Heart of the West (32 page)

There was Snake-Eye, for once without his leather apron, and Shiloh with his fiddle tucked under one beefy arm. Cowboys painfully attired in tight new boots and celluloid collars. Sheepherders with woolly vests and bells on their hats. And prospectors sporting new red flannel shirts and trimmed beards.

Clementine spotted two more familiar faces and she went to them. Pogey was trying to lasso his partner's arm with a blue bandanna, and Nash was having none of it. Gus had told her of this western custom: at dances where women were scarce, the men partnered each other and those playing the ladies in the set had to wear bandannas tied around their arms.

Nash, however, had snatched the bandanna from Pogey's hand and thrown it in the dirt, then stomped on it for good measure. "I ain't the one being heifer-branded this time, and that is that! What makes you think I'm gonna want to dance with a gimped-up old saddle stiff like you anyways?"

"God and all the little god-almighties!" Pogey flung back his head in an appeal to the heavens. "You'd dance with any old gazabo fool enough to ask you."

Nash shook his finger beneath his partner's nose. "Now, there's where ye're mistaken, you see. 'Cause I got standards. And besides, playing the lady ain't a job fitting to my talents. I'm more the courting swain type, being known as I am for my dash and vinegar and savvyfair."

"Savvy-what the hell? There're times when you make no more sense than tits on a bull. Yappity-yappity-yip goes your tongue, on and on, till a man starts to wishing for a shotgun just so's he could shoot off his head and put his ears out of their damned misery—"

Nash whipped off his hat and flattened it against Pogey's stomach. "Hobble your lips. There's a lady present."

"Eh?" Pogey spun around. He took off his hat and made a surprisingly courtly bow, so low his long yellow beard swept his knees. "Mrs. McQueen—my, but if you don't look prettier'n a little red heifer this mornin'."

The heifers Clementine had seen thus far weren't pretty at all, but the sentiment behind the compliment couldn't help but make her smile. "Howdy, Mr. Pogey. Mr. Nash."

Nash grinned and nodded. Pogey pulled a woeful face and tugged at his ear as he resettled his hat. "I wish I could say I was fine, ma'am, but I ain't." He rasped his hand across his whiskery neck. "Got me such a touch of the dry throat i can't even spit without primin' the pump."

"What he's trying to say," Nash supplied, at Clementine's quizzical look, "if'n he had the vocabulary for it and weren't so all-fired concerned all the time with being pithy... is that he's thirsty."

Clementine laughed. "Oh, of course. Gentlemen, this way, if you please."

She led the two prospectors over to a pair of barrels sitting on a trestle table tucked beneath the shade of a giant cottonwood. Gus had taken a week to make this cider from the dried apples that came from Washington Territory, strung like beads on strings and looking like pieces of old saddle leather.

She filled a tin cup from one of the barrels and passed it to Pogey. The smell of apples was sweet and biting, but he cast a dubious eye at it. "Is this teetotal stuff?"

Nash sighed loudly. "What for you even wasting your breath by askin? And you normally such a pithy man. You think that Gus, with his abstemious ways, is gonna pack any kinda wallop into his cider?"

Clementine pressed a brimming cup into his hand. "Nevertheless you must try it, Mr. Nash. You might be pleasantly surprised."

Both men took tiny, tentative sips, screwing up their faces as if they were being asked to take a dose of cod-liver oil. Nash swallowed first, and his owl eyes grew even rounder. Pogey choked as his went down. He stifled a grin behind the cuff that wiped dry his beard. "Now, that's what I call prime cider."

Clementine sucked on her lower lip to hide her smile. She had seen Rafferty dump six bottles of spirits into one of the barrels when Gus's back was turned. Her temperate husband, Clementine knew, was not going to be pleased.

She leaned into the two prospectors and lowered her voice. "Now, Mr. Pogey, Mr. Nash... may I trust you both to ensure that only those gentlemen so inclined to drink cider with any kind of wallop in it will fill their cups out of this particular barrel?"

"Eh? Oh, sure, sure." Pogey nodded so vigorously his beard slapped his chest.

Nash placed his hand over his heart. "You may trust us, ma'am, to your dyin' breath. Wild cayuses couldn't drag out the truth if we didn't want it told. You could hang our guts on a fence post and braid 'em for lariats, you could drag us naked over a cactus patch, you could whittle whistles outta our shinbones—unh!"

Pogey smacked him hard in the gut with his empty cup. "Try exercisin' yer arm instead of yer tongue and pour me some more of that deeelicious dried-apple cider."

Just then Clementine spotted Gus heading their way, and she hurried off to intercept him. He walked around the edge of the dance floor, which was a canvas sheet pegged down on the flattest part of the yard. The brothers had chopped down little pine trees and hung lanterns on them in a circle around the canvas, for the dancing would go on all night long.

"You tried any of my cider yet, Clem?" Gus said as he came up to her.

"Oh, well, I..." She searched frantically for a reason to divert his attention from his precious brew. A group of cowboys, she noticed suddenly, stood in the middle of the canvas, their thumbs hanging off the back pockets of their pants, their jaws working on plug tobacco like cows chewing their cud. She pointed a finger at them. "Why, really, Gus! Go tell those men not to spit on the dance floor."

Gus grinned and tipped his hat. "Yes, ma'am."

Clementine heard the sound of more carriage wheels and she turned. For a moment she was dazzled by the sun striking off the tin roof of her new house, and she shaded her eyes with her hand.

Zach Rafferty held the reins of the shay and he looked... different. More like a banker than a bank robber. He looked almost tameable today. Hannah sat beside him wearing a candy-pink-striped dress with a shockingly low-cut bodice and enormous leg-of-mutton sleeves. Her hat was laden with pink plumes and purple silk lilies, and her hair fell over her white shoulders in two thick dark red ringlets. Hat and head were both shaded by a pink calico parasol trimmed with lace.

Rafferty stepped down and held up his hand for Hannah.

He was smiling, and the look that passed between them was not meant for others to see. A bittersweet ache pulled at Clementine's chest, startling and confusing her so that her steps faltered.

She looked away and saw then that the other women, who had congregated on the porch, were casting scowling looks in the shay's direction. They turned their backs and marched inside the house.

Hannah Yorke had seen them, too, and her face turned the color of sour milk except for the two bright spots of rouge the size of dollars on her cheeks.

"Mrs. Yorke... Hannah." Clementine stretched out her hands as she came forward, the ache in her chest swelling, filling her throat and making it difficult to get the words out. She took extraordinary care not to let her gaze slide over to Rafferty even for an instant. "I'm so pleased you are here." She grasped the woman's trembling fingers and gave them a reassuring squeeze. "You couldn't talk Saphronie into coming?"

Hannah shook her head, heaving a shaky sigh. She flapped a hand in front of her face like a fan. "Lord, honey, I barely talked myself into coming here. I swear I'd almost rather have to skin a skunk."

Deep dimples appeared in Hannah's cheeks as she smiled, and then she was laughing. To Clementine's surprise she heard herself laughing as well. She remembered her first day in Rainbow Springs and how Hannah and Snake-Eye and Nickel Annie had laughed as they tried to winch the piano out of the wagon and how she'd envied them because they were friends, and a revelation came to her then that was stunning and rather wonderful. We're friends, she thought. Hannah Yorke and I.

Hannah snapped her parasol shut and whirled around. She leaned over to pull something off the seat of the shay, and when she straightened up, her arms were filled with a beautiful hand-pieced quilt. "Where I come from, when a man and his woman move into a new house, their friends give them a welcome gift."

"Why, I don't know what to say..." Clementine's hand came up to stroke the quilt. The quilt was exquisitely made, with tiny, almost invisible stitches, the colors so bright and cheerful it reminded her of wildflowers. "Except to thank you, of course," she finished, and she smiled.
"Their friends give them a welcome gift"
... a friend. She
did
have a friend.

Hannah's dimples started to deepen, and then they vanished entirely and her eyes turned wary, like those of a dog too used to the feel of its master's boot.

Gus came striding up to them, his face tight. "Damn you, Zach. I told you not to bring her here."

"Last time I looked,
brother,"
Rafferty said in that cold, silky voice that had Clementine's gaze darting to his hips to see if he wore his gun, "my name was on the deed to this place, right next to yours."

Clementine took the quilt from Hannah and thrust it at her husband's chest. "Look at the fine gift Mrs. Yorke has given us. Perhaps you should take it on into the bedroom now, though, before it gets soiled."

He swung his angry gaze onto her. "Clementine, if you think—"

"Please, Gus. And then we'll all try a taste of your famous cider, shall we?"

Gus's mustache quivered as if he would spit out more angry words. But instead he spun on his heel and headed for the house, and Clementine eased out the breath she'd been holding. She knew Gus; he'd been all primed to say something mean about Mrs. Yorke's past. Mr. Rafferty would have had to hit him then, and both brothers would've been sporting scrapes and bruises for days to come.

When Clementine looked around again she saw that Hannah now held a watermelon in her arms. "And this is from Nickel Annie," Hannah was saying. Her voice was a little trembly, but the dimples were back in place. "She carried it all the way here from Fort Benton, wrapped in bunting and nestled in an egg crate. She said she was sorry she couldn't be here herself."

"Oh, my..." Clementine said as Hannah passed the watermelon to her as if it were a swaddled baby. It wasn't very big and it was rather yellow at one end, but it brought another lump to Clementine's throat. This time she dared a glance at Rafferty, but he was looking at Hannah and smiling.

"Hey, Shiloh!" he shouted suddenly and waved an arm through the air. "What are you waiting on? Agitate them catguts and let's dance!"

"You asking this child to cut a jig with you, cowboy?" Shiloh yelled back at him.

"Hell, no, I already got me a woman!" Laughing, Rafferty slipped his arm around Hannah's waist and pulled her toward the dance floor.

Shiloh sat on a barrel, crossed his knees, swung one foot, and tapped the other. He put the bow to his fiddle and lifted his head... and his eyes went wide. All the laughter and gay talk halted abruptly as a band of Indians emerged from around a bend in the north road.

There were about a dozen men mounted on piebald and pinto ponies. An equal number of women and children were on foot leading more ponies that pulled lodge poles packed with tipis. A pack of mangy, underfed dogs barked wildly as they darted in and out among the horses' hooves.

The man who rode at the head of the band wore a turkey-red calico shirt and white-man's pants with a breechclout over them. A single white feather decorated his braided hair. Although the day was warm, all of the women and children and most of the men wore ragged blanket coats laced up tight beneath their chins.

"Flatheads," she heard Rafferty say to Gus, who had suddenly reappeared at her side, the quilt still in his hands. "They don't usually stray this far off their reservation."

"They appear to be a pretty tatter-ass bunch of bucks," Gus said. "I reckon they aren't out for any trouble—at least not if they know what's good for them. We got them outnumbered three to one."

Rafferty cast his brother a mocking look. "Yeah. So do you also reckon I should go and make a little high palaver with their chief first? Before we start exchanging gunfire with the women and kids?"

The Indians had turned off the road into the hay meadow. The lodgepoles, trailing behind the packhorses, rattled over the uneven furrows. A child began crying and its mother scolded, the dogs barked. But a silence had settled over the ranch; not even the cottonwoods were stirring.

Clementine shifted the watermelon in her arms, feeling inside her an old familiar fear. She was often haunted by thoughts of the savages; she had only to close her eyes to see the tattoos on Saphronie's face and the gouges in the wall of the buffalo hunter's cabin. And Iron Nose... he had not been caught and hanged with the rest of his renegade gang. He was still free and filled with hate. He and Joe Proud Bear, who with his family had disappeared into the emptiness of the western mountains. Only a yellow ring in the grass was left to mark the place where their tipi had stood by the Rainbow River.

The Indian chief held both hands in front of his body, the back of his left hand turned down. "He's making the sign for peace," Gus said, and she heard the tension ease out of his voice. "I told Zach they were tame Indians."

Rafferty returned the gesture. The two men spoke some more with their hands and a few monosyllabic words Clementine couldn't hear. She was struck by the sight of Gus's brother standing toe to toe with the Indian. Even in his fancy clothes he looked almost more savage, more capable of sudden violence, than the man with the white feather in his hair.

Rafferty rolled cigarettes for himself and the chief. Then he turned and made a sawing motion in the air. Shiloh drew the bow across his fiddle, and the jaunty strains of "Little Brown Jug" broke the silence. One of the Indian children, a boy, whooped and began to dance.

Rafferty came strolling back. "They're on a buffalo hunt and horse-stealing expedition to the Crow lands southeast of here," he said to Gus. "I invited them to stay for the party."