Bittersweet (34 page)

“It’s okay, we’re safe,” Sarah reassured him. “Keep holding tight, hon,” she called up to the child. The man in her arms looked at her with unfocused eyes, blood tricking in a grisly wash from his temple. He was young, not yet twenty, with straight, tow-colored hair and pale blue eyes.

Tight in each other’s arms, hanging on to a rope held secure by a little boy, they regarded each other.

“I can’t pull us out,” Sarah apologized.

“I can boost you out, I think.” He grabbed the rope and, circling her waist with his free arm, lifted her partway out of the water. She crawled the rest of the way up the bank and turned to extend a hand to him. With her help he managed to pull free and they collapsed, gasping, in the grass.

“Coby Burns,” he managed, and coughed.

“Sarah Ebbitt. Pleased to meet you.”

“Can I let go the rope?” asked a small voice.

Sarah held her arms wide and Matthew ran from his post to tumble into them. “What a fellow you are. I love you so.” She kissed him until he laughed and squirmed. “You called me Momma.”

“Momma,” he said, suddenly shy.

“Coby Burns, this is my son, Matthew Ebbitt.”

Matthew shook hands with the older boy. “I’m sorry about your wagon, mister.” They looked at the spring; it was as smooth as glass, reflecting the deep blue of the sky. On the far side, a line of bubbles disturbed the surface, bursting into brown rings of mud-stained foam with a barely perceptible popping sound.

Coby Burns watched the water for a moment. “I sold everything my mother left me and went into debt to buy that outfit. I must be in the hole fifteen hundred dollars.”

“In the Round Hole,” Matthew amended.

Coby’s face crumpled and he looked as though he would cry. But he laughed, laughed until his fair skin turned beet red and his eyes disappeared behind his cheeks. It was infectious and Sarah began to giggle, then to laugh, until she was holding her sides and rolling on the grass.

When they’d laughed away their fear and their relief, they wiped their eyes and stared soberly at the dark spring. Somewhere under the dark water, sinking into fathomless mud, were a loaded wagon and a team of horses.

Karl came back in late afternoon. On the seat beside him rode a girl of sixteen or seventeen, her clear, wide-set blue eyes and creamy complexion rescuing her simple farmer’s face from plainness. Following in a canvas-topped Conestoga, gray with dried mud, were Lonny Wells, his wife—an older, no-nonsense version of the girl with Karl—and a ten-year-old girl, berry-brown, with a narrow, clever little face. All looked hot and tired and extremely dirty, Karl and Lonny most of all. Their clothes were caked so thickly with mud that the original colors were indistinguishable. Karl pulled up just off the road and waved the Conestoga in behind.

Two freightwagons were already parked in the yard, their teams unharnessed to graze for the night. Sarah came out onto the porch carrying a wooden spoon, a stained apron covering most of her dress. The sun was low and she shaded her eyes with her arm. The girl riding beside Karl was chatting animatedly, occasionally letting her hand rest on his arm. Karl seemed to be enjoying the attention and laughed often. Untying her apron, Sarah pulled it hurriedly over her head and tossed it back inside. She glanced at her reflection in the windowpane. Her dunking in the spring had done little for her hair; strands were pulled from the double crown of braids and hung
limply over her temples. Halfheartedly she tried to tuck them back into their pins, then gave up and went to greet the wagons.

Karl jumped to the ground and the mud fell from his clothes like shards of broken pottery. Gallantly he extended his hand to the girl. With a simper she took it and leaped heavily to the ground.

“I shouldn’t jump after sitting so long,” Karl was saying as Sarah walked up to them. “The joints get stiff.”

“You’re getting old,” Sarah said sweetly, and proceeded to introduce herself before he had the chance to do so.

Drawn by the creaking of harness and the stamping of horses, Matthew bounded out from whatever gully or bush he’d been playing in. He paused for an instant by the Wellses’ wagon, caught by a scramble of pigtails and petticoats as Lonny lifted his youngest daughter from the high seat, but even the prospect of another child to play with couldn’t slow him for long when there were adventures to be related, and he ran to be in on the telling of the day’s doings.

Karl scooped the boy up and set him on his shoulders. Before his feet cleared the ground, Matthew began an enthusiastic though incoherent narrative of Coby Burns, the Round Hole spring, and six horses gone. At length the story was sorted out with Sarah’s assistance, and Karl went inside to meet Mr. Burns.

Coby, wearing his own shirt and a pair of Karl’s trousers rolled at the cuffs, rose from his seat by the fire to shake hands. The young man was of average height, slender, with wide, well-muscled shoulders and strong, bowed legs. Dry, his hair was almost white and his brows and lashes invisible. The two were immediately at ease with each other, and while Sarah started supper they talked. Coby was from Elko, Nevada. He’d moved there with his mother and father when he was nine, following the silver rush. When he was twelve, his father had died. Alone with his mother, Coby had worked wherever a boy could get a day’s employment to keep them fed and housed. His mother, terrified of being alone after his father’s death, refused to let him look for work too far from Elko, but within five years he’d managed to buy his mother a small house in town. She had died a year later. Coby had sold the house to buy a freightwagon, and had borrowed money against the wagon to buy the team. To get the horses cheap, he’d bought them green, figuring to break them to harness himself. The farm equipment that he was taking to Susanville was his first commission.

Karl had been listening, elbows on knees, intent on the boy’s
story. He leaned back and ran his hand through his hair, the white at the temples feathering out like wings. “Maybe we could save some of it, drop a line down and see if we couldn’t pull the wagon up, or at least some of the cargo.”

The drivers of the two freightwagons and Lonny Wells and his family had gathered around to hear the tale. The eldest Wells girl, her eyes full of Karl, piped up, “Mr. Saunders is very good at pulling things out of places.”

“Seen and not heard, Lucy,” her mother admonished.

“He got us out of a mudhole deeper’n anything,” Lucy finished quickly.

One of the drivers took his pipe from his mouth. “Be that as it may”—he winked, and Karl colored slightly—“if you think you’re pulling this man’s wagon out of Round Hole, you’ve got another think coming. I heard tell Van Fleet tried plumbing that thing one afternoon. Rope went down from here to Timbuktu, hit nothing. I guess he tied another rope on to that, and a chunk of iron on it. It got sucked into that mud so’s two men couldn’t haul it out. Had to cut the rope and let it go. Weight of the wagon’s buried those horses deep in mud by now.”

Coby cleared his throat and pinched the end of his nose hard to cover his feelings. Sarah caught Karl’s eye and motioned toward the kitchen. Quietly the two of them left.

Later, while Sarah set the table for supper, Karl spoke with Coby alone. They leaned on the porch railing and gazed out over the desert. In the sage, touched orange by the setting sun, the black figures of Karl and Sarah’s small herd were scattered. Heads down to graze, they looked more like stones than like living cattle. The day was already cool, the thin air of the high desert not retaining the sun’s warmth.

“Have you ever worked with cattle?” Karl asked.

“I worked a couple of ranches east of here, near Elko, before Mom died. Roundup, branding—when they needed extra hands.”

Karl watched the young man covertly—a wide, unlined forehead; almost-white hair falling to his eyebrows; a slender, powerful frame, muscular and clean-limbed. As honest a face as a Minnesota farm boy. “You can hire on with Mrs. Ebbitt and me,” Karl offered. “You’ll not make your fortune here, but there’s not a better place for saving your wages.” Coby laughed, and Karl went on, “We could use another hand, a man who has worked with livestock. What
I know, I’m learning from books as I go along. And you would be free to leave as soon as you’d saved enough to get you on your feet again—no hard feelings.”

The alkali flat to the south was dyed red, the sharp peaks above it deep purple against a silvery sky. Coby breathed deep of the tangy evening air. “I grew up in eastern Nevada. ‘The back of beyond,’ Mom always called it. I don’t mind empty spaces.” He put out his hand and Karl took it. “Thanks, Mr. Saunders.”

“Two dollars a day and room and board is the best we can do for you.”

“I’ve worked for less.”

“Your room is the hayloft in the barn, though you are welcome to sleep upstairs in the house anytime there are free beds, and there usually are. But a person needs a place of his own sometimes.”

Coby nodded. “The loft will be fine.”

“I’ll tell Sarah; she’ll be pleased.” They shook hands again and Karl left Coby on the porch, enjoying the last lavender and gold of sunset.

At supper, Lucy Wells seated herself next to Karl, a table’s length away from the uncompromising eye of her mother. Throughout the meal she made eyes at him and took every opportunity to embellish the tale of her rescue. Mrs. Wells shot meaningful glances at her husband, but Lonny was a mild and doting father and did nothing to check his daughter. Sarah, constantly up to serve, watched the proceedings with a jaundiced eye. Karl was enjoying the young lady’s attentions in an awkward but flattered way.

The dishes were done and Sarah sat in a quiet corner, the lamp turned up, reading
The Old Curiosity Shop
. Inside the cover, Mr. Utterback had written:
Imogene—not his best, but haunting nonetheless
. Sarah ran her fingertip over Imogene’s name and her eyes unfocused for a moment, looking beyond the walls of the room. Her reverie was disturbed by the staccato click of heels on the bare floor.

“Mrs. Ebbitt?”

Sarah closed the book. “Miss Wells. Won’t you sit down?” The girl plopped comfortably into the chair next to hers as the invitation was voiced. She was pleasant-faced and young, and Sarah smiled at her despite the irritations at dinner.

Lucy sighed deeply and rested her cheek on her hand. “He’s so
alone!” She smiled sadly at Karl’s angular form as he leaned on the mantel, deep in conversation with Coby. He tipped his head back and laughed at something Coby said. “And so unhappy. Just listen.” Her voice was fraught with secret understanding.

Sarah studied the lanky form, the broad face and flat cheeks bronzed by sun and firelight, the fine lines around the eyes made deep by the desert climate. “Karl seems happy enough to me,” she replied.

“I know. To most people.” Lucy shook her head knowingly, and Sarah hid a smile.

Karl, unaware that he was the object of so much speculation, said good night all around, stopping to take his leave of Sarah and Lucy on his way out.

“Take an armload of kindling with you,” Sarah said. “It’s going to be cold tonight.”

“I have enough to last. I told Coby to take one of the beds upstairs for tonight; we can get him set up in the barn tomorrow. Sleep well, Sarah, you’ve done a good day’s work today. I think Coby will be a good man to have with us.” His eyes rested on hers for a moment, and Lucy fluffed in her chair until he turned to her. “Good night, Miss Wells.” He bowed, a handsome Old World bow. Sarah pursed her lips and looked at him from under lowered brows, but he didn’t repent, even to a wink, and left Lucy Wells in a twitter.

Sarah was the only one who saw the girl slip out after him, and she went back to her book.

Later, Mrs. Wells, deeming it past bedtime, came looking for her daughter. “I believe she stepped out for…air,” Sarah said dryly.

Mrs. Wells rolled her eyes heavenward and clucked her tongue. “For Lud’s sake. Is she bothering Mr. Saunders? That vixen’ll send me early to my grave. See these gray hairs? That one give them to me, every one. She gets passions like other girls get headaches, and every one of them’s a matter of life and death. Not six weeks ago she saw a flyer about a traveling lady preacher and took it as a sign from God. Drove us crazy for a week, reading tracts to us morning, noon, and night.”

Lucy had followed Karl to the barn and waited outside the tackroom, gathering her courage. A candle burned behind the curtain and she could hear him laying a fire in the stove. Resolutely she rapped on the door. “I’ve come,” she said when Karl opened it.

“So I see.” They stared at each other.

She looked past him into the dimly lit room. It was clean and bare, his few belongings arranged on top of a battered leather trunk in a far corner: a faded photograph of a middle-aged woman standing beside a short pillar with a vase filled with flowers on it; a wallet of cracked leather folded beside the picture; a silver chain with a nugget of silver. Several changes of clothes hung from pegs on the far side of the room, and there was a bookcase under the single window, filled with books brought in from the house. The floor and walls were whitewashed and scrubbed spotless. Lucy rubbed her upper arms. “It’s cold,” she hinted.

“You’d better go back to the house.”

“Can’t I come in?”

“No.”

Stumped, she paused. Clearly this was not the scene she had envisioned. She stepped close to him and, catching up his hand, folded it to her breast. “I know you aren’t happy,” she whispered. “I understand. I’ve understood you from the moment I saw you.”