Crow Mountain (30 page)

S
o, my dearest Nate, here I am. Back on our mountain. It took some effort to persuade my husband that I should return, particularly as I am with child again.

Five years have passed since our adventure, and still I think of all the things you mean to me. This little book has become my harbour and our son is my life's joy. Of course, now that I look back, I realize you knew I was carrying your child. The way you cared for me was a giveaway, but also the way you took to laying in our bed in the morning, your head near my middle; and the manner in which your hands rested there when we sat on the porch in the evenings. How you talked of us going to your family for the winter. I wonder when you would have told me. I was not at all sick until we reached
Portland, and I thought it was only that my body had broken along with my heart.

The only time I roused at all on the journey was when I heard of the plan to separate me from Tara. Hart, leaving us at the first trading post, had offered to buy her. I stood in the thoroughfare, gripping her noseband as he took her reins and announced to the whole settlement that if Tara were sold to him, or if any attempt at all were made to separate me from her, that they would find me dead at the first opportunity I could affect it.

I was entirely sincere and Mr Stanton intervened immediately, his hands held out in an honest promise that no one would try to take Tara away. He pledged to see to her welfare himself.

Hart laughed at his attempts to pacify me, but accepted the money my future husband produced from his soft leather wallet; then he spat in the dirt at my feet and called me the cripple's whore. Mr Stanton dismissed him sharply and Hart laughed in his face.

The subsequent journey to Oregon was harsh. The days were long and dry, the trail hard. Our pattering showers were gone. It was four days to Spokane. I was mute and recoiled from anyone's attempts to touch me, even in assistance. Spokane was a settlement of fur trappers who had eyed my blood-soaked leggings and rough shirt with interest when we arrived that baking afternoon. The first night there, my clothes were taken in my sleep and replaced with a cheap cotton muslin gown, purchased in the hardware store. I
sobbed in silence, and refused to dress. Papa was distressed, but told me I must wear it for it was time to leave and my other clothes were beyond ruined and had been burnt. The gown itched and the seams chafed. I refused to wear the shoes they had bought me.

It took us another ten days to reach Portland, Tara trotting behind the coach Papa had hired. After the first two days, Mr Stanton sat opposite me. Papa preferred to ride after I told him I would not remain in an enclosed space with him. He had, after all, been the cause of what had happened to you.

To Mr Stanton I said nothing, and stared out of the window. He remembered our letters, and how I had told him of my wish to continue playing the piano and working on my writing. He asked if I had seen anything of the landscape during my time in the Montana wilderness and if I could describe it. I struggled to look at him, but his relentless attempts at conversation were, I see now, admirable in the face of my desolation. And by the time we reached Portland, Mr Stanton had arranged with Papa for the wedding to go ahead.

It was done quickly, with no fuss. I cannot remember saying my vows and I suspect Mama had put something in the tea she urged me to drink that morning. She had been horrified by my appearance when I stumbled into the house in Portland, and had me scrubbed raw, then covered in creams to whiten my skin. I barely noticed, for I was little more than undead at the time.

I want you to know that Anthony has been a very kind
husband. He is a truly honourable man, and says he never considered that the marriage would not go ahead. He had kept all my letters and read them, so many times. And he had made plans; created a life for us in Larkin Street.

He was disappointed, naturally, when it became apparent on our honeymoon that I really was more than just heartsick. I was delivered of your son seven and a half months after the wedding, at a pretty boarding house by the sea in a place called Heaven's Anchorage: a child with pale eyes and the most astonishingly powerful lungs.

Anthony has supported me, as he said he would, in my own interests. And in addition, we have built a glasshouse garden here in San Francisco not far from our house. Many people visit it. They must apply for a ticket but it costs them nothing, because I think you would have liked that. The garden is filled with plants and flowers from Montana and the Rocky Mountains. I go there early in the mornings and sit by myself.

Tara, who bore me from the mountain with the same stoicism she always displayed, brought forward a stunning glass-eyed colt the month after I gave birth. He is destined to be the finest breeding stallion in the Western States, apart from his sire, who has not been seen since he kicked his way out of the corral as Hart attempted to catch him. Hart was thrown to the ground by a blow from the stallion's head and the man who chewed tobacco caught a kick in the chest and didn't get back up. I watched as the white horse galloped into the forest, Papa's hand at my elbow.

A man stayed behind to bury you; he was already digging beneath the old tree by the corral as they took me away.

But I cannot think of you in the ground or my heart would shatter again, and leave me as it did for so long, clutching a door handle or a fire mantle, as the reality of a world without you in it crashed upon me. Instead, I imagine you here, following the life you made for us. I like to think that the white horse visits you, from time to time, in this place.

I have not seen Mama since my wedding day. On the day they left for England, Papa came to tell me he was so very proud of my courage and wished me every success and happiness in my new life. I neither looked at him, nor spoke. He put his hand on my hair and told me he had only been trying to do the right thing. It was the closest I have ever known my father come to an apology and I cried, then.

He pulled up a chair and began to tell me a story. The story of a father who saw only a life of confinement and unhappiness for his beloved daughter in London: the laudanum, Papa said, had long had the upper hand over Mama, and when he had seen me that day the year before, blank and glazed, his decision had been made. He had lost a wife, but he would not lose a daughter. So he had made a bargain with a good man, the best he could find, and sent his child, alone, across the world to a new life, only to think he had lost her altogether.

My eyes asked the questions I could not voice, and Papa explained, in a few sentences, how Mama's troubles had begun before I was born. The doctors had thought a child would help; I had not. And now that I was ruined – despite
my subsequent marriage – she did not want me near her.

She did not come to say goodbye.

These are but small sadnesses, and I tell you them only so that you will know how my life is now.

Our son is a fine, strong boy with your looks and what I think will be your height. Anthony made over my dowry to me for his upkeep. Our boy is, to all good intents and purposes, raised with genuine affection as my husband's own child, yet Anthony insisted that your name was on the official paperwork for he wished, at some stage, for a legal heir of his own. More money was given over for this purpose, largely for the purpose of keeping it private, I suspect, but I did not object to it. In fact, it made me very happy and I think it would have made you proud, though it did pose me one small problem, which I shall come to.

After much thought, I have purchased a large farm out here to be our son's inheritance, a ranch for the breeding of horses. The very finest American horses. I have also set aside some of the land as a reserve for the plains buffalo, and have employed a man to oversee it.

One Michael Calton. He is a true cowboy, pioneer-stock. I think you would like him. He came all the way to San Francisco on a ticket I mailed to Wyoming, so that I might meet him regarding the position. And he reminded me a little of how you might have been, in our fancy drawing room: a spooky yearling. He ran his hat brim through his hands as I stifled a laugh and begged him to sit to take tea. And he knows these lands. He is familiar with the reservation set up for your
people two years ago, somewhat to the south of our ranch, and can scratch through in their language. His writing is rough, but he sends regular updates as the homestead down in the hills takes shape.

Lucky is now Chief Little Elk, as you predicted, and at war with the Pikuni. I know nothing of Clear Water, but live in hope of news. Rose was seen in Fort Shaw the day before Sheriff Hart was found hanged from the cell bars in the jail-house with his own knife in his back, his sheriff's star smashed into a mess of tin. On closer examination, they saw he had been scalped. I send his widow a modest pension for the care of their son, though I am uncertain of my motives.

Soon after that day, Mr Calton wrote to me of a small incident on the ranch. It is necessary, for now, to keep our buffalo corralled close to where the barn sits and the main house is being built. They are precious, now that so few remain. The house lies in the shelter of trees and a high bluff, from which there is a fine view of our land. The bluff is an ancient buffalo jump, but no more will die there, and it will be, in time, a home. Mr Calton went out at dawn one morning to check on a cow and calf and high on the ridge, against the jump and the dawn, sat an Indian brave on a grey mare, smoking a cigarette, rifle sticking up over one shoulder. The Indians have been no threat to the homestead, and I had written with instruction that no Indian camping party should be displaced or turned away: a pax. Mr Calton returned to work. When he looked up again from the calf, horse and rider were gone.

Rose, for I believe it
was
Rose, has not been seen near a
white settlement since. She roams the plains, and makes war against the hunters who come to Montana in ever greater numbers. She has, on two occasions, made the San Francisco newspapers, at the head of a band of braves. I read aloud her endeavours to my tea parties with a fierce and secret pride. They gasp and sip at their china cups. And they will never know.

As you predicted, the white man is determined to drive the buffalo into the dust. I read often of further massacres. But not here, Nate. Not on our land. When he is of age, our son will inherit this ranch to do with as he sees fit; I hope he will see it as your legacy. A legacy of your love of this place, its animals and its people. For I will tell him of you, when the time comes.

We are on our way there now. I am bringing Tara home. It will hurt me sorely to part with her, for she is my truest friend and without her I would have grieved to death. But neither she nor her son, the young white plains stallion, Isaac, belong in San Francisco with its leafy parks and its wide enamelled roads.

And nor do I. But there I will stay. Anthony simply oversees the railroad now; it is thought he will be a senator by his thirtieth year. And you were right: the tracks will not come through your mountains. The story of my ‘rescue' never reached the newspapers, although heaven knows how much Papa and Anthony had to pay to keep it out.

Thought we speak of it rarely, my time with you is woven through the fabric of our lives, colouring them with sun
showers. Anthony is much accustomed to my continuing fascination with the new America, and he remains devoted to the medium of the photograph. Last year he hit upon a capital idea. He asked me to find a photographer, to document the people and landscapes of my West, his gift to me.

Mr Edgar Carson, who was born in Wisconsin, was the ideal candidate; we engaged him to document the native way of life and the buffalo, while they remain. He roams east of the Rocky Mountains with his photographic equipment and an assistant, returning to San Francisco every few months. I stood in the dark room with him as he developed his last set of plates, and watched as a familiar face emerged from the solution. Dog Child. Mr Carson told me Two Tails's son now has ties to the US Army, as a scout. I was pleased to see the young Blackfoot warrior once more. But it was a cruel reminder that no camera will ever capture the face I would give everything to see again.

Yet, onward. I spend my days on charitable works and furthering my husband's political career. Larkin Street is a happy home, and likely to be even more so in a few months' time. I found a nurse, from Virginia. She is fat and black and full of joy, and she sings when she thinks she's alone. I told her, on a quiet afternoon, that I'd once had a friend who'd fought for the Union Army. She put her hand on my arm and told me that you and she would be introduced in her Promised Land. Hattie adores your son, and she is making plans for these babies. For they think, Nate, that I am bearing twins.

I am sitting on our porch as I write this. Our son is playing
in the meadow, making friends with every living thing. When he is still, which is rarely, he watches the world with eyes that see everything, as if time moves around him, not he through it. In those moments I see the man he will become and I feel my soul tear with love.