to scurry off to, no bolthole away from us. I had tried to get Tom to stay in the tent but he was set on keeping our stores safe. I suppose he knew there was something going on with the three of us, some kind of woman’s trouble he was not privy to.

  I put Rachel to bed as though she were a baby again, swaddling her in blankets. Leehorn had been by to check on her, but I’d kept him at the door. He’d seemed both angry and embarrassed, as if he was taking Gill’s attack on her as a personal failing of his. I took the small bottle of brandy he’d brought over and told him that Rachel would be well enough to see him soon.

  Cecelia didn’t come in for quite some time. I heard the men outside, their usual hungry ruckus dampened by the bloodshed of the morning, but still carrying through the air. Then the quieter time, the scrape of the large pots being emptied and cleaned out. I heard the wood barrow wheel cutting through the ice, squeaking as it went. I waited, and knew that Cecelia must have built up the fire for tomorrow, under the half-completed cookhouse roof, where it would keep dry. Still she didn’t come to the tent. I rose from my seat by Rachel’s side, wrapping my shawl about myself and peering through the canvas flaps.

  There was no sign of movement around the cookhouse, or inside it. No dark figure walking through the snow. A few black birds hopped on the icy ground, pecking here and there, scratching at the jagged-glass earth. I turned away from them and almost jumped out of my skin.

  Cecelia was only a few feet away, sitting on the steps of the wagon, in the gloom. My coat was drawn around her tightly and she had her hands before her mouth, blowing them to drive away the chill. Our eyes met, and she was the first to look away. I stood there stupidly, my heart a piece of lead dropping down into my belly. Cold and hard. Was she so determined not to see me that she’d stay outside and freeze, rather than come and share my fire – my bed?

  I stepped outside and let the tent flap close behind me. Cecelia started to her feet.

  “Lau
ra, you’ll catch your death.”

  “So’ll you, sitting out here like that.”

  She looked away.

  “Will you tell me what’s wrong?” I asked, heart in my throat like a fist.

  Cecelia sighed, and I saw her shoulders fall. She looked very young. I felt tired too, and it was as if in that moment the weight of the life we’d made was pressing down on me, crushing me like a fall of logs. I wanted out, of the whole thing. Out of the woods, out of camp, away from the freezing air and the snow and the harshness of all of it.

  “I think we’d better leave here,” I said.

  Cecelia looked as though I’d said something ugly but true, like she was hearing about a horrible death. I didn’t understand it, didn’t she want to be rid of this place too?

  “It’s not been good here,” I said, “It was…it was an idea, but it’s not working and I don’t think we can go on. Not if things like this are to come of it.”

  Cecelia swallowed, but she gave a small nod.

  “Alright,” I said, relieved. “As soon as the snow melts we’ll-”

  Her sob startled me, and her as well. She snatched her frozen hand to her mouth to stifle it, but another came, and another, until her drooping shoulders were shaking with them. Her eyes were squeezed shut, it looked as if she would fall into the snow. Then her hand went to her eyes, to cover her tears, and she let out sobs as ragged and dry as a magpie song.

  I crossed the snow in a few quick steps and tried to pull her into my arms, but she held back, unmoving as a tree trunk. I stepped back, trying to see her face.

  “Cecelia?”

  She shook her head, but pushed me a little in the direction of the cookhouse. I started to walk and she came with me. The cold made me hurry, and soon we were inside the mostly complete cookhouse. There was still a small hole in the roof, where boards needed nailing up and the floor was trampled dirt with snow sifting in over it from the trees, but it was better than being outside in the full cold. We kept blankets in there to wrap around us as we waited for the fire to gain strength in the mornings. Cecelia picked one up and draped it around me. My leaden heart was eased by that, but the next moment she was moving away and huddling up on a crate by herself.