No Eye Can See (55 page)

“I'm not looking for sympathy,” she said and wrinkled her forehead. Then the driver stopped.

“Here's the place,” he said. “Josh McCracken, Attorney at Law.” He twisted in his seat, said, “If you don't mind my saying so, you two seem pretty happy together to be coming to a land and divorce lawyer.”

“Divorce?” Mazy said.

“One of the best in the state,” the driver said. Then, considering another option he might have missed, added, “ less of course you're getting one from others, so you two can be together.”

Mazy opened her mouth to protest but told Seth instead, “Why don't you stay out here? Set the driver straight while I'm gone.”

“About our not needing a divorce or that we intend to be together?”

Her set jaw was her only answer as he helped her from the buggy.

The waiting area in McCracken's home had black horsehair couches with wide walnut arms curved around the ends. Ferns draped from huge porcelain pots below photographs colored with pastels of mountains and valleys. A chandelier hung from the high ceiling—and that was only
the outer office. Mazy turned slowly around, feeling smaller than she wished, and decided there must be wealth in the dissolution of marriages, another of the Wests hidden treasures.

“You must be Mrs…. Bacon,” a man said from behind her. The voice was high pitched, from a small man.

“Yes. Jeremy Bacons wife.”

“Yes,” he said, adjusting his glasses on his narrow nose. “Follow me, please. Mr. McCracken will see you now.”

The man across the desk from her matched her in height. His hand felt warm as he took hers, gently pressed her fingers with both hands then directed her to a seat, thanking her for coming, asking after her comfort, ordering his secretary to return with tea. She sank into the cushion of a leather chair, sitting much lower than the lawyer now enthroned behind his desk. Her chair had appeared equal to his before she sat. Now her chest caved in on itself from the chairs softness. Light from the window behind him masked features that faded into a cleanshaven face. Dark hair curled at the ivory shirt collar. She looked around, noted the absence of any other people in the room.

She took in a deep breath, took control. “I understood my husbands brother and his wife were to be here,” she said, forcing herself to sit up straight, hands at her purse on her lap.

“Your husbands brother asked that I press their case for them,” McCracken said, taking control back. “Its quite usual, I assure you.”

“I hoped to meet the relatives of my husband.”

“In due time,” he said. “I'm sure he'll want contact with you, but for now, things are somewhat…awkward, to say the least. They're feeling a little remorseful that they've not made a greater effort to stay in touch with your husband's offspring. And they were uncertain how you might receive all this news.”

Mazy's hands felt damp, and she thought perhaps the room was too warm, though the window behind him stood partway open and the lace curtains moved easily in a light morning breeze. The secretary returned,
bringing cool tea and sugar cookies, both of which Mazy now declined, her mind spinning without knowing why.

“Your letter informing us of your husbands death came as a shock to them,” McCracken told her, “as you might imagine. They'd had no word from him since just before you started out.”

“As my learning he had a wife and child came as a shock to me.”

“Children,” he corrected. “He had two. A daughter and a son.”

A hawk in flight carried a snake in its talons. Oltipa raised her eyes at the bird's cry of triumph, doing what it needed to stay alive, risking all for food, perhaps to feed its young. She watched as it made its way to a tree and disappeared. Staying alive. That was what she must do, not get caught up with her outrage at this man. And save
this
child if she could not save her own. She must return, for even the slightest chance that her son lived, for even the chance that David Taylor might come searching, be confronted by this Randolph man and lose the challenge with his life.

In a whisper she said, “Think how to stay alive. Go back.”

“You got a plan?” My Jessie whispered.

“This is familiar place, these rocks and trees.”

She tried to remember where the
pam-hal-lok
was, the cave, the one her family took refuge in when an early snowfall caught them in these mountains. The
yola
melted the next day, but they had watched it come in flakes as large as acorns thickening the manzanita bushes in front of the cave opening with wet white. They watched from a place safe and warm.

In the morning, out of gratitude for this surprising home found where they did not expect it, her family left behind a cache of food— dried acorn flour, some deer meat—for someone else in need. Their feet made wide tracks in the melting snow, and Oltipa had looked back,
remembered seeing two crooked trees like eyes growing out of the rocks above it, the cave opening like the slit of a frown in an old mans pocked gray face.

The food would not be there now. But if they could get free and find the cave, it would provide shelter, a place for them to hide until the Randolph man tired of searching.

“I have plan.” Oltipa said. “Tonight, to sleep. When we are not held like twists around a basket next to the fire, you will make noises like you are ill. When he bends to see your pain, I will slip my silver spoon from inside this pocket and press it to his back, make him believe it is a gun or knife. Force him to cut your rope. Then we will bind him to a tree and be set free.”

My Jessie shook her head. “He wont care if I'm sick. ‘Less I throw up on his boot, and that'd just make him madder.” She whimpered. “I wanna go home.”

Could such a man find an ill child too much work? Maybe leave her behind…as he did her child? Yes, she decided, the Randolph man was held hostage by hatred, blinded by rage. Oltipa shivered in the August heat.

Dried leaves crackled as the horses moved through them. It would be a time of fire if storms came, the ground so dry. Perhaps she could start a blaze, stumble through the campfire and in the smoke and dust, they could disappear.

Before another thought could fill her mind, My Jessie said, “I hurt his big toe. He cant run fast. Maybe we could take his horse. He'd be stuck.”

Oltipa thought, then said, “When horse goes down steep slopes, toward the creeks, rope around us gets loose. He holds it high. On right side of saddle. He does not notice.”

My Jessie whined. “I don't know my rights and lefts.”

“His bad foot side. We slide down when the way is steep,” Oltipa said.

“Wont he see us when he looks back?”

Oltipa considered. “Horses hit water. Much splashing, clop, clop. We slide off. Scare my pony. Confuse that man. We run. Hope he is blind, with his seeing eyes on this pony running past him.”

“Maybe I can hit his foot again. If he chases.”

“Shh,” Oltipa said as the Randolph man turned. He didn't bark this time about their whispering. Perhaps the leaves and crush of branches covered up their words. She had noticed when he held the rope that bound her and My Jessie, that the Randolph man sometimes looped their mare's lead twice around the saddle horn, to control one rope at a time. The hemp line leading their mare would be held hard and fast then, and any effort of the Randolph man to dismount would be tangled by the ropes tension. But now, he held both ropes in his right hand, his reins in his left.

“Heading down,” he called out then, pointing with his head toward the stream below. “We'll camp close to water tonight. You beauties might have a bath.” He laughed, turned back, started the horses down the steep side, moving around boulders, past windfallen trees, finally to a landslide area, steep and smooth, that ended at the water's edge, free of shrubs and trees. He kept his arm out to hold the lead horse clear.

As they reached the smoother slope, the mare they rode fairly sat on its haunches, dust from the other horse doing the same in front puffing up around them. The Randolph man lifted the rope that bound them, and Oltipa felt it loosen, felt it ease up her back with her own shoulders hunching down. She felt the help of My Jessie's hands pulling it over her, freeing her.

Oltipa watched, and when Zane Randolph's horse hit the water, he did what they hoped for—he stayed within the stream. The two horses clop-clopped through the water, splashing and kicking up rocks. He looked back, saw them still there, the rope around them held to look tight by Oltipas hand. Then he turned back, and she watched him take the lead rope and double hitch it around the saddle horn. He was resting his arm of the pulling. This was their chance.

“Now,” Oltipa whispered and she rolled the hemp rope up and over
My Jessies shoulders, off over her head. “I slide off back. You follow. Now!”

Their legs wide, still bound hands pressed on the horse's rump, they dismounted. Oltipa first, her heart pounding. She felt the mare startle forward. She hit the water, stepped aside to avoid the hooves, did what she could to pull the child. My Jessie was sturdy and strong and pushed herself back from the horse and landed on her feet. “Run,” Oltipa shouted. “Run!” She threw a rock at the mare, which jolted, causing the Randolph man to turn.

Seth waited with the driver, only half hearing as he talked about the flood damage of the year before, rebuilding going on. Seth thought of the game of chance he'd entered with this woman and his life.

Last evening, he had gone to the casinos. He played the game of a lifetime, taking his winnings up and gathering others until it was just two of them left and a pot of fifteen thousand spilling on the table before them. A single turn of the cards and he either walked away a wealthy man or sank into indebtedness he'd spend a lifetime digging out from. It was the rush of his life, that game. Maybe Mazy was right. Maybe there was no other passion for him except risk.

When he turned over a queen of hearts and the other man held only a jack, he'd stayed calm on the outside. His insides swirled with triumph. He'd wanted to wake Mazy, to tell her. Walked to her door but did not knock. He had suspected she wouldn't have shared his elation in his newfound wealth even though it meant they might have a more predictable life. Still, he hadn't given her that option, had simply gone to his room and turned in. He wondered what held him back.

Zane Randolph heard the shout and felt the rope yank around his back in the same second as he saw the mare bounding up beside him on the left. No! He grabbed for the lead rope bound hard and tight at the horn, tried to yank it loose, couldn't, turned his own horse to the right, wanting to straighten the rope being pulled against his back, his thigh, frightening his horse. His horse, pulled by the frightened mare, frenzied it more. It sidestepped and lurched, pulled even tighter by the rope attached to Zane's saddle. The mare's neck stretched out now, its eyes wide in terror. Zane's horse spun around it. Water splashing, rocks rolling, horses slipping. The rope gouged tighter against Zane, the noise of water and a shrieking horse, and rocks tumbling, and his own shouts, of “Whoa, now, whoa now!” throbbing like a hammer at his head.

The rope stretched tight across his thigh, and his own horse pulled and sidestepped, and then the mare reared and whinnied and shrieked, and Zane heard the crack and grind of its neck just before it went down, strangled. The rope raked Zane from his saddle.