Faithful (31 page)

THE NEXT MORNING, PAPA AND I SET OUT ON A DAY THAT promised to be warm and clear. Our driver, Bill, was a pleasant, older man who’d worked in the Park for years. He drove a small wagon, pulled by two sorrels, a mare and a gelding, all our goods loaded carefully in the bed.

“This is the route we’ll take,” Papa said as we ate breakfast. He pointed to a thin line on the map, and I saw the names Dunraven and Mount Washburn. There were no true roads.

“I’ll see you in a week.” Mrs. Gale smiled. “Your first commission.” She patted me on the cheek. I hugged her tight.

I did not see Kula; no one in the hotel knew where she’d gone.

I was relieved when our wagon pulled away from the canyon. For days I’d felt as if the falls were sucking me into the foaming green water of the river below. Now we rode through peaceful woods, the tall pines towering above us. The track climbed into higher and higher country. Alpine buttercups nodded yellow, mountain gentian, its bells the deepest blue, popped from stone outcrops, and tiny, pink elephant flower, on its dense spike, waved in the slightest breeze.

“The pass ’n the mountain are up ahead,” said Bill.

We rounded a bend and I gripped the side of the wagon. To our right, the meadow slipped away to a deep ravine. Above us rose Mount Washburn, its upper slopes rocky and open. The wind whipped through the wagon now that we were out of the woods, and Bill pulled the horses in to steady them. We climbed higher against the edge of the mountain. When we stopped for lunch, Papa and I rested in the sun, sheltering from the wind against the wheel.

By mid-afternoon, we’d circled the mountain to its north, and Bill suggested that we make camp. While the men set up the tents, I found a stream, and washed myself as best I could in the icy water. Then I sat on the edge of the meadow above the camp and watched the meadowlarks swoop and swing overhead. At dinner, the beans and salt pork tasted better than anything I’d eaten in the finest hotels.

“It’s the fresh air ’n exercise,” said Bill. “Make you hungrier ’n a one-eyed polecat.”

I lay in the dark in my tent and listened to the night sounds: the distant cry of a coyote, the screech of an owl, a high piercing woman-wail of what must be a mountain lion. Despite the rocks that drove points into my back, I slept, and when I woke in the morning, stiff, I heard the men stirring. I lay for a while with a smile on my face, wondering what Kitty would think of me now. I imagined Kitty sitting in this tent and laughed out loud at what I was sure would be vigorous complaining. I’d have to write to her and describe my privations.

I wondered whether Mama had spent many nights sleeping in such a primitive fashion. I suspected she had, and I felt both sympathy and admiration.

I wouldn’t have a proper bath in hot water for at least another seven days, but I didn’t care. The air smelled like frost, and there was a stiff breeze, so I pulled my hair back into a long braid rather than pin it up. We set out again, stopping along the way to take pictures. I tried to frame the shots, but began to have an understanding of the difficulty of depth perception. It was such a huge country.

Huge and extraordinary, and it filled me up with a raw longing, the kind I’d felt on rare evenings in Newport when I looked out across the ocean and watched the seals in joyful play.

We stopped at one vista when the bounce and creak of a wagon came floating up from the rutted road ahead. As the wagon emerged from the trees, my heart did a bounce of its own. Tom Rowland and his father drove toward us from the direction of Yancey’s camp. It seemed that no matter where I went in Yellowstone, there was Tom.

The men greeted one another. Tom strode over to where I stood with the camera. He stood so close that our arms brushed; my stomach fluttered. “Taking pictures on your own?” he asked.

“Yes.” I straightened. I kept seeing him with Kula. I looked up at him, wishing he’d put his hand on my shoulder as he had with her. “I have a job. Mrs. Gale had an accident. She asked me to fulfill her commission.” At least he seemed to show the same pleasure in seeing me as he had with her.

He raised his eyebrows in that familiar, quizzical way. “I heard about that.” From Kula, I was sure.

I stiffened and looked away lest my eyes betray my jealousy. “Oh! I guess the word got around.”

“I guess.” I didn’t want to think about Tom and Kula together anymore.

We stood in awkward silence. I looked at my hands, and quickly thrust them behind my back; my nails had dirt beneath them, and the backs of my hands were beginning to darken from the sun. And then I realized Tom wouldn’t care. Which I liked, enormously. Graybull would care. Edward would have. I needed to stop worrying about what Tom would think and be myself.

“Maggie’s having a last adventure before she returns to Newport to announce her engagement,” said Papa.

Tom turned to look at me with surprise. My heart turned to stone. I cringed that Papa had to plunge me right back into a reality I hated. “Really?” Tom asked. “Who’s the lucky fellow?”

“George Graybull,” Papa said.

Tom started, then looked away, chewing his lower lip. Was that disappointment I saw in his eyes? My heart melted, stone no more, then the blood pounded in my ears. “So, congratulations,” he said.

“Thanks.” I wanted to scream, “It’s not my choice!” I looked at the ground and scuffed my toe in the dirt. I heard Papa talking to Tom’s pa; then I heard Tom whisper to me.

“Are you happy?”

I looked up at him. He leaned toward me and I swam in his gray eyes. I shook my head, no. His smile grew like the sunrise over the Atlantic on a summer dawn.

“Good,” he said softly. “Good.”

I glanced at Papa. He was watching me carefully, no longer in conversation.

Tom said loudly, “Keep that camera handy. You’ll have tons of chances now to see animals in a new light.”

I returned, “You never know what can happen on a last adventure.”

“Ah! The unknown. Yellowstone is famous for its surprises.” His eyes met mine, and he was smiling, and I just about burst out laughing.

I tamped down the laugh. “I’m learning all about surprises. I’m learning that I want them in my life.”

“Really?” His eyes were shining now.

“I think the unexpected should be welcomed. Some people are beginning to think I’ve become almost impulsive.”

Tom grinned. Papa coughed.

I went on. “I think . . . I think it’s fine not to have everything you want and expect. Maybe life is richer when things don’t turn out as planned.” I folded my arms across my chest and stood up straight. The wind kicked up my skirt and strands of loose hair fluttered around my face, and I brushed the hair back with my fingers, letting Tom see my grimy hands. I smiled at him.

Tom turned to his father. “Dad—you wanted more samples from this area, didn’t you?” Tom looked at Papa. “I know the Tower region pretty well, if you need a hand.”

Papa surprised me by saying “I could use the company.”

“And we might see some wildlife,” Tom said. “I still haven’t seen a bear this season.” He paused and then said, with a sly grin, “Maybe Maggie can snap a photo of one for her fiancé. Before he snaps its head off.”

“Fine with me if you stay with the Bennets.” Jim Rowland tossed Tom a sample sack, then handed him a rock hammer. “I’ll be back in Canyon by nightfall. You can catch up with me next week.”

“An extra pair of hands will be most useful,” Papa said. “Tom can accompany Margaret while I’m working.”

My heart jumped—no, my whole soul leapt around as if it were newly born. I felt as if Tom knew me better than anyone on earth, that he understood me, even when I couldn’t fully speak my mind. We exchanged another smile, and my heart beat so hard I feared he could see it.

So much had changed in only a few days that I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a new world. And, for me, as always, the edge of anything was a terrifying place to be.

July 23–26, 1904

FOR SEVERAL DAYS TOM AND I CLIMBED UP AND DOWN the slopes of Mount Washburn. Tom collected rock samples, storing them in canvas bags in the back of the wagon. He showed me how he plotted the sample locations on the map. I followed him as he collected, photographing the rock outcrops and observing the intricate patterns made by layers of the rock he called rhyolite.

I took to sitting and listening to him, his lectures about the region’s geology; but my mind wasn’t on the rocks. I watched Tom, his every gesture. It was like watching a ballet. He would get so excited about some mineral, or something he saw in a rock face. Where I saw only striations, he saw continents, universes, the infinite. I focused on his face, lit from within. I felt on fire, too.

Papa, with Bill, traveled back along the road making notes about road conditions and improvements. I often found myself alone on a slope gazing over the view. The earth and sky seemed to expand so that I felt I could see far cities, the broad sweep of the Great Plains, distant blue-green oceans. We saw mountain goats that retreated on nimble feet to tottering rocks and then peered back at us with suspicion. I watched bald eagles sweep overhead, moving to heights where they became black dashes against the sky.

Mama might have walked these very slopes. I suspected she’d loved what she saw just as I did. I missed her so, even more, now that I knew she was truly gone.

Once, my eye was pulled across a deep ravine as something moved through the pine trees on the other side: a herd of elk. Some fifty or sixty snaked through the shadows beneath the pines, making their passage in total silence. I heard not a twig snap, not a snort of breath; I watched, enchanted, as the ghostly animals rounded the curve of the hill out of sight.

Tom gave me a spare sample book and I collected flowers, pressing them in the pages and making notes. My photographs took another turn to the detail I loved so much, as I focused on the smallest of blossoms: tiny dicentras—bleeding hearts—and edelweiss on the high rugged slopes.

I watched Tom when he didn’t know it, too. I admired his sure, deft manner on the slopes. I watched his long fingers, his unconscious habit of pushing his fingers through his hair. I felt as if I would lose something precious by losing him. I didn’t know if I’d lost him to Kula. I didn’t know if I was lost to George Graybull.

This time with Tom and his landscape was a dream-time and I wanted it to never end. But, of course, it did.

We broke camp after four days to head farther north. I packed the camera and the negatives, padding the cases between the canvas packs of food and lashing the tarp over the top.

“Maggie!” Tom came running toward me. His excitement made me smile.

“You look like you’ve found a pot of gold.”

“I have! Scat! And tracks—big ones! And a deer kill!”

“That doesn’t sound good,” I said, my smile fading. I did not consider this happy news.

“But it is! Big bear, from the look of it. Probably a grizzly.”

My hand tightened on the strap I held. A grizzly. “Where?” I wanted to be away from it.

“Just ahead. What a treat! If we stop up there”—he gestured up the road—“we can observe him when he comes back.” He looked at me. “It’s perfectly safe. As long as we keep our distance.”

“I have no interest in seeing a bear.” I pulled on the strap, tightening and tying. These were not the black bears being fed out behind the hotels. I remembered the night I was too close to a grizzly. It drew me yet it terrified me. It held an overwhelming mindless power, attractive and deadly. Mrs. Gale had said it: “You attract your talisman to you.” Well, I wanted none of that. “No, thank you.”

“No interest?” He sounded puzzled.

“None. I want to stay as far away as possible.” I had to pull the knot apart when I failed to do it right. My fingers fumbled and my patience was gone. It pained me that Tom didn’t understand the seductive pull that the bear had on me, its tantalizing malevolence. The fear rose in me like metal filings in my mouth. “I want nothing to do with bears!”

“But . . .” Tom leaned against the wagon to try to meet my eyes, that were firmly fixed for the moment on my poor knot-tying. “It’s what I want to do. I thought you understood.”

I turned to stare at him. Please, no. Just because it was important to
him
. He couldn’t see how I felt. My fear was that Tom was like every other man. That and my fear of the bear, my jealousy of Kula, my hateful position as Graybull’s prize suddenly were all mixed up. “It may be what you want to do, Tom Rowland, but what does that matter to me?”

He looked at me as if seeing me anew. “I thought . . . I thought you cared. About what I did. About what I want to do.”

“You presume too much,” I said, yanking the new knot tight. My mind’s eye focused on one thing, Tom with Kula, and I forgot entirely our last four days together. Some stupid irrational feeling rose in me and I spoke without thinking. “You and Kula,” I said, not knowing how to finish it.

The air was thick with tension. Then he broke the silence. “I was right. From the minute I met you, I knew it. You’re a snob.” I whirled to face him. But he mocked me. “You have a fancy fiancé now, and you’re taken with yourself.” There was something else in what he was saying. His eyes were on fire. Tom was jealous of Graybull. “And don’t think I don’t know how you treated Kula.”

“How I treated . . . !” I stuttered, reeling from one emotion to the next.

“Accusing her of stealing! Treating her like a slave!”