He'd kissed the back of her hand. “But I love to surprise you with gifts, Suzanne. If you were sighted, you'd love it.”
She'd pulled back, winced as though he'd struck her. He held her hand tight.
“You accepted the cookstove. From a perfect stranger.”
“The former owner had paid for it. It belonged to the house. The way you give me things…invades me,” she said, tugging her hand free. “It would unsettle any woman.”
He sneered, then lied, as he twisted the dog's ear. “In the future, my dear, I promise to honor your request.”
Suzanne was home today. He put away the telescoping glass. He would ride toward his other prey instead.
He had seen Ruth. From a distance, through that glass. He knew where his wife stayed, taunting him with her presence. She lived there in broad daylight at a place called Poverty Flat. He'd ridden out before snow fell, nodded to travelers making their way from the Emigrant Ferry. His heart pounded in delicious anticipation. He skirted the meadow, stayed in the trees’ shadows and waited, staring at the cabin, wondering how it would be to see her after all this time. She'd stepped out of the barn, carrying…a bridle. He might have known. Through his eye magnifying glass, he caught the concentration of her betraying face. She looked…content, peaceful. No worries. Just a woman walking, having tended her horses.
He heard his breathing, calmed himself. Let her be serene as a still pond. No need to rush. He would stir the waters slowly. He knew what it took to drown. He controlled the invasion of her life, the slow strangulation.
Today was Christmas Day. He was sure Ruth and the Barnard children and a Mariah—Suzanne said her name was—would head for dinner at the Kossuth House. Suzanne would join them, giving him two invasions in one day.
At the edge of the meadow where Ruth's animals pawed at the snow, he halted. He heard his breathing change as he watched Ruth. Children piled into a wagon. His nieces and nephew, he guessed, the eldest boy having gone out to help yoke up the oxen. A girl with a limp. She looked to be he same age as his child would have been. Could that be his Jessie? She was the youngest, hopped on last, and they rode out giving him what he figured would be several hours of exploring time.
He left his horse a good distance from the cabin so as not to leave tracks in the snow. He wore skins over his own boots to cover his footsteps, made his way under cover of timber, looking out at the meadow where the road skirted in a wide arc before heading west into town. Then he simply walked through the unlatched door.
He heard his breathing change. The smell of her was there, a mixture of leather and horse, of homemade soap and liniment she might rub on an animals sore leg. He could picture her slender hands, the hands he'd seen hold a lithograph she'd done with such perfection. He imagined those fingers running down the leg bone of her horse, lifting the foot in tender healing. Then she'd come inside, to this place, through this door, to wash her hands.
He looked for a basin, found a porcelain bowl set on the bench by the stove. A white pitcher sat near it. He took the hides from his boot, laid them by the door, then walked to the bowl. The water felt cool when he dipped his hands into it, dabbed some on his eyes, at the sweat on his neck. He swirled his hands in the water then, and smiled, knowing she would later splash the ripples he left, splash his scent on her own face without ever knowing. He would think ofthat back in his hotel, of how he touched her without her knowing.
He scanned the room. Sparsely furnished, which surprised him. She had liked lovely things, and Suzanne implied that Ruth had resources left from her brother's estate, the brother who had gotten what he deserved, to Zane's way of thinking. The lawyer brother who made the charges against Zane stick, who helped Ruth send him away.
Children's toys, a slingshot, dolls, writing material, the scratchings of a child; he found a harmonica still lying in its box, Christmas paper ripped open around it. A set of crude crutches leaned against the wall. Some underdrawers were draped over a stump acting as a chair. Beds with quilted comforters lined the back wall. Benches hugged a plank table. Ruth's whip hung on pegs along with a rifle. A photograph of the brother and his wife and…Ruth hung from a nail. Three children in that photo, that was all. None looking like the child with the limp.
He decided to move the frame. Just a small amount, setting it slightly crooked against the rough timber. He stood back. Yes, just enough to make her wonder if she'd bumped it herself. And something else. He must do something else.
He calmed his breathing, took a deep breath. Patience. He wanted her to slowly come to know of his closeness like a candle's light dimming, burning down, to first think forgetfulness or busyness caused her to misplace things or lose them.
Later, he would make the move that would leave her crying out, just as she'd left him. Today, he put the hides back over his shoes, scanned the room again, took one more item. He felt…delicious. As though he'd just consumed a holiday meal.
“Oh, my,” Adora said.
“What is it, Mother? Your tooth bothering you again?”
“No, my tooth is fine today. Thanks for asking. It's that I've forgotten your birthday, Tipton, haven't I? Way back in October. I never even said.”
“We had a few other things on our minds, Mother. I didn't remember it myself—until several days after,” Tipton lied. She walked with her hands stuffed up inside her coat sleeves, a scarf tied tight beneath her chin. She noticed another place in her good green wool dress that needed mending. “What made you think of my birthday?”
“That brooch, back there.” Adora nodded toward the mercantile window just passed. She stopped.
“We've no time to look now,” Tip ton said. “Elizabeth said she'd have supper hot by four. And I'm starved enough to eat our mules since you won't sell them.”
“Prices'll go up in spring. It was done in silver with a blue stone, the brooch. Let's just peek.”
Tipton's knuckles were red and scabbed from the scrub board that was as familiar in her hands now as a muff of fox hair had once been. And she had competition to worry over too: The Chinese people did the work cheaper and faster. Tipton constantly reminded her customers that she was an American they were supporting. She flirted with every grizzled miner, and she curtsied when they tipped her. This week, Tipton had a new customer—the St. Charles Hotel—who needed sheets and toweling washed. No tips to be found there, but the work was steady and she didn't have to go out and “solicit” men's dirty shirts to boil. She hated that part. But that was what a laundress did, and that was what she was.
It wasn't fair, her working so hard. More than once Tipton cursed her brother for having taken all their funds—and probably Lura's, too—and leaving her and her mother in this pitiful state. Other people had fared better. Suzanne had a nice place and a suitor, from what Mazy said. Elizabeth liked the bakery and living behind the kitchen even if her daughter still shared her bed. That Mazy must not have wanted to spend a dime of her money, or she could have had a house too. Maybe Mazy was waiting out the winter, like Tipton's mother was.
As it was, Tipton took the largest portion of her earnings just to pay for the back room of a shop where she could heat the spring water and do her scrubbing. Her mother did at least help her iron and sometimes delivered clean things back to the miners. The rest of what she made bought food and coal for their stove.
But she was always hungry. Tiptons stomach growled. She thought that strange when on the trail she'd refused to eat. Now she couldn't eat enough in her one meal a day.
It was not the picture she held when she set out for the West or even that first day in Shasta when she'd met nice fellows who laughed and punched each other as she blinked her eyes at them. Had that been only eight weeks ago?
Tyrellie would have been proud of her, though. He was a hardworking man who didn't believe in wasting time finding blame or pointing fingers. “Just keep your commitments,” he often told her. “Every obstacle that gets in your way is just another chance to learn something you otherwise might never
know. Something important to make your life have meaning.” She wasn't sure what the laundry lesson was. Maybe that skunk oil stank, but it soothed her bruised knuckles too, or that she hadn't had to succumb to the life of “those women,” even if their lives looked a lot more prosperous than hers or her mother's.
But she had committed to keeping her and her mother alive. She made her day-to-day pickups and washings and ironing and returned the items clean each evening. But it was not a commitment that inspired much. And there were constant setbacks.
Just last week, she'd been startled by a cat bounding across the street while she carried her day's work, and she'd dropped the pile into a muddy hole. She'd started breathing fast then, the way she had back on the trail; thought about just letting herself sink into dirty underdrawers and shirts and drift away, go back to living for the taste of laudanum on her tongue. But she'd chosen to “stay with them,” as Mazy said. And something about being needed and wanted had helped her put one foot in front of the other. So she'd stood in the street, red plaid shirts and yellow britches soaking up grime and cried instead of dying, knowing her mother wouldn't survive if she didn't pick them up and start over. She'd hauled the huck towels and the shirts and carried them back to the room. Heated a new tub of water, and began again. That night, she'd dropped into bed just as the sun came up.
Who had time for dreaming?
“Just look at that silver brooch,” Adora said, bringing her back. “It never hurts to look.” Tipton let herself be pulled back to the shop window. Her mother pointed at items displayed behind the store bay.
“A place to live is more important, Mother.”
“Money has been out of my mind, if truth be known.”
“I do know. Ever since Charles left, in fact.”
“Oh, don't let's start with that. Lets just look at this sapphire.” She sighed. “How I wish I could get it for you. Doesn't sapphire stand for prosperity?”
Tipton allowed herself to grow a smile at the corners of her mouth. Once her mother had doted on her only daughter, but she'd changed coming across, didn't notice what a pretty young girl like Tipton might enjoy. Maybe she wasn't pretty any more, Tipton thought. She certainly didn't feel young. The afternoon sunlight hit the silver pieces. Nestled between them were bowls of lilies surrounded by quartz crystals, gifts every woman got from the Chinese at Christmas time. Tipton even had one at home.
“Mother, come on. They'll be waiting for us.”
She grabbed at her mother's elbow. She hadn't meant to be abrupt. But she slipped on the slick boardwalk, stumbled and tripped, then found herself clinging to her mother to stand upright.
“Oh!” Adora said, losing her balance. “Oh, my!” And the next thing Tipton knew, her mother'd pushed Tipton from her just as her arm swung into the window. Shattered glass like snowflakes scattered at their feet.
Oltipa wondered why she stayed, why she didn't seek her band of people. Maybe she was just afraid to leave the safety of warm fires while the yola gathered in drifts outside the door. Maybe she'd been softened like a well-worked hide, by the tending of David Taylor.
David Taylor cared for her the way a kind brother served a sister. No need to search for food, no need to fish, to hunt. All that was needed was provided.
She had looked for signs of danger. She watched eltee-wintoo— white men. She could tell when their voices rose in anger, their fingers jabbed the air, how they pinched their eyes, held their teeth. The sound and speed of their words told her when to scurry out of sight. But in David Taylor, she saw only kind eyes, soft as the dog named Chance. He offered bags of bread and chick-en he called it, using words that made him sound like a chattering squirrel.
He slept on the floor of this cabin, covered with planks of wood, and he let her lie on a cloth stuffed with moss that smelled of summer, and he covered her with a hide blanket he said his father left. Too kind. Too good, this David Taylor. Yet she waited. For him to say she could not leave, that she was a captive, force her to do what she did not choose to. He had done none of these things. Yet.
She was not lazy. She stayed for the promise of her child.
David Taylor had come back for her, brought a horse, and together they rode through back country of oak then digger pine, up and down ravines until he took her here, a place he said his father built. The structure was nearly as tight as her husband's bark house had been. No rain came through this roof, and faded light came in through the bottoms of glass bottles laid up side by side to create a window. David Taylor gave her food, chopped wood enough so she could tend the fire with her good hand, and then he left her.
Through the winter season, when the trees slept and the sky cried tears of nourishment to raise the streams and bring the salmon back, she waited for him. Her wrist and fingers healed, her belly grew full beneath her breast. She set a trap for rabbits. Using the rifle David Taylor left, she put down a deer the dog had chased into the frozen creek, its leg broken from the fall. She dried the meat and spent days scraping the hide of hair. She made needles from the shards of leg bone, formed an antler into a handle for a knife she would give to David Taylor. In gratitude for what he had done.
Chance barked one night, and she found a porcupine and killed it with stones and rocks, then took the quills for decorations. She had to do none of this to stay alive—David Taylor had seen to that—but it served her, doing things to remember how. She filled the days waiting for her child to come, waiting for David Taylor.
Then in a cold dusk, he returned. Through silent white, on wide shoes made of deer gut and wood, he brought her new things to eat and a small package wrapped in string.
“But we got to wait to open it until I bring the tree inside,” David said.
Bring inside?
David squeezed the small pine through the door, then tied ribbons of cloth like strips of venison hanging from the edges of the branches. He brought corn, and after heating it, they pushed white puflfs onto strings, and they draped the corn on the tree like tiny butterflies settling on leaves. “We have corn to eat,” she told him. “Put in stomach, not on tree.”
David laughed. “This is special,” he told her. “A celebration time. See? I even got Chance here a present.” He put a ring of leather on the dogs neck that had four, five bells that jingled like ice thawing off the roof and dropping to the stones below. Then he handed Oltipa a gift.
Inside the wrapping lay a tiny silver spoon.
“It's engraved by one of the best in Shasta City,” David said.
The spoon felt cool on her hands, and she smiled at the tiny picture of a hawk in flight, filling up the scoop.
David fixed food, and then he said he would tell a story.
“My people tell stories when yola falls too,” she told him.
“Well, good,” he said. “This is a story about a woman waiting, having trouble finding a place to birth her baby.” Oltipa dropped her eyes. He touched her hand. His fingers were callused, his palms warm. “Its got a good ending. See, the baby was given as a gift from God, and God sent a man to tend her, care for her. When you tend somebody, that makes you kin. Guess that's why I came back for you.”
“Because I will have baby?”
“A little hard to explain here,” David said. He still held her hand. “Because that baby grew up and showed us all how to care for each other, our neighbors, family—like you and me—who might be different.” David Taylor rubbed his face with his hands, scratched at his cheek. “I just didn't think it right, you being kept—like that spoon there. You're a human being, a woman. Family.” He cleared his throat, looked away. “Like my sister.”
She set the spoon down, reached for David's hand, held it in her own. “David Taylor is gift, like special baby. David Taylors hands are His hands, taking care of this Wintu woman.”
“Don't move!” A man shouted in irritation from inside the shop window. Tipton had no intention of moving, not a muscle. Not with the shards of glass on her wool dress and glittering at her mothers feet. She
didn't see any blood. Thank goodness! Now if only the owner didn't threaten a lawsuit or demand immediate payment.
The man came out into the street, and his face looked less lined in irritation, and more noticeable for its pink flush captured by dark sideburns that swooped into a cropped mustache. He brushed at Tipton's woolen skirt, picked slivers of glass hung up on the buttons lining the skirt's front. Then he turned and squatted to brush glass from Adoras slipper. Tipton could see he did it gendy, holding her mother's ankle as though it were glass itself. He stood again and wiped his hands on a leather apron covering his cream breeches. He took a deep breath.
Here it comes. Ml be months paying this off
“I must apologize for the fragile nature of the window glass,” he said then. “So pleased neither of you is hurt. Step over it gently and come inside, as my guests. I'll have chocolate and scones brought over while we wait on your husbands.”
“We dont have husbands,” Adora said sweetly. Was she flirting? Why, the man must be ten years younger than she. And why was he being so kind?
“I'm saddened to hear that. A mining tragedy?”
“A loss upon the trail,” Adora said.
When they were settled inside, he introduced himself and Adora gasped again. “Nehemiah Kossuth, of the Kossuth House?” 1 he same.
Adora sank against Nehemiah, who helped her to a stool. “Ernest,” Nehemiah said to a young man who stepped forward. “Do a sweep, will you? While I tend to these fine women who were literally attacked by this poorly blown window glass.” Nehemiah excused himself then, promising a quick return.
“What's wrong with you, Mother? Do you feel faint? Is it your arm? You're fanning yourself like it's August.”
“He's of the Kossuth House,” she whispered as Ernest swept. “We've hit the jackpot.”
“We've hit nothing,” Tip ton scolded. “Except your elbow in a broken window.”