No Eye Can See (24 page)

“Your place?” several said in unison.

“Yes. I have a house. With a fence and a view—for those who visit.”

“How'd you do that?” Lura said. “We settled on a boardinghouse. Nothing else seemed suitable. I didn't even see you searching!”

“I have my ways,” Suzanne said, grinning as she patted Sason's back on her chest.

“Well,” Adora said. “Well.”

“Maybe my quilt square will be a house,” Suzanne said.

“Anything you want it to be. The quilt will be our book,” Mazy said. She looked over at Seth, who had taken the writing kit from his vest pocket and was making sketches on a crumpled piece of paper.

“The story of our journey home,” Missy Esther said. “Reminding us of how we came to know what mattered to us though each of us came by what we learned in a different way.”

Missy Esthers words fell into the silence, and Mei-Ling became aware of a hole in her heart, as large a fracture as when she left her own family, when Zilah began her journey home, when Missy Esthers brothers died, a hole made wider now by the thought of leaving, going a new and different way.

On the Red Bluff Trail

The moon rose over the curve of the hill. David rested the horse, letting the animal catch its breath. He'd been riding at a steady pace for the past two hours out from the staging barn where the passengers were bedded down for the night.

He'd driven another thirteen miles after his encounter with Randolph. When he'd come to, David had seen the back of the big man as he stepped through the door. He wanted to go after him, haul him down, shake him, but he couldn't catch his breath. He drank the water the hostler gave him, let the damp neck scarf almost dry on his face. Then he stood, climbed back up onto the seat. “Give them fifteen minutes
more, then sound the all-ready,” he told the hostler. “I just need a minute here.”

He'd felt the tilt of the cab as passengers climbed in, imagined the smirk on Randolph's lips. David shouted the all-ready and snapped the whip, seething over his own inaction, his not standing for the girl. What he'd wanted to say was, “She wasn't yours to own. No human is. What you did may have been legal, but that didn't make it right. It wasn't. I didn't make her go just like I didn't try to make her stay. If you can convince Hall and Crandall that I lost your property,’ then so be it. I'll pay them back what's owed. But I should have stopped it before it started.”

He shook his head.
Coward. Than what you are.
The most he'd done was make it sound as if it was a quirk she leapt off. If it had been a bounced bag, he'd have stopped for it. It did look like he didn't take care of passengers’ things. But she wasn't a
thing.
Why couldn't he have just said, “You'll never convince me she was luggage, nor Hall and Crandall either. She didn't belong to you. She belonged to no one.”

Now, bone tired, his neck sore and red, David walked the horse he'd mounted at twilight. He'd ridden out on his borrowed horse as though for an evening ride. It was a man's right to have time to himself.

It was an early rising moon, just what he needed. He looked behind him. He saw nothing but the distant roll of hills and the tongue of road he'd ridden out on. David wasn't sure at all if he could find the spot. Worse, maybe she hadn't understood his plan to bring her food and water. She wore a blank face when he'd told her. Maybe he'd misread the expression in her eyes. Maybe she'd been terrified and hadn't wanted to jump as he'd motioned. What if she was hurt? He wondered what he'd do if he didn't find her.

Of course, she wouldn't be there, now that he allowed himself to think straight. She was a Wintu. She knew how to live from the land, how to take care of herself. What did she need him for? Why should she even trust him to come back? This whole trip was crazy, riding fifteen,
sixteen miles or so one way to what, rescue a woman who didn't need it? And hope to get back before daylight to drive the morning run? He should just turn around then.

But he couldn't. If for no other reason than that he'd told her he'd be back. A man was nothing if he didn't keep his word. He carried food, a canteen of water, and a bedroll with a blanket and a piece of emerald green linen he'd bought with his first pay, had planned once to give his mother. Odd how he'd rolled the cloth into his bedroll and never taken it back out, even after he learned of his mother's death. It tucked beneath his neck when he slept. It would be enough to cover the Wintu woman while she made her way through towns, until…until what? David didn't know. He just knew he'd made this commitment to her and to himself, and he would keep it regardless of how outrageous or wasted a hope it was.

He felt the horse alert, saw its ears twitch. He twisted to look back. Was that a rider behind him? In this dim light of shadows, he couldn't be sure. He looked up. A strip of cloud speared the moon. He pulled the horse into the shadow of scrub oak lining the road. He watched for a time. Saw nothing. He leaned forward over the horse's neck. “Let's go,” he said under his breath and squeezed his knees. The horse responded with a surge forward, a pace David hoped they could keep up.

That boulder. The moonlight polished it smooth, but David recognized it as the one he'd slowed the team for. So he must have already ridden past the spot where Oltipa had jumped off. He pulled up the reins of his borrowed horse, turned, his eyes scanning, hoping to sight something familiar. The gelding snorted once, his head low as he retraced his steps. The white pine tree with the acorn woodpecker's stash dotting the trunk, large roots hanging out over the side where the bank washed away, was it there? The top of the bank pitched out toward the road, as though it might topple over, pulling up a root ball larger than the Concord. Maybe there'd be a mark of her scampering up and over. She might have reached for the roots and missed.

It took courage to jump. David admired her for that. He'd looked back and had seen nothing in the roadway, so he assumed she'd made it. He hoped again that she hadn't been injured.

He wished she'd call out to him. Could she see who it was in the moonlight? Would she be relieved to know he'd kept his word or annoyed that someone had interrupted her sleep?—if she slept, if she was even still there. Returning was a crazy thing to do. He wasn't thinking well at all.

Then he saw it. The tall pine cast a shadow onto the road. With the cloud gone, he could even see the pine needles crisp against the sky.

Oltipa?” He used a loud whisper. Oltipa?”

There wasn't any way to stay on horseback and ride that ridge. He rode north again a few yards to where the bank began a slope to the road. He dismounted, picked a large rock and wrapped the reins around it. “Stay put, boy,” he said, patting the horse at its withers. Then he untied the bedroll containing the food he'd talked the station cook out of and the emerald green cloth. He slipped his arm through the hemp rope that held the roll, hoisted it up onto his shoulder, and threw it up.

Tall as he was, David still had to jump for the tree root that stuck out like a gnarled hand from the bank. Successful, he soon straddled the thick root, then shimmied his way toward the body of the tree. He stretched his right leg around it, feeling his boots hit solid ground. He stood, his back to the tree. “Oltipa? Are you here? Anywhere?”

His eyes cast uphill, beneath the branches of a few pines, mostly oak. He heard an owl, listened for the night sounds. A branch broke off to his right. “Oltipa?” he said. He swallowed. Perhaps he'd been followed after all. Another sound. The hair at the back of his neck prickled through the sweat. He turned and saw it.

The animal was the color of wet sand, sleek in the moonlight. Its head was a round ball sucked into its muscled shoulders and neck. David couldn't see whiskers or eyes, so the big cat must have had its head faced away as its tail twisted down from the thick tree branch.
Something caught its interest other than David. He wanted to whisper Oltipas name again, make sure it wasn't her the animal sought. A deer maybe? A fawn?

He couldn't take any chances. He had to bring the big cat's attention to him, just in case the woman was its prey. He reached for his ball-and-cap pistol. Its range wasn't that far and the accuracy questionable, but his rifle remained in the scabbard, back with the horse. At least he had six rounds. He kept the bedroll on his shoulder, making himself look as large as he could. His movements were slow as a winding-down clock.
Here, kitty-kitty,
he thought. The animal outweighed him, he was sure of that.

The pistol grip felt cold in his hand. He moved closer, grateful he was downwind and hadn't been seen. He took aim and shot.

David forgot how the pistol smoked and smelled each time he shot it. Through the powdered haze, he could see the big cougar fall, crashing from the branch and landing with a hard thud on the far side of the tree. He eased up, walked a wide swath around the cougar. He poked at the cat's ribs with his boot. There was no movement. He couldn't see exactly where he'd hit it, no blood anywhere visible in this shadowed light, but the ball would have pierced the underside. David stepped over the animal, his eyes beyond now, trying to see what had interested the cat.

He heard a whimper.

“Oltipa?”

He squinted toward the sound. Something moved, smaller than a fawn. A porcupine? A rat? Then it bounded toward David, black eyes peering out through a beard of scruffy hair. “What…?” David said just as the dog barked.

“Whoa.” The dog pushed itself against him. “Wait, wait.” He laid the pistol down and laughed a cracked-voice laugh as the rough tongue ran itself over David's cheeks, his eyes. With both hands, he held the animal at arms length, the dog's back legs dancing in the air. “I got no
time for you,” he told the squirming mutt, smaller than a Christmas ham. The dog barked then, a yip almost. “You're sure a long way from home,” he said. “That's certain.”

The dog twisted itself from his hands, dropped to the grass then, and darted through Davids legs, causing him to lose balance. “Hey,” he said, turning to watch the dog run off. “Is that any way to treat your rescuer?”

David smelled the danger behind him before he heard the rustle.

He turned. “Oh,” he said, his eyes locked on to another's. His heart thudded. He thought of his mother and his father as their faces flashed before his eyes. He never dreamed it would end like this, beneath a tree, the only witness an odd-looking dog. David eased himself backward like a wounded crab, his throat and stomach exposed as he shifted his hands and feet. He was supposed to make himself bigger, someone told him, when found by a cougar. Stare at them, make them think twice about taking you on. He could see the animal's tongue loll on one side.
It must be dazed.

The scream ran cold fingers up his spine. The animal crouched low now, slow and deliberate, stalking. David should have shot again when he first downed the cat.

What happened next came quick. From the corner of his eyes, he saw a black streak. The dog raced between David and the cat, distracted the animal for no longer than the hoot of an owl, long enough for a shadow beyond the cat to rise, her arms raised. Then she plunged the rock with such force against the animal's head that the cracking of it echoed like thunder rolling through distant trees.

This California way of thinking proved…tiresome, Zane decided. Where was the challenge in setting people upon each other if it took no effort? A word dropped, a threat suggested, and the boy would be blackballed from the stage line, probably destitute within the month. And the
Wintu woman, with her dirty black hair stringed down over her face, would be an additional weight around the boy's neck if he actually did act to help her. Helping a person obligated a soul worse than hurting them, that was Zane's observation. It was a good lesson for the boy to discover. Perhaps he'd even helped him grow up, face life as it really was, hard and cold and cruel. Zane smiled.
Careful,
he thought to himself,
one wouldn't want to be obligated.

The jehu, looking tired and red-eyed, had delivered them to the next stage stop and then driven back toward Sacramento. Zane had been assured by the next agent that his claim would be paid, and Zane had smirked at the unrepentant boy, then boarded the coach leaving for Shasta.