Mending Horses (33 page)

Kelpie snorted, and Rinn bobbed his head. They would break ranks any second now. Daniel shook his head at Mr. Sharp; adding the torch might be too risky. It was the best they'd ever done before an audience; there was no point chancing their luck any further. Torch or no, the trick had never looked so grand, the ponies never so alert and handsome, the acrobats never so precise and skillful.

Francesca leaped to the ground, landing with a cat's easy grace. Her brothers followed, raising their arms in triumph, then
bowing to the cheering crowd. Daniel signaled with the whip, and the ponies reared as one onto their hind legs, came forward two steps, then dropped back to all fours and gracefully bent their right forelegs and bowed along with the gymnasts.

Daniel whipped off his cap and bowed, not to the audience, but to the ponies and the acrobats. As he straightened, he and Billy shared a grin that warmed him down to his toes. And even though he'd never left the ground, he was soaring.

“Good God, Hugh, you attack that rock like it was the very devil himself.” O'Neill laughed and clapped Hugh on the shoulder. “Pace yourself, man, or you'll drop before it's yet dinnertime.”

Hugh settled his pickax and wiped his sweaty hands on the seat of his trousers. He took a long drink from the bottle of cider that O'Neill offered him, the sweet amber liquid dribbling down his chin. He dragged his forearm across his face, though his grimy sleeve did more to add grit to his cheeks than to dry off the sweat and cider. “I'm fine, Martin. It feels good to be working again.”

Since arriving at the railroad camp, he'd assaulted his work with the intensity of a fiend. He rubbed his hands together before lifting his pick again, feeling the tough leathery places where healed blisters were turning to calluses. It was hard work, aye, work that left him limp and drained at the end of the day. And that suited him perfectly—to drop onto his blankets and sleep without dreaming.

It felt good to slash at the mountain with pick and shovel as if he were striking at the very face of God Himself, who'd stolen so much from him. To strike for once with blows that, for all the force he put into them, could do no harm to anyone he loved.

Aye, it felt good to be working out here in the fresh air, even in the damp and the cold. He could breathe again, no matter that the air was dense with stone dust and dirt. It was free air, fresh and cleansing. Perhaps out here he could work his way into healing. Perhaps . . .

If only that young teamster down the way didn't put him so much in mind of Liam.

Daniel slipped into the pavilion just in time to watch Francesca begin her
corde volante
performance. It still captivated him to see her float and twirl high up in the pavilion's peak, like a white butterfly blown aloft by the music of Mr. Stocking's fiddling. He held his breath as she let go of the rope, somersaulted, then caught herself and hung by her knees. He was so hypnotized that he almost leaped out of his skin when a long-fingered hand grasped his shoulder.

Daniel clapped a hand over his own mouth to stifle a cry of surprise. Mr. Chamberlain's dark, furious eyes glared at him. “Where is she?” the conjurer asked.

“Uh?” For the moment, the only
she
Daniel could think of was Francesca.

“Billy, you dolt. She's supposed to be on next,” Mr. Chamberlain snapped, apparently so angry that he'd forgotten to keep the lass's gender a secret.

“Last I knew, Billy was with Mr. Stocking.”

He'd not seen much of the lass all day. She'd left the morning's equestrian drill to Daniel and the Ruggles boys, claiming she had a new song to learn with the peddler. She'd left Daniel with the harnessing of the ponies' wagon for the parade, and she'd not taken her place in the caravan until the very last moment. Daniel had thought she'd been in one of her snits, though he'd not been able to figure out what he'd done to anger her.

Mr. Chamberlain shook his head. “Jonny nearly missed his cue, he was so busy looking for her. Nearly had to have Francesca performing to the slide trombone.”

“I—um—”

“Never mind.” Mr. C. twirled one end of his false mustache. “I'll read some heads or conjure a ghost. That'll make 'em happy. But she'd better be here for the finale.”

Daniel found Billy back at the inn, curled in the straw in Pearl's empty stall, hugging her legs to her chest. He opened the door warily. “Are you ailing?” he asked. She had seemed a bit peakish that morning. He'd never seen her turn away breakfast before.

“I think I'm dying,” she said. He couldn't see her face, which she kept pressed against her knees. She held her shoulders tight to her body, as if to hide that she was crying.

“Dying? You've not been at Mr. Stocking's tobacco again, have you?”

She shook her head and rocked herself back and forth. “There's such a griping in me guts. And there's blood. So much blood.”

“Blood?” he asked. “Where? What happened?” He put a hand on her shoulder and tried to turn her face toward him. She squirmed away and curled herself tighter. When she finally looked up, her cheeks were wet with tears and flushed bright red. “D-D-Down there. Blood. Just like Mam. There was so much blood down there when she died.”

“Down . . . there.” Daniel's stomach somersaulted. He laid her on her side and turned her as much as he could while she curled in on herself like a hedgehog. A dark stain spread across the seat of her trousers. He let her go as quickly as if he'd scalded his hands.
Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
. Who was he to deal with such a thing? All he know about female troubles was what he'd learned from tending to livestock and an occasional crude joke from one of the farmhands at Lyman's. He looked frantically about the barn, as if he expected a wise old woman to appear and take the burden from him. But there was no one else. “Tell me about your mam, lass. What ailed her when—when she died?”

Billy unrolled a little bit and sat up to face him. “She was having a baby. The baby come and then there was blood
everywhere—d-d-down—down there. And then she died, and so did the baby.” She hugged herself tighter, as if she could stop the bleeding that way. “I don't want to die, Daniel.” She gulped back a sob, released her grip on her knees long enough to wipe her nose on her sleeve, and drew in a long snuffling breath.

Daniel ran a hand across his face. “You're not dying, lass. I can tell you that much.” But he wasn't altogether sure she'd be pleased to find out the truth of it.

Mr. Chamberlain's conjuring and Mr. Sharp's Ethiopian fire- juggling took the place of Billy's singing while Mrs. Varley cleaned the girl up and fitted her out with fresh clothes and much
tut
-
tutt
-ing, and
poor
-
lamb
-ing, punctuated with cries of “
I knew it all along!
” That Billy meekly tolerated all the fussing was sure proof to Daniel how stunned she was.

After the dust had settled from the show, Daniel stole up to the bed chamber at the inn where the lass had remained hidden all afternoon. “You feeling any better?” he asked the blanket-covered lump that was Billy. Had it been young Ethan back to the Lymans' who was upset, Daniel would have soothed the lad's bruises with cold water and wormwood and listened to him rant about Lyman. Maybe he'd have promised him a ride on Ivy. He knew well enough how to console a lad, for he'd been in the self-same place. But a lass, well, how was he to know what was going on inside her head?

He could leave the consolation to Mr. Stocking or Francesca or Mrs. Varley. No, not Mrs. Varley. She'd smother the lass with her
dear-dear
s and next be measuring her up for a gown and petticoat, and then Billy would be off, and no telling where she'd end up.

An array of remedies littered the table: a cup of gingery-smelling tea, one of Mr. Stocking's elixirs, a tin pan and damp rag smelling sharply of goldenrod—some sort of women's poultice, he supposed.

He took a deep breath and tried the only thing he had to offer. “What're you lying there for?” he said sharply. “Kelpie and
Silk are getting full of themselves and need riding to quiet 'em down. You ought to be outside helping me, 'stead of lying here sulking.”

“I'm not sulking,” said the lump.

“Then you'd best get your arse out of that bed and onto one of them ponies, 'cause I can't be riding both of 'em by meself. If we wait any longer, it'll be dark.”

The blanket moved aside, revealing a wary blue eye and part of a scowling mouth. “Get Francesca or Teddy to do it.”

“You know Kelpie likes you best,” Daniel said. “And anyway,” he added a little less roughly, “Francesca says it'd do you good. She says . . . she says getting up and doing always helps when she—I mean—you know, to take her mind off—off things.” The rope dancer had said no such thing, but Billy wouldn't know that.

The lump stirred, and a rumpled Billy emerged. Part of him expected her to look different, though in what way he wasn't sure. Was he expecting her to all of a sudden look more of a girl? She still had the same boyish manners and graceless stride. But soon there'd be no denying the betrayal of her body that had begun that morning.

Thankfully, she spoke of naught but the ponies and their training as they readied Kelpie and Silk for their ride, speculating about whether Kelpie could ever become incombustible and whether Moze or Philo Ruggles should ride Silk in tomorrow's show.

Soon there was no talking at all as they gave the ponies their heads while there was still enough daylight left to run safely. The sun dipped below the horizon as the ponies finished their race. When Daniel reined Silk in and looked at Billy and Kelpie, the lass seemed, if not happy, then at least distracted.

“Ha!” she said. “We beat you! I knew Kelpie was faster.”

Though Daniel had not held Silk back one whit, he'd not been able to nose her ahead of Kelpie. But he'd not tell Billy that. “You never,” he said.

“What? Knew Kelpie was faster or beat you?”

“Neither.”

“Liar.”

“Ingrate.”

“Ee-jit.”

Ah, there was the old Billy back again. But something different from rivalry or stubbornness lingered in the air between them, like the sulfurous clouds of colored smoke that Mr. Chamberlain conjured in his act. Daniel's fear of disturbing that cloud gave him a vague jangling feeling beneath his skin. Silk picked up the feeling, and she switched her tail testily.

“ 'Tisn't fair,” Billy said, and Daniel felt the cloud drift in his direction.

“All right, so Kelpie
is
faster,” Daniel said, trying to push the cloud back.

“That's not what I mean,” Billy said. “Francesca said . . . she told me . . .” She paused, and Daniel hoped she'd realized this was no fit subject to be speaking of. “It's horrible, Daniel. All me life, every month. It's like—like—It's like being in nappies.” She shuddered.

Daniel cast a sideways glance at the lass but could see nothing of her expression, just the shape of her body and Kelpie's, all the color in them washing into grays and blacks. “It'll not be so very bad, once you get used to it. Everyone has to grow up now, don't they?”

“I'm sure you never minded growing up, for wasn't every year that much closer to being free of that Lyman fella? But I'll never be free ever again.”

Daniel shook his head. “I never knew a lass that wasn't free.” Not that he'd known all that many lasses, but the Lymans' dairymaid Lizzie, Mrs. Lyman herself, the lasses who came and went about town, sure they'd all seemed freer than himself to do as they pleased, at least until he'd got clear of the Lymans.

“Oh, aye?” Billy said with a snort. “How many lasses do you know can do anything they please?”