Heart of the West

by Penelope Williamson

  "You've been here three days," she said. She raked her fingers through the hair on his chest. "That's a long while to be away from your ranch this time of year."

  Beneath her hand his chest moved as if in a sigh, though she didn't hear it. "My brother brought a wife back with him from Boston, and things've turned to teetotaling hell. I could see right off the way it was gonna be. Wipe your feet before you come in the door, take your hat off inside the house, eat like you aren't hungry, and don't call it shit even if it stinks."

  His words were mean, but her ears had picked out the note of worry threaded through them. His brother's return to Rainbow Springs with a wife in tow made her uneasy as well. Probably because Mrs. Gus McQueen was only the first of what would soon be a whole plague of respectable busybodies descending on the place to point their horrified fingers at Hannah Yorke and call her a disgrace, a fallen woman.

  Well, Hannah Yorke had fallen, all right, but she had picked herself up again. She was a property owner now, never mind that the property was a saloon and a former bawdy house. Those respectable women with their turned-up noses and starched bodices could all go to hell, with Mrs. Gus McQueen leading the way. Because Hannah Yorke liked having her own money and making her own way in the world. Especially now that she no longer had to do it lying on her back.

  She twisted a thin curl of his chest hair around her finger and tugged on it hard enough to pucker the skin. He didn't even wince. "Your brother's new wife is sure enough a lady," she said. "Y'all could use some civilizing."

  "Oh, she's as prim and dainty as a lace curtain, all right. And she'll be just as much use to us out here."

  She watched his callused, veined hand fondle her breast. She liked the way his hand looked as he touched her, strong and lean, so dark against the paleness of her skin. "She's got a real pretty face, though," she said.

  "Gus better hope he likes lookin' at her pretty face"—he pushed himself up on one elbow to lean over her, and his lips curled into a wicked smile that was all man—"'cause I know women like her, and six days out of the seven lookin' is all she's gonna let him do."

  He was done with talking. He covered her, and she felt his cock pressing hard and hot between her legs. She slid up, then back to take him inside her, her fingers digging into his shoulders. He moved deep within her, a slow thrust and drag, and the world tightened and narrowed until all she knew was the heavy thumping of her heart in her chest and her own breath sucking in and out.

  CHAPTER 6

  Clementine paused under the jangling cowbells of Sam Woo's General Mercantile, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness. Today the place smelled of smoked meat, new shoes, and the vinegar that dripped from the spigot of a wooden barrel.

  Sam Woo leaned on the counter, the bride catalog spread open between his bent elbows. The green eyeshade and spectacles obscured the upper half of his face, but Clementine saw his mouth pull into what could have been a smile. It could also have been a grimace of dismay.

  "Mrs. McQueen, holy God!" He looked crisp and clerical in a stiff paper collar and black sateen sleeve protectors. "What a big wonderful surprise this is!"

  Clementine had a suspicion that it was not a surprise at all, that as soon as they'd left the ranch this morning an invisible telegraph had begun signaling the imminent arrival of Gus McQueen and his bride in Rainbow Springs.

  "Good afternoon, Mr. Woo," she said, nodding stiffly to cover a sudden, agonizing bout of shyness. "I..." She fumbled with the pocket of her tight-fitting basque. "I have a letter to mail, and my husband said you could..."

  "Dispatch it for you. But of course, of course."

  Sam Woo whipped the green eyeshade off his head and replaced it with a billed blue twill cap. He went behind a small grilled box that had been set up on one end of the pickle barrel counter above a peeling poster for Rosebud whiskey. Clementine pushed her letter beneath the grille.

  She'd held her mother's face in her thoughts, in her heart, yesterday when she penned the words about Gus and the ranch and the frightening wonder that was Montana. But she knew her father's eyes would be the only ones to see them, for the servants were instructed to bring all correspondence directly to him. Perhaps he would read her letter. More than likely he would toss it onto the fire unopened.

  Sam Woo pulled his spectacles to the tip of his nose and peered over the top of them at the address on the envelope. "Massachusetts, huh? It's gonna cost you two dollars."

  "Two dollars!"

  "Handling fee. Someone's gotta take the letter to Helena, so it can be put on the stagecoach heading east. Helena and the stagecoach are a long way away."

  "What someone?"

  He shrugged. "Someone I hire. Handling fee."

  "You, Mr. Woo, are a splendid example of Yankee greed and ingenuity."

  He bowed low, as if acknowledging a compliment. He was a strange little man, she thought, exotic in spite of all his best efforts to seem otherwise. They were both outsiders here, she and Mr. Sam Woo. Two people who would never wholly belong, yet could never return to the places they had come from.

  "Have you chosen a bride yet, Mr. Woo?" she asked.

  He shook his head, his long queue sliding back and forth over his shoulders. "Not yet, not yet. Soon. Soon as I save up one thousand dollars."

  "Which shouldn't be long, if you are given many more letters to dispatch." She slipped the half-eagle beneath the grille. "You may take your exorbitant handling fee out of this. And there are some other things I wish to purchase."

  Sam Woo bit into the gold piece, then held it up to the light of the window as if he suspected it of being counterfeit. "Where'd you get money like this?"

  "I robbed a bank before leaving Boston. I would like five pounds of flour, please, and one of brown sugar. A bucket of lard and several cans each of corn and tomatoes. Fresh eggs—"

  "No eggs. Sorry about that."

  "And tins of milk. Lots of milk."

  Comprehension dawned in his eyes. "Holy God. Does Gus McQueen know you're doing this?"

  "Not yet. But I have no doubt someone will soon tell him."

  "Not me, no, ma'am." He shook his head, laughing. A soft, trilling giggle that sounded like a child's. "This Chinaman ain't no Indian-lover, but he's not crazy either, no sirree jingle."

  He changed headgear, back to the green eyeshade of the busy businessman. He dumped out a nearly empty candle box and began filling it with her order, muttering to himself in a mixture of English and Chinese.

  Clementine looked around the store, noting the recent additions to Mr. Woo's bountiful wares: the smelly bundle of buffalo hides that had been freighted out in Nickel Annie's wagon, jars of white grape jelly, a hooked rug... As she crossed the puncheon floor for a closer look at the rug, ashes gritted beneath the soles of her shoes. The stove's belly, she saw, was overflowing. Mr. Woo obviously hadn't emptied it in weeks. She would never understand men: how they could work so hard at some things and be so lazy about others.

  She thought the rug was beautiful. A jute gunnysack had been used as the base, and bright scraps of red, yellow, and green calico had been hooked through to resemble a giant spray of spring tulips. The carpets in her father's house had all been thick and expensive and woven of soft, muted colors. Her mother, she knew, would probably label this rug garish, but Clementine loved it.

  Sam Woo came up to her, carrying the loaded candle box, his face creased in worry. "It's a good thing, Mrs. McQueen, what you're about to do. But, holy God, it's not smart. They're holding a meeting right now over at Snake-Eye's livery. They aim to form up posse and hang... someone."

  He gave the box over to her, and she staggered a bit under its weight. She thought he was going to offer to carry it for her, but he pressed his lips together and retreated behind the counter.

  At the door she paused. "Mr. Woo, why aren't you at the meeting?"

  "This Chinaman ain't crazy," he said. Only this time he didn't laugh.

  The day was cool, but the sun shone, and the labor of str
uggling through the mud with her burden soon had Clementine flushed and gasping for breath.

  She paused to rest, setting the candle box among the thick, gnarly roots of a box elder tree. Her arms ached. Sweat ran down between her breasts to pool around the bones in her corset. Her flannel shimmy clung wetly to her legs, making them itch.

  She looked around her. The hat-crowned butte from which the RainDance country took its name stood ragged against the blue sky. The butte's arid slopes were lumpy with dishwater-colored gravel heaps that marked the entrances to the mines, most of them abandoned. She could just make out a crudely lettered sign that read four jacks next to one of the bigger heaps. Rotting timbers surrounded a hole in the red earth and a dilapidated hand-cranked windlass. The mine didn't look as if it would produce a fortune any time soon.

  Her gaze shifted to the tipi that shone rusty white in the spring sun. The river flowed between her and it, rushing fast and loud from the mountain runoff. A rickety bridge, made of stones and old timbers, spanned the water where it elbowed around a stand of quaking aspens. She would have to cross the bridge and approach the tipi in full view of everyone in Rainbow Springs.

  Her back prickled, and she twisted her head, peering over her shoulder. The bog that called itself a street was deserted. The buckboard in which she'd ridden to town with Gus stood alone before the livery. The barn's big sliding double doors were closed. Gus and Snake-Eye and the other men of Rainbow Springs were all inside, planning a lynching.

  She wiped the sweat off her face with her handkerchief, took a deep breath, picked up the heavy box, and started walking again.

  She left the road, taking a narrow path that led through the town's small cemetery. The crude wooden crosses were all leaning and weathered, except one. a pair of man-sized boots hung over the freshly hewn marker. She didn't slow down to read the name burned into the wood. She knew who was buried here—the Scotsman MacDonald, who had been killed by cattle thieves.

  She approached the bridge, her skin crawling now as if the leaves of the aspens were a thousand winking eyes, watching her. Zach Rafferty's drawling voice seemed to reverberate like war drums in her blood: "Them Injuns chopped up poor ol' Henry into so many little pieces they had to gather him up in a bucket so's they could bury him." She remembered the sight of Joe Proud Bear galloping down the road, his lariat hissing and whipping through the air. Even in his western clothes, he'd looked pure savage.

  As Clementine stepped onto the bridge the heel of her shoe caught in a cracked log. Her knee buckled and she almost stumbled. A strange sound popped out her mouth, like the death cheep of a strangled bird. Don't be a fool, she admonished herself. You are not going to be massacred in broad daylight with all of Rainbow Springs watching.

  She approached the Indian camp slowly. She didn't see the piebald pony anywhere, and her breath came a little easier.

  The wind had died. Pale smoke from a campfire spiraled into the sky. The aspens shivered like silver raindrops in the sun, casting a dappled shade onto an old buffalo robe that covered the ground in front of the tipi, and onto the small child that sat on it.

  Clementine stopped at the edge of the robe and tried to peer through the slit in the cone-shaped tent. Strange effigies had been painted on the sun-bleached hide. "Hey there?" she called out.

  No one answered. The child crammed four fingers into its mouth and looked up at her with wide dark eyes.

  Clementine set the box of food on the ground and knelt beside the child. The buffalo robe smelled rankly of wood-smoke and stale grease. A kettle hung bubbling over the fire from a trammel supported by stakes driven in the ground.

  "Howdy, sweetheart," she said. It was difficult to tell, but she thought the child was a girl. She leaned into her, bringing them nose to nose, and saw her own face reflected back at her from a trader's paper-backed mirror that hung from a rawhide string around the child's neck. The little girl's cheeks were fat, but her body was pathetically thin. She wore buckskin leggings and a blue calico smock that had been lovingly decorated with beads and dyed porcupine quills.

  "Where is your mama?" Clementine asked. The child stared back at her, unblinking, even though a fly crawled in the comer of her eye. Clementine shooed it away. "Ma-ma," she said again.

  The little girl took her fingers out of her mouth and looked toward the river. Clementine got awkwardly to her feet, fighting with her tight-fitting, heavy sateen skirts.

  The child's mother walked toward them with long, free strides. She wore a loose scarlet blanket coat that hung to her knees, and her legs were covered by tall fringed moccasins. Each had been decorated differently, with beads and quills, elks' teeth and bits of scarlet cloth. They were beautiful, more colorful than the rag rug in Sam Woo's mercantile. She carried a hide bucket that dripped water, leaving penny-sized patterns in the dirt.

  She saw Clementine, and her steps faltered. She looked quickly around. Her long straight hair whipped back and forth, slapping her face. It glistened blue-black in the sun. "What do you want?" she cried.

  "I've brought some canned milk for your baby."

  The girl walked past her and set the bucket beside the fire. Her face was expressionless. "She died."

  "Oh... I'm so sorry." The words sounded so shallow, so pointless. But she didn't know what else to say.

  The girl lifted her thin shoulders in a shrug, but Clementine caught the flash of pain in her eyes. "My man would not want you here," she said.

  Clementine nodded, her mouth suddenly dry with fear again. She took a step sideways and knocked into one of the trammel stakes. The kettle rocked, slurping gravy into the fire. A good thick stew was cooking in that kettle, filled with lots of meat. She hoped for Joe Proud Bear's sake that it was venison.

  She looked up and met the girl's wary eyes. "Warn your man: he should cease riding with the renegade Iron Nose or he will be caught and hanged."

  The girl's dark eyes widened. "Joe did not kill that white man, and neither did his father. Oh, they maybe steal a few cows now and then, but—"

  Her head swung around at the sound of galloping hooves, and the cross she wore around her neck flashed in the sun. The piebald pony burst out of the copse of aspens, cutting straight across the bow in the river, splashing glittering drops into the air.

  She seized Clementine's arm and thrust her toward the bridge. "Go!"

  Clementine had barely taken two steps when the Indian was upon her. He reined the piebald to a sudden stop, splattering mud over her skirts. He threw himself out of the saddle, blocking her path. His wife cried out to him, and he shouted something back at her in his harsh guttural tongue, freezing her in place. He looked more than ever like a savage today in bone armor that covered his chest and with slashes of vermilion and ocher greasepaint on his forehead and hollow cheeks. The copper bands around his arms blazed like fire in the sun. He was very young, but he had a warrior's face, full of rage and hate.

  He glared at Clementine with fierce dark eyes that were incongruously framed with lashes as long and thick as a girl's. Her stomach knotted, and there was a strange coppery taste in her mouth.

  "Paying a social call, white woman?" he sneered.

  His wife held out her hand to him, as if beseeching him to understand or forgive her. "Joe, don't... She brought milk for the baby."

  He barked a harsh, bitter laugh. His eyes narrowed on Clementine. He pursed his lips so hard the sprout of feathers on his head quivered. He leaned into her and shot a thick globule of spit onto her bodice. "That for your charity."

  Clementine could do nothing but stand there and shudder. The place where he'd spat on her burned as if he'd branded her through all the layers of her clothes to her skin.

  His mouth curled into a mean smile. He leaned into her again, so close she could smell him—woodsmoke and grease, like the buffalo robe. He lifted his hand, and her whole body stiffened up, rigid as a tent pole. He pulled loose a lock of her hair that had started to slip from beneath the brim of her hat.

  She flinch
ed as he rubbed it between his fingers, making little smacking sounds with his lips.

  "You have pretty hair, white woman. Like sun-ripened grass. It would look good decorating a war club."

  She jerked back with such violence she nearly fell, and he laughed. Drawing on a childhood of strict training, she lifted her chin in the air and turned her back on him. She tried to walk away with some manner of dignity. But deep inside, all she wanted to do was run.

  Hannah Yorke had been sitting in a wicker rocker on the gallery of her white frame house, watching the clouds sail across the big blue emptiness of the Montana sky. For once the wind was tame, only stirring itself enough to quake the aspen leaves. And for the first time all year there was the warm breath of summer in the sun.

  The dress she wore that afternoon was the fiery red of spring poppies. Humming softly to herself, she spread her hands over her thighs, taking pleasure in the slick feel of the grosgrain silk and its bright color. In the Kentucky coal-mining town where she'd grown up, everything had been covered with a film of soot. She'd had to leave home to learn that the world was not all shades of gray.

  She lifted her hands above her head, stretching, reaching for the sky. She was some sore after all the bed exercise of the last few days. At the thought of the cowboy her mouth curved into a wistful smile. She would regret taking him as a lover, but not yet. Not today. His loving had left her feeling a little sad, because he was so good at making her forget. But it was a good kind of sad. She had been world-soured for so long. And so damned lonely.

  From the wicker rocker on her porch she could see the whole of Rainbow Springs. She watched the men gather at Snake-Eye's livery and knew what they were about. They came one at a time, looking over their shoulders before disappearing into the barn. How men did so like to play their silly games, making themselves out to be more important than they really were. Men making themselves out to be men. She knew them all, and most would greet her if they passed on the street. A few would not. As Rainbow Springs grew up into its own self-importance, those who thought themselves too fine to acknowledge the town harlot would grow in number as well until someday, she knew, she would no longer be welcome here.