What Once We Loved (11 page)

“About going north,” Matthew said, “I had hoped to go back someday myself. So I'm not doing you a favor. And you had a good idea about the jacks, I figure. But sure, you can own one.”

“How generous of you, Matthew Schmidtke,” Ruth said.

“Ma'am?”

“Don't tell me what I can or cannot own. I'll decide that for myself.”

“Didn't mean to undercut you. You bought Ewald. That's fine. Or you could take Carmine. Whichever.”

He adjusted his hat, pulling it up and then down. He'd taken his foot off the rail and then put it back. Well, good, he was nervous too. She wasn't the only one struggling with strong feelings.

“That's straight then. I like…Carmine, even though I found Ewald first.”

“The wild-eyed one? Oh, Ruth, I'm not—”

“And your jack, Ewald, you'll breed to…?”

“We'll buy half your mares. If you'll sell. Or we'll get others. Keep everything businesslike.”

“Your mother will approve?”

“I'll talk to her,” he said.

“So we may not end up exactly in the same area,” she said. “Once we're in Oregon, I mean. If I'm buying land and you're getting yours free. Because you're a man.”

“Looks like it.”

“Good. Then we have an agreement for traveling north together only. After that, we'll part company. Go our own way.”

“Looks like it.”

“While we're settling things, I also want to say that I'll be directing the children as I see fit. And I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from telling them things. Seems to me you have your hands full with your sister and
your ma. Your mother,” she corrected herself. “I wouldn't want you to become…overburdened raising me and mine.” She swallowed. “Do we have an understanding?” There. She'd clarified this relationship once and for all.

Matthew stopped adjusting his hat and stared. For some reason her heart rate increased, and his blue eyes moved like a lightning strike right through her.

“Do we have an understanding?” she said again, blinking.

“Looks like it, Miss Martin,” he said, sweeping his hat from his head. He held it at his chest, gave her one last look, then turned on his heel and walked away.

She'd said all she wanted to, up front and clear as a freighter's bell. She'd taken a giant stride forward. So why did she feel as though she stood with her hands pressed over her head instead of flying free with the wind in her face?

Matthew Schmidtke hefted sacks of grain onto the back of the wagon with a little more force than needed. Who was he to think he understood them anyway, any woman? Not his sister, not his mother, and certainly not Ruth Martin. He wished for the hundredth, no, the thousandth time, that his pa was alive to ask. But based on the changes he'd seen in his mother in the year since his father s death, he guessed the man might be scratching his head just as Matthew was, if he'd been alive to witness Lura's transformation. She'd once been a mouse of a woman who'd do whatever his pa had asked.

“Fix us some sassafras tea, Woman,” he'd say, or, “Get me my tobacco and pipe, quick like now. I don't have all day.” It never seemed unkind. Just his pa's way. And his ma just moved like a…rabbit to comply. Most times.

Now that he remembered, she did have another way about her.
Sometimes she moved slower than a terrapin. “You in a hurry?” she'd say, handing his pa a pipe they all knew he didn't like, that clay one she'd taken to chewing on since his pa had died. She'd give it to him and he'd say, “Now, Woman, you know this one don't draw good. Should throw the thing out.”

“It was my pa's.”

“He could have afforded a better one.” He'd motion her to go back and get another, and this time she'd bring it…but not the tobacco. “Lura,” his pa would say.
Lura
instead of
Woman.
That was a sign he was getting upset. “Your pa was a seven by nine if I ever knew one.” His mother would scowl and quick-walk away. She returned with the tobacco—but without a flint—and they'd start arguing about his grandfather, a man Matthew truly loved. “Just a seven by nine, that's all that man ever was. Not a dream in his head. Not a vision. Raised himself a daughter the same as him.”

“He made his way with his head held high,” his mother would defend.

“Because he jutted his chin out telling people his opinions,” his pa would respond. “But not keeping his thinking sharp.” Sometimes Matthew wondered how his parents had ever found each other, let alone decided to marry and stay that way for twenty years.

“He told my mother every day that he loved her,” his ma would say. “Put his arm around her. Every day”

“That's because your mother would forget from one day to the next, he
had to
tell her every day.” His mother's eyes would pool. “Oh, don't go pumping on that handle now. I told you I loved you when I married you. That hasn't changed. Don't need to keep repeating a thing. Only seven by nines need things repeated.”

Matthew'd wondered about that phrase his pa used. He'd even asked him once, within his mothers hearing, what it meant.

“Huh?” his pa said. “How would I know?”

“Your pa don't worry over origins of things. Nor what their impact
might be,” Lura told him and then answered the question her husband couldn't. “Used to be the size of common windows, a seven by nine, and people who're common—”

“Don't you be filling your head with words and such,” his pa had countered, pointing with that pipe. “There are no solutions in reading. Experience, that's what you got to learn from. It don't matter what that term meant once. Enough said.”

“She was just saying, Pa.”

His father had sat right up in the chair. “Don't you go back-talking to your pa now, Son. Don't worry over women none either. They'll come along when they're told. It's the way it was meant to be. It's the way it is.” His pa had sat back in the leather chair. “You put your concentration on cattle and land, Son. That's how you'll take care of your ma. And how you'll find yourself a woman. You don't worry about this ‘touching ‘em' every day with sweet words and all. You give her land, and she'll come to you like a bear to honey.”

His mother had snorted. “Ask your pa if that's how I came to him.” His father had lifted an eyebrow. “I'll answer that one, too. Your pa came to me, my being an only child. And my father having land with a house on it with windows larger than seven by nine. Now who's talking honeyed words,” she'd said and slammed the long-handled spider to the stove.

Funny he should think ofthat day while he was dealing with Ruth. He guessed he wanted to say and do what would be a comfort to her— he didn't want to agitate her. He wanted to be more like his grandfather, using loving words every day, even if his pa thought it wasted effort.

His ma seemed to be enjoying the readying. He was glad she'd be with him and Mariah instead of sharpening knives for butchers and whatnot, taking that little cart around with things from the Wilsons Mercantile to sell to folks up in the ravines. He didn't think that was safe, a woman going alone like that. “Pa said I was to look after you,” he'd told her when he arrived in Shasta City.

“He couldn't look after himself,” she said and sniffed.

“Ma!”

“Its true. Oh, he loved me. I know he did, in his way. But I cooked and cleaned and mended and ran for him, and he mostly told me I was nothing but shucks. Well, I'm more than that. And so is Mariah, and so are you. I'm proud you took the cattle on ahead. Proud you tended Ruth Martins horses all that time. But while you were growing up, we were doing things to tend to others and ourselves, too, back there on the trail. We were growing up too.”

“Mariah looks a little worse for wear,” he said under his breath.

“Mariah does? She's doing fine. She's a big help to me.”

“She ought to be in school, Ma. You don't want her ending up as some…seven by nine.”

His mother hadn't responded, but she'd thumbed her
eyes
, quick like. He figured he'd hit a nerve.

His little sister, Mariah, had changed. Taller, prettier, a good rider. He guessed it was all that time with Ruth's horses. But she wore a sadder face somehow. Joe Pepin, the wrangler who had come all the way from New York with them, had commented on that too, how Matt's little pipsqueak sister had “grown the eyes of a lonesome dog.” It wasn't exacdy how Matthew would describe it, but he knew just what Joe meant.

Maybe his ma hadn't been available to her like she should have been this past year after his pa's death. Maybe his ma's push for business was her way of numbing the pain of it, and Mariah had paid the price. He had to step over the fact that his mother had worked in a saloon and been part of a traveling musical troupe to mining camps with slobbering men hanging around. She'd done what she had to do. Couldn't fault her for that.

At least he'd had Joe Pepin to help guide him this past year. Not so much about the ways of women; Joe had little experience with that. But about catde and horses and keeping his head even when he was grieving the loss of a loved one. That was what he'd needed. He'd almost lost
more than his head in the tangle of Oregon country. They'd given up some horses to Takelma Indians wearing paint, the braves pointing those bows laid flat out from their chests, the way he'd seen pictures of Englishmen holding crossbows. A good trade, three horses for their lives. He'd made sure they were the Schmidtkes' horses and not Ruth Martin's. And they'd learned later that the braves always wore paint; it was when they put on white dye that they meant to use those bows against the whites.

He and Joe had lost two cows to broken necks from falls off ridges they shouldn't have been on. Eventually they'd found a route he later learned was part of the Applegate Brothers' Trail. They'd pushed the stock into a valley in the shadow of two flat-topped hills sticking up like tables just before the first snowfall. A river that folks sometimes called Gold and sometimes the Rogue flowed beneath the table rocks, and Matthew said that was where they'd stay, take the animals on to The Dalles in the spring where he'd agreed to meet up with his ma and Ruth Martin.

It was the wasted time that had distressed him, the sense that he'd somehow lost his way and not kept his word to meet up along the Columbia River when he'd said he would. Ruth would be waiting for them there, he was pretty sure, and she'd think he'd taken off with her treasures if he didn't arrive. Treasures! After this past winter, he knew that just living was the treasure. He wouldn't mention that to Ruth just now, that the snows in Southern Oregon had been so bad the horses had eaten moss from the trees to stay alive. He'd save that and some of his other tales for telling over the campfires on the trail, if she was interested. Right now, he was just grateful she'd agreed to their partnering up, however stiff the terms.

“Well, ponder that,” Ruth heard Elizabeth say. Seth stepped away from in front of the oak tree near the cabin on Poverty Flat. Behind him, a ladder rose up through the leaves.

“For you and David and Oltipa's boy, Ben, when you come visit,” he said. “We boys here built it ourselves.”

“Well, ponder that,” Elizabeth said again, her handkerchief moving the warm air before her.

Adora Wilson and her son, Charles, had come out too, it being a Sunday, their mercantile closed. Who had invited them? Ruth wondered. Couldn't there be an event without everyone being included? Was there some written rule that whenever those who traveled on the widows' wagon gathered in a group, that all of them within trotting distance had to show up, even one who had created more problems for them in the first place? Charles Wilson with his jagged ear was slime on a rock, as far as she was concerned, slick and full of trips and falls if one stood too close.

Besides, they were just putting off the inevitable. No one wanted to say good-bye, but that was what was needed next. Then came this tree house unveiling. Now all the children would have to climb up into it, and there'd be cake eating up there and drinking eggnog while retelling the stories about building it and whatnot.

“When'd you find time to do that?” Mazy asked.

“While Ruth and Matthew here were off gathering jacks and you and Lura were negotiating Durham cows,” Seth told her. “Me and the boys, we just pitched in and got ‘er done.”