Bittersweet (27 page)

Imogene stopped behind Sarah and rested her hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. Sarah looked up. “I killed him.”

“That was the object.”

“I guess so.” Flies had found the wound, and made a frenzied buzzing in the hot air.

Imogene urged Sarah to her feet. “You go back to the house. You got dinner, the least I can do is prepare it. Go on now.” She watched as Sarah walked back toward the welcoming shade of the buildings. The gun was left on the bank; Imogene picked it up and balanced it over her arm. The rabbit stared sightlessly up at her. She grasped its hind feet, lifted it, and holding it as far from her as possible, she too walked back to the house.

By suppertime the rabbit was stew, and Imogene served it with pride.

Two wagoners had come in that evening, one tall and lanky, with a horse face and a head as bald as an egg, the other of middling height, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, with a spiky shock of black hair. They shoveled the stew down in complacent silence and asked for seconds. They were regular travelers through Round Hole
and loudly appreciated the reappearance of meat on the supper table.

Sarah managed a small bowlful but was withdrawn most of the evening. When supper was over, Imogene led her out onto the porch, away from the murmur of the freighters. The summer night was cool and the air so dry and clear that the stars seemed to hang within reach of the distant mountaintops. Imogene pulled two weathered chairs, used for sitting outdoors, close together and they sat quietly for a time, enjoying the soft sounds of the desert night.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” Imogene said after a while.

“I just feel bad about the rabbit.”

“We have to eat.”

“I know. I’m being silly.”

Imogene smiled at her earnestness.

“I don’t want to hunt anymore. Is that okay? I’ll cook.”

“Of course.”

The door banged behind them and the tall angular wagoner joined them on the porch. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m going to hit the hay. Dan’ll be up awhile longer, but he said to tell you he won’t be needing nothing. Good night, ladies.” He ambled down the steps and out toward the barn.

“Good night, Curley,” Imogene returned. “When are we going to have the honor of having you as an overnight guest inside?”

“When Farmer’s Feed and Grain pays their drivers a decent wage and pigs fly,” he called back good-naturedly.

They watched his lanky silhouette fold down out of sight in the high grasses beyond the spring as he bedded down for the night.

“I don’t mind killing chickens,” Sarah said suddenly. “I used to wring their necks better than Walter, Mam said. And I had some chickens at Sam’s. They were all mine, I took care of everything. Chickens are different, they’re just to eat.”

“We’ll order some chickens from Reno tomorrow when the stage comes,” Imogene decided. “Is there a time of year for chickens?”

“I don’t know. We’ll want grown ones anyway; baby chicks might die on the way. Some hens and a rooster. Do we have money?”

“No. We’ll ‘run our face,’ as Mac says. We may as well order some saplings too. In for a penny, in for a pound. I’m hungry for trees, shade trees.”

“Are we too poor?”

“No, dear. I just worry. We’re doing quite well. We should have most of the equipment I took over from the Van Fleets paid off by next year.”

They ordered the chickens and the saplings the following day, and as soon as the passengers off the southbound coach for Bishop had been fed and settled into their lodgings, they set about constructing a chicken coop, assisted by two young men. Neither was yet thirty years old, adventurers from the shattered South, cadging rides from freight wagons to try their luck in California. One was lean and blond, his eyes aged by the war; the other was shorter, darker, and spoke very little. Attracted by Sarah’s fragile good looks and a chance to break the tedium of an idle summer afternoon, they had offered their assistance with the building project. Dubbing Sarah “straw boss” because she was the chicken expert, they carried the motley assortment of lumber Imogene ferreted out from the piles of refuse behind the stable and shed. The Southerners would have built the coop by themselves if Imogene hadn’t insisted they instruct her and Sarah in the fundamentals of carpentry, in return for which supper would be on the house. By evening an adequate coop was erected, Imogene and Sarah wielding the hammers, the two boys looking on and shouting directions and encouragement.

When it was finished, Sarah patted the corner of the low, sloping roof; she’d been too busy to be shy and now the new structure took her mind up completely. “We’ve done it,” she said with delight. “And next time we’ll be able to do it by ourselves.”

Long after supper was over, while Imogene was still tending bar, Sarah sat by the window of her bedroom, looking out at the dark mountains and the small black hump on the north end of the stable that was her chicken coop.

Imogene came to bed after midnight, walking softly so she wouldn’t awaken Sarah if she was sleeping.

“Imogene?” Sarah called softly.

“It’s me.”

Sarah pulled herself up and made a place for Imogene on the bed. “You’re up so late.” She took Imogene’s hand and kissed it.

“Those boys stayed up drinking. I don’t like to see young people drink so much.”

“Maybe they’re homesick.”

“Maybe.”

“I’ve been looking at our little shed. I haven’t built anything before. It’s easy.”

“I sometimes think women are discouraged from doing men’s work because they’re afraid we’ll discover how easy it is.”

“I like it. Imogene, I don’t hate it here as much as I think I should.”

Imogene laughed. “Well, that’s good. Maybe we’re getting used to it. It’s late, we’d best get some sleep.” She slipped into her nightgown and crawled under the covers. “How did I stand a cold bed all those years?” she asked as Sarah snuggled close.

Before dawn, a wagon driver was banging on the counter in the bar and bellowing Imogene’s name. Pulling on a heavy wrapper, she came quickly. It was still dark, with only the barest glimmer of light in the east, but Imogene recognized him by his barrel shape and low-crowned hat.

“What is it, Cracker?”

“Those reb boys I give a lift in? They fell in the drink last night. Too drunk to get out, what with the high sides and the grass slippery.” Blunt and angry, he poked his finger into the air. “Fence that goddamn hole in! I mean it. I told Van Fleet and now I’m telling you.”

“The boys drowned?” Imogene asked stupidly.

In the face of Imogene’s horror, his anger dissolved somewhat and he mumbled a gruff affirmation. “They did. Me and one of the boys heading out Susanville way fished them out. They must’ve staggered into it when they went out to bed down for the night. I don’t expect they had the price of a bed between them?”

Imogene shook her head. She stood silent for a moment, looking past him, then said, “I’ll get dressed.”

The young men lay side by side in the grass by the spring. The Round Hole yawned still and dark in the half-light before dawn.

“You can see where they tried scrambling out.” Cracker pointed to where the grass was torn and pulled down. “The bank’s high, and what with the grass growing out over the water the way it does…”

“Why didn’t they call for help?” Imogene cried. “Didn’t anyone hear them? I’m sure it would have awakened me. I’ve always been a light sleeper…” Her voice trailed off.

“No sense worrying it now, ma’am, maybe they were just too drunk, thought it was all in fun till they was spent. Maybe one
passed out and tumbled in and the other got dragged down, trying to fish him out. There’s no telling.”

Another man, round-headed and thick-shouldered, arms soaked to the shoulders, searched the two dead men. Cracker jerked his chin toward him. “Lyle here pulled them out.”

Lyle rocked back on his haunches, resting huge hands on his thighs. “They got nothing on them to say who they was,” he said. “Just drifters, I guess. Like as not didn’t have any folks to speak of.”

The boys’ faces, so animated and young the night before, were gray and old, wrinkled by water. Imogene held herself against the chill, rubbing her upper arms as the sun topped the mountains.

“If you can point us to some shovels, we’ll bury them,” Lyle offered.

“Here?” Imogene said, aghast. “Shouldn’t there be someone—a graveyard—something?”

“The heat’ll be on us in an hour or so,” Lyle warned. “They’ll start stinking. We’d as well bury them now.”

“There are shovels in the shed.”

While the passengers on the morning stage for Reno loaded their baggage and harnessed a fresh team, Lyle and Cracker quietly dug a grave in the meadow below the spring. Imogene had fetched two old sheets from the house, and the boys’ bodies were wrapped head to foot in makeshift shrouds.

As the men lowered the corpses into their common grave, Sarah ran down from the house. Lyle saw her and waved her back. “Nothing you can do, missus. Go on back now.”

“It’s all right, Sarah,” Imogene called. “There is no more to be done.”

But Sarah came anyway. With short, determined steps she ran across the road and skirted the Round Hole spring. Her face was as pale as death, but her mouth was set in a firm line and her eyes were clear.

Imogene stepped between her and the open grave. “My dear, you needn’t have come.”

Sarah held out the book she had clutched across her bosom. “The Bible,” she said breathlessly. “You would’ve forgotten it. Those boys would want the words said over them.” Sarah held the Bible out to Imogene.

“Will you read it?” Imogene asked softly.

“The Bible’s not for me to read or not read anymore,” Sarah replied.

Imogene took the Bible and opened it to the Twenty-third Psalm. Sarah stood beside her, her eyes averted from the bundles in the bottom of the trench. The two wagoners bared their heads and stood quietly by as Imogene read aloud in a deep, sure voice. When she closed the Bible, she had tears on her cheeks.

Cracker cleared his throat. “That was right. Me and Lyle would’ve forgot entirely.”

“Thank you, Sarah,” Imogene said, and they walked slowly back to the house.

That afternoon, when the stop was empty, Sarah and Imogene, the younger woman gloved and bonneted against the rays of the sun, used their newly learned skills to erect a railing around the spring.

THE CHICKENS ARRIVED, A ROBUST, STRINGY LOT WITH PARTICOLORED
feathers. Only two had succumbed to the rigors of the journey, and they were eaten for dinner. Imogene’s saplings arrived on the same coach; their wavering green tops, frosted white with alkali dust, gave the mudwagon the look of a grizzled old head. Mac and Noisy supervised the planting from the shade of the porch, giving suggestions and speculating on their chances of survival. Noisy was pessimistic, but Mac figured they’d live out the week.

Summer ended abruptly. Imogene’s saplings, planted in a neat line around the house’s side yard, lost their leaves almost overnight, and a biting wind blew out of the northwest all autumn and through December. Slate-colored clouds scudded dry and cold across a dome of scoured blue.

The valley was too dry for snow, but the mountain peaks were white, and frost covered the ground through February and March. Imogene made the trip by wagon the eighty miles to Loyalton to get hay. She was gone nearly a week, and Sarah ran the stop alone. On her return they spent the better part of two days breaking the bales into manageable lots.

The weather stayed bitter through April but held a suggestion of softness in the afternoons, and rain fell in cold scattered showers, the progress of a lone thunderhead often visible as it carried its dark
streamers of rain over the face of the desert. High-voiced new frogs peeped from the spring, and the winter black of the sage was taking on a greenish cast. By the end of May, the bitterbrush was in bloom and spiny yellow and blue flowers half as big as a penny and close to the ground appeared along the road where the water settled in the swale. Jackrabbits and cottontails the size of a woman’s hand grazed fearlessly on the short, coarse grass by the meadow’s edge. Occasionally a coyote, tempted by the easy game and a winter’s lean belly, would hunt them in the daylight, and the nights were filled with coyote song as they called to unseen mates over the Smoke Creek.

The coach out of Reno rattled through the crisp spring air, the dust from the horses’ hooves and the wheels plumed up behind for three hundred yards. About a mile from the house, waist-deep in the fragrant sage, Imogene shifted the carcasses of two freshly killed quail and shaded her eyes to watch the mudwagon. Van Fleet’s old coat hung from her shoulders down past her hips, its mottled blue-and-brown plaid stained with use and the blood of rabbit, squirrel, and deer. The sleeves were too short and her bony wrists stuck out several inches. The dress she wore was faded and patched, an old housedress she reserved for hunting; it had shrunk over the years and didn’t quite reach the top of her wide-toed, lace-up, men’s boots—her tramping boots, Sarah called them.

Noisy was the first to look her way; she waved and started for the road. Noisy Dave hollered and waved back. Mac, half-asleep beside him on the high seat, jerked upright. Head bare to the weather, the Henry Repeater held easily in the crook of her left arm, Imogene strode through the brush.

“You’re a ways from home, Miss Grelznik,” Mac said as Noisy reined up. Several passengers craned their necks out the side windows to catch sight of her. Imogene had become a character people talked about even in Reno.

“Can we give you a lift home?” Mac asked.

“That would be nice,” Imogene thanked him. “Sarah ought to have lunch on; we’ll get there while it’s hot.”

Mac jumped to the ground and handed her up, as gallant a gentleman as if she were in satin slippers and a taffeta gown. When she was settled between them, Noisy shook the reins and hollered instructions to the lead team. The horses, excited by the smell of water and the sight of the barn, needed no second invitation and
started off at a good clip. Noisy, hunched forward, his round belly on his knees, the leather leads strung between his fingers so that he resembled a puppet master, looked over at Imogene. “You want to give it a try? Take the wagon in?”

“No, thanks,” she laughed. “Two horses are enough for me, and it took me a while to learn to handle that. We must walk before we run. Maybe next year.”

A rut, cut in the roadbed by an old wash and revived by flash floods during the spring rains, jolted the coach, and a gunnysack hung on a post by the seat yelped and whined. “I near forgot,” Noisy said. “Mac and me brought you and little Mrs. Ebbitt a present.” Spitting a graceful arc of tobacco juice over the side, he lifted the sack free and dumped it unceremoniously on Imogene’s lap. “It’s tied up tight, better leave it like that, he’s a feisty little feller. I think he’s too little to bite you through the sacking, but I wouldn’t trust him far as I could throw him, if I was you.” Imogene held the bundle carefully, trying to protect it from the jolting of the ride.

“It’s a coyote pup,” Mac explained. “Don’t know if he’ll live or not, he’s pretty small. Noisy here spotted him off to the side of the road. The bitch had been shot—must’ve been near the den, because three pups had come out to her. The pups were no more’n three or four weeks old. This little fella was the only one left alive. Just bones, tail, and ears. He was so weak he couldn’t hardly stand, but he bit old Dave a good one.” Mac laughed.

“Damn pup,” Noisy growled amiably. “Be a good dog if somebody don’t kill him first.”

The pup stirred inside the burlap bag and Imogene laid her hand on it. She snatched it back quickly. “He was trying to bite me through the sack!”

“He’s quite a pup,” Noisy agreed.

“Watch him, Miss Grelznik, pups’ve got teeth like needles. You want me to hold him?” Mac offered.

Imogene shook her head and arranged her skirts around the swaddled coyote so he couldn’t reach her with his teeth.

The coach rolled into the inn yard and Noisy pulled up before the steps. “Sarah!” Imogene called as she climbed down. “Sarah Mary!” The door burst open and Sarah darted out of the house, her apron clutched up under her chin in both hands.

“Look who’s come out to meet us! Maybe it’s my birthday or something and I don’t know it,” Mac teased.

“Imogene,” she gasped, grabbing the older woman’s arm, “a rat chased me out of the kitchen. It stood up on its hind legs and jumped at me. It was huge.” She held her hands, one above the other, about a foot apart. “This tall.”

“A rat ran after you on its back legs?” Imogene tried not to sound incredulous.

“Jumped at me.” The coach door opened and a round-but-tocked man backed out. Sarah made a couple of little hops to demonstrate the tactics of her attacker.

Mac laughed. “Must’ve been a kangaroo rat.”

“Mac,” Imogene admonished, “it scared her.”

He looked hurt. “I’m not fooling. Kangaroo rats come out around this time of year. About so high, big-bottomed, long tails—they hop around like kangaroos.”

Imogene and Sarah eyed him warily.

“It’s the truth if I ever told it,” he protested.

Sarah glanced nervously over her shoulder at the passengers emerging from the coach, knocking the dust from their clothes. “I better be getting on with lunch,” she murmured.

Imogene handed her the quail. “These ought to go in the icehouse unless we’re having them for supper tonight.”

“Just chase that kangaroo rat out with a broom or something,” Mac hollered after her. “He’ll leave you alone.”

“She don’t mix with folks much,” Noisy said.

“Sarah’s a shy little thing,” Mac admitted, “till she gets to know you.”

“She’s better.” Imogene held the gunnysack away from her. It was wet and beginning to smell. She hung it back over the post by the seat. “Sarah works herself to death, thinking she has to make up for letting me meet the coaches and take care of the customers. She’s quite a cook. And she can skin a rabbit in half the time it takes me.”

Imogene greeted the passengers as Mac and Noisy busied themselves with the livestock. It wasn’t until after lunch had been served and cleared away that Imogene remembered the coyote pup.

The gunnysack hung slack on the post, looking empty. In the bottom, a slight widening indicated the pup. Imogene cupped the inert form in one hand and lifted the sack free. “Hey, little fella,”
she called softly. There was no answering squirm. She carried the puppy, still wrapped in the sack, into the kitchen, away from the noise of the dining hall. Sarah was doing the dishes, humming a song to herself in a sweet, high voice. Gently, Imogene set her burden on the plank tabletop and unwrapped it.

“What’ve you got there?” Sarah dried her hands and came over to the table.

“A coyote pup. I’m afraid I’ve killed it. I forgot about it and left it out in the sun.” She freed the small form from its burlap prison and stroked the dirty fur. The puppy, light brown and feathery-tailed, was no longer than her two hands. He was gaunt, and his fur was caked with his own filth. “He’s breathing, I think.” Imogene rested her hand lightly on the tiny ribcage. “I’ll put him someplace cool and maybe he’ll come around.”

Sarah got a wet cloth and squeezed a few drops of water on the pointed nose. A pink tongue flickered out. The fur around the pup’s mouth was crusted with dirt and stood out in spikes.

“He looks as though he’s got moss growing on his jaws,” Imogene remarked. “The water seems to be helping.” When the pup ceased to accept water, they laid him on the back porch, near the trap to a small cellar, where it was cool. They folded the burlap bag into a cushion and sat a bowl of water nearby. Sarah left the door ajar so she could listen for him.

In the middle of the afternoon, much recovered, the little dog tottered out of his nest. Sarah was at the kitchen table peeling and dicing onions. He growled, a sound so small it was almost a purr, and Sarah looked up.

“Hello, little moss-face,” she said softly. He growled again. “Don’t you growl. You’re too little to growl.” Talking reassuringly all the while, Sarah slid out of her chair and sprawled prone on the floor propped up on her elbows.

When Mac and Imogene came in from the barn an hour later, Sarah had coaxed the little animal onto her lap and was squeezing milk into its mouth from a badly chewed corner of her dishcloth.

Imogene pulled off her work gloves and knelt beside them. Mac, leaning in the doorway, pushed back his battered hat and wiped away the perspiration with his forearm. “Wish you gals would get yourself a hired hand. Bucking hay and mucking out ain’t women’s work. Nor an old man’s, neither.” He scrubbed his grizzled stubble
with his finger stumps. “You’ll bust something inside, you keep at it, Miss Grelznik.”

“I’m strong as an ox, Mac, you’ve said so yourself. There’s a lot of men that don’t work as hard as I do.”

“Still and all…”

Imogene reached out to stroke the pup’s fur, but he growled at her, a funny gurgling sound through the milk. Sarah looked up. “Mac, will he kill my chicks, do you think?”

“He might. ’Less you teach him different. You maybe could teach him, coyotes are smart beggars.”

“How do I teach him?”

“First time you catch him messing around the chickens, hit him between the eyes with a two-by-four. That’s got to get his attention. Then just tell him real nice not to do it.”

Dinner was over. A fire crackled in the stone hearth at the end of the dining hall away from the bar. Most of the clientele had left on the northbound for Fort Bidwell. Two wagoners played checkers at a table near the bar. Noisy was gone, opting to sleep outside to save money, though the temperature still dropped below freezing most nights. He was going to retire when he’d saved enough, he said, find the fat of the land and a rich widow, and live off them. Mac and Imogene sat near the fire, their chairs drawn up close to the blaze, nursing their after-dinner coffee. Except for a kerosene lamp turned low over the checker game, the fire was the only light in the room.

“Sarah still playing with her new dog?” Mac asked.

Imogene smiled. “I imagine. She set about making a bed for him out of an old crate so the little fellow won’t get cold. She’s good with small, timid things.”

“She’s got a feeling for what it’s like being scared, maybe. Creatures can sense a person’s insides that way. That little gal is doing fine. I never figured her for a life as hard as this, but she’s doing okay.”

“Sarah Mary is stronger than she thinks.”

Mac slurped his coffee noisily and stared into the fire. The sound of the checkers slapping down mixed pleasantly with the pop of the burning pitch. A spark flew out and Imogene reached for the shovel.

“There is no Mr. Ebbitt, is there?” Mac asked.

Imogene scooped up the burning ember and threw it back in the fire. “That’s right, Mac. I forged his name on the lease.”

For a long time, neither of them said anything. The fire burned low and—more for something to do than from necessity, since it was warm so near the hearth—Mac threw another log on the grate.

“You two gals oughtn’t to be trying to run this place alone. It’s rough country out here.”

“We’re doing all right.”

“I expect you are. Better’n some. Food’s a damn sight better, but the place is looking rundown, needs some paint and nails.”

“I can do it, Mac.”

“I’ll give you a hand when I can.”

“You’re not going to tell Mr. Jensen?”

“No, I ain’t.”

Imogene leaned back in her chair, her eyes resting on Mac’s gnarled old face.

“Thanks, Mac.”

“Mr. Ebbitt dead?” Mac asked after a while. “Or don’t he exist? Nate was poking around the Wells Fargo office, asking questions, soon as Sheriff Graff let him out.”