Amethyst (25 page)

“Join me in the prayer our Lord taught us. Our Father…”

The mourners joined in, some voices wavering, some with tears, but all growing stronger as they prayed together. Four men lowered the box into the hole, and Linc tossed in a handful of dirt.

“You are all welcome to come to our house for dinner.” Pearl nodded to those gathered. Jeremiah McHenry drew his harmonica from his pocket and played the opening bars of “Amazing Grace.” The notes rose clear like an offering to heaven, and the mourners’ voices joined in.

As they walked away, Opal wanted to plug her ears against the thuds of dirt on the lid of that box.

Jacob walked beside her, stopping only when someone thanked him for such a good service.

Opal slowed down. She wasn’t waiting for him, not really, but somehow she felt better when he was there, as though he took part of the load away that was trying to drive her right into the ground.

The next morning Linc and his bedroll were gone from the bunkhouse. No one had heard him leave. On a piece of wood, he’d written in charcoal,
Thank You
.

Two days later the nightmare woke her again, but this time since the sky was lightening toward day, Opal dressed and headed down to the corral. According to the verse Mr. Chandler read about time, mourning should be over and a new day of joy rising. If that was so, why was it so hard for her to pick up her feet?
Put this behind you and think of something else
. No matter how many times she told herself that, it wasn’t getting any easier. Out in the pasture she whistled for Bay, and when the old mare nuzzled her shoulder, Opal swung aboard and rode her to the barn.
Think on something else
.

“Is Atticus still in Oregon or on his way back to Ohio, old girl?”

Bay’s ears swiveled to listen. When Opal dismounted inside the barn, the horse shook all over.

“No idea, huh? You’d think he could let me know how he’s doing.” Opal used the currycomb on Bay’s mane and tail. Talking to the horse made more sense than talking to herself. She got about the same number of answers.

You know he can’t write very well
.

“Whose side are you on?” Now she was arguing with herself. He could ask someone to write for him. Even she snorted at the absurdity of Atticus asking for help. That would be about as likely as Rand moving to New York.

New York. The Brandons. Would they come to visit this summer? They’d said they would if it could be worked out. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Mr. Roosevelt was in the area at the same time and Bernie Brandon could meet him or go hunting with him? Her thoughts took off on all kinds of possibilities.

Bay flicked her ears and turned to look over her shoulder.

Opal stopped with the currycomb and rubbed the old mare’s ears and down her neck. “You are so thin, girl. A walking rack of bones.” Even though she’d snuck some of the chickens’ grain for her horse, there was no hay left—not even any of what McHenry had brought them. Would the grass come back soon enough to keep the rest of the stock from starving to death?

She leaned against the horse. “What else can I feed you?”

Rand and the men had been cutting cottonwood trees and dragging them closer to the barn for the cattle that had hung around the homeplace instead of dying out on the plains. With the snow melting so swiftly, the carnage left by the blizzards became more obvious every day. Dead animals stacked in the draws, scattered across the land, food for the scavengers and death to the ranchers. Rand had returned from town where he’d talked with some of the other ranchers, the look in his eyes so close to defeat that even Ruby had nothing to say. She just hugged him.

He had yet to talk about what he’d learned, at least to Opal. Every time the men came in from range riding, they just shook their heads.

For the first time in her life, Opal did not want to go riding. Grateful that Bay had made it through the winter, she went back to brushing the long rough coat.

That night around the supper table, she asked, “Can’t you go on the train and buy grain or hay somewhere else and bring it back?” She knew the answer before she asked the question. Where would they get the money to do such a venture? They’d need everything they had to make it through till fall. Maybe she and Ruby could sell the jewels their pa had left them.

She tuned back into the conversation. “No fall roundup?”

“Not for sure yet, but if the steers recover, they’d have to gain twice as much as usual. The cattle brought in from Texas and points east fared the worst. I’m hearing eighty and ninety percent loss.”

She was afraid to ask but did. “Was ours that bad?”

“No, because we sold that lot of steers in the fall. Thank God for leading us to do that. I shipped some that I would have kept over another year. They were a bit small, but they’re not coyote food out on the prairie. I have no idea how many we have left, other than that fifty head or so around here. And some of the brands aren’t ours.”

“No one’s seen the horse herds either.” Chaps took another swig of coffee. “They should be moseying back north sometime soon.” His unspoken “if they come” lay there as loud as if he’d shouted it. Every fall the ranchers let most of their remudas loose to fend for themselves over the winter, keeping only enough horses to pull the sleighs, provide rides to town, and to round up the wild bunch. The horses banded together and drifted in search of feed, pawing down to the dried grass under the snow. But this year the range had been overgrazed and, with the drought, winter feed was scarce to none.

“Going to be a lot of dead trees this summer, the way the animals stripped off all the bark.” Beans tipped back his chair. “We ain’t seen the worst of this yet.”

Opal pushed back her chair and headed for her room. She couldn’t let them see her cry again. All she’d done lately was cry.
Why, God? Why all this destruction? All the cattle dying. Little Squirrel and the baby. You could have changed the weather. You calmed the wind for the disciples.

Don’t think about it
.

She threw herself on the coyote pelt quilt, the deep fur against her cheek.
Why not calm the wind and lessen the cold here
?

Perhaps they should head west like Atticus. She cried until the tears dried, blew her nose, and then meandered back to the table. The men had gone to the bunkhouse, and Rand sat in his rocking chair near the lamp with his Bible on his lap.

Opal sat on the stool at his feet. “Will we make it?”

“Are you asking if we’ll be leaving like so many of the others?”

“Guess I am.”

He shook his head. “No. We’ll stay. The grass will come back, the cows will have calves again; our bull might be one of my better investments. We may not have any money coming in to speak of, but we will have food on the table and a roof over our heads. I imagine this will be the end of the abattoir, so we’ll go back to shipping cattle to Chicago on the train. Shame de Mores is going to lose it all. He had good ideas.”

“And the horses?”

“We’ll have to wait and see.” He shook his head slightly. “I’m afraid there won’t be many to train and fewer to buy.”

“I figured that.”

“I don’t want you out riding the range.”

Opal stared down at her boots. While the mud was drying somewhat, she still managed to find some to slop in. When she looked up at Rand, he shook his head. A sigh escaped the clamp her teeth had on her lip.

“Besides, Bay isn’t strong enough.”

“I could ride one of the team.”

Again Rand shook his head. “Opal, you don’t need to see the carnage. I heard you crying in the night.”

She made a face and stared off to the pines on the ridge south of the house. She’d awakened to the sound of sobbing and then realized it was her sobs. The clouds that stood on her shoulders pressed her into the ground, wore black linings with no touch of light or silver, ever since she’d started toward Pearl’s and seen the heap of decaying cattle carcasses that half filled the draw, their long horns locked among the tree branches, their bloated bodies with the hides sloughing way. The smell made her gag, and the sight of buzzards ripping at the bodies was branded on her inner eyes. Instead of going on, she’d turned and come home, still white and green from throwing up when the wind wrapped the smell around her and wouldn’t let loose.

“I’m not doing my share, and with Linc gone…”

“What do you think we’re doing?” Rand frowned.

She half shrugged.

“In the last two days we’ve pulled three live animals out of the mud, rounded up ten more that might not make it. Thanks be to God that the grass is growing, but it can’t come up fast enough. We’ve stripped the trees of branches, the sagebrush is grazed down to the ground, and…” He spun around at the thunderclap that rocked their ears. A roar like ten freight trains bearing down on them made him mount up and ride back around the barn. The river ice was breaking up.

“Get back to the house!”

She could barely hear his shout over the roaring and grinding. She raced up the slight rise and, once beyond the barn, looked back to see the iced-over river bucking and surging with huge chunks of ice piling, then tilting and disappearing under the surge. Dead cattle floated on the ice, spun in the frothing water, flipped up, and went under. Water covered the ice along the shore and flowed out onto the bottom land, splintering trees, always with the roar, be it of agony or a cry for freedom from winter’s solid lock.

Rand nudged his horse to a gallop to herd the cattle in the bottom away from the flooding water.

Opal stood watching, unaware of the tears pouring down her cheeks. All that death now choking the river that usually brought life. Most years the spring breakup was a celebration, but this year’s was an ear-pounding dirge. She turned at the hand on her shoulder. Ruby stood just behind her, Per on her hip and leaning against her shoulder.

Together, tears streaming down their cheeks, arms around each other’s waists, the sisters held each other up.

“‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord.”’ Ruby muttered the verse over and over until Opal wanted to clap her hands over her ears and scream at her to stop.

“If He loves us so much, why does He keep taking away?” The cry wrenched from her heart, leaving a gaping hole.

“No matter what, He is right here with us. He promised, and our Lord God never breaks a promise.” Ruby rocked her son, who had started to whimper, a small cry turning into the cough that had never left him. “‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me….”’

The valley of death. The ridges of death and a prairie that stank of death to high heaven. Opal reached over to take Per. “I’ll get his medicine.” What she really wanted to do was start running and not stop until there was clean air, clean grass with cattle grazing, and clean rivers flowing with spring runoff, not winter death and coughing children with runny noses.

Maybe Atticus chose the wiser move by heading west. Surely a place where the winters weren’t so terrible was better than here in the Little Missouri River Valley. Whatever had she seen in the badlands anyway?

CHAPTER NINETEEN