Gear, W Michael - Novel 05 (8 page)

 
          
 
Laura offered her hand and tilted her head.
"A good evening to you, Mr. Hanson, and thank you for your fine
compliments."

 
          
 
She greeted each individually, and stopped
before Richard. "It is good to see you, Mr. Hamilton." Richard's
heart skipped at her smile. "I hear that you are off on a great
adventure."

 
          
 
"Yes," Tom called. "He's going
off to the wilderness to be scalped and eaten by a bear—though we've yet to
decide if bears prefer to dine on men who speak Latin or Greek."

 
          
 
"Greek, I'm sure," Laura supplied as
she charmed Richard with her dimpled smile.

 
          
 
Richard's breath had gone short, his face hot
and flushed. He'd never known what to do with women, and here, for the first
time, the most beautiful one in the world was staring up at him with those
incredible sapphire eyes.

 
          
 
"Yes," he forced the words,
"I'm off. . . on business, you understand. I'll be back, of course."

 
          
 
Her smile brightened. "But think of the
adventure, Mr. Hamilton. You'll see so many marvelous things."

 
          
 
"I will."

 
          
 
"Come," Tom said, slipping in beside
Laura and taking her arm. He gave Richard a deprecating glance as he guided her
away. "Sit, and let us entertain you."

 
          
 
Richard sipped his brandy, unable to do more
than stand like a ramrod, as the others clustered around Laura. The talk turned
to the lighter things, jokes and anecdotes, stories of rowing and parties,
things he'd never had much to do with.

 
          
 
Will came up to take Richard's arm, leading
him to one side. Richard couldn't take his eyes off Laura. She sat at ease,
laughing, surrounded by a knot of her admirers.

 
          
 
"Quite a beauty, isn't she?" Will
watched him from the corner of his eye.

 
          
 
"Indeed."

 
          
 
Will poured another brandy, lowering his
voice. "You know, she's always liked you. Asks me innumerable questions
about you."

 
          
 
"Oh?"

 
          
 
Will pursed his lips, frowning thoughtfully
into his glass. "It wouldn't be a bad thing—you and her. Have you given it
any thought?"

 
          
 
"She's the most beautiful woman to grace
God's great Creation." Richard took a deep breath to settle himself.
"But.. .why me?"

 
          
 
Will shrugged. "You'd make an admirable
catch, Richard. You could provide for her in the manner she deserves. And,
well, not that I'm a prejudiced brother, but I think she's the most charming
girl in the world"

 
          
 
"She is that."

 
          
 
Will placed a hand on Richard's shoulder.
"Think about it. A union between our families might benefit all
concerned." He paused. "She'd be a great help to you, especially now
that you're taking over some of your father's responsibilities."

 
          
 
"I suppose."

 
          
 
Will shook his head. "I'd hate to see her
spend her life with a rake like Hanson."

 
          
 
Richard turned, staring at Laura as if at a
sudden revelation. A girl like her? Married to him? A giddy excitement rushed
in his veins.

 
          
 
"Ah," Will said as he read Richard's
expression, "so, you can be heart-struck. I was afraid you'd never come
down from the clouds."

 
          
 
"Clouds?"

 
          
 
"Your endless obsession with philosophy,
Richard. You have a keen mind, my friend. With the right application, there's
nothing you can't do. If you turn that acute mind of yours to business as you
have to philosophy, you'll be one of the most powerful men in
Boston
. You know that, don't you?" Will
paused. "Stay a while after the others leave."

 
          
 
Richard nodded, dazed. He almost had to shake
himself as Professor Ames walked up and clasped his hand. "Richard, I'm
taking my leave. I'll miss you in my classes. You've been one of the brightest
students I've ever had the pleasure to debate." He placed a hand on
Richard's shoulder. "Be prudent in your travels, Richard. Come and see me
upon your return."

 
          
 
"It's only for a short time, sir. You'll
find me in the front row of your lectures again. I promise." Were it not
for the whirlwind of sudden hope conjured by Will,
Ames
's departure would have saddened him to the
core.

 
          
 
Tom Hanson, of course, was among the last to
leave, dominating Laura's time until the very end. He took the final
opportunity to kiss the back of her hand.

 
          
 
"Quite the ladies' man, our Thomas
Hanson," Will noted after Hanson had finally retrieved his hat and coat
and gone out into the night.

 
          
 
"He's most interesting," Laura said
evenly, casting a demure glance at Richard. "But I think there is more to
life than parties and clever stories, don't you, Mr. Hamilton?"

 
          
 
"Yes, of course."

 
          
 
Laura smiled coquettishly. "Tell me about
your trip, Mr. Hamilton. Oh, I so envy you. How wonderful to set out on a
dangerous adventure! I want to hear all about it."

 
          
 
Encouraged by the look in her eyes, Richard
explained about his trip, and the philosophical challenge between him and his
father. As he talked, the words seemed to come with greater ease. She hung on
his every word, nodding, delicate hands clasped in her lap. What would it be
like to hold hands like those?

 
          
 
At last, when the clock struck one, he forced
himself to take his leave. Will clapped him on the back and went to fetch
Richard's hat and coat.

 
          
 
For the moment, he was alone with Laura.

 
          
 
"Thank you, Mr. Hamilton," she told
him, her voice intimate. "You've made this a most pleasant evening."

 
          
 
Richard mustered all of his courage.
"Will said that... that is, that I might hope to—"

 
          
 
She cocked her head. "That you might come
courting?''

 
          
 
"Yes, that is, if you and your family—"

 
          
 
"I would like that, Mr. Hamilton."
Her laughter was musical. "I would like that a great deal. I can't wait to
hear about all of your adventures."

 
          
 
"Might I take the liberty of writing you
while I'm gone? I'll send you a letter a day, I promise."

 
          
 
"I would appreciate that, sir. And I'll
write you, too."

 
          
 
"I'd like that." Richard shrugged
awkwardly. "But where will you send them? I'll be traveling, on coaches
and steamboats and such."

 
          
 
"Oh, yes, I see. Then, I'll just read
your letters and wait until you've returned. But I do want you to know I'd
write if I could."

 
          
 
He could hear Will's footsteps in the hall.
She offered her hand. Trembling, Richard took it. His body thrilled at the
touch. She seemed softer than down, and his lips tingled as they brushed the
back of her hand.

 
          
 
"Have a safe trip, Mr. Hamilton. I'll be
waiting for you when you return." For long moments their eyes held, until
reluctantly, she withdrew her hand.

 
          
 
That smile had been for him, alone. He walked
from the parlor like a drunken man, his heart pounding fit to break his ribs.

 
          
 
Will waited with his coat, eyebrow lifted, a
wry smile on his lips. "I do believe you've been enchanted, Richard."

 
          
 
"Yes, enchanted."

 
          
 
"Be careful, Richard. Come back to
us."

 
          
 
"I will, I promise."

 
          
 
He walked out into the night, heedless of the
cold.

 
          
 
It is thus certain that pity is a natural
sentiment, which, by tempering in every individual the act of self-love,
contributes to the preservation of the entire species. It is this pity which
hurries us without reflection to the aid of those we see in distress; it is
this pity which, in the state of nature, takes the place of laws, manners,
virtue, with this advantage, that no one is led to disobey her gentle voice: it
is this pity which will always hinder a strong savage from robbing a female
child, or infirm old man, of the living they have acquired with pain and
difficulty if he has but the slightest prospect of providing for himself.

 
          
 
—-Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the
Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind

 
          
 
As darkness fell, Heals Like A Willow remained
huddled beside the rocked-up burial crevice. Snow continued to fall, spun into
patterns by the wind rushing over the caprock and down into the valley. Cold
had leached into her back from the sandstone. She shivered. Empty. Her insides
felt like a rotted log. How numb and cold could a person get before all feeling
faded away into nothingness? The crunch of moccasins on the crusted drifts
might have been a dream.

 
          
 
"Willow?" the scratchy voice barely
penetrated her foggy hearing.

 
          
 
She didn't look up, content to drift among
images from the past. Her son's bright eyes danced with joy as his father
played a finger game with those chubby infant hands. Squealing giggles mixed
with strong male laughter to echo hollowly in her memory.

 
          
 
"You can't stay up here." The thin
voice was heavy with the Ku'chendikani accent. "Smell the wind. The clouds
are going to break and the night will be clear, deep cold.. . bitter enough to
make the trees pop."

 
          
 
The words lost themselves in thoughts as muzzy
as cattail down.

 
          
 
"
Willow
?" This time a hand prodded her
shoulder, intruding bluntly.

 
          
 
She blinked and twisted her head to stare up
past the snow-crusted hood of her buffalo robe. Two Half Moons, her husband's
aunt, appeared as a dark blot in the indigo twilight.

 
          
 
The old woman reached down to poke her again,
harder this time. "Come on, girl. Dying up here won't do anyone any
good."

 
          
 
"Freezing,"
Willow
whispered absently. "It's an easy
death. So cold at first. . . and then the warmth steals over you until the
shivering stops. Warmth . . . out of painful cold. Strange, isn't it? That
freezing to death is that way?"

 
          
 
Two Half Moons looked up at the murky sky.
"Hot and cold. Man and woman. Night and day. Front and back. Two sides to
everything, girl. That's how Tarn Apo made the world. All we see is one side at
a time, but look through the night and you will see dawn."

 
          
 
"And death?"

 
          
 
"Look through death and you will see
life, pet!" The old woman made a frustrated gesture. "But why am I
telling you this? You're the one with more questions than is good for you.
You're not going to change, are you? Stop questioning old Slim Pole? Stop
annoying the puhagan and elders with your ideas?"

 
          
 
Willow
resisted feebly as the old woman pulled on
her. In the end she needed simply to remain limp to defeat Two Half Moons'
efforts.

 
          
 
"All right," the old woman sighed,
settling against the sandstone next to her. "I've seen five tens and five
winters, girl. Perhaps that's enough, eh? I'll just sit here and freeze with
you. We can talk about the two sides of things as our flesh grows colder and
our souls grow warmer."

 
          
 
Willow
remained silent-Two Half Moons grunted,
then said, "Of course, people who freeze to death don't think too straight
after a while. I've seen men forget which way they were headed... walk off
trails they'd used for years. So, a couple of hours from now, as the cold sets
in, we might be mumbling and cackling like sage grouse hit on the head—and
making just as much sense."

 
          
 
Through her robe, Willow felt the old woman
shiver, and could hear the elder's jaws making a slapping sound that would have
been clicking had any teeth remained in her mouth. "Napia, why don't you
go back to camp?"

 
          
 
"If you're fool enough to die up here for
no reason, why can't I? You're still young. But me, I'm old. Can't do much any
more."

 
          
 
Willow
endured another attack of shivers. Two Half
Moons would make this a matter of wills. Out of stubborn contrariness, she'd
force herself to die here, too.

 
          
 
"I just want to be left alone."
Willow
hugged herself. The chill had eaten through
the layers of her moccasins and her feet ached.

 
          
 
"Alone, hmm? How many have I buried in my
years? I couldn't bury my mother and father. I can remember that day very
clearly. We were up north, on the
Musselshell
River
. The bottoms are good there. Plenty of room
to run horses. The Pa'kiani came out of the trees . . . killed my father
outright as he started out of the lodge. A Pa y ki shot him in the face with a
gun. I was inside and he fell back on top of me, his blood and brains all over
my dress. They took my mother captive, made her a slave. I heard later that the
warrior who took her beat her to death. It was in the winter. She was pregnant
with that Blackfoot's child. A boy who escaped the next spring said that the
camp dogs ate her, chewed on her frozen body where it lay in the snow."

 
          
 
Willow
closed her eyes.

 
          
 
"No, I didn't get to bury them, but I did
bury three of my children ... all very young. My sister and two brothers.
Cousins, so many cousins," Two Half Moons continued. "Twice the White
man's spotted sickness has come and taken people, one after another, from my
family until I thought no one was going to be left. Once there were so many we
just left them lying in their lodges where they died, and fled to the high
mountains, preferring to take our chances with Pandzoavits, the rock
ogres."

 
          
 
Willow
shook her head. We live in an age of
unhappy ghosts. "Better to die and let our souls find their way to the
Land of the Dead. No smallpox. No sickness at all. Plenty to eat. Animals
always willing to be killed. No pain, or cold, or misery of any sort. That's
what Slim Pole says."

 
          
 
Two Half Moons snorted. "I thought you
didn't believe the puhagan. ''

 
          
 
Willow
stared into the gloom. The snow fell in
small crystals, like a powdery dust. "Later, when this is all over, I
won't. Up here . . . with my husband and son so close, I have to. It's for
them, you see. I believe with all of my soul. I followed the rituals as the
Ku'chendikani teach them."

 
          
 
"And your Dukurika don't?"

 
          
 
"Grandmother used to tell me that the Ku
'chendikani had learned so much about horses that they forgot most everything
else that was important."

 
          
 
"Such as?"

 
          
 
"Such as the way the people used to be.
She says the Ku 'chendikani used to stay in one place, moving through a smaller
territory. They weren't concerned with wealth, with horses and White man goods.
She thought I was a fool for running off with my husband. That I'd be treated
like a pack dog instead of a person."

 
          
 
"You've always been different." Two
Half Moons grunted as she resettled herself. "But your grandmother may not
be wrong. I remember my grandmother saying the same thing. She was young when
the horses came. She always thought we were crazy to have chased the Pakiani
out of their lands, pushed them far to the north. But then, we had horses and
they didn't."

 
          
 
"And what did it get you in the end,
Aunt? They traded for the White man's guns—and got horses of their own. Now
look what's happened. They've pushed us clear back into the mountains. I've
heard they want to kill us all. When you push on a sapling, you must expect it
to spring back."

 
          
 
Two Half Moons chuckled. "You've always
had that way about you. Had your husband not been such a great warrior, someone
like Iron Wrist would have beaten it out of you."

 
          
 
"Only once, Aunt. I'd have vanished into
the mountains and that would have been the last anyone would have seen of me."

 
          
 
Two Half Moons considered for a moment.
"I can remember my grandmother talking just like that. Perhaps you are
right. We have changed. Horses are things for men, not women. When the elders
died out, so did women's voices in the councils. I remember... yes. In the old
days, the women spoke. They knew the places where the plants grew, where to
find water and which camping spots were good. As the years passed, such
decisions began to be made by warriors. The old camps weren't any good because
they didn't have enough grass for the horses, or the trails were too rough for
horses to travel down the sides of the rim-rock."

 
          
 
Willow
watched the snow fall and looked for
patterns in the swirling flakes. "And women started doing all the work,
processing the hides, sewing the lodges, carrying the firewood. They became as
captives, more like slaves. Among the Kuchendikani I have seen men who love
their horses more than their women."

 
          
 
Two Half Moons frowned in displeasure.
"I've thought about it from time to time. Who doesn't think back as they
grow older? Your grandmother knows what some of the rest of us are too blind to
have seen because it was right in front of us." She shook her head in the
gloom. "When I was young, I told my children about life in the old days.
About men, women, and children working together to trap the animals on the fall
hunt. I told them about roots, and storage pots. And then I told them how much
better life was when men started to ride out on fast horses, and we traveled
constantly in pursuit of the buffalo. I told them that even when we were
starving during the dry years—and starving worse during the bad winters. Funny
. . . how we fool ourselves."

 
          
 
Heals Like A Willow knotted her hands inside
her mittens. "Among the Dukurika we starve, too, but it's only when all
the caches have been eaten. And even then we remember to strip the pines of
bark, to lay snares for the elk along the trails to the feed grounds, and to
stretch nets in the trees to catch wax wings. At least we have a little food in
our bellies. Not like the Ku'chendikani, who have to boil their moccasins for
the broth and chew hard strips of leather."

 
          
 
Two Half Moons endured a violent fit of
shivers, bowing her head. "What does it mean for the people, girl? What is
going to happen next? Something with these White men, I'll bet. It won't be
good."