Bittersweet (33 page)

Sarah threaded her arm through Karl’s and rested her head on his shoulder. He started to pull away. “Liam and Beaner are playing cards upstairs,” Sarah said. “They won’t be down again tonight.”

He let her stay. “You’re shaking.” He put his hand over hers. “Anyone would think you had gone up against a bobcat, not a little boy.”

Sarah laughed and pressed his hand to her heart. “My heart’s jumping like a rabbit’s. Feel.”

He pulled her to him, kissing her upturned face, her forehead, her nose, her parted lips. Her breath escaped in a sigh and he held her close.

“I want you with me tonight,” Sarah said.

“I want to stay, but we have guests. No eyes for a hundred miles, remember. Dizable & Denning could cancel the lease on moral grounds if they wanted to—the widow Ebbitt living in sin with the hired man.”

“Damn them!” Sarah muttered.

“Who?”

“Everybody.”

He kissed Sarah again, and suddenly it was Karl who was trembling. He held her away from him. “I’d best go to the barn before I forget I’m a gentleman.” Sarah put out her hand but he was already down the steps.

SUMMER BLEW BY, HOT, DRY, AND WINDY. EVERY DAY THE WIND CAME
up around noon and blew until sundown. Matthew was used to the humidity of Pennsylvania summers, and his nose and lips dried until they cracked and bled.

Two of Sarah’s chickens vanished one night in July. A talon and a handful of bloody feathers were discovered behind the sacks of barley in the barn several days later. Circumstances hinted at the possible guilt of Moss Face, but by tacit consent the hints were ignored.

On an evening in August when there were no customers at the stop and Karl and Sarah were playing cribbage on the porch, Matthew amusing himself with a wad of paper and the dog, a herd of deer came to drink at the spring. Entranced, the three of them stopped to watch. Mule deer, their great long ears turning to catch any sound of danger, their small heads held high and still, gathered around the watering trough below the spring and drank. Moss Face crept forward on his belly, a low hunting growl reverberating in his chest, but Karl sealed his muzzle with one hand and held him prisoner.

For a long time the deer drank and grazed; the light went from the sky, and the first stars of evening appeared over the mountains before they started away. Moving in twos and threes they headed
down across the meadow, bunched their muscled haunches, and flew effortlessly over the fence. There was no sound, no thudding of hooves, as the animals came to earth and trotted off into the purple shadow of the sage.

The cards lay forgotten, and with a quiet good night, Karl and Sarah put the boy to bed and slipped off, hand in hand, to share the magic.

Business was good, there was money saved, and at the end of summer Karl made the trip to Standish to buy cattle and a saddle horse. Fifteen head—a humble beginning, he said, but a beginning. Karl had never herded cattle and had to hire two cowhands to bring them back to Round Hole. For so few head there was grazing nearby, but when the herd grew, as Karl and Sarah hoped, they would have to range for miles. It would take a hundred acres of the Smoke Creek Desert to support one cow.

In September the nights grew colder, and though it often reached eighty degrees during the day, there was usually frost on the meadow in the morning, and the air was crisp and buoyant. Karl and Sarah shared the task of giving Matthew lessons in the evenings from Imogene’s books.

Matthew missed his aunts and his grandmother but accepted his new life with a natural resiliency and formed a fast friendship with Moss Face. Sarah forbade Matthew to sleep with him on general principles, but late one night when she couldn’t sleep, she got up and went to the kitchen to get something to eat. She found that Matthew had deserted the warmth of his bed and lay curled up on the kitchen floor with his dog. Sarah carried him back to bed, and thereafter Moss Face slept with the boy.

Sarah poured coffee into a thick white mug, the aroma filling the warm kitchen. “Sun’s coming up,” Karl observed. Red fingers probed over the eastern horizon and squares of rosy light appeared on the wall behind the table as dawn reached Round Hole. Matthew made shadow rabbits with his fingers and tried to persuade Moss Face to bark at them. Ignoring his young master, the coyote retreated under the table, leery of being banished from the kitchen. Sarah poured another mug half-full and filled it the rest of the way with milk and a tablespoon of sugar for her son.

“How many, Matt?” Karl asked.

“Twelve,” came the reply.

“He won’t eat twelve, Karl. Make him six.” Sarah got out of the way as Karl spooned batter onto the griddle. “Was it too cold in the tackroom?”

“Not too cold. I built a fire, and with the extra blankets I’m warm enough.”

“If it gets too cold—”

“Sarah, I can eat twelve.” Tired of shadows that couldn’t elicit a bar, Matthew concerned himself with breakfast.

“Can you count to twelve by twos?” Sarah said to divert him.

As he was laboring past six, the sound of hoofbeats distracted them. A lone rider on a mud-caked draft horse trotted up the road from the direction of Pyramid Lake. Frost glittered on the ground, and the clopping of shod hooves on the frozen earth rang loud. The rider was bundled in the heavy woolen overcoat and cloth cap of a farmer, and his mount was better suited to pulling a plow than bearing a horseman.

“Better put on some more bacon, Sarah. I’ll go bring the poor sod in out of the cold.” Karl handed her the spatula and took his jacket from the hook outside the door.

“We’ll bring the poor sod out of the cold,” Matthew echoed and, aping Karl’s movements, he too got down his coat.

“Watch yourself,” Sarah warned mildly. “There’ll be no ‘poor sod’ in front of our guest.”

Griddle cakes were on the stove and more were in the oven, keeping warm when they returned. The newcomer introduced himself as Loony Wells, late from Virginia, Oregon-bound. Mr. Wells was overweight but hard-muscled, with a tired, weathered face. He, his wife, and two daughters had pulled their wagon off the road to camp by Pyramid Lake. He’d rolled the wagon over a sinkhole and mud had claimed it up to the axles. During the night the mud had frozen iron-hard.

After breakfast, Karl harnessed his team and two horses belonging to Wells Fargo, and headed back toward the lake with Mr. Wells.

By the time the breakfast dishes were washed and the chickens fed, the day began to warm up. Sarah went humming about her morning chores; she carried herself with a firm step and matronly calmness. Since she had come to the desert, Sarah’s delicate good looks had roughened a little, though she was meticulous about wearing her bonnet. Her face had fleshed out and her back and arms
had grown stronger. Four hands were left to do the work of six, and the chores around the house and yard had fallen to her.

The sun gathered strength as it climbed, burning mist off the pond. Matthew perched on the railing around the spring, watching a pair of mallards resting on their southward journey. Sunlight caught the boy’s hair and clear skin. He was as agile as a monkey. Sarah watched him playing along the rail, his mind on the bright water birds, and pressed her hand over her heart, smiling.

“Matthew,” she called, “come help me with the upstairs laundry.”

“It’s not Tuesday, Sarah.” The ducks took flight, running first across the water, leaving momentary tracks on the glassy surface.

“It’s Tuesday. All day.”

Lost in the face of logic, Matthew jumped from the railing and ran before her into the house, bounding up the stairs two by two. Together they pulled the sheets from the cots and wrestled the bedding out of the windows to air.

It was early afternoon before the wash was done and ready to be hung out to dry. A long rope was strung taut between two T-shaped uprights planted in the backyard. Sarah draped a sheet over the line, holding clothespins in her mouth. In the distance a plume of dust announced the day’s first freightwagon. The desert would dry the sheets long before the driver had any desire for bed. She finished hanging the wash and automatically scanned the yard for Matthew. He’d been quiet too long. He was settled by a corner of the stable, fashioning an intricate harness for his dog out of scraps of leather. She left him to his task and went indoors to start supper preparations.

Through the kitchen window she watched the wagon grow larger and finally take shape within its cocoon of dust. Over the months she’d come to recognize most of the teams and wagons that traveled the route through Round Hole. This was a new one: six horses, the lead team a mottled pair of browns, the others colorless with alkali. The wagon was loaded with wooden crates,
BERTH-FARMINGTON FARM EQUIPMENT
stenciled on the sides in black. The load was heavy, and the tired animals strained in the harness. As she watched, the wind changed and the dust blew out behind the freighter. All the horses threw up their heads at once, their ears suddenly forward, nostrils wide. The scent of water imbued them with new life, and the wagon came on at an accelerated pace.

Three hundred yards from the barn, the horses broke into an uneven trot. In an instant the driver was on his feet, the lines curled through his hands, leaning back on the reins and shouting. Sarah dropped her paring knife and ran outdoors, a half-peeled potato clutched in her hand.

Matthew had left the stable and was playing down by the spring, the soft blue of his shirt barely visible above the weeds. Oblivious to everything, he poked twigs into the ground, making tepees for his growing encampment of Paiutes.

“Whoa, Goddamn you, whoa!” The driver’s voice rasped over the jangle of harness and the pounding hooves. The equipment was not made to race, and pinched the horses to bleeding. Already mad with thirst, the tearing of the furnishings drove them to frenzy, and dragging the overloaded wagon behind them, the wood groaning as if it would break, they turned for the spring.

Pale under sun-browned skin, the young man pulled on the lines with all his strength, attempting to turn the runaways. Boxes shook loose and several fell, bouncing end over end until the slats broke and machine parts scattered over the road.

“Matthew!” Sarah screamed. The dark head popped above the grass, followed immediately by the pointed hairy face of his constant companion. Matthew saw the onrushing horses and froze. The driver had fallen to one knee in front of the seat, the leads wrapped around his hands. He held on with dogged fury, fighting the six horses. Foam flecked the animals’ hides, the lather churning the dust to mud on their flanks, and flew from them like dirty snow.

“Matthew, run!” Sarah cried, and sprinted across the yard toward the spring, on a collision course with the oncoming horses. Quick as a cat, the boy scrambled under the railing and lit out for the barn, Moss Face close on his heels.

“Get back!” the driver yelled at Sarah as the horses cut between her and her son. In an impotent rage she hurled the potato. It struck the near horse above the eye, but the beast took no notice. Sarah fell back as the horses plunged through the railing she and Imogene had built. Two-by-fours splintered under the impact as the lead team, driven by the smell of water and the team behind, plunged into the spring. They were dragged down, thrashing in the traces, the water whipped white by lashing hooves. The screams of the animals mingled with the desperate cries of the driver as he tried to pull the four remaining horses to a stop. Thirst, the momentum of
the overloaded wagon, and the pull of the animals already floundering in the spring combined to drag the next two horses over the bank. Wild-eyed, they lashed out with their hooves against the draw of the bottomless spring. The panicked blows fell on their fellows, and the water reddened with blood. Lost, the last horses fell to their knees and were pulled in. The wagon followed, the rear wheels gouging the grass from the bank. Buoyed up by trapped air, the wagon floated for a moment, poised on the roiling water, then the right rear corner started down. The driver struggled to his feet, untangled the leads from his hands, and threw himself as far from the sinking freighter as he could.

Sarah caught sight of Matthew, staring round-eyed from a safe perch on the paddock fence. “Rope!” she cried. He understood immediately and hit the ground running.

Pulled under by its own weight, the freighter looked as though the dark water were sucking it down. Within a minute it was submerged, but for the seat and the front wheels upended to the sky. Frantic, the horses fought its weight.

A rope draped around his neck like an ox yoke, Matthew ran to his mother’s side. She stood as near the edge of the spring as she dared, her eyes riveted on the floundering man. “Good boy,” she said. Lifting the coils from his neck, she wound one end of the rope a half-dozen times around one of the posts that had taken root and sprouted. “Here!” She handed the short end to her son. “Hold tight, don’t let it unwind!” So saying, she tossed the coil into the spring. The driver caught hold and began pulling himself to safety. As he grabbed at the reeds, a slashing hoof struck his temple and shoulder a glancing blow, and Sarah saw his hands relax on the life line.

The water curled in on itself like a wounded snake, and the wagon was gone from sight. Dark, silent shapes under the water, four horses struggled. Only the heads of the lead team, mouths squared with terror, breath coming in high-pitched screams, remained above the surface. Then they, too, were silenced and a vortex formed as the water was drawn down after them. The rope went slack and Sarah saw that the driver was sliding back into it.

She looped the rope once and slipped it over her head and down to girdle her waist. “Hold tight, Matthew, Momma’s going in.” She scrambled down the treacherous bank into the water, and shoved herself from the safety of the reeds to grab the drowning man by
the hair. Together they went under. As the water was closing around her, Matthew cried, “Hold him, Momma! Hold him!”

With all her strength she kicked against her sodden skirts, kicked her tiny booted feet against the depths of the spring, her fingers twined in the young man’s hair. Her head broke clear of the water for an instant. His face shining, confident, and yet afraid, Matthew held his post by the cottonwood, gripping the rope with all his might. Sarah pulled herself and her burden toward that shining face. The reeds were around her and the bank against her shoulder, but still she held on to the rope, unable to pull herself free of the spring. The freight driver was clasped to her breast like a lover. She gasped for breath.

“Momma!” Matthew called.

“Don’t let go, honey!” Sarah said when she could find air. “Hold on tight.” The man in her arms was coming around. He threw his head back and fought to free himself. “Stop it!” she begged. Her fingers slipped on the rope, burning, and her chin slid below the water. He clawed, trying to drag himself out of the water over her. Desperate, she sunk her teeth into his shoulder. He roared with the sudden pain, and the panic cleared from his eyes.