Toby shook his head. “I tell you, that family of theirs is strange. Their daddy told me once that sometimes in their family a girl’s born that can see things that are gonna happen. Not things that have happened, but things that haven’t happened yet.”
Maddie held the warm cup in her hand and nodded. “I’ve heard of it. Sometimes it’s called second sight. I can’t imagine a fortune-teller in ’Ring’s family.”
“Oh, they mostly keep it quiet. But whenever there’s one of them girls born, they name her Christiana. There’s one of them now, lives on the coast, not the Maine coast, but way out west. This one’s only a girl, younger than your little sister in there, but she once saved a church full of people from burnin’ or somethin’, so they know she’s got this ‘sight.’ ”
“She knew that something was wrong?”
“It seems that months ago she was playin’ with her dolls and she told her mother that her Uncle ’Ring was gonna be in trouble.” Toby smiled. “Her mother sent a man all the way across the country to tell the boy’s father, and the old man sent the youngster out here to help the boy.”
Maddie drank her coffee. “So Jamie found his brother and followed him.”
“When we was watchin’ you, ’Ring saw the kidnappers followin’ you, and he saw the Injun, and then he saw somebody else, couldn’t figure out how he fit into it all.”
“And that was Jamie.”
“Yeah.”
She shook her head. “So Jamie saw the two of us handcuffed together and decided to play robber, no, highwayman, and take ’Ring’s horse and other goods.” She was silent for a moment, thinking of all that ’Ring had known and she hadn’t. No wonder he had been so calm when the man took his horse; no wonder he hadn’t wanted to go after that precious horse of his. He knew it was safe with his brother. ’Ring had also known that they were safe as they camped for three days, since his brother was keeping watch over them. And also, ’Ring had had a key to the handcuffs all the while.
She thought of the way he smirked at her when she’d been so afraid for him when he wanted to go after the robber. She thought of the fistfight they had pretended to have. ’Ring had known that she was not far from the camp and had been listening. She remembered being puzzled by the fact that she could not find any marks on him after his fight.
She stood and looked down at Toby. Maybe she should be angry, but she wasn’t. Whatever he’d done, he had returned Laurel to her. “I’m going to bed,” she said, then turned and went inside the tent. She slipped into ’Ring’s arms and, in his sleep, he drew her to him. Maddie pulled Laurel to her and went to sleep.
“Are you all right?” Maddie asked Laurel the next morning. They were alone in the tent, both of them sitting on the cot. “And don’t lie to me. I want the truth.”
Laurel told of her experiences in a string of curse words and exclamations that, had Maddie been another woman, might have horrified her. But Maddie knew how Laurel had grown up. It wasn’t until Maddie had been away from her father and his friends, not until she’d been in the opera world for some time, that she realized what an unconventional childhood she had had. Her family had been isolated from other people, and her friends had been old mountain men. Instead of learning sewing and how to pour tea, like most young ladies, she’d learned to dress out a buffalo, to trap beaver, and how to bead buckskin. When she started to sing professionally, she realized that the only songs she knew were opera arias and a few filthy little ditties that Bailey had taught her. She could survive in the wilderness on her own but, before she met John, she couldn’t tell silk from canvas.
Maddie smiled at her little sister and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “I was worried about you.”
Laurel looked at her sister with some awe. She didn’t remember her older, famous sister very well from the few short years that they had spent together before Maddie left, but Laurel had kept scrapbooks of everything that she could get about Maddie. There were posters and clippings and pressed flowers and every letter that Maddie had sent her.
“They said that you needed me,” Laurel said. “I went to the men because they said that you’d had bad medicine.”
Maddie smiled, for Laurel’s words took her aback.
“I was froze fer you and that’s why I went with them,” Laurel said softly, her heart in her eyes.
Maddie smiled and took her little sister’s hands in hers. “I was froze fer you too, but I couldn’t get there.” She touched her sister’s cheek again and realized how much “civilization” had changed her. In the civilized world, people didn’t admit that they were longing for someone else, or “froze fer,” as Laurel called it. No, in the civilized world people hid their feelings or lied about them. And when they were told that someone needed them, or, as Laurel said, had bad medicine, bad luck, they didn’t just drop everything to go help them.
“I went with them,” Laurel said, her mouth in a tight line. “The man was a damned sky pilot, but he gave me some high wine and I went to sleep.” She looked at Maddie. “But he got his. He took a pill and dropped his robe.”
Maddie’s eyes widened. A man pretending to be a preacher had taken Laurel and drugged her, but it seemed that he had been shot and had died. “Did you kill him?”
“Naw, some vide-poche did it.”
Maddie was glad to hear that one of the other bad men and not Laurel had killed the kidnapper. She hugged her little sister. “I’m just glad that you’re safe. You seemed to have given ’Ring a hard time.”
Laurel pulled away to look at her sister. “He thought I’d believe him when he showed up at that house. Just expected me to go with him, like he was God Almighty Hisself.”
Maddie had to pull Laurel to her to keep her sister from seeing her smile. She could imagine ’Ring telling Laurel what to do and how to do it, just as he’d first told Maddie what she was to do. “He tends to be like that,” Maddie said, “but I have hopes that he will learn. Were the kidnappers bad to you? Did they harm you?”
“They tried to scare me, but I put a little buffalo tea in their food and that kept them away from me.”
Maddie frowned. It was one thing to be brave, but another to be dumb, and putting urine in the food of kidnappers was definitely dumb. “Laurel, I think—”
Laurel recognized the tone of an impending lecture when she heard it. “Speakin’ of buffalo tea, you got any food? I’m so wolfish I could eat whangs,” she said, speaking of the fringe on a mountain man’s garment.
Maddie laughed. Her sister was fine, and even from the little of what she’d heard, she was beginning to pity the poor kidnappers. They were no doubt merely hired men, just as the man she’d often met in the woods said that he was, and they’d had no idea how to deal with a twelve-year-old hellion who put urine in their food.
“Go on, go eat,” Maddie said, then, as Laurel started to leave, she caught her hand. “When you’re talking to the others, try to keep it clean. Otherwise they won’t understand you and you’ll shock them.”
Laurel’s mouth turned into a grim line. “That…that man of yours, he…”
“What did ’Ring do?”
“He turned me over his knee, that’s what.”
Maddie had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from laughing. Her father had threatened to do just that whenever his daughters cursed, but he was much too soft-hearted and had never once been able to strike them. Their mother had not been so inclined though. “Just pretend you’re talking to Mother.”
Laurel nodded. “I figured that out. What kind of men are these easterners? Are they men?”
“Yes,” Maddie answered. “They’re men. Go on, get something to eat.” As Maddie watched her little sister leave the tent, it occurred to her that perhaps the reason she’d never been interested in the men in Europe was because they didn’t seem like men to her.
She stood and brushed off her skirt. Yes, the eastern men were men, different from the men she’d known as a child, but definitely men.
Later in the mor
ning Laurel told Maddie that she did not want to return to the East, that she wanted to go home to her parents.
’Ring looked at the child and said, “It will be a while before I can escort you. But I’ll take you as soon as I can.”
Before Maddie could open her mouth, Laurel spat at ’Ring. “You! Who needs you to take me anywhere? I can go on my own.”
Maddie started to interfere in this argument until she realized that her inclination was to protect ’Ring.
’Ring looked a bit bewildered by Laurel’s attack. “I only meant—”
“You meant just what you said. Why, you—” Laurel broke off at a look of warning from Maddie. “We don’t need you, do we, Maddie? We can go on our own.” Laurel’s chin came up. “Besides, we have Hears Good.”
’Ring snorted. “He just watches. He never helps directly. Besides, I’m beginning to believe that he doesn’t exist. I think he’s a figment of your and your sister’s imaginations.”
Laurel looked as though she were ready to chew nails, and Maddie had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing. Her little sister had no idea that ’Ring was teasing her and enjoying her sputtering.
Laurel looked at the trees and said loudly, “I need you.”
Maddie was curious whether Hears Good would show himself when given such a direct request. She had no doubt that he was near enough to hear them, for Hears Good had always been very curious and had always found the arguments between white people to be endlessly fascinating.
Laurel stood there with her arms folded across her chest and her foot tapping, while ’Ring made exaggerated motions of scanning the trees.
“I don’t see your phantom Indian,” he said.
Maddie could see Laurel beginning to lose her confidence in the appearance of her friend, and Maddie wished that Hears Good would show himself. She gave a whistle and waited.
Just as she’d begun to think that Hears Good was not going to show himself, he stepped from the trees—and all eyes were on him.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing on the earth more magnificent than a Crow warrior in his prime—and Hears Good was that: handsome, tall, proportioned as man was meant to be proportioned, skin the color of the earth, and he carried himself with the knowledge of what he was.
Maddie did not go to him, did not speak or touch him, not when he was being a warrior. As a child she and her sister and Hear Good’s children had crawled all over him, had teased him and played tricks on him, but not when he was being a warrior; then they stood back and looked at him in awe—as ’Ring, Jamie, and Toby behind him were doing now.
As quickly as he appeared, Hears Good slipped back into the forest.
It was a moment before Laurel spoke. “There. Does that suit you? Do you think he can take us back to my home?”
’Ring wasn’t listening to her. He turned to his brother and they smiled at each other. It was as though they had seen a childhood legend come alive and they weren’t sure that they yet believed it.
Jamie went to his brother and put his arm around ’Ring’s shoulders. “I get to be Hears Good next time,” he said, using a phrase that was obviously one he’d used often as a boy.
“Only if I get to be Jefferson Worth,” ’Ring replied.
Laurel looked at Maddie. “What are they talking about?”
Maddie laughed. “Boys,” she said. “They are being boys.”
“They still askin’ her questions?” Toby asked as he squatted by the fire and ate another helping of bacon.
Maddie yawned and nodded. Right after Hears Good’s appearance, ’Ring and his brother had called Laurel into the tent and, since then, they had been in there asking her questions about where she had been held and why. At first Maddie had been protective of her little sister, but then she’d realized that Laurel was enjoying having the full attention of the two handsome men—even if she was more than a little cool to ’Ring. Maddie could see that her sister especially liked the blue-eyed Jamie, and Jamie gave the child very grown-up looks.
As Maddie was leaving the tent, she passed Jamie, bent over, and whispered, “You hurt my little sister and I’ll break more than your heart.”
Jamie laughed as Maddie left the tent.
Now Maddie felt like singing, and she realized that in the past few days she had not wanted to sing. It was the first time she could remember in her life that she hadn’t wanted to sing. But now she wanted to sing and she wanted to sing for ’Ring.
“Didn’t the miners say that they’d brought the piano up here and put it in a building?” she asked Toby.
“It’s up there on the hill. It was just a lean-to, but they put a roof of sorts on it and a front wall.”
“Good,” she answered, and started up the hill. It was just a small place, hardly big enough for the piano and a chair, but it would do. She smiled as she thought of ’Ring’s coming reaction to her singing. It was one thing to hear an opera singer on a stage and quite a different thing to hear her in a small room.
It didn’t take her long to arrange with Frank to play for her in the afternoon. Edith made them lunch of fried ham and biscuits. Maddie wanted to talk to Laurel, but she seemed interested only in Jamie and kept watching him. Maddie narrowed her eyes in warning at Jamie, and he lifted his hands in a gesture of innocence.
At last Maddie stood. “I’m going to have a lesson now,” she said as though it meant nothing. “Perhaps, ’Ring, you’d like to join me.”
He smiled. “I might like to do that,” he said, and followed her up the hill to the little cabin.
Inside the cabin he closed the door behind them, she walked to the piano, then turned to Frank, who was already seated at the keyboard. “ ‘Ah, fors’ è lui,’ please,” she said softly.
’Ring sat down in the chair she had placed opposite the piano and smiled at her. The lovely aria from La Traviata was already one of his favorites, and he’d heard her sing it twice before. Yet, for all the times he’d heard Maddie sing, he’d never been alone in a small room with a voice such as hers. When heard on a stage one realizes that it takes a powerful voice to be heard to the last seat, but it is difficult to understand the full depth, the full power of an opera singer’s voice when sitting in an audience of a hundred or so people.
At first ’Ring merely enjoyed the music as Maddie sang about whether or not she should love Alfredo. But when she got to the part where she was singing of how perhaps their souls were meant for each other, he opened his eyes a little wider. Her voice, partly from talent, partly from training, came from inside her chest, deep, deep down within her. When she sang follia, Italian for “It’s madness,” the sheer volume of her voice made his chair begin to vibrate and with it, his body.
She sang of the burning flame of love, of a love that was mysterious and unattainable, the torment and delight of her heart.
It was on the exquisite trill of gioir, “Enjoy myself,” that he sat up in his chair and looked at her. He’d never seen anything as beautiful in his life as this woman. He knew that he loved her, had loved her for some time now, but now he was looking at her differently, not as a person, but as an incredibly desirable female.
Frank surprised ’Ring as he made an attempt to sing Alfredo’s part as he stood outside Violetta’s window and sang that love is the pulse of the whole world.
It was Maddie’s trills on her first reply to Alfredo that made ’Ring begin to shake. It was a slow inner tremor that spread from the core of his body until it reached his limbs. He held on to the chair as though he might come apart if he didn’t.
Maddie saw the blood drain from ’Ring’s face and knew she had a very special audience. Crystal-clear she sang the notes, and her A flats were perfection.
At the second set of trills, ’Ring began to sweat. Her voice surrounded him, went through him, and when she sang of fluttering from pleasure to pleasure, he felt the words as well as her voice.
It was at the end, at those final magnificent high C’s that he looked at her. He started at her feet and m
oved up.
When Maddie saw his eyes on her body, she, too, began to tremble, for it didn’t take much knowledge to see that what she saw in ’Ring’s eyes was lust. At the moment it didn’t matter that she didn’t know whether the lust was for her or for her voice. It mattered only that it existed.
Before the last note died, somehow ’Ring managed to make his way out of the cabin. He shut the door behind him and leaned against the wall and tried to get a cigar from inside his shirt pocket.
“There you are,” Toby said. “I was lookin’ for you and then I heard the caterwaulin’ and I knew where you’d be. You all right?”
“I…” ’Ring whispered.
Toby immediately went into action. He put his hands on ’Ring’s chest and guided him to a tree stump to sit down. When ’Ring kept fumbling at his shirt, Toby removed a cigar, lit it, then handed it to ’Ring, but ’Ring was shaking so much he could hardly hold it.
“What’s wrong with you?” Toby demanded.
“I think I’ve just visited the Garden of Eden,” ’Ring said.
“Huh?”
“Eaten of the Tree of Knowledge.”
Toby still didn’t understand, so when Jamie walked up he grabbed him. “Can you make any sense of him?”
They stood there looking at ’Ring, sitting on the stump, still shaking, doing his best to smoke the cigar to calm himself.
“Says he’s been to the Garden of Eden, eaten some fruit.”
At that moment Maddie opened the door. She took one look at ’Ring and sneered at him. “How dare you leave the room while I’m singing,” she said, and slammed the door, then angrily started walking down the hill toward the tent.
’Ring looked around Toby and watched her walk: full hips, a tiny, corseted waist. She turned and he saw her profile of breasts in front, a curvy backside.
Toby looked from ’Ring to Maddie then back at Jamie. “I’ll be damned,” Toby whispered. “He’s been struck at last.” Grinning, he pulled ’Ring off the stump and pushed him toward Maddie. “Go talk to her,” he said, laughing. “Bring her back up here. I’ll see that ever’body’s out a your way.”