No Eye Can See (57 page)

21

Stars glittered above him, silver stones thrown to light the night. “No moon,” David said, his
eyes
sticky with sleep. His horse would easily stumble, traveling without a moon. He wondered if the sky was clear wherever Oltipa was. He stretched, his neck sore from the way his head dropped while he slept beneath the tree. He heard the crunch of his horse chewing, the rustle of the dog at his feet. Had he dreamed? He couldn't remember. He stood, reached for his packsaddle, took out a bite of dried meat, liking the pull of it against his teeth. A shooting star caught his eye, a single flash of brilliance. “So small, we are,” he told the dog as he squatted to share his food. “So small in the scheme of things.”

He'd done what he could do and would have to live with the failure of his efforts. He thought of heading into Oregon anyway, futile as it might be to find Oltipa there. He could see his sister, walk where his father once walked, try to understand how he could have left his wife and daughter behind. Maybe to keep them safe. Maybe doing what he thought best for them, at least that was what he wanted to believe. He preferred that explanation to the one he'd come to first—that his father chose the dazzle of a fire over its warmth. Gold was no end in itself, despite what all around him were saying.

He might never know what his father thought, or what happened to him either. Just another unanswered question life handed him, asking him to ponder and trust.

“Heading back,” David told the dog. “Don't want our Ben growing up without knowing there was someone there for him. Got to tell him about his kin and what she was about.” He could keep her story alive, and if she did live, if she did escape the hands of Zane Randolph, then she'd return to where she last saw Ben. “She might not come back for me, old boy,” he said. “But you can bet she will for Ben.”

Riding a straight trail, without the side trips of following the dog seeking Oltipa's scent, he arrived at the cabin sooner than he expected. His eyes scanned the simple room, noted the things Oltipa did to make it her place, their place.
Bos,
she called it, home. Baskets woven and filled with flour and berries sat on the plank floor; salmon she'd caught and dried in the wind were stacked on a crate in the corner. She'd been working a deer hide. It lay rolled up, fur outside, and there were other skins—squirrel, rabbit—whose softness smelled of her as he picked them up, brushed the nap beneath his fingers. He couldn't find the small spoon he'd given her. That surprised him. Nor the dress. She must have been wearing it when he left. His eyes watered. He assumed she took it off as soon as he left, returned to her chosen clothing. But he found a woven grass dress folded and lying on the raised bed he'd built her. Once-yellow flowers spilled out of a pot, dried wisps scattered across the table. Little things unique to them made this a home. They'd always had enough—some to give away. “Generosity toward others,” his mother had said, “is the true sign that you're grateful for all God has given.” This cabin had become a home that way.

He hadn't thought of the walls and roof as a “home” when he lived here with his father. They'd thought of nothing but gold then, using the wooden walls and rafters as a space to keep them safe from the wind and snow, healthy enough to change streambeds and shorelines the next day. He looked around, wondering if there was a single thing left in this structure that was personal to his father. He found nothing. No wonder it was so easy for him to leave it once his father left. Like his father,
David had given nothing of himself to the place, kept all of what he was inside. Until Oltipa came.

Maybe that
was
what his father left behind: a son who took a gamble not for gold but for a woman's life, for the stillness of his own soul.

This cabin would stay a home again, for him and Ben. They'd keep it ready for her.

He checked to see what supplies he would need, deciding then he would work the claim not as an end, but as a way to one. He could be with the boy, to stay close. And when Ben was older, then he'd find another way to make his living, not wanting the boy to believe that gold was the goal in life. Others had struck it rich, but many invested in hotels, mercantile businesses. They gave others work. Yet they lived in homes not much bigger than this. There were other things to be done with money. David would make his mark for Ben.

Elizabeth greeted him at the hotel door, flour drifting like snow down her front. “Come in, come in! Oh, I know you're looking for your boy. He's in good hands. Got him out at a friend of mine's, Ruth Martins. He was just too much boy, here. He needed entertaining every time I turned around. I liked the fun, but my Strudels suffered. Sarah wanted to be back home with her auntie, what with Jessie missing… you don't need all that news, now do you? So,” she said, looking closely at him, “I'm pondering your eyes there and I'd say you didn't find her. Them.”

“Lost their trail north. At least I think it was their trail. Could be they went south or toward the coast. I don't know.”

“Will you head south, then?”

David shook his head. “Maybe. But I'd just be chasing dust, I expect. He'll sell her, sure.”

Elizabeth patted his shoulder. “I got news for you too. Not good
either. That man? He's been making Ruth's life miserable for years. He was her husband. Is, I guess. And he took her little niece with ‘em.”

“That must have been the treasures he meant. More than one. This Ruth might know where he'd go, then?” David's
eyes
brightened. The dog barked and scratched at the door.

“Haven't seen your dog since you left,” she said. “I was worrying over that. Let him in.”

“I should have said I took him. I don't know if he really had their scent or not, but I followed it until he got confused. At least I had a step to take.” He thumbed at his eyes. “Where's this Ruth live? Maybe she can think of something about Randolph, about where he'd go. Give me a next step.” He lifted the dog. “Got to play the hand I'm dealt,” he said. “Play it good as I can.”

They sloshed through the shallow creek, running as fast the slippery rocks allowed, lifting knees high despite their hands being tied. Oltipa fell. My Jessie helped her up. Jessie cried as she ran, and Oltipa crooned encouragement. Oltipa had looked back only once. The Randolph mans horse stomped and skittered around him, pulling back as he shouted. Her pony looked dead in the water.

David Taylor had given her the horse they'd ridden, the one lying dead.
No time to mourn now,
she thought and turned away. She bunched her dress up in her tied hands, and showed My Jessie. The child picked up the edge of her flannel dress, what she'd been wearing for three days now. Oltipa always made sure the child was off to her side or ahead of her.

Once, early on, she thought she heard the Randolph mans words carry over the water, a shout, and they lay still, as still as a rabbit too far from its hole with a coyote fast on its trail. She stared into My Jessie's frightened eyes, thought of her son, prayed for their safety.

“That rock,” Oltipa said, pointing. They sat wet, shivering in the heat and panting beside a boulder. Oltipa eased out around the boulder to see what she could of the Randolph man. They'd come a distance, around a bend, and she heard nothing but the rush of water, the screech of a bird overhead. “Come,” she said and led the child up the rock-pocked and brushy bank, into the shrubs and up the steeper side.

The heat began to press against their skin, drying them. Then as though the God of David Taylor truly did watch over her, she found the
pam-hal-lok
—the cave! There was no food inside, but here came safety and the time she needed to pull the spoon from her pocket and begin the long process of using it to dig at the ropes that still bound her hands.

“Spoon,” she told My Jessie. The girl helped her fumble with the skirt, reaching for the inside pocket. “Hold,” Oltipa said, then rubbed the hemp strings that bound her hands against the spoon. She made little progress.

“Wont we ever get free?” My Jessie said, her lower lip trembling.

Oltipa looked around the darkened cave until she found a sharp rock.

She rubbed her wrists across the point until the rope loosened, then told My Jessie to pull the frays free. Rushing, she did the same for the little girl, fumbling once with her tired hands, then putting the rock and spoon back in her pocket.

“I'm hungry,” My Jessie said.

Oltipa grunted and nodded. “We go home soon,” she said. She reached for the girl, a child the size of Oltipas younger sister, and held her in her arms until she slept.

Through the opening of the cave, Oltipa looked out at
thooyook. Stars,
David Taylor called them. She wondered if he saw them. She heard a twig snap and held her breath. Nothing happened. She exhaled. They were safe here. Safe from this Randolph man. She decided then that when she found David, she would try to tell him that no matter where she was, when she saw the stars, she would remember the thousand
kindnesses her life was given because of him. She'd tell Ben too, if he lived. A sharp pain stabbed beneath her breast with the thought. She did then what David Taylor told her once to do: “Ask for all you need.”

She was a strong woman, that Mazy Bacon, Seth thought. Strong, sure, and straight as an arrow. He supposed it was the set of her jaw line as she left McCrackens office that told him she was on a new trail, likely one that didn't have room for him. Nobles Cutoff had been a glitch, he decided, an interruption of this woman's single-headed steering of her world. He couldn't fault her for it. He admired it. He just wasn't sure he was up to the challenge of finding a way to make her care for him without risking her losing herself.

He guessed he knew it from the beginning, when she didn't lean on him as a woman might, when she said she was willing to wait for more. Knew it again with the chaste response to the kiss he'd given. Passion, she said she wanted. Well, so did he, and it was a gift if two people found it together, seeking similar things, making their way side by side. His old grandmother had told him once that God had a partner picked for everyone, but some took longer to be ready. “When you find the right one, you'll know it,” she told him.