Carla Kelly (54 page)

She tried to concentrate on Mama's welcome words, but her tired mind couldn't absorb a high priests social up the canyon and a baby shower for that “nice Sister Glenn in the next block.” She balled up the letter and threw it to the wind. Ash blew across the high plains, and she rode steadily through it, even though her horse whinnied and tried to hang back.

She arrived at the Double Tipi in record time, giving her horse a quick curry before graining him and turning him into the pasture. Except for Two Bits, the house was empty. She picked up the young cat. “I should have taken you with me to Cheyenne,” she said, breathing into his fur for the faintest odor of bay rum. All she smelled was smoke.

Within the hour, she had thrown together a stew, deckling the top of it with dumplings to make it more filling—hang the aesthetics—and a handful of this and that. “I've abandoned my standards,” she told the Queen Atlantic. “Miss Farmer would frown on this stew.”

It tasted wonderful. She sat by herself and ate a bowlful of the stew, meaty with venison one of the cowboys had brought to her, courtesy of a deer that could not outrun the blaze.

She popped a pan of rolls in the oven when she heard horsemen in the yard. She ran to the window, wiping her sweaty face with her ash-gray apron. Half of the men she didn't recognize or maybe they were just too soot-stained for her to make out. But there was Paul, just sitting on Chief because he looked too tired to dismount. Her heart went out to him.

They tended to their mounts first, as she knew they would. Crossing her fingers that they would not just mount up again after supper, she breathed easier when they turned their horses loose, still saddled, into the pasture to graze.

The rolls were done and nicely browned, with butter glazing their tops, by the time the men sat down at the table. Paul smiled his thanks, and everyone dug in, eating silently as though they hadn't had a meal in days. Perhaps they hadn't. They ate like starved wolves. Her heart turned over with love and admiration for all of them, thinking back to her first official dinner at the Double Tipi. How long ago that seemed now and how foolish.

She watched them eat, something Paul had laughingly accused her of doing years ago, it seemed, back when there were things to laugh about. He was right; she did do that. She watched them now, some of them Negro, some of them with at least as much Indian in them as Paul, some who couldn't read and write, and others toothless from bar fights, bad food, and poverty. She felt a pang, thinking how much she would miss them when she left.

After dinner, some of the men went to the bunkhouse. The rest just rolled up in their bedrolls in the kitchen and parlor and were soon silent in exhausted slumber. James's room was empty, so she invited them in there too. Two men were already sleeping in Paul's bed.

“Do you mind?” he said, indicating her bed.

“You know I don't. Need help with your boots?”

“Not this time.” He looked at her, his expression contrite. He winced as he lay down. “I'm sorry to evict you, but I have to. I turned thirty-six yesterday, and I'm feeling every single minute of it.”

“Happy birthday,” she teased, wishing it sounded funny. She pulled a chair up to the bed and propped her stockinged feet on the mattress.

She remembered the letter from Albert Hickman that she had stuck down the front of her bodice. As he watched, a little mystified, she pulled it out and handed it to him. With a grin, showing white teeth on a black face, he held the letter to his cheek. “Still warm.”

“Mr. Otto!”

“I may be tired, but I'm not dead.”

He looked at the return address for a long minute and set the letter on his chest. “I guess my middle name should be Hickman.” He handed the letter back to her and closed his eyes. “I'm too tired to read it. Just leave it on my bed after we clear out tomorrow, and I'll get to it eventually.”

“Am I heartless?” he asked a few minutes later. “I finally get some relatives, and two or three words strung together in a simple sentence just aren't registering in my head.”

Julia shook her head and told him she had tried to read a letter from her mother. “It was as though everything she wrote came from another world.”

No answer; Paul had fallen asleep. It touched her heart to see his fingers folded around his thumbs like a baby.

Julia woke up with the sun, the smell of smoke stronger. Wide awake, she left her bedroom quickly and tiptoed into the kitchen.

It wasn't her imagination. The smoke was thicker; she could barely see across the ranch road to the horse pasture. She turned around to go for Paul, but he was standing behind her, his hand raised to settle on her shoulder.

“It's worse, isn't it?” she asked.

No answer. Paul was already shaking the men awake in the kitchen and then heading down the hall, calling out to the other sleepers. While they whistled for their mounts, Julia made a pot of oatmeal, wished for something besides canned milk, and took out the sack of doughnuts Emma Gillespie had insisted she take along. Back inside, they practically inhaled their food, eating like men who had no idea when their next meal was coming. Most of them were on their feet and eyeing the smoke through the open door.

Paul came back for the rest of the doughnuts. “The wind is shifting. We're going to the high pasture to cut the fences and let the cattle run.”

“Oh, Paul!”

“This happened once before when I was fourteen, I think. Pa was still alive. I swear we spent half the winter in Nebraska, rounding them up. But you do what you do. That's life on the range, Julia Darling. Think how much you're going to miss me.”

He smiled when he said it, as though trying to calm the fear she was trying so hard to conceal so she wouldn't become one more thing he had to worry about.

If he hadn't said that, she wouldn't have reached for him. He wouldn't have opened his arms, and she wouldn't have practically leaped into them, so terrified she was. His arms were tight around her and low on her back, bending her toward him until Mama would never have approved. She didn't care. She didn't want him to ever let her go.

“Hey, now. It always seems worse than it is,” he said, his hand on her hair, smoothing it down. “Smoke gets trapped in these little valleys and that is what's so scary right now. Give it an hour or two, and it will lift.”

“Boss! We gotta ride!” It was Doc calling to him.

With strength from some source she must have tucked away and forgotten about, Julia freed herself from his arms. “Go do what you do,” she echoed. “I'll keep a stew going because this place is busier than a train depot.”

She turned toward the Queen Atlantic, forcing her mind to a meal because she knew it would occupy her just enough to blank out most of what was happening. Paul took her hand and pulled her back. He kissed her, and it wasn't that soft kiss in the parlor of months ago. Her mind was chaotic, but he seemed to be trying to pull all the courage he could from her. She gave him all she had.

“Don't you do that to just any old stockman who wanders by,” he said.

“I'll try not to,” she teased, her nerves humming.

He should have left then, but he didn't. After waving to Doc and telling him that he'd catch up, he took Julia's hand again.

“Miss Darling, surely it has come to your attention that I am more than interested in you.”

“What?”

She thought he was teasing, but his eyes were deadly serious. “So interested that I need to tell you I love you. Always have, always will. I'm of the opinion that you're not indifferent to me. Considering all this, and the general shortness of life—I am, after all, thirty-six now—will you marry me?”

“You're serious?” she asked.

“Never more so. I've been cleaner, and I've certainly smelled better, but I am in complete earnest.”

So it came down to this. There wasn't time to let him down gently, especially when she didn't want to let him down at all, but the men were riding out of the valley and the smoke was thick.

She chose her words carefully. She only wanted this discussion once because to revisit it would cause more pain than she knew she could bear.

“Paul, I'm not even sure when it happened, but I fell in love with you too.”

She thought he might smile, but his eyes were just as serious, as though she was giving him bad news.

“I love you more than words can tell, but the answer is no.” She said it quietly, but the words seemed to crash into her brain like cymbals.

“Really?” he asked, his question quiet, but almost pulsing underneath the word, it sounded like relief.

How could that be? She didn't understand. “I would never tease you. I might have said yes earlier, but not now. I've been hoping you would take a greater interest in the Church, but lately, you seem to have gone the other way.”

“I go to church with you,” he countered.

“And I love that. But that's as far as your interest seems to stretch. Can you take me to the temple next week and marry me there?”

She tried to gauge his expression but it was beyond her.

“No, I can't,” he told her slowly. “Not next week and not next month.”

“We could marry, and I would hope you might decide to give my church—your mother's church!—another chance some day. It happens. Or it might not.”

“Then why not take the chance? You love me.”

“Probably more than you'll know, but everything changed when Iris died.” She didn't care that her voice was rising. The other men were at the far end of the valley now and James was far away. “If it comes to choosing you or the Church and my family in eternity, then I can't marry you now or ever. The risk is too great. I can't gamble like that. I'd be gambling with my soul, and I won't.”

React, react!
she wanted to scream at him. He just stood there, his face a blank. She turned away. He never should have asked her now, not when his mind was as torn as hers was—even more, because his cattle and ranch were at stake and he had no business asking her to marry him at such a time. “Why are you doing this?” she whispered, turning back.

“I wanted to know where I stood, before the day started. It's going to be a long day, Darling.”

He startled her by blowing her a kiss. “What a woman you are,” he said, admiration in his voice now and not the despair she had anticipated and dreaded. She knew it should be impossible, but he almost seemed pleased about something.

I must be losing what little mind I have left,
Julia thought, amazed, as he turned and walked away. Then he was in the saddle, his posture as impeccable as always. To her amazement, he started singing “Sweet Evalina” before he was out of earshot.

Her fingers to her lips, Julia watched him ride toward the smoke. If that was the last kiss she would ever enjoy from the man she loved, she would have little trouble in cementing it firmly in her mind. She had trusted the Lord enough to do the hard thing. With a clarity she had never experienced before, Julia knew the Lord was perfectly mindful of her. The knowledge put the heart back into her body. She turned to the stove and calmly reached for her cookbook.

o one came for the noon meal, which frightened her more than the pervasive and growing odor of burning range grass. Paul had been right; when the sun came out, a slight breeze came with it and dispersed the smoky fog. But that was hours ago. The wind had dropped, and then stopped altogether, which gave her a cautious feeling of optimism. The sun burned hot and high overhead. Even leaving the kitchen door open gave no relief, not when it competed with the Queen Atlantic. It was as if the whole earth was waiting, wary.