Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

Waltzing In Ragtime (3 page)

BOOK: Waltzing In Ragtime

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“I’m thinking your newspaper did right sending you,” Farrell said.

Olana felt herself blushing. Sidney Lunt should have sent her to a charity ball, a flower show, the opera; somewhere within her own milieu. Certainly not to Sequoia National Park. She was a fraud. She didn’t even know the difference between her father’s trees and Matthew Hart’s. But she would learn. She would do anything rather than be swallowed by the money-hungry titled families of the European continent. Swallowed, like Hettie and
Belinda, who used to be such fun, and were now as pale and lifeless as the marbled tombs on their estates.

Olana Sarah Whittaker would not find herself a titled husband, so her mother could gloat to her friends and her father could be bled dry. She was an American. That was one thing the year abroad had taught her. And it felt so good to be home. Even here, in the vast wilderness without amenities.

“Best turn in now, miss,” Farrell advised. “We’re all heading back to Three Rivers tomorrow, back to Mrs. Goddard’s place.”

“But we’ve only arrived!”

“Matty says it’s on account of the winter’s coming in early. He doesn’t want us caught up here at this altitude.”

“And since when did Mr. Hart add the title of barometric prognosticator to his accomplishments?”

Farrell scratched his head. “Must admit, the skies look Indian Summer fine to me. To Mr. Parker too. But I’ll wager when their argument’s done, he’ll trust Matthew Hart.”

Olana hadn’t taken down a note. “Write pieces vivid with description, Sport,” Sidney had commanded. She thought of Matthew Hart’s remark about her greenness. For all his engaging her in political debate as if she were his equal, the ranger was like the others — her parents, her editor, her refinement schooling. Determined she fail.

two

“I think these are the last of them, Mrs. Goddard!”

Olana strode through the back door with an armful of wildflowers as the older woman poured ground coffee into the pot. It was Olana’s favorite part of the morning, just before the men stumbled down to their breakfasts.

“The rangers, they were right cheery with you here with us, miss.”

Olana tried on her most modest smile. “Why, who wouldn’t be in your house and company, Mrs. Goddard?”

The stout woman squeezed her hand gently. When was the last time Olana’s mother had done that? Years. Stupid thought. She’d better not stay too much longer or she’d come home acting as sentimental as these country people. She began setting Matthew Hart’s place at the table.

“Oh, Matt’s gone now, dear girl!”

“Gone?”

“Up in the mountains.”

“But Mr. Farrell said the rangers hire themselves out to neighboring ranches when the park closes.”

“All but Matt. He’s the winter guardian, didn’t you know? He’s come down only to fetch supplies. I told him to bid you a
proper good-bye, left him outside your door this morning. Land, that boy is skittish!”

Olana slammed the cupboard door. It caught her thumb. Her screech of indignation was not discreet. The woman ran to her side. “Let me see. Oh, that’ll be a nasty bruise, beneath the nail, too.”

“I should like to walk a bit.”

“Of course. Go on, I’ll manage.”

Mrs. Goddard’s hand rested on her shoulder. Olana’d had enough of these people and their uncalled for touching. Didn’t they know their place?

As she wrapped three biscuits in a bright chintz napkin, Olana heard the matron outside her bedroom door, walking down the corridor, ringing the men out of their beds with her schoolmarm’s bell. How far had Matthew Hart gotten, especially loaded down with a winter’s worth of supplies? She didn’t have to know where his camp was, precisely, she reasoned. She’d find him long before he reached his destination, and get the interview Sidney demanded. Farrell’s bay mare would do for her excursion.

Olana eagerly slipped off her simple day gown. She stared, dismayed, into the wardrobe’s mirror. Was there a trace of freckles on her face? And her shoulders rose up a little thinner out of the ample bosom nature and her corset still provided. Not at all fashionable, showing bone. How she would love to get out of this place and back to steaming baths and French wine sauces at home. She frowned. Perhaps that’s the reason Sidney and her father had allowed her to come. Were they hoping she’d be discouraged by physical hardships? Didn’t they know that fears of her mother’s neurasthenia were stronger than any hardship she could imagine? Due to her illness, Dora Whittaker languished in darkened rooms with headaches for days at a time. Olana buttoned her russet riding ensemble and spread out the elegant French lace of her blouse. She was not her mother. And she would not become a hothouse countess like her friends, either.
Sidney was her model, she would be as devil-may-care as a man of independent means. She would show off her horsemanship to that tight-lipped ranger. Meeting him on the trail with her picnic lunch, her daring would either cool his anger or fan it hotter. Either prospect had its charms.

By noon Olana spotted a steep, overgrown trail splitting off from the main road. She was doing so well, why not? How lost could she get, with the crucial direction being up into higher elevations? And wouldn’t it be delicious, skimming ahead, meeting Matthew Hart triumphant? She slapped her quirt against the mare’s flanks.

Hours later her hands began to hurt inside the soft kid leather gloves. Cooler. And dark. It couldn’t be getting dark this early. Olana pulled her gold watch from its place pinned to her blouse and stared at its Roman numerals. Three-fifteen. What had happened to the sky? It was gray, getting grayer. Olana stared just past her mouth. Her breath was fogging. Thunder sounded in the distance. No fear, she reminded herself, don’t let a horse smell it. But the air itself was charged. “Easy,” she soothed, reaching for the mare’s mane. But with the streak of lightning and thunderclap, the animal turned and bolted. Her shoulder hit the ground first, taking the brunt of the fall.

She rose to her knees. “Damn you for a weak-livered pole cat!” she railed, shaking her fists, realizing she’d repeated language she’d been surrounded by at the boarding house. Olana didn’t even know what such a feline looked like. A giggle bubbled up her throat and burst into the cold, damp air.

What did Farrell call the mare, she wondered, rambling through the dense underbrush. Something sentimental, keening, like the Irish. Rosaleen. Olana called out the name, then listened. Nothing. She called again when the drops pelted her hat netting.

Soon the rain had soaked through every layer of her clothing. Olana had thought the mare would seek a level area, a meadow, to slow her frightened charge. If the beast could find such a place. She stumbled on in the undergrowth, the twisted roots. Her teeth
chattered involuntarily. She’d never felt this cold. But the rain was stopping, the sky getting lighter. Wasn’t it? She stared up at the clouds. The squinting smile that stretched across her face froze in horror. It was snowing.

Matthew Hart dreamed of being in the Klondike. Lottie was alive again, and shaking him awake.

“Get up Fandango Man, work to be done.”

He was ecstatic, but careful not to show her. If there was one thing Lottie couldn’t abide, it was sentiment. So he rolled onto his side and reached his arms around her waist. He pulled the ties of her dressing gown and nuzzled between her breasts. Some mornings, if it was early enough, if his touch was gentle, he could get her to come back to her brass bed, even let him love her once more. Other times she’d whack him between his shoulders with her hairbrush before her girls discovered she’d let any man stay longer than hourly.

It was a hairbrush morning he figured, from the angling glide of her hips. Still, he raised himself on one elbow to admire her weathered grandeur before she chased him out. To his surprise, she took his face in her hands, let him see her eyes fill with tears the way she only had when she was dying.

“Work to do,” she said again. “Don’t let the fear stop you. Use your gran’s good sense now.”

“Work?”

“Yes, work!”

He opened his eyes. Wind howled at the window. And snow. When he rolled over, a pain cracked between his shoulders. “Damn it, Lottie, I’m going,” he surrendered, on his feet, straddling two worlds.

He tried to hold onto the dream as he put the pine log on the fire. The scream of the bay mare brought him fully to his senses.

Outside, the sudden drop in temperature further alerted him to the vagaries of October in the Sierras. He pulled up the collar of his buckskin coat. The snow was already drifting up the base of
the giant red trees that sheltered his home. He approached the horse who was wandering, sniffing at the smoke from his chimney. He spoke softly, holding out his hand. Matthew stroked her neck until she was content to be led into the small stable with his animals.

It was Farrell’s mount, Rosaleen, but the stirrups were set too high for any of the men. A growing fear crept up to the roots of Matthew’s hair as he removed the saddlebag’s contents. There was a napkin from Mrs. Goddard’s and a mahogany box. A writing box. He yanked it open. Gold-plated fountain pens, ink, fine bond paper, and initials carved in a brass plate above the inkwell.
O. S. W.

“Shit,” he whispered, letting the box drop from his hands.

Olana stared up at the towering trees, their height swallowed by the blowing snow. What did they care? They lived thousands of years, didn’t he tell her that? And they mended themselves of every disease, pestilence, even fire. Everything but the likes of her and her father, scheming for their wood. This was the trees’ revenge. They wouldn’t tell her where the horse was, they wouldn’t shelter her from the cold, the wind. They even directed the fury about her.

The cold was white now. White, blistering, and as unforgiving as these mountains. A picnic, that was all she wanted. Wasn’t it? A picnic, to make his sad eyes laugh. Then let him kiss her, let him just try and kiss her. Olana’s hair blew out before her face. She’d lost her hat long ago. She could still raise her arms, but couldn’t move her fingers to make a proper job of clearing her hair from her face. Well, don’t come, her giddy mind flittered again, as I am no longer properly attired or coiffured to be a source of attraction to any man. Even you, Matthew Hart.

Her wild, fragmentary thoughts settled on the ranger’s large, gentle hands. Once, during her few days at Mrs. Goddard’s, those hands had guided hers as she lifted the apron full of chicken feed. She’d looked over her shoulder then, and her breath had caught
in her throat because his eyes were so beautiful.

“Matthew!” she screamed up through the ever-descending sky. “Matthew Hart!”

She listened. Beneath her feet a stream of water flowed. Below the ice. She forced the blocks that were her feet to follow it.

A cave’s opening loomed before her. It contained the source of the stream, and another wind, a warmer one, coming from deep inside. Shelter. She entered. The relentless wind still rang in her ears.

She leaned her back against the wall just inside the cave’s mouth, and tried to fold over the flaps of her riding suit. She couldn’t even raise her arms. It didn’t matter, her collar was frozen open. Where were Matthew Hart’s fingers now, his gentle hands spreading warmth?

She felt herself sliding down, and knew she wouldn’t be able to get up again. But she couldn’t stop. It didn’t matter, suddenly. Nothing at all mattered. It became an effort to keep her eyes open. In that effort Olana Whittaker was still stubborn, determined to last a little longer. To see what happened next. But what was all the fuss about, she thought vaguely. It wasn’t so difficult to die.

Matthew Hart’s eyes seared across the whiteness. “Damned woman,” he said, believing that if he continued to curse her, she’d be alive. His head still told him she couldn’t have gotten as high as seven thousand feet. Once he found her hat in the birch tree, he stopped listening to his head. He let his eyes scan the horizon until he felt a direction. Come on, you’re one of my kind, send out a signal. There. He felt a cold that rattled his teeth. To the northwest. He urged his horse on. Around the next bend he saw the mouth of the cave.

He stood over her, her bright hat dangling from its netting in his hand. It was there, on her hat that her eyes finally focused, then up at his face.

Her voice was a thin grate. “Don’t hold it like that,” it demanded, “you’ll rip it worse.”

He came closer. “Damned woman,” he said, but softly now, like an endearment.

Her mouth twitched, her eyes closed.

He wrapped her in his coat and lifted her into his arms, then onto the saddle.

BOOK: Waltzing In Ragtime

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