A Taste of Heaven

Copyright © Alexis Harrington,
1996

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1

March 1887

L
iberty
Garrison Ross momentarily straightened from her task and leaned on
the shovel handle, flexing her back. Her skirt was solid mud from
waist to hem. Wincing at the fire in her hands, she lifted them to
look at the blisters forming on her palms. She hadn't thought to
put on her worn gloves before she came out here. Small
wonder.

A chill breeze came up and caught the long
ends of her hair, flapping them across her face. The late March sun
glared off blinding patches of snow that remained on the ground and
still blanketed the surrounding hills. Out there, she knew, lay the
rotting carcasses of thawing cattle, frozen on their hooves by
successive blizzards that had howled over this land continually
since November. She was a stranger here, but still, by this time of
year, she would have expected to detect the scent of spring. It
wasn't there.

She glanced down at the open trench in front
of her. In one corner, a bit of white sheet protruded through the
dark soil. It gleamed up from the bottom of the pit under the noon
sun. Creeping hysteria closed in, making her heart jump, and the
threat of tears burned behind her eyelids again. She dashed a
shaking, muddy hand across them. She had to hold together a little
longer, the worst part was over. She had only to finish filling the
hole.

Don't think, she ordered herself, just dig.
If she gave this too much thought, she'd run screaming through the
winter-beaten range lands. Here, death and hardship lurked like the
vultures circling the lifeless cattle.

Libby sank the shovel blade into the
dwindling pile of heavy, water-soaked dirt that she'd erected while
digging Ben Ross's grave. It was hard to remember that he had been
her husband—she had never felt married to him. And not just because
she'd been his wife for only four months before he died of
pneumonia.

She lifted the shovel with effort. She had
never buried anyone before. In Chicago, there were people whose
business it was to handle such matters as funerals and interment.
But this wasn't the city. It was the frontier. And since coming to
Montana last September, Libby had done a lot of things she'd never
expected to do.

Try though she might to make her mind a
blank, she couldn't shut out the reality of what she was doing, and
what had led her to this. Shuddering sobs began working their way
up her throat, and she frantically pushed soil into the hole,
working faster and faster.

She'd get away from this uncivilized,
godforsaken place if it was the last thing she did. Life in Chicago
had been a heartache.

In Montana, it was hell.

L
ibby Ross
stepped out and carefully closed the door behind her, making
certain it latched. It was a senseless exercise, she knew, but she
performed it just the same.

At this early hour, it was cold here on the
rough, narrow porch. During the winter, this side of the house had
remained in shadows most of the day, even when the sun shone. That
fact had served her well for the past month, especially when the
ground had still been frozen—

At the thought, her hand tightened
spasmodically on her satchel, the one she'd arrived with last
September. She hadn't come here with much except hope, and in some
ways it felt as though she were leaving with even less.

Overhead, in a sky that seemed to have no
end, clouds crowded out the sun. Libby took away with her only
those personal items she’d brought last fall, and packed them in
her trunk after hoisting it on the rickety buckboard. She also
carried Ben’s Winchester, which she would keep for protection. She
didn't have much skill with the weapon, but she supposed if faced
with the need to use it, she’d figure it out fast enough. Nothing
else in the house was of any interest or help to her. A few broken
pieces of furniture and a hodgepodge of worthless stuff collected
over Ben's lifetime of austere bachelorhood—these were her widow’s
dower.

She climbed onto the buckboard and picked up
the lines, looking down at the skinny roan it had taken her over an
hour to hitch. He was a sorry-looking thing, and she worried about
him making the trip to the town of Heavenly. That the gelding had
survived the winter was a miracle for which she was profoundly
grateful; he was her only transportation out of here.

But Libby knew she would have walked,
even crawled on her knees if she’d had to, just to escape from
here, and Montana. She didn't have much money, but surely she had
enough to buy a stagecoach ticket to
somewhere
outside this territory. That was her
immediate goal. Where she was going, and what she’d do when she got
there were worries to put off for later.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the best
her numbed mind could devise. Her first destination was Heavenly,
the nearest town, fifteen miles to the east. She'd seen it only
once, and that had been last fall when she arrived on the stage. As
she stood in the street blinking against the sun, to her city-bred
eyes it had been a crude, disappointing outpost with a saloon and a
few stores that rose from the sagebrush. But after months of seeing
no other landscape but empty, snow-covered prairie, in her mind’s
eye Heavenly, Montana, had achieved the stature of its
namesake.

Pointing the horse toward the road, she
didn’t look back at the shabby hovel where she’d spent the
grueling, interminable winter. But she spared just a brief glance
at Ben’s grave. Yesterday, after finishing his burial, she'd marked
it with a clumsy cross. It was made from two wooden spoons, lashed
at their intersection with a tie from one of her aprons. It wasn't
fancy, but it was the best she could do, and as much as he deserved
for the lies he'd told her to bring her here.

On both sides of the road leading away from
the ranch, the grassland was sparsely dotted with the mangy brown
coats of dead cattle, revealed by the melting snow. She shivered in
the face of the chill wind. It seemed like she never was warm
enough anymore.

She bowed her head for an instant against the
pain of knowing she was totally alone in the world. Then she
flapped the reins on the horse's back to hurry her leave-taking
from this place.

*~*~*

Under the halfhearted sun, Heavenly, Montana,
was a disappointing sight. Libby glanced around as her tired horse
stumbled down the street, and her inflated notion of the town
fizzled away like a drop of water on a hot stove. Many of the
buildings were tall and narrow, a design she’d found peculiar to
the western towns she’d seen on her way out here. It made no sense
to her—they had more room out here than they could use, but the
structures were high and cramped. These were made from rough-sawn
planking, and looked neglected.

It was late afternoon, and her arms felt as
heavy as granite. They’d already ached from digging Ben’s grave
yesterday. Driving the horse fifteen miles over rough, nearly
nonexistent roads had just about finished her off. She had no
experience with reins and several times all three of them—horse,
buckboard, and she—would have left the path had the gelding not
been smart enough to correct Libby’s errors. At least she’d
remembered to wear gloves today, and it was a good thing—inside the
leather, her hands were still raw.

Still, she thought, looking around again,
there was life here, and people. She hadn’t talked to another
person besides Ben since last fall. And he hadn’t been very
talkative, at that. Especially toward the end.

Signs along the muddy street marked the
establishments of a barber, a gunsmith, a feed store, an assay
office, a “painless” dentist, a hotel, and the saloon. At least the
town had a hotel, although what little money she possessed wouldn’t
last long if she had to spend more than one night there.

At the halfway point of the thoroughfare,
Libby’s eyes lit on Osmer’s Dry Goods. She remembered the stage
driver telling her that Osmer’s sold the tickets. With clumsy
maneuvering, she pulled the wobbling buckboard to a stop and sighed
with relief. Wrapping the lines around the brake handle, she
climbed down. Every muscle she owned was stiff.

God only knew what she looked like after her
daylong trip. She hadn’t secured her hat very well and somewhere
along the way, it had blown off, taking her best hat pin with it.
She glanced down at her clothes. At least the roads hadn't been
dusty, and aside from being wrinkled, her dark skirt was still
fairly clean. She smoothed the front of her jacket and, taking a
deep, steadying breath, set off toward Osmer’s.

Three cowboys lounged at the hitching rail in
front of the place, apparently engaged in a deep discussion. As she
approached them, snatches of their conversation floated to her.

“—
and I hope we can do somethin’ about
it before Mr. Hollins gets back. Elsewise, he’s like to have a fit
when he hears what we done,” one of them reflected glumly. He
leaned his tall, spare frame against the rail and crossed his
ankles, making his spurs clink.

“Aw, he woulda done the same thing if he was
here,” the second cowboy replied. He had the bushiest mustache
Libby had ever seen. He looked up from the cigarette he was
rolling, his hat shifting when he raised his brows. “Maybe worse—he
mighta shot that damned potato-head.”

“Charlie's right. Tyler will understand,” the
youngest of the three offered, sounding the most confident. “I
don't know why you two think he’s so fearsome. It ain’t like he'll
flay our hides off.”

The mustachioed one licked the seam of the
tidy roll of tobacco and twisted the ends. “Yours, he won't, Sass.
You ain’t old enough yet to really get him riled, but he expects
the rest of us to know better. If we don’t, we're up to our asses
in—

“—
oh, a-afternoon ma’am!”

Catching sight of Libby, the two older ones
lurched to attention and turned a ripe shade of crimson. They
scraped their hats off their heads and held them against their
chests as though watching a funeral cortege pass. Their spurs rang
and there was general shuffling as they made a path for her on the
sidewalk. The youngster gawked at her with respectful awe until the
lean, leathery cowboy reached over and whipped off the youngster’s
hat impatiently. He shoved it into the boy’s hands, and delivered a
sharp poke to his ribs. With this silent reprimand, he shut his
gaping mouth and straightened like the other two.

Libby nodded in acknowledgment and continued
to Osmer’s door, unable to suppress her smile. The West was a
crude, uncivilized wilderness, but at least some of the people were
polite.

*~*~*

“Passed away? Old Ben Ross?” Nort Osmer
stared at Libby across his counter, slack-jawed. “I know he's been
poorly in the last year or so, but— Well, I
swan . . . ”

The general store was redolent with the
clashing odors of jerked beef, tobacco, tanned leather, coffee, and
a vague floral scent. A row of jars filled with colorful candy sat
on the counter. Libby’s eyes lingered on the candy—she hadn’t eaten
since noon, and the skimpy meal had consisted of only a piece of
bread and a hunk of dried beef. Sneaking a surreptitious glance
around her, Libby noted a jumble of merchandise on display, some
items with fur still attached. This was all so different from the
elegant department stores in Chicago—not that she'd had the money
to shop in them. But she’d looked in their windows often enough
over the years.

“Had you known my husband long, Mr.
Osmer?” she inquired, more out of politeness than real interest.
The word
husband
stuck in her
throat.

He blinked at her, obviously still
assimilating the news of Ben’s death. He was a mild-looking man
with small, pale eyes and reddish brown hair.

“Yes’m, since I was a boy. He’s been coming
in from the time my pa owned this place. We were surprised as all
get-out when we heard he took a wife.”

Libby wasn't sure who “we” were, but assumed
he meant the townspeople. Osmer paused here, looking at her with
curiosity.