Thank God for Indian summer. This last warm spell had made it possible for Laura to work outside instead of steaming up the cabin, and she wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass. Perched on a stool, she pared soap into the big washtub, readying the water for the dirtiest batch of laundry she’d seen yet. To look at those clothes, a body’d think they came off coal miners instead of railroad men.
With more crews coming in every day, the camp was growing, and so was her business. Last week, she’d taken in fifteen dollars, and this week looked to be even better. Stopping to rub an itching nose, she reflected that while the work was hard, it kept her too busy to fret about much else. By the time she got to bed tonight, she’d be too tired to think, much less worry about life without Jesse.
As the last piece of soap hit the water, she laid aside the knife and went to the piles of clothes she’d already sorted. Scooping up a rank-smelling load of shirts, she carried them to the tub and dropped them into it, then stirred them vigorously with a pole. The water turned a dull brown almost immediately.
It was going to be a lot harder to do this after she had the baby, but she’d manage. By then, the track work would slow down, and maybe she wouldn’t have so much dirt to contend with. Pausing long enough to roll up her sleeves, she counted the batches of laundry· Eleven. When the weather turned cold, it’d be hard to get all those dirty clothes and the washtubs into a one-room cabin.
Her arms ached, and the small of her back hurt, but she returned to churning those clothes like butter, humming the tune of “My Darling Clementine” to take her mind off the backbreaking work. At least she was making enough to support herself, and for that she had to be thankful.
The path was steeper than Spence had remembered it, or maybe his tired horse just made it seem that way. As his eyes took in the still-green grass, the bright leaves on the scattered trees, he had to wonder if he could have gone on. It didn’t matter now—he’d come too far back to even contemplate another try before May. No, he was just stuck for the winter in a godforsaken corner of Nebraska, where the only person he knew was Laura Taylor.
Yeah, there she was. She had her back to him while she hung wet clothes on a long laundry line. She had enough men’s pants flapping in the mild breeze to outfit an army.
“What the hell…?”
She turned around at the sound of the horse coming up the path, and she gaped at Spence Hardin for a moment before she found her voice. “What on earth are you doing back here, Dr. Hardin?” she asked, hurrying toward him. ‘I thought you’d be somewhere in Utah with the Mormons by now.”
‘Ί hit snow.” Easing his leg over the saddle, he swung down to face her. She had her sleeves rolled to her elbows, her dress was wet in front where it clung to her big stomach, and her hair was a mass of wind-blown tangles, but after nearly three weeks in the saddle, she was a welcome sight. Looking away, he admitted, “I came back—I couldn’t get through, so I guess you and just about everybody else was right.”
“I’m sorry—I know how much you wanted to go,” she said quietly.
“Yeah, well, it looks like I’m here for the winter.”
“Here?” Momentarily nonplussed, she looked up at him with widening eyes.
“Yeah. I’ll probably try to get room and board at the fort, if it’s not against army regulations.”
“Oh.”
“So—what’s all this?” he wondered, gesturing to the sagging clothesline.
“Washing.” As his eyebrow lifted, she explained, “I’ve got myself a business now. Once a week, the men in camp send their dirty clothes up, and I wash, dry, and iron everything.” Pushing back her hair, she added, “I’m making a living at it,”
“It’s a damned hard living, I’d say.”
“At least I’m surviving.”
“Why didn’t you keep the money?” he asked abruptly.
“I guess you must’ve found it, she replied.
“That’s not an answer.”
“You already know why—it wasn’t mine to keep.” Stepping back, she looked toward the cabin. “I…uh…I don’t suppose you’ve got time for a cup of coffee, do you?”
“I’ve got about six months of it, he answered dryly.
“Well, then come on in. I’ve got real coffee now—and I’ve always got bread and jam.”
“Anything sounds good—I haven’t eaten since Laramie,” he said, falling in beside her.
“If you came from Laramie today, you sure made good time.”
“I left last night.”
“And you haven’t eaten anything in ail that time? I didn’t think a man could go that long without food,” At the threshold of her door, she stopped to turn back to him. “Maybe you’d better stay for supper.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble.”
“You won’t be—I’ve got to eat, too.” Holding the knob, she threw her shoulder into the door. “I don’t know how many times I’ve planed this down, but it still sticks,” she explained as it opened. ‘Tm afraid to take too much off—I don’t want cold air coming in around it this winter.”
The place didn’t look much like it had when he’d left nearly a month before. “I see you’ve done some fixing up, he murmured.
“I had to. There’s glass in the windows now, and I covered the walls with newspaper before I whitewashed them, so maybe it’ll be a little warmer in here when a norther’s blowing outside.”
“You make this rug yourself?”
“Well, it’s just rags I braided together, but at least I can walk around with my shoes off without getting my feet full of splinters,” she said, pleased he’d noticed. “Those curtains used to be my petticoat.” As he looked around, she sighed. “I know—there’s a little too much furniture, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw anything out.”
“No, it looks nice—real nice. I don’t know how you managed to do all this.”
Moving to the cupboard, she took out two heavy cups, the breadbox, and the jam pot. “I didn’t want to sit around feeling sorry for myself, so I just kept busy.” Turning around in the corner she called her kitchen, she asked, “Do you still want cream and sugar in your coffee?”
“Not if it’s real coffee.”
“It is, but I’ve got to go outside to fetch it. I didn’t see any sense to making two fires, and I was boiling water for the wash out there.”
While she stepped out, he continued to study the one room, thinking she’d made it pretty homey, considering what she’d had to work with. There was even a framed square of embroidered white cotton hanging on the wall. Looking closer, he could see the tiny stitches that proclaimed, “Laura Lane and Jesse Taylor, united in matrimony October 18, 1859.” Exactly six years ago day after tomorrow.
She came in with the enamelware coffeepot and stopped when she noticed him reading the embroidered words. “It seems like that was a whole lifetime ago,” she said softly. “I thought it’d be like that forever,”
“I guess we all believe that way.” He turned around, his face sober. “But some of us are just plain fools.”
“I loved Jesse, Dr. Hardin. That was the happiest day of my life.”
“I wasn’t talking about you—I was thinking of me.”
“It was a bad time to get married, right before the war like that, but we didn’t know then Lincoln would win, and North Carolina would secede. The Jesse I knew back then was the best man I ever met.”
“Yeah.”
“I guess war changes men sometimes,” she added sadly. ‘They seem to come back harder than they went in.”
“Yeah.”
Recovering, she carried the pot to the table and filled both cups before she sat down. “Your coffee’s ready.”
“Thanks,” he murmured, taking a seat across from her. For a moment, he stared into the rich, brown liquid pensively, then recovered. “It wasn’t me who changed.”
“You sound like Jesse. He always said he came back to a different woman than the one he’d left behind. Maybe that was true, but I don’t know. Maybe being alone all that time, sitting at home, waiting for both of them to come home, I got used to doing for myself like he said, but I don’t think so. I mean, I’d always had to look after things as far back as I can remember. No, it was him that changed,” she said positively. “Before the war, we’d always dreamed together.”
“And after?”
“He’d been dreaming alone all that time he was gone, and he had it set in his mind what I wanted.” She took a sip from the steaming cup, then set it down. “And he was going to give it to me, no matter how many times I tried to set him straight.”
There was a wistfulness in her voice that touched him more than her words. “Sometimes it’s hard to know what’s in someone else’s mind.”
“Yes.” Her chin came up. “Yes, it is. I thought I could read Jesse’s like it was a book. When he came back, I couldn’t do that anymore, and it hurt. I liked what I had, Dr. Hardin—I didn’t want to come out here.”
“I sort of figured that out.”
“But I am here, so I’ve got to make the best of what I’ve got. Otherwise, I’d just drive myself crazy wanting what I can’t have.”
“Which is?”
“My home back. Danny. Jesse the way he was before the war. They’re all gone now. All that’s left is me and this baby.” Recovering, she leaned back in her chair. “I guess I sound pretty sorry for myself, but I’m not. Mama always used to say the Lord doesn’t give us anything He knows we can’t handle.” Forcing a smile, she looked him in the eye. “She also liked to say life’s what you make of it, not what you’re given. If she was right about that, then I’m going to do all right. I never was one to complain about anything I thought I could change.”
“I’d” change a lot of things if I could.”
“Maybe you just think you would,” she murmured, sipping her coffee again.
“Well, I won’t let another woman make a fool of me, that’s for damned sure. Once burned, twice shy, as they say.”
She eyed him curiously, wondering how a man like him had become so soured on his life. “Well, I wasn’t exactly burned, but I don’t think I’ll ever want another husband. Not that anybody out here wants to believe that. They all seem to think that widowhood is an unnatural condition, you know.”
“You’ve got admirers, I take it?”
“I’ve got a lot of idiots who ought to know better,” she retorted. “I’d like to get a mirror for all of them, too. I don’t know what there is about a man that makes him think a flea-bitten, louse-infested fellow who doesn’t even know what a bathtub’s for is a prime catch for a woman. And they aren’t particular the other way, either—I could be cross-eyed, bucktoothed, stringy-haired, knock-kneed, and nigh to ninety, and it wouldn’t make much difference to any of them, as long as I was interested in marrying. You’ve got no notion of how it is out here, Dr. Hardin,” she declared with feeling. had to quit offering haircuts, because the money wasn’t worth the importunity.”
“You’re a pretty woman.”
“In this condition? I doubt that very much.”
“You are.”
“Well, I don’t feel it, and I don’t want to be, anyway. If I had two wishes in this world, it’d be a healthy baby and a chance to raise him in peace. If I had ten choices, none of them would be a man right now.”
“I never met a woman who didn’t want to live off a man.”
“I’m not a leech.”
“No, you’re not. You’re a remarkable woman.”
“No.” Leaning across the table, she refilled his cup, then stood up. “You’re welcome to sit a while, but I’ve got washing to finish.” For a moment, she allowed her expression to soften. “I must sound like a real harridan, I know, but I’ve let myself get behind. I am glad to see you, Dr. Hardin. I’m not too blind to know I owe you a lot”
“I’ll make do with supper,” he murmured.
“Well, to tide you over, you’d better eat some of that bread and jam you haven’t touched yet.”
When she came back nearly two hours later, he was asleep in her daddy’s old rocker, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his head resting on the broad back of the chair. Tiptoeing closer, she reached to touch the thick black hair.
“Dr. Hardin…?” she said softly.
Asleep, he’d lost his harshness, making him look years younger, more like the twenty-eight years he claimed. There was no question that he was a handsome man. This time, she shook him gently. “Dr. Hardin, you’ll get a crick in your neck like that,” she told him.
It was no use—he was dead to the world. Feeling sorry for him, she rolled up a towel and eased it beneath his head, then went to the kitchen corner to’ peel potatoes for supper.
He was just plain exhausted, she decided. It .made her wonder how far he’d actually gotten before the snow stopped him. What a bitter pill that surely must have been for him to swallow. How terribly hard to turn back. He’d wanted to find that little boy so much, and now he had a long winter to wait before he could try again. It just wasn’t right.
She still didn’t know what his wife had done, but whatever it was, it’d left him a bitter, disillusioned man. As her knife circled the potato, making a ribbon of the peel, she knew his wounds were as deep as hers. And it was going to take more than a winter to heal them.
He awoke to find the room almost dark, and the smell of onions in the air. Sitting up, he twisted his head, trying to ease his stiff neck, and he saw that she had a fire going in the hearth. A big black kettle hung from a hook above the flames, and a heavy Dutch oven rested on a flat rock at the corner of the fire pit Passing a hand over his eyes, he asked, “What time is it?”
“Good—you’re awake. It’s six-thirty, and I was beginning to be afraid the cornbread would burn waiting for you.”
“I didn’t mean to nod off,”
“Well, if you hadn’t needed to, you wouldn’t have.”
“You’ve got an answer for just about everything, don’t you?”
“I thought you might wake up cranky,” she murmured, taking the Dutch oven from the hearth.
“I’m not cranky,” he muttered.
“No? Then I guess I’m just mistaken. Anyway, if you want to wash up before you eat, the water bucket’s right outside the door.”
“Thanks. I thought I smelled onions.”
“I made potato soup.”
“Potato soup and cornbread. I ate a lot of that back in Missouri, and I always liked it.”
“Oh? I thought you were Georgia born and bred.” “No. We moved there when I was nine. My stepfather was the Georgian.”
“And he was the preacher.”
“Yeah.” With an effort, he forced his tired body from the rocking chair and headed outside.
“The privy’s around back,” she told him from the door. “Mr. Hawthorne sent some Chinese up to dig it for me.”
When he came back in, he looked as if he’d poured the bucket over his head, she decided as she dipped the soup from the kettle into the bowls. Carrying them, she met him at the table. “Go ahead—I forgot the butter.”
“Do you mind if I crumble the cornbread into my soup?” he asked. “I know it’s not mannerly, but I like it that way.”
“Suit yourself,” she said, setting the butter plate m front of him.
He ate with gusto, wolfing down three bowls of exceptionally good potato soup, while she toyed with hers, and he realized she was watching him. “Sorry,” he apologized sheepishly. “I’ve been living on hard tack and jerky most of the month since I left.”
“I figured you liked the food.”
“Ummm—very much.”
“I’m not going to clear the dishes yet. I’ve still got clothes to take down before the dew makes them damp again.”
“Need any help?”
“Well, it d be nice—I mean, I could use the company.”
The whole sky was ablaze in hues of orange, pink, and a hazy purple as he looked across the rocky yard. It was the sort of sunset that took one’s breath away just to look at it. Laura Taylor stopped walking to follow his rapt gaze. “Yes, it is beautiful, isn’t it?” she said softly. “God’s paintbrush, Mama used to call a sky like this.”
“Yeah,”
There was a crisp chill in the air now, and the smoke from the chimney wafted overhead, adding the warm smell of burning wood to the world. Down the hill, the white canvas tents took on a surreal look under that awesome sky. Spence took a deep breath, drawing in the autumn air, savoring it. A full stomach, a night like this—that was the way a man was supposed to live. Then he caught himself.
“Which end do you want to take?” he asked her, looking toward the long clothesline.
“You don’t have to help—it’s too pretty an evening to spend taking down laundry if you don’t have to.”
He spied the big woven baskets. “Tell you what—you just sit down, and I’ll get the clothes. I need to work off some of that supper, or I’ll be too full to sleep. Go on, he said, turning her back toward the house.
The sweet smell of cloth dried in the sun brought back memories of another time, when he’d lived in Missouri with his mother after his father died. It’d been a hard time for her until Bingham came along, but he could remember following her down that old gray clothesline, holding the basket while she put the clean clothes in it. It hadn’t been the same in Georgia, where he’d watched the slaves do the task.
Hefting the heavy basket, he headed back toward the cabin. Laura’d brought two chairs from the house outside, and she sat facing the camp, looking out into the beautiful, darkening sky. Overhead, the moon gazed down benevolently, barely veiled by floating skiffs of clouds. Silhouetted against that sky, she was a picture to carry in the mind, her face mirroring the beauty of the place, her hands placidly resting on the mound that held her child. And he couldn’t help admiring her, thinking she was truly an extraordinary woman.
“I thought you might want to sit out a spell.”
“Yeah.”
The night sounds of an Indian summer carried on the air like a lullaby, while the lanterns in the camp below glowed like lightning bugs in a Georgia swamp, gaining brightness as the sun sank deeper into night. Sitting there in silence, Spence realized it was the most peace he’d known in a long, long time.
“I come out here every night it’s warm enough,” Laura said, her voice low.
“I can see why.”
“I expect I’d better go in, she said finally. “I’ve got all that ironing to do tomorrow.” When he said nothing, she turned to him. “Did you find yourself a place to stay in camp?”
“No.” In the moonlight, he could see her moon reflected in her widening eyes. “I’ve been sitting here, thinking some.”
“Oh?” she asked cautiously.
“Yeah. A woman in your condition needs a man around, and…” He could sense her stiffening beside him, but he plunged ahead. “I’m not talking an impropriety, you understand, just an arrangement that’d benefit both of us.”
“Oh, I don’t…like how?” she managed to ask.
“I don’t think Jesse’d like to see you taking in laundry, and—”
“Then he should’ve thought of that before he brought me out here,” she cut in.
“I was just wondering how you’d feel about taking in a boarder for the winter,” he went on. “I’d pay you for cooking and cleaning, and you wouldn’t be out here hanging clothes in the dead of winter. And you wouldn’t be alone if there was any trouble with the baby—you’d have someone here.”
“I see.”
He could tell she wasn’t exactly enthusiastic. “Look—I’m not looking for another wife, and you say you don’t want another husband. The next hard-case that comes up that hill to court you won’t get past me. All I want is a place to stay, and I’ll move on next May.”
“There’s only one room—and one bed, Dr. Hardin.”
“I’ve got a bedroll—all I need is a place to put it. And we can figure out a way to divide the room.”
“Well,” she mused slowly, “I sure never expected anything like this to come up. I don’t expect anybody’d think much about you staying here, but there’d sure be some talk about me.”
“I’d be a boarder, nothing more.”
“Nobody looking at you would think that—they just wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“You’re a very handsome man. I’d be the widow trying to trap you.”
“I’m not trappable. Hell will freeze solid before I go looking for another wife.”
“Oh, I understand that. And if I learned one thing after Jesse came back, it was that I’d become too sure of myself to suit either of us. I don’t want another husband, Dr. Hardin, and I probably never will. I loved Jesse, but I wanted my say-so, too, and he couldn’t see why. A man and a woman have to pull together to get anywhere, and I don’t aim to be the only ox in the yoke while my husband cracks the whip.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard matrimony put in those terms,” he admitted.
“That’s what I mean. None of you understand.”
“But I suppose you’ve got a point about the talk,” he conceded, heaving himself out of the chair. “Maybe we can make some arrangement for meals, and I’ll see if I can get a place down there to sleep.”
“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”
“No. It was a selfish, idiotic idea, anyway. I don’t even know where it came from. I was just sitting there, thinking how peaceful it was up here, that’s all. I just didn’t think about the consequences for you, and I’m sorry.”
He’d started for the cabin, probably to get his gun belt, and when he came out, she knew he’d be going. She sat very still, trying to figure out if it would work.
Sure enough, he came out strapping his gun to his hip. As he walked toward the place where Dolly grazed with the chestnut and the mule, she heard herself call out, “Wait…” As he turned around, the moon glittered in those blue eyes, making them look like steel. “That is…how much money are you talking about?—for room and board, I mean.”
“How much do you make doing dirty laundry?”
“Oh—now, that’d be too much!”
“How much?”
“Well, it varies, but last week I took in fifteen dollars. That’d be sixty for the month, and I wouldn’t pay that to stay with the queen of England,” she declared flatly. “And all I’ve got is half a room, anyway.”
He let out a low whistle. “You get fifteen dollars a week for doing laundry?”
“Well, I expect a decline in that now that you’re here,” she admitted frankly. “I think some of them just bring up their clothes so they can make eyes at me. I imagine your being here will discourage a lot of that.”
“I could probably manage to pay twenty or twenty-five a month, considering the meals.”
Now that she’d made up her mind, she couldn’t help smiling at him. don’t suppose you’d consider doing laundry, would you?”
“Only as the absolute last resort to keep from starving. But maybe with the board money, you could hire somebody.” Coming over to pick up his chair, he studied her face through the darkness. “What made you change your mind?”
“With you around, I’ll have somebody to talk to besides myself. I figure when a norther hits, and they say you can count on at least one every winter, we’ll need the company.”
Spence had seen slaves under the whip who .couldn’t work as hard as Laura Taylor. And it didn’t seem to make any difference what she tackled. She could study something, then figure out a way to do it, whether it was patching the wall, evening the floor, or sending a bucket of wet laundry over a pulley next to the clothesline. In the week he’d been living in her cabin, his admiration of her had grown by the day.
And her Creator had certainly endowed her with an indomitable spirit. She was totally unwilling to give up on anything until she’d given it her all. He was beginning to think there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do, even though he knew it sounded ridiculous to say it. He’d thought he was doing her some sort of favor by staying there, but he was beginning to think she didn’t need him.
She looked up from the table where she’d been counting her money. “Is something the matter?”
“No. I was thinking about getting a job with the railroad.”
“They’ve got a doctor.”
“I hear they might be hiring more men on the repair track.”
“The rep track? It’s hard, dirty work—a lot worse than washing clothes.” Holding up the money jar, she said, “There’s twenty dollars in here and another fourteen on the table.” Stuffing the new money in with the rest, she added, “You’ve got too much education to work the rep track, Dr. Hardin.”
“Hard work never hurt anyone. If it did, you’d be dead.”
“But I’m used to it, she pointed out mildly. “I wasn’t born to the purple like some folks I know. You don’t need to be swinging a hammer—you’ve got a higher calling than that.”
“I wasn’t born to the purple, as you call it.”
“What about that plantation you grew up on?”
“My stepfather inherited a share of it—he didn’t own it all. Miss Clarissa had half.”
“Well, all my daddy had was forty acres, and every time it looked like there’d be a good crop coming in, something would. happen to it. It’d be too wet, or it’d be too dry, or the hail would beat it to pieces.”
“Why did he stay on it?”
She rubbed the side of her nose pensively before answering. “He was a farmer, just like his father—he came from a long line of farmers. He didn’t think he was poor as long as he had his land.”
“Yeah, but if it didn’t make a living for him—”
“Now, you’re sounding just like Jesse. There are some things a lot more important than money. Like being honest, for instance. Or caring about your fellow man. Daddy never had a slave in his life.”
“Bingham didn’t want any. He didn’t believe in slavery either.”
“Then why didn’t he free his and hire men to get his planting done?”
“It wasn’t that easy.”
“He wasn’t forced to keep them, was he?” she countered.
“He didn’t own them outright,” he answered evenly. “His sister owned half of everything.”
“Then he should have sold his half. You can’t say you don’t believe in something and keep on doing it, can you?”
“Look—I’m not Thad Bingham, so I can’t answer that. I was a kid, so I didn’t pay much attention at the time. I just know he preached against slavery.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t!” he snapped. “I don’t know where you think you’re going with this, but it must be somewhere, or we’d still be talking about your family’s farm.”
“I was talking about making amends.”
“What?”
“Reverend Bingham put you through medical school didn’t he?”
“What’s that got to do with slavery?”
“It was slaves that made all that money for him. You went to medical college on that money, Dr. Hardin.”
“Go on.”
“Don’t you think you ought to atone for it by practicing what you learned?”
“I did my atoning in the Confederate Army. I sawed off legs while men screamed for me to stop—I held guts together with my bare hands, trying to stop the blood pouring through wounds that’d make a pig butcher sick—I watched boys too young to grow beards die on my table—I saw enough misery and death to last me a lifetime, Mrs. Taylor—and if I never see another capital saw or gaping gut, I’ll still have the nightmares until I die,”
“I’m sorry. I just thought—”
“Well, don’t!”
“You did some good, too,” she said softly. “Jesse wouldn’t have had both his legs without you. And Danny—”
“That’s another one,” he cut in harshly. “I was the one who held Danny Lane down while he died. So don’t talk to me about a calling, because I answered mine, and look what it got me—a thousand dead men—tens of thousands maimed! A wife who took off with another man because I couldn’t go home! I answered that call once, Mrs. Taylor, and so help me God, I won’t make that mistake again!” As she blanched, he realized he’d gone too far. “I’m sorry,” he managed hoarsely. “I had no right to tell you that.”
Rising awkwardly from the table, she crossed the room to lay her hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know how you managed to live with that inside you,” she said quietly. “At least I know now that Danny had somebody who cared about him there when he died.” Moving behind him, she rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the tautness beneath her fingers. “As much as you blame yourself for what you couldn’t do, you have to remember all the men who made it home because of what you did for them.” Her fingers crept into the thick black hair that waved at his nape, stroking it. “You’re every bit as much the hero as the majors, colonels, and generals who led them into battle. They lost the war, but you got men home alive.”
He closed his eyes, feeling foolish for his outburst, as her hands eased the terrible tension in his neck. “Everybody at home reads the newspapers about how glorious the victory or about how devastating the defeat, and they think it’s some sort of contest,” he said softly. “It isn’t—it’s a blood-soaked hell. If people could see for themselves, there’d never be another war.”
“Maybe there won’t be—not for a long time, anyway,”
“No. Politicians will trade insults and plot the destruction of a perceived enemy; then they’ll sit back and watch somebody else’s husband or son die for their mistakes. The world gets bloodier, not wiser.”
“You have to think it’ll get better, or you can’t live.”
“It won’t.”
“Bitterness eats a man’s soul, Dr. Hardin. Sometimes, to live, you have to let go of it.”
“Bingham used to say something like that.”
“I’m sorry I said such things about him,” she conceded. “I didn’t even know him. I just think we paid too high a price for slavery, that’s all.”
“We did. For that, and a lot of things.”
“I didn’t mean to pick that sore when I said you should practice medicine, either. I didn’t know about your wife—or any of those other things.”
“I figured when you saw the grave, you knew she’d left me.”
“No. I thought it a little strange that she was buried out here, and that you were going to San Francisco to look for your son,” she admitted. “But I figured there was some explanation I hadn’t thought of, and if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me—that it wasn’t my place to ask.”
“I guess she just got tired of waiting. I blame myself for sending a wounded friend home to her, asking her to welcome him. She welcomed him, all right,” he added bitterly. “They took off together last March.”
“He couldn’t have been much of a friend, and she couldn’t have been much of a wife. But I guess she paid a high price for her foolishness, seeing as she died on the way.”
“I feel cheated about that, too. I wanted her there when I killed Ross. I wanted both of them to know they hadn’t gotten away with it. Now he’s out there somewhere, and I don’t even know if he’s still got my son,”
“And you had to turn back,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “That had to be hard to do.”
“It was. I should’ve known better than to start out this late. I should’ve known when there were just two railroad surveyors on the road with me, there was a reason. Hell, they weren’t even going through the pass.”
Her hand stilled, then dropped. “I don’t guess you heard, did you?”
“What?”
“They didn’t get back. A cavalry patrol out of Fort Laramie found what was left of them. A rider came over to notify Mr. Hawthorne they’d been murdered by Indians.”
He had to wonder if that was why he’d seen those buzzards. ‘They were just a few hours ahead of me,” he said, shaking his head. “If I hadn’t been having trouble with a skittish mule, I’d have been with them.”
“Then you were just plain lucky.”
Yeah, for the first time in a long time, maybe. But he sure hadn’t thought so then. Twisting his head to look up at her, he was struck by all that gold in those brown eyes. For a woman who’d had more than her share of grief in her young life, she’d managed to come through it with a dignity he had to admire. There was a calmness, a steadiness about her that went beyond any twenty-four years. As far apart as they’d been in character, it was hard to believe she and Lydia Jamison were close in age.
Moving away, she stood at the small window to peer outside. “I’ve been thinking about what you said last week,” she said, breaking a short silence.
“About what?”
“Hiring somebody to help. There’s a Chinese man Mr. Russell sent out to help me fix the door and some other things after you left. I didn’t understand a word he said, but he did everything I showed him to do.”
“Russell’s not too impressed with the Chinese he’s got working for him.”
“So I gathered. I guess he gave up on this one, anyway. When I took the laundry down yesterday, one of the others who speaks better English told me he’d been let go, and he was taking it hard. I don’t guess he’s earned enough to get him home, and it’s too late for him. to go, anyway.” Turning back to face him, she told Spence, “Since you think it’s beneath you to wash clothes, I’m going down to see if I can find him. If I don’t, he’ll starve.”
“I’d be damned careful about who came up here.”
“You’ll be here,” she reminded him. “I figure the way business is going, I can afford to pay him enough to survive on. They seem to get by on next to nothing, you know. The rumor keeps going around that they eat bugs so they can send what they earn back to their families.”
“It’s your money.”
“Yes, it is, but I wasn’t worried about the money so much. Most of the white men around here have a lot of contempt for the ‘heathen Chinee,’ as they call them. Since your people owned slaves, I was wanting to know you’d tolerate Mr. Chen before I hired him. If I thought you’d treat him like a dog, I wasn’t going to do it.”
“Mrs. Taylor, I’ve never treated anybody like a dog in my life. Slaveholder or not, Bingham treated the Negroes on his place like family. Truth to tell, that was probably why he never sold or bought any.”
“I didn’t mean to get your dander up—I was just asking how you felt, that was all.”
“You’ve got no business going down there yourself,” Spence declared flatly. “Just give me the name, and I’ll fetch him up here. Maybe if you see I haven’t skinned and tarred him, you’ll believe I don’t give a damn what he is.” Lurching to his feet, he reached for his coat. “His name is Chen—right?”
“Chen Li—or Li Chen. I’m never sure which name is supposed to come first. But you can’t miss him.”
“I suppose I ought to ask why,” he muttered.
“He’s only got the right eye—the other one is missing. He lost it in an accident last month.”
As the door closed behind him, she sat down at the table again to close the money jar. If Chen came to work, there’d be two men up here during the day, and maybe some of the talk would stop. If he spoke better English, he could go back and tell the rest of them just how the living arrangements were before things got out of hand. Right now, nobody could seriously believe Spencer Hardin was sharing her bed, but after the baby came, talk could get a lot worse.