Heart of the West

by Penelope Williamson

  "An assayer's button."

  "But what does it mean?" The stone felt warm in her hand, magical. "Are we rich?"

  Gus smacked his hands together, laughing some more. "It means maybe we're gonna be twenty percent of rich."

  "Thing is, it ain't all high grade," Nash said. "And it's hard rock. It's goin' to be expensive to dig it out."

  Gus dropped back onto the nail-keg stool, quieter, though the shine of dreaming still brightened his eyes. "Hard-rock mining does need the proper machinery to drive through the rock to get at the veins, and you need mills and chemists to reduce the ore to metal. Y'all won't be able to do it yourselves. You'll have to lease the mine to a consortium."

  Pogey blinked. "Huh?"

  "A consortium, a group of investors. Men with the money it takes to run a full-scale hard-rock mining operation. How it works is, you'll lease the Four Jacks to a consortium in return for a piece of the mine's yield. A percentage of the profits, so to speak."

  Nash blinked. "Uh... we was kinda hoping you'd arrange that for us, Gus. We was figuring them fancy educated ways of yours would set better with the money boys over in Butte Camp and Helena." Nash sighed, and his face took on a mournful cast. "It ain't easy being rich. Already things've got all complicated on us, and we ain't even started yet. There was a time when a man could pull up a sagebrush, shake off a dollar's worth of gold into a pan, call it a day's work, and be satisfied."

  Pogey thrust out his chest, hooking his thumbs in his black suspenders. "Me, I like the feel of bein' rich. Some folk who don't know better might call it a complication. Those of us with vision and smarts—we call it progress."

  "I suppose I could ride on over to Butte Camp and talk to some of those big leasing outfits," Gus said. "It'll have to wait until after the spring roundup, though."

  "You better hop to it with that roundup," Nash said. "Else the calves now sucking your cows are going to be wearing some renegade rustler's brand."

  "Yup," Pogey said, shaking his head. "That Iron Nose sure is one hell of an artist with a running iron." He leaned toward Gus and pitched his voice into a rough whisper, as if the rustlers had their ears to the windows even as he spoke. "You heard what happened to poor ol' MacDonald? Well, there's been talk about holding a necktie party for them murdering, cattle-thievin' Injuns." He made a fist and jerked it by his neck as if pulling on a rope. "Some folk are sayin' we oughta start right now with Joe Proud Bear. Others say wait and let him lead us to his pa, then we can have ourselves a family lynchin'."

  At the mention of Indians, Clementine's gaze had strayed to the gouge in the wall. She wondered how MacDonald had died—had he been hacked into pieces with a tomahawk? No, she remembered Snake-Eye saying the man had been shot. She had never met MacDonald, only seen his coffin.

  Ever since coming to Montana, her thoughts had been haunted by fears of Indians. Late at night, lying beside Gus, the sound of the wind caressing the cottonwoods easily became moccasined feet rustling through the grass outside the window. Yet more than by the massacring savages of her imagination she was haunted by the Indian girl and her babies, and how her man had roped her like an animal and dragged her away because she'd shamed him with her begging. And how everyone in Rainbow Springs, including her, had let it happen.

  She was standing by Gus now, and she felt a latent tension within him, like a coiled whip. She laid her hand on his arm; it was hard, muscular, a man's arm with a man's strength and a man's capacity for violence. "That Indian boy," she said, "he has a wife and children. If he's stealing, maybe it's to feed them. It isn't right for ordinary citizens to take the law into their own hands. That's what courts and judges and juries are for."

  He swung his head around, and she was startled by the raw anger on his face. "You people from the States, y'all just don't understand. There are stockmen at the railheads who'll buy anything on four hooves, cheap and no questions asked, then ship em back to Chicago and make a nice fat profit. Those same stockmen own the judges and the courts and the juries, Clem. They've been letting cattle thieves go for years. There comes a time when a man's got to protect what's his or he can't call himself a man."

  "Rustlers have always got their necks stretched first and been tried later," Pogey said. "And these here are renegades we're talkin' about. Half-breeds. Most folk don't think a man with red skin got a right to any trial."

  "Breechclouted savages, the lot of them." Gus gripped her arm, pulling her against him, as if he could physically force her to line up on his side. "Don't fret yourself with it, girl. This is men's work and is nothing to do with you."

  "But it does have to do with me, and what you are planning is wrong—"

  "That's enough!" He slammed the flat of his hand down on the table, knocking over her recipe book and sending a cloud of flour puffing into the air. "That's enough talk about cattle rustling," he said, calmer. "I'll do what's got to be done. You let me take care of it."

  She pulled away from him, swallowing down the words she wanted to shout back at him. She rubbed the sting on her arm where he'd held her, where his fingers had bitten into her flesh. He had a right to chastise her. She had shamed him by arguing in front of the other men. He was her husband and he ought to know what was right, except that in this instance she couldn't help but believe he was wrong. And it was so hard to accept, so hard...

  Gus drew lines through the sweat on the pail of beer he'd barely touched. "You seen my brother in Rainbow Springs any time this past week?" he finally said, after the silence had grown uncomfortable.

  Pogey cleared his throat. "Ain't seen him precisely. We heard him. Heard of him, that is."

  A muscle bunched in Gus's jaw. "I understand there's a new girl at the Best in the West."

  "You mean Nancy? Naw, she ain't up to Rafferty's standards. Not only is she so bucktoothed she could eat an apple through a keyhole, she's as hard-used as a cowpoke's boots." He cast a sheepish look at Clementine. "Pardon me, ma'am. Nope, all the while you been gone, Gus, every man in the RainDance country 'cept Rafferty has been calicoing that Hannah Yorke and gettin' snubbed proper for all their pains. Then last Friday night he saunters on into the Best in the West, gives her a look, and damn—durn if she didn't succumb. He's been pokin' her ever since as if to make up for lost opportunities... no offense, ma'am."

  Beneath the thick curve of his mustache, Gus's mouth took on a bitter slant. A shadow from the rafters slanted across the upper half of his face, obscuring his eyes, but Clementine didn't need to see his face to know his thoughts. His brother was openly sinning with Mrs. Yorke, a woman who wore violet silk and red-tasseled shoes. Hannah Yorke, the town harlot.

  "I reckon we oughta be making tracks," Nash said, creaking to his feet and giving his belt a hitch. He nudged Pogey with the thick round toe of his boot. "Hump yore tail, pard."

  Pogey pried himself off the nail keg, belching and scratching and swaying slightly once he got vertical. They took their leave, teasing Gus some more about his contented state of matrimony as they shuffled out the door.

  Clementine took shelter out of the sun beneath the eaves to wave them on their way. Gus went with them as far as the corral. Pogey rode the sway-backed burro, and Nash walked alongside. They passed the jug back and forth between them. They didn't look like the owners of a silver mine. She wondered if being rich would change them.

  The old biscuit-colored dog raised his head and watched them go, but he didn't leave the shadow of the barn. For hours he'd been lying there, flat on his belly, resting his nose on his paws. He pined for Gus's brother, who had stayed gone for three days, courting Mrs. Yorke, the town harlot. The dog had walked around Clementine and sniffed her once and then ignored her, as if he too didn't expect her to be here long. He had a strange milky white cast over one eye. Gus said he'd been bitten by a rattler and should have died. Instead he'd been left blind, or nearly so.

  Gus didn't come back to the cabin, but went instead to the side of the barn where the buckboard rested. He'd mumbled something about havi
ng to take the buckboard back to Snake-Eye or buy it off him. Clementine knew what he was about. He was going into town to fetch his brother home before the man brought more shame and embarrassment upon the family. Her family now.

  The misty light of morning had flattened into day. The meadows of wild hay that ran the length of the valley rippled in the constant wind. She could smell the hay, sweet and green. She tilted her head to watch a lone chicken hawk draw circles in the sky. The sky, always the sky. The vast emptiness of the sky numbed her mind and made her dizzy.

  Lifting her skirts high above the mud, she crossed the yard toward Gus. She could feel the mountains, bristling with black pines, watching over her shoulder. The wind and the sky and the mountains always made her uneasy. They lured her, laid claim to her, and they frightened her. They stirred the same sort of restless feelings in her that Gus did in bed at night. And along with the restlessness that gripped her heart, there were still the hollow, echoing spaces that needed to be filled. The yearnings of her childhood had followed her to Montana, or she had brought them with her.

  "Gus?" she practically shouted, startling them both. She touched the cameo at her neck, felt the tiny betraying flutter at the base of her throat. "Surely you do not mean to leave me here by myself."

  He was working a kink out of the harness chains, and he took a moment to look around at her. His broad shoulders blocked the sun; his hair was shot through with threads of gold. His mouth and eyes were tight with anger. "Of course not. It isn't safe."

  She drew in her breath and let it out slowly. "I'll just get ready, then."

  "Don't dawdle. I want to be back before it gets dark."

  She was about to start toward the cabin when he stopped her. "Clementine. Don't ever challenge my authority like that again."

  She clenched her teeth against the surge of rebellious feelings that threatened to choke her.

  "It makes me look bad, girl, when you set yourself up against me. Like I'm not the man in my own house."

  She stood rigid before him, trying to quiet the shaking that was going on inside her. She wouldn't apologize, nor would she acknowledge that he was right. "I must get my hat and gloves," she said instead. She turned and made her way stiffly across the muddy yard. She could feel his angry gaze stabbing into her back. She kept having to swallow again and again to keep from screaming.

  In the lean-to that sheltered the big iron bed, she set about making herself decent enough to be seen in town. The wind and dancing around the table with Gus had made a mess of her hair. She put the curling tongs in the chimney of the lamp, and while they heated, she washed her face and hands. Her face stared back at her from the cracked mirror, wind-chapped and sunburned and a little frightened.

  Her cloak hung on a hook beside the makeshift clothespress. The cloak with the heart-shaped secret buried deep in its pocket. She took the sachet out and stood there holding it in her palm, feeling its weight, and hearing the clank of the coins.

  She wouldn't leave Gus; she knew that already. But she was tired of always worrying about what was proper, or seemly, or even if she was a good wife. She was a woman grown and she ought to be allowed to think for herself. Like the mountain men and trappers who had come before her to this uncharted wilderness, she wanted to forge her own trails.

  She used a butchering knife to slit one of the seams in the sachet. She took out a five-dollar gold piece and then looked around the cabin for a place to hide the rest.

  Long and lean and beautiful, the cowboy lay naked on her bed.

  He lay on her bed and watched her with wild golden eyes. Hannah Yorke rose from her bath, stepping with deliberate grace out of the galvanized iron tub. Water ran in smooth streams over her skin, caressing her the way his hands had caressed her an hour ago. Perfumed steam banished three days' worth of stale whiskey and sex. It was late morning, and diffused sunlight shone through the gauzy marquisette curtains on her bedroom window, setting the red silk walls afire and painting a soft pink patina on her naked body.

  She felt the heat of his gaze on her as she toweled her body dry, and yet she shivered, mostly from the cool spring air, and maybe a little from those strange yellow eyes. Oh, he was a wild one, all right, and just a little loco, in the way that Joe Proud Bear and Iron Nose and a lobo wolf were all ornery and crazy. Creatures that were loners deep inside themselves and answered to nobody's rules.

  She put on an Oriental silk wrapper and sat on the horsehair fainting couch to brush out her hair. Gathering a thick hank of it in one hand, she lifted her arm and pulled the steel teeth through, starting at the crown of her head and going to her waist. Her hair slithered and coiled around her wrists and hands. Her breasts rose and fell, nibbing against the sensuous silk. He watched her, and she knew the pure femaleness of what she was doing stirred him. She shivered faintly again, and her muscles tightened in anticipation, and memory.

  She stretched out her legs, digging her toes into the thick Turkey carpet. She loved this room—though, with its red silk wallpaper and the elaborately carved four-poster bed, it looked as if it belonged in a bordello. Which was precisely what it had been before she'd bought it. Now it was just a room in a house. Her house, and she lived in it alone. In the fifteen months she'd been in Rainbow Springs, the cowboy was the first man she'd allowed into her life, into her bed.

  A decent woman, she knew, would think Hannah Yorke had been corrupted beyond redemption by her old life, and perhaps that was so. For although she had resisted him hard, the truth was... the truth was that she had wanted the cowboy since she first laid eyes on him. Had known right from the start that she would have him, or he would have her. And, oh, they had certainly had at each other these last three days, fucking as if they'd invented the word.

  The truth was...

  She tried not to lie to herself anymore. Once long, long ago she had believed that no matter what she did, no matter what was done to her, nothing would ever be able to touch the heart of her.

  Lies, all lies. As deep as hell, that's how deeply she'd been touched by all the days and nights of her life.

  Now she knew that if she stopped brushing and turned her head, she would catch her reflection in the large mirror with the fluted gold frame that sat atop her dressing table. And she would see the face and the eyes of a whore.

  As if to prove she was tough enough to stand it, she lifted her head and looked in the mirror. She saw her face and, behind it, the reflection of the man on her bed.

  His gaze met hers in the glass. The hard, almost cruel look of arousal on his face both excited and frightened her, and she looked away. He hadn't a care for things that could be broken, like hearts. And he made love with a desperate hunger, as though he might die tomorrow.

  "Come here," he said. Commanded.

  Because she wanted to so badly, she didn't go to him. She went instead to her dressing table with its gold mirror. A fringed Arab scarf covered the top of the table, and on it sat a biscuit bowl of cocoa butter cones soaking in boric acid. The strong sweet-and-sour smell rose up to smother her. She pressed her palm over her womb, sure that she could feel the ache of its emptiness. There would be no baby from what she and the cowboy did on her bed.

  Beside the bowl was a posy of wax flowers from a wedding cake preserved under a glass bell. Once, the violets had been the deep purple of royalty, the white roses as pristine as winter's first snow. Now the violets were a faded puce, the roses long since yellowed. She ran her fingers over the smooth glass. Nothing, not even a bell jar, could preserve a thing forever from the ravages of time. The years passed, and memories, like flowers, faded. So every day she made herself look and touch and remember never to believe in lies, not even the ones she told herself.

  She turned and looked at the man on her bed. He was young and strong and hard for her. She smiled as she went to him.

  "Hannah," he said, hunger in his voice.

  She sat beside him. He rose up and she bent down until their lips met. His kiss was raw and smoky, full of need. The sc
ent of his skin swam to her head—heat and man and lust. He pushed his tongue into her mouth, and she curled her arms around his neck. She loved the feel of him beneath her hands, the hard, unyielding muscles beneath the warm silken skin. a fierce longing enveloped her, an urge to press her body against his and hold him close.

  He eased her down beside him. His mouth and hands moved low over her belly. She had a tattoo of a rose high on the inside of her thigh. His tongue, hot and wet, traced each petal, licking along the curve of the stem and disappearing into her dense bush of woman's hair. Pleasure... She had forgotten that pleasure could be given as well as sold. For two years she had been a red-light girl, working the line in Deadwood, renting a shack furnished with little except a bed. Her name had been burned into the wood above the door. Not her real name, of course. The one she'd worked under... Rosie.

  The tattoo intrigued him, but he'd asked no questions about it. She wasn't used to a man who didn't want her life story, who didn't want to be told that at heart she wasn't really a whore but the girl next door, the girl he'd left behind.

  He moved up to kiss her mouth again, letting her taste herself on his tongue. She loved the weight of him. Her chest tightened with a warm, elusive sweetness. It had been so long since she'd been held by a true lover, since she'd been touched with any tenderness.

  She suddenly couldn't bear it. She tore her mouth from his, panting a little. "What're you doing here, Rafferty?"

  "You mean you haven't figured that out yet? I guess I need to try harder." He licked the middle of her cheek, where a crescent-shaped crease formed when she was happy. "You got a smile a man would go to hell for, darlin'."

  "You didn't need to go to hell for it, only as far as Rainbow Springs."

  He rolled off of her, sliding one arm beneath her back so that he was cradling her against him. He cupped her breast in his hand, pulling on her nipple until it was hard and tight. He liked to touch, this man. She had discovered that about him in the beginning hours of the first night. And somewhere along the way, some woman had taught him how to do it well.