Amethyst (34 page)

“What happened?” Pearl rushed toward her. “You’re white as a sheet.”

Amethyst handed her one letter and held her own between two fingers. “My father.”

Pearl sucked in a deep breath. “I see.” Bit by bit through the months, she’d pulled information from Amethyst about her family and life in Pennsylvania. “Okay, I’ll pour you a cup of coffee and you sit out on the porch, if you want to be by yourself, and read your letter. I’ll go ahead and finish packing the food.”

Amethyst nodded. She glanced toward the stove, so tempted to drop the letter in the fire and pretend she’d never received it. But that was the coward’s way. Instead, she did just as suggested and retired to the porch. Slitting open the envelope, she dragged a piece of paper out and unfolded it. She closed her eyes.
Please, Lord, help me to bear this
.

She read the first two lines, and a smile tickled her cheeks. The next line brought on a chuckle and the last a full-throated, bellybobbing laugh. She read the missive again and kept on laughing.

Pearl burst through the door. “What is it? Are you all right?”

Amethyst shook her head, nodded, and laughed some more, handing Pearl the letter at the same time.

“He’s married?” Pearl read it aloud.

“Dear Daughter,

Thank you for yer letter of April. I am sorry Joel is not my grandson. I am married. Beulah takes good care of me.

The best,

Yer Pa

P.S. Send back train ticket.”

“Beulah takes good care of him. God give her strength.” Amethyst tipped her head back and chuckled again. “That poor, poor woman.”

“This means you don’t have to worry about him anymore.” Pearl handed the letter back. “You won’t send him the ticket, will you?”

“Good heavens, not in this life.” Amethyst thought to the return ticket she had safely tucked away in the back of the family Bible. If she ever needed money, she could get some by cashing in the ticket. And she still had the gold pieces her mother had left for her should an emergency occur.

She planted her hands on her knees and pushed herself to her feet. “Let’s get on out to the raising before it is all done. You do know how to get there?”

“Carl said he’d tie flags on bushes for us to find the way.”

“I’ll harness the horses and bring the wagon up.” Amethyst stared at the envelope in her hand.
Burn it. What a waste of good paper. Tear it up in tiny pieces and burn it. Waste not, want not
. Ignoring the clamor in her mind, she marched into the house, set the stove lid aside, ripped the letter, envelope, and all into tiny bits, and watched them flare into flames before even reaching the coals. She set the lid back in place, dusted off her hands, and headed outside to the applause made by Pearl’s clapping hands.

Sunbonnets shading their faces, they followed the flags and, as they neared McHenry’s site, heard the sound of laughter, the thudding of axes, the shouting orders, and children calling to one another in a game. They smelled the smoke of a campfire and the fragrance of boiling coffee.

“I thought you’d never get here.” Opal trotted over to tie the horses to a hitching post in the shade of a wide sheltering oak tree.

Amethyst sat for a moment and looked around. “What a lovely place for a house.” Protected by the hills on either side, the house would face west to the river and to the buttes on the opposite side. Tall cottonwood trees shaded the house that now had log walls chest high. As two men kept the next log from rolling back down the ramp, two others pulled on the hoisting rope and dropped the notched log into place. The thud echoed in the valley.

The children, along with the young girls minding them, clapped and cheered. The men wiped sweat from their foreheads with the backs of their hands and moved the ramp logs around to the next side.

Off to another side others were building the trusses to support the roof.

Amethyst’s gaze unerringly found Jeremiah McHenry. He was adzing a log to flatten the top and bottom so it fit more tightly. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, sweat darkening the shirt, and when he stopped for a breather, he pushed the brim of his hat back with one finger. As she’d heard someone say once, he was a fine figure of a man in spite of the black patch over his eye.

She turned to see Pearl watching her, a knowing smile curving her lips.

The flush Amethyst so despised roared up her neck and turned her face to fire. Was it that obvious? How could she not have come to care for him—no other man in her entire life had asked for her opinion or thanked her for every little service or told her stories into the late evening—in spite of the red warning flags of flask and temper?

She shook her head both inside and out. She knew what kind of woman he wanted, one like Pearl or Ruby, who would know how to dress in stylish clothes, carry on a conversation, use the correct fork, and look fine on her man’s arm. Both Rand Harrison and Carl Hegland stood straighter and walked with pride when their wives laid a hand on their arms and smiled into their eyes.

Instead of joining with the women who were sewing curtains for the windows and stitching a quilt for his new bed, Amethyst made sure the tables were ready for the food they kept in the shade and covered against the flies. She carried the water bucket around and filled the dipper for each of the men to drink, laughing when they sloshed water over their faces.

“Summer sure came by today,” Charlie said. “Thanks for the water. We’ll stop for dinner when the sun is straight up.”

“We’ll be ready.”

She let her sunbonnet shade her face when she served McHenry and nodded when he said, “Thank you.” Did he suspect how she felt?

At the cut of an expletive she turned, her water bucket sloshing on her skirt. She’d recognize his voice anywhere. McHenry was picking himself off the ground, muttering under his breath, yet she could still hear him. He’d never used that kind of language around her.

“You all right?” Rand stopped on his way over to help when McHenry motioned him away.

“I’m fine.” His growl belied the words.

He tripped again. She’d known it immediately. That he tripped and misjudged distances so often made it no easier. She could understand that.
But he gets so angry
. She watched as he turned away, drew something from his shirt pocket, and tipped his head back. The sun glinted on the silver flask.

He must have struck his bad leg in the fall.

Lord, what do I do? I can understand why he does this, but I can’t stand the idea of being around a drinker who swears
. She turned away, still wanting to go help him. Ach, such doings.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

June slipped into July, and no matter how hard Opal worked, the darkness only lightened once in a while, usually when she was playing with Sprout. Otherwise it never left.

She’d overheard Rand and Ruby talking about her one night.

“I don’t know what to do,” Ruby had said.

“Nor I.”

If I knew what to do, I would do it
.

“The laughter she always brought just isn’t here, and if I scold her one more time, I think I shall banish myself to the woodshed. Scolding doesn’t help, praying hasn’t helped, trying to get her to talk—that’s as hopeless as trying to wash skunk stink off Ghost.”

“I found her weeping out by her tree a day or so ago. I didn’t even let her know I was there. It about broke my heart.”

Leaning her forehead against the wall, Opal thought to her tree, an ancient oak with one branch as big as some other trees running parallel to the ground before curving upward. Opal often lay along that branch and stared into the leaves and branches above her. Bits of blue sky, the sun gilding the leaves, the breeze forming and reforming the patterns of light and shadow. One afternoon she’d fallen asleep there and awoke as she hit the ground. The branch wasn’t that wide.

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw rotting carcasses, many now stripped of hide and flesh, ribs arcing white, silent testimonials to the animals that lived and breathed and wandered the wide prairie in search of the perfect grazing spot.

Rand’s entire herd numbered eighty-five with only fourteen calves, six of them heifers. Several of their twenty cows had lost their calves. They had twenty head of heifers of breeding age, so next year they might have forty calves. If they all made it through the winter. If the winter were not so severe. If, if, if. None of which had to do with how hard they worked, other than having put enough hay by and planted oats and wheat, as Rand had done, so they would have grain to eat and feed.

Her mind sorted through the numbers like the Chinese man she’d once seen using an abacus, the beads clicking faster than the ear could hear.

And not only the cattle dead. Little Squirrel and the baby too. Linc gone, his absence at the table a continual reminder—they’d become like family in the time they’d been with them. There’d been another funeral when they found what was left of a woman who had wandered off. If she had to say one more good-bye, Opal was sure she’d cry herself into a puddle to be sucked up by the thirsty ground.

What concerned her the most? Rand and Ruby acted as if nothing was wrong. They said God would provide. Like He’d provided fodder for the cattle this winter? Sometimes she wasn’t sure who she was angrier at, them or God. And Jacob—standing up there talking about how God loved them and ordered that they love one another.

This was home, but what if they couldn’t stay here? So many others had left. Empty soddies, empty ranch houses, empty buildings in Medora, empty prairies. But for the bones. Rand said they would go out and pick up the bones after the sun and the weather, along with the critters and birds, finished cleaning the carcasses. Someone was foolish enough to pay for the bones to be ground up for fertilizer.

Rand was grateful. For the privilege of picking up bones? Another one of those incomprehensible things. Life was incomprehensible. Sleeping seemed the only antidote, but when she slept so much, how come she never woke up rested?

Soon the all-day haying would start, and the women would work from before dawn cooking for the crew and into the night canning if something was ready. Most of the garden would be ready in August, but the Juneberries, strawberries, and chokecherries were ready in July. She wandered down to the barn and let Sprout out of his stall. Rand wanted her to let him run with the herd, but she knew something would get him. He had no fierce longhorn mother to protect him. She let him through the gate and into the pasture, where she sat down and let him graze around her.

His horns showed a couple of inches now, so if he rubbed his head against her, which he loved to do, sometimes it hurt. Like now. “Ouch, you can’t do that.” She pushed him away. He thought she was playing and pushed back.

“You need another young steer to battle with. Not me.” Instead, she scratched under his chin and along his throat, which was guaranteed to make his long eyelashes droop and to make him stretch his muzzle out even more.

Roundup had consisted of castrating and branding their far-toofew calves, including ten for the Robertsons. They’d moved steers that wore other brands to their rightful places, and she assumed other ranchers did the same. Some steers no longer had owners in the area. Rand kept a tally of those he kept so that he could pay the owners if he could find them.

She pulled a long stem of grass and chewed the tender end. Sprout lay down beside her. “If you’re done grazing, better come on back to the corral. I hear Ruby calling.” She got to her feet, and when she walked off, Sprout hoisted his hindquarters, then the front, stretched, tail twisting above his back, and trotted after her, bawling as if she’d forsaken him.