A Gown of Spanish Lace (15 page)

It wasn’t until the next afternoon that Laramie knocked on her door and identified himself.

Ariana hastened to answer. She was relieved to hear his voice and prayed as she lifted the hook that he wouldn’t have suffered from the ride in the elements.

He looked fine. She sighed with relief.

He carried a burlap bag in each hand. “Hope I got what ya needed,” he said matter-of-factly, “’cause I don’t think I’ll be welcomed back fer a while.”

Ariana frowned at the words but couldn’t sort out his meaning. He deposited both bags on the table.

“Got a couple pots and this here thing,” he said, drawing a strange piece of metal from the closest bag. “It’s a reflector of some kind. Supposed to make biscuits without an oven.”

Ariana had never seen one before. She had no idea how to use it but determined to give it a try.

He had brought a nice selection of basic supplies. There wasn’t much in the line of spices or flavorings, but at least she would be able to do her own cooking. Ariana was thankful.

“Now—if I just had some meat…” she mused.

“I’ll git some,” he promised simply and later kept his word, appearing at her door with some venison steak just before the winter sun dipped behind the nearby hills.

Ariana could not believe how good the stew tasted after her weeks of unsavory beans. She even enjoyed a second helping.

The biscuits hadn’t done well. They were burned in spots—and undercooked in others. She would need to practice with the new reflector. Even so, they were definitely better than what she had been served from the gang’s kitchen. Perhaps now she could regain some of the weight she knew she had lost and have more strength when the time came for her to escape from her captors.

For Ariana lived for the day when the weather would improve, and she would find a way to slip away from the four log walls that held her captive.

Chapter Eleven

An Ally

In the privacy of the small cabin he called his own, Laramie lifted the small items from the chest, one by one, and laid them on the rough board table. According to Sam, these were his mother’s things. He felt a strange connection with them—a longing to know more about this woman he had never known. He appreciated Ariana’s reluctance to disturb the contents of the trunk any more than necessary for her own survival.

The pin he studied was a cameo. It looked fragile and delicate—the white profile surrounded with intricate filigree. It seemed out of place in a rough camp of lawless men. Did she really wear it here? Had she truly ever been in residence in the camp? Laramie found it hard to believe, yet her trunk—her things—were in camp. It puzzled him.

He withdrew one of the lace hankies. The cloth was soft to his touch—fine and smooth. He had never handled such fabric before. It was embroidered with a little pattern in delicate work, and as he looked closer he could make out letters.
L-A-L
. He put the letters together and whispered them softly. “Lal.” They spelled nothing as far as he knew. Yet he felt they held a secret. Lal. It was a strange word.

He tenderly lifted the other handkerchiefs and placed them all in a neat little pile.

Another pin. This one small, with a blue stone in the middle that caught the afternoon light.

Another hankie—then an oval on a long gold chain. He turned it this way and that as he surveyed it carefully. He noticed a little clasp. Carefully he pressed on it and it opened. It held a small lock of downy hair. Whose hair? Why had his mother carried it in this strange little oval? He studied it for a long time before he closed it and laid it aside.

A scrap of lace. He turned it over in his hands, discovering no purpose for the bit of cloth. Yet he did not discard it—but put it gently on the growing pile. Another hankie, elaborately embroidered. It looked like a pair of intertwining rings. What had that meant?

And then he was lifting the tintype. He turned it to catch all advantage of the light. It showed a woman. A woman whose face still shone out at him in spite of the fading of the years—whose eyes were turned lovingly upon a baby boy she held in her arms. Could it be him—with his mother?

Her face was so sweet—so gentle. He had never seen such an expression before. For long moments he studied the picture. Something about the woman’s likeness reminded him of the girl in the cabin. What was it? Was it the expression? The features? Maybe the eyes.

Carefully he placed the tintype on the bottom of the small chest and began to return the other items. Then he went to the corner shelf, lifted up the tiny gown that Sam had said was his, and gently added it to the other items in the chest.

His whole being was shaken by the experience. And yet he knew so little. He understood even less. Who was his mother? What had happened to her? If she had remained with him, would his life have been different? Somehow he felt it would have been, even though he wasn’t sure just how.

He closed the lid of the little box and turned his attention to the Bible. He opened the cover and read of one King James, who had authorized the version. It meant nothing to him. He continued to turn the pages.

He came to a page with a list of names, entered in precise and careful penmanship. His eyes quickly scanned the contents. It looked like a family record of some kind. He checked the heading at the top of the page and saw that it was titled
Births
. He skimmed down the page and read the last few lines.

Tilford James Bradley, 1812–1816

Margaret Rose Bradley, 1814–1842

Weyburn Oliver Bradley, 1817

Mary Louise Bradley, 1820–1820

Lavina Ann Bradley, 1822

Conrad Timothy Bradley, 1823–1824

Ethan David Bradley, 1826

There was a space and then the line announcing,

Burke Timothy Lawrence, August 10, 1860

Laramie wondered about the last entry. Why so much later? Why a different name?

Laramie turned the page. The headline at the top announced
Marriages.

Margaret Rose Bradley & Thomas Cullen Roberts, 1833
Lavina Ann Bradley & Turner Donair Lawrence III, 1840
Weyburn Oliver Bradley & Jane Titford Gray, 1841

Laramie flipped another page. This one was labeled
Deaths
, and he quickly let his eyes scan down the page, noting the names he had read previously, now with little notations behind the dates. Died of natural causes—in childbirth—whooping cough—pneumonia. It seemed that his forebears, if indeed that was the record he held in his hands, had more than a little difficulty.

He turned the page again and found a table of contents and then on into the printed pages of the book. But the pages held more than print. Here and there he found, in the same careful handwriting, brief notations or comments about passages. The truth dawned. The same person who had recorded the births, marriages, and deaths was the owner of the Bible. His mother? It was among her things. If he was to believe Sam, then this Bible had belonged to his mother and her name might appear in the book he held.

But it didn’t add up. His name was Russell. Laramie Russell. His pa’s name was Will Russell.

Then Laramie smiled a cynical smile. It would seem his pa had seen fit to change his name. Perhaps more than once. There was nothing new about that. Laramie supposed there wasn’t a man in camp who went by his given name.

Was there a chance his pa had once answered to one of those other names?

“So he was once Bradley or Roberts or Lawrence or maybe Gray,” he mused aloud. “Quite a different handle than Russell.”

Laramie slowly closed the book and promised himself that he’d do some more investigating into what it held as soon as he had the time. His horses needed to be fed and rubbed down. He’d have to satisfy his profound curiosity later.

Carefully he picked up the well-worn volume and the chest. His eyes scanned the room quickly. Then he walked to his wooden bunk, lifted it over a way, and knelt on the floor. With a small amount of coaxing, one floorboard groaned reluctantly upward. He slipped his treasure into the hole beneath, beside his money poke and extra Colt. It wasn’t safe. There was nothing safe in the camp. But it was the safest place he knew.

He moved the bunk back into position and picked up his Stetson, anxious to get his chores out of the way.

Laramie had finished with the horses and would have returned to his cabin and lit the kerosene lamp, but hunger drove him toward the main bunkhouse.

As he passed the south cabin the smell of cooking food caused him to stop midstride. He decided to check on Ariana to see how she was managing with the provisions he had brought her. Perhaps there had been something he’d forgotten.

He knocked, then called out and heard her move to the door and unlatch the hook.

She looked surprised, since Laramie never came in the evening except to bring her plate of food—and now the arrangement was for her to make her own meals.

“Jest came to see how ya made out with the cookin’,” he quickly explained.

“Fine,” she responded, indicating the empty plate she had just left to answer the door.

He moved past her and into the room. “Smells good,” he observed.

“Just stew,” said Ariana, her heart thumping with uncertainty. What did he want? She saw his eyes wander to the biscuits still on the cooking sheet.

“They didn’t turn out too well,” Ariana confessed. “I need to practice with the reflector.”

“They look a heap better than Rawley’s,” he observed.

Ariana noticed the slight twitch of his nose.

“Help yourself,” she offered.

He did, without hesitation or apology.

“There’s a little stew left—”

“Do ya mind?” he asked and glanced at the plate on the table.

“I’m sorry,” she offered quickly. “I only have the one plate, but I’ll wash it—”

“No need. I’ve et off worse things,” he responded and picked up the plate. He moved to the stove, where the stew still simmered, and dished out the remainder of the contents.

Ariana stood mute as she watched him squat on the floor, his back up against the door.

“You can sit at the table,” she said quickly. “I’ll—I’m finished.”

But he shook his head. “I’m used to sittin’ most anywhere.”

Ariana had never seen a man eat so hungrily. She found herself wondering when he had last had a decent meal. She roused herself and moved to rinse the one cup so she could pour him a cup of coffee.

“Thank you,” he said, looking a little embarrassed at the unfamiliar courtesy.

“I’m sorry I didn’t make more,” Ariana apologized as he cleaned up the plate with a biscuit. “I didn’t—I was trying to—to not use the supplies—”

“I can git more,” he stated briefly.

“But you said—” began Ariana.

He smiled. A lazy, good-natured smile. “True,” he replied, “but there are other stores.”

Ariana still didn’t understand his meaning, yet she couldn’t help but wonder if the food had been obtained with the help of a pistol rather than a gold piece.

He set aside the emptied plate. Ariana supposed that he must still be hungry. She had eaten two servings herself.

“Do you want those other two biscuits?” she inquired.

He nodded and moved to get up, but she brought the biscuits to him. He washed them down with great gulps of coffee.

The warm food seemed to relax his usually tense body. He even lifted off the Stetson and placed it on the floor beside him. Ariana noticed that his hair was curly. He was also in need of a good haircut. Then her eyes noticed a scar on his forehead—just at his hairline. She was wondering about it when his words drew her attention.

“What does lal mean?” he asked her suddenly.

“Lal?” she echoed.

“Lal. Jest like thet. L-A-L.”

“Where did you see it?” She was forgetting some of her caution.

“On one of them hankies in thet little box.”

“Oh,” said Ariana, “then it likely was a monogram.”

“A monogram?” He sounded puzzled.

“One’s initials.”

The frown still puckered his brow.

“The first letters of your names,” went on Ariana. “Mine would be AYB. Ariana Yvonne Benson.”

He seemed to be pondering.