by Janet Fox
“A token? A token of my eagerness to spend my life scrubbing other folk’s things?”
“So she’d not think ill of me. She’s already fond of you, girl. She sent word back. She remembered you. And she’s got a nice place in Bozeman. She’s ready to take you in. You can live with her and earn your keep.”
A nice place in Bozeman—what I wouldn’t give for such—but Pa wouldn’t be there. And I’d be slaving for a rich woman. Again. Hurt rose in me like bubbles in a spring. “I’m tired of earning my keep!” My voice rang, and a couple of the men looked our way.
Pa’s eyes cut at me, but that spring was hot.
“I’ve waited and waited for when you’d quit this business and leave here with me. We’d go together. Don’t send me away. You have to come with me.”
I bit my lip till my eyes smarted.
“My mind is set. You’re going. I’m sending word to her today and sending you after. You’ll leave tomorrow, Kula. Get yourself ready.” Pa left me with my hands gripping the picket rope like it was a lifeline.
I should’ve known—I wanted to hurl the words at his back. I should’ve known I couldn’t trust you.
I marched away from the camp and up the hill, my knees complaining from their bruising and my heart breaking from Pa’s words.
I should’ve let Gus pull the trigger. Got rid of those snake eyes, those yellow teeth. This was his doing, Snake-eyes.
I strode right up to the crest, to where the valley pulled away south with the bright silver thread of river that wove through it, patches of snow in the hollows, pale ovals in the piney blue-black, and the mountains all snow covered at their sharp tips. Steam rose up from spots where the hot springs vented into the cold bright air. My lungs contracted, and a little sound escaped me that was too close to a sob.
Kula Baker doesn’t cry. Pa’d just given me what I’d wanted, hadn’t he? I’d leave this rough place. I’d be in Bozeman. A city, brimful with possibility. A place for me to rise up in the world, raise my station.
No. Pa was packing me off to another wretched situation, where my station would be that of slave. Cleaning and washing for Mrs. Gale. Suffering the rudeness of men who’d think nothing of open gawking at a girl with native looks.
I had this dream. In the whispering restless dark I saw myself dressed fine, because my pa and I had made a proper home, because Pa had taken on proper employment. I could read books all day long if I wished, in my own parlor, in my own silks and velvets. I could catch the eye of a gentleman. A gentleman who would treat me right so I’d never have to cook or scrub or sew again. A gentleman who’d look on me with soft eyes.
I had been a maid before, seen how gentlemen treated a lady. I never would understand Maggie—she’d been rich once. And as good as she’d been to me, I took her for a fool. Turning her nose up at an offer of marriage. I’d have left with that rich gentleman if he’d asked me, but he didn’t. And a man like him would not ask me, a ladies’ maid—at least, not until my pa and I together had a fresh start. That’s what we both needed. A fresh start at a new life.
A new century lay open before us, where all things could be made clean and shiny, even a man’s soul. Why, I’d heard that men could get up in the air in flying machines, men flying like birds. If that were true, why then, anything was possible. It might even be possible for me, the part native daughter of an outlaw, to become a lady.
Wasn’t it? Couldn’t I lift out of here until I was wrapped in the blue bowl of the sky, free? Couldn’t I fly like a swallow out over these thick-timbered woods, these braided rivers and steaming rocks and sullen springs and hulking peaks?
Oh, I’d leave these woods, yes, but without Pa and without that fresh start. I’d still be a servant. Even with Mrs. Gale, nice as she was, I’d still be her servant.
I tightened my hands, balled up my fingers, raw and callused. Whatever start I made would be fashioned by me.
“Hiya!”
Gus galloped away north, snow and mud spitting up behind his mount’s heels. Carrying Pa’s message to Mrs. Gale, no doubt.
I turned back toward the camp to make my preparations with an unsettled mind.
Chapter TWO
November 28, 1905
“She had thrown the dice,
but his hand was over her cast.”
—The Golden Bowl, Henry James, 1904
MIN WAS THEONLY CHINESE I’D EVER MET.
I didn’t live in the camp most of the time. Pa’d reared me and schooled me in my letters and numbers, and his men were like a passel of uncles teaching me this or that about hunting, or scouting, or sensing change in the weather.
He’d seen to it I’d never met a true threat. At least not until recently.
Once I’d reached an age where my two good hands could be of service, Pa’d found me work here and there in the park. Someone was always looking to have their clothes washed and mended, or their tea served, and I’d scrub the sour look off my face and pull back my hair in my blue ribbon, and they’d pay the poor sweet Indian-looking girl to take care of their things. Even house me pretty nice, some of them, so I didn’t have to stay in Pa’s camp.
Min showed up in Mammoth Hot Springs a few weeks earlier, and I noticed her right off. She was like me, foreignlooking. There weren’t many of us in Mammoth itself.
She floated in and out of Yellowstone Park, from Mammoth to Gardiner and back, picking up chores, washing, and mending. We’d exchanged only a few words, but straight off I thought of her as kin. Both of us wore our skins like they didn’t quite fit.
Now, in the railway station in Gardiner with travelers and tourists, Min came to my mind as I felt the appraising stares, the bold ogling looks, the recognition that I didn’t fit, and I shrugged in my discomfort.
An animal that shows fear is easy pickings.
Kula Baker does not show fear.
The train from Gardiner to Livingston was near empty, and I sat alone by the window with my gloved hand pressed flat against it. The valley rose hard and knifelike to either side of the train: it rose steep, offering the way forward or back, and I was going forward past the edge of known territory.
When that valley broadened out under a gray sky, under the snow-covered hills and flanking mountains, the Yellowstone slowed as it tumbled out of the mountains, easing out into the plains and into the broad unknown beneath the bare cottonwoods and perching bald eagles. I tried to slow my own breath and let myself flow out with the river, even while my heart was galloping down the vertical face of a cliff.
I’d learned a thing or two from my employers, and most from Maggie, who had tried over the last year to school me in worldly things. Now she was off at that college of hers, and I hadn’t seen her since summer. But it didn’t matter what she’d taught me; I’d never ventured this far out of Mammoth, out of the park. Terror blazed through my innards. And then I tucked in tight.
I touched the cameo that had been my present from Maggie, and beneath it and hidden by the placket of my shirtwaist I felt the small key Pa had given me just before I left. “Keep this key close,” Pa’d said as he slipped the chain around my neck in the early morning light. “You may have need of it.”
At the ticket window in Livingston, I asked after the Bozeman train.
“Three o’clock,” the man replied, his head bowed over his paperwork. “One way or round-trip?”
“One way.”
He glanced up at me through the iron bars, and I could feel his eyes take in my features. “Second class’ll be a dollar fifty.”
I glared. But I curbed my tongue, wishing I had the money to demand first class. I slid the coins across the wood counter and took my ticket and sat on the oak bench near to the door with its arched sign: LADIES’ WAITING ROOM.
I would’ve gone into the Ladies’ to wait, but did I dare, with my second-class ticket? With me being so obviously not a true lady? I squared my shoulders and stared at the wall.
Men prowled the station, catlike.
Cougars came i
nto the camp on a rare occasion, and I knew well what to do when facing down a cougar. Stand tall, do not run, show no fear—that’s best. Cats do not like to be challenged, but they love a chase. I straightened my shoulders and made sure my thick hair was still pinned well up. Everything about me, still tucked in tight.
One man took a turn around the long room and came and sat next to me on the bench and cleared his throat. He was outfitted in an old, out-of-fashion frock coat. His shoes were scuffed. I twisted my head away and leaned my arm against the rest.
“Know yer way around Bozeman, then?”
I glanced; a mistake. For one instant, with his hungry expression, he looked like Snake-eyes. In that instant the fear must’ve been plain as day on my face. I drew up, but not before a sly smile played on his lips.
“You traveling alone? Course you are.”
“I have friends in Bozeman.”
“Whereabouts?”
My heart hammered. I had no idea whereabouts. Pa said Mrs. Gale would fetch me at the station in Bozeman.
“Pretty gal like you, traveling alone. Darn shame.” His voice dropped. “You maybe a Crow? Or Sioux?”
“No.”
“Sure,” he said. “Sure thing.” He slid down the bench right up next to me. “I know gals like you. Can’t fool me.”
My hands tightened around the drawstring of my reticule. “I’ve got a knife handy, right here. You don’t move away, I’ll stick you.” I kept my voice low and even, hoping he wouldn’t hear the tremor hiding behind it.
He clicked his tongue, but slid back to the far corner of the bench. After a minute he moved off, and I let the air out of my lungs.
This was not my dream, where I was treated so. My gentleman would treat me decent.
On the train as it climbed up and over the Bozeman pass through snow-covered hills and under gray skies threatening new snow, a knot grew in my stomach, tighter than a burr in sheep’s wool. I touched the key again, felt it beneath my shirt.
The train eased into the station in a cloud of steam. I made my way down the steps and found my trunk. The porter who pulled it off the train for me took in my meager offering of pennies and frowned. I frowned right back, knowing from experience, from my years of service, just what he was thinking. Those pennies would have to do. I had no more to give him.
From behind me came, “Miss Kula?”
The voice was so unexpected that I turned sharp as glass. I looked down into the anxious face of a boy who stood twisting his cap. “I’m Caleb, Miss Kula. I do for Mrs. Gale from time to time, and she sent me to fetch you.”
I relaxed. He seemed more nervous than I was. “I see. How did you know . . .”
“It was you?” He smiled. He was pleasant enough, maybe three or four years younger than me. “She told me. She said you were pretty. Dark-haired. Native-looking.” At this last he blushed.
As well he should have.
I narrowed my eyes. “My trunk.” I pointed, leaned toward him. “Don’t go getting any ideas,” I said low.
“No, miss, I sure wouldn’t. Never. No.” He stared at me, abashed, and I realized with a shock that it was the first time anyone had ever called me “miss.” The very first time, in all my years. I forgave him right then.
I stood straight and mustered up a smile. “Then I’m sure we’ll be friends.” I stuck my hand out. “Friends?”
He pulled back from my hand as if it would bite. He nodded. Then he took my trunk and dragged it out across the platform and through the station to a small carriage waiting by the curb.
As I made to get into the carriage he stuck out his hand to help me up. “Friends,” he said, soft and shy, as our hands met.
Caleb drove down Bozeman’s main street. I’d never seen so many shops in one place. This was nothing like Gardiner, let alone Mammoth.
“That’s the greengrocer,” Caleb said. “There’s the pharmacy.”
Such a variety of people, all dressed fine, even though wrapped against the chill wind. Such a hubbub and slop, garbage and calling out.
“Lookie!” shouted Caleb, and he laughed. He pointed at the horseless carriage belching and rattling down the street in front of us. When it pulled over with a whine and a clattering halt, Caleb shouted, “Get a horse!” as I twisted right around in my seat to eyeball the thing.
Such noise and confusion reigned that if I hadn’t been in control of myself I’d have slapped my hands over my ears and shut my eyes. The ride to Mrs. Gale’s house may have taken ten minutes, but it felt like ten hours.
And then—there she was. In the middle of the chaos. Min.
She glided down the street, head bowed, hands clutched at her middle. I lifted my own hand to call out to her but drew back just in time. For she’d walked right up to someone I knew, even if he was dressed decent. Even if he did sport a waxed mustache and a shiny star on his lapel. She walked up to Snake-eyes, and it was clear from the way he laid his hand on her: she belonged to him. Bitter saliva filled my mouth.
Snake-eyes. Min was his. And he was the law.
Chapter THREE
November 28, 1905
“All I have done so far is to survive as
nothing more than a humble worker like pigs
and cows. Is my youth being wasted?
No. I have dreams. I have hopes.
Life means nothing if you don’ t try
to better yourself.”
—Diary of Henry Hashitane,
Japanese rail worker in Montana, 1905
I TUGGED AT CALEB’S SLEEVE, POINTED. “IS THAT THE SHERIFF?ʺ I could hardly choke the words out.
“Him? Don’t know him. But that looks like a marshal’s badge. Must be from someplace else.”
And Min. There she was. Almost like I’d conjured Min by thinking of her. And she was connected with him. My skin was a prickle all over, and that closed-in space feeling came over me and I smelled a trap, set and ready.
Kula Baker knows predators.
Pa’d said he’d come for me here when he was ready. I had to bide my time working for Mrs. Gale. Now I’d be biding with a wary eye and a worried heart until Marshal Snake-eyes returned to his someplace else. I put my hand up to hide my face as we drove by.
We turned onto a broad avenue heading south, and I let out a long breath and shoved the thought of Snake-eyes from my mind.
“There it is,” said Caleb. “Mrs. Gale’s.”
I knew Mrs. Gale was a photographer who sold her photos, as well as being a widow of independent means. That was a startling fact all by itself—that she worked. But now that I approached her town home I saw Mrs. Gale through fresh eyes, and wide ones at that.
Her house was the largest I’d ever seen up close, a brick three story with a full front porch like the one on the National Hotel in Mammoth, with tall windows draped in lace. A neat little picket fence surrounded the front yard with its sprawling bare-branched elm.
Mrs. Gale herself came to the door when Caleb rang. She was just as I recalled her: bright-eyed, plump, thick fingers of gray woven through the brown coils of her rolled-up hair. I curtsied, a rare thing for me. I was humbled by all this splendor.
“Kula.” Mrs. Gale smiled. “No need for formalities here. Come in.” She drew me into a front hall larger than most houses.
Caleb followed me in with my trunk; I slipped my fingers into the bow of my bonnet while my eyes swept this grand space.
Mrs. Gale lectured on about mealtimes and expectations and duties and other things I should be attending to. But my senses were otherwise occupied. I stopped in front of the tall clock in the hallway and listened to its deep, slow tock.
“Because I live alone, I have no cook, so you’ll help in the kitchen as well.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I murmured.
“Let’s see you to your room.” She turned and led me up the stairs.
The window that faced the landing was stained glass, a picture of a girl admiring flowers in a vase. I stopped on the landing and traced my fingers ov
er the smooth glass, over the lead that held the glass together, over the body of the girl with her pretty white gown, the gray light coming through the glass and staining my fingers red and deep purply blue and yellow. Fruitlike, ripe and luscious.
I wanted to be that girl. I could be that girl. If I found myself the right husband.
“Kula?”
I went on up the second flight.
“There’s no need for you to sleep on the servant’s floor with just the two of us in the house. I didn’t take on boarders this winter. Both our rooms are here on this floor. That one’s mine, and here’s yours.”
I had my own room. My own. I stepped into the room with Mrs. Gale.
“Are you all right, my dear?”
I raised my fingers to my face and rubbed my cheeks dry.
“I’ll leave you here. When you’re ready, come downstairs and join me for tea.” Mrs. Gale went back downstairs, leaving me in my room.
My own room—with a bed, my own bed, a real four-poster with a lacy canopy. With linen sheets. With a private water closet, my own private water closet with a pull chain toilet that I flushed three times in a row just to watch the water wind down in the shiny white bowl.
I sighed. I knew who would be cleaning that shiny white bowl. Still . . . I had my own wardrobe, with hangers for my clothes. My own writing desk and chair.
The seat on my chair was embroidered with a stitch so fine it made my fingers ache.
Caleb had left my trunk in the middle of my room. I bent and unlatched it. I had a few nice things: the pale lemon shawl Maggie had given me, her blue velvet gown. Pa doled out most everything from the runs to his men, or sold it. He didn’t want to turn my head with pretty baubles. Except for the few books he’d given me, everything else I had I’d earned myself.
I was ready to change all that. Ready for a man to raise me up.
When I joined Mrs. Gale, she’d set out the teapot and a plate of sugar cookies in the front parlor.