A movement on the road leading into town from the lower valley caught Erlan's eye, a man and a woman on horseback.
The man she couldn't know from this distance, but the woman she recognized by the fairness of her hair, and because she had been expecting her.
Her gaze went from the woman on horseback up the butte to the stark skeletal gallus frame of the Four Jacks. And then back down and out into the flat prairie, where the new copper heap roasting pit spewed its foul brown smoke.
She took the kite from her son's hands and began to reel in the flying line. "Hurry up, Samuel. We must hurry and find Auntie Hannah."
Zach Rafferty allowed his gaze to roam slowly over the woman who rode beside him. He let the feeling of looking at her settle deep within him. Gus was dead.
The truth of it, the reality of that stone-piled grave, gripped at his chest like a fist and twisted. But he couldn't get his mind to settle on that yet—on Gus being dead.
Four years, she'd said. That rock-piled grave had been lying beneath the cottonwoods for four years, and all that time she'd been alone. Alone and... He couldn't bear to think of those four years wasted, couldn't bear to think he'd come back too late for her. Too late, maybe, for himself.
The temptation to do it, to come back, had been part of his every breath and heartbeat. He'd driven himself near crazy at times, trying to imagine what she was doing at any moment of the day. In his mind were a thousand memories, and he'd lived them again and again. Clementine with a fishing pole tucked between her knees. Clementine beating a bowl of cream, skirts swaying. Clementine smiling down at the head of the babe that suckled at her breast. Clementine doing things he'd never seen her do, only imagined. Like taking down her hair and pulling a silver hairbrush through its thick length again and again, her breasts rising and falling with each stroke. Or unrolling a black stocking up her calf and knee to the middle of a slender, creamy thigh. Clementine... Clementine living and doing none of it with him.
Each moment, each hour and day, had been one more spent without her, until all the miles and years that separated them had become unendurable. There were days when he'd been so lonesome for her he had shuddered with it, like a drunk too long without a bottle.
And now here he was and here she was... and here Gus wasn't. He looked at her face, so heartbreakingly familiar. And as cold and distant as the stars. He'd never been gut-sure of her love for him. Never really believed it would endure. The one and only time he'd asked her to come away with him she had chosen to stay with his brother.
He still wanted her, though. Lord, he still wanted her. But having a woman in your bed wasn't the same as having her in your life, as making her your life. Her and her children and a struggling ranch, another man's dream. His brother's dream.
He looked at her closed face and thought how the hells on earth were usually of your own creation.
Hell was what he thought he was seeing a moment later when they topped the last rise before town and his eyes beheld a pit of flames. His second thought was that it was a prairie fire, except that it couldn't have been, not with the ground wet enough to bog a butterfly. As they drew closer he realized he was looking at an enormous bowl in the earth filled with glowing coals and burning wood.
"Jesus God," he said.
The burning pit released a fumy smoke that smelled like souring hides and made a brown sludge that smothered the sky. The surrounding countryside was as bare and pocked as the face of the moon. The once pine-studded buttes had been logged almost bald, and the few trees left standing were stunted and dying. The grass was leached-looking. The Rainbow River ran swift from the heavy spring rains and snow runoff, but it was foul and foamy, like dirty soapsuds.
"It's called heap roasting." She turned in the saddle and cast him a look so sharp he felt it. "It's how the mine—the mine your father owns—smelts its copper, by burning layers of logs and the ore in a big pit. This one's a new and improved heap they fired up only last week, and it's twice as big as the last one. There's sulfur in that smoke, and arsenic. On hot summer days when the wind doesn't blow, the smoke can spread all the way out to the ranch. It's killing the land."
His gaze followed the streams of slime and tailings that ran from the mine. The butte was ugly with heaps of gravel, erosion ditches, and gray stumps. Huge piles of cut timber were stacked around the headframe and among the mine buildings.
"It burns up voracious amounts of wood—that pit," she said. "As does the mine itself, what with all the timber needed to shore up the miles of underground workings. If the Four Jacks has its way, there soon won't be a tree left standing in all of the RainDance country."
In town the raw, suffocating smoke was so thick he could barely see from one false-fronted building to the other. The lamps were lit against the dusk, although it was still midafternoon. Shadows cavorted behind the windows of the saloons and dance halls, and tinny music floated on the thick, heavy air.
"Rafferty."
He turned to look at her. Her face was a pale oval floating in the murk. "You were here in the beginning when the town was new," she said. "Tell me it doesn't hurt to see it like this."
He wished he could see her face, but even if he could have, he knew it wouldn't have changed things. It would never tell him what he wanted to know.
"It hurts," he said.
Hannah Yorke had spent most of that morning kneeling on the carpet in her bedroom being violently sick into a chamber pot.
As the bouts of nausea came and went, she'd thought of how tired she'd been lately, of how she'd fainted at their last whiskey party. Of how she couldn't remember the last time she'd suffered with her monthly curse, she who'd always been as regular as an eight-day clock.
She'd wiped her face with a wet cloth, and her lips puckered as if pulled by a drawstring. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth, not sure if she wanted to laugh or cry.
She pushed herself to her knees, swaying dizzily. She caught a movement in the large mirror with its fluted gold frame. Her own startled image stared back at her, as if they both saw a stranger.
A baby. She was going to have a baby. There's buck in this ol' hoss yet, she thought, and had to stifle another hysterical laugh.
The woman in the mirror raised her hand and pushed her sweat dampened hair out of her face. My, what a hag! Although on any other day Hannah knew she looked good for forty, young still, not like those sheepherders' and sodbusters' wives. She had stayed out of the sun and off the booze for the most part, and she'd kept her figure. She wouldn't have her figure much longer, though, and there were those fine-drawn lines around her mouth and eyes that no amount of strawberry cream had been able to keep away.
She was forty years old and she was going to have a baby by a man practically young enough to be her son. It was ridiculous, scandalous. Why, the whole town would reel in horror at the thought. Most respectable women still averted their eyes and drew their skirts away when Hannah Yorke walked past. Imagine how they would behave when her belly got big enough to shade an elephant.
There were ways... But she wouldn't think of them. She pressed her hands protectively over her womb, as if even stray thoughts could do it harm. She still hadn't forgiven herself for giving up her first baby; she would have this one if it killed her. She wanted this child. It seemed she wanted it more than anything had been wanted since time began.
She tried to imagine what the proud daddy would say when she told him. She wouldn't tell him. Lord, what was she thinking? He would be able to see it for himself soon enough.
And he would insist on doing right by her, she was sure of that. When you shared a bed with a man for seven years you came to know at least some things about him. Drew Scully wasn't the type to father a baby and then walk away from the responsibility of it.
Another bout of nausea struck her and she fell to her knees, groping for the pan. She couldn't remember being so sick the last time. They said it was a good thing, a sign the baby was taking. If that was true, she thought with a shaky laugh, t
hen Hannah Yorke was damn good and pregnant.
Drew...Oh, God, what was she ever going to do about Drew?
Never mind that she was much too old for him, she wasn't near good enough. As marshal he was well liked and respected by the town. He was a man on his way up in the world. Hannah knew how other men looked down on a man who was fool enough to marry a whore, even a reformed one. It was a matter of pride, of being content with other men's leavings. If he walked down the aisle with her, he would walk himself right out of the life he had made for himself here.
And if he had wanted to marry her for herself—really wanted to, and the town and everything else be damned—he'd have gotten around to asking her long before now.
So she would have to be looking after herself, again, and looking after herself meant leaving Rainbow Springs. She couldn't raise her baby as a bastard in a town where everyone knew its mother for a whore.
By late afternoon Hannah was feeling well enough to go out.
She dressed with care in a dusky rose linen gown and an enormous net-swathed hat trimmed with burgundy silk lilies. She went to the window and looked out, trying to peer at the sky through the heap-smoke haze, to see if it was likely to rain soon. In the end she decided to take along a black lace parasol lined with oilcloth. Over her shoulders she threw a purple-and-rose-striped silk shawl with black fringe that matched the fringe on the parasol.
She had just started down the stairs when her stomach began churning again. She gripped the banister tightly, drawing in great gulps of air. Her stomach turned over and settled. She released her breath in a long sigh.
She had reached her front gate when she saw Erlan coming toward her down the road, as near to running as she could come in her shuffling gait. She had her little boy in her arms, and the kid was using the wind they made by their rush to trail a red kite along after them. It was a strange sight, making them look like a big, awkward red-winged bird trying to take flight.
"She is here!" Erlan cried. She was breathless from having to struggle through the thick mud on her crippled feet. "She is going to do it."
Hannah felt a smile break across her face, and her blood stirred. A good down-and-dirty scuffle was just what she needed to take her mind off her own troubles. "Then I expect she'd like her friends standing at her side when she does do it," Hannah said. "Are you willing?"
Erlan looked toward the scarred, ugly butte, then up into the grimy yellow sky. The pall of smoke that hung over the town had grown much thicker since morning. The new heap roasting pit was half again as large as the last one, but it seemed to be releasing four times as many noxious fumes into the air. Just then the shift whistle blew, and Erlan started. But she straightened her shoulders and shifted her son's weight higher on her hip. She met Hannah's gaze, her eyes serious and a little worried, but resolute. "I am willing," she said. "We had better hurry, though."
Clementine McQueen was already standing beneath the gallus frame when they arrived at the Four Jacks. The morning shift was coming up in the cages and the afternoon shift was waiting to go down. She must have asked a nipper to stop each man coming and going, for a towheaded boy went from miner to mucker to skinner, and every time he spoke a head would swivel around to stare at her. The collar sheet and the area around it were already crowded—with cable spools and reels, boxes of muck sticks, picks and drills, and hopper cars full of giant powder and timber.
As more and more damp and sweating miners congregated around the shaft head, the gallus frame began to smell like a roomful of wet dogs. The carbide lamps on the miners' hats shot beacons of light into the murky haze. Hannah wondered how Clementine was going to make herself heard over the ringing bells, the clattering cages, the ore being dumped into the holding bins, the rhythmic throb of the pump rod, and the steam hissing from the boilers.
Clementine had climbed atop an empty cable spool. She stood tall, her head held high, like a queen about to address her subjects. Hannah, who knew her well, understood that Clementine gathered her ladyhood around her like a mantle only when she was most afraid. But folk had a tendency to find it off-putting, mistaking her shyness for conceit and maybe being a tad insecure about their own lack of polish. At least Clementine didn't look so Bostony today; in truth, she looked disheveled and muddy, as if she'd just ridden in off the range.
As Hannah and Erlan approached her makeshift platform, Clementine noticed them. Her face lightened with a quick and dazzling smile, and some of the stiffness eased out of her shoulders. The miners had also spotted the other two women, and their murmurs rose from a hum to a beehive buzz. Not even hurdy-gurdy and red line girls hung around the gallus frame during a shift change.
"They're as fired up as a January stove," Hannah said to Erlan. "They're not going to want to listen to what she has to say."
Erlan set Samuel on the ground, keeping a tight hold on his hand. The worry in her eyes had intensified. "Perhaps we should have tried to talk her out of it."
"Have you ever known anyone, man or woman, more gut-stubborn than Clementine McQueen when she gets her sights set on a thing? I'm only worried our being here'll wind up harming more than helping. We ain't either one of us exactly upstanding citizens of the community."
"Merciful heavens." Erlan fingered the high, stiff collar at her throat. "I feel as if I am wearing a brand on my forehead like a Taoist monk. But Clementine said the battle cry must come from us women. So far we three are the only women willing to make any noise."
"I suppose you're ri—Oh, my lord. Speaking of needing mercy, will you look who's here?"
Erlan followed Hannah's gaze toward the man who leaned against one of the headframe's iron struts, a battered Stetson deeply shadowing his face. "Is that not the brother of her husband?" Erlan's forehead wrinkled. "Is this a good thing?"
At the sight of that dark, reckless face, Hannah's eyes had blurred a moment and her heart had clenched with the sort of bittersweet ache a gal got when she ran into a man she'd been crazy in love with a long, long time ago. It was hard to tell from this distance, but he looked pared down. More hardened, if such a thing was possible. "It could be good," she said, her voice cracking. "But then, it could also be real bad. With a sweet-talkin', heart-breakin' scoundrel like Rafferty, you can never guess."
If Clementine even knew he was there, she didn't let on. She nodded at the nipper, and he gave a short toot of the shift whistle, silencing the miners. "Gentlemen," she began in her fine diction, "I wish to speak to you about how the Four Jacks is poisoning your lives..."
"Come on, honey," Hannah muttered under her breath, "let 'er rip."
Hannah's gaze swept over the miners. She spotted Marshal Drew Scully lingering in the back of the crowd, his stance calm but watchful. Her heart surged up into her throat, and a warmth spread all over her, as if she'd just slipped into a hot bath. She wondered if there would ever come a time when she wouldn't react this way to the day's first sight of him.
At that moment he noticed Rafferty, and the two men eyed each another warily like two bull elks deciding whether to butt or back off. Then Drew's gaze found hers. She gave him an uncertain smile that he didn't return.
An angry bellow interrupted Hannah's thoughts, and she realized with a start that she had missed most of what Clementine had said.
"We all know the Four Jacks has offered to buy your timberland and fer a fair price, only you ain't sellin'," one of the miners was shouting back at her. "If you ask me, all this talk about poison is just a lot of sour hay."
The man's cronies laughed and hooted, banging on their lunch pails. From the back of the crowd someone let fly with the soggy remains of a letter-from-home. The gravy and meat-filled pastry landed with a splat on Clementine's chest.
She swayed, a look of utter distaste and horror twisting her face. But before Hannah had even thought to react, Erlan launched herself forward. "Did you forget you ever had a mother, you pile of turtle dung?" she shouted. "How dare you treat a woman with such disrespect? You are all mannerless pieces of dog vo
mit!"
A hoot of nervous laughter erupted out of Hannah's throat. "I reckon you boys've just been properly cussed out, Chinese style," she drawled.
The men, at least those standing in the front, looked sheepish. A few looked back over their shoulders to scowl at the culprit. But one turned around to address the others. He was a red-haired mucker with a long, sharp jaw and a big mouth that had started more than one fight at the Best in the West.
"What the hell are we listenin' to these women for?" he demanded. "Hannah Yorke here, who's no better than she ought to be, this slanty-eyed laundry girl, and a widow who probably just needs a good beddin' to get the hysterics out of her system."
Hannah lifted her parasol in the air and advanced on the man. "You're sucking wind, mister—"
"That's all right. Hannah," Clementine said. Her voice trembled at little, but she squared her shoulders, tugging at the peplum of her grease- and gravy-spotted riding habit. "You can throw your garbage at me and say all manner of vile things, but you can't change the truth."
"You cause trouble like this, lady," one of other miners put in, his tone more concerned than angry, "and you could be responsible for throwing two hundred men out of work. We can't afford to see the mine shut down, no matter what it's doing to the land."
"Who cares about a few acres of grass and trees anyways?" the red-haired mucker said. "It ain't like we're runnin' low on the stuff." And the men all laughed.
"I don't want to shut down the mine," Clementine said. "Only stop the heap roasting. There are alternative methods of refining copper ore, such as smelters with flues and smokestacks. But nothing will change until your union leaders raise the issue with the Four Jacks.
"Look," she went on, conviction coloring her voice and cheeks. "I've brought along with me some scenic views I made of this valley when I first came here twelve years ago, before silver and copper were discovered..."
Heart of the West Page 70