The High Divide (22 page)

“You're telling me you think we tried to steal those horses?” he asked.

“I'm looking out for Mr. Hornaday. He hired me to be his assistant, and that's what I'm doing. We can't be losing our animals.”

“You think we tried to steal them.”

“Setting out in the night like you did? Yes, I saw you.”

“Did you tell Hornaday what you think you saw?”

“No, but I mean to. He should know what you're in it for.”

“Get down off your wagon, Gumfield.”

“I don't have to do nothing you tell me.” The young man gave the gray pull-horse a slap with the reins to speed it along.

Eli rode up close alongside and grabbed hold of the hame and brought the wagon to a stop. He jumped off the buckskin mare and stood in place, holding both horses. “Get down off there, right now,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I want you to say it to my face. Unless you didn't mean it.”

“I meant it.”

“Are you getting down, or do I have to come up?”

Gumfield set the hand brake. Then he stepped down, stumbling as he came, the toe of his boot catching on the toolbox.

When he was back on his feet, Eli told him, “Say it again.”

The boy turned to watch the six-mule team come on, white showing on all sides of his green irises. “What are you, deaf?” he asked.

“Pretty much, yes,” Eli said. “Come on, let's hear it.”

Looking down at his feet, Gumfield uttered the words quietly and without resolve: “You and your old man meant to steal them horses.”

Eli hadn't forgotten the promise he made to his mother—no more fights—and he knew that hurting the boy was going to leave him with the same hollow, sick feeling he always got from eating too much brown sugar at Goldman's store. All the same he put a fist in Gumfield's stomach, hit him hard, and when the boy doubled over, slammed his right hand against Gumfield's left ear, sending him like a maul-struck beef to the ground, where he curled up tight, his breath coming fast and hard. The big wagon was rolling by now, and Eli nodded at old McAnna, who glanced down at Gumfield quivering in the grass and then looked away.

Eli waited until the boy peeked up from the crook of an elbow. Then he said, “Tell me what you think now. You still believe we tried making off with those horses?”

Gumfield shook his head. He hadn't managed to catch his breath yet.

“You don't know the first thing about my father, and if you did, you'd stay as far away from him as you could. Do you hear me? You'd never look at him again. Now listen—if I see you talking to Mr. Hornaday, I'm coming after you. And next time I'll hurt you.”

The boy rolled over and sat up. He nodded, rubbing his face with both hands.

“Say something,” Eli told him.

“I won't talk to him,” Gumfield said. “I promise you.”

“All right then.” He left him there on the ground next to the wagon and swung back up on the buckskin mare and touched her with his heels.

•••

ELI COULDN'T LOOK FORWARD
into the next span of days to see what they would bring. He couldn't know there would be no further sightings of Indians, and no buffalo-spottings either—not soon anyway. On the second evening out of Miles City, McNaney would take a mule deer that made the mistake of standing too long on a rise three hundred yards west of camp. On the third day out, they would pass beneath the red buttes, one pointed and the other squared off, before entering the valley of the Little Dry, which flowed north to the Big, which in turn emptied into the Missouri. On the fourth day they'd swing west and follow the Big Dry's broken course toward its beginnings in the high country, where the Phillips men had reported seeing the herd of some two dozen. From the night of the storm until the fifth day, when they'd make permanent camp on Calf Creek, not an hour would go by that Eli didn't catch some movement at the edge of his sight, some shadow or scrub tree, some piece of rock that made him think,
There they are.
By that point he would have given up all hope of his father coming to his senses, and yet for reasons unclear to him, after having given Gumfield the what-for, Eli would begin to see his father's obsessions as his own—the prospect of finding Magpie no longer a frightening thing, but instead a desire that brought purpose to his days.

Bird in Flight

F
or Gretta, morning brought rain-speckled windows and a brand-new landscape, the occasional hump of jutting rock offering the promise of harder country to come.

Although she hadn't been able to relax in the night, not even to close her eyes, Danny had slept well, his warm head propped against her shoulder, and then on her lap, and then against the armrest. Finally, needing to stretch out, he'd sprawled on the floor, where his feet stuck into the aisle as a hazard for nightwalkers. Now, though, as the train slowed at the depot in Bismarck, its brakes gasping, wheels shrieking against steel, Danny was awake.

“Do you know the address?” she asked him, dismayed at not having thought of this earlier.
Keep your head on, Gretta—
that's what her father had always told her, and she whispered it to herself now: “Keep your head on.” There was so much at stake.
God help me.

“What?” Danny asked.

“Her address—Mrs. Powers's address. Do you know it?”

“I think so.”

“You're not sure?”

“I know it, yes,” he said.

She managed with the porter's help to hire a boy to drive them in his surrey. The day was cool beneath a bright sun, a storm having passed mostly to the north, and it was pleasant to have shade for their eyes. They'd been riding for only minutes, the houses getting larger and finer as they went, when she turned to Danny and said, “Does this look
right
to you?” She hadn't imagined a neighborhood like this one, so settled and well appointed, flower boxes and clean fences and large brick chimneys. It didn't help that the young man driving was an apparent deaf-mute who kept his eyes trained relentlessly on the street ahead, not even glancing over when spoken to.

“I'm not sure anymore,” Danny answered. But then the driver made a sound that came out like
wup,
and the wagon slowed and came to rest.

It was more than she'd expected, the house he was pointing at, two-storied and handsome—gabled, shuttered, and surrounded by a board fence covered in the same shade of creamy white as the clapboard siding on the house. Gretta was aware of feeling small, diminished, on top of the itching jealousy she was already suffering with. As she paid the boy and collected their satchel, her mind rushed forward to evening. Where would she and Danny spend the night? It was still morning, but already she knew this visit was going to go badly, that Mrs. Powers would be of no help at all, and that she and her son would soon be on their way, having wasted their time here.

She went up to the door and knocked, thinking,
Please God, don't let her be home.
“We shouldn't have come,” she said.

“Why not?” Danny asked.

She was turning to leave, having grabbed Danny's hand, when a woman came around the side of the house and stopped short, grunting as if struck in the belly. She was older than Gretta, though not by much, and her face was pretty, if you didn't count the nose, which anyone would judge to be a bit too long. Her body was hard to read in the shapeless smock she wore. With both hands she clutched a small pile of chicken eggs in her apron.

“Excuse us,” Gretta said.

“I'm sorry. You frightened me.”

“Hi,” Danny said.

“Danny,” she answered. But she was looking at Gretta, her expression difficult to make out. It might have been disgust, but it was more like astonishment, her jaw thrust forward and down, as if looking at the last person she wanted to see.

Gretta let out a breath. “I'm Gretta Pope,” she said, surprised at the satisfaction it gave her to say it.

“Yes.” The woman was still for a moment, caught, it seemed, by a thought requiring all her concentration. Then she smiled. “And I'm Laura Powers, please come in,” and she led them to the door.

Inside, she lifted her apron to the kitchen counter and allowed the eggs to roll free on it, catching one as it careened toward the edge. She took a bowl from the cupboard and set them in it one by one, all six. “I had an idea to boil an egg for myself,” she said, and turned back to Gretta and Danny. They hadn't moved from just inside the door, Gretta taking everything in, telling herself to pay attention.

“Come in, sit down. You can set your bag right there,” and she pointed to a little alcove off the kitchen, where the coats hung. “I'll get you some water. You must be thirsty.” She filled two glasses at the counter pump and set them on the table, then excused herself.

Five minutes later she was back, wearing a crisp pale-green dress and a pair of polished lace-up shoes. Her auburn hair was caught up at the back of her head in a way that showed off the shape of her face.

“I haven't had lunch yet,” Mrs. Powers said. “Would you care to join me? I'll fry some potatoes too.”

Gretta glanced down at Danny, who was nodding. “My son would love that, thank you,” she said. “But if you don't mind, I'll just sit here with you—I'm not very hungry.”

The eggs and potatoes were ready in minutes, and as Mrs. Powers and Danny began eating, Gretta made anxious attempts at small talk—about the weather, about the floral-patterned curtains on the windows, about their night on the train. She wasn't prepared yet to confront the woman—she didn't know if she could keep a rein on herself, but also because Danny was here. Soon, though, it grew obvious that Mrs. Powers felt the same way, and Gretta was able to relax a bit. She sat back in her chair and let her shoulders drop, the long sleepless night catching up with her. She started to yawn. Her eyelids felt swollen, heavy. And when Mrs. Powers suggested that she lie down for a while, Gretta found herself nodding.

“For just a little while,” she said.

How she made it to the second-floor, Gretta didn't know, but when she woke in the soft feather bed, hands and feet buzzing from sleep, the light was low, the afternoon all but gone. Downstairs, she found Danny smiling from the floor of the sitting room where he was sprawled, reading his Buffalo Bill novel yet again. In the kitchen Mrs. Powers was sliding a pan of biscuits into the oven. There was chicken and gravy boiling on the stove.

“You must have needed that,” the woman said, a twist in her nose. “You look like someone else entirely.”

There was nothing worse, Gretta thought, than the calculated savagery of women. The cruelty of men, by comparison, seemed plain and glandular.

Supper was an awkward affair, with Mrs. Powers shuttling between the table and stove and making a great show of her hospitality, bringing out at the end a plum pie she'd baked while Gretta slept upstairs. Afterward, though, in the parlor, their war of caution and courtesy began slipping away.

“My Jim knew your husband's family in St. Paul,” Mrs. Powers said, “before they ever served together. Jim grew up there too, I don't know if you were aware of that. Well, apparently you weren't aware of
Jim.
Or at least your boys weren't.”

Gretta shrugged one shoulder and looked over at Danny, slouched catlike in his chair now, sleepily, though his eyes were bright and piercing.

“Jim was older than Ulysses by a few years. Closer in age, probably, to your husband's sister. What was her name again?”

“Florence—but she's almost twenty years older,” Gretta said, recalling to mind her sister-in-law, bent over and leaning on her cane, and the weak voice drifting from the upstairs bedroom.

“Florence, of course. I never met her. Actually, Jim was fifty when he died.” A flicker passed through the woman's eyes, and she said, “Florence Popovich, wasn't it? Yes, Jim was fond of the whole family, and spoke of them often.”

“No, her name is Littlefield.” Gretta shook her head, glancing at Danny. “She married Charlie Littlefield. They're still in St. Paul, same house.”

“Ah.” Mrs. Powers nodded, her eyes as hard as iron now.

“In fact I saw them last week.” Gretta imagined herself getting up from the soft, upholstered chair with its high, winged back, walking over to Mrs. Powers, and slapping the arrogance from her face.

“And it seems you didn't know anything about the Seventh, either, did you,” Mrs. Powers said.

“I didn't, no.”

Danny in his chair listened silently, head turning from his mother to Mrs. Powers and back again, not missing a thing.
How much does he know?
Gretta wondered.
How well does he understand what she's doing?

“Well, I didn't meet your husband until this summer, though I certainly felt as if I had, because of Jim's stories. All those stories. So when he showed up in July, I knew him right off. I opened the door and his name jumped straight into my head.” She smiled, pleased with herself, warming to her subject.

“Excuse me,” Gretta said, and got up and went into the kitchen for a drink of water. For Danny's sake, and her own, too, she needed to slow this down a little. Being here, finally, and knowing Ulysses had been here ahead of her, she could see how unprepared she was to reconcile the life she thought she'd had with the life she'd been living. For a week and a half now, ever since her visit with Florence, she'd felt like a stranger in her own body, the very shape of her limbs and breasts and hips unfamiliar to her. Every time she looked in a mirror she half expected to see another woman's reflection—sometimes a woman far lovelier than herself, with perfect skin and hair, at other times a woman careless in appearance, fat and scornful.

Back in the parlor it was clear that Danny was exhausted, his face tipped to the side. Mrs. Powers suggested that Gretta take him upstairs and put him to bed, which Gretta did—and while she waited there for him to fall asleep, sitting on the edge of the feather bed, she tried to justify to herself why she ought to have any hope of keeping hold of what she'd had up until now—or thought she had: a man worthy of her trust.

A memory came back of a night in St. Paul when she was nineteen and living with her aunt and uncle, a memory she and Ulysses often spoke of in their early years, but which she had since forgotten. It was a cold night in January, well below zero, and Gretta lay restless beneath a pile of quilts, unable to sleep on account of the choice she faced between a boy she knew from the Lutheran church to which she belonged, and an older man—the horse-car driver—whose intentions were impossible to read. That very day the boy whose name was Frederick had proposed marriage in the presence of her aunt and uncle, who'd been pleased and proud, since Frederick's parents were prominent in the neighborhood, the father a prosperous grocer. They'd also been stunned by Gretta's response.

“I'll have to think about it,” she'd told Frederick.

It wasn't that she hadn't liked the boy. She'd liked him very much. Moreover, she trusted him, believed in his potential as a husband and father, and in his future as a businessman. What held her back was something she couldn't have divulged to anyone. It had to do with a sensation she experienced every time she saw the horse-car driver, Ulysses, whom she had come to know on her twenty-minute rides to and from the Summit Avenue mansion where she cleaned and cooked. Despite the scarring on the side of his head and neck, and despite the way his pale eyes could penetrate or dismiss her, whenever she saw him, a pleasant warmth flowed through her stomach and prickled in her breasts. This embarrassed her, and she feared that her blushing face might give her away, though if it did, he never let on. He simply drove the car, reins in one hand and gesturing with the other as he pointed out sites of interest on their route, or described his plan to move west, to some young town, and make a life there for himself, building houses. Often he was silent for long minutes, sometimes for the whole ride, every now and then letting his eyes come to rest on her and not looking away until she did. She had no good reason to believe he had intentions—and yet in his presence she often heard a voice inside her, saying,
He loves you, Gretta.
And so it was Ulysses who filled her mind as Frederick made his awkward proposal.

At ten that night someone had knocked at the front door, and Gretta heard her uncle scrambling in the adjacent room and then grumble as he padded across the floor to see who'd come to trouble them at so late an hour. She heard a low voice she didn't allow herself to hope she recognized, and then her uncle was at her bedroom door. “Get up at once,” he said, his tone nervous and high-pitched.

Ulysses, it turned out, had spoken to the grocer that afternoon and learned from the man about his son's intentions. “Before you give Frederick his answer,” he instructed Gretta, who was dressed in her cotton robe, hair pulled into a sleeping bun, “I believe you and I should get to know each another.” And there in the small, cold parlor, with her aunt and uncle sitting nearby in matching rocking chairs, Gretta had agreed to this request.

After Danny had fallen asleep, she went back downstairs and settled into the chair across from Mrs. Powers, who put her needles and yarn aside. For a time they sat without speaking, neither quite sure of where to look. The anniversary clock on the giant secretary clanged in Gretta's ears. “Danny told me you said Ulysses was on his way west, to gather bones,” Gretta finally said.

“Yes.”

“That's more than he told me. For all I knew he'd drowned in the river that runs through town, or met up with some other misfortune.”

“That must have been difficult for you. I'm sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“I know what it is to lose a husband. Mine died last year.”

Gretta said, “Do you have children?”

“Three. Well, two. A married daughter in Denver whom I don't see often, a son in Seattle, and another son who's gone. They weren't Jim's, though. I had them by my first husband, very early. It's a terrible thing, their living so far away. You never think of that when they're young.”

For a time they made small talk, avoiding each other's eyes, Mrs. Powers clearly tired now, stifling yawn after yawn, her chin propped on her hand. Gretta sensed an opportunity had passed and was disappointed. And yet relieved, too. But then Mrs. Powers perked up, rising from her chair. “Let's go sit in the kitchen,” she said. “It's getting cool in here. I'll put a little fire in the stove.”