“We’d fight too,” Samuel said, “if it were the other way round. Wouldn’t we? You wake up one day and there’s people you don’t know, who look different and dress differently, coming through the streets and building on land that doesn’t belong to them. And maybe they’d tell us they just wanted our houses, and they’d pay us something, but it wasn’t really a fair trade. And they kept taking more. We’d probably try to kill them before more came. Maybe if we killed enough, they’d change their minds and leave us alone.”
His eyes found mine, and I gave him a small, private smile. I didn’t think there was one man in a thousand who would say something like this, especially after what had just happened to us.
“Sure we’d fight,” Browne said. “And maybe one day it’ll happen to us. But right now, seems to me there’s plenty of land, and at least we’re doing something with it. Railroads and farms and cities. The Indians can fit in if they want. Like Thomas here.”
Thomas didn’t say anything. I don’t think he wanted to talk anymore. He started down the slope. We all headed back to the camp and dressed and started tidying up. The Sioux had taken some foodstuffs from the wagons, but not too much.
“So how long we gonna stick around?” Browne asked as he cooked up our breakfast.
Hobart’s face twisted. “We’re packing up now, ain’t we?”
“I think we should finish up first,” Samuel said.
“Finish up?” said Hobart. “You crazy? The only reason we’re not dead is you knew that kid. He won’t be around next time.”
“We’re in the right place,” Samuel said to Withrow. “I thought Cartland might’ve found it, with those black bones. But it’s here somewhere. The boy said it was here.”
Withrow shook his head. “That’s not what I heard. He said even his father didn’t know. He was on a vision quest—hallucinating on some kind of smoke maybe. All he said was the buttes were the first thing his father remembered. He might’ve been staggering around a long time before then.”
This was a very good point, and not one I liked very much. If we left now, empty-handed, how likely was it we’d get another chance? I knew how much Sam had counted on us making this find, claiming the fee, using that money to give us a start.
I waited for him to ask my opinion, and when he didn’t, I said:
“I think we should go back. It’s not safe. We can come out again next season.”
“Thank you very much, little lady,” said Hobart. “A voice of reason.”
I hated being patronized, but what I hated even more was that Samuel wasn’t even looking at me. Had he even heard me? He was turned to Withrow and said, “Three more days. Just to finish around the last butte.”
“We’ve got one gun!” Browne exclaimed.
Withrow looked at his men, then back to Samuel. I didn’t know if he was as desperate as Sam, or just feeling sorry for him, but he nodded. “Three days.”
When Browne and Hobart started to protest, he held up his hand. “And that’s it. I’m not planning on being the only white man out here when things get ugly. And I hope your fathers have the sense to get out too.”
“Yours will be fine,” Thomas told me. “He’s got a lot of soldiers with him. The Sioux won’t risk a battle.”
“Mine, though,” Samuel said, and I could tell it had just occurred to him. “It’s just him with Ned and Hitch.”
“Lieutenant Frye will warn him, won’t he?” I said.
“If he knows what’s going on, but he might not. Anyway, they’ve moved farther away. They can’t protect them. I should go. Just to make sure they know what’s going on. I can get there and back by late afternoon.”
Withrow sighed. “Okay. Thomas can go with you.”
“I know the way,” Samuel said.
“Thomas’ll go,” Withrow insisted. “We need you back alive so you can find us this rex.”
Samuel went to our tent to collect his things, and I followed him inside and closed the flap.
“You didn’t even ask what I thought,” I said.
“About giving up? I thought I knew. But I guess I was wrong. I thought you wanted the rex as much as me.”
“You know I do, but—”
“If we don’t get it now, we’re sunk. Withrow probably wouldn’t even hire us again. Maybe your father would find it first, or maybe there’ll be a war and we won’t be able to get near this place again. We need it now!”
“We could’ve been killed today. And now you’re leaving me?”
“How else can I warn my father? You’ll be fine. I trust Withrow. He’ll keep you safe.”
“We’re in Indian territory! Even with you here I’m not safe!”
“Then go to your father!” he snapped. “Is that what you want?”
I stared at him, stunned by his sudden anger.
“Is that what you want?” I retorted. “Because it doesn’t feel like you want me here at all. We’re not partners. You criticize and ignore me. You don’t even seem to want me much in bed.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t want to get pregnant!”
“And I have very good reasons for that! I didn’t marry you to become your servant. I married you so I could go to university and work with you in the field!”
“Is that the only reason?”
Before I could halt myself, I said, “It was a very big part of it!”
He nodded. His lips compressed, and I could see his tongue working behind them, like he was trying to form words, or bite them back.
“Then it seems to me,” he said, each word cold and clipped, “that you’ve got a pretty easy decision. After all, now your father’s promised to send you to university. He’s got a big find. And sounds like he can take care of you much better than me.”
I said, “Maybe we both made a mistake.”
He said nothing.
“We were rash.”
Still he said nothing. I felt like I was floating free of my body, like I was witnessing some terrible accident.
I said, “It wasn’t a clearheaded decision.”
I wanted him to say something, to prove me wrong. Instead he reached inside his pocket and took out the two halves of our marriage certificate. He handed them to me.
“Your father was right,” he said. “There doesn’t have to be any fossil record of our marriage. You can burn it. Just walk away, if that’s what you want.”
Then he left the tent to go find his father.
27.
YOUTHFUL PASSIONS
AS I RODE, I RAGED. I THOUGHT OF ALL the ways I’d shown her I loved her, all the loving things I’d said to her. She was cold, so coldhearted, like her bloodless father; there was a part of her missing. She didn’t want a baby with me. She still hadn’t told me she loved me. She didn’t know how to love anyone.
“Looks like they’re packing up,” said Thomas, as we neared my father’s camp. It was strange: It used to be my camp too, and now it was just Father’s. Hitch, up on the wagon, saw us first and waved. I saw Ned turn from striking a tent, and then call out to Father, who was nailing a lid onto a crate.
I was nervous as they all walked to meet us. I was worried about Father’s anger, worried he’d try to stop me. Thomas and I dismounted.
“Sam!” cried Hitch, giving me a surprisingly powerful hug. “You’re married! Congratulations!”
I laughed. “Thanks, Hitch.”
I didn’t know what my father had told them; I supposed it would’ve been hard to keep it a secret, once Cartland and he rode off together to try to stop us. Ned smiled at me but said nothing. I guessed he didn’t want to rile up Father by wishing me well. But I could tell by his kindly eyes he did.
“So,” Father said. We did not shake hands or embrace. “I hear you’ve struck out with the Barnum boys.”
“Cartland told you?” I asked.
He nodded. “And where is Rachel?”
“Back at camp. We just had a nasty run-in with some Sioux.” I told him about it. “Wanted to let you know.
”
“Lieutenant Frye’s giving us an escort back to Crowe,” Ned said. “They’re calling it quits for the season too. It’s nearly September anyway. It’ll be getting cold soon. What about you?”
“We’ll be out a bit longer,” I said. “We’ve got a lead on something good.”
“The rex?” Father asked.
I wasn’t going to tell him anything. “I’m sure Ethan Withrow would be very pleased if we found that.”
“Any bone yet?” he asked.
I said nothing. My father waited a moment, then lifted his hands as if it didn’t matter. Hitch and Ned headed back to their packing, and we were alone. Quiet, standing there. I don’t know that I’d ever seen him so stingy with his words.
I tipped my head at the crate he’d been closing. “What did you find?”
“Aren’t we competitors now?”
“Maybe. But the world is large.”
“Spoken like a wise man. It might be a variety of hadrosaur. Its head is quite large and has a curious hollow crest on top. . . .” He trailed off, distracted. Then:
“I appreciate you coming, Samuel, but—”
“But.” I’d been waiting for this. “She’s not a Quaker, and she’s the daughter of the man you hate, and you want me to leave this whole thing behind.”
And for just a moment I felt a flicker of what Rachel must have felt—the temptation. To go back to what we’d had, to what we knew and was easiest.
Father looked at me curiously. “No. I was going to say you should get back to your wife now.”
“Oh.” I took off my hat, scratched at my hair. “I’m not sure she wants me back.”
He said nothing. My talkative father, for once in his life, was waiting for me. And like some natural law of physics, my words rushed out to fill his silence.
“She thinks it was a mistake. I’m not even sure she loves me. She’s never said so.”
“She ran away to marry you. She risked a great deal.”
“But I’d told her she could go to university and work with me. And just a few days ago, her father came to our camp and offered her the same things. If she left me.”
“She stayed, though.”
“Yes, but . . .”
There was so much in my head I didn’t know what to say.
“When I was younger,” Father said, “not quite as young as you, I met a young woman while studying in Washington. I thought her very beautiful and very bright, and we saw a great deal of each other. In my letters home, I wrote about her, and my parents knew I was getting very attached. She wasn’t a Quaker. My parents wrote back and discouraged my affections. But I didn’t care much for their way of thinking and carried on.”
“Did you run away with her?” I asked in amazement.
“No, no. I was not always obedient, but when my parents summoned me home, I went.”
It was hard for me to believe Father had ever done anything he didn’t want to.
“They told me it was a youthful passion and it would spend itself and then I could marry a suitable Quaker woman. I was sent to Europe to study and forget about her.”
I wasn’t sure if this story was a reprimand, or where exactly it was going, but something suddenly came to me.
“This is where you met Cartland.”
“Correct. But this was not the purpose of my story—”
“You never told me you knew him in Europe.”
He sighed. “Because I now consider our friendship, if you can call it that, grotesque. We met at the university in Berlin and became friendly in the way Americans abroad do. He was a solid scholar, a bit plodding for my tastes, but we exchanged notes and even went on a few ambles looking for samples. Toward the end of the summer we named small specimens after each other. He got a mollusk, and I got a millipede.”
I shook my head, astonished. Unthinkable.
“And now you will hear my side of the story Cartland told you.”
He made it sound like he was telling it just because I forced him; but I knew he wanted to tell it.
“I was headed home to America a full month before him, so he asked me to deliver a package to Melissa, his fiancée, in New Haven. It was an easy enough stop to make. His fiancée, I was surprised, wasn’t hideous. Surprisingly presentable, but not at all my type of woman. Her family invited me to stay before returning to Philadelphia—they wanted to hear all of the news of Frederick Cartland and goings-on in Europe. So I stayed, and Melissa grew attached to me.”
“How attached?”
He puffed air from his cheeks. “She seemed to think she was in love with me—at least, that’s what she told me in the letters she wrote when I was back in Philadelphia.”
I looked at him hard. “You didn’t do anything to lead her on?”
“I am flirtatious; this is no secret. But I’m flirtatious with all women. It’s a despicable weakness on my part, I know, but I don’t seem able to help myself. In any event, I made no special effort to woo her. And I certainly never seduced her, as Cartland said! She kept writing, though, even after she married Cartland!”
“But you never wrote back?”
“Only to return her letters. Which foolishly she kept—which is why Cartland seems to think we carried on an affair. You have my promise, Samuel. I’m sorry for Cartland—a terrible humiliation for him, of course. She was a fool to keep those letters.”
My whole life I’d been watching Father, listening to him, learning from him, trying to please him, charting the weather of his many moods. I knew his expressions pretty well, his poker face, his foxy charm. I probably shouldn’t have, but I did believe him right now.
All these years trying to make sense of his hatred for Cartland, and now I got to see its murky beginnings. This wasn’t the only reason they hated each other. Given who they were—their natures, their circumstances, what they’d done to each other—it was inevitable they’d become enemies.
“I’m glad to hear your side of things,” I said.
“This has become a rather long story,” he admitted, sounding uncharacteristically apologetic, “and I’ve strayed from its main point. I went home. I met your mother, and we married. But there wasn’t a single day I didn’t think about that lady from Washington.”
“You wish you’d married her instead?”
“I do. I wish I’d had your courage, or recklessness, or both. Whether we’d have been happy, who can say? Your mother was a fine woman, Samuel, but I was a poor husband. She was very intelligent, and took a great interest in my work, but I didn’t share it with her. And when her health became poor, I neglected her all the more. My heart may have been beyond my control, but I denied her my companionship and a shared life of the mind. And once you’ve made your choice, and said your vows, that’s a great betrayal.”
He’d never talked this much about my mother. And I had so few memories of her, it hardly ever occurred to me to ask. But it was the naked way he spoke that struck me. I’d never seen him so revealed. Being a husband seemed a lot more complicated than I’d imagined. Maybe the problem was I’d never even properly imagined it at all.
Father gestured to the cookstove. “There’s some lunch.”
“No thanks. I should get back.”
He reached out and shook my hand. “You take care of your wife. You love her.”
“I will. I do.”
His grip was tight. “Come back with us,” he said. For a moment I saw genuine fatherly concern etched into his face. But then it gave way to his familiar charming grin. “I mean the both of you. Next spring we can return, you and me and Rachel, and find this thing properly.”
I smiled, even as I felt a sting behind my eyes. He was sly as a fox still, and it was far too tempting an idea. But I shook my head. “We’re going it alone, the two of us.”
“All right, then. You know, I’m starting to enjoy the idea of having Rachel as a daughter-in-law.” He grinned. “I’m sure Cartland’s mad as a hornet.”
This was as much of a blessing as my marri
age was going to get. It wasn’t a lot, but it was more than expected, and it made me think I wasn’t losing my father.
When Thomas and I got back, the camp was empty, and we set out to join the others at the buttes. My head was full of things I wanted to say to Rachel. We spotted Hobart working along a ledge, and Thomas went off to join him. I said I’d catch up later. On the far side of the butte, prospecting one of its many wrinkled folds, were Withrow and Browne. I couldn’t see Rachel.
“I think she went farther round,” Withrow said when I asked where she was.
It was a towering monument of stone. I started around the base, shading my eyes, and I didn’t see her, and then didn’t see her some more.
“Rachel?” I called out.
Why the hell had Withrow let her go off on her own? She might’ve been spotted by more Sioux. Might’ve fallen. Might’ve decided to run off and join her father. I shouted her name again. Panic ballooned inside me, squeezing the air from my lungs. My voice echoed off the steep slopes.
“I’m here,” she said.
She stood tall. She’d been crouched in a shallow crevasse. For a moment I just stared with mute relief. There you are. She watched as I came closer. With every step I just wanted her body against me. I climbed down beside her and held her tight. She put down her hammer and her arms encircled me and her palms pressed into my back hard. I felt her solid heat and breathed her hair and skin, and we didn’t say anything for a while.
I spoke into her ear. “I did not make a mistake.”
I felt her breathing against my chest.
“All the way back,” I said, “I was thinking of those specimen boxes I’d fill up when I was young. Always trying to fill them all up. And there was always something else, some new empty space to fill. You’re the thing I could never find.”
Her fingers lightly touched the hollow of my throat, like she didn’t want me to talk anymore.
“No,” she said. “There’ll be something else. With you there will always be something else to find.”
“Maybe.” I tried really hard to think, to be honest. “But maybe as long as I’m looking with you, it’ll be all right. If we can at least be together, that’s what I’ll be happy with. I’ll be a better partner, I promise.”
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