Under a Painted Sky (16 page)

“When do you use that?” I ask.

“When you need an extra length, like when you need to catch a wild horse. Or a sparrow.” He wiggles his eyebrows.

Finally, he demonstrates how to make a honda by tying an eye splice. Weaving the thin strands of hemp soothes my mind.

“C'mon, Sam, let's throw already.” Andy nudges me with the toe of her boot to hurry me up.

“Almost done.” I keep my eye on my rope so I don't mix up the strands. This reminds me of how I used to braid my hair. If we had not cut it, I could have spliced my hair around my head as practice.

I get to my feet and dangle my eye splice in front of Cay.

“Not bad. Now, kids, hold the coils in your left, twisting half a turn for each coil so things don't get kinky. Lariat in your right.”

We do it. Cay stands between Andy and me with his own rope.

“Since we don't have any good stumps, West will be yours,” Cay tells me. Then he turns to Andy. “And you do Peety.”

“What?” Andy exclaims.

West and Peety look up from their card game.

“I can't do that,” I gasp, taking a step back. “I might strangle my stump.”

West dares me with his eyes. “Catching me ain't as easy as it looks.”

“Yeah, it is,” says Cay. “Pretend he's a mute post, which ain't far from the truth.”

He winds up and casts his lariat over West. West shrugs out of it and tosses it back.

Cay hands it back to me. “Your turn. Let's see if Chinamen can do more than bow.”

I narrow my eyes. “You offend me.”

“Oh-fend? You mean like rile you up? I thought Chinamen never get mad.”

Steam trickles out of my ears. That fox wants me to prove him wrong, but I won't play his game. I unclench my jaw and toss my nose in the air.

“Could my stump turn around? He's making me nervous,” I say, as coolly as I can.

West throws down his cards and turns around. Stretching out his legs, he leans back on his hands and mutters, “Good luck.”

That's it. I will show those hot shots just what Chinamen can do. I crank up my arm, sure someone tied lead weights to my rope given how much it drags.

“You call that an arm? I call that spaghetti,” Cay yells. “Put some game into it—you're throwing like a girl.”

“I ain't a girl,” I growl, stomping the ground a few times to prove it.

“Why you got spaghetti arms, then?”

“At least I don't have spaghetti brains.” My eyes catch on one of the blond locks that springs out from behind his ear. Even his curls are mocking me. I stop winding to glower. “We Chinese like our spaghetti arms, which allow us to balance better when we, er, cross bridges.”

I apologize to Chinese men everywhere, most of whom don't even know what spaghetti is. Andy pulls the brim of her hat over her ears. With a grimace, I throw as hard as I can, watching in horror as my loop heads toward our blaze, many miles from West. It lands in the nest of flames. Cay jerks back my burning lariat as I pray for a twister to suck me up.

Cay stamps out the rope. “Uh, Sammy, you noodled the fire.”

The stumps are shaking with laughter. Even Andy.

I suck in my gut, then cuss and spit a few times. “Why must I learn this?”

Cay flinches like I slapped him. “Don't say that. How you gonna catch anything if you don't know how to rope?”

“Charm. My spiderweb.” I chafe, stewing in my own juices. But as the laughter continues, I deflate.

Cay pushes my hat down over my eyes. “No one does it on the first try. Andy's turn.”

Gladly, I step aside.

“Hit me with your best shot,” Peety says. When Andy winds up, he starts heckling her. “Hey, Andito bandito, I know you wish you can touch this Mayan pyramid, this buffalo body of
músculo
—”

She casts. Her rope does not spin but whips Peety on the side of the head.

“Ow,
chico.
”

One glance at Andy's shocked face sets me off. I fall to my knees and let my laughter tumble out.

• • •

Each night after cowboy lessons, I drill the boys and Andy on language. I use pages from West's journal to write out Chinese characters for them to memorize, and give them throat and tongue exercises so they can push out the French
r.
Cay likes to turn phrases like “Nice to meet you” into “Nice to meet your lips,” but I don't mind as long as he remembers the vocabulary.

The boys take turns requesting songs from the Lady Tin-Yin, and she is always happy to comply, the show-off. Then we lie in our line, surrounded by rope. Most nights, I fall asleep last. The stars are too irresistible, and I don't want to close my eyes. Every time I do, fears start racing through my mind, led by a couple of Scots driving a rabid posse against me.

Eventually, though, I convince myself the MacMartins do not suspect us. Then there's only Father to consume my thoughts. I try not to dwell too much on what he suffered in the fire. That will set off girly tears for certain, and I have not cried since our first day on the Trail.

A hand touches my shoulder one night, and I wake with a confused gasp.

“Sammy.”

I am curled in a tight ball, and my face is wet. I gulp and wipe my eyes with my sleeve. West hangs over me.

“I'm sorry,” I whisper, unfurling myself.

“Don't be,” he says, his voice compassionate.

The stars fade in that exquisite time between night and day, when neither the sun nor the moon shows its face. He settles back down beside me as I grab at the wisps of my dream. I don't remember it now.

“Something happen to you?” he asks.

I long to answer him. But I can't. “Why are you going to California?” I ask instead.

“Cay wants to go there.” He takes his time. “He fooled around with the ranch owner's daughter. She said he got her pregnant. He was going to marry her, but then he found out she wasn't with child.” He pauses to rub his neck. “Ranch owner wanted him to take his daughter anyway, but Cay didn't love her. So we cut out after we finished the last drive. Won't be going back to Texas for a long time.”

“You left your home for him.”

“He's family, just like Peety. Can't just give up on family, even when they act like fools.”

“What about your parents? Brothers and sisters?”

“I'm an only child. Mama died when I was seven. With any luck, pa's in the ground, too.” His voice cools, and I regret bringing them up.

I glance at his triangular earlobes, the telltale signs of a troubled life. “I'm sorry,” I murmur once again.

He shrugs. “Ain't the first to have a mean daddy.”

I get a pang in my heart, both at his suffering and at the reminder of my fortune in having had a kind father. “Every child deserves his father's love.”

He sighs, then doesn't speak for at least thirty watermelons. I think he's fallen back asleep, but then he says in a quiet voice, “This one time, he cuffed me for painting the fence too slow. Blood got into the paint and turned it pink. No matter how much I tried mixing in more white, it still looked pink to me. I finished the fence, but I knew it was no good, even though people couldn't see it. There were certain things about me I could never change, no matter how I tried.”

My breath stops short. Somewhere along the way, the subject changed from paint to himself. What things could he not change? A mean temperament? I have known West for less than a month, but I have not seen an ounce of spite in him.

“My father pointed out once that the violets with the deepest color grew from the dung heap.” As soon as the words are out, I realize I have equated him with dung. “I mean, er—”

A puff of air curls out of his mouth, giving way to a reluctant smile and even a chuckle. “Sammy,” he says in that way I've come to know as part exasperated, part resigned.

I regard his profile, his lips parted slightly, and his perfect eyebrows beginning to knit. It both scares and thrills me to admire his beauty from so close, like I am breaking some law against staring. My gaze wanders to the tiny cleft in his stubbly chin, like a fingernail mark. I clench my fist to stop my fingers from touching it.

He turns to me, but instead of looking away like he usually does, he lingers. Our eyes lock, mine still wet, his tortured, and I glimpse his soul.

They say time freezes, but I've never experienced it until now. I stay like that, lost in his eyes for that eternal moment, and then the dawn breaks, and we are Sammy and West again, boys on the trail.

BY THE TIME WE REACH THE HOMESTRETCH TO
Fort Kearny, I've roped my stump half a dozen times, and Andy rides Princesa like a Nubian queen floating on a mahogany boat. Peety rewards Andy's improvement by giving her his kid riding gloves, fleece-lined, too.

Our trail soon converges with the one that starts at Independence, Missouri. The road grows thick with wagons and people plodding up to the fort on the hill.

The sun hangs low, so we settle in for the night a few miles past the junction in a sea of wagon circles, people, and animals.

Cay and West go hunting. They only have one rifle between them but hunting is their ritual together. Peety never seems to mind, in fact, I think he enjoys the time by himself. He told Andy he was twenty-one, which means he was born in the Year of the Rat. Though Rats are charming and sociable, they like to spend time in quiet reflection.

Peety leads the horses to a branch of the Platte River, talking to them conversationally in Spanish, while Andy and I collect firewood.

Only a few stringy willows grow among the sandy bluffs, not enough to hold a flame. To solve this problem, emigrants are throwing buffalo chips onto their fires.

Andy pokes the toe of her boot at a pie-sized chip, then stoops down to collect it. She points her nose at the even bigger pile by my feet. “Get that one.”

“Maybe one's enough,” I suggest, not wanting to touch buffalo droppings.

But one tiny hitch of Andy's eyebrow tells me to stop being a girl, and pick it up. I pull my sleeves over my hands and retrieve it.

Turns out buffalo chips aren't so horrible. They're dry as skillet bread and scentless. Our two chips catch the sparks and hold them fast, and in no time, our water boils.

“Heard talk of a whetstone half a mile downstream. Think I'll go sharpen the knives.” Andy rummages through our gear, collecting the miscellaneous blades: two pocket knives, a hunting knife, and her cooking knife. “You's okay here by you'self?”

“Yes. I'll sift the cornmeal.”

She keeps her head down as she hurries in the direction of the river and soon is swallowed into the masses, more folks than I've seen since St. Joe. They're a diverse bunch with common dreams—land for the pioneers, gold for the Argonauts. Judging from the conversations, neither group can wait to reach Fort Kearny, the first trading post since we left civilization. Not me. The place is probably crawling with lawmen. Maybe they even keep a judge on hand so they can try and hang in one shot.

As if summoned by my worries, a trio of scruffy-faced men in navy-blue uniforms materialize out of the haze and skulk toward me. Army men. I drop the sack of cornmeal I'm holding and it spills into the sand.

“Hey, boy,” says one of the men. His untucked shirt reveals a protruding belly, and greasy strands of his blond hair stick to his tanned cheeks.

I get to my feet, mouth gaping like a bass, but failing to produce any noise. The men's heads tilt and swivel as they try to make out my face from under the shade of my hat, like a band of coyotes routing out the throat hold. I notice that the cottonwood above my head is sturdy enough for a hanging and forget how to work my lungs.

There's no sign of the boys or Andy, only pioneers briskly going about their business, too far away to notice. I cannot flee since that would confirm my guilt. I step backward, willing the shade of the cottonwood to swallow me up. The men close in.

Blondie's eyes shift around our camp. “Here by yourself?”

All the blood in my body surges to my head as I ransack my brain for the answer to this simple question. I do not want to involve the remuda by saying no. Then again, plainly I have more supplies than one person needs. I sway, but catch myself before I topple over.

“We came to the right party,” says another man with hair too gray for a soldier. “He's already full as a tick.”

“Well then, I guess you won't mind sharing,” says Blondie. “Come on, hand over some of your rookus juice.”

A third man, smacking his tobacco, leans in toward me. “You wouldn't hold back from good soldiers protecting their fellow countrymen, would you? Share your stash and we might consider you a patriot.” My brain trips over itself trying to keep up, but I can't figure out what he wants.

“Maybe he don't understand.” The gray-haired man leans in closer. “Whis-key,” he says slow and loud, as if I don't speak English.

A spark jumps out of the fire with a loud
crack
and wakes me from my stupor. “
Yo no
—” I begin in Spanish, quickly switching to Chinese when I realize my blunder. “
Ngoh mm ming baak,
” I say, which simply means, “I don't understand.” I pray they will leave me alone now, but Blondie scowls and starts casting his eyes at our supplies.

“Maybe we'll check ourselves,” he says. “Bet we find plenty of joy juice in those saddlebags.”

I cannot let them put their grubby hands on our things. Perhaps I can scare them away. Father said people fear what they don't understand, and perhaps if I make myself very confusing, they will be very afraid.

Andy appears fifty feet away, slowing when she sees the situation. She begins to hurry toward me, but I shake my head at her. If the soldiers see us together, it might raise their suspicions. The soldier in the back, a thin man, turns to see what I'm looking at, and I quickly unleash in my harshest Cantonese, “For shame, you with the great blond belly. A bear knows better than to eat a porcupine!”

The tobacco-chewing soldier and the gray-haired one look at each other uneasily, but Blondie's face screws up. “Take it easy,” he says gruffly.

I cannot stop now, or he will think I am weak. I throw my hands at all of them. “Do you not know that too much alcohol will make your bowels sluggish? Go away, you turtle eggs.”

“Maybe we should ask someone else,” suggests the gray-haired man.

“Yes, go pick on someone your own size, gender, color, and aptitude,” I continue in my foreign tongue. “I am just as much a patriot as you. My skin may be yellow, but I am not”—I glance at my spilled grain—“I am not cornmeal, and you have no right to tread over me, as if I am mush.” I kick at the cornmeal, spraying some of it onto the first man's boots. Blondie steps back and soon he is hurrying away after his compatriots.

I collect my breath, and Andy hurries toward me, her kitchen knife held low at her side. She eyes the scattered cornmeal. “What happened?”

“They were looking for whiskey.”

Her worried expression turns wry. “Looks like they came to the wrong place.”

I crumple onto the ground, my guts flooding with acid. “What if they had . . . what if—”

“They didn't.” Andy makes brisk work of salvaging what cornmeal she can.

I stare at the fire, willing the panic imps to leave.

She bats at my hand. “Stop picking off you's buttons. You's nervous habits drive me batty. Take off you's shirt.” She whips out her needle and reattaches my sleeve button. “We's safe. Nothing gonna bug us tonight except a few stones in the mush.”

I crane my neck in every direction, looking for more soldiers. “We can't go to the fort tomorrow.”

“All right, we won't,” she says solemnly.

Her words of solidarity soothe me. “You ever think about the noose?”

She snorts, then glances at me, though her fingers don't lose their rhythm. “I been thinking about the noose since I was born. You know, sometimes they use thirteen loops in the hangman's knot. That makes it go easy. Six or seven gets the job done, too, if it's hemp. Any less and you got you'self some powerful kicking to do when you swing.”

I gulp, never considering this aspect of things.

She swats my arm. “As Isaac always says, no one ever injured an eye by looking at the bright side. We's making good time and flying under the wings of eagles.”

I shift my focus to Andy's dark hands, and try to unbend my frown. Next to the stone on the twine bracelet she's worn every day since I met her, she's added a wood button, along with two furry seeds that she somehow punched holes through.

“Why do you collect those things?”

“One day I'm gonna see my little brother, Tommy, again. And I want to show him pieces of where I been.”

“I thought he died?”

“He did. See, I figure if this bracelet's on my body when I die, it's going with me to heaven.” She stops sewing and holds up her wrist. The baubles line up neatly. “Isaac tucked this rock with the hole in a boll of cotton for Tommy to find. He was always doing silly stuff like that to help the picking go by faster.”

She removes the bracelet and lets me hold it. “Tommy said if he looked at a person through the hole, he could see the good in them.” She points to the seeds with her needle. “These are from ‘Yankee Doodle' night. They dropped on me when we were sitting under that tree. And this button is from Mrs. Calloway. I found it on the floor of her wagon and she said to keep it. Tommy's gonna like that one.”

I loop the twine around my finger, remembering Mother's bracelet.

Father gave Mother the circlet of ten different-colored jade stones as a wedding present. A client in New York once offered Father three hundred dollars for it. It's irreplaceable, not because the jeweler only made one, but because it's the only thing that remains of my parents, besides Lady Tin-Yin, of course. Mother never took her bracelet off, which means she believed it was a part of her. She might not have lived long enough for me to know her touch, but if she had, I imagine it would feel like those jade stones: smooth and delicate and full of warmth.

I twist the twine around my finger but it springs away and unwinds. It's quality twine, the kind that has a mind of its own. “It's beautiful.”

She puts down her sewing. “It's time to ask the boys if we can keep on with 'em.”

I nod. “You don't think we should tell them about us, do you?”

She doesn't answer right away but squints as if divining the future in the smoke of the fire. “No. Those boys done nothing but good by us. The less they know, the better. If we's ever caught, then they's innocent.”

“The law might not believe them.”

“It's not the law I worry about. What if they swear on the Book but don't tell the truth? God likes his harps back nice and shiny.”

“You think they would lie for us?”

“They might.”

I loop the bracelet back over her hand, and she tucks it under her sleeve. If the boys did lie on the Bible, I hope God would not hold it against them. My harp isn't exactly shiny either.

“I'm also gonna ask 'em to find out about Harp Falls,” she says in a softer voice.

“I remember,” I say glumly. I try to lift up my frown as I sense her eyes upon me. “You can have Paloma.”

“Thanks, but I wouldn't take her from you. I'll get another animal somewhere, don't worry about that. You's a real gem, Sammy, a gem to the core. Gonna miss you a lot.”

She finishes with my button, snapping off the thread with her teeth. My own fingers somehow tied my shirt flaps into a knot, and now I try to work them free. I don't know which worries me more, lawmen catching us, or Andy leaving. How does she expect to find her brother in this wild country? The federal marshals could easily have taken her for a runaway, or even as one of the Broken Hand Gang. Without the protection of the remuda, she'll be an easy target.

As for myself, if the boys don't want us,
and
Andy leaves, I'll be all alone. It won't be easy, especially when my companions have become like family. The flames appear like bright blurry patches in front of my eyes.