“AND HOW WAS YOUR BROTHER this fine mornin’?” Mike O’Hanlon inquired lightly, the moment Gideon took up his shovel in the belly of that accursed mine.
Overhead, timbers creaked under tons of earth. “Fine,” Gideon said, with a smile that was deliberately hard, brief and spare. “Made me breakfast, in fact.”
Ignoring Gideon’s reply, Mike looked up. “Whole thing could come down on our heads anytime,” he observed. “One more thing the owners won’t trouble themselves with—shoring up timbers.”
“I guess that’s a danger in any mine,” Gideon observed. “Not just this one.”
“And why should they care what happens to us, young Yarbro?” Mike asked, again as if Gideon hadn’t spoken. “They don’t mind starvin’ our children. Don’t mind that our wives have to beg storekeepers for grace and another week to pay, just to put a bean on the table. No, sir, as long as the profits are rollin’ in, that’s all that matters to them.”
Gideon rested on his shovel handle for a moment. Thanks to the release Lydia had given him the night before, he felt a lot easier in his skin, and his muscles, though they still ached, didn’t throb in protest every time he pitched more ore into the cart. He thought about what Rowdy had said to him at the table that morning—that if he’d guessed Gideon was spying for the owners, O’Hanlon and the others had, too.
“It’s clear you took the time to watch my house and follow me to Rowdy’s before dawn, and that’s a lot of trouble for a man to go to, it seems to me. You’ve been trying to get under my hide since I signed on. Why don’t you just spit out whatever it is you have to say so we can get on with loading ore?”
Something flickered in O’Hanlon’s eyes, respect perhaps, but a certain contempt, too. “I’ve been working in holes like this one since I was nine years old, young Yarbro,” he said slowly. “And I know an outsider when I see one. You don’t belong here. Your clothes are too good, your house is too fine, and your family is too important in this town. Even without the way you talk, I’d know by your manner that you’re educated, used to thinkin’ for a livin’, not sweatin’ for one. If it’s true that a man carries the measure he’s taken of himself in his eyes, you’re not one of us.”
Wilson strolled by just then, with a bandage covering most of his face. “Back to work,” he growled. “We’re not paying you men to shoot the breeze.”
“Sod off, Wilson,” O’Hanlon answered easily, never looking away from Gideon’s face. “Well, young Yarbro, you wanted my opinion. What say you to it, now that it’s been offered?”
“I say,” Gideon answered evenly, “that you’re full of sheep-dip. I need this job, just like you do. I’m just as worried about coolies and the timbers supporting the shaft and all the rest. As for my clothes and my family and the look in my eyes, you’ll hear no explanations from me, and no apologies.”
“I guess we understand each other, then,” Mike said. “I know you’re a Judas, and you know I know it. But I’ll not harry you again, after what I’ll say next. When you speak to the owners, young Yarbro, you tell them we’ve taken all we’re going to take. You tell them we’re tired of seein’ our children go hungry and our God-fearing wives ashamed.” He moved in closer then, tapped hard at Gideon’s chest with a forefinger. “You tell them, Mr. Yarbro, that we’ll bury their precious ore, and ourselves with it, before we’ll crawl before them like whipped dogs one more time.”
Before Gideon could reply to that, the timbers groaned again, a long, ominous whine.
“I’m gettin’ out of here!” one of the men shouted. “Before the whole damn town comes down on me!”
Even Wilson looked troubled.
“Everybody out,” he said, with grave reluctance. “Now.”
ALTHOUGH LYDIA HAD FELT LIKE doing some vengeful spending when she and the aunts left Lark’s place, when presented with the actual opportunity, she was not so certain. Gideon worked hard down in that mine, and probably for a pittance, though they’d never discussed his wages.
Mr. Blanchard, the storekeeper, greeted the three women warmly and with recognition, addressing Lydia as “Mrs. Yarbro” and immediately making it plain that her husband’s credit was good in his establishment.
The aunts busied themselves looking at ribbon and yard goods, enjoying the outing for what it was—a new experience. In Phoenix, they had never gone out to the shops—the few things they required were delivered—and except for the dresses and hats Gideon had bought for them on the day of the great escape, she’d never seen them in anything but their black mourning dresses or nightgowns and wrappers.
Lydia decided it was safe to give her aunts free rein—despite their earlier, faintly disturbing response to Lark’s suggestion that Gideon could well afford the things they needed, she knew they were far more interested in looking at things, and touching them, than purchasing.
She, on the other hand, needed bloomers and camisoles and petticoats, a decent nightgown, too—Gideon had ripped away the one she’d been wearing, after all, and it was past mending. She could use a few dresses, as well.
She made her selections carefully, and with an eye to thrift and true to her expectations, the aunts wanted only a paper of pins, a bottle of violet-scented toilet water, and a dime novel with a depiction of a gunslinger, pistols blazing, on the cover.
As Mr. Blanchard was tallying up the price of these goods, Lydia stood at the counter, waiting patiently and wondering if Helga had gotten the stains out of the bedsheets.
A whimper from behind the counter snagged her attention, and she creased her brow in a frown. “What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s just this pup,” Mr. Blanchard said. “Found him out in the alley last night, poor little critter. The wife brought him in and put him in a basket, hoping he’d rally, but there’s not much hope of that, between you and me.”
Lydia rounded the counter without permission, and saw an impossibly small black-and-white puppy of indeterminate breed curled up in the bottom of a shallow wicker basket. She crouched, her skirts pooling around her, and laid her hand ever so gently to the dog’s thin back, felt the little creature shiver.
“Wife has cats,” Mr. Blanchard went on, benignly regretful. “So we can’t keep him. He’ll probably die, anyhow, but we figured since his life, short as it was, must have been hard, the end ought to be made easy.”
The dog whimpered again, a mewling sound more suited to a newborn kitten, and looked up at Lydia with imploring eyes. As a child, her aunt Nell had permitted her to take in strays, but they’d always either died or wandered away again, the way animals do.
“What’s his name?” Lydia asked softly, aware of the aunts crowding up behind her, peering down at the poor little scrap cowering in the bottom of Mrs. Blanchard’s basket.
“Never bothered with that,” Mr. Blanchard said, but there was something new in his voice. “Would you want to take him home, Mrs. Yarbro?” he asked. “I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t—he’s not long for this world, as anybody could see—”
“I will take him home,” Lydia said, resolved, gathering the pup tenderly into her hands, holding him close against her bosom as she rose. “Thank you, Mr. Blanchard.”
“What will Helga say?” Mittie asked, at once fretful and fascinated.
“Never mind what Helga will say,” Lydia replied, nuzzling the pup.
Millie, evidencing rare practicality, had already fetched a baby’s bottle from one of the sundry shelves, set it firmly on the counter. “He’ll need milk,” she said. “Papa once saved a whole litter of blue-tick hounds with milk—remember, sister?”
“Indeed I do,” Mittie answered. “They were born too soon, and their mother had died, and dear Papa brought them into the cooking-house and made the servants feed them cow’s milk and they all came around in time. Grew up to be the best hunters in the county.”
Lydia stroked the tiny dog, loving the warmth of it, the softness of its fur, the look of beleaguered hope in its eyes. The “servants” Mittie referred to had been slaves, and old Judge Fairmont had probably loved them—in the same way he’d loved those hounds.
If this puppy perished—and there was every chance he would—Lydia knew she would be heartbroken. But, like her ancestor, she had to try to save him. Turning her back now would be simply impossible, whatever the cost to her.
“I could have a gallon of milk sent over, no charge, of course,” Mr. Blanchard offered, watching Lydia with kindness in his eyes. “We get it fresh from Mr. Sayer’s cow.”
“That would be fine, Mr. Blanchard,” Lydia said. Now that her arms were full of puppy, she took a second look at the other purchases.
“I’ll send the other things around, too,”Mr. Blanchard said.
“We can manage the pins and the toilet water,” Mittie insisted staunchly.
Lydia smiled, thanked the storekeeper again, and left the store.
The aunts hurried along the sidewalk on either side of her, reminding Lydia of quail chicks trotting behind a hen.
“Such a snippet,” Millie commented, a little breathless because Lydia was setting a fast pace. “Whatever shall we call him?”
“I think you’ve just solved that problem,” Lydia said, at once enormously cheered and wary of the sorrow that might lie ahead, compounding the inevitable loss of Gideon. “Snippet is the perfect name, it seems to me.”
Soon, they were home again.
The aunts rushed to find a blanket and a basket to make Snippet a bed.
Helga, pinning the freshly washed sheets from Lydia and Gideon’s bed to the clothesline, shook her head. “Land sakes,” she said. “What do we need with a dog?”
But her eyes softened as she came closer and reached out to touch the quivering puppy.
“The point,” Lydia said gently, “is that he needs us.”
Helga looked worried. “See how he shivers, Lydia? He’s not well.”
Lydia lifted the little bundle slightly, kissed the top of Snippet’s head. “He needs a little tending, that’s all.”
“And you need something to tend,” Helga said wisely.
Barely half an hour later, a boy arrived, driving a buckboard, and dropped off Lydia’s purchases and the promised gallon of milk.
When Gideon arrived home from the mine, looking grim and most reluctant to face her, he found his wife sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, holding Snippet and giving him milk from a baby’s bottle, a drop at a time.
THE SIGHT OF LYDIA WITH the puppy did something to Gideon, made him forget Mike O’Hanlon and the trouble at the mine. Even made him forget the sheets he’d seen, drying on the clothesline, and the damning fact that he’d used Lydia, the night before, in a way he might regret for the rest of his life.
Lydia did not immediately look up, though of course she knew he was there, but Helga caught his eye straight off, and there was a warning brewing in her plain face, threatening as storm clouds gathering on the horizon.
“What do we have here?” Gideon asked, crouching next to Lydia to get a closer look at the dog.
Their gazes connected. Lydia smiled, albeit sadly.
“This is Snippet,” she said.
Although he was grinning by then, something about the way she held that pup left Gideon feeling stricken, nostalgic for a life he’d never had to begin with, probably never would have. “Suits him,” Gideon allowed.
The aunts, who had evidently been opening parcels at the table, judging by the debris of brown wrapping paper and string, fell silent.
Did they expect him to banish the pup? Or was it that they’d heard all the racket he and Lydia had made in the night?
Gideon flushed at the thought. “Can I hold him?” he asked Lydia.
She hesitated, then reluctantly handed over the dog. It nearly disappeared between Gideon’s palms, it was so small, and when he held it up close to his face, it licked his cheek.
He laughed, surrendered the pup to Lydia again.
“He mustn’t die,” one of the aunts said, and when Gideon looked over, he saw that both women’s lower lips were quivering.
That struck at something deep inside Gideon, too, the way seeing Lydia with the pup had.
He stood up. “He won’t die,” he said, though where this certainty came from, he didn’t know. The critter was scrawny, and probably too young to be weaned.
“Mr. Blanchard said he might,” Mittie-or-Millie argued. “Someone left him in the alley behind the mercantile, and Mrs. Blanchard couldn’t take him in because she has cats.”
“Papa once saved an entire litter,” the other sister said.
Glancing down at Lydia again, coddling the pup, Gideon felt that odd, broken wanting again. But this time, he knew it for what it was. She would hold a baby in the same reverent, infinitely tender way.
A baby.
For all his regretting, he hadn’t once thought that he might have gotten Lydia pregnant. They’d only made love that once—but once was all it took, wasn’t it?
Unnerved, Gideon shoved a hand through his hair.
“You’re home early,” Lydia remarked, barely distracted from the pup.
Now, Gideon felt a twinge of envy toward that dog, right along with the sympathy. “Half day at the mine,” he said. Lydia didn’t need to know that Wilson and the others had been afraid the support beams might give way, and bury the men so deep that they wouldn’t be seen again until Resurrection Day.
“I reckon you must be hungry,” Helga said to him, with guarded courtesy. “Leaving the house before breakfast the way you did, and by the front door, too.”
Inwardly, Gideon sighed. Outwardly, he grinned, because he knew if he ever let Helga get the upper hand with him, well-meaning though she might be, he’d never know a moment’s peace from then on.
He nodded. “Obliged,” he said. He’d stopped by the bank earlier—like most of the businesses in town, it was open six days a week—and cashed a draft. “You’ll be needing some things for the house,” he added, taking some folding money from his shirt pocket.
Lydia didn’t look up from the puppy, so he finally handed the bills to Helga. Her eyes widened at the amount, but she offered no comment—only turned and tucked the funds into a salt box affixed to the wall.
“We did incur a debt at Mr. Blanchard’s mercantile,” Millie-or-Mittie confessed, nodding toward the garments lying on the table, amid the wrapping paper and coils of twine. “Lydia abandoned most of her clothes, you know, when we left Phoenix.”
Gideon nodded again. “I know,” he said. Being a man, he hadn’t thought much about Lydia’s wardrobe, but things like that were important to women.
All of the sudden, he felt too big for that spacious kitchen, too awkward, like some large farm animal stabled in a pantry. If he moved in any direction, he was sure to break something—or someone.
Helga had commenced making lunch by then, and the old ladies hastily gathered up the dresses and the wrapping paper and the string. Lydia finally laid the puppy in its laundry-basket bed, smiled slightly as it gave a whole-body sigh and drifted off to sleep.
Again, Gideon’s throat swelled painfully. He put a hand out to Lydia, to help her up, and for a moment, he thought she’d refuse to take it, get to her feet on her own. In the end, though, she accepted his assistance.
He wanted to pull her into his arms, hold her, tell her he was sorry, swear that even after he’d gone, she and the aunts and Helga and that puny little dog would lack for nothing, because he’d send home most of his pay, but he couldn’t, not with so many people around.
Helga made hash for their midday meal, and Gideon ate hungrily, though he couldn’t help noticing that Lydia barely touched her food, and her gaze kept wandering to the puppy.
“I believe I’ll go over to Mr. Blanchard’s mercantile myself,” Helga said, when she’d finished eating. “We could use flour and coffee and a few other staples.”
When no one commented, she took some of the money from the salt box, donned a calico bonnet and left.
The aunts cleared the table and began washing dishes.
Gideon watched Lydia watching the puppy for a while, then went upstairs, turned up the gas-flame under the bathroom boiler, and shaved while the water heated for a bath. After a stinging splash of bay-rum to his face, he headed for the bedroom, in search of clean clothes. Most every garment he owned was either dirty or still in his room over at Lark and Rowdy’s, but he had trousers and shirts in his valise, the things he’d normally worn, before returning to Stone Creek and going to work in a copper mine.
“I know an outsider when I see one,” he heard Mike O’Hanlon say. “Your clothes are too good, your house is too fine, and your family is too important in this town.”
He’d never failed at a single assignment he’d undertaken, since the day he left college and went to work, he thought, but he’d sure made a hell of a mess of this one. And the irony was, he was going to have to leave Lydia anyway.
His shoulders stooped.
“Gideon?”
He hadn’t heard Lydia approaching, hadn’t heard the door open—but then, he probably hadn’t closed it in the first place. He couldn’t recall, and that troubled him—he was losing his grip.
“Are you going somewhere?”
Gideon turned, smiled at his wife. “No,” he said. “I just thought it would be good to clean up.”
Her smile faltered a little; she looked so small, so vulnerable, standing there. Gideon’s heart turned over, as he thought of all the things there were in the world to cause her pain.
“Lydia, the puppy—” he began.
“I know, Gideon,” she said, very softly. “Snippet might not survive. You don’t need to tell me that.”
His throat closed up again. He swallowed. “I could borrow Rowdy’s horse and buggy,” he heard himself say, though he hadn’t consciously formulated the idea. “Show you around Stone Creek a little—maybe take you out to see Wyatt and Sarah’s ranch.”
She brightened. “I’d like that,” she said. “But Snippet—”
“The aunts and Helga will be here to look after the pup,” Gideon said, because suddenly it seemed vitally important to take Lydia out in the buggy, a perfectly normal outing for a married couple. “And hovering over him won’t keep him alive.”
Lydia pondered that, then nodded.
“I mean to take a bath,” he told her. “I won’t be long. When I’m through, I’ll go fetch Rowdy’s rig and come back for you.”
She still looked troubled. “Gideon, when I came in—the way you were standing—something about the angle of your head—”
“I’m all right, Lydia,” he said. He wished—God, how he wished—he could tell her about his real job, and Mike O’Hanlon’s suspicions, and even what he’d be doing in Flagstaff the next day, but he couldn’t. Not, he realized, because he’d given his word to the mine owners, but because he didn’t want to lay his private concerns on her shoulders.
He’d done enough to burden her as it was.
“Are you sure we won’t be imposing on Wyatt and Sarah?” she asked. “Just—dropping in on them that way?”
“I’m sure,” he said, and because he had to lighten the moment or break under it, he added, “But if you’d like, I could have engraved calling cards printed up and drop one off at their door ahead of time, so they’d know they were about to have company.”
Lydia smiled at that. “I’ll wear one of the new dresses you bought me this morning,” she said. “The blue sprigged muslin, I think.”
He nodded, thinking he would have been perfectly content to stand there in that bedroom and look at her—just look at her—for the rest of his born days. But life had a way of moving on, grinding things and people beneath its great wheels, and he could feel forces gathering around him, closing in. All of it made a pleasant buggy-ride with his wife a matter of urgency. Depending on how things went in Flagstaff the next day, he might not set eyes on her again for a long time.
So he went back down the hall, and bathed and put on fresh clothes. Then he headed for Rowdy’s place.
His brother wasn’t around, but Hank and some of his friends were playing baseball in the lot beside the barn.
“Tell your pa I borrowed the buggy and the gray mare,” Gideon told his nephew, as he headed for the barn door.
“Take the sorrel,” Hank replied, because such requests were common in his experience. “The mare threw a shoe yesterday.”
Gideon smiled, nodded and went on about his business. Found the sorrel, hitched the animal to the buggy, and set out to collect Lydia. On any previous visit to Stone Creek, he would have joined in the baseball game, at least for a little while, but not that day.
Hank waved as he drove past, and Gideon nodded in farewell.
He might see Hank again when he returned the buggy, he thought unhappily—or not until his nephew had grown into a man.
WYATT AND SARAH’S RANCH LAND reminded Lydia of a rippling green sea as she and Gideon looked out over the expanse from the seat of Rowdy’s buggy. Several hundred cattle grazed in the rich grass, drank at the springs and the small creek, two riders—probably Wyatt and Owen, though it was hard to be sure from that distance—moving among them.
The main house stood upon a hill, a two-story white structure, solid and square, with green shutters and gleaming windows and a veranda on three sides. It was flanked by a sturdy barn, a springhouse and several other small outbuildings.
Gideon’s grin was weary as he took it all in. “You should have seen this place,” he said, with quiet pride, “when Wyatt took it over from Sarah’s father’s bank ten years ago.” He turned slightly, pointed to a smaller house, on another hill. “That’s Owen’s house, there,” he went on. “He and his wife, Shannie, are expecting their first child in a few months.”
“It’s lovely,” Lydia said, catching the sound of children’s laughter on the slight breeze. She had met Rowdy and Lark’s little ones, now she would get to know Wyatt and Sarah’s, too. Perhaps, like their cousins, they would address her as “Aunt Lydia,” a prospect that pleased her.
“For an old train robber and erstwhile rustler, Wyatt did all right for himself,” Gideon said, taking up the reins again, urging the horse on.
They descended a rutted, curving dirt road with a grassy hump bulging high in the middle, and when they drew closer to the main house, Gideon gave a long, shrill whistle through his teeth.
Dogs began to bark, and then four children, two boys and two girls, roughly the same ages as Lark and Rowdy’s brood, came running barefoot around the side of the house and up the road toward them. Two dogs frolicked after them.
“Uncle Gideon!” one of the girls cried, her face alight, her long, dark hair flying behind her as she ran up that road. “Uncle Gideon!”
Grinning, Gideon stopped the rig, set the brake lever, and jumped nimbly to the ground, catching the child when she launched herself into his arms. He spun her around, both of them laughing, and then set her on her feet again.
Lydia watched as the older two, both boys, solemnly shook Gideon’s hand, and the baby, a girl no older than three, hung shyly back until her uncle crouched directly in front of her. The gentle way he spoke pierced Lydia’s heart. “And here’s my Lucy Jane,” he said.
Lucy Jane hooked one finger in her mouth and regarded him with huge cornflower-blue eyes.
“She doesn’t remember you, Uncle Gideon,” the other girl said. “She was really little the last time you were here.”
The tallest of the boys, perhaps eight or nine years old, turned to Lydia, still sitting in the buggy, enjoying the scene and, at the same time, wondering why it made her feel sad.
“Are you our aunt Lydia?” he asked.
She nodded, smiling.
“This is Payton,” Gideon said, ruffling the boy’s hair. He’d hoisted Lucy Jane onto his hip, carried her easily in the curve of his arm. “That other yahoo is Luke. It was Margaret Alice who tried to knock me down, and—” he looked around, frowned “—where’s Mark?”
“It’s his turn to churn the butter,” Margaret Alice replied. “And Mama says he’ll have to copy Bible chapters if he doesn’t quit whining about it.”
Gideon laughed.
By then, Sarah had appeared on the porch of the big house, a younger and noticeably pregnant woman with a glorious head of copper-colored hair beside her, both of them smiling in welcome.
In the distance, Wyatt and Owen approached on horseback.
Suddenly, Lydia felt shy.
“They can be a mite overwhelming,” Gideon teased, having read her expression the way he so often did, climbing into the buggy seat again, with Lucy Jane perched solidly on his lap. “All those Yarbros coming at you in a herd, I mean.”
“Cattle come in herds, Uncle Gideon,” Luke said, speaking for the first time. Like the other children, he had dark hair and very blue eyes. “Not people.”
“I stand corrected,” Gideon replied, with an affable salute, and started the buggy moving again.
The boys and Margaret Alice climbed nimbly onto the back of the rig to ride along, while the two large dogs, yellow like Pardner, ran alongside, adding gleefully to the fuss with yips and barks.
Lydia, in the center of all this dust-raising, noisy activity, had never felt happier—or sadder. Thus, she did not know whether to laugh or cry.
Sarah greeted her on the porch with a beaming smile and a kiss on the cheek, and introduced her to Shannie, correctly assuming Gideon had told her the children’s names. Wyatt and Owen reached the house, dismounted, and left the horses standing, reins dangling, at the water trough.
Wyatt smiled at Lydia, bid her a polite welcome, but the look he tossed in Gideon’s direction was slightly less cordial.
“Come inside,” Sarah urged, taking Lydia’s hand. “The coffee’s on, and I’m just about to take a blackberry cobbler out of the oven. Shannie and I have been baking all afternoon.” She paused. “Oh, Lydia, I’m so glad to see you.”
Sincerity shone, beacon-bright in Sarah’s eyes, and Lydia was moved by the sight. She truly was a member of the Yarbro family—except to Gideon.
Wyatt lingered, holding his black round-brimmed hat in one hand, and so did Owen.
Glancing back, expecting Gideon to follow, Lydia saw him set Lucy Jane down, so she could scamper into the house with the other children.
“I’ll have a word with you, little brother,” Wyatt said to Gideon, and though he probably hadn’t intended for Lydia to hear, she did. Meeting her gaze, then looking away, Wyatt spoke again. “Owen, you go on inside and have some cobbler before it’s all gone.”
Gideon stood with his hands on his hips and a stubborn set to his jaw, looking at Wyatt.
Owen stepped onto the porch, smiled affably down into Lydia’s worried face, took her by the arm, and escorted her briskly into the house.