by Janet Fox
“This is a fine house,” I said into my teacup.
“Kula, I like you. I know you’ve had a hard life. You’ll work hard here, too, but when your father asked me, I took you in because I like your company.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I was pretty certain Mrs. Gale’s notion of hard work was nothing like the ill treatment I’d received from time to time in the past. Still and all, I was a servant. I knew what would be expected of me.
Kula Baker won’t be taken for a fool.
I lay in bed that night and recalled how I’d parted from Pa what seemed a hundred years ago but was in fact only this morning and that key he’d handed to me, saying, “Keep this key close.”
“What’s it open?” I’d asked.
Pa had glanced at Gus, who stood nearby, waiting in the slant dawn light with the pair of horses to ride with me into Mammoth to catch my coach. “You’ll know if the time comes. Choices. But just remember, not all choices are easy, girl.”
“Pa, I don’t understand. Please come with me. Let’s go together. Don’t send me off alone.” I whispered it so low I was sure he didn’t hear me. Sure he didn’t hear me because he stepped back and let Gus hold the mare’s head for me. All he did was lift his hand good-bye before he turned away.
Now I lay in the pitch-dark strange room in Mrs. Gale’s house and ached all over in spite of the soft feather mattress. I wasn’t truly sure why Mrs. Gale had taken me in and was acting so nice to me. I wasn’t sure at all what I’d do if I ran into Snake-eyes or even Min on the street. I wasn’t sure about a thing in my life, not even Pa.
I loved my pa. How I loved my pa. But for me love alone wasn’t enough.
Chapter FOUR
November 1905—March 1906
“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.”
—Hamlet, William Shakespeare, 1602
WINTER BLANKETED BOZEMAN, COLD AND DRY. SNOW FELL from the sky at regular intervals, smoothing the rocky, bare-limbed edges of the city.
I worked for Mrs. Gale, but it was easy work. I still wasn’t sure of her intentions—what kind of lady didn’t work her servants hard?—but her kindly demeanor let me down gentle. For one thing, she truly admired my skill with the needle. My embroidery was good, that I knew, but it meant something to me to hear Mrs. Gale say as much.
And I was also quick with numbers—my pa had taught me—and Mrs. Gale let me help her with her affairs. I cleaned, but she was such a tidy person by nature and things were so well scrubbed to begin with that it was like putting the polish on a church.
I learned from her how to cook in ways other than over a campfire and with ingredients like anchovies (which I did not like) and capers (which I did). And I learned to eat at a table laid with more implements set out only for the two of us than outfitted Pa’s entire camp. Sometimes, gazing at the finery around me, I wondered at it all.
Growing up with outlaws made me a hard case, especially for a woman, and I still couldn’t figure why Mrs. Gale took me on and treated me so kind. There were many rocky, bare-limbed edges of my own to be smoothed, and Mrs. Gale was a fine-grit sandpaper.
After my first few weeks in Bozeman, Caleb and I did the regular shopping together. I never let up keeping my eyes open for that devil Marshal or for Min, like worrying about running into a bear that lurked unseen in the woods, but town shopping became my delight. I determined not to let worries rule my life. As Caleb loaded the grocery items, I wandered the dry goods aisle of the general store, fingering satin and lace ribbons and sniffing jars of cold cream. Then Caleb and I would spend a handful of pennies on small glasses of Coca-Cola at the soda fountain just so I could stare after the ladies and examine their fashionable costumes. One day, perhaps that would be me . . .
A few times I caught the eyes of men. Men who seemed quite proper and of means. I took to mimicking the actions of the ladies—tried to put a lick of polish on my figure even to the point of acting shy and demure, which was so against my nature. And I listened, and polished up my speech by imitation, too, so I could meet my opportunities with a gracious tongue.
On one of those occasions a young man smiled and tipped his hat. He approached me and would have engaged me in a conversation if Caleb had not appeared at my elbow, tugging at me like an annoying little brother. I hid my disappointment, but gave the young man a willing smile.
There were opportunities in Bozeman for me.
Kula Baker knows what she wants.
When some weeks had passed and I’d seen neither Snake-eyes nor Min, I began to relax. I decided they’d returned to wherever they’d come from. It pained me to think of Min with him, but there was nothing I could do about that.
The holidays came and went, but I heard nothing from Pa. Maggie and I had exchanged letters, and she was friendly and I swallowed my jealousy of her good fortune. As a Christmas gift, I sent Maggie a stack of five new hankies that I’d embroidered, and she sent me a pair of pearl earbobs that I put on at once and didn’t take off except to sleep.
Bit by bit the hard knots I carried around from seventeen years of ups and downs began to unravel. I began to realize that maybe I didn’t need my pa to help lift me into a comfortable life. I could make my own way to a life of contentment, to a respectable life. I could find a man who would treat me well. Be he young or old, it didn’t matter. I was certain that somewhere in this small city were a man and a future, waiting for me.
I’d been in Bozeman almost five months, and still I did not hear from Pa.
Pa had done his best. That I knew. He’d had to raise me up in the company of a rough bunch without a mother, but I was always clean and well fed and nurtured by books and ideas. Even once he’d started me working he’d seen to it I had what I needed. He’d tried, he’d cared. So why was I not surprised when he all but disappeared from my life?
I had thought that he’d given up on me; I never thought I’d give up on him.
Routine wears a groove so that you forget what matters. I was in such a groove one snowy March day when Caleb and I picked our way through ice to the greengrocer’s door. A fine snow drifted down from a gray sky. I was caught by surprise.
“Kula?” The voice came from behind me, hoarse and ragged, muffled by the snow.
“Pa!”
There he was, big as life, and I didn’t think; I threw my arms around him.
But he drew away, and then I truly saw his face. Lined, thin, gray stubble knotting his chin. His hair too long. His eyes darting and fearful. This was not the Pa I’d left behind. I dropped my arms and took a step back.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s bad, Kula. That stranger in camp . . .” Snake-eyes. “His name’s Wilkie. Josiah Wilkie.”
All my muscles were tensed now. Snake-eyes had a name. “Josiah Wilkie. He’s a marshal, Pa—I saw him here in town. What about him?”
“You’ve got the key—now you’ve got to go to San Francisco, and quick, Kula. I didn’t know what Wilkie was up to. How could I have known?”
Passersby on the sidewalk, casting scathing looks at how we blocked their passage, churned around us like river eddies. Caleb chewed his thumb, his eyes as big as two moons.
I tugged at Pa’s sleeve to pull him against the window where through the glass the winter vegetables—onions, parsnips, carrots—stretched out in stiff rows. Pa’s eyes were not on me but traveling up the street, down the street. My body tingled; my nerves were on fire, muscles ready. My voice was a soft hiss. “Pa, I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
“You stay away from him. Stay away from Wilkie. You promise me: you stay as far away from him as you can.”
“Pa—”
“You still have the key, don’t you?” My hand traveled to my throat. “Good. That key is for the box. Find the box in San Francisco. It’s all I’ve got.”
“The box! The one that Wilkie wanted? What about it?”
“It’s in San Francisco, girl.” He gripped my arm so tight I felt the bruise form. “Go to San Franc
isco.”
I shook my head, bewildered. “Go to San Francisco?”
“You have to go, right away. Kula, there’s no time. You have to promise me you’ll go there and find the box. You—”
I set my lips, pushing back. He was not making sense. “Pa. I’m not going to San Francisco. I’m making a new life, right here, in Bozeman, Montana.”
“You must. It’s the only way. Listen to me now, remember. You’ll need to find Ty Wong.”
“What in heaven and earth are you talking about?” I tugged my arm out of his grip, the blood pounding through me. Was I feeling anger, or fear? I had a life here, a life I was not about to leave.
But he blundered on. “Ty Wong. He’ll tell you where . . .” We heard a shout from behind us, in the street.
Pa let go of my arm and staggered into the street, leaving me rigid against the window. “Hoy!” A man shouted, a horse reared. Pa raised his arm and leaned away as the buggy driver reined back; and then I heard the whistles coming from the end of the street, wagons screeching through the throng, men yelling, horses screaming, all clatter and confusion and Pa in the middle, snow drifting down, his head lowered as if he waited for the axe to drop.
And me, still standing rigid, trying to distance myself from him, trying to make myself invisible. They were after Pa, and all I wanted was to melt into invisibility.
“There he is!”
“Get him!”
“Don’t let him get away!”
My feet were fixed as if I stood in a sucking swamp. Pa did not move as the men, most wearing a blazing star, surrounded him, rifles at the ready, Colts drawn and cocked.
All of Bozeman was transfixed. On the sidewalk between Pa and me two men had stopped to watch; I had to stand on tiptoe to see past them to Pa. I heard the one say to the other: “That’s the man murdered Abraham Black. Shot him in cold blood. I heard it was his young son found Abe dead in a pool of blood in his own barn. Terrible thing. And all for a couple horses.”
I shrank against the building. My pa? Pa wasn’t a horse thief, much less a killer.
“He’s a well-known one, that one, so I hear. That’s Nat Baker. Nat Baker’s been robbing coaches in the park for years. They finally got him now.”
The other man nodded. “He’ll hang for sure.”
Pa. My pa will hang. For murder.
From the crowd around Pa a man pushed forward, wearing a silver star all shiny and spiked right there on his chest. I knew him right off, those snaky eyes of his, that man Pa’d said was Josiah Wilkie.
Wilkie pointed at Pa. “That’s him, boys. Cuff him good. He’s a slippery devil.”
The men closed ranks around Pa, and my heart thudded slow, slow beats that pounded in my ears as I tried to take it all in. I should stop it. I should step up and say, “No, that’s my pa; he’d never kill anyone.”
Wilkie stepped back and spun those snaky eyes around as if he expected to find someone in the crowd, and I froze solid.
I tipped my brimmed hat low over my eyes so Wilkie couldn’t see my face. I stood with my back against the glass as rigid as those lined-up vegetables, the snow like a curtain between Wilkie and me. If I stood there silent and still, no one would notice me. No one would notice a native-looking girl in a plain woolen skirt and jacket. Here in Bozeman, no one took much notice of native girls—they faded into the shadows like smoke. Here on Main Street I was only a shadow, unconnected with the killer.
The shock of thought ran through me: the killer of a man found dead by his young son, a man killed for a couple of horses.
The crowd around Pa moved and shifted, and his eyes met mine, just for an instant. And then I dropped mine away again, my hands plastered flat against my skirt, my gloves pulled tight. I sensed the movement of the men as they shoved by me in a chorus of triumph pushing Pa before them, his feet catching on the cobbles. His stumble, their rough yank and grab. My palms sweaty inside my gloves, my hands shaking as Pa—my pa, not a murderer, not the killer—was swept away from me and into the closed carriage with its bars, slam, slam, and the “hiya!” as they took him away. And I denied him, stepped deeper into the crowd, melting like late snow, melting in my shame and agony. I denied my pa.
Caleb was at my elbow. “That’s your pa?” He spoke softly, but awe colored his words.
“No. Forget it. Let’s go.” I yanked him past the greengrocer and down the street, opposite to the direction of the police wagon.
The sharp teeth of denial, like coyotes on a downed elk, tore me to shreds.
Kula Baker does not forgive. Especially not herself.
Chapter FIVE
March 24, 1906
“His mind ran over past years, and pieced together
the recollections of a long-past scandal.”
‘Of course! Of course! ’ he said to himself, not without
excitement. ‘She is not like her mother, but she has
all the typical points of her mothers race’.”
—Lady Rose’s Daughter, a novel by
Mrs. Humphrey Ward, 1903
ISLAMMED INTO THE FRONT HALL, SHAKING ALL OVER. Mrs. Gale, sitting by the fire, lifted her head.
“Kula?”
I fled upstairs, my skirts hiked high, taking the steps two at a time.
In my room, I put my hands on the window and shoved, heaving up the stubborn sash. I leaned my head into the frigid air now thick with blowing snow. I gulped in the cold and my body constricted against it, but I didn’t care. Pa should’ve left the woods before this. He could’ve left his outlawing long ago, and changed his tune and been a free man. Instead, my pa had doomed himself by getting caught—maybe even murdered a man, though my heart wouldn’t admit it—and my whole life was inside out.
The snow hit my cheeks like sharp pins, sticking onto my skin and sending little frozen threads into my heart.
I pulled back inside and closed the window and all my skin burned and I shook all over like a rabbit in a snare. My room was freezing cold now, and I tugged my yellow shawl tight around my shoulders as I sat on my chair and rocked and shook.
I reached for the key that hung out of sight round my neck, and I thought about what Pa had said. About San Francisco and that box and what might be in it. It had to be valuable, or else Wilkie wouldn’t have wanted it so bad. Whatever it held, Pa needed it. Choices, Pa’d said.
Go to San Francisco, and find someone named Ty Wong. I had to go to San Francisco. But how could I make my own way to California—the end of the earth as far as I was concerned. And to find a complete stranger in a huge city to retrieve a box that I hadn’t even known truly existed until now?
How in heaven was I supposed to manage all that? And what of my life, of my plans? How could I find someone to help me make a safe life for myself in San Francisco, just when Bozeman was starting to become home?
My teeth were chattering so hard I sounded like a sapsucker on a hollow tree. I went downstairs to seek some warmth.
Mrs. Gale stood at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for me. On seeing her, prickles rose on my neck and gave me pause. I stopped on the landing with my back to the stained glass.
“What?” I asked.
“Someone came by looking for you.”
I hadn’t been upstairs more than fifteen minutes. I tugged the yellow shawl up to my chin. “Who?”
“He wore a badge and an unpleasant expression. He said he’d followed your father to Bozeman and had somehow connected your father with me.” Mrs. Gale knew what my pa was. She knew why someone with a badge would be looking for him.
“Did he know about me? That man?”
She shook her head. “Not from me. I didn’t invite him in.”
My legs were so shaky it was like standing near one of the geysers when it erupted.
“Kula, what’s happened?” Her voice was soft, gentle.
“Pa. He found my pa. That man arrested Pa on the street. Caleb and I saw.” My suspicious nature slipped as I sank down on the step. “I didn’t try to sto
p it.”
Mrs. Gale came to sit on the stair below me, her dress billowing around her.
“He said Pa killed a man . . . He would never . . .” I blinked, keeping my misery locked up tight. “Pa might be a thief, but he’s not a murderer. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t try to stop them . . .”
Mrs. Gale placed her hand on mine.
I didn’t know what was safe to tell her, what to hold back. I still didn’t altogether trust her. I didn’t really trust anyone. And now I wasn’t even sure I could trust my own pa.
What if he had killed that man? How could I ever forgive him?
“Can I help?” Mrs. Gale asked.
I shook my head. “No. Except to release me. I have to leave.” I had to go to San Francisco.
“Of course.”
I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Maybe Caleb could take me to the train.”
She looked puzzled. “I can arrange that. But Kula . . .” She hesitated. “Running away won’t help.”
I yanked my hand out from under hers. Anger pushed the words right out of me before I could stop myself. “I’m not running away. Pa needs me to go to San Francisco.”
She sat back, her eyebrows up. “Really.”
I nodded. I picked at the edge of the shawl. “Pa said. Go to San Francisco.”
She pursed her lips. “I was born there.”
This was news. “What’s it like?”
“A busy seaport. There are many diversions, and not a few dangers. Especially for a girl traveling alone. Why must you go to San Francisco?”
I put my head down, resting my forehead on my folded arms. I spoke into my arms. “To find something of my pa’s.” Because Pa told me I must. Maybe it would help him. But I didn’t say this; I didn’t want to tell her more.
She asked, “For how long will you be there?”
“For as long as it takes me to find someone and this thing Pa needs.”