Heart of the West
Page 9
This father sounded like a veritable rascal. She couldn't imagine this man raising up such a son as Gus. But then, he hadn't, at least not for long. "He must be a smart man, though, Mr. McQueen," she said, for she sensed a shame in him that went deep and was biting. "A learned man at least. If he can sell anything."
"Yeah, well, he's a master of philosophy, or so he claims, and he's even got a piece of parchment with a seal to prove it." He pursed his lips and stared off into the empty Montana sky. "What he's a master at is using a person's need to believe in something, in anything, against them. So I guess you can see why I didn't want to tell you about him—not after having seen for myself where you come from."
He stopped abruptly as if he'd run out of breath. She touched his hands, which were fisted tightly around the reins. "I don't care where you come from. Only where you are now."
He bowed his head and looked at the footboard between his spread knees. "And I didn't want to tell you about Zach because I wanted you to like him, and I know you aren't going to. He's... well, some rough and wild in his ways."
For some strange reason she wanted to smile. "Nickel Annie said he's a hell-bent boy."
"It wasn't easy growing up anything else around the Reverend Jack McQueen."
He flicked the reins, and the dun-colored mare jerked into motion. The buckboard rolled through the thick, sodden grass. The wind blew dry and warm still, and a heavy silence settled over her husband's face. Not an angry silence this time. A brooding one.
She wondered what had caused the McQueen family to break apart, and why Gus had gone with their mother to Boston and his brother had stayed behind to grow up to be a hell-bent boy. She had opened her mouth to ask him these things when Gus tensed, half standing as he squinted into the distance. They had just topped a rise and could see now that a man walked the trail ahead of them. A man leading a horse with something that looked dead slung across its saddle.
"It's Zach... Zach!" Gus waved a circle in the air with his hat and let go with a high yipping yell. He sprang the horse into a loping canter, and the light wagon lurched and swayed and squelched over the soggy ground.
The man stopped and turned to wait for them. Long and lean, he stood with his booted feet braced apart. He was naked from the waist up, and his chest was sun-browned and strapped with muscle... And streaked with blood.
But then as they drew up Clementine saw that the something slung across his saddle was a calf covered with blood itself and so newborn it was still steaming.
Gus wrapped the reins around the brake handle and leaped out of the buckboard. He flung his arms wide to embrace his brother, then thought better of it. "Lord, Zach. You're near as naked and slimy as a mud weasel," he said.
The man, Gus's brother, said nothing. Not even a how or a howdy.
"I bet you'd just about decided I wasn't coming back," Gus said, his face wreathed with his bright, laughing smile.
The man, Zach Rafferty, Gus's brother, took a step toward the buckboard. Every muscle in Clementine's body tightened and her breath caught in her throat. She had never seen a man so near to being naked before. Even her husband had yet to undress down to the skin in front of her. She wanted to look away, yet she could not, for though she was repelled, she was also fascinated. Sweat and blood glistened on his skin, matting the dark hair into swirls around his nipples and trickling in slow rivulets down his belly to leave a spreading dark patch on the waistband of his jeans.
He hooked his thumb in the cartridge belt that slanted low across his hips. His dusty black hat was pulled down over a face that was all sharp planes and harsh angles. The hat's soft brim hooded his eyes. He reeked of blood and the animal odor of birth. The dun mare caught the smell of it and sucked in a snort of fear.
The calf bleated, breaking the taut silence. Gus's smile had dimmed a little. He nodded his chin at the calf. "What happened to the dogie's mother?"
"Dead," Zach Rafferty answered in so thick a southern drawl, the word came out in two syllables. "Timber wolves got her."
Gus hooked his thumbs in his coat pockets and hunched his shoulders. "Well, I guess you figure since I'm back that Ma did pass away. She went slow, but peaceful. We had a fine funeral for her. Lots of people came." He cleared his throat, smoothing down his mustache. "She did ask about you, Zach."
"Yeah, sure she did."
He stepped closer to the buckboard, so close it seemed to Clementine that he was right on top of her. His hat brim raised slightly as he peered at her from underneath it. The restless wind blew between them, like a dry, hot breath fanning her face.
He pushed his hat up with his thumb, the better to stare at her. He had strange eyes—flat and yellow, with the hard, shiny look of polished brass. "So who's the woman?"
Gus jumped and glanced up at her, flushing, as if he'd forgotten all about her. "My wife. She's my wife. Clementine Kennicutt. Well, McQueen now. I met her while I was in Boston, and that's quite a story in itself. You'll have a good laugh at my expense when I tell you about it..."
The man's head dipped, the hat shading all of his face again but for his mouth that was set hard and mean. "Jesus Christ and glory, brother," he said. "What in the hell've you gone and done?"
CHAPTER 4
Clementine sat in the buckboard and stared at husband's house, which wasn't a house at all, but a shack. A weather-rotten shack, sod-roofed and made of hewn logs chinked with clay. It didn't have a spool-railed porch, not even a sagging front stoop. She could feel his eyes on her and she tried to say something, but her lips wouldn't move. The silence stretched between them, filled only with the sad whispering of the wind in the cottonwoods.
A dog's barking shattered the still air. A rangy cur with a pale yellow hide the color of a buckwheat cake burst out of the barn. It pranced crazily around Gus's brother, whining in its joy when the man hunkered down to scratch it behind the ears. "Christ, Atta Boy," he said, laughing like a young boy as the dog's drooling tongue slobbered over his face. "Maybe I shoulda worn my slicker."
The man glanced up and caught her looking at him. He dug a stick out of the mud. Straightening, he hurled the stick through the air with such force it shattered when it struck the ground. "Go on, fetch that, you ol' gimp-legged hound," he said. She heard the raw anger in his voice now and knew that it was meant for her.
The dog had started after the broken stick in his odd lurching gait. But a magpie swooped over the yard, and he chased after it instead.
"Well, no sense in us just sitting here in the buckboard for the rest of the day," Gus said, and Clementine heard a tightness in his voice as well.
He wrapped the reins around the wheel hub and jumped off the wagon. He helped Clementine down and stood facing her a moment, his hands resting lightly on her hips. He turned without a word and began unloading their baggage.
A log barn, much bigger than the cabin and with an attached smithy, made up one side of a corral of unpeeled poles. Gus's brother led his big gray horse with its burden of newborn calf up to the corral gate. His naked back gleamed brown and sweat-slick; the muscles of his shoulders and arms bunched and flexed as he lifted the top pole.
He turned suddenly. Their gazes clashed and held a moment, until Clementine wrenched her eyes away.
Perhaps the shack—the house—wasn't all that bad, she thought as she looked at it again. At least it was neater than the soddies and road ranches she'd seen along the trail. No noisome piles of bottles and tin cans littered the yard. All the glass panes were still intact in the two front windows.
Lifting her mud-stained skirts, she looked up. Nailed over the door was an upside-down horseshoe and mounted above it, a pair of steer horns as thick as tree limbs. Wrapped around the middle of the horns was a piece of leather with the Rocking R brand burned into it. Her husband's brand. And his brother's. Gus had drawn it for her once in the prairie dirt. She told herself he hadn't lied; he'd only omitted some things. And his descriptions, his dream words, had been of the good parts, not the bad. It wasn't his fa
ult that she'd expected more.
Gus brushed past her, carrying her bulky carpetbag. A moth-eaten old buffalo robe hung over the warped front door. He pushed the robe aside, hooking it on a nail. He plucked the peg from the hasp and nudged open the door. With the late afternoon sun already dipping behind the mountains, the cabin was dark inside. But it wasn't musty. In fact, it smelled pleasant. A manly smell of leather and tobacco.
Gus struck a flame to a coal-oil lamp and adjusted the wick, and Clementine swallowed down more disappointment.
The furniture was made of packing crates and tin sheets, except for a sawbuck table covered with worn brown oilcloth and the four empty nail kegs that served as stools. A shelf above the cookstove held a cast-iron pot and two trypans. Pieces of horse blanket had been nailed here and there over the walls, but slits of light still shone through in places where the chinking was crumbling.
At least the floor was pegged wood instead of tramped earth like so many of the road ranch floors. And it was swept clean in spite of all the churned mud in the yard.
She followed Gus as he carried her valise into another room with a sloped ceiling, like that of a woodshed. An old iron bedstead filled most of the small space. Gus slung her bag into a corner and backed out the doorway fast, as if he couldn't get away from her and that bed quickly enough.
She took off her cloak, gloves, and bonnet, laying them on the table. In the rear of the cabin was the cookstove and a sink soldered out of coal-oil tins. A washpan and dishrag hung on a nail next to the stove. She lifted the rag in her hand; it was worn threadbare in places, but it was clean.
It occurred to her that Gus's brother had been living in this place while Gus was gone. The cleanliness of it was due to him, which seemed odd, cleanliness being next to godliness and Mr. Rafferty looking about as far from godliness as a man could get.
A small, high window above the sink let in weak sunshine. She had to go up on tiptoe to look out of it. She saw that the river curved around in back of the cabin. It was thickly hedged with willows and cottonwoods. A winding, narrow trail led along it to a privy downstream.
She heard Gus's step behind her just as he reached around to work the pump handle. Water splashed into the tin sink with a loud clatter, wetting the front of her skirt. "Look here, Clem," he said, his voice falsely bright. "Indoor plumbing, of a sort."
She moved away from him, rubbing at the wet marks on her plain brown serge dress.
His hands fell heavily on her shoulders, and he turned her around to face him. He lifted her chin with his curled fingers, forcing her to meet his eyes. "I guess it's not a palace, is it?"
"I didn't expect a palace," she said, her throat thick. And although it was true, her disappointment made it sound like a lie.
"You expected better than this, though."
She tried to soften the lie with a smile: "All it needs is a woman's touch."
He let go of her chin, brushing his hand along her neck in a quick and gentle caress. "I'll build us a better place this summer. Zach and I were only getting by in this old cabin because we've been too busy working the ranch to worry about anything else. I can have some milled lumber sent over from Deer Lodge." His eyes crinkled, and his face began to shine with the joyous glow of his dreams. "We can order furniture from one of those Chicago wish books. What do you say we make the new house two stories, so's to have lots of bedrooms..." His gaze shifted suddenly away from hers as his voice trailed off. He rubbed at his mustache. "You'll come to like it here, Clem, you'll see. You'll be happy."
"Oh..." Her throat closed up, and she almost couldn't get the word out. She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. "Gus," she said. "Yes... Gus. I will."
His face brightened, and then he laughed. A loud, joyous laugh that rattled the pots and pans above the cookstove. He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her close, so that they were pressed belly to belly and hip to hip. His hands moved over her back, soothing her, warming her. "You called me by my given name; It's about time, wife."
She rubbed her cheek against his neck, and she could feel the beat of his pulse. Steady, solid. He was a good man, a good husband, and she didn't know why she had waited so long to do this one thing that had made him so happy.
She lifted her head and gazed up at him. He cradled her face in his big hands, and the smile he gave back to her was lazy and sweet. He lowered his head, and she held herself still, though her heart was pitching and dipping.
"You gonna leave that horse sweatin' in the harness?"
Gus stiffened, his fingers digging into Clementine's shoulders as he spun around. Zach Rafferty stood in the doorway. He spoke to his brother, but his hooded gaze was riveted on his brother's wife.
"Slave driver," Gus said with an easy smile. "I was about to get better acquainted with my bride." He leaned over and kissed her hard and fast and roughly on the mouth, then set her away from him. At the door he paused, and Clementine thought she caught a flash of triumph on his face as he looked at his brother before he brushed past him and into the yard.
Zach Rafferty stepped inside, hanging his hat on a peg next to the door. His hair wasn't tawny gold like Gus's, but a dark brown, so dark it was almost black. He had washed up and put on clean clothes—a blue chambray shirt that had been scrubbed so many times it looked as soft as French silk and clung to his damp skin.
He came toward her, his plain iron spurs scraping the floor. There was a prowling, coiled restlessness to the way he moved that made her feel that she was being stalked. And there was something about his face, his eyes... a stark, mesmerizing quality that held her gaze even when she wanted to look away. There was no laughter in them, only the cold, brassy hardness of a winter sun. They were mean eyes, she decided. Mean and repellent, and fascinating.
He stopped when he was so close to her that she could have reached up and put her palm on his chest. The cloth of his shirt lifted a little as he drew in a deep breath, then settled. The smell of him came to her, of leather and soap and man.
She took a step back. He made her feel hot and uncomfortable, restless, as if her skin was too tight for her body. So as not to look at him she looked around the room. Her eyes took in the table with its ugly oilcloth cover and the four nail-keg stools, the rickety couch improvised out of Arbuckle coffee cases and some boards, with an old soogan for padding.
Against her will, her gaze went back to his. She saw the knowledge of her thoughts reflected in his flat tawny eyes. "You'll find there ain't a lot of Chippendale settees out here like y'all got back in Boston," he said in his molasses-thick drawl.
"And you will find, Mr. Rafferty, that I am not some pampered creature who needs Chippendale settees in order to be content."
"That a fact?"
His hand came up, and she tensed, the breath backing up thick and hot in her throat. He reached past her, his arm brushing her hair, to take something off the shelf above her head— a packet of straw-colored papers and a muslin bag with a red bull printed on it, enclosed with a yellow drawstring.
He stood right next to her, seeming to loom over her, while he poured tobacco out of the bag into one of the papers, licked the edge of it, then rolled it tight. His fingers were long and brown and roughened with scars and calluses.
"Surely, sir," she said, lifting her chin in an unconscious challenge, "you do not intend to smoke that in here?"
He paused in the act of putting the cigarette to his lips. A crease appeared between his dark, flaring brows. "Christ almighty. Now that there's a lady in the house I suppose I'm gonna have to remember to spit outside, too."
"A gentleman does not smoke and most particularly he doesn't spit in mixed company. Nor does he descend to the childish expediency of cursing his God in order to express his thoughts, however meager or base those thoughts might be."
No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she wanted them back. She had sounded so hoity-toity, like Aunt Etta in a pique. Except that Aunt Etta would have sooner choked to death than uttered the word "spit."
He put the cigarette between his lips and leaned over the flame of the lamp that Gus had lit against the fading afternoon. "Did my brother tell you the story about this here claim cabin?" he said. He blew a thin stream of smoke into her face. "About what happened to the fella who lived here before us?"
She waved at the smoke, swallowing back a cough. She was sure she wasn't going to like hearing this particular tale.
"He was a buffalo runner, was ol' Henry Ames, and you might say it was his occupation that did him in. One day a band of Bloods, who're just about the meanest Injuns living, paid him a visit. They'd taken exception to him poaching off their herds, I reckon." He paused, drawing on the cigarette again, and his voice took on a silky, dangerous edge. "They kilt him slowly... with tomahawks."
She felt as if her lungs had shrunk and all the blood had rushed from her heart. "In this house? They killed him in my house?"
"Come here."
A scream nearly jumped out of her throat as he took her by the elbow and led her over to the far wall where a rifle rested on a pair of deer antlers above the coffee-case couch. He let go of her arm, and she rubbed the heavy brown serge of her sleeve where he had touched her. Rubbed hard, trying to erase the imprint of his fingers.
He pointed to a deep gouge in the wall in the shape of a half-moon just below the gun's gleaming oiled stock. "You see that?"
"Yes," she said, her pent-up breath escaping with the word.
"The men who found him figured he lost his right hand first, going for his old Long Tom, which he kept right here where the Winchester's hanging now. He put up a fight—you gotta say that much for him. If you'll look around, you'll see the scars left by the tomahawks, where the Injuns missed poor ol' Henry and took chunks outta the walls instead. Some of the marks are down low," he went on, watching her intently, "near the floor. I reckon toward the end he was fighting them off on his hands and knees... or rather"—and his mouth pulled into a mean smile—"his bloody stumps and knees."