Opal

by Lauraine Snelling

  He wrote for three pages and signed his name, along with an address, before he sat back in his chair and rubbed his aching forehead. The headaches were still a recurrence since the accident, but they came less frequently now. As did the dizziness. He addressed an envelope and, now that the ink was dry, folded his closely written sheets, fitted them in the envelope, and dropped wax from the candle on the flap to seal it.

  The letter he wrote to his family was far shorter, but at least they would know where he was living now and would have an address for him should they decide to write. If only he could write a letter to Mrs. Robertson and perhaps Miss Edith and be gone when they got them.

  Ah, but that would be the coward’s way out, and he’d resolved not to take that way anymore. He put away his things, blew out the lamp, hung his good clothes on the pegs along the wall, and just before crawling under the bedcovers, laid a hand on Joel’s shoulder. ‘‘Lord, please, help me to show my son how much I love him. And if possible, let him believe that I am indeed his father. Now and for always. Thank you.’’

  Morning was going to come mighty early, but he’d finally gotten some things off his chest. One, no, two, left to go.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Opal threw back the sheet and went to kneel at the window, her arms crossed on the sill. She inhaled and nodded. Fall was indeed heading quickly for winter. Soon this window would be closed, the cracks stuffed until spring. Gone was the hot stillness of summer, of frogs croaking and crickets singing.

  An owl hooted, a coyote yipped, and another joined in to make a chorus. From a distance a horse whinnied, another answered. What did they see or hear that made them restless? She listened closely now. Horses were better at guard duty than even a dog. Another whinny, and she pushed away from the window and flew out the door to call Rand. Something out of the ordinary was out there.

  ‘‘Rand, there’s—’’ ‘‘I heard them too.’’

  ‘‘I’ll get dressed.’’

  ‘‘No, you stay here. I’ll take Ghost and get the men. Get the rifle down.’’

  Opal wanted to argue, but someone needed to stay by the house, and she was as good a shot as any. Rumor had it that a small group of Indians had been stealing horses and cattle. So far their ranch had never had any trouble, but then, Rand treated the Indians like he did everyone—fairly and with respect.

  Opal pulled on britches and shirt, knotting her hair back with a ribbon. Once she had her boots on, she headed for the front room and took her rifle from the gun rack. Levering a shell into the chamber, she eased out the front door and remained in the deep shadows. The moon peeped from behind a cloud, then hid again. Ghost whined at her feet. Rand must have told her to stay too.

  ‘‘Come,’’ she whispered as she slid back into the house and walked on through to the back door.

  ‘‘I don’t see anyone.’’

  Gun ready, Opal spun toward the voice. ‘‘Oh, you startled me.’’

  Ruby stood to the side of the window. They exchanged brief glances, and Opal paused for a moment before easing back out the door and repeating her actions from the front of the log house. Two pairs of eyes were surely better than one.

  The land had fallen silent, as if it too waited, holding its breath in order to see.

  Opal’s eyes ached from staring into every shadow, from studying each moving leaf and grass blade. Ghost sat quietly at her feet, further confirmation that nothing untoward moved.

  She wagged her tail when Rand stepped onto the porch at the far end.

  ‘‘Good thing she knew you, or you might have caught a bullet.’’ Even though Opal trusted the dog, her heart still needed to settle back down.

  The sound of horses galloping off in the distance sent them both to the front of the house.

  ‘‘You see anything?’’ Rand called to the three approaching men.

  ‘‘Two Indians. Took off when we showed up. Good thing we have a strong fence and the horses were in it.’’ Chaps set the butt of his rifle on the porch floor. ‘‘They must be getting desperate.’’

  ‘‘They don’t eat horse. I’d give them a steer if they asked. But horse thieving . . .’’ He shook his head. ‘‘And on a moonlit night too. Strange.’’

  ‘‘You need anything else, Boss?’’

  Rand nodded. ‘‘Joe, you take guard the rest of the night.We’ll keep an eye out for a while.’’

  Though they stayed on guard for the next week, nothing else happened. A severe frost crept in one night, and they woke to a white-rimmed world. Opal’s boot tracks to the barn to milk made a black trail in the sparkly grass.

  ‘‘We’ll dig up the rest of the potatoes,’’ Rand announced after breakfast. ‘‘And bring up some river sand to cover the root crops. Opal, you take care of that. I don’t want Ruby doing any heavy lifting.’’

  Opal stared across the table at her sister. ‘‘You’re all right?’’

  ‘‘I’m fine. Rand is being a mite protective, that’s all.’’

  ‘‘Chaps, you can go back to splitting wood. Beans says we’re going to need to put in extra wood at the line shacks. Promises to be a hard winter. The rest of us can go pull in those trees we downed last year and any that the wind felled for us. Let’s stay on this side of the river.’’

  The men gave Beans a hard time about his weather-predicting bones as they filed out of the kitchen.

  Opal continued to study her sister. Were the circles under her eyes more pronounced? Had she seemed more tired lately? How come the cows could drop their calves off all by themselves and women needed help? She started to ask, thought the better of it, and pushed back her chair. Cleaning up the garden would most likely use up the day. That and studying, since tomorrow she went to Pearl’s again. Rand had been making sure one of the men was always around the homeplace too. Was he being overprotective or just wise? She chose the latter and set her dishes in the steaming pan.

  ‘‘It keeps cold like this, and we’ll be butchering soon.’’ Chaps forked up a mound of potatoes. He had finished splitting a pile of wood so had offered to help Opal dig up the potatoes.

  Opal pointed to the dirt-crusted potatoes. ‘‘Per, you can help me put them in the sack.’’ She did several to show him how. When he did as she said, she patted his bottom. ‘‘Good boy. You can help.’’

  Together the three of them made their way down the row.

  ‘‘Hey, Per, no.’’ Chaps hid his laugh behind the back of a gloved hand as he swiped it across his face.

  Opal turned. Per sat in the middle of the row, a ring of dirt circling his mouth as he tried to take another bite out of a potato about the size of his fist.

  ‘‘Good grief.’’ Opal surged to her feet and took the potato away. ‘‘We could at least wash it first.’’

  Per reached for his treasure, eyes narrowing. ‘‘No, Opa.’’

  ‘‘Well, that was sure clear.’’ She turned to Chaps, who was now leaning on the fork handle. ‘‘Can it hurt him?’’

  ‘‘Only if he chokes on it.’’

  ‘‘Opa!’’ One tear meandered down his fat cheek as he stood up.

  ‘‘Oh, all right.’’ She rubbed the dirt off on her pant leg, turning the potato to get it all. Washing would be better, but this was the way she always cleaned carrots before eating them. After all, what harm could a little dirt do?

  She gave Per back his potato, and he plunked himself down again. Hard to do two things at a time at his age, like standing, biting, and chewing the crunchy white flesh.

  ‘‘I’ll wash you up later,’’ she promised and went back to putting potatoes into the gunnysack. From there they would dump them into the bin cleaned and ready in the root cellar. Turnips and rutabaga each had a bin, carrots another; onions were already dried, hanging by their braided tops. Anything that couldn’t be stored or dried was already canned.

  Ruby and Little Squirrel were justifiably proud of the shelves of food put up. Any game brought in and not needed immediately was either smoking or had been s
moked and now hung in the springhouse.

  By the time the triangle rang for dinner, Opal counted ten gunnysacks full of potatoes, tall and ready for hauling. She’d taken Per back into the house earlier when he’d gotten fussy but had stopped first for a quick washup at the pump to appease his mother.

  As they continued to prepare for the coming winter, Opal finished off the two horses she’d been training and took them back to their owners so the Harrisons wouldn’t have to feed them. Along with bringing the split wood to the line shacks, Rand hauled sacks of grain back from Medora for winter feed. They stocked the line shacks with a supply of canned food and dried food and lined the northern wall with firewood as an extra shelter. They made sure that the Robertsons’ shack had the same preparations.

  ‘‘It don’t look good, Boss,’’ Chaps said one evening after supper. He’d just returned from several days of checking on the grazing herds. ‘‘The grass is down to the ground already in too many places.’’

  Rand slowly shook his head. ‘‘Sometimes fences don’t sound like a bad idea. Would keep our own cattle closer to home and they wouldn’t overgraze the land. Too many head have been brought in.’’

  ‘‘Won’t be a problem next year. Mark my words, many are going to die.’’

  ‘‘We’ll see how bad the snow gets, then cut down cottonwood trees if we must.’’

  Opal sat at the table supposedly doing her lessons but instead listening to the men. The Indians had taught them to bring down the trees so the stock could feed on the tender branches. They’d not started feeding out the hay yet, but the stacks that looked so large in the summer now appeared pitifully small.

  ‘‘Opal, how about stopping by the Robertsons’ on your way to Pearl’s in the morning? I’ll have a sack ready for you.’’

  ‘‘Sure.’’ Opal knew the two women exchanged fabric pieces for quilts and clothing, along with yarn for knitting, especially the yarn that Little Squirrel had dyed during the summer. She’d used onion skins for a soft yellow, bark for a brown, and ground red rock for a shy red. While cattlemen hated sheep, they all appreciated the wool carded and spun to be knit into stockings, hats, scarves, and mittens or gloves. While knitting wasn’t her favorite occupation, Opal could turn a heel with the best of them if she could sit still long enough.

  The sun just topped the eastern buttes as she rode Bay out of the cut, nudging her into an easy lope that ate up the mile to the Robertsons’.

  ‘‘You just missed the girls,’’ Mrs. Robertson said after greeting Opal and taking the sack from her. ‘‘Oh, good. More quilt pieces.’’

  ‘‘Where’s Edith?’’

  ‘‘She went to visit Mary. She really needs a couple of extra hands, what with her two little ones.’’

  ‘‘Oh. I didn’t know she was leaving.’’

  ‘‘We thought it better this way.’’ Cora nodded toward the stove. ‘‘You want a cup of coffee?’’

  ‘‘No, thanks. I need to be going.’’

  ‘‘Thank Ruby for me.’’

  ‘‘I will.’’ Opal waved after mounting Bay. Wonder what that was all about? Loping in to Pearl’s gave her plenty of time to ponder. No one had said anything about Edith’s leaving. Was it because she was so sweet on Mr. Chandler? Virginia would tell her if they ever had time to talk again.

  She dismounted and led Bay into the three-sided shelter behind Pearl’s house. The framework of a barn rose right behind it so it would eventually become one building. Carl had nearly finished the addition to the house too.

  As Rand often said, ‘‘That man never lets any moss grow between his toes.’’

  Opal unsaddled her horse and tied her to a manger where Carl had left some dried cornstalks for the horse to eat. ‘‘I’ll come out and water you later.’’ Flipping her book-laden saddlebags over one shoulder, she headed into the house.

  Music met her at the door. A piano. ‘‘I’m here,’’ she called as she shut the kitchen door behind her.

  ‘‘Come see what Carl brought home.’’ Pearl’s voice floated back from the front parlor.

  ‘‘I can hear it.’’ Opal hung up her outdoor things and followed the lovely notes, as pleasant to the ear as the fragrance of fresh bread was to the nose.

  Pearl turned on the bench, her smile rivaling the sunshine coming in the windows. ‘‘Can you believe it? My father had this shipped out to us. In one of my letters I mentioned how I missed my music, and here it is, an early Christmas present.’’ Her long fingers flew up and down the keyboard, bringing forth crashing waves, a tinkling brook, a lullaby, and a call to adventure.

  ‘‘You want to try it?’’ Pearl let her hands fall in her lap.

  ‘‘I’ve not played since Dove House.’’

  ‘‘Perhaps we could do a duet for the Christmas program.’’

  Opal sat down on the bench. ‘‘Where are the kids?’’

  ‘‘Over to Cimarron’s. Carl dropped them off. You know how nice it is to have close neighbors like that?’’

  Opal settled her hands on the keys. Cool to the touch. She played a series of chords, then several scales. Her grin said it all.

  ‘‘See, I told you you wouldn’t forget.’’

  Opal played a simple song, missing a couple of notes and slower than she’d have liked. ‘‘Need practice all right.’’ She turned to look at Pearl beside her. ‘‘Sure makes me think of Belle. You ever wonder what happened to her?’’

  ‘‘Not really. She and I weren’t much of friends.’’

  ‘‘She was a terror at times, but she was good to me.’’

  ‘‘Well, we better get busy. You have all your homework done?’’

  ‘‘Even the essay. I’m not much fond of the Greek tragedies.

  Not of Greek anything.’’ Opal wrinkled her nose.

  ‘‘You’d rather not study that?’’

  ‘‘Do I have a choice?’’

  ‘‘Latin is more important as a language, but the Greek philosophers and sages are well worth learning from.’’

  Opal made a face.

  ‘‘Besides, it’s good discipline.’’

  ‘‘Like calculus?’’

  ‘‘Yes. The more you develop your reasoning powers, the easier college will be for you.’’

  Opal shook her head. ‘‘Pearl, I am not going to college or some finishing school for young ladies. That’s not what I need to make a life here in the badlands.’’

  Pearl studied her young charge. ‘‘But the more intelligent and educated you are, the more you will be an interesting woman to talk with and the more you will give your children and your husband. In spite of what men say and think, women have fine minds that need education just as the prairie needs sun and rain.’’ She rose and moved to the bookshelves that lined the north wall. Pulling off a book, she brought it to Opal. ‘‘Here’s Plato’s The Republic. Look for what it says about the value of a good mind. Read Proverbs also, keeping in mind that when the Bible talks of man and men, it frequently means humankind, but then, you would know that if you were studying Greek more closely.’’

  Opal nibbled on her bottom lip. ‘‘I’d rather read Mr. Roosevelt. He, at least, speaks my language.’’

  ‘‘You mean English or Western?’’

  Opal cocked her head, a grin lighting both eyes and cheeks.

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  Later, as she and Bay loped on home, Opal veered off the trail to check on a place where she often saw deer. It wasn’t long before, with a gutted deer slung over the back of her saddle, she trotted up to the springhouse and dismounted. The kitchen windows glowed a lamplit welcome.

  Ruby stepped out on the porch. ‘‘I was getting worried.’’

  ‘‘I know, but when this spike stood right there and stared at me, I couldn’t resist.’’

  ‘‘Supper’s nearly ready. We have company.’’

  ‘‘Who?’’

  ‘‘Mr. Chandler.’’

  ‘‘Ah. I’ll be in soon as I hang this.’’

  ‘�
��Let the men do that. I think you should put on a real skirt.’’

  ‘‘Aww, Ruby.’’

  ‘‘Don’t give me any trouble. It’s about time you started dressing like a young lady when we have guests.’’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  ‘‘So what will life be like in a line shack?’’ Jacob pushed back his plate.

  ‘‘Would you care for another piece of cake?’’ Ruby refilled his coffee cup.

  ‘‘No, thank you. I won’t be able to get back on that horse as it is.’’ He patted his middle. ‘‘Delicious meal.’’

  ‘‘You’re planning on manning one of the line shacks?’’ Rand leaned back in his chair, studying the younger man.

  ‘‘Yes, sir. Mrs. Robertson says it must be done, and the girls surely cannot do it.’’

  ‘‘I heard of one woman who did. But she was mighty tough.

  It gets real lonely out there. What about your boy?’’

  ‘‘He will move into the house. I hate to leave them with no man on hand, but what else can we do?’’

  ‘‘Hire another hand.’’

  ‘‘I don’t think she has the finances for that. We haven’t discussed her money situation, but I know that, though they trade butter and eggs at the store, the beeves sold this fall were her mainstay.’’

  ‘‘We’ll send one of our men out to spell you. Chaps, tell him about life in a line shack.’’

  Chaps creaked his chair back on two legs. ‘‘That wind is what gets to you. That and the cold. Your job is to ride out each day halfway to the other shack and make sure you head any cattle you find back toward the river. Cattle drift before the wind, a dangerous thing. If they get out on the open prairie they won’t have any protection. Most likely we’ll never find them—at least not alive. Winter is a lot different here than where you came from.’’