Gus grinned and tipped his hat. "Yes, ma'am."
Clementine heard the sound of more carriage wheels and she turned. For a moment she was dazzled by the sun striking off the tin roof of her new house, and she shaded her eyes with her hand.
Zach Rafferty held the reins of the shay and he looked... different. More like a banker than a bank robber. He looked almost tameable today. Hannah sat beside him wearing a candy-pink-striped dress with a shockingly low-cut bodice and enormous leg-of-mutton sleeves. Her hat was laden with pink plumes and purple silk lilies, and her hair fell over her white shoulders in two thick dark red ringlets. Hat and head were both shaded by a pink calico parasol trimmed with lace.
Rafferty stepped down and held up his hand for Hannah.
He was smiling, and the look that passed between them was not meant for others to see. A bittersweet ache pulled at Clementine's chest, startling and confusing her so that her steps faltered.
She looked away and saw then that the other women, who had congregated on the porch, were casting scowling looks in the shay's direction. They turned their backs and marched inside the house.
Hannah Yorke had seen them, too, and her face turned the color of sour milk except for the two bright spots of rouge the size of dollars on her cheeks.
"Mrs. Yorke... Hannah." Clementine stretched out her hands as she came forward, the ache in her chest swelling, filling her throat and making it difficult to get the words out. She took extraordinary care not to let her gaze slide over to Rafferty even for an instant. "I'm so pleased you are here." She grasped the woman's trembling fingers and gave them a reassuring squeeze. "You couldn't talk Saphronie into coming?"
Hannah shook her head, heaving a shaky sigh. She flapped a hand in front of her face like a fan. "Lord, honey, I barely talked myself into coming here. I swear I'd almost rather have to skin a skunk."
Deep dimples appeared in Hannah's cheeks as she smiled, and then she was laughing. To Clementine's surprise she heard herself laughing as well. She remembered her first day in Rainbow Springs and how Hannah and Snake-Eye and Nickel Annie had laughed as they tried to winch the piano out of the wagon and how she'd envied them because they were friends, and a revelation came to her then that was stunning and rather wonderful. We're friends, she thought. Hannah Yorke and I.
Hannah snapped her parasol shut and whirled around. She leaned over to pull something off the seat of the shay, and when she straightened up, her arms were filled with a beautiful hand-pieced quilt. "Where I come from, when a man and his woman move into a new house, their friends give them a welcome gift."
"Why, I don't know what to say..." Clementine's hand came up to stroke the quilt. The quilt was exquisitely made, with tiny, almost invisible stitches, the colors so bright and cheerful it reminded her of wildflowers. "Except to thank you, of course," she finished, and she smiled. "Their friends give them a welcome gift"... a friend. She did have a friend.
Hannah's dimples started to deepen, and then they vanished entirely and her eyes turned wary, like those of a dog too used to the feel of its master's boot.
Gus came striding up to them, his face tight. "Damn you, Zach. I told you not to bring her here."
"Last time I looked, brother," Rafferty said in that cold, silky voice that had Clementine's gaze darting to his hips to see if he wore his gun, "my name was on the deed to this place, right next to yours."
Clementine took the quilt from Hannah and thrust it at her husband's chest. "Look at the fine gift Mrs. Yorke has given us. Perhaps you should take it on into the bedroom now, though, before it gets soiled."
He swung his angry gaze onto her. "Clementine, if you think—"
"Please, Gus. And then we'll all try a taste of your famous cider, shall we?"
Gus's mustache quivered as if he would spit out more angry words. But instead he spun on his heel and headed for the house, and Clementine eased out the breath she'd been holding. She knew Gus; he'd been all primed to say something mean about Mrs. Yorke's past. Mr. Rafferty would have had to hit him then, and both brothers would've been sporting scrapes and bruises for days to come.
When Clementine looked around again she saw that Hannah now held a watermelon in her arms. "And this is from Nickel Annie," Hannah was saying. Her voice was a little trembly, but the dimples were back in place. "She carried it all the way here from Fort Benton, wrapped in bunting and nestled in an egg crate. She said she was sorry she couldn't be here herself."
"Oh, my..." Clementine said as Hannah passed the watermelon to her as if it were a swaddled baby. It wasn't very big and it was rather yellow at one end, but it brought another lump to Clementine's throat. This time she dared a glance at Rafferty, but he was looking at Hannah and smiling.
"Hey, Shiloh!" he shouted suddenly and waved an arm through the air. "What are you waiting on? Agitate them catguts and let's dance!"
"You asking this child to cut a jig with you, cowboy?" Shiloh yelled back at him.
"Hell, no, I already got me a woman!" Laughing, Rafferty slipped his arm around Hannah's waist and pulled her toward the dance floor.
Shiloh sat on a barrel, crossed his knees, swung one foot, and tapped the other. He put the bow to his fiddle and lifted his head... and his eyes went wide. All the laughter and gay talk halted abruptly as a band of Indians emerged from around a bend in the north road.
There were about a dozen men mounted on piebald and pinto ponies. An equal number of women and children were on foot leading more ponies that pulled lodge poles packed with tipis. A pack of mangy, underfed dogs barked wildly as they darted in and out among the horses' hooves.
The man who rode at the head of the band wore a turkey-red calico shirt and white-man's pants with a breechclout over them. A single white feather decorated his braided hair. Although the day was warm, all of the women and children and most of the men wore ragged blanket coats laced up tight beneath their chins.
"Flatheads," she heard Rafferty say to Gus, who had suddenly reappeared at her side, the quilt still in his hands. "They don't usually stray this far off their reservation."
"They appear to be a pretty tatter-ass bunch of bucks," Gus said. "I reckon they aren't out for any trouble—at least not if they know what's good for them. We got them outnumbered three to one."
Rafferty cast his brother a mocking look. "Yeah. So do you also reckon I should go and make a little high palaver with their chief first? Before we start exchanging gunfire with the women and kids?"
The Indians had turned off the road into the hay meadow. The lodgepoles, trailing behind the packhorses, rattled over the uneven furrows. A child began crying and its mother scolded, the dogs barked. But a silence had settled over the ranch; not even the cottonwoods were stirring.
Clementine shifted the watermelon in her arms, feeling inside her an old familiar fear. She was often haunted by thoughts of the savages; she had only to close her eyes to see the tattoos on Saphronie's face and the gouges in the wall of the buffalo hunter's cabin. And Iron Nose... he had not been caught and hanged with the rest of his renegade gang. He was still free and filled with hate. He and Joe Proud Bear, who with his family had disappeared into the emptiness of the western mountains. Only a yellow ring in the grass was left to mark the place where their tipi had stood by the Rainbow River.
The Indian chief held both hands in front of his body, the back of his left hand turned down. "He's making the sign for peace," Gus said, and she heard the tension ease out of his voice. "I told Zach they were tame Indians."
Rafferty returned the gesture. The two men spoke some more with their hands and a few monosyllabic words Clementine couldn't hear. She was struck by the sight of Gus's brother standing toe to toe with the Indian. Even in his fancy clothes he looked almost more savage, more capable of sudden violence, than the man with the white feather in his hair.
Rafferty rolled cigarettes for himself and the chief. Then he turned and made a sawing motion in the air. Shiloh drew the bow across his fiddle, and the jaunty strains of "
Little Brown Jug" broke the silence. One of the Indian children, a boy, whooped and began to dance.
Rafferty came strolling back. "They're on a buffalo hunt and horse-stealing expedition to the Crow lands southeast of here," he said to Gus. "I invited them to stay for the party."
Clementine stiffened, and Gus patted her shoulder. "It's for the best, girl. We'd do better to have them here underfoot, where we can keep an eye on them. Otherwise come morning half our beeves will be missing."
She would never conquer her fear of them. Capture, rape, enslavement by savages—a dread instilled in every white woman long before she ever set one dainty foot westward. But the Indians of Clementine's imagination, who crept on moccasined feet up to her bedroom window at night, hatchets and scalping knives clutched in their bloodied hands, seemed like made-up figures on souvenir cards when compared to the thin, ragged wanderers who now huddled in the middle of her hay-field. And out here, when a man and his family rode across your ranch, they were invited to stop and eat and rest up a spell. This land was too empty, too lonely, to turn anyone away.
"Yes... I can see they must be asked to stay," she said.
She felt Rafferty's eyes on her. She knew it all the time now, knew it when he looked at her. Oh, yes, she could feel it—a swift, sharp plunge of her guts that left her breathless and full of confounded, frightening feelings that had no name.
She turned her head, lifting her gaze to meet his. And though she was prepared for the fierce intensity in his yellow eyes, still she rocked a little on her feet when she was struck by the full force of it. When her mouth would let her, she said, "What's the chief's name?"
"White Hawk."
Clementine walked alone into the middle of the hayfield. The chief was a tall, bull-shouldered man with a stately dignity that matched anything she could muster. He had a seamed and rugged face, with a long blade of a nose, sharp as a tomahawk, and a wide, turned-down mouth.
"Mr. White Hawk," she said. "You and your people are welcome here."
He stared at her, his face as enigmatic as the mountains at his back. He grunted and pointed to her swollen stomach, then to the watermelon she still carried, forgotten, in her arms. And then he did the most astonishing thing—he pantomimed swallowing the melon whole and pointed to her stomach again. Color rose hot and fast on Clementine's cheeks, but laughter rose as well so that she had to press her lips together to catch it, in case the chief took offense.
She held the watermelon up to him and pointed to the knife in the sheath at his waist. "Perhaps you would like to try a swallow of it yourself."
Clementine shared her watermelon with the Indian called White Hawk. She stood in the meadow, crushing the hay stubble beneath the soles of her French kid shoes, watermelon juice running sweet and sticky through her fingers, and the September sun warm and gentle on her head. You take it all in, Rafferty had said, with your eyes and your breath and the pores of your skin. She looked from the Indian to the raw and lonesome mountains, and something opened up inside her, flowed into her and out of her, and for one trembling, exquisite moment she was White Hawk and the redolent haystacks and the music from Shiloh's fiddle.
She was Montana.
Her candy-pink-striped skirts flared like the lip of a bell as she twirled, showing off a purple petticoat and red-tasseled shoes.
Gus frowned. That woman... that woman hadn't once been allowed to catch her breath since Shiloh took up his bow. She went from one man's arms to another's, and those who hadn't taken a turn with her yet waited on the sidelines stamping their feet until their spurs jangled. But if Zach didn't mind that nearly every man in the territory was handling his whore, Gus thought sourly, then he didn't know why he should stew about it.
It was a wonder to him anyway that his calico-chasing brother had stuck all summer with one woman. At least it could now be said that Zach Rafferty was being faithful in his sinning.
Gus hooked his hip on the hitching rail and folded his arms across his chest. He cast a wistful look behind him at the open kitchen door, where Clementine had disappeared to do some more of the endless chores with the food. He wanted to ask his wife to dance, but it probably wasn't proper for a woman in her condition to do all that bouncing in public. Hannah Yorke's breasts certainly did bounce as she danced. They nearly spilled out of that scandalous dress she was wearing, like a pair of pink and dewy peaches. Large peaches.
Gus cursed beneath his breath and pushed himself upright. He straightened the kerchief at his neck and smoothed his mustache. He had to elbow his way through a crowd of cowboys, sheepherders, and prospectors to plant himself before her.
He offered her a stiff smile. "Will you try a turn with me, Hannah?"
A look of wary surprise crossed her face. But then her dimples creased with a knowing smile, and a laugh gurgled deep in her throat. "Of course, Gus," she said, and offered him her arm as Shiloh switched from the schottische he'd been playing to a waltz.
This was the first time Gus had ever touched Hannah Yorke. She felt soft and warm in his arms, and she smelled as sweet as a hothouse rose. He tried to keep his gaze off her breasts and off her mouth. Her ripe, wet mouth. Man must truly have a predilection for sin, Gus thought, because this woman stirred him. She shouldn't, and he didn't want her to. But, oh, Lord, she did. And he waited in embarrassed agony for the dance to end so that he could be free of her.
By the time Gus steered Hannah off the dance floor and toward his brother he was feeling more like his old self. He had looked on a woman and lusted after her in his heart, but he had triumphed over the sin and vanquished it.
A smile broke across his face when he saw that Clementine stood beside Zach. His sweet Clementine, who, unlike Hannah Yorke, was all that a woman should be. Modest and pure in her ways, gentle and submissive... well, perhaps not always submissive. But she was young yet and she would learn. As her husband, he knew it was his duty to guide her.
Clementine stood beside Zach with the hitching rail at their backs, the logs of freshly peeled pine shining white in the sun. They looked posed there as if for one of her photographs, but for all the attention she paid him they might as well have been at opposite ends of the earth. For a while it had seemed his wife and his brother had only to get within spitting distance and they behaved like a pair of alley cats fighting over the same fishbone. Now they rarely spoke, and he'd noticed lately that they couldn't even abide looking at each other anymore. It sorrowed him to realize the two people he cared most about in this world would probably always hate each other.
At least maybe the sore feelings would ease some now between him and his brother, Gus thought. It hadn't taken that much skin off his pride after all, asking Hannah Yorke to dance. And he could understand Zach's weakness for the woman better, now that he'd felt the tug of her lure.
"That Shiloh, he sure can kick up a tune..." Gus began, but his voice trailed off. Zach's eyes were focused on the road coming from town, and they shone with a bright, laughing mischief that raised the fine hair on the back of Gus's neck.
Slowly he turned and he felt his own jaw come unhinged.
"Well, glory be and hallelujah," he heard Zach say, and the words echoed back at him from wells of memory, "if it ain't One-Eyed Jack McQueen."
CHAPTER 15
Jack McQueen sat on the back of a mule the color of dirty dishwater and regarded his sons out of his one good eye. "Well, glory be and hallelujah, the Lord has seen fit to answer my prayers. My boys! I've found my long-lost boys!"
"What are you doing here?" Gus said, his voice cracking. The father of his memory was a bigger man, but the face was the same: the life-chiseled canniness of it and the slyness behind the charming smile. The sparkling blueness of his eyes... eye. Gus felt a sick twisting in his belly that he knew was shame. He was supposed to be a man now himself, but he was always going to be ashamed to be the issue of a no-account like Jack McQueen.
Apparently the man was back working the salvation bunco, for he was wearing a swallowtail coat shiny wi
th age, rusty trousers, and Geneva bands yellowed with hard wear. Always dress shabbier than the flock you are fleecing, he'd told them many a time when they were boys. Women especially are more willing to trust their pocketbooks, and their hearts, to a poor but pious preacher man.
The poor but pious Reverend McQueen drew in a breath that expanded his chest. He looked around, taking in the cowboys and miners high-stepping arm in arm around the enormous fiddle-playing black man, and the trestle tables loaded with enough food to feed the entire Sioux nation. He fixed Gus with his one-eyed gaze, and a shrewd amusement creased his face. Gus knew that look. It was the one he always got when he was all set to make trouble and prepared to enjoy it.
"I am pleased to discover you are well, Gustavus. Lo and all these many a year," he said with the seminary-polished manner he always put on with the Geneva bands. When he peddled patent medicine, he spewed fifty-dollar words faster than any college textbook. When he sat down to a card game, he became a good ol' boy, full of bluff and bluster and oozing snake oil charm. When he sold bogus mine shares, he was a posh East Coast swell full of acumen and sincerity. "Yes, indeed, pleased and humbled and... oh, all manner of things to see you, dearest boy," he said now. "And how is my dear and faithful wife, your mother?"
"She's dead."
"Jesus reigns!" The reverend snatched the battered stovepipe hat off his head. Sunlight glinted off the oil in the long, dark hair that hung straight to his shoulders like an Indian's. Hair that hid the nub of his ear, which had been cut off for horse stealing when Jack McQueen was a boy. At least that was what the old man had told them once, but then, he made up crazy lies just to get in the practice.
"O Lord..." He lifted his eye to heaven, his face turning all gentle and weary, as if the sins of the world lay heavy on his heart. "We do pray for the soul of our dear departed, Stella McQueen. 'Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh,' and a sinner, alas, in the eyes of God. Deserter of her loving husband, repudiator of the innocent child of her womb. Have mercy on her, we beg of thee, O Lord. And should she, by the miracle of your holy grace, be repentant of her sins, then welcome her as is thy wont into the bosom of thy glory, amen."
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