Bittersweet (26 page)

Noisy held the horses in a hard grip, shouting soothing words at the top of his voice until Mac could get around to the lead team to hold their heads. The animals had smelled water several miles out and were frantic to drink.

A small man appeared from the murk of the stables and hurried across the yard to help with the unharnessing. Noisy Dave climbed down from the box and pounded his thighs with the flats of his hands. “Long haul, that,” he boomed, “but we brought you some passengers. I don’t know if you can rightly charge them, Van. It’s the folks took over your lease.” Noisy called through the coach window to Imogene and Sarah, “This is Beau Van Fleet.”

The man’s face had lit up when the lease was mentioned, and he ran halfway to the house. “Elmira!” he shouted in a high, boyish voice. “Come on out, it’s the folks took over the lease.” He laughed. “You hear me, pet?”

A hard-faced woman, all angles, stepped out on the porch, half-hidden in the gloom of the veranda. “Well, it’s none too soon for me,” she called back, and hurried down the steps to meet them. In her eagerness she pulled Sarah bodily from the mudwagon and bustled her and Imogene into the house.

Several freightwagon drivers were eating supper; they sat at a bar that ran half the length of the room. At the far end was a large stone fireplace with a varnished wooden mantle. A rattlesnake skin
was stretched on the stone, the gray and brown diamonds shimmering in the lamplight. Several tables, mismatched and without cloths, were set between the bar and a row of windows overlooking the coach yard. Near the fireplace a motley assortment of comfortable chairs were scattered about. The ceiling was low and unpainted, of the same planking as the floor. The walls had been papered, but it was peeling in several places and faded wherever the direct light of the sun hit it.

When Imogene and Sarah were ushered in, herded like ducks before the nonstop quacking of Mrs. Van Fleet, the men paused in their silent shoveling to glance at the newcomers. Tired beyond talk, dusty and bedraggled, Sarah and Imogene let their garrulous hostess take them where she would. After several indecisions and shufflings of chairs, she seated them at a table near a window.

“There. Got you a window seat.” She laughed nervously, an exhalation of air through pinched nostrils. “Not that there’s anything to see. You sit tight here, rest yourselves. Can I get you a little something?”

Imogene looked to Sarah; she was staring out over the baked earth. The forbidding wall of mountains beyond inked a ragged black edge to the translucent silver of the late-evening sky. The moon, rising, shone warm and golden between two peaks.

“Sarah?” Imogene lightly touched her arm.

Sarah shook her head.

“Just water for now,” Imogene said to Mrs. Van Fleet. “We’re still a little unsettled from the ride.”

Elmira hovered near them a moment more, patting the chairbacks and making agitated chirping sounds as though afraid they would flee if left to themselves. Finally she left them alone. “These’re the folks come to take over the lease,” she said as she passed the men at the bar. The leather-faced diners looked curiously at the two women. Sarah and Imogene pretended not to notice.

“Hell of a place to bring your womenfolk, if you ask me,” a short, thick-necked man grunted.

“Nobody asked you, Lyle.” The scrutiny over, the men went back to their suppers.

Imogene pulled off her gloves and reached across the table to take Sarah’s hand.

The moon cleared the mountains, bathing the desert with soft
light. In the courtyard, men moved about at their chores, black shadows in the moonlight.

“There’s just nothing,” Sarah whispered, staring out the window.

Imogene pressed her fingers. “It will be all right, Sarah.”

“I know it will.” Sarah made herself smile and return the pressure of Imogene’s hand.

Mrs. Van Fleet returned with a glass of water in each hand, both dripping from being thrust under the pump. Sarah thanked her and drank thirstily. Before she had taken more than a swallow or two, she gagged and shoved the glass from her so abruptly the water slopped on the table. She hid her mouth with her handkerchief, coughing and dabbing at her eyes. Imogene picked the glass up before Elmira could retrieve it, and put it to her lips. She recoiled at the smell.

“Smells like rotten eggs, doesn’t it?” Elmira exhaled through her nose in a silent laugh. “Tastes like them, too. And the water isn’t half of it. Hon, I should’ve warned you, but I’ve got so used to it I sometimes forget. Beau says he’s got so he prefers it, but it still tastes like rotten eggs to me. Everything gets to tasting of it—coffee, tea, lemonade, even your baked goods. It’s the alkali in the water, they say. But it doesn’t seem to hurt you.”

As she mopped at the table with her apron, she poured out a stream of talk that allowed no time for reply. Sarah recovered herself and sat clutching her handkerchief. “Made me just choke,” the woman was saying, “but now I drink it right along with Beau. I’ve almost forgot what good water tastes like.”

“All the water tastes like this?” Imogene pointed an accusing finger at the half-empty glass.

Elmira looked from one to the other. “Oh my,” she murmured, “I go on too much. It’s not so bad, you won’t even taste it in a week or so. Sooner. You get used to it right off.” She turned to Sarah. “You okay, hon?”

Sarah nodded unconvincingly.

“If you could show us our rooms…” Imogene said with a tired smile and a gesture at her dust-stained traveling clothes.

Upstairs, two long low-ceilinged rooms, imperfectly hidden behind dingy curtains, opened off a small landing. Mrs. Van Fleet left them just outside the doorways. “On your right,” she said, and retreated down the stairs. Imogene raised the candle she’d been
handed;
WOMEN
was scrawled over one lintel in chalk,
MEN
over the other. She pushed aside the curtain on her right and held it until Sarah had passed through. Their bags were already piled in the middle of the room. Five cots thrust their feet out into the middle of the floor. Two of them were made up; stained mattresses, cotton breaking through the ticking, covered the others. The room was hot and airless. Several flies, mistaking the candle’s reflection for the last light of day, battered themselves against the glass in a last mindless attempt to reach it.

Imogene opened two of the windows and settled the curtain more modestly over the door.

“Where will we begin?” Sarah’s eyes swept over the dreary walls and bare wooden floor. Even in the cheery light of the candle flame, everything showed the same dull brown of the desert.

Imogene sighed and shook her head. “The first thing we are going to do is clean.”

MR. AND MRS. VAN FLEET REMAINED AT ROUND HOLE FOR THE
better part of a week, helping Imogene and Sarah learn the needs of the stop. Stages came through twice a week. The stage from Reno, usually driven by Noisy Dave with Mac as his swamper, traded passengers with Ross, the driver of the northbound coach that ran up through Buffalo Meadows and Deep Hole, through Eaglesville, Cedarville, and Lake City to Fort Bidwell. Passengers on the night stage stayed overnight at Round Hole, but the main bread-and-butter of the stop came from the constant traffic of wagons hauling freight; Round Hole was a regular stopping place on most of their routes.

With Beau Van Fleet’s help, Imogene renegotiated the agreements he had with the wagoners that supplied Round Hole. Food that couldn’t be raised or killed in the Smoke Creek Desert had to be brought in from Fish Springs Ranch to the south or Loyalton to the north, and all manufactured goods were ordered from Reno. Imogene, Sarah, and the illusory Mr. Ebbitt—who figured strongly in all the business discussions—were responsible for providing the transient livestock with hay and grain. It was brought in three-hundred-pound bales from Sierra Valley via Portola, a town over Beckworth Pass eighty miles southwest. Dizable & Denning leased the stop a wagon primarily for that purpose.

Mrs. Van Fleet grew visibly calmer as each day passed and Imogene showed no sign of condemning the Van Fleets to another prolonged stay in the desert by changing her mind. By the time Elmira and her husband left on the Sunday stage for Reno, she was actually good-tempered.

An hour after the Van Fleets departed on the Reno-bound stage, several three-hundred-pound feed bales were brought in by freight wagon from Sierra Valley and Sarah and Imogene started inn-keeping in earnest. They fed the driver and saw him on his way, set to work breaking down the bales and storing the loose hay.

Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the barn walls in golden stripes, and the air was warm with the scent of hay and horses. Imogene and Sarah worked in their shirtsleeves, with bibs and tuckers hastily fashioned from old bedsheets protecting their clothes. Dust motes danced to the desert’s silence in the still air.

Sarah lifted a forkful of hay and tossed it into the growing mound at the back of the barn. Straws sparkled like gold as they fell through the fractured light.

“Rumplestiltskin!” Imogene called as the straw turned to gold and spun to the floor.

Sarah laughed and suddenly threw aside her pitchfork. “Watch me, Imogene.” Running headlong, she dove into the hay. “Come on,” she cried, “oh, you whose father couldn’t abide leaf-diving.”

Imogene laughed self-consciously.

“Dive!” Sarah ordered. And, awkwardly at first, then gaining speed, Imogene ran for the pile of hay and flung herself on it. Sarah scrambled to the top, scratching straw down on Imogene. Grasping the rope tied over the beam, she began to shinny up as best her petticoats would allow. Halfway to the top, she let go and tumbled backward into the soft hay. Following her lead, Imogene climbed the wooden ladder affixed to the barn wall. Up near the high loading window, she called, “Look at me!” and hurled herself into space to fall fanny-first into the pile.

Scooping up double handfuls of hay, Sarah showered Imogene, keeping up the barrage until the older woman shoved half a mountain of straw down on her in retaliation. Sputtering, Sarah dug her way out only to be buried again as Imogene, at the top of the heap, yelled, “King of the mountain!” and kicked down hay. With renewed vigor, Sarah let out a roar and charged up the side of the
stack. She threw herself on Imogene and they rolled over and over until their hair fell free and their petticoats tangled.

“That,” Imogene laughed as she recovered her breath, “was all the childhood I have ever had. Thank you, Sarah.”

Sarah brushed the straw from Imogene’s face and kissed her eyelids. “My childhood is over,” she said. “I’m not a bit sorry.” She smiled into her old friend’s eyes and, with a fingertip, traced the line of Imogene’s mouth. “Lord, I think I’m going to like being a woman. You’ve always been my teacher; teach me to make love to you.”

Imogene arrested Sarah’s hand and held it. “Why now, Sarah?”

“God lost. We won.”

Imogene didn’t understand, but she answered the young woman’s smile. “We’ll learn together.”

Sarah touched her lips to her old friend’s, the sigh of her breath soft against Imogene’s cheek, and the schoolteacher felt the warm rain of Sarah’s tears. “My love,” she whispered, “what is it?”

Sarah laughed. “I think I’m melting. I have been in love with you since I was fifteen. You’ve peopled all my dreams. Your face, your dear beautiful face.” She kissed Imogene again and the strong arms folded around her. Lightheaded with the scent of Imogene’s hair and the cut hay, Sarah felt her heart lifting, light as a dry desert cloud.

Imogene felt as though she had finally reached home.

A sense of celebration claimed Imogene and Sarah as they moved their things from the women’s dormitory into the bedroom they would share.

Over the next week they cleaned every surface inside the stop, boiled every stitch of cloth—the curtains, the bedding, what tablecloths there were—and dusted and polished until the freight drivers retreated out of doors with their hastily prepared meals, grumbling that Round Hole wasn’t what it used to be.

Fresh meat was a problem; the freighters were a carnivorous lot, and beef and lamb were expensive. Beau Van Fleet had saved himself a great deal of money by hunting venison, rabbit, and occasionally duck, pheasant, or even squirrel. Nearly three-quarters of a large doe had been left when he and Mrs. Van Fleet departed. The haunch of meat hung thirty feet above the ground at night, away from the flies, like a macabre flag, and was buried in a cool earthen
pit lined with straw during the day. Mr. Van Fleet said the crust that formed over the flesh would keep the meat almost indefinitely if it was kept cool. Day by day the chunk of venison grew smaller. Finally, ten days after they’d taken over the stop, Imogene steeled herself to the task and took down the rifle she had purchased from the Van Fleets. In the cool of the evening, after they had eaten and seen to the needs of the one guest—a freighter from out of Salt Lake hauling cloth goods—Imogene and Sarah taught themselves to shoot.

The sun had almost set and the sharp smell of sage hung in the air. The road disappeared behind a ragged wall of scree twenty miles east. Above the mountains, the sky glowed sea green. About a hundred yards from the house, the fence that separated the meadow and the buildings from the desert was broken by a gate. Beyond, the world seemed more desolate and forbidding than the patch of ground they’d grown accustomed to, and they turned off the road just inside the fenceline.

The rifle was an old Henry Repeater; Mr. Van Fleet had shown them how to load it and fire it. With some difficulty, Imogene slid open the cartridge chamber and Sarah poked the bullets into the magazine. Fumbling one, she dropped it in the dirt and both women froze.

“It didn’t go off,” Sarah whispered.

Imogene picked it up gingerly, holding it between her thumb and forefinger. “It looks all right, but I don’t suppose we’d better use it, it may be damaged inside.” She set it gently on the ground at a little distance from them.

With infinite care, Sarah slipped two more bullets into the rifle. “No more will go in,” she breathed.

“Do you think we should close it?” Imogene asked.

“I think Mr. Van Fleet said to close it.”

“Sarah, stop whispering, it’s making me nervous,” Imogene responded.

Imogene choked the barrel with her thumb and middle finger and pointed it away. For a minute or two they simply stood, Sarah watching, Imogene holding, growing used to the idea.

Imogene took a deep breath. “All right. What shall I shoot at?”

“I could put a rock on a fencepost,” Sarah suggested.

“Let me just try to hit the post first.” Imogene pulled up the rifle and leaned her cheek against the stock.

“You’re supposed to hold it tight to your shoulder,” Sarah said.

The schoolteacher pulled the Henry tight to her shoulder.

“And sight with both eyes. Open.”

“I can’t see with both eyes open.”

“Well, you’re supposed to.”

Imogene opened both eyes.

“Squeeze. Don’t jerk,” Sarah warned.

Imogene glanced at Sarah over the rifle stock.

“Mr. Van Fleet said.” Sarah smiled sheepishly.

Imogene laughed. “All right. Squeeze. Here we go.” The rifle kicked a little but she’d kept it snug against her shoulder and the recoil didn’t hurt. The fencepost, twenty feet away, was unharmed, but a tiny burst of dirt beyond showed she hadn’t been far wide of the mark. After several more tries they were rewarded with a satisfying
thwack
as a bullet finally struck home.

“Could I try?” Sarah asked.

Imogene handed over the rifle. Half a dozen rounds were expended into the dirt before Sarah got the feel of it, then she, too, managed to hit the post. It was growing too dark to see, and they gave up their target practice for that night.

After that, most evenings found them out by the eastern fence. Imogene fired with steady dependability; the weapon was a tool and she worked with it doggedly until she had mastered it. Sarah either shot brilliantly, hitting everything she aimed at, or she was unable to hit anything and would quit, frustrated, after a few rounds.

Finally the deer carcass that the Van Fleets had left was gone, and the freight drivers began to grumble for red meat. So, on a hot afternoon when there was no one around, Imogene took down the rifle, Sarah filled her apron pockets with cartridges, and they went hunting rabbits. The smell of baked earth rose from the dust under their feet, and the sun burned through the high desert atmosphere. Sarah folded the scoop of her bonnet forward until the brim flopped on both sides of her face like outsized blinkers.

“I wish I’d worn gloves. This sun’ll tan you like leather faster than the Pennsylvania sun. Back home I could stay out half a day sometimes and not show pink at all. If you don’t take care, Imogene, you’ll ruin your complexion. You’re already brown.”

“I know,” Imogene replied. “I’ve never given my complexion much thought.”

“It’s better brown, I think.” Sarah looked at Imogene critically and rattled the bullets in her pocket. “Yup, I like the way you look.”

“As long as you like my face, I will be satisfied with it.” Pleased, Imogene blushed a little under her tan.

“Now you are truly beautiful,” Sarah said. Forgetting she had a fistful of bullets, she threw her arms around Imogene’s neck and kissed her soundly.

“Sarah.” Imogene put the young woman from her. “We must always be careful.”

“This is the West—the middle of the desert. Who would care? Who would see?”

“Once burned, twice shy, they say, and I have been burned twice. The third time might be at the stake.” Imogene smiled. “I’m overanxious. You may kiss me as long as there are no alien eyes within a hundred miles.”

Sarah kissed her again.

This time Imogene kissed back. “I like this neighborhood,” she said.

A fat cottontail, slow with the heat, hopped ahead of them, his white fluffy tail catching their attention. Oblivious of the huntresses, the bunny grazed in the shade of a sage bush.

Sarah pointed, but Imogene had already seen it. Silently she held the rifle out and indicated Sarah’s apron pockets. Sarah counted out the cartridges and dropped them into the rifle. They always loaded the rifle together as they had the first time they’d fired it.

Imogene pumped a bullet into the chamber. At the click of metal on metal the rabbit ceased its eating and looked up at them. Slowly, Imogene pulled the gun to her shoulder. The rabbit took fright at the movement and darted into the road. Galvanized by the flight of her quarry, Imogene fired. The bullet struck the ground behind and a hundred feet beyond the rabbit, plowing a puff of dirt into the air. The rabbit scampered to safety in the high reeds along the irrigation ditch at the edge of the meadow. Sarah ran up the embankment and looked over the fence, her eyes raking the acres of grass.

“It got away,” she said accusingly. “You didn’t leave both eyes open.”

“I don’t think I left
either
eye open. I wasn’t even close.”

“Let me.” Sarah bounded down the slope and took the rifle.

“Do you think you can do better?”

Sarah just laughed and pumped a cartridge into the chamber.

“My, it’s exciting,” Imogene said.

“It’s real, not just a target.”

“Be careful, you’ve got a bullet ready.”

“I know,” Sarah replied with a race of annoyance. “It’ll be faster.”

A second rabbit came into view as she spoke, not fifteen feet from where the first one had been grazing. Sarah sucked in her breath, stealthily pulled the rifle up, sighted down the barrel, and squeezed the trigger. The gun barked and the rabbit toppled onto its side in the dirt.

“I got him!” she cried, and Imogene clapped her hands. They ran down the roadway. Sarah reached the rabbit first and stopped just short of it. The bunny lay on its side, panting shallowly, its open eyes covered over by a milky membrane. Its lips were pulled back from its teeth and a ribbon of tongue showed pink between the blunt incisors. Blood ran from a neat round hole in the little animal’s side, pulsing out with the rapid beating of its heart. Sarah fell to her knees with a cry. Frightened by the sound, the cottontail kicked its hind feet, the blood gushed out suddenly, and it was still.