Silver Heart (Historical Western Romance)

  Chapter 7

  There was no point in it but I scrambled backward into the corn, freeing myself of Matthew's embrace, as if I could change what had happened. Cursing my skirts, I swiveled to my knees, forced myself upright, even as Hutch leaned down and grabbed Matthew by his shirt front, dragging him to his feet.

  I stifled the instinct to cry out. Matthew had been hurt; Hutch needed to—be careful? Let go? Nothing I could say to that effect could possibly improve the situation. I tried to step forward and tripped over something in the garden, still reaching for Hutch's arm, when his fist flashed forward and caught Matthew on the jaw, knocking him back to the ground.

  He turned, then, without looking at me, said in a hard voice, without turning back, "I want you out of here before sundown. When you are healed, return to the mines. Don't come back here."

  "Hutch, wait," I said and tried to run after him. His long stride took him through the front gate and out to his horse before I could cover half the distance. I called to him, tripped again, swore, and finally stopped, standing stupidly with one hand out, tears threatening behind my eyes, hair loose and blowing in an afternoon wind.

  "Let him go, Maggie," Matthew said from behind me and I whirled on him, furious, only to find his expression as miserable as I felt. He stood, although awkwardly, keeping the weight off his injured right leg, and he didn't approach me or hold his arms out, only shook his head. "You can't make anything better right now. I'll go. He'll blame me."

  "That's not fair," I said, and I meant all of it, everything, from meeting Matthew at the wrong time to falling in love with Hutch without telling him, to confusion and the newness of everything and being afraid and in a strange place. I meant Hutch leaving and having come back when he had and Matthew being shot.

  "He's my brother," Matthew said, which didn't explain anything. "It will be alright." He moved through the corn and stopped beside me, a respectful distance away. "For what it's worth, there would have been nothing else. Ever again."

  It wasn't worth anything. I didn't say anything, just watched him as he limped to the house to collect his few belongings and find a way back to his boarding house.

  Only when the kitchen door closed behind him did I allow myself to whisper, "I know," and let the tears begin to fall.

  He didn't talk. Hutch went, as far as I knew, back to the mines that afternoon, leaving me standing in the dusty garden. The corn rustled in the hot afternoon breeze, reminding me of the sounds it had made when Matthew and I had fallen into the neat, orderly rows.

  I didn't cry for long. So much had happened in the last six months, some sort of black cloud had hovered over me. As the year turned to 1880, my mother had died and my father gone silent. He'd taken to drinking more than working and an accountant whose numbers don't add up any better than his clients' do soon loses those clients. With no sons and only one of his five daughters married, he started looking for solutions. Long before my mother had died, there'd been talk of me marrying Hutch Longren. It seemed a good match. He was looking for someone to share his life, someone to help around his house and to keep his accounts, maybe to start a family with. News from the West was slow. Though we knew the silver market was down as the War ended, we didn't know the silver itself was running out. My father, he wasn't cruel, he was simply mourning and unable to care for our family as he once had, didn't know he was sending me from frying pan to fire.

  Six months later, I'd come to rest somewhere I could have been happy. Somewhere I could have built a life. Instead, I'd jumped directly into a fire.

  I cried for shame. I cried because I was afraid of Hutch's anger. I cried for the rift between the brothers and for having found Matthew beautiful to begin with. But mostly, I cried because I had hurt the man I was going to marry. He'd been nothing but kind to me since I arrived, a stranger opening his home and his heart. I had repaid him like this?

  It would have been the only time. Because I hadn't been marrying for love. Because there had been a spark, something there.

  Because I knew, from Hutch's letters, from what Annie had said, I knew that Matthew wasn't constant and wouldn't be mine.

  Because I wanted to marry Hutch, was falling in love with him, wanted to build a life with him.

  There was no way I could tell him that, and no reason for him to believe me. And he hadn't given me the chance.

  I stayed out in the garden for the short course of tears. Then I weeded and picked corn for a dinner I couldn't imagine cooking, or Hutch eating. I picked more peaches from the trees that didn't seem inclined to stop producing them. I watered the kitchen garden, the fruit trees and the ornamental border of bright flowers that blurred in my distracted gaze. More than anything, I wanted to talk to my mother, who had known Hutch Longren all his life, who had known, although not as well, Matthew and Annie. And if not my mother, then I wanted to talk to Virginia but even though there were telephones in Boston and a telephone in our house, there were no telephones in Virginia City or Gold Hill and a telegram wouldn't convey what I needed and would take too long, besides.

  I wasn't looking to be absolved of what I'd done. I was looking to see if there was a way to recover from what I'd done. Tension wound tighter and tighter inside me, swirling like the dust storms I'd seen as I crossed the West to come here. I thought, eventually, I'd fly apart like some of those storms did, rather than settling, all the detritus dropping out of the funnel. Through the garden I moved faster and faster, ripping up weeds as if I could rip out the shame, until I stopped, a handful of plundered carrots in my grasp, and thought of Annie.

  Just that fast, I ran for the house, leaving corn and carrots on the bench, fetching a basket to carry more of the endless peaches and finding a hat. I could have taken one of the horses, if I'd known how to saddle or had the patience to learn, but my heart beat frantically and I took to my heels and ran the distance to Annie's house.

  "Maggie! What's the matter?"

  Annie stepped back and let me enter without hesitation. Somewhere during my flight along the mile separating our houses, I'd started and left off crying again and I could feel my face was streaked with dust and tears. Annie took the basket from my arm, put her other arm around me, and led me into the kitchen, where she put the tea kettle onto the stove and loaded the peaches into the deep sink, giving me time to catch my breath and my wits.

  She made tea and slid it onto the table in front of me along with fresh cookies I couldn't look at. Her girls weren't home and her son was in college. It was just the two of us and she chattered inconsequentially as she made the tea, telling me about the hens that wouldn't lay and the lizard that kept sunning himself on her kitchen floor.

  "Now," she said when she joined me at the table with her own tea, and a tray with the cream and lemon and sugar, "tell me what's happened." Her warm blue eyes, so much like both Hutch's and Matthew's, met mine.

  How? How could I tell her? But it left me in a rush.

  "I've been confused since I came here, out of place, lost, I love it here, but it isn't Boston, I miss my home, I miss my sister, and I was determined, going to make a home here, and Hutch is the most handsome man, truly, I saw him in the train station and should have been afraid to speak to him if it weren't I had no choice. Marriage of convenience, I mean, it was all arranged and it's not that either of us didn't know that but he's confided in me, told me things he didn't necessarily have to even if a husband should tell a wife and let her share the burdens, I'm not a wife yet, he's not my husband, I thought it was respect and I thought I was starting to care, we'd talked about when to have the wedding, probably just the justice of the peace unless we have to wait for a circuit judge, and it was all going according to plan, I mean, more so, you know?"

  She couldn't have, but she nodded.

  "I thought I was falling in love with him, that wasn't something I expected or anything I had to have, I thought how many marriages are and how many would work better if that came later and I thought it might but it might come later and then, well,
that would be part of it."

  She was watching me, very quiet, maybe the way she'd watch a potentially dangerous animal, maybe only giving me space to start making sense in.

  I didn't know if I could do that. "And then I met Matthew," I barreled on. And stopped. Because I'd seen in her face she'd just caught up to everything I had said.

  "Matthew," she said. "Of course, it's Matthew."

  I closed my mouth slowly. There was no judgment in her face. That almost made me feel worse. Surely, I deserved some.

  "I understand," she said and covered my hand where it lay on the table with hers.

  "No, you don't. You can't. I mean, I didn't want. I didn't mean to. It was—there was something there. I needed to know I could get past it. I needed to know what I'd be walking away from and that I could walk away from it."

  She waited as if to see if I had finished. I hadn't, quite.

  "I'm falling in love with Hutch. I wanted to be certain there was nothing there with Matthew."

  "I understand,” she said with complete conviction. And this time, I believed her.

  Shadows gathered in the kitchen as we worked together, canning the peaches I'd brought. Annie didn't need them; her own trees were groaning under the weight of fat, pink fruit, but we needed to do something with the bounty and keeping our hands busy made it easier to talk.

  "I knew your mother," she said, looking contemplatively across the kitchen at nothing. One hand hovered over a peach, clutching a sharp knife. "She wasn't much older than me, though we didn't do much together. Aren't girls silly? We think a few years means you need a different set of friends."

  I quartered another peach and discarded the pit. "I thought she spent a lot of her time with her own brother and with Hutch." Saying his name provoked a shiver in my stomach.

  Her gaze sharpened onto me. "There was that, too. Whatever they tell you about her being another mother to them, she was another playmate." She curled off another piece of skin from the peach she held.

  Surprised, I nicked myself with the knife. "My mother?"

  She nodded, set the peach down without paying attention to it, both hands on the sticky, juice-covered counter. "A regular tomboy, always keeping up with the others." She glanced at me. I could feel the uncertain smile on my face. "I wish I could tell you stories, but she spent more time with them than with me." She shoved the bowl of cut peaches out of the way, began moving aside the skins, dumped the pie crusts onto the board and began rolling them out. "Now, my brothers. Them, I know."

  I swallowed, stilled, wished I had more peaches to cut, and waited.

  "Matthew is closer to your age than Hutch. He's young, old enough to take a wife but hard to imagine him doing so. We both followed Hutch out here, me with John, who thought a grocers would be a good choice and it was until..." She stopped, didn't look at me, said, "Well. But we had many good years together, and I love this place. And not long after John was lost, Hutch's Ellie took ill. I couldn't leave then."

  I hadn't realized it had been so many years since she'd lost her husband and she'd remained for her brother or, more likely, both of them.

  How can you be so kind to me? I wanted to shout. I've hurt both of those men you love. But in the next instant, as she removed the bottom crust from the oven and began filling it with slices of peaches, she told me.

  "Matthew's the youngest. Back home in Alturas, when all of us were growing up, he was the special one, the baby of the family, and my parents spoiled him. We all thought when he came to work the mines with Hutch that he was growing up." She made a fist with one hand, lightly tapped the edge of it on the counter, and turned so she could meet my eyes. "He's not a bad boy. Man, I guess. He's 24. He's just wild. And not the wild that shoots off its guns on a Saturday night or gallops through town for the pure fun of covering everyone's clean hanging laundry with dust."

  She didn't say anything for a few minutes, and I quietly picked up a dish cloth and began sweeping the peels into a pile she could rake into the soil of her own garden. I hoped she'd go on. There had to be more. Something that would not absolve me but would quell the fear that spun inside me, help me find a way through the guilt.

  What she said surprised me more than anything else.

  "He met Ellie first. Did you know that? No, I can see you didn't, and I'm not sure there's any reason either of them would have told you. But maybe you should know. She was closer to his age than to Hutch's, not that I think that makes a difference. Hutch came out when he was 20 and Matthew followed along when he turned 17. There was so much silver coming out of the mines then and, when Matthew came, John and I followed not long after. Good years and none of us really thought it would end."

  I looked around her house. It was small, comfortable, scrupulously clean, but it showed the signs that Hutch's did, evidence of pennies stretched and money scarce.

  "Did Matthew buy into the Silver Sky with Hutch?" I asked. Hutch had said he'd see Matthew at the mine. I wanted there to be some reason Hutch couldn't simply fire him and send him away there, too.

  She nodded, distracted as she placed the top crust on the pie, crimped the edges and cut vents. "First, they talked about a casino; would have called it The Faro Queen. But Hutch wanted silver and he bought the mine and, Matthew, he saved up for a while. Didn't take him long. He's a hard worker when he wants something, just every so often he thinks he's found a way around something. Tries to go the easy way." She was staring off into space again. Abruptly, she turned and looked directly at me, then took my sticky hand in her floury one and led me to the table.

  "Matthew met Ellie first year here. She was a tiny little thing, with big brown eyes and long brown hair. She wasn't anything like either of them, she was quiet and you never knew what amused her unless you watched close. Then you might see a tiny smile on her lips. She watched life like it was a play, really. She never jumped in."

  I leaned forward, interrupting her thoughts because she was falling inward. "Did you like her?"

  "Ellie? Yes, very much so. She was kind and quiet and where I'd actually have expected Hutch to marry someone more like—" She hesitated, then said, "Well, your mother, someone with spirit, someone who could ride and climb and hike with him and maybe catch tadpoles better than him. He fell in love with her."

  She released my hands and slapped hers onto her apron with a There! gesture and started to rise.

  I put out a hand and stopped her and she sank back down to her chair as if she'd known that wouldn't satisfy me. "He fell in love with her. But Matthew did first?"

  Annie closed her eyes briefly, and took a breath. "Matthew did first. Which is not to say our Matthew doesn't fall in love indiscriminately, by which I mean no slight, but he's very free with his favors. And Ellie—Ellie loved them both. She loved me and John and our children. She loved her family and she loved being outside. And she loved children."

  She sighed and stood and I let her this time, because I didn't think she was going to stop talking. She focused on me again.

  "Not much more to tell. She loved them both. She loved Hutch more. I think she fell in love with Matthew first, but he hadn't settled, was still seeing other girls, and by the time he had fallen hard enough to seriously court her, she'd fallen in love with Hutch."

  She went back to the bench, now starting to peel potatoes, and it was time for me to return to, if not home, to Mr. Longren's house and start my own preparations. I stood and gathered the basket along with a few early apples she'd given me. Two questions now circled in my mind, one I could ask, the other I could not.

  "Did Hutch know?" I asked. She had her back to me and I saw her stiffen, then slump a little.

  "He found out. But by the time he found out, Matthew was himself again, seeing this girl this week, this girl the next, avoiding ever promising himself so he had no contracts to breach. After that, Ellie and Hutch were married and very much together. We all just ... went on."

  I crossed the kitchen to give her a quick hug, the basket with the new apples
bumping between us. "Thank you," I said.

  Annie smiled. "They're just apples. The pies will be done soon; will you stay and take one back?"

  It was quite a bit more than apples but I appreciated her discretion. "I can't wait. I have my own supper to see to."

  Out on the street again, this time not running but probably still disheveled, I walked through the early evening with the basket on one arm and my thoughts in a storm.

  I had asked Annie if Hutch knew and she had answered that he had, too late.

  I had not asked her if Matthew, then, had wanted nothing more from me than to be used as a weapon against his brother.

  Hutch didn't talk at dinner, except to thank me for preparing it. I tried to leave him be. I could wait it out. If he still meant to marry me, we would have to talk.

  Wouldn't we?

  I had nothing to look forward to, for now. A long summer's night waited after the kitchen was cleaned and the dishes washed, and the summer sun was not yet down. I had my books, the mystery novel that had so caught my attention before I headed West. I had embroidering I could do and, likely, shirts of Hutch's I could patch. There was always laundry in every household and economizing meant not sending it out. I could weed the garden more, or walk through the town. I could write a letter to my sisters, or to my new family in California, who had sent me a letter greeting me and who likely knew nothing of what had occurred here in Nevada. I could find ways to entertain myself.

  What I wanted to do was to sit with Hutch as the sun went down, as we had that first night, and talk about our lives. I wanted to find commonalities and differences, shared joys and those things that made us both shudder. I wanted to plan for the future and sew a wedding dress and I could do none of those things. Likely I had myself to blame, but the question now lodged in my mind: Had Matthew sought my company only to hurt his brother?

  Hutch made an offer of assisting with the kitchen cleanup, which I refused. He'd worked a solid day in the mines, worked quite late following the events of the afternoon. When I had returned from Annie's, the few belongings Matthew had had with him were gone. I could clean the sitting room until there was no trace he'd ever stayed there. I could weed the garden and uproot every stalk of corn. It would change nothing.

  The light was going from the day as I sat at the kitchen table, my embroidery before me, untouched, when I heard footsteps running into the yard, panicked hard steps across the porch. I was on my feet and in flight before Hutch came from his den to answer it. I knew that panicked cadence, and anticipated what he'd find as he answered the door.

  Mr. Barnett stood on the porch, terrified as a first time father, which, from what I'd seen, he was far from. "Mr. Longren, is Miss Lucas in? It's my wife, sir, the baby's coming."

  Hutch turned back and looked at me. I was already wrapping my shawl around me, had already gathered the basket I carried in lieu of a doctor's black bag.

  I wanted to ask him if he minded, but I couldn't. I couldn't leave this poor scared man or his wife alone and, if they'd come for me, then where was Dr. Horton? I wouldn't ask permission. Hutch Longren was not yet my husband.

  I paused at the door and couldn't think of anything to say to him. Mr. Barnett was already at the edge of the porch, looking ready to spring from it and run again. A buckboard was tied at the gate, one horse looking downcast and resigned.

  Hutch Longren was not yet my husband. He might never be my husband. This was my calling. I did not need to ask his leave. Nor could I tell him when I'd return. That was in the hands of fate and in the will of the unborn child.

  I searched his eyes for a moment but they revealed nothing. At last, I simply nodded, murmured, "I'm sorry," and meant it far more than he knew, and followed Mr. Barnett out into the long light of evening.

  Mr. Barnett didn't talk either. He urged the horse to trot, forcing it to carry us as quickly as possible to the far end of Gold Hill. Around us, the Nevada night was harsh, all sharp black shadows and gold reaching light as the sun set behind us. The sage gave up strong scent and, as we turned from the main roads into the neighborhoods of Gold Hill, sage grouse and quail flew up like dust clouds, tsk-ing discontent. Cotton tail rabbits ran across the rutted dirt track and magpies dove for carrion along the road. From somewhere in the foothills that surrounded us, some bird repeated a sharp, clarion call.

  The night was still hot; the wind died down. I would have liked to have such a night to stroll along the hotels in Virginia City, to meet new neighbors, to walk on my intended husband's arm.

  Mr. Barnett stopped us shortly before their gate. The children clustered, wide eyed, in the yard, looking as if they expected an Indian uprising or for coyotes to run down out of the hills and set upon them, rather than the arrival of a little sister or brother. There were an indeterminate amount of them, all blond as their parents, with big eyes and dirty faces. For all that she had such a number of children, I was willing to bet Mrs. Barnett had already been laboring for most of a day and had not been up to attending the children for days before that. Mr. Barnett was rumored to spend quite a bit of time (and funds) at the hotels or, more likely, their saloons. Probably they'd hoped not to have need of my skills or the doctor's.

  "Where is Dr. Horton?" I asked.

  "Haven't been able to find him." He was already at the door, but I stopped and opened my basket. The children watched me suspiciously until I pulled out wrapped hard candies and passed them around. Times like these it never hurt to bribe the older children to keep out from underfoot, at the same time reassuring them they weren't forgotten.

  From inside, I heard Mrs. Barnett call. "Henry!"

  Time to go. "Will you come in?" I asked him.

  He nodded though it looked more like he meant No. "For a little while."

  I smiled. It was easier when the husbands knew they couldn't stay the course. They were always heavier and much more awkward to move than their wives.

  He stepped to the bedroom door with me, made a sort of general hello gesture to his wife, said, gruffly, "I've brought the midwife," and vanished so quickly, only familiarity would convince Mrs. Barnett that had been her husband.

  I smiled after him and started into the room to find her sweating and tired but smiling also. "He's better off out there with them," she said.

  "I've no doubt. When did the pains start?"

  As I had supposed, they had started at dawn. She had labored for most of the day, convinced the child was coming, until she began to falter and still no baby.

  And there was nothing now but to see to Mrs. Barnett and her child, to distract her from anything I needed to do, which was to touch and look and move her about, to locate the child's head, which was where it belonged, and convince her to let me make her a cup of tea to "ease the passage".

  Surely there are such things, but mine was no more than tea. My mother had taught me from the beginning that the woman herself was the best and worst coach, could do the most for herself and make her own path hardest. The tea was tea; the idea behind the tea was important. If that didn't work, I had midwifery skills to fall back upon, but far better to let nature take its course.

  I gave her the tea and sat next to her on what looked to be a milking stool. We talked about how long the family had been in Gold Hill, how many other children she had, how Mr. Barnett's job at the bakery was going and that I had not, in fact, known that was where he worked and did she recommend their bread? Oh, she did, indeed, though there was another baker in Virginia City, which she dared to say might be a bit better, and then, too, why spend money to buy bread when she had a recipe she'd be happy to share with me and – and – Miss Lucas, I think the baby is coming.

  It was, and it did and, within an hour of my arrival, I called Mr. Barnett to visit his wife and new son, then stayed long enough to ensure her health and convince the father away from his new arrival long enough to see me back to Mr. Longren's house.

  It was full dark when we set off.

  Mr. Barnett obviously didn't want to be away
from his wife but he was cheerful and talkative, telling me about his other children, whose names and ages I couldn't remember and wasn't, in fact, completely sure he remembered; they seemed to change. He told me about meeting Mrs. Barnett and about moving to Gold Hill and about just about everything.

  I was happy to let him talk. His gregarious good cheer allowed me to rest on the hard seat of the buckboard, my basket wedged between my feet, my mind wandering. It had been a long and terrible day, with a good ending. Mrs. Barnett was healthy and happy, her new son lively and squalling. A happy ending for them.

  They'd insisted on paying me and, though I wanted to charge for my services, to be able to help out the household I still seemed to be becoming part of, they had so little I had to convince myself to take the payment. Sometimes pride is more important than the actual ability to pay. So, I had silver dollars in my basket and a bit of oat cake Mrs. Barnett had made earlier in the day—which amazed me. She'd probably been laboring even then and she'd done her baking and put dinner on the table, no doubt. I was tired just having attended to her during the birth of her child.

  And from the rest of the day, as well.

  Hutch had left a lantern on the kitchen bench, and gone off to bed already. The grandfather clock struck ten as I entered the house, waving Mr. Barnett back to his family. All at once, the exhaustion set in and my bones seemed to weigh too much and my spirit wasn't up to moving, not any further.

  There was old coffee in the pot on a back burner, faintly warm. I poured a cup and sat down in the chair I'd used my first day when Hutch and I had talked so long and I'd had so much hope for the future. When Matthew had slept on the davenport in the sitting room. When everything had been new, and possible.

  Outside, the stars were bright, harder and more defined than they were on the streets of Boston. I could hear the wind blowing and somewhere again coyotes, though they were farther away tonight.

  There was a way to fix what had happened. There had to be. I couldn't have ruined everything, not so soon after finding that I actually wanted everything. I wanted to make a life for us.

  I finished the coffee and shoved the mug away, letting my arms stretch out across the table. Matthew had loved Ellie before she and Hutch had fallen in love. It was possible Matthew had only meant to hurt Hutch, but I didn't think so. Maybe that was my pride, as important to me as Mr. Barnett's pride that made him pay what he couldn't afford, but I didn't think that either. Matthew's glances had been as shy as mine and I didn't think I'd misread them.

  It would have been the only time. We were trying to move past it.

  There had to be a way to fix it.

  I yawned and lowered my head, resting it on the inside of my arm where it stretched across the table. In the morning, I'd give Hutch the money I'd made tonight. If he thought we should keep it, I'd ask him to bank it however he cared to.

  In the morning, I'd make him breakfast, convince him to eat before he went to the mines, and I'd sit with him.

  In the morning, I'd put this day behind me.