Crossings (17 page)

She faced him. “I'm not little.”

“No, ma'am,” he assured. “My mistake. But you
don't have to worry about McAllister making the same one.”

That remark brought a gleam to her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I saw him looking at you. He knows who you really are, and Helena can't do a damn thing about that no matter how hard she tries.” Carrigan nudged Obsi with his bare toes. “Get up, dog. It's time to turn in.” Then to Emilie. “McAllister's a man I wouldn't mind knowing. 'Night.”

He left Emilie in the lantern-lit kitchen to ponder his words. The climb upstairs tested his waning endurance. After closing the door to his bedroom, he dragged his feet to the bed and lowered himself onto the mattress edge with a tight-lipped oath. His clothing fell from his lap to the floor.

“To hell with it,” he muttered, not bothering to even kick them aside.

He would have lain down, but there was a dove-gray hat on the pillowslip. When he picked it up, buckskin thongs dangled from the underside. They were anchored through a jet glass bead.

Helena.

He didn't know what to make of a considerate woman, and he found himself in debt to her. Again. Pride was one of his vices, but he supposed, like laudanum, in a small dose he could swallow some.

Tonight he'd touched his lips to hers because one kiss was better than any words he could have said. Respect for her stamina had provoked him into kissing her. She'd all but consented with the half-moon look in her eyes when their fingers had touched, so he'd obliged because there was nothing more he wanted to do at the moment. He was in need of a woman to take his mind off aches and pains before hunkering into a tub full of relaxation.

Examining the hat under the natural light of the moon, he mused that only one other woman had filled
his thoughts the way Helena did. Jenny. But it was still too hard for him to think about his first wife.

Carrigan put his forefinger in the crown and twirled the brim. Hats were a personal thing, but this one appealed to his taste and suited him fine. He tried it on.

The brim was stiff and flat as a cow pie, the band not feeling right around his wet hair. But after a few weeks, the fit would be better. A hat's wearability improved with age like a vintage wine, its beauty and service never fading in the owner's eyes. When this one was stained with his sweat, disreputable in appearance, and kneaded into diverse shapes, Carrigan would have a constant to remind him of Helena.

Lying down with his gun at his side, he pushed the brim over his eyes. Obsi put his chin on Carrigan's belly and waited for his master to stroke his ears. On a tired sigh, Carrigan complied until he began to drift off.

He slept with the scent of store-bought newness filling his nose.

8

O
ver the next four days, Helena worked side by side with Carrigan. There were mornings and afternoons when she had to help Emilie and Ignacia in the store or with kitchen chores, or she had to look over the ledgers and pay out accounts, but she merely went through the motions. Her mind was on the mailbags, managing the horses, keeping the equipment in good order, and the news that the Paiutes had held a council at Pyramid Lake in which they'd recited their grievances and were in favor of war. Shortly thereafter, a small party of warriors had attacked Williams Station, killing two of the operators.

The latter had her greatly concerned because the winter had been a difficult one for the local Washoe Indians. As scanty as the Paiutes' supplies were, she feared they would raid more of the outlying stations for food. She'd received a dispatch from the Pony Express firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell initiating a policy to supply the Indians with rations should they approach a station, not only to keep them friendly but as an act of humanity.

Genoa was a pretty hurrah town with a growing population. She doubted the Paiutes would declare war on a settlement that couldn't be easily overtaken. Gray's stockyard was merely a swing station—one in which the riders made horse changes and nothing more. But the home stations where the riders finished their runs were spread out in the open-range counties across the territory. They would be prime targets, as the smaller number of occupants would be poorly protected.

Helena tried to keep her anxiety at bay, focusing on the turn of events in her own life. With Carrigan's assistance, the station was functioning as smoothly as it had been when her father was overseeing its management.

While she and Carrigan handled the Express ponies and kept up general maintenance of the stockade, Carrigan reserved his speech, expressions, and mannerism for moments in which they would have the most impact. The longer she was around him, the more she picked up on the idiosyncracies of his uncommunicative nature. His inclination for few words was born from years of having no one to talk to.

His tough mask would crack on occasion to display an unexpected smile and laugh. When a black and white magpie stole food from Obsi's plate, Obsi tried to climb the old cottonwood to chase the bird. Carrigan's baritone laugh seemed to make the sunshine feel warmer, and Helena had had to pause from feeding the chickens to relish the sound. The other incident that stuck out in her mind was when Carrigan had come to the breakfast table the morning after she'd left the hat on his pillow. He'd eased his mouth into a fragment of a smile to show his thanks.

For her part, their fraudulent marriage was increasingly becoming a troublesome one. Each night she would hear Carrigan moving in the room next to hers. Rather than sleep being a welcome relief, she
dreamed of Carrigan. Things she would never admit to herself would surface in slumber. She would relive his kisses, and invent others in vain fancy. Upon waking, she'd brush the hair from her eyes, sit upright in bed, and vow to put him out of her head. Even if the marriage were real, she could never give him the gift a wife bestows on her husband. Only a fool would think she could make him happy.

And she was feeling foolish lately.

She'd begun to worry overmuch about her appearance, taking care to wear a clean apron and keep her shoes polished. Her hair was in place at all times, even when she was mucking the stalls. Hands that were usually chapped from scrub water were given special treatments of rose glycerin.

Helena didn't like what she'd become, and she somewhat resented Carrigan for making her aware of being a woman again. If she could, she'd run away from herself. Just as she had when Kurt had died. But there was no place for her to go now. Genoa had become home, and she could no more leave it than she could her own skin.

On a Monday night, Esmeralda went into labor. Since Eliazer had sprained a muscle in his back earlier in the day while lifting saddles to the racks, the task of the mare's care fell to Helena. Normally Esmeralda was quite capable of foaling on her own and made it perfectly clear she preferred to be left alone. But her labor had been going on long after supper and nothing was happening. After examining her, Helena had no reason to suspect a breech foal, so she decided to give Esmeralda another hour before revaluating her. Since the mare would prolong delivery if Helena kept a vigil by her side in the stall with a lantern, Helena chose to wait on the haystack where she could be near without intruding.

The night was cool, but clear and bright. Snuggling into the rotund haystack on its leeward side, Helena
breathed in the grassy scent and felt comforted. An eternal roof of quietness above garnered her stare. The stars reminded her of candle flames flickering to a radiant glow, then sputtering to a wick point of near nothingness. Unnumbered sparks of light shone down on her from the serene and silent space, and put Helena into a maudlin mood. Sorrow was beginning to win the battle inside her. She knew no cure for grief other than to be active and let time cleanse it away. But she was losing the race.

She missed her father so much, she imagined seeing his shadow next to hers. When she was younger, she used to sneak away from her mother and Emilie in their sewing circle to be with Father in the barn. He would tell her stories about the Old Country and his family while he rubbed the tack into supple leather. It was her father who taught her to load and shoot a Sharps rifle . . . her father who had taken her on fishing trips.

Helena brought her knees up and spread her skirt hem over her shoes. Her mother had always told her, out of suffering emerged the strongest souls. But that wasn't true. She was weak. And she was so lonely, she hurt.

A tear rolled from the corner of her eye, and she wiped the droplet away with her sleeve cuff. But another one followed. Then another. Until she was sobbing quietly. All the memories of her parents flooded her, and she couldn't stop the flow of grief from coming.

Helena yielded the weight of her conscious with a tearful release necessary for the elevation of her spirits. Time passed, as if the grains in an hourglass stood still. She mourned in her dark hiding spot where no one could witness her frailty.

Out of the night, Obsi trotted to Helena and sniffed her skirt with a sneeze. Startled, Helena sat straighter and quickly dashed the tears from her cheeks. Where
Obsi was, Carrigan wouldn't be far behind. And she didn't want him to see she'd been crying.

Cigarette smoke drifted to her nose as the outline of a dark figure and a red glow approached. Carrigan stood over her like a towering spruce. She wasn't really surprised to see him roaming about. He didn't sleep much either. Instead, he prowled the confines of his room, and sometimes the yard, smoking half the night.

Carrigan lowered himself to his heels. “You ever pull a foal out before?”

“Once,” she replied as he sat back into the hay, somewhat dismayed that he'd decided to join her. The crisp rustling that resulted from his crushing weight sent delicious gooseflesh up her arms. “My father made me. My mother watched and threw up.”

“The West is hard on women,” Carrigan remarked, grinding his smoke beneath his boot sole. “Maybe your mother wasn't made for it.”

Quietly Helena replied, “She wasn't.”

Carrigan grew silent, not prodding her for details. Perhaps his lack of pressure was what made her want to tell him. “My mother never made it to Genoa. She died of diphtheria in Nebraska Territory on the crossing from Pennsylvania.” Helena pictured the monument Father had staked into the hard prairie earth, made from the wood of Mother's prized organ. They'd piled flat stones on the mound to keep the wolves away. As the Conestoga rolled on without Mother, the forlorn marker and mutilated remains of the lacquered instrument were a blur in Helena's tear-filled vision.

It was the loneliest land for a grave.

No one understood the devastation Helena had felt leaving her mother there with the scattered skeletons of animals. Not even Father, who'd never spoken a word of love to his wife, but had broken down and wept for forgiveness at her burial site because he'd
made her go on a journey she hadn't wanted to. That night he drank himself into a great state of inebriation.

Were it not for Helena, her mother would have refused to leave New Providence. But Helena had done something that forced her mother into giving up the home that made her happy.

Mother had taken care of Helena when she'd needed her. But Helena, despite unfailing hours of effort and energy, hadn't been able to save her mother. Buffeted by the winds on the western trail, Johanna Gray's frail body broke. She'd been a woman of culture and refinement, but the travel made her hollow-eyed, tired and discouraged. Helena would never forget the look in her mother's eyes when they first saw the plains of endless grass. Without a word, she stood very still and looked slowly around her. Then something within her seemed to give way, and she sank upon the ground. She buried her face in her hands and sat that way for a long moment without moving or speaking. Never before had Helena seen her mother give way to despair.

Nine days later, they buried her.

Helena didn't want to think about her mother anymore. Instead, she asked Carrigan, “Where are your mother and sister?”