Heart of the West

by Penelope Williamson

  She was almost running by the time she reached the cabin. Her dark tent, camera, and wet plate apparatus were already packed in portable cases. Their weight made her walk with a lopsided lurch, and their handles dug into her raw palms, but she barely noticed. She crossed the yard strewn with her wash and didn't see it. Her skirt caught on a splinter when she climbed the snake fence, pulling free with a loud rip that she didn't hear.

  She arrived back at the meadow panting and with her hair falling over her face in wet, sticky strands. Yet she was humming as she set up the camera and dark tent. She coated a glass plate with a thin layer of albumen, then coated it with the collodion. Her eyes burned as the ether alcohol evaporated in her face and the film set, but it was a familiar sensation, and she blinked it away without thought. Hooded inside the dark tent, she bathed the film with a silver sensitizing solution, splashing black stains on her sore hands. Her mother had always admonished her to wear gloves when she "pursued that messy, smelly hobby," but she always forgot or was in too much of a hurry.

  With the wet plate now sensitive to light, she did indeed have to hurry to expose it before it dried. She carried the plate, enshrouded in its wooden box, back to the camera. She draped the black focusing cloth over her head, choosing the river and willows as her subject, adjusting the camera's focal length and aperture. She capped the lens and swung the focusing screen out of the way to slide in the wet plate box, and that was when the moose stepped out of the trees.

  He walked clumsily, swinging his big splayed feet. His massive palmed antlers swayed, as if they were too heavy even for his thick brown neck. He huffed a loud snort that fluttered his pendulous upper lip as he lowered his head to the river. An enormous tongue unfurled out his mouth and slurped.

  Oh, don't go away. She slid the plate box in carefully so as not to make a sound, although her heart thudded loudly in her excitement. Please don't go away.

  The moose lifted his head, perhaps to savor the water or to listen to the wind. Perhaps he was a vain moose who fancied the thought of immortality. Whatever the reason, he lifted his great homely head and stood motionless.

  Clementine held her breath, uncovered the plate, and uncapped the lens.

  Zach Rafferty moseyed along the trail toward home. He walked at a leisurely pace, leading his gray. The calf followed at his heels like a homeless pup. Rafferty looked down at the dogie and pretended to be disgusted. The stupid critter probably thought he was its mother.

  He was walking because his horse had thrown a shoe. Most of the cowboys he'd trailed with would be morally outraged at the idea of having to walk. Secretly he liked it. He liked the soft give of the earth beneath his boots. And he liked the smell of it—fecund and ripe, like the smell of sex with a willing woman.

  As he walked, he opened his eyes and breathed deeply, letting the earth and the sky sink into him. He loved this land, loved its wildness and the sad, sweet lonesomeness of it. The way the mountains latched onto the wide and empty sky. The way the sun dusted the buffalo grass with gold. The way the wind howled and lashed in pain and loneliness, as wild as any animal and as unforgiving as time.

  He paused on a rise that overlooked the dip in the valley that sheltered the cabin and barn and pastureland of the Rocking R. The timothy grass was ripening; he could smell its sweetness on the wind. It made good hay, and they would mow it next month, he and Gus, and put it up as winter feed for the saddle horses. It was part of a cycle of work that followed the seasons and melded the days and brought him a sense of belonging.

  For so long his home had been nothing more than a saddle blanket. For so long he had owned nothing but himself. Now the land owned him, and this frightened him. He didn't like caring so deeply about something he could lose.

  Nobody was in the yard to greet him except his old biscuit-colored hound. He hunkered down to ruffle the ears of the ecstatic dog until the calf, feeling jealous, butted its head into his lap.

  He saw the laundry strewn in piles beneath the sagging line, and he smiled. A lot of work had gone into scrubbing those shirts of Gus's and all those soft white feminine things. A lot of work that was going to have to be done all over again.

  He was still smiling as he led the gray into the barn. He loosened the cinches, took his saddle by the horn, and swung it off the gelding's back. He did a quick currying job, brushing the cakes of mud off the gray's hocks and belly.

  "You're a worthless old bangtail, Moses," he said, pouring a can of oats into the feedbox. "You been lazin' in Snake-Eye's barn for over a week, and now all's you want to do is eat." The horse snorted into its feed, and Rafferty slapped it on the rump. He draped his saddlebag over his shoulder and left the barn.

  He knocked the dung and mud off his boots at the hitching rack. The latch string was out, but still he hesitated before the door to his own house, undecided about knocking.

  "Damn you, Gus," he said beneath his breath, pushing the door open.

  The cabin smelled sour, like dead steam and soap, and felt empty even before he called out his brother's name. A tub of gray water sat in a puddle in the middle of the floor. A copper full of sheets had boiled down to a mush on the stove. The fire had gone out. He lifted the lid to the woodbox; it was empty.

  He took his wedding gift to Gus out of his saddlebag, still undecided about whether to go through with the giving of it. He didn't want Gus to think he'd come around to accepting the woman—which he hadn't and was never going to.

  A rag rug he'd never seen before lay spread on the floor. A bunch of wildflowers—mountain bluebells and pink pussy-toes—filled a coffee can in the middle of the table, like something you'd see in a restaurant in San Francisco or Chicago. And she'd gone and strung curtains across the windows. They were fashioned of bleached flour sacks, but she'd made a start on embroidering them with a border of little yellow birds. He slapped his hat against his thigh as he examined the work closely. Little finches, he guessed they were supposed to be. Dainty, feminine, finishing-school fine. He turned and stared at the closed door to the bedroom.

  It was her sanctuary now, that room, so he invaded it deliberately. She had left her mark here as well. He looked at her things but didn't touch them. Her silver hairbrush, the bar of fine milled bathing soap that released a smell of wild roses into the air, a green leather Bible with a gold clasp. A pair of photographs in silver frames. Of a black-bearded man with the wild, staring eyes of a fanatic. Of a pale-haired woman with a fragile air and a sad mouth.

  Her night rail hung from a hook on the wall. He lifted it in his hands, his callused fingers snagging in the fine batiste. He rubbed his face in it. It, too, smelled of roses, and of her woman's scent.

  He went to the window and looked at the laundry scattered in the mud. He looked at it for a long time, his balled fists pressing hard into the cracked sill.

  The next thing he knew, he was out the door and following her trail, his boots making no sound in the pine straw. He arrived at the meadow and saw the big bull moose first. He paused, surprised, for though they liked to feed on river plants, you didn't usually come across one so low in the valley this time of year. Then he saw her.

  The front half of her was covered with a black hood, and she was bent over... damned if it wasn't a camera. The moose caught his scent and lumbered off, splashing through the river. She emerged from beneath the hood, and he thought she might have laughed. She pulled a rectangular wooden case framed in metal from out of the camera box. He took a step, his foot coming down on a dry twig.

  She whirled, a splayed hand pressed hard to her breast. She stared at him, her eyes wide and confused, and then he saw recognition dawn and, with it, anger. Her breath shuddered in her throat, but her voice was cool, controlled. "How dare you creep up on me like some savage Indian?"

  He said nothing, just came right at her. She watched him come, her eyes growing wider, her nostrils flaring. He stopped when only a hand-space separated them. Her face was pink with sunburn, except for two lines around her mouth that tightened and
whitened.

  She tried to sidle around him. He blocked her way. She sucked in a little gasp, and he trotted out his most charming smile. "Now, why do you want to go skittering off like that, Boston? And me wearing my party manners today."

  Her gaze flashed to his face, then away. She seemed to draw deep within herself to still her trembling by a force of will. "Kindly remove your loathsome presence from my path, sir." She made to step around him, and this time he let her. "I don't have either the time or the inclination to banter or to trade insults with you."

  "Yeah, I can sure see that," he said. He followed her so closely their shadows merged into one. "'Loathsome presence' is a pretty tame insult. Folk out here lean toward 'lickbelly bastard' and 'son of a no-good bitch' when they banter. What in hell are you doing?"

  "I am developing the negative, of course."

  She had stopped before an odd sort of tent that rested on top of a tripod beneath the shade of the larches. Made of India rubber, like a tarpaulin, it was the size and shape of a hay bale. The front end hung open to reveal a miniature cabinet of drawers and shelves lined with bottles, funnels, and beakers. She set the metal-framed case inside the tent beside a large tray filled with water, and began to button up the flap, speaking to him over her shoulder.

  "This is a very delicate process, so I would be grateful if you would leave me in peace to accomplish it." Three sleeves dangled from the front flap. She tossed Gus's old hat on the ground, thrust her arms through two of the contraption's sleeves and her head through the middle one. a moment later her head popped out again. "Do not under any circumstances open this tent," she said, and thrust her head inside again.

  He leaned against a larch trunk and stared at the back end of her. Her dress was an ugly liverish color, and it looked like she'd worn it to take a roll in a hog wallow. Fumes wafted from the tent, smelling like the inside of a patent medicine man's wagon. Haughty little bitch. The way she'd said "I am developing the negative, of course," in that uppity Boston accent, like he was too ignorant to be breathing the same air with her high-and-mightiness.

  She was a long time with her head and arms stuck in the tent. He heard splashing sounds and a muttered "drat." So she had a temper, did she, beneath all her starch and those tightly laced corset stays? Finally she emerged, all flushed and damp. She put the hat back on and walked out from beneath the trees into the sunshine. She held a glass plate up to the sky, and her face grew vivid.

  There she stood in her muddy, ripped dress and one of Gus's old hats, and yet she still had the air of the lady about her. She had the kind of looks that went with rustling silk and soft music. Winter looks, with her ash-fair hair and pale skin and bones that seemed as fragile as a film of spring ice. She breathed a little fluttery sigh. Her lips were lush and wet and parted as if in passion.

  He wondered if she looked like that in bed at night when Gus took her.

  He peered over her shoulder, trying to see what it was about the—what had she called it?—the negative that had gotten her all dewy and pink and excited.

  She spun around, gripping the plate in front of her chest. Her hands, he saw, were blistered red and dotted with black stains.

  "Guess your developing didn't work too good, huh?" he said.

  She thrust her nose in the air and somehow managed to look down the dainty sunburned length of it, even though she was a good foot shorter than he. "It worked quite nicely, thank you."

  "So why won't you let me look at it?"

  He reached for the plate, and after a little hesitation, she surrendered it. "Be careful. It's still wet. And I haven't varnished it yet, so please take care not to scratch it. And remember it's a negative," she said, "so light and dark are reversed, of course."

  "Of course," he mimicked.

  It was a ghost moose standing in a black meadow in hell. Yet Rafferty thought he could almost see the animal's powerful muscles quivering on the verge of flight, see the wind ruffling the grass and leaves, see each little ripple in the river. There was something about it that caught at his chest. This was his moose, his meadow. His country, damn her. And he felt violated, as if she had invaded a thing of his that was too private and intense to be shared.

  "I've never photographed an animal before," she was saying, and the passion he had seen on her face now textured her voice. "It's difficult to get one to keep still long enough to make the exposure. But the light today is so bright and clear, all it took was ten seconds..." She trailed off. "It's a moose."

  He gave a belittling snort, handing the plate back to her. "If you say so."

  She pushed the negative into a wooden slot in the tent, her movements stiff, her jaw clenched so hard her chin trembled. He had hurt her feelings, poor baby.

  She began putting bottles away, emptying pans of smelly water. He draped his arm over the tent's brace, watching her. "You don't usually see a moose this far down in the valley until later in the summer," he said. "He'd be in rut then, of course. A bull male all hot and lusty for a sweet female." He brought his head close to hers, and she went utterly still. His mouth was so close to her face that his breath stirred wisps of her hair. He smelled her scent, an unlikely mixture of photographic chemicals and mud, wild rose and woman. "Bulls in rut can be a whole lot dangerous. They've been known to fight to the death when two of 'em fancy the same piece of tail."

  She stepped back, wiping her hands on her skirt. Her face was fresh with color. But her eyes, as she studied him, were as still and deep as a mountain lake. She looked at him for so long that he could feel his cheeks growing warm. "You're wearing a flower in your hat," she finally said.

  On his walk home he'd come across a field of blooming camases, undulating in the wind. For the hell of it he'd picked one of the sweet-smelling flowers and tucked it through the silver-studded band on his Stetson. He had forgotten he'd put it there, and now he felt foolish.

  "You got something against flowers?" he said.

  "No..." Her mouth trembled, then broke into an all-out smile that lit up her face. "Only it's such a splendid contrast, don't you see? That pretty little flower stuck through the band of a battered old black hat above a scowling face with a purple eye and a puffy lip." She bit her own lip, catching back another smile. "Would you let me make a photograph of you?"

  He stared at her, his gaze on her mouth. She might have the face of a lady, he decided, but she had the mouth of a whore, her lips full and lush and made for sinning. He ripped the camas off his hat and crushed it in his fist, then flung it away. The wind caught the slender petals, swirling them around in a blue cloud.

  A charged silence crackled the air as he stared into her upturned face, and she stared back. She had eyes that were set wide apart and slightly protruding. Eyes the color of the moss that grew in the shaded parts of the river. Dense, dark green.

  "Why do you dislike me so?" she said.

  His gaze fastened again on her mouth, and he felt his own lips form the words: "I want you gone."

  "Why?"

  "Because you're gonna ruin... things," he said, then wished he hadn't. As it was, he and Gus had been having a hard time trying to make a go of the ranch without bringing a woman into it. And the thought flashed into his head before he could stop it: without bringing a woman between us.

  "Well, it's too bad for you, Mr. Rafferty. Because you won't be getting what you want."

  She stood before him, straight and delicate as the willows. Their eyes held as if locked. A minute passed when nothing was said and everything was understood. He was in a battle with this woman for the land he loved, and for the heart and loyalty of his brother, whom he loved more.

  He felt a strange shakiness in his legs as he turned away from her. He prowled the meadow, restless, his thumbs hooked on his gun belt, the pointed toes of his boots kicking at tufts of grass. From time to time he cast a glance at her as she efficiently packed up her camera and the strange little tent.

  He was beside her when she was ready to go. He bent to pick up a case just as she
reached for it. Her hand closed around the handle, and his hand closed over hers.

  He stared at her bent head, at the taut curve of her back.

  "I always carry my own equipment," she said, her voice tight.

  He let her go and straightened. "Suit yourself, then."

  She stumbled away from him, lurching beneath the weight of the cases, her heels kicking up her skirt tails. He could feel the lingering imprint of her hand on his palm, singeing his skin as if he'd held it too close to the cookstove on a cold winter's morning.

  He stretched out his stride to catch up with her, his boots cutting a swath through the grass. He studied her as they walked side by side in silence. He could see, even with her bundled up toe to neck in layers of starched cotton, that she wasn't much woman. Ass and hips as slender as a boy's, narrow waist, small breasts. She'd rolled the tight sleeves of her dress up to her elbows. Tiny scratches crosshatched the delicate skin of her arms. She was badly sunburned.

  He really didn't have to work so hard at driving her away; Montana was already doing it for him. This country was too wild, too harsh. It would destroy her. It would crush her in its fist and toss her away as he had done with the flower.

  She didn't protest when he took the cases from her and lifted them over the fence. He climbed the rails first and, without thought, held out his hand to help her after him. And she, without thought, gave her own hand into his keeping.

  For a moment so brief he wondered afterward if he had imagined it, they looked into each other's eyes and an invisible skein of lightning wrapped itself around them. He felt the fire of it through all his skin and bones, through his very breath.

  She was safely on the other side of the fence, but he still had ahold of her hand. Her bones were small, as fragile as a bird's wing. Her skin warm. Her palm was rough, too rough. He turned it over and saw white weals, like packing twine, curled around her flesh.

  "Somebody took a strap to you," he said, shocked at the frayed edge he heard in his own voice.