“You should be scared.”
“Well, I’m not.” She lifted her hand to his cheek, but he backed away from her.
“Go home and forget you know me.”
She couldn’t accept the dull ache beneath her breast. “I can’t. I love you.”
“Then stop loving me.” Wyatt started walking. His stride was long and swift. Leah had to run to catch up to him, unable to leave things between them as they were.
“Wyatt! Wait!”
He spun around, putting his hands on her shoulders to keep her at arm’s length. “I’m telling you right now: Go home. I haven’t changed, Leah. I never will, so don’t come after me. I’m sorry about yesterday. It shouldn’t have happened.”
When he pushed her away, she fought the tears that blinded her. As he continued toward the bluff where the cross’s dark shadow fell, she called out to him with a sob, “What did you bury up here that’s so important?”
Barely turning toward her, he replied without inflection, “A part of what I used to be.”
21
Though stone were changed to gold, the heart of a man would not be satisfied.
—Chinese proverb
Wyatt was still washing dishes at the Happy City Restaurant that Saturday. There had been no sign of the money after five days of backbreaking digging. He was beginning to wonder if he was going a little crazy to be spending so much time chasing after something that had eluded him for so long.
And without Leah, he felt more alone than he had in prison.
Her face was etched in his mind, whether smiling, serious, or thoughtful. He missed hearing her laughter, watching her gestures. The way her hair was always mussed from the camera cloth. He longed to hear her voice, sweet and clear. To listen to her talking about progress and inventions. He longed to be with her, touch her, hold her. Kiss her. He suffered the dull ache of desire at the thought of her.
But none of that was to be.
She hadn’t come into the Happy City since that day on the mountain. Tug had stopped by every day after school, wanting to know why Wyatt didn’t come to his house anymore. Wanting Wyatt to lasso with him and take July out for a ride. He’d given the boy an excuse, saying he didn’t have the free time at the moment to get away from other obligations. Tug hadn’t taken the answer too well, pressing Wyatt at least to go frog hunting with him. Wyatt hadn’t had the heart to tell him no. He’d said he’d think about it and see if he could get some time off from the restaurant. But he couldn’t promise.
That had been two days ago and Tug hadn’t returned to the restaurant’s back door wearing his chaps and the real spurs that Geneva had bought him after the close call with Cricket. Every time Wyatt heard a noise at the doorway, he half expected to see Tug standing there with adoration in his eyes. But when the space was empty, Wyatt’s disappointment left a hard pain in his chest.
He’d come to love that boy, just like he did his mother.
The slow week had drawn out like the edge of a blade, slicing into Wyatt and making him restless. Hartzell had moved out of the Starlight and back home with Geneva. Before he left the hotel, he’d knocked on Wyatt’s door to extend to him a teller’s position at the bank.
Wyatt had almost laughed at the irony of his working in a bank, but he didn’t. Hartzell had been dead serious. He’d told Wyatt that after what he’d done to save Tug, he was as good as a member of the family and deserving every opportunity. Wyatt had thanked him for the offer but turned him down. Hartzell adamantly declared that if Wyatt ever changed his mind, the job would be his.
Friday, Rosalure had popped her head into the kitchen from the bamboo reed curtain. Fancied up in school clothes, with her hair plaited in two braids close to her head, she’d stepped up to the sink while holding her books.
“Hello, Wyatt.”
“How’s school, Rosalure?”
“All right.”
He knew what she’d say before she said it, wishing that she hadn’t had to.
“Tug misses you, Wyatt. He doesn’t understand why you don’t like him anymore. Are you mad at him about Cricket?”
Letting out a slow breath, Wyatt leaned into the counter, his hands submerged in the water. “No. I’m not mad at him.”
“Is it me? I know I wasn’t always nice as I could be—”
“You haven’t done anything either.”
“What’s wrong then? Momma cries at night. I can hear her in her bed. She hasn’t done that since my father died. Did you two have an argument?”
Wyatt couldn’t answer.
“I know that all grown-ups have arguments. Look at Nanna and Poppa. But they worked things out. You and my momma could, too.” Rosalure looked at her scuffed shoes, then hesitantly back at Wyatt with shyness in her eyes. “I like you, Wyatt. I know you probably thought I didn’t too much. It’s just that I didn’t want another father for a long time. But now, it’d be okay with me if you wanted to marry my momma.”
Wyatt put his hands on the sink’s edge, nodding, afraid to trust his voice.
“I’ve got to get home now. I just wanted you to know how I felt is all.”
After she’d gone, Wyatt realized his fondness for Rosalure ran deeper than he’d acknowledged. With her maturity and candor, he loved her and wished he could have been the kind of father she needed.
Leo came into the kitchen with an armful of dirty dishes and a broad grin on his face. “Six more orders for the proverb cookies. I hope we have enough to last the rest of the day.” Then he spoke to Yan.
Tu rattled off a response in Mandarin, and Leo’s smile increased.
Wyatt took the dishes from Leo and dunked them into the soapy water. “You’re having some good luck with those cookies, huh, Leo?”
“Better now that I’ve translated the proverbs into English. It was a stroke of luck they fell in the batter and Yan baked them into the cookies.” Leo lit up a cigarette and waved out the match. “Customers are fascinated with ancient sayings. It’s sort of like reading about omens. You know, like fortunes and destiny.”
“I think I do.” Among everything else on his mind, Wyatt had his destiny with Bean Scudder to worry about. Ever since the exposition, the marshal had been dogging him. Wyatt had seen his shadow in the back alley late one night after closing, but he was gone before Wyatt could walk up to him. A night later, Wyatt had caught Scudder standing across the street from the Starlight staring at his window.
Wyatt wanted to know why Scudder was still hot after him when he’d made it clear he wasn’t going to be chased. Seeing as how Wyatt wasn’t leaving town as soon as he’d wanted, it was time to pay Scudder a visit and set him straight once and for all that a telephone call to Billings, Montana, didn’t mean jack.
“Leo, would you mind if I took ten minutes?” Wyatt asked.
“Sure, Wyatt.”
“Thanks.”
Wyatt removed his apron and slung it over the towel rack by the oven. Stepping out the back door, he headed down the alley and took a shortcut to Scudder’s office.
Once there, he didn’t bother to knock. Any U.S. marshal’s office was public domain and he saw no reason to ask permission to enter.
Throwing the door open, Wyatt stepped inside with all the bravado of a dime novel hero. Swearing, Scudder bolted from his chair, knocked over a tin of kerosene oil onto his desk, and inadvertently threw the stream of his electric fan off-kilter so the blades blew into the wall and ruffled a bulletin board of wanteds. Soon, papers were flying off the tacks.
“Hey, Scudder, what are you up to?” Wyatt sauntered toward the desk where the vapors of kerosene were the strongest.
“Hang it all, Holloway! You just gypped me out of ten years of my life.” His hand rose suspiciously to his mustache where the part by his left nostril drooped a little. Patting the hair back in place, he rebuked, “What do you mean, barging in on me like this?”
“What do you mean by following me?”
Scudder snorted. He went for a towel on the top of his ice ches
t and used it to blot the oil that had already begun to sink into some papers. “I ain’t following you.”
“Damn sure are.”
The russet hair on Scudder’s lip rippled when he breathed. And he was breathing heavily. The towel wasn’t helping to clean up the mess, which was now dribbling to the floor and spattering on some of the wanted sheets. Scudder’s eyes darted around the room in frustration, then they latched onto Wyatt’s and narrowed speculatively as if he were trying to decide whether to say what was bothering him more than the overturned kerosene. “How’d you know about the mustache?”
“I saw you through the window the night you burned yours up when you were drunk. You couldn’t have grown a new one so soon.”
Scudder dropped his behind into the chair and groaned. “You aren’t going to tell anyone . . . are you, Holloway?”
Walking through the room and assessing the jail, Wyatt let Scudder stew a minute. He paused at one of the cells, put his hand on the iron, and tested its strength. The bars could hold a man. Hold him a long time. Wyatt shuddered and turned to face Scudder. “It’s not my way to put my nose where it doesn’t belong. What you do is your business, Scudder. Just like what I do is mine. I haven’t broken any laws, so I don’t want you trailing after me, waiting and anticipating that I will. That telephone isn’t going to do you any good either.”
“You aren’t from Billings, are you?”
“Been through the town, but never lived there.”
Scudder fidgeted with his mustache. “Who are you, Holloway?”
“Don’t bother a man unless you’re convinced he’s guilty of something.”
“You are guilty of something, only I just haven’t figured out what.”
“I’m not guilty of anything, you got that?”
“Least not in my town you aren’t.”
“Damn right. And that’s all that you need to know.”
“I reckon.” Scudder kept remolding his mustache.
“It’s not looking so good,” Wyatt observed, letting Scudder’s comment slip by. There was no point in stressing his innocence with a man who couldn’t drive a nail into a snowbank. “You trying to take that mustache off? Is that what you were doing with the kerosene oil?”
“It won’t come off.” Scudder gave the end a yank and succeeded only in pulling out his lip into a mock sneer. Releasing the waxed end, he grumbled, “Damn and double damn that Tiberius Tee.”
“What did he give you to affix that with?”
“Diamond Magic invisible cement.”
Wyatt shook his head with just barely a flicker of sympathy for the marshal. “Let me make two suggestions. First, you get yourself some harness oil and mix it with a little turpentine. That ought to get that mustache off. Second, lay off the beer. It’s going to kill you eventually.”
Scudder yanked the wire cage of his fan from the direction of the wall and aimed the cool spinning air at his perspiring face. “How would you know, Holloway? You’ve never set foot in one of the saloons.”
Wyatt found it odd he’d come to chew out Scudder and now he was swapping life experiences with him. “It’s been a long time, but I’m no stranger to a bar. Liquor owns you when you let it. I’m not buying an early grave anymore.”
A knock on the open door had Wyatt moving away from the cell.
“Here’s the negative of Bodie Ledgerwood you wanted to send over to Ridgeway, Marshal.”
Leah’s voice gripped Wyatt, her name echoing in the black stillness of his mind. She remained at the door, a change coming over her face when she finally saw him as he walked forward. Her brown eyes grew large and liquid, but her inscrutable expression gave him no clue as to her thoughts.
* * *
Leah had been unprepared to encounter Wyatt at the marshal’s office. The building was the last place she thought she’d find him.
She’d been staying clear of him ever since that day on the mountain. She had her pride. But always, his name and the memory of his face lingered at the edges of her mind. With a shiver of vivid recollection, she relived the biting words he’d spoken to her. The way he’d pushed her from him, telling her to go home.
She’d cried that night until her eyes burned from sleeplessness. Her whole body had been engulfed in tides of confusion. She’d felt drained, hollow, and lifeless by Wyatt’s rejection.
She hadn’t been able to concentrate on her work despite a busy schedule taking photographs of the 1904 classes enrolled at the Eternity Normal School. Her thoughts would inevitably filter back to the question of what had happened between her and Wyatt. Why he couldn’t love her enough to know that his prison record didn’t matter to her.
When she was near him, her heart swelled with a feeling she had thought unattainable. For the first time in her life, a true, passionate love had found its way to her, but no sooner had she recognized and admitted it, she’d lost Wyatt. The blow was devastating, trapping her within the memory of her emotions. Without him even as her friend, she’d felt an extraordinary void.
Marshal Scudder pushed himself from his chair and reached for the large envelope in her hand. “I appreciate your expediency, Mrs. Kirkland.”
Though she fought against showing Wyatt what remained in her heart, her exhausted eyes smiled at him. Then quickly looked away. “I’ll be leaving you to your business then.”
“I’m not his business,” Wyatt replied dryly, then he came toward Leah. “And I was just on my way out.”
Leah didn’t have anything further to discuss with the marshal, so she went out the door as well. Going down the walkway with Wyatt at her side and saying nothing, the misery of the week came at her full force. She wanted to tell him how much she missed him, but she held her tongue.
Once on the boardwalk, Wyatt paused, and she couldn’t help stopping also. Gazing at him, she waited for him to speak. He shrugged into a stance that was familiar to her: hands stuffed in his denim pockets, hat drawn low. He stood close enough for her to reach out and touch him. Put her hand on his chest . . . lean into his arms . . .
“How’ve you been, Leah?”
“All right.” She stood rigidly, afraid to even breathe.
“Things going okay for you?”
“I suppose.”
Numb silence. Then he lifted his head. “I better get back to the restaurant.”
The need to keep him near had her blurting, “I entered the photography contest with my photograph. I entitled it ‘Soul of the Fallen Pine.’ ”
“I hope you win. Then you can go to New York.”
“Yes . . . New York.” But the lure of the big city had dimmed.
Their eyes met for an instant, then Wyatt pulled his away.
“Have you found what you were looking for?” she asked.
He seemed puzzled. “What?”
“On the mountain. What you’d left.”
His brows lowered. “Not yet.”
“It must be very important.”
“Yeah.” But he didn’t seem very enthusiastic. Kicking at a pebble, he dug his hands deeper into the slashes of his pants. “Leo’s expecting me back.”
“Sure . . . you better go.”
He caught and held her gaze, and she almost thought he caressed her with his eyes. “Take care of yourself, Leah.” His hesitation was marked in his steps as he walked away. She wanted to call after him, but she didn’t. Not this time.
* * *
Wyatt sat cross-legged at the bottom of the hole he’d been working on for over a week. Debris fell from the sides, crumbling down every so often to coat his shirt and pants with dirt. He only had an hour left before he had to ride out on July and get cleaned up for the restaurant. Using a hand shovel, he mindlessly pulled rock and sand from the deepest part of the cavity.
He couldn’t take the strain anymore. He had to accept that the money was destined to be buried on this mountain until somebody got lucky enough to dig in the right spot for the wrong reason and unearth one hell of a surprise.
All but resi
gned to leaving Eternity without leaving Leah the money, Wyatt cursed himself for not being able to take care of her and the children. He knew Leah would never spend a dime of stolen money, so he’d figured he’d start by mailing her a thousand dollars with a note that said her money from Italy had been refunded. After that, he figured he could set himself up as an anonymous patron and buy her photographs for large sums of money.
But without the satchels, he could do nothing.
Wyatt had been mentally preparing himself to ride out of town. To put Eternity behind him. He wouldn’t only be leaving Leah, he’d be leaving some people he considered friends. Hartzell, for one. Leo. He didn’t like leaving Leo in the lurch, and hoped he could get a fast replacement for him at the restaurant.
Taking up a fistful of dirt, Wyatt threw it over his knee. He sat for a long moment, then he stood and brushed the dust from his clothing. He swore at his stupidity for wasting all those days in his prison cell thinking about the damn money. Thinking about how he was going to dig it up when he got out. How he was going to spend it. What he was going to do. It was all for nothing. He’d never find it. He’d been kidding himself thinking he could.
With a swift kick, Wyatt caved in a section of the loose sandstone wall and gave vent to a foul curse in the process. He reached to pick up his tools, hurling the pick over his shoulder and bending further for the shovel. In doing so, a streak of rust in the pinkish stone caught his eye. Crouching down, he rubbed at the spot until the reddish brown image grew. Until he could tell that the texture was not that of rock, but of metal . . .
His heartbeat pushed at his ribs.
Using his fingertips, he clawed at the earth, revealing more of a rusted surface that appeared to be in the shape of a cylinder. He dared to envision the extra gallon Yellow Crawford apricot cans he’d stuffed the leather satchels into on a cloudless night so long ago. He rubbed some more, and more. . . .
Then . . . seventeen years and ten days later, he didn’t have to imagine anymore. He was touching them.
22
The wise adapt themselves to circumstances as water molds itself to the pitcher.
Portraits Page 33