“I ve no grain for you,” Mazy said. “Soon as I want to touch your babies, you turn on me.” She wore gloves with no fingers that circled the fork handle. “At least the winter here was nothing like Wisconsin,” Mazy told Ruth. “The cows handled the cold well.”
“Cold? Are you cold?”
“No. I swear, Ruth, sometimes I think you can't hear. I'm always repeating half of what I say. I was remembering the winter and thinking that the snow is less wet here, not as cold.” She pushed Mavis out of the way, went back to her shoveling. “Go,” she said when Mavis stepped closer. She watched the cow amble toward its calf, barely visible in the leggy grass.
In the distance, Mazy watched Ruth's horses, their heads down as they ripped at grass. She heard the boys laugh near the swing they'd hung in a tree and saw a stray cat make its way across the muddy paddock, stepping close to the new calf's nose. Not intimidated by the calf's larger size, the cat stood its ground when Bumper startled backward. Mazy smiled. She liked this place. Liked it a lot.
“I'm an easily kept woman,” Mazy said. “Fresh air, cows, and open space is enough to make me feel wealthy, setting my feet to firm. Even being around people is growing on me.”
“I think you ought to take this place, Mazy,” Ruth said.
“I thought you liked it here.” Mazy braced the fork handle on her chest, retied the scarf at the back of her neck. “Besides, I'm still looking for a place closer to Shasta. This is a good four miles out. Traveling back and forth with the milk, it gets hard on the oxen and on me, too. And don't tell her, but I miss my mother.”
“Nothing of mine fills the cupboards here, not really,” Ruth said. “I could leave.”
“But you'd take the children with you.”
“Ah yes, the children,” Ruth said.
When she woke again, Suzanne dressed, then fed Sason. Johnnie hadn't arrived yet, and the two other children slept, so she felt for the cast iron pot, swung it back on the andiron and into the hearth. Stew kept bubbling there. The pan for tea warmed at the stove. She patted for the stick Sarah left for her each night before she went to bed. “That way if I want a cup of tea in the night, I can poke the fire and get the pot hot.” She did that now and lifted the kettle with her apron, carefully dipping her finger into the cup set on the table as she poured so she wouldn't overfill it. She dropped the peppermint leaves into the mug, put her hands over it to feel the steaming heat. She could do this, on her own! Waiting for it to steep, she counted steps toward the bedroom, picked Sason back up, and was burping him on her shoulder when Pig started his barking.
“What is it, Pig?” It was his warning bark. She sniffed the air. Had she stuck the stick back in the right place? Did something burn?
“Pig?” He barked in his biting tone that grated on her ears and forced her to pay attention. “What is it!” She set Sason near the bed, hung on to the side rail, then turned square. Pig pulled on her arm now, his teeth sharp. “Ouch! That hurts.” The dog barked again, tugged at her until she moved toward the door.
She heard the clang of a fire wagon in the distance then, not in the residential district. The sound moved away from her. She could neither hear nor smell anything wrong. What did that dog want? She heard a scratching sound. No. Crackling like dried leaves.
Suddenly, she felt a rush of air. What was it? Then she knew. Her heart pounded in her chest.
“Sarah! Clayton! Get up! Get up! Fire! Fire!”
She tried to localize the smell, the sounds. Was it at the back of the cabin, the side? She stumbled toward the bed where the children slept, shook Sarah, pulled on the girl's quilt. Sarah started to cry. She coughed.
“Get up! Don't cry. I'm not mad at you. Can you smell the smoke? Get Clayton. Hurry!” Pig barked, pulled at her arm again. “I've got to find Sason!”
Suzanne swirled around. Grabbed for her cane, felt herself sick with the taste of smoke. Where was she in the room? She'd moved too fast, not turned square. Where was the door? Where was the smoke coming from? Where was Clayton? “Pig! Find Sason. Sarah!” She was just a child herself!
“Clayton,” Sarah wailed now. “Fire!”
“Sarah! Come here!” She felt the girl's hand. “Take me to him, lead me, quick!” Pig pushed at them. She reached for Sason, snatched him into her arms before thrusting him at Sarah. “Go! Follow Pig. Is there fire between us and the door?”
“No,” Sarah cried.
“No time for tears. Go to the door. Now!”
She was coughing now; they were all coughing. She scratched at the bed with her hands, her arms, pulled on the quilt. It resisted, the boy must have been there. She could hear coughing. The smoke was heavy, and above her she heard crackling. Her throat burned. She felt heat. “Clayton! Come to Mommy.” She made one final grab for the child, prayed it was him on the quilt.
Pig barked, standing by the bed, she thought. He should have taken the other child out! She heard her son cry. At last, she held him, felt the flames singe her hand as she rolled him in the quilt. The dog grabbed at her arm then, yanked with his teeth. She followed him, her eyes stinging, her throat tight. She felt the weight of the blanket dragging as she held her son and stumbled where Pig pulled her toward a coolness she hoped was an open door.
She heard a breaking, splintering sound, like timbers crashing in at the back of the house. “Sarah? Where are you?”
“Im here, my dear,” she heard Wesley's voice say, then. “Let me take the boy.”
Ruth wondered if her mother had agonized when she'd sent her away.
Her mother wouldn't have described it as sending Ruth off, never saw herself as a mother who abandoned her daughter. She'd have said it was to keep Ruth safe, words Ruth used about Jessie, too.
The fever took so many that year. 1832. Ruths mother pleaded with her father to send both her and Jed farther north, but Papa held firm. Jed already pored over legal books at the university, and her father saw no reason to disrupt his life. Ruth's, however, was another story.
Ruth begged to be allowed to stay. She told them she wouldn't get sick, pulled on her father's arm, her fingers gripping into the thin-striped lines of his sleeve.
“It's for your own good, “her mother said. Her hands shook. She pushed up her tiny glasses on her nose. ‘You'll be safe, out of the city, away from this plague. “
“You don't want me, “Ruth shouted at her, the force of the words causing her mother to blink and lower her chin as though struck. “There's nothing wrong with me. I'm not sick. You just don't want me. “
Ruth swallowed, the memory choking.
Then finger by finger, her father pulkd Ruth's hands from the grip of his arm. “You have wounded your mother deeply. You will apologize. “
It was the first time Ruth really saw the hardness in his eyes. She planned to apologize, of course. She hadnt meant to say it, though she believed it to the depths of her soul. It was a moment of defiance. She stuck her lower lip out and crossed her arms instead.
With a handkerchief, Ruth's mother wiped perspiration from her own wide forehead, stood, and turned her back. Ruth watched her narrow shoulders kave through the carved oak parlor doors without even a backward glance.
It was the last time Ruth ever saw her mother. She succumbed to cholera that night.
“Where'd you go?” Mazy said, touching Ruth's arm.
Ruth shook her head. “Sorry. I have a habit of drifting away.” She turned then, picked an egg out of the pile of grain sacks stacked in the corner. She handed it to Mazy, who tied it in her apron. “My mother was an artist. Did I ever tell you that? Quite good. A perfectionist. She used to say, ‘My eyes just aren't what they used to be. My hands either,’ after she drew a lovely piece that people raved about. I tried my own hand at the replica of a horse one time, wanting to please her. She patted my head and said, ‘You'll master it in time, dear. In time.’ I was always a disappointment to her.”
“That sounds like something encouraging a mother might say. Not disappointing.”
> “Does it?”
Ruth bent back to her work.
“Maybe, as a grownup, you're looking at your life with the same critical eye you think belonged to your mother. Maybe that's the cause of the dance of demand between the children and you.”
Ruth didn't respond. She watched Mazy throw another forkful onto the manure pile, making the pen that held her cows and calves all tidy. Mazy's shoes had burlap bags tied around them.
“Why dont you just buy yourself a pair of boots?” Ruth said irritably. “Sometimes, you hold back when going ahead would be wiser.”
Mazy stared at her. “Manure'll cure scratchy feet,” she said, “and peeling hands. A little seeping through my shoes is nothing to worry over.”
Ruth shook her head. Mazy bent her back to the muck, pushed the wooden fork tines with her foot, then pulled back on the handle, bent her knees to lift the load. The layer of hard crust made her grunt with effort. It gave with a second push of her fork.
“Since I'm already standing in muck, so to speak,” Mazy said. “And seem to be annoying you anyway, I may as well share this thought, too. Those boys ought to be out here. We could show them that working together can be a good time. That we like their company.”
“Its soothing without them about. And I can do it better anyway.”
Mazy carried the mix of old straw and manure to a pile they would come back to later, to fertilize the garden plot next to the cabin they'd planted. “It may not be my place to say this, but your nephews need to learn to be useful, that others are counting on them to do their parts. Jessie is at least churning butter now. If you dont give the children important tasks and let them know they're important, they'll grow up expecting others to meet their needs. Maybe even lazy. Worse, they'll learn to think they have no value, not even to themselves. It's hard to hold a family together when people think their not being there wont even be noticed.”
“Jason wanted to be paid,” Ruth said sharper than she intended. “They never have owned up to losing the harmonica and taking my hat. And there are other things, almost eerie. Things moved. My whip twisted differently than the way I hung it. And they deny it, that's what rankles. It's like they're teasing me, Mazy. I even found a photograph… My face had been scratched out.” Ruth shivered. “Maybe if I'd had one child at a time with room to get to know them, maybe I'd feel more secure about this mothering thing. Maybe if I had made a better choice in who fathered my children, or left him at the first sign of his…ways. Maybe my son would still be alive, maybe I wouldn't be living with his father's shadow over every part of my life.”
“There's no wage in finding blame,” Mazy offered. “Not of others and especially not of yourself. What's done is done. It really is.”
Ruth nodded then wiped at her eyes. “All I can do now is figure out how to react.” She looked past Mazy toward the road then. “Wonder why Seth's got his horse all lathered up.”
It was like taking milk from a baby, Zane decided, holding Suzanne as she shivered. He draped the smoldering quilt around them, her and the boy. Sarah carried the youngest one on her hip. Both children cried, their faces red with tears and snot, coughing up the smoke.
“Johnnie, is that you? I hear someone.”
“Yes. He's here,” Zane said. “Probably started it with his clumsiness, getting your fire going. What is he bringing out of the house? Your harp,” he added with disgust.
“No, Wesley. Don't let him. The things don't matter.”
The boy had almost caught him, as he set the blaze low and slow, he thought, at the pine needles dusting the ground behind her house. He hoped the flame would eke its way into the cabin, with smoke awakening her and then his rushing in. But he'd seen Johnnie shuffling up the hill. Maybe it was his usual time to come, or he'd heard of the hotel fires and was looking after Suzanne's gold purse. His presence forced Zane to slip out behind the house and come up from the opposite side. By then the flames had bitten into the logs. He'd stood watching at the window until the smoke clouded his vision. Then he'd come around and been there when the dog pulled her to the door. That Chinese interloper had arrived at almost the same time and had rushed in, hauling trunks and just now that wretched troubadour harp Suzanne insisted on playing and seemed to gain strength from.
They might have lost everything.
“Let me take you to a place I have,” Zane said. “You'll be safe there. Nothing's left in town. Not a thing.”
Suzanne's teeth chattered as she talked. “Just get Elizabeth for me, will you? She's at Kossuths Bakery if it still stands. She and Mazy will help us. She and Mazy, my family. Get my family for me.”
“You're being naive, Suzanne. Hurtful. Putting your children at risk. You need to come with me.” He'd pressed her head into his chest.
“Tiptons friend's coming,” Sarah said.
“Is he? Oh, good. He knows Elizabeth. He can get her.”
“You should come with me, Suzanne. I can take care of you. And the boys. Just look at what your irresponsibility almost caused.”
“I need to see how the others are.” Her voice sounded tense, strong. “We're family, Wesley. That means something to me.”
“Good then,” Zane said, dropping his arms from the quilt. Suzanne lurched a bit when he stood back, caught herself from stumbling, her arms outstretched now. He watched her weave her hand to find him. “I need to be helping fight the blaze,” he said. “You're all right here, then, with your family” He thrust the child at her. Clayton cried.
“It's gone,” Seth said, his face flushed as he rode his big sorrel up, reigned up just outside Ruth's barn. Puffs of air shot out through the horse's nostrils as Seth stepped down. “I've never seen anything like it.” He lifted off his hat, ran his hands through his yellow hair.
“What are you talking about?” Mazy asked, the pitchfork still in her hand.
“Shasta City. Whole place went up in flames. Weren't enough buckets to stop the spread.”
“Mother—?”
“She's all right. But most everything you had in your rooms, it's gone.” Mazy gazed at her feet, her dress pulled up between her legs and tucked into her belt, then looked up at Seth. “Except for what you brought here. And Suzanne,” he said. “She'll need you two. Nehemiah brought her down to Tipton and Adoras while I headed out here.”
“Sarah?” Ruth asked.
“She's fine. They're all fine. Scared. Just a kid.”
“Go in and get coffee,” Ruth told him. “We'll hitch up.”
He nodded. “The Wilsons want their mules and wagon, so we've got to harness their team, too,” he shouted after her. “Get the boys to help.”
Mazy walked out to gather up the Wilson mules, using a bucket of grain to lure them in while Ruth called the boys already heading toward them at the sight of Seth. They hitched up the wagons, saddled Jumper and Koda, then headed inside. Seth faced a sea of faces, answering questions put to him by Mariah and the children.
“Kossuth House, too. And the St. Charles. The Shasta. Your bookstores, Mazy. Seventy houses, all the rest of the businesses on either side of the street, and half the buildings in the alleys. Even the church. Everything. Mackley Alley, Two Foot Alley, they're all just rubble.”
“Were you burned out?” Mazy asked.
“Didn't have much, but I've been staying in a tent with a wood floor I put up myself far enough from Main and Second. It's fine. Spending most of my nights at the hotel working.” He winked at Mazy, and she bristled, her shoulders stiffening. “Guess there won't be any games of chance there for a while.”
“The St. Charles got singed in the fire last December too, didn't it?” Mazy said, filling a tin with milk from the pitcher.
“This time it went. Town looks like a mouth of black and broken teeth.”
“How'd it start?” Jason asked.
“They don't know exact,” Seth said. He took the refilled cup Mariah handed him and drank, looked up over the top. “But it spread a long way fast to get as far as Suzanne's.”
/> He sat on the big bay and watched the town burn. The second story front of the St. Charles once painted yellow fell blackened into itself. Licked with flames shooting a hundred feet into the air, it would all be gone in minutes. The residential section popped and burst with canvas and wood, and oak leaves slick with oil spread the flames faster than a lick of the lips. People ran and scattered like rats, some carrying water buckets in long lines hopelessly trying to save a home, a church, a store. All without success. Rebuilding would consume them when it was over. And in the rebuilding, there'd be a fortune to be made. Maybe with less work than running his “trap line.”
He pressed the reins against the horse's neck, turning it northeast toward one of Greasy's shacks. He'd wait there, let things settle a bit, consider what rich opportunities lived inside this danger.
Partway out of town he had another thought. Ruth surely would be heading in, to see about Sarah. Perhaps he should make a visit while she was gone, leave something of himself at her abode. Yes, this would be a fine time to raise her heart rate, something delicious to do before he decided to check his traps. He'd set new ones.
“You stay here,” Ruth told Jessie and Mariah. “Ned too. Jason, you're old enough to help.”
“I want to see Ma,” Mariah said. “Is she all right? Have you seen her?”
Seth nodded. “She had a couple of the other banking ladies in tow,” he said. “She told me to come on out and bring in what we could, for you not to worry. I'll bring her back soon as we're able.”
“Dont want to be left with no girls,” Ned complained. He kicked at the dirt in front of him and looked so glum that Ruth relented. “All right. But you stay close. This is no picnic we re going to. Mariah, you and Jessie are better off here.”
They loaded quilts, extra food, and any clothes the children had outgrown and Ruths one dress. “So many people burned out,” Mazy said. “But Mothers all right? You're sure?” Seth nodded.
“At least it isn't winter like the last fire,” Ruth said. “No one will freeze to death.”