Bittersweet (20 page)

To everyone’s surprise, Sarah spoke up. “I can lift Wolf.”

“She’ll hurt herself trying, Miss Grelznik,” Nate insisted. He leaned down and put his hands on his knees. “Mrs. Ebbitt,” he said gently, “you’ll go hurting yourself, trying to lug that boy around, and I’d feel real responsible. Old Hattie’s fine for him. You look after yourself and get your strength back. He’s a dirty little beggar; you don’t want him all over you.”

“I can lift him,” Sarah said, but the fear that she could not care for a child clouded her face and she sounded uncertain. Imogene climbed down to stand between Sarah and Nate. Nate had to straighten up and step back to look her in the eye.

“Mr. Weldrick, we shook on it. I’ve heard a handshake is legal tender in a court of law out West. Sarah, why don’t you take Wolf inside?”

Sarah wavered a moment, vague and unsure. “It’ll be fine,” Imogene said, and Sarah led the child away.

Nate looked after them while Imogene busied herself with the unloading. “Mac,” he said, “somebody once gave me brandy in one of those long-legged glasses that ping when you flick them. I bit right through it, the glass was so fine. Just took a bite right out of the rim. Cut my lip. That little gal makes me think of that.”

To add to their small store of goods from Pennsylvania, Fred and Lutie had given them two cots, Addie Glass had brought several
chairs and a small table down from the attic to put in their living room, and Mac had pressed an old Colt .45 on them. “Law here’s often as not settled by the authority of Judge Colt,” he said.

While Imogene opened her boxes of books, dishes, and household goods, Sarah made a soft bed of blankets for Wolf in the room that was to be hers. Often, with Wolf pattering at her heels like an affectionate puppy, Sarah sought Imogene out with questions. Did they have a washtub for the child? Was there enough money for a new suit of clothes? Where were the scissors to trim his hair? Had Imogene seen the soap dish? Imogene had to settle the two of them in a comfortable corner with a picture book lest Sarah wear herself out.

They were both napping when Imogene finished cleaning their new home. Wolf sucked his thumb as he slept, a fold of Sarah’s dress clutched in his fist. Imogene tiptoed past them, outside, to dump her washwater.

“We’re a family,” she said. She tilted her head back and looked up at the patch of sky framed by a delicate golden tracery of leaves. “Thank you.”

OVER THE WINTER, SARAH GREW STRONGER. BAD WEATHER AND WOLF
gave her an excuse not to venture out much, and except for Imogene and McMurphy, she saw no one. When summer came around, Imogene gave her the task of the household shopping to get her to go into town so she could overcome her shyness around strangers.

Sarah made Mac go with her.

“It smells summery.”

Mac flared his big nostrils and took a noisy sniff. “You’re the smellingest gal I ever knew, Mrs. Ebbitt.”

“I can smell the sage when it’s hot, and the horses, and the sun on the wood. Summer. Back home it’s not so dry, and the air’s got so many smells you mostly can’t sort them out.”

“It’s dry, I’ll give you that. Maybe later we’ll get some rain. August sometime’ll bring down thunderstorms.” They walked in silence for a while, Wolf at Sarah’s side, kicking up little puffs of dust for the pleasure of watching them fly. The wooden buildings soaked up the sunlight and sent it back into the air in shimmering waves. Sarah wore a sunbonnet to protect her face, and a new peach-and-brown plaid dress that Imogene had made for her on the Singer sewing machine at the school.

Mac had given up prospecting in late spring and had taken a job caring for Wells Fargo’s draft animals. Mostly he worked after
noons and evenings, currying and bedding down the teams in from the run across to Pyramid Lake and the Smoke Creek Desert. “I ain’t going shopping with you,” he said. “But I’ll be waiting around to carry. Find me. Don’t go trying to carry things yourself.”

He left her in front of the stationer’s. Imogene’s credit was good in any shop in Reno, and consequently so was Sarah’s, and the storekeepers were used to the shy young woman with the half-breed Indian boy. After leaving the stationer’s, Sarah went to the grocery and the dry goods, leaving her purchases to be called for at the counter. After a week’s letters to her son were posted, she looked for Mac.

The boardwalk that fronted most of the stores harbored scattered idlers in its shade, the sun sweeping them farther and farther under the overhang. Mac’s gnomelike figure was not among them. Above the town, the mountains faded to cardboard cutouts in the summer haze, with a speck of white here and there, where a pocket of snow escaped the sun’s detection. Shading her eyes, Sarah searched the far side of the street.

“Where do you think Mac’s got himself to?” Sarah asked Wolf.

Without hesitation the toddler thrust a round arm out and pointed across the street. “Saloon.” In his limited vocabulary, “saloon” was one of the few two-syllable words he used. Wolf was not given to much talk.

The doors of the Silver Nugget were open, the shade an even stronger draw on an August afternoon than whiskey, gambling, or women. After the dazzle of the day, nothing was visible inside. A howl, a human coyote baying at the moon, sounded from the darkness behind the open doors, and Sarah blanched. “I get him.” Wolf disengaged his hand from hers and started resolutely across the street, as though routing men from saloons was not a new experience for him.

Sarah caught up with him. “We’ll go together.”

Inside the double doors, the saloon floor had been cleared of tables. Men, talking and shouting, formed a tight circle around the open space, the beer in the mugs they held slopping onto the sawdust and other patrons. In the ring were two men and two dogs: a squat, beefy fellow in his mid-fifties straddling a black dog and sporting a bowler pulled down against his ears so that his snow-white hair thrust out in waves below the brim; and a long-legged, long-haired man with a red beard that covered his neckerchief,
crouching on his hands and knees, face to face with a shaggy brown and gray mutt.

The bearded man stuck out his tongue and began licking his dog’s broad chest. Owners were expected to “taste” their dogs to assure the bettors that poison had not been spread on their fur before the fight. Quiet fell on the gathering as they watched intently. “That’s enough,” said the man who’d called for them to begin. “Manny ain’t poisoned.”

Sarah stood dumbstruck in the open doorway, clasping Wolf’s hand in hers. “He licked that dog!” she said half to herself, half to the boy. She spoke softly, but her words fell in a sudden quiet and the bearded man’s eyes rolled up from the dog to her. He let out an earsplitting roar and charged toward her. Mac, standing to the back of the ring of bodies, upon a chair so he could better witness the proceedings, dropped his beer and threw himself after the charging man.

He was too late. The dog-licker had cleared the saloon in three strides. His long arms wrapped around Sarah and swung her high into the air. Wolf sat crying in the dirt, and Sarah was screaming.

“David!” she cried when her breath returned, and standing on tiptoe, holding tightly to his neck, she sobbed happily. Mac, having brought a barstool out with him, stopped brandishing it when he saw that the two of them were acquainted, and perched on it instead, rubbing his jaw with his finger stubs.

David turned to the faces crowding the doorway. “My sister,” he announced. He whooped again and tossed her into the air, eliciting a little, breathless scream. When he put her down they stared shyly at each other, neither knowing what to say.

David offered her his arm. “Front of a saloon’s no place for a man’s sister. Come on, Manny.” He whistled and the dog trotted out to wait at his heels. “Sorry about the fight, boys. You understand. Another time.”

Brother and sister walked up Virginia Street toward the river, Sarah’s arm held firmly under David’s, Wolf doggedly clutching Sarah’s skirts, virtually forgotten. “It’s good to see you, Sarah Mary. I get lonely for family. Doggone, but it’s good to see you!” He threw back his head and laughed. Sarah wasn’t saying anything, but she clung to his arm, smiling up at him and giving him a shake and pressing her head against his shoulder now and then as though to convince herself he was real.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” she said as they left the main street. Tears started and he held her, laughing down at her and patting her back with his big hands.

“I promised when I left, didn’t I? Well, there you are.” He surveyed her critically. “You’re just a little bit of a thing. No bigger’n a girl. And shyer than I remember.”

She tugged at a strand of his long hair. “You’re just like I remember you. Exactly.”

Addie came out on the porch with disapproval wrapped around her like a cloak. Her eyes raked David’s considerable height, from his balding head to the heels of his heavy railroad boots. Sarah introduced him as her brother, and the formidable little lady graciously let them pass into the backyard.

They sat under the elms, talking. David recounted his adventures, changing them where necessary to make Sarah laugh. He had started for the silver mines of Virginia City as he had planned, to strike it rich. A year had passed before he arrived. On the trip across the country, he had struck up a friendship with an engineer who worked for the railroad, surveying track, building bridges, and digging tunnels. They had sat up all night, passing a bottle between them and swapping tall tales. David admitted that as the younger and less experienced of the two, he’d invented most of his contributions. By morning it had been decided that David would travel with the engineer and learn engineering.

“Now I’m a regular railroad typhoon.” David laughed at his own joke and went on, “Danny’s dead, blew himself up tunneling through the gold country in California, but I’m building bridges the same way he would’ve done.” He was silent for several minutes, remembering his friend.

He asked Sarah what had brought her west, and had to be satisfied with the answer, “I came with Imogene.” She avoided the subject and looked so miserable when he tried to pursue it that he let it go.

In midafternoon Mac came by, carrying the parcels Sarah had forgotten in town. At first he was gruff and disgruntled, jealousy making him peevish. But a little coaxing from Sarah cheered him and he joined them on the grass. He and David knew a lot of people in common; the subject of family being exhausted for the moment, the conversation moved on to embrace people and events further afield.

Wolf was over his first fear of David and played close to the big man, missing no opportunity to get a good look at his beard. Finally, David invited the little boy to touch it. After a tentative pat and a tug or two, Wolf, evidently satisfied as to its texture and authenticity, wandered off to play in Addie’s rhododendrons.

“Where’d you come by the Indian kid?” David asked.

“I take care of him for his pa,” Sarah replied. “Wolf’s a good boy.”

David looked at his sister, warm and maternal, smiling at the baby as he played.

“Look!” Wolf crowed, waving a perfectly ordinary twig, and Sarah laughed and clapped her hands.

David winked at Mac. “Some Indian’s kid landed in a pot of jam.”

“He’s only half Indian,” Mac said. “Pa’s a miner up Virginia City way, though he gets around. Does a lot of things. Right now he’s over to San Francisco doing some damn thing.”

“Wife die?”

“I don’t know as they were rightly married, when it comes down to it. I don’t know if a white man can marry an Indian in Nevada. They had some Indian mumbo-jumbo, I remember. Me and Nate was pretty drunk. But not a marriage proper like you think of.”

“Did she die?” Sarah asked this time.

“No, Weldrick run out on her. Last I heard, she was shacked up with some miner up near Carson.”

“Wolf’s mother is alive?” The odd tone in Sarah’s voice caught Mac up short in his gossiping. Imogene and Sarah were closemouthed about their personal affairs, but Mac had seen the changes the Indian boy had brought about in Sarah.

“You getting at something I’m missing?” He cocked a wary eyebrow.

“Wolf ought to be with his mother,” Sarah said flatly.

“Now that ain’t so. After Nate lit out she took to the booze, can’t leave it alone. And besides, she run off and left the kid—guess her new fellow didn’t take to half-breeds not of his own making—and last November she left him outside a flophouse Nate was staying at. Naked as the day is long, and tethered to the horse trough with a piece of rawhide. If he hadn’t shied a horse by wiggling, nobody’d have found him till he froze to death. I guess the little fellow never set up a caterwauling like most kids would’ve done. That’s the In
dian in him, I expect. You keep that boy, Mrs. Ebbitt. You take him back to his ma, he’ll die as sure as if you put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.” Mac’s exaggeration had the desired effect; the haunted look left Sarah’s eyes and she watched Wolf like a young lioness would watch a lone cub.

“Mrs. Ebbitt?” David looked at his sister.

“I married Sam Ebbitt.”

“That pigheaded, psalm-singing son of a bitch!” David exploded. “Jesus Christ, why?”

Sarah looked ready to cry.

Mac shoved himself to his feet, saying he had to see a man about a horse, and, excusing himself, hurried from the yard.

“Why?”

“I just did,” was all she would say. Another avenue of inquiry was closed and they sat without speaking, watching the clouds change shape overhead. With Wolf’s busy hands busied elsewhere, Manny came out from under the porch where he’d hidden himself, to lie between Sarah and David. He flopped down with a mournful sigh and rested his chin on his paws. Sarah scratched his ears for him.

“You like Manny?”

She nodded. The dog pricked up an ear at the sound of his name.

“I named him Emmanuel after Pa. He’s a fighter, takes offense at everything and starts in snapping.”

“You miss Pa?”

“Nope.”

“Remember Sam Ebbitt’s old yellow-eyed dog?”

“That damn dog bit me once. I like to killed him, but he got under that woodshed.”

“I
did
kill him.”

“You’re joking me!”

“No, I’m not. I choked him in a door.” Sarah smiled a little in spite of herself. “And I’m not sorry, either.”

David laughed so loud it brought Mrs. Glass to the window.

When Imogene came home from school, Sarah, David, and Wolf were indoors preparing dinner. When it was ready, Sarah said a simple grace: “I thank You, Lord, for my brother.”

After supper she asked David to stay with them while he was in
Reno, and Imogene added her welcome, but David declined, making his excuses. “It’s just nine—way before my bedtime,” he said. “I’ll likely still be visiting with some of the boys long after you’re asleep. I can sleep anywhere. Besides, I’ve got to be in Auburn—over the Sierras—tomorrow, but I’ll come by in the morning and say good-bye. I’m in these parts a lot,” he assured Sarah. “I’ll be on your doorstep so much you’ll wish I’d stayed lost.”

He wouldn’t change his mind and so Sarah hugged him, said good night, and went in the bedroom to tuck Wolf in. David and Imogene could hear her singing to the boy through the door. David paused on the porch steps. “Could you walk with me a bit, Miss Grelznik? There’s some subjects I’m not clear on.”

The night had turned cold. Even in summer a wind came down off the mountains and cooled the valley at night. In the clear, dry air, there seemed to be half again as many stars as shone in the Pennsylvania skies. They walked in silence for a while, following the footpath along the river, David’s silhouette only slightly taller than Imogene’s.

“How do you come to be out West?” he asked. And Imogene told him of Darrel’s accusations and Karen Cogswell’s hysterical outburst, of Sam whipping Sarah and breaking into Imogene’s house when Sarah had run there for protection.