"We'd grub together any old thing we could find to gussie up that little Christmas tree. Things Mama'd been saving up for the event all year—bits of colored ribbon or snippets of cloth from a quilting bee... cookies we could eat afterwards. Even a set of tin cookie-cutters she'd brought with her from back East, hung on hair ribbons. She'd save the whole year's candle ends, Fancy, and we'd cut up bits of pasteboard to make holders for them in the branches. Then, when it was all about as pretty as it could get, my Daddy would read us the story of the Baby being born, from the Good Book. He'd add on tales he'd heard from his folks long ago, of course... about how the animals could talk on Christmas Eve, because they'd given up their manger to the Holy Child, and about how it's real important to give food and shelter to any strangers who come calling that time of year, because it might just turn out to be Christ in the stranger's guise."
"I never heard that," Fancy interrupted.
"Once we did have a stranger come by," Hart continued. "An old coot, half starved he was, from losing his pack mule and supplies. He appeared on our doorstep this one Christmas Eve and Chance and I kept tripping all over each other doing things for him, just in case he turned out to be God Almighty in disguise!"
Hart laughed and Fancy said, "I like the way your face crinkles up when you laugh, Hart. You look just wonderful."
Lord, how I love to hear her say my name, he thought, and
Fancy saw the fleeting look of longing in his eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it had come.
"My mama and daddy used to have a grand Christmas Ball every year, Hart. My mama'd be busy for a month or more getting the servants to make everything ready—all the seeded raisins and cracked nuts and washed currants and fruitcakes and puddings and such. Mammy'd make benve brittle from sesame seeds she said came all the way from Africa and every single soul on Beau Rivage would have some special part to play in making Christmas perfect.
"There were amazing drinks, I remember, with marvelous names like sangaree and sack posset and syllabub.
"All the women for miles around would come to the fancy-dress ball at Beau Rivage wearing gorgeous gowns, and the men would be fancied up like dandies. I used to watch from between the rails of the big old banister over the entrance hall, as they swirled by down below on the pink-and-white marble floor. Just like dozens of butterflies, they were, Hart. Flitting this way and that, this way and that..." Fancy swayed back and forth in the old rocker, eyes tight closed, hugging herself as if she were in someone's arms. "Lord, how I wanted to dance like that when I grew up."
Hart thought the sight of her was inexpressibly poignant. I love you, Fancy, he said somewhere deep inside himself. I'll never forget how you look tonight.
He almost said the words aloud, but some instinct warned him they would not be welcome and he didn't want to break the spell. Hart glanced around the cabin wishing there were some kind of music to be found there, and Fancy's little music box caught his eye. He rose from the floor, took the small keepsake from the shelf, and wound it up until the box's tinkly sounds filled the cabin with harplike music.
"May I have the pleasure of this dance, Miss Deverell?" he asked with great dignity. Halle McAllister had taught both her sons to dance, and neither had passed up opportunities to practice when they'd lived in Denver.
"You most certainly may, Mr. McAllister," Fancy replied, surprised and playful. "Despite my dance card being quite filled up, sir, I shall make room for just one dance with you."
She rose from the chair, curtsied, and moved into Hart's embrace. For the briefest moment the warmth and safety of his arms made her ache with pleasure; had the arms she nestled in been Chance's, she would have been perfectly content. Her head rested low on Hart's chest and her hand was all but lost in his huge callused one. She was startled by the enormity of her own response to the strength she felt in this man, who held her so reverently.
"Why, Hart," she whispered in genuine astonishment, "you're a real good dancer!"
"Any man holding you would be able to dance, Fancy," he replied softly. "Might even be able to fly."
Fancy laughed merrily at the compliment—he really was such a good friend—and Hart felt her relax into his embrace. He wondered if she could hear the heart pounding within him. It was so easy to communicate the moves to her, their bodies seemed no more than one. He felt, as much as heard, the melody rise up in her, a gentle humming formed somewhere behind her breasts, and lifted almost imperceptibly with the rhythm of the moment. The blood rose precariously within him; he longed to press his hard body into hers, but feared to frighten her with the impropriety of such an act.
Fancy sang to the music box's accompaniment, as round and round in the dingy cabin they waltzed to the music of their needs. Maybe he had misread the signs of her love for Chance, he told himself wonderingly. Maybe it wasn't too late to win her heart. He felt the pressure of her pliant body bending, stretching, swaying with the rhythm of the dance. He heard Fancy sigh as if a great burden had been lifted, saw her look up into his eyes—was she seeking something there? Dizzy with reawakened possibilities, Hart bent to kiss her upturned lips with an inevitability that was profound. He had always known that if he once took her in his arms he would never, ever let her go....
Like a judgment from heaven, the door burst open. A frenzy of snow and frigid wind billowed into the room, freezing both Hart and Fancy into startled immobility.
Chance and Bandana stood poised in the doorway for a dumbstruck moment taking in the scene, then Chance laughed a little too heartily and pushed past Bandana, stamping his feet to relieve them of their burden of ice and snow. Bandana walked in quietly behind him. Hart let Fancy slide out of his arms, and tried to regain his self-control.
Fancy's face lit up like a lamp in the darkness. Unembarrassed, she ran to both men, hugging them, helping them out of their jackets, shaking the clinging snow into puddles on the floor. The fire hissed at the wind's intrusion and Hart fought the confusion of pounding blood and loins, and of damnable disappointment.
"I thought you'd never make it through!" Fancy breathed elatedly. "Oh, I'm so glad you're here!" Hart didn't share her glee.
"Take more'n a blizzard to keep us away from you come Christmas Eve, darlin'." Bandana had read more than the scene in Hart's face.
"Got to keep a rarely fine little gal like you happy, don't we?" He bent to pull his feet out of wet boots with the help of a wooden jack, and tried to distract them all with banter.
"Smells like a mighty fine stew you got there, Fance, old girl. Seems we got back here just in the nick of time. Cain't nobody dance right without real music. Cain't get no music 'round here without my old banjo thumpin' out its sound. So if you'll just dish up that rabbit, we'll have us a proper dancin' party later on." He glanced at Hart to make sure his soliloquy had gone on long enough to cover his embarrassment.
"God's whiskers, Bandana," Fancy responded, beaming. "I'd be thrilled to dance to your music." Then, as if she noted Hart's disappointment for the first time, or perhaps even remembered he was there, she added, "Hart's a real fine dancer, Bandana—I'll bet you didn't know that about him."
"But he can't hold a candle to his big brother," Chance said, tossing an amused and speculative look at Hart as he did..
"Wouldn't think I had me a pair of half-ass twinkle toes for partners, to look at 'em, would you?" McBain asked, putting the question mercifully to rest. "Truth is, cain't nobody cut a rug like yours truly, so if you'll just feed the inner man, I will put both these two pups to shame. And a whiskey wouldn't go down too hard neither. It's colder than a witch's tit on that trail out there."
The moment passed, as moments do, and after dinner they gave each other the presents they had made, they sang, danced, laughed, talked, and told Christmas tales. Finally, at midnight, Hart read the story of the Christ child's birth from his mother's Bible. It was well on to morning before all four settled in to rest. The eerie howls of the blizzard only made the tiny cabin seem safer and more secure to Fancy.
"Thank you with all my heart," she murmured softly into the darkness before she drifted off to sleep. "You've given me a memory tonight I won't ever forget."
Bandana, feigning sleep in his bedroll, wondered if each of the brothers thought she meant the words for him alone. "There's gonna be good memories and bad ones them three share before it's through," he said to himself before letting sleep overtake him. "Real good and real bad."
Chapter 28
The four walls of the tiny cabin were pressing in again; Fancy looked toward the window with pinched longing. Winter was endless and the space too tiny to be occupied by four adults. No place to store her meager clothes, but stuffed under the sway-backed bed. No way to cook more than primitive meals, no way to catch even a modicum of privacy, nowhere to stash her bloodied linens from her monthly showing, nowhere to wash, nowhere to live like a civilized human being...
Would the memory of Beau Rivage and its gracious, airy pleasures never grant her peace? Fancy punched the pillow she had been plumping and slammed it down on the bed so hard that two feathers flew out and fluttered to the floor.
Sometimes Fancy felt she would burst at the seams, lose control, run screaming out the door and into the endless snow... sometimes she felt she would do anything, no matter how grotesque, to escape a future in a place like this... sometimes, like now, she would simply endure for one more day.
The tightrope she walked among the men was becoming precarious. Their broodings and their varied loves for her fomented in the cabin's confines, as did the demands of her own need.
She knew now the kind of riches that came from the earth were harder won than she had imagined. Even if the claims paid off eventually, as Bandana insisted they would, three mouths would be enough to feed with the proceeds—and how many years might go by before the payoff came?
She had insisted on sharing in the physical labor, at first to assure herself a part of what they dredged from the mine, later out of friendship, and finally out of a desperate hope that something could be made to yield before she had to move on.
No man would have faulted her industry or her willingness, least of all the three who loved her.
Hart's friendship had ripened into a fierce reliability; he was Fancy's confidant and sounding board. He never tired of talking with her, nor of listening. He'd sketched her so often and in so many poses that the others teased he would never need that stint at art school he so ardently desired, for he had served his sketching apprenticeship with Fancy. She talked endlessly as he drew her, and because she wasn't in love with him, she was honest—no need for subterfuge or flirtation, no efforts at coquettishness or seduction marred the friendship Fancy offered Hart.
Hart had thought long and hard about his love for Fancy; he saw no way to have her for his own. If Chance had been any other man, he could have fought for her love—but such was unthinkable, for his rival was his brother. Besides, when he let the probable futures unfurl in his imagination, there was no way on earth he could offer Fancy what she longed for, needed, and deserved. She was not the girl to follow her husband into the wilderness uncomplaining—she was meant for grander schemes than Hart could ever bring to fruition. Chance could take her where she needed to go-
Hart could see in Fancy's eyes how Chance's dreams sustained her. She was like one from whom all dreams had been drained, who came alive again with their nightly replenishment. If the truth were known, Hart loved those dreams himself. Not that he believed them as Chance and Fancy did, but he wanted to believe, so as not to queer the luck.
So every night the golden future would unfold, then the next day they'd all be back out mucking on the mountain—Fancy with her hair tied up under a scarf like a Gypsy, wearing a pair of boy's breeches and one of Bandana's old shirts, trying to make all they'd conjured up come true.
Soon, something would have to give. Fancy could feel it in her restless bones. It was getting very close to time to move on.
"Are you ever afraid, Bandana?" Fancy asked her friend. She'd had the dream again last night, the one she feared most.
"Sometimes," he answered, narrowing his eyes a little to regard her closely. "What are you afraid of?"
Fancy shook her head, she knew and yet she didn't; the formless fear had no edges, only a vast dimension.
"I'm afraid of never getting back to where I'm supposed to be, I think, Bandana. Never having enough, never finding what I'm looking for... maybe never even knowing what it is I need so badly...." She shrugged, unable to explain.
There was such a lost-child quality to Fancy—it touched Bandana's heart. Do lost children ever find their way home? he wondered. What must it be like to have been born to aristocracy and all its promise, then wrenched away to forage for the scraps from others' tables?
"Life's real strange, darlin'," he said, not wishing to stanch her pain with platitudes. "Sometimes we cain't never get hold of what we think we want, sometimes we get it and it turns out to be the wrong thing entirely. Most women take life simple. All they want is a decent man and kids, a home somewhere to take care of. Not too many of them have the talents you do—or the ambitions. You're headstrong, too, Fance. I think most men would have one hell of a time trying to get you to work in double harness."
"But, Bandana, I'd like to just fall in love and hand the whole thing over to some man to take care of like my mama did," she said plaintively, trying to convince herself.
"Bullshit, darlin'!" he said with equanimity. "The kinds of things you want, Fance, ain't ordinary wants for a woman. You've had too much freedom to knuckle under to authority easy; it just ain't your nature."
"What is my nature?"
"A little wild, a little vulnerable. A lot of got-to-do-it-my-way. If you had money, you could follow your needs and see where they took you. Without it, you may have to compromise... learn to play the woman-game. Men still rule this world, Fance, however damn fool they go about it. It looks to me like if you don't marry one and let him do the dirty work, you're gonna have to learn how to do it all for yourself. And you're gonna have to take your licks just like a man does. Once you eat the apple, you cain't live in Paradise no more."
Bandana watched her walk back toward the cabin, the setting sun a red globe silhouetting her against its glory. He was plenty old enough to know what compromises fate could demand in return for giving you what you wanted.
Chapter 29
"G'day Fancy. You ride that brumbie like you were born in the saddle." Caz reached a hand to steady her as she dismounted; the wind had blown her hair into a wild dark halo, her hat hung down behind her on a rawhide thong. Caz looked her over appreciatively.
"We haven't got a brass razoo, Fancy, old girl, but with you around here, we're rich as Croesus."
"You are the most superlative flatterer in three states, Caz, and don't think for a minute I don't appreciate every outrageous compliment." She laughed, in merry communion with this strange man who worked beside the boys and Bandana, whenever they needed him and whenever his own claim allowed. She had a feeling he'd die for any one of them, if the need arose, for loyalty seemed as integral to his character as laughter.
"Where is everybody?" she asked, straining to untie the cinch and ditch the saddle, so she could brush the dirt and sweat from the "brumbie."
"Gone bush, Fancy, every last one. Bandana's gone to Bullemakanka for all I know, when he goes walkabout there's no telling where he'll turn up. The other two lads let out for town like a Bondi-tram. They'll be back by sundown. I've got you all to myself." He grinned and his amiable face looked almost handsome.
Fancy laughed, she'd grown fond of Caz, his irreverence, his tall tales, and his tough integrity. He didn't let her get away with what the others did, but he was a friend nonetheless.
She picked up the heavy saddle, but Caz pulled it from her grip.
"Now, now, just because you're independent don't mean you have to get a hernia," he said as he set the heavy saddle on its proper peg.
"And just because you're
busy doesn't mean you can't stop for a cuppa with a friend," Fancy responded affectionately. She tried to surprise the man, occasionally, with the Aussie slang he was teaching her.
"Cuppa, is it? Never say no to a cuppa."
The two sat companionably on the ground, once they had their tea in hand; the air was crisp, but the midday sun had warmed it just enough for comfort. Fancy leaned back to stretch the sun into her bones. She looked at the square body and leathered face beside her with genuine warmth.
"What do you want out of life, Caz? You're a great puzzle to me."
He chuckled and took a sip of the steaming tea.
"That's because I don't want what you want, Fancy. Nothin' near it. You four all have ambitions that got left outta me. Bandana's got a bee in his bonnet about finding the mother lode, Chance and Hart each got their own needs to goad 'em. Me? I like the day-to-day living just fine. Couldn't care less about tomorrow, long as I got today.
"When I was in that stinking hole of a prison, all I wanted was freedom and the sun. I got both them things right this minute." He squinted at her, smiling. "Got the prettiest sheila in Colorado for company and a cuppa in my hands... what could ambition give me I ain't already got? From what I see, ambition just puts you in a kerfuffle and doesn't give you much in return but bigger headaches than the next feller. Maybe give you a bigger house to kark in."
"Kark?"
"You know... die. Who needs a big funeral?"
Fancy sighed and shook her head. "I think I do, just not too soon." They both laughed. "Isn't there anything you'd like to have, Caz, that you haven't got?"