“A man cannot have two women, Leo, and succeed in public life, unless he is a Frenchman.”
“I’m an American, Rowland.”
“And you’re obliged, therefore, to choose.”
“Between them? Rowland, are you not the one who suggested I remarry Zoe at the earliest opportunity?”
“I was, and since that time we have learned of a supposed child. Your child, Leo, if Miss Starr is correct.”
“It does complicate matters enormously.… But what are you suggesting now?”
“Zoe is not your wife. Even without the presence of Bryce Aspinall to verify it, we have the church records from Pueblo stating she was married to the fellow. She will be unable to produce papers of divorce, and will have no legal ground to stand on if you choose to divorce her.”
“Divorce? Rowland, may I remind you that if Zoe is not my wife, then I am a poor man indeed, in a very literal sense. If she is not mine, neither is Brannan Mining.”
“You and I know that, Leo, and your attorney and his staff know it, but Zoe Aspinall does not, and I see no reason why news of it should ever reach her. You’ve said yourself that she never concerns herself with legal niceties and the intricacies of ownership. To be crude, Leo, the lady seemed only ever interested in yourself.”
“Women have no head for such matters, it’s true, but supposing she did ask questions of an embarrassing nature with regard to the company—then what?”
“You make such questionings unnecessary, Leo, by offering her a generous settlement to remove herself from any claims upon you and yours.”
“How generous?”
“Offer her a million dollars to sign a document stating that she tricked you into a false marriage and has no claim against you as a result of that trickery. She may not be happy to admit she lied, but a settlement of such proportions will cheer her up in no time. Why would she be dissatisfied with it? She’ll take the money and be grateful you don’t bring suit against her for bigamy.”
“But a million dollars …”
“Cheap, my friend, dirt cheap. You have your company, and you’re free to marry Miss Starr, if that is your choice. It’s the perfect solution for everyone.”
“I’m thinking, Rowland … I’m thinking it might have been better to leave Mr. Aspinall alone, kept him on the payroll, so to speak, to confront her with her own past, you see.…”
“All very well to see that now, Leo, but hindsight offers clearer skies than the daily fog we plow through. We have hit a reef, and Mr. Aspinall’s end is neither here nor there. Do you wish to remarry Zoe, or take the other lady for your wife?”
“I have made my feelings known to you.”
“And so there can be but one path to follow, yes?”
“Yes …”
She sent a telegram from Denver, giving the time of her arrival home, and a carriage was waiting for herself and Omie at the Glory Hole station. They were taken directly to Elk House, where Leo nervously awaited their arrival. He had wanted to avoid any confrontation so soon, but Rowland advised against it. “Be there when she arrives. Tell her what you know. Take the wind from her sails without pause, without mercy. Postpone nothing.” And when Zoe came through the front doors of their home, Leo was there, working himself into a cold rage, the better to accuse her of her crimes.
“Leo, home at this early hour?” asked Zoe, breezing past him on her way to the staircase.
“Some things must take precedence over business, my dear.”
“How remarkable that we should agree on something.”
He followed her up the stairs. She had not even allowed him a kiss in passing. Leo was finding it easy to be annoyed with her. He became aware of Omie’s belated entrance only when he was halfway to the first floor, and gave her a stiff wave, which was not returned with nearly enough speed or enthusiasm to placate him; it would be better when Omie was gone, along with her mother; the girl had always made him uneasy with her uncanny ways, her blue face and its staring eyes.
“We must talk, Zoe. We must talk immediately.”
“Of course.”
She entered her room. Leo hesitated at the doorway, then followed her inside. “Why have you returned so soon?”
“Seasickness. We both suffered most abominably. Sea voyages are no longer under consideration for either of us.”
“But … why not a trip by land?”
“To where—Mexico? Canada?”
“Oh, anywhere at all in our own country. The railroads nowadays … such wonderful scenery, so easily admired from a comfortable seat … I do believe it will be a thing of future times, Zoe—travel for the sake of scenery alone.”
“You may be right.” Zoe unpinned her hat and set it down on the dresser. “Is she still here? In town, I mean.”
“Here …?”
“Your mistress, Leo.”
“I … well, yes. Yes, she is here, and here she’ll stay!”
The sudden change of tone in his voice made Zoe look up at him. Leo’s face was flushed with anger.
“I did inform you, Leo, that you must make a decision before my return. I admit I’ve come home earlier than expected, but my conditions remain as stated.”
“Oh, do they, do they indeed. Well, let me tell you … wife, that conditions hereabouts have changed, oh, yes! Nothing is the same anymore. There have been fundamental changes since your departure, indeed there have!”
“Will you share these changes with me, Leo? You seem upset. Has the market for gold plummeted overnight?”
“The market for gold is steady, and will continue that way. The market for truth and fidelity, however, has crashed, and the market for honesty within the state of matrimony has likewise come tumbling down, at least in this house, my dear, my darling.…”
“You’re referring to your mistress, Leo?”
“I am referring to Zoe Aspinall, who pretended to be Zoe Dugan, who attempted to become Zoe Brannan, but is not! That is the woman to whom I refer!”
Zoe’s expression of casual contempt faltered. She attempted to replace it with a scornful mask, but knew it made no impression on the red-faced man before her. How had he found out?
“Well?” he bellowed. “What do you have to say for yourself! Do you have the gall to deny what I say? Do you? I have the proof! I have it on paper, Miss Bigamist, Miss Treachery and Deceit, Miss Make-a-fool-of-me …! Do you wish to speak?”
“Leo … I had no plan, no wish to be unkind.…”
“But you were! You were unkind! Why did you say nothing of this man! Why did you let me believe myself your husband! Good God, woman, supposing we had managed to have children between us! Bastards! You said nothing! Nothing!”
“It was … it had no meaning for me. He was gone. He was no longer real. I thought … I thought it might upset you to learn of him.…”
“And it has, it has upset me to learn of him. It has upset me far more than it would have had you mentioned him before we undertook certain sacred vows, Mrs. Aspinall.”
“Leo, I … I meant you no harm by it, truly.…”
“And no harm will come to me, or to you, or to Omie, because no word, no word at all, of this disgrace to us all, will be made public, do you hear? I will not have my name, and yours, and, more importantly, Omie’s, dragged through the filth that public knowledge would smear upon us all if any inkling of this … this humiliation became known to the world. I wish to spare us all any such thing, especially Omie, who is blameless. Are you listening to me?”
“Yes …”
“My attorney has drawn up a paper releasing one million dollars for your personal use in any fashion you desire—one million dollars, Zoe, simply to absolve yourself of any connection to myself and my business holdings. My attorney has tried several times to dissuade me from this course of action, since I owe you nothing at all, but that has never been my way. I wish for you and Omie to be taken care of, and have insisted that your payment of severance be not one dollar less. You and Omie will quit this house and say
nothing to anyone concerning the reasons why. The contract is clear, the terms fair. I would not have gone this far, Zoe, if I thought you truly had loved me, but your actions have made it plain you did not. No woman of integrity would ever have deceived a man so. You have had your own trials, and I admit you have suffered, but that is no excuse. You wronged me with unforgivable duplicity and mendacity and … you made me believe you loved me when you did not!”
The papers were produced from his jacket like a rabbit from the silk hat of a magician. They landed with a rustle and a swoosh in front of Zoe, page upon page of close-written absolution, denial and renouncement. She could barely read the words. He had found out, after all this time, and now she was without armor, defenseless before buried truths that had been unearthed and flung into her face. Zoe had entered Elk House like a returning queen, and within minutes had been reduced to some kind of conniving kitchen maid, a worthless slut whose futile aim it had been to bring down a worthy man by lies and deceit. She truly felt he had reason to hate her, given the secret she had kept from him for so many years. She was found out. She was undone. A pen and inkwell were fetched from her writing desk. She scanned the clause Leo’s finger pointed out to her, the one concerning immediate payment of one million dollars to herself if she would acknowledge her lie. One million dollars, compensation of regal proportion, and who was she to say it was not enough, she who had knowingly married one man while married to another. Leo was unshakable in his wrath, immovable in his certainty that what was done could be made over with the scratching of a steel nib on fine paper prepared for that purpose. He was, she supposed, being generous. There was, she supposed, nothing else she could do, other than sign the sheets spread before her, sign them in the name of herself, but a self she found it difficult to recognize after so long.
“Be sure and write Zoe Aspinall,” Leo said, his voice gentler now that it was obvious he had bested her, flattened her with the heavy truths of yesterday.
One million dollars. She signed.
41
When he saw the man-shaped shadow, almost hidden beneath the ledge, Nevis asked himself if liquor was responsible. He had been hacking at the ice for less than ten minutes, at some distance from Nightsoil Smith, further down the ice slope. The area immediately beneath the ledge’s overhang was particularly cold to work in, and Smith had declared himself unable to cope with it, his chest being what it was that day, so Nevis Dunnigan worked his way up toward the thickest ice in the ledge’s deepest shade, and began to hack at it with his pick, unresentful at having been obliged by Smith’s wheezing chest to perform the hardest work on his own.
The shadow of the man within the ice was indistinct, unrecognizable at first as human, but as he hacked a little deeper, and began to concentrate on the shape revealing itself slowly to the pick, Nevis convinced himself the thing was a man. It was impossible to tell how deeply it lay, the ice distorting depth as it did, but Nevis thought he could dig out his find with some assistance from his friend, and so called Smith up to his perch beneath the ledge.
When Smith at last joined him, red of face and short of breath, Nevis pointed with significance at the ice before him. “What?” said Smith, put out by his exertions.
“Look harder,” Nevis advised, smiling.
“I am. Ice. Tomorrow I’ll show you some shit.”
He began to move away, and Nevis caught his shoulder. “Look again. Trust me, there’s something there, my friend.”
“All right, there’s something there, but what is it?”
“It’s a man, can’t you see? There’s the head, there the feet, and in between, the body and legs, for heaven’s sake! You can’t see him?”
“Is he … kind of curled up?”
“He is indeed. My congratulations to you. Shall we dig him out?”
“He won’t be alive.”
“I know that, but my curiosity demands that I see his face. The fellow might have been there for hundreds of years, possibly thousands!”
“Aww, not that long,” said Smith, for whom the nation’s founding fathers were as remote as the Old Testament’s prophets.
“Help me dig him out. He may have some article on his person to indicate how many years have passed since he felt the sun.”
“Think he’s a white man? He looks awful dark to me.”
It required an hour’s labor simply to bring the shadow man’s features closer to air and light, his body being wedged into as tight a space beneath the ledge as it was, but at the end of that time it was proven that the thing was truly human, although its race was still in question.
“Long hair,” said Smith. “It’s an Injun.”
“The fur trappers of yesteryear were hairy fellows also, I believe.”
“But they had beards, and this one don’t.”
“But it may be a woman, you see. Let’s dig on.”
“We don’t have hardly any ice yet for the wagon, and you want to waste more time digging out an Injun? What for?”
“Simple curiosity, or respect for the dead, perhaps. If you don’t care to assist me, I’ll do it by myself.”
“Don’t be taking that tone with me now, or I’ll let you, and you’ll be here till sundown chipping it out.”
They stayed until sundown anyway, both men working faster as the air around them descended the Fahrenheit scale and caused their flesh to shiver. The figure trapped in ice was awkward to reach by pickax, and the best part of the daylight hours were used up before a block containing the complete article was hacked free of the slope. Released from its larger prison, the block immediately escaped the clutches of Nevis and Smith and began sliding down toward the patiently waiting mules.
“Noooo …,” breathed Nevis, as the shining sarcophagus accelerated toward the rocks below. It broadsided into a large boulder and shattered into many pieces, some of which flew upward to catch the last rays of sunlight spilling over the valley’s western rim, then these shards descended with the rest around the small dark figure slithering still to the very bottom of the ice slope. It arrived quite close to the mules, which greeted its arrival with the same aplomb with which they had accepted the small explosion preceding it.
Smith reached it first, and had drawn his conclusions by the time Nevis joined him. “Injun, definite.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“See that on the foot? What’s that if it ain’t a moccasin?”
Nevis squinted in the failing light. He had seen ceremonial moccasins before, exquisitely beaded things, quite beautiful to look at. The things wrapped around the feet of their find were graceless bags of animal hide bound clumsily about the ankle. The legs themselves were remarkably ugly, shrunken to a sticklike thinness inside pants of the same material that clothed its feet. Ice still clung to the upper torso, making further examination impossible.
“Let’s get the crittur back to town and take a real close look.”
“This is a man, Smith, therefore deserving of our respect.”
“Well, I do respect him, but my goddamn hands are froze from being up here all goddamn day, and we wasted every minute of it for not even a nickel’s worth of ice!”
“Our haul today is more important than that.”
“Does he look like he carries a wallet?”
“In a scientific age, science pays the piper, Smith.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means our shrunken fellow here may be worth more than you and I could make in a year of chipping ice and hauling dung.”
Smith shook his head. He expected they would even have to pay for the little man’s funeral, once they took him down to Glory Hole.
Winnie objected to the presence of the thing immediately. It was dead, and it was clearly an Indian. The remainder of the ice had fallen from its upper body during the descent to town, its deerhide vest and the feathers in its braids revealed. “It’s an object of scientific value, Winnie,” Nevis told her, and was told in return to put it out in the stable. “It stinks!” she sai
d. Nevis could not see how this might be of consequence in so odoriferous a household as Smith’s, but his partner sided with Winnie, and the Indian was removed to the stable, where its closer proximity to the honey wagon rendered all objectionable odors redundant. Nevis thought his friends were exaggerating; how could something as deeply frozen as the corpse possibly begin to smell so soon after its release from the ice?
Over dinner he proposed that their unique find be made available to a paying audience, after the fashion of P. T. Barnum’s various freaks and curiosities. “There’s money to be had from such displays,” he told them, but Smith and Winnie were unconvinced.
“It’s just a dead old Injun, not like a famous king or something that folks’d want to see,” protested Smith.
“And it’s ugly,” added Winnie. “You can see the ribs poking through, practically, and he’s got no lips.”
The face of the frozen man was indeed startling, its tendon-tough rictus giving it the appearance of a skull tightly encased in old leather. The teeth, seemingly in excellent condition, leered unpleasantly below the empty nasal passage. Its eyes, like poorly molded marbles, were set crookedly beneath lids distorted by cold and time. It was, Nevis had to admit, an object without aesthetic appeal, but this was the very characteristic that would, he insisted, bring paying customers to the glass case containing such a curiosity.
“What glass case?”
“Use your imagination! We’ll order one built, a special airtight case to keep him fresh and presentable without losing his ugliness. I only wish he had two heads or a third leg to make him even more repellent, but you can’t expect to have everything.”