Clementine made herself look more closely at the gash in her son's head. The blood seemed to be thickening on its own, although the wound still looked ugly. "Sarah, you will tell me now how this happened."
Sarah's wide, serious gaze shifted up to Rafferty, as if he was the only one she deigned to answer to, and Clementine wanted to shake her. "They're logging again on our land—those Four Jacks men. We only rode up for a closer look at what they were doing, and they shot at us. We didn't mean to sneak up on them... well, not exactly... but I think we kind of surprised them when we rode out from behind the madwoman's soddy."
Four Jacks men... A cold, engulfing wrath swelled in Clementine's chest. The Four Jacks. First they poisoned the air and stripped her land of trees, and now they were shooting at her children.
Saphronie appeared at her side with the remedy chest. "Thank the Lord Mr. Rafferty's come home," Saphronie said in a low voice. "You can let him take care of them Four Jacks men."
Clementine said nothing as she bathed the cut in her son's head with witch hazel. Her hands shook as she thought of how much worse it could have been. She cast a sharp look up at her daughter. "Sarah McQueen, you disobeyed me by not riding directly home from the school-house, as you know you're supposed to."
The look Sarah gave back to her was typical of the child— wide and still and edged with contempt. Her daughter, who was so fearless and independent, and unmerciful to those weaker than she.
"Those are our trees they're cutting down," Sarah said. "Somebody should make them quit it."
Clementine finished dressing the gunshot graze with aloe vera gel and comfrey. "Saphronie, you take the children on into town this afternoon just like we planned," she said. "Stop by Doc's and see if Danny needs this cut stitched up. We'll all be staying the night at Hannah's."
Saphronie lowered her voice to a bare whisper. "You really are gonna do it, then? What you all decided the other day at the whiskey party?"
"I said I was, and I am. Only now I'm going to make a little detour on the way."
"Oh, mercy. Take Mr. Rafferty with you," Saphronie said, but Clementine was already on her feet and striding into the house to fetch the jacket to the riding habit she was wearing, and the Winchester rifle. The man she'd loved all her life could come with her or not.
When his dun pulled up alongside her, Clementine urged her own mount into a flat-out gallop. They tore down the road toward town, their horses' hooves making sucking, squelching sounds in the spring mud. She felt frantic inside, as if demons were chasing her and she dared not stop.
She eased up after a few minutes, though, when she realized he intended to keep up with her. She wouldn't look at him.
"Are we riding out to kill someone?" he said.
She breathed to ease the ache in her chest. "I would like to, truly I would."
"You gonna tell me what this is all about?"
"Sarah just did. The Four Jacks Copper Mine is logging our land, and somebody has to stop them."
The loggers had set up their day camp on the west slope of the coulee, near the ruins of the madwoman's soddy. Once, the surrounding hills had been thick with yellow pine, alder, cottonwood, and larch. Now whole acres of trees had been shorn down to bare shale earth or reduced to slash piles. In the coulee that had been so dry the summer of the drought a creek now flowed three feet deep from the recent rains and the runoffs in the mountains.
One of the picket horses whinnied, announcing their arrival, although they had already made noise enough as their horses' hooves popped and sucked through the soft slough where the melted snow had run down from the buttes and foothills into the coulee. The loggers were all busy farther up on the hillsides. Only two men remained in the camp, standing around a small cookfire.
Clementine's gaze went first to Percivale Kyle, superintendent of the Four Jacks Copper Mine. As usual, he was dressed like an escapee from a Wild West show: white Stetson, fringed jacket, and a white leather vest with a braided horsehair chain looped from a buffalo-horn button to his watch pocket. He was a fair, elegant man with a spade-trimmed blond beard and winter-gray eyes.
Clementine had seen him a few times packing a silver-plated revolver with a pearl handle. But today, like most days, he was unarmed. The Four Jacks liked to present itself as a peaceful, law-abiding company.
But one look at the Mick, she thought, changed that impression. He always wore a tam-o'-shanter over his big bullet-shaped head, and he kept his mustache clipped short and stiff, like a boot brush. The skin on his face hung loose and his eyes were beady, making him look mean. Clementine didn't know his real name; she'd only heard him called the Mick.
For a moment all was silent but for the click of the horses' teeth on their bits. Then Percivale Kyle took a step toward her, his own teeth showing in a smile.
"Mrs. McQueen. Somehow I knew that little accident we had here would bring you hotfoot after us." He had a strange way of talking through his nose while barely moving his small pink lips. "Please believe me when I tell you that no one regrets more—"
"Which one of you polecats shot at my son?"
Neither man volunteered, but no one had to. Not only was the Mick the only man wearing a gun, but Kyle's gaze flashed over to the Irishman, all but pointing a finger at him.
In one quick smooth motion, Clementine brought the Winchester up to her shoulder, sighted, and pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot punched through the air, its echo muffled by the rain-heavy clouds.
Her horse had danced sideways at the sudden explosion of noise, its ears back and its eyes showing white, but she easily kept control of it with her thighs and knees. She swung the barrel onto Percivale Kyle and levered another cartridge into the breech.
From behind her, she heard a click as Rafferty cocked his revolver. "Don't," he said softly, and the Mick, who had started to reach for his gun, changed his mind.
A bright red stain had appeared on the sleeve of the Mick's buff wool coat. He touched his arm and then stared in astonishment at the hand that came away bloody. "Christ, she shot me! Did you see that, Kyle? She shot me."
"And I will do so again if you ever harm another child of mine. Only you won't hear the next one." She raised the rifle barrel until it was aimed between the dandy's eyes. "They say you never hear the shot that kills you. Isn't that true, Mr. Kyle?"
Percivale Kyle lifted one elegant blond brow and spread his hands out at his sides to show that he was unarmed. "You've made your point quite adequately, Mrs. McQueen. But as I attempted to explain to you, the wounding of your little boy was an accident. One that will not be repeated, I assure you. The Four Jacks doesn't make war on innocent women and children."
"No, only on innocent trees." Another shot smacked through the air, and Kyle's pristine white Stetson went sailing backward off his head with a gaping hole in its big crown. Even Clementine was a little surprised by how close she'd cut it—she'd missed putting a crease in the top of the man's head by the width of a fiddle string. "Get off my land," she said.
Kyle kept his hands spread wide at his sides, but his pale eyes narrowed and a muscle bunched along his jaw. His voice, however, remained calm. "Now, now, ma'am, be reasonable. The court has determined the ownership of this parcel to be in dispute between the Four Jacks and the Rocking R, and until a final ruling can be made we have sanction to continue cutting."
"From your court, your judge."
"The law is the law. However, we both know that if you were to accept the generous offer the Four Jacks has made and give up all claim to the parcel in question, then any legal suit would become a moot issue." Kyle had been slanting glances at Rafferty ever since they'd first ridden into view, and finally he could stand the suspense no longer. "Who the devil is he?"
Rafferty's saddle creaked as he leaned forward. He rested his left wrist on the cantle, but his right hand still held his Colt trained on the Mick. "He's the devil who owns the Rocking R."
Percivale Kyle's surprised face swung back to Clementine. "I thought
you owned it."
"I do," she said. And she pulled her horse around and heeled him into a trot, leaving Rafferty to follow. Or not.
She waited until they were well clear of the coulee, and then she reined in and gave him a long, penetrating look.
She could read nothing of his thoughts in his face. Nothing. "My name's still on the deed, Boston," he finally said.
All those hard and lonely years of relying only on herself, answering only to herself, coming to believe only in herself— after living through those years, she wasn't sure she could bear to turn her life and her heart over to any man. And to a man like Rafferty, so wild, so irresponsible, so dangerous...
She had a hard time getting her throat to work. "I don't see as how you have a right to it. Not after seven years."
She looked at him and waited. Waited for him to tell her she was the all and the only of what he had come back for. But what had their love ever really been, beyond a scorching heat and a wild yearning? Many a wild mustang was untamable, and if you tried put a saddle on one, you only risked getting hurt. Or you broke the spirit you were seeking to own.
She waited, and she supposed she was waiting for him to say he loved her, but what he said was "Since when did you become such a dead shot?"
"There are a lot of things you no longer know about me."
"I know there's no quit in you, Boston. I've known that about you ever since that first year, when I tried to chouse you away from here and you stuck like a cocklebur on a blanket. All the way through the first snowfall and beyond... remember?"
For a moment their eyes met with all the hurt and pride and pretense stripped away. And then she hardened her mouth, along with her heart. "But we both know there's quit in you."
She didn't expect an answer, and she didn't get one.
Farther down the coulee, concealed within a stand of pines, Marshal Drew Scully had watched the altercation between Mrs. McQueen and the Four Jacks men. He'd kept his hand on his gun, ready to intervene, although he was relieved when it hadn't been necessary.
He didn't want anyone to know he was out here. And he particularly didn't want anyone to witness what he was about to do.
When he was sure he wasn't being watched, he went down to the new creek that flowed through the coulee. He had a saddlebag draped over his shoulder and he walked stooped over, peering at the rocks that were scattered in the creek bed and along the banks. These were rocks that had been carried, along with the melted snow and excess rainwater down from the surrounding hills and buttes. From time to time he bent over to pick one up, before tossing it away. Finally one caught his attention enough that he fixed a loupe into his eye to study it more carefully.
He rubbed a spot on the rock clear of mud and grit and looked at it again, and a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. His thumb continued to stroke the stone over and over, even after he'd allowed the loupe to dangle and swing idly from the cord into his neck, and the smile had long since vanished.
His gaze went up the ravine, following the direction of the runoff. He began to climb.
About halfway up the steep, slippery slope, a scattering of boulders thrust up out of the soggy earth. He carried a sledge and bull prick in his belt, and he used them to chip a fist-sized piece off one of the rocks.
He slipped it into his saddlebag and then he went quickly back down into the gulch, heading for the stand of pines and his hidden horse. For a moment only, no more than a second or two, sunshine burst through a break in the clouds and flashed off the seven-pointed tin star that was pinned to his chest.
CHAPTER 31
The knife flew through the air, striking the wall handle-first and clattering to the floor.
"Bloody hell!"
Erlan Woo thrust another comb into the smooth ebony coil of her hair, ignoring the flying knife and the savage fury in the man's bellow. But she winced a moment later when she heard the crunch of wood being smashed and shattered by a heavy boot.
Holy God. First he flings his knife at the wall, and now he is destroying the beautiful carousel he spent all of last month carving. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment, reminding herself that a woman should always strive for virtuous patience.
She turned away from the mirror and looked across the small bedroom at the man she lived with. Most days he was himself, her anjing juren, sweet and gentle. But there were other days when his ill moods lashed out like a dragon's tail.
She felt her love for him swelling warm and tender in her heart. He had tried, was trying, and she knew he did it for her. His fingers bore many scars where the knife had slipped, and the wall showed many nicks from when his temper had slipped, but he tried.
His head swiveled around just then to face her, although she hadn't moved or made a sound except to breathe. It was something he often did. She thought it was because he could see her with his heart. They were no longer two, but one.
"I'm forgetting, Lily," he said. "I'm forgetting what things look like. Even you. Your voice, the feel of your hair, the clean, sweet smell of you—they're all engraved in my heart. But not your face. I try to put your face into the black ocean and all I see is a blur, like looking into a clouded mirror."
She crossed the room to him, shuffling on her crippled feet. She gave him the smile she smiled for him alone, although he never saw it.
She knelt beside his chair and picked up one of the wooden horses that had been part of the carousel he had destroyed. Her loving gaze went from the ridges of scar tissue where his eyes used to be, over the broad flat bones of his cheeks, to the thick, strong throat that rose above the open collar of his chambray shirt. She watched him swallow.
She curled his scarred and bleeding fingers around the wooden horse. "Feel how the wind flies through its tail, how its hooves prance high. Can you not tell that you are getting good?"
"I'll never be as good as I was."
"You will be better."
His face knotted into a frown, but he said nothing.
"In China, today is the Festival of Pure Brightness. It is the day we sao mu—we sweep the graves of our ancestors and make offerings. Samuel and I... we would like you to come with us while we pay respect to his father's grave."
He sat very still, and beyond the silence of the room she could hear the suck and splash of wagon wheels plowing through the muddy road, and the distant rumble of thunder. The bedroom, which was nothing more than a lean-to added on to the shack where she ran her laundry, always smelled like this—of soap and starch and steam.
He felt for her lips with his fingers and softly brushed over them. "'Tes not that I don't want to be with you and Samuel, you understand. 'Tes that..."
She licked his fingers, tasting him. "I know."
His eyes were badly scarred and people stared, and although he couldn't see them staring, she knew he felt them. But she knew that, even more, he hated the shame of having to be led around. "Like a bloody little pug dog on a leash," he always said.
She stayed with him a moment longer and then she rose and went to fetch her son. She washed and dressed him in fine American clothes to please his father, and she put on the gold bracelet of a married Chinese woman because she was still married to Sam Woo and always would be.
Then she went back, with Samuel's hand in hers, to the door of the lean-to. "We are leaving now," she said to her lover who sat in the shadows beyond.
He turned his head and nodded. She saw the need on his face to ask her how long she'd be gone, to get some sort of assurance that she would be back. And she saw, too, the pride that kept him from asking.
Erlan dropped her son's hand and crossed her arms over her chest as if to protect her heart. He was getting good again with his carving. And when he did get good, truly as good as he had been before, then he would have something to live for besides her, and she would have no more reason to stay. She would have to leave him, and this time he would let her go without trying to stop her. Because he no longer believed himself worthy of her.
She would have to leave him.
Outside, the sludgy smoke from the copper smelting pit hung overhead, as smothering and smelly as a wet wool blanket. She and her son struggled through the sloppy mud as they trudged out of town, toward the Chinese cemetery.
"Aiya, these roads are as muddy as rice paddies," she said to Samuel, who had never seen a rice paddy. Her memories, too, were dim of the paddies she had only observed from the high garden wall of her lao chia. The citizens of Rainbow Springs wouldn't allow the Chinese to bury their dead in the town cemetery, so they had established a burial ground of their own, on land no one else wanted at the base of RainDance Butte, among the tailings and slag heaps and waste rock. It was as if a dragon had breathed upon this place. Not even a weed grew in the scorched earth.
Erlan gave Samuel a willow branch, showing him how to sweep his father's grave and so drive off any harmful spirits that might be lurking about. Then together they laid out the bean-curd cakes and rice dumplings and a single precious orange. As she arranged the burning incense sticks and small wax candles around the wooden grave marker, she told Samuel of the strong and honorable man the merchant Woo had been. And how it was now his duty to nurture his father's spirit in the shadow world.
This year Samuel was old enough to handle the kite by himself. Fashioned of red silk and kindling sticks, it was flown on the Festival of Pure Brightness to honor one's departed ancestors. Erlan watched the kite swoop and soar like a lazy bird across the smoke-hazed sky. She wondered what it felt like to be as free as that kite, free of always having to yield to the clinging hands of a fate she was no longer sure she wanted.
Free to serve only herself, please only herself.
The kite rode the wind, but still it was bound to the earth and to the hand of her son by its flying string. Its freedom was only an illusion. And if someone were to cut the string, the kite would float up, up, up into the vast and empty Montana sky to disappear forever.
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