“You didn't take advantage ofthat, Greasy? Them with no men riding with them?”
“Didn't say that. There was one. Big, tall fellow. Seemed happy enough.”
“With a gaggle of women to himself, why wouldn't he be?”
“First, I thought there was another,” the man named Greasy continued. He rubbed his palms on dirty pants and lowered his voice so Zane was forced to lean closer. “Yessiree, she wore men's pants and a black floppy hat, made her look like a skinny boy, ‘til I saw her eyes. Hazel and still as a hawk's. Wore a whip on her hip too. Don't guess any take her on easy. Riding a right smart horse too, and trailing a big gelding. Quite a sight, that many women at once.”
Zane heard his own breathing, his mouth slightly open. He didn't want to ask where the man Greasy had seen the blind woman or where he'd encountered a woman with hazel eyes sporting a whip and trailing a horse. And she wore a dark felt hat. Zane wondered if it was his.
“Too bad you had to come south,” someone said.
“Hitting the sale, then expanding my…interests,” Greasy told them. “Besides. From the look of ‘em, they was tired and beat enough to be staying on right there near Shasta City. I could find ‘em when I head back. Might even take a bath first.”
“She finds out you're sweet on her, she'll make herself disappear.” The men roared again; one man slapped Greasy on the back.
“How hard could it be to find a blind woman traveling with one who dresses like a man?” Greasy said.
Shasta City
So here it was at last. The first separations. Most of the women had already set their tents and turned in for the night. Mazy tapped her pen on her writing book. She watched the sparks from the fire go up then flatten out with the smoke. No one but her had even tried to keep them all in one place, as though they all knew how it would end: Esther and her Asians heading south, the rest seeking their own homes. It did seem they were more cantankerous than usual, though, snapping and nagging at each other. She wondered if that was a phase people went through when they had to say good-bye, needing grumpiness to remember instead of the empty place in their hearts.
“Looks like you went to your saddle bag and found it empty,” Seth said. He squatted down beside her, his white silk neckerchief hanging away from his neck as he poked at the fire with a stick.
“Does it?” She couldn't decide whether to talk further with him, not sure if it would imply an intimacy she wasn't ready for. But, she decided, she could talk with him as a friend. “It's just that I still resist change, even when I can see it coming and know it has to be. I can't seem to think about what good might be on the other side.”
“Not everything around the bend is worrisome,” Seth said. “May I sit?”
“Oh. Sure. I'm sorry. I should have said.”
“You shouldn't have done anything,” Seth said.
“I suffer from sorry-itis, I guess. A condition.”
Seth laughed. “Old habits fade slow. Take my…anticipation of good things to come. Maybe not four bookstores yet, but I like believing good things'll happen up ahead.” He took the writing kit from his pocket, inserted the pen into the tip, then pulled the cork from the bottle. From the inside band of his hat, he unrolled a piece of paper and spread it across his knee. “ ‘Looking for Hope’ “ he said as he wrote. “By Seth Forrester and Mazy Bacon. We've got a title, now what?”
“Oh, you,” she said and tossed a piece of bark at him. The light from the campfire flickered against his face.
“Looking for the hope that Mazy will want Seth to return after taking the good Sister and her charges on to Sacramento. There's one hope I have.” He looked up at her and smiled that engaging smile, his eyes with a question. She looked away, brushed at mud on the hem of her skirt. Seth poked at the fire again, and the sparks shot up into the night sky. “It's too soon, isn't it?” he said then.
Mazy nodded. “I haven't really said good-bye yet. I haven't gotten the old field put away for the winter, so I can't begin to think about tilling new soil and replanting.” She pulled her shawl around her tighter, moved the log she sat on closer to the fire. A cow mooed, and beside the wagon where Suzanne prepared herself for bed, Pig slobbered in his sleep.
“It's a long time ‘til spring,” Seth said.
“I don't know if I can do it,” she said, almost talking to herself. “Though I suppose I will. What choice do I have? But just the thought of where I'll get hay to last the winter for the cows and stock, of where we'll put up. Should I save that money? Use it to build a cabin? Stay at a hotel—there is a hotel?” Seth hesitated, nodded. “Where to live, how to live. Taking care of mother, finding out more about Jeremy, his child…”
“A bleak place you've come home to, that's how you see it?”
“A bleak homecoming. Yes.” She shivered.
“Let me get a blanket,” Seth said, and he rose, took his bedroll and unfurled a quilt of colored stars against a dark background. He draped it around her shoulders, the fibers molding over her back. She nodded her thanks. He sat back down, beside her. “I'd like to shoot a little hope into that bleakness,” he said. “You're not alone in it, you know. Got friends.”
She patted his hand. “I didn't have that many friends back in Wisconsin. Jeremy and the farm were my whole life. Well, and mother, too. Now half of that is gone and there's a pit of uncertainty in the middle of my heart: that I'll make more mistakes, spend my life looking back and curse myself for my stupidity. I almost want to stay cooped up inside this wagon and do nothing until I feel a little more hopeful about the future.” She wondered if he could understand what she meant.
“Hope isn't everything coming out the way you want,” Seth said. “None of us is assured ofthat. Still, what's the choice? Pretending life's a sack of misery or that nothing has any meaning at all? Is that what you want?”
“No. There's meaning. I believe that. There's a pleasant place waiting, if the Psalm is right. I just don't know how to get there.”
“Some things are just worth doing, worth trying, even if fifty years from now we look back and say, ‘That didn't work out well, now, did it?’ But that'd be better than not doing anything at all. We're fashioned to risk, Mazy. The way I see it, God's a risk taker for sure, putting us here, hoping wed not forget how we arrived. I'd rather have a saddlebag of mistakes to look back at than sitting in an old Hitchcock rocker with an empty mind because nothing worthy'd been risked. Memories are certain. Can't see what's ahead no matter how you try.”
“But if you think a thing through well before you act, there ought to be no errors. If things fail, it must be because you didn't plan well.”
“That's a high standard you've given yourself.” He put his arm around her and pulled her to his side. “But it does make you responsible for everything that is. Guess I dont think that's rightly so.” She rested her head on his shoulder, feeling the warmth of a friend. His jacket felt smooth on her cheek. “Lots not in our control. Cant see ahead, Mazy.”
“Can't see behind you, neither,” a new voice interrupted, and Seth jumped, “Oh, didn't mean to startle you, Seth.” Elizabeth sat down on the other side of Mazy, who lifted her head and smiled as she felt Seth drop his arm and sit up a little straighter. “‘We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.’ I like to think that verse puts us all on equal footing with Suzanne.”
“It does promise that same hope, I guess,” Mazy said, “that we'll see through uncertainty if we keep our eyes looking high.”
Ruth placed the buckwheat husks inside the flannel bag and held it close to the morning fire. The heat sent up a distant scent mixed with memories of Ohio farmers entering the newspaper office, the smell of corn and turned earth on their pants. Did buckwheat grow like grain? No, Naomi said it was a bushy plant with white flowers. It bore heart-shaped seeds that gave up groats for toasting. Naomi said they saved the hulls when the grain
was milled and that was what she stuffed her pillows with. “It is ancient way,” Naomi told her. “Old way, good way.”
When the bag felt warm enough, Ruth carried it to the cart where Jessie sat, surrounded by goose down pillows and covered with a dark quilt.
“Can you raise your leg, honey? I'll put this under. It felt good before, didn't it?”
“It stinks.”
“Jessie, please. Naomi took her own pillow apart to make this little one for you.”
“It hurts.”
“I know. But you've got to push a little, into the pain, or you'll never be able to use your leg again. Here, I'll help you lift. Elizabeth says it's healing well. You've got to get strong enough to try the crutches.”
“They won't hold me. You want to see me fall.” The child stuck her lower lip out—that act and the child's constant complaints flashed heat into Ruth's face.
“Jason and Ned worked hard to fix them for you,” she said. “And Sarah padded the arms. You're being unreasonable.”
“Ugly sagebrush. They smell. So does this,” she said and tossed the bag of buckwheat husks toward the ground.
Ruth spun around, grabbed for the bag and walked away, shaking inside. She'd chosen this caring for the children, chosen this living with others. But she was no good at it. Fury came faster than fondness.
“Don't go, Auntie. I'll be good. Promise,” the child wailed then. “Please, Auntie.”
Was it her imagination, or did the girl drag out the word auntie, as though she said it as a tease?
“I've horses to tend,” Ruth shouted to her over her shoulder. “When you feel like being pleasant, I'll come back.” She fast-walked away. She needed to…leave, to go away, that was what she needed. To find a place where she couldn't injure others and where she could not be touched. Behind her, she heard Elizabeth talking to the child—Ruth's child— making her laugh. Ruth brushed at the hot tears that threatened.
“It's all right, Koda,” Ruth said as she approached the horse, her hands moving along the animal's familiar jaw line, patting at his withers, then running her hand down his leg to check his foot. First one, then the others. She checked for nicks and scrapes, then did the same with Jumper, finishing with handfuls of grain for each of them from the packs she'd hung in the low branch of a pine. Here at least she was competent, could make things happen. The smell of damp ground and steaming manure, the mixture of horse scent and smooth hides always soothed her. She pulled the brush from the pack and began at the base of Koda's mane, pushing out toward his tail. She could stay with people, she decided, as long as she could spend a little time with horses.
“But I do have to manage the children,” she told the horse. Koda nickered low. “Yes, if you could talk you'd tell me, what? What a fool I was to take them on?” The gelding nudged her.
“I could look after them, when we get into town.”
“Oh, Mariah. You surprised me.”
“Didn't mean to scare you. I'm good with children, really I am.”
“Doesn't your mother need you for that business she talked about?”
“I know there was that time with Clayton, when I didn't watch like I could have, but…” The girl had picked up a brush and worked on Jumper, her eyes barely able to see over the big stallion's back. The center part in her hair was straight. Ruth looked at it as the girl worked.
“Everyone gets distracted,” Ruth said. “I wouldn't hold that against you.
“Good.” The girl stopped, came around, and stood with her hands on her hips, elbows out. Ruth smiled. It was how she stood herself, more often than not. “If you want to do a good thing, you have to concentrate. And I can do that. Keep my head now, I can. Ma says she's going to have herself a business and make bushels of money and make Matt proud of her when we meet up again. That's not me, though. I want to make Matt proud, too, but by being around horses. And children,” she added in some haste. Jumper, the horse Mariah preferred, nudged her. “Keep your head up, that's what I'm finding I need to do. All the time. Look for chances. That's how we found the stock that time, not letting ourselves worry over whether we would or not or what we'd do if we didn't. We just looked for tracks and counted on making something happen. Remember?”
Ruth nodded. Mariah scratched at the horse's ears. The girl reminded her of herself those years before, all hopeful and bright with ideas. How could she have such an influence on this one and yet be so inept with her own child?
“I'm not sure what kind of an employer I'll be,” Ruth said. “I do want things to happen my way. If you work for me, you'll have to remember that.”
Mariah's face lit up. “But you're willing?”
“And there's the question of whether your mother will let you.”
“If you asked, there'd be a better chance she would. I'm discovering that my ma and me don't always see eye to eye.”
“I'll ask, then,” Ruth said.
Maybe this could work. Things might be looking up.
7
Sacramento City
David Taylor, jehu for the Hall and Crandall Stage Line, lounged against a post in the shade of the bakery's roof, separating himself from the crowd milling about. His homespun shirt stuck to him in the October afternoon heat, and he scratched against the trickle of sweat that threatened his back. Dust from stomping horses thickened the air. David tried to look relaxed, his booted ankles crossed over each other, his hat pushed back on his head. But he felt lost, away from his coach—the big Concord—incomplete as any jehu was without his whip and leather reins laced between his knuckles.
With his left hand—his near hand, as the jehus called it—he scratched at the day-old growth of beard on his chin. His mother would have clucked at him, “Always putting adventure before hygiene.” He was only eleven when she'd said that first, as he'd tromped, full of spring mud, into their house. He asked her what the word meant—hygiene.
“Hygeia was the mythical daughter of Aesculapius,” she told him, wiping dirt from his face. “In Greek stories. She was the goddess of health, and her father was the god of medicine.”
“Who was her mother?” David asked.
“I haven't a clue,” she told him, touching her nose to his. “Just a story. I only know that hygiene is the offspring of good medicine, which means you, young man, need more than a face wash if you re to stay healthy.” And she'd sent him toward the copper tub, lifting a riding quirt from his muddy pants as he passed.
He needed a bath now, that was sure, and a shave, too. And he needed to braid the silk of his whip as he always did at the end of a run. He never neglected something on which his life could later depend.
But the scene spread out here entranced him. This mass of people pressed together beneath a sky washed almost white by the heat of a late afternoon drew him in. People, looking all curious and pushing and pretending they were bidding for horses or land instead of what they were. He ought to head for the home station where he could rest and wash his lanky, nineteen-year-old frame, complete his daily routine. He felt for the smooth hickory handle of his whip, then remembered it was with the coach, back at the stage stop. He'd go there shortly, he would. But for now, he studied the crowd, eyes just forward, as though catching another's eye would convict them for participating in such a vile event. Who would have the courage to look and nod while they did what they did? People hid beneath the shadows of their hats while sweat beaded on foreheads.
“One hundred eagles!” someone shouted, and David realized it had begun. His heart beat a little faster as he turned to the voice, so close to him. A number of others risked a glance at the big man dressed all in white, his eyes glistening as they scanned the crowd, his lips a thin line that masqueraded as a smile. The man sat astride a sorrel of eighteen hands who fought against the tight reins, moved its hindquarters about, and jerked its head up and down, the noise of the bit breaking into David's thoughts.
“I repeat. One hundred gold eagles.”
“Taken,” the auctioneer said.
&n
bsp; Even from the distance, David could see the auctioneers Adam's apple bobbing with excitement that the first bid should be so high.
David hadn't noticed that the bidder, large and sitting above them, had even been in the crowd, yet in seconds he consumed everyone's focus. His first bid was high, just to bring attention, maybe. Or perhaps he was the impatient kind, didn't like to waste time. Another bid came from somewhere else in the crowd. Necks craned to see who countered, but David kept his eyes on the rider. He thought he saw the white-clad mans one eyebrow flicker with the act of a challenging bid, noticed he breathed in through his mouth now.
“One hundred fifty,” the auctioneer shouted back, pointing toward someone on the other side. Back to the large man. “Do I hear one seventy-five for this fine specimen?”
The big man ran his fingers at the edge of his hat. The auctioneer snapped at it. “One seventy-five. Do I hear two hundred?”
The man turned then, scanned the crowd, and when he did, he stared into Davids eyes. David swallowed at what he saw there, sharp and hard and hot. He blinked and read empty before the mans gaze moved on.
Something about his intensity as he turned back toward the auction block, his tight control of the horse, his body rigid as a lamppost, the moisture at the side of his mouth, all brought fire to Davids stomach.
Imagining things, that's what he was doing. From habit, David reached for the whip, felt the emptiness at his side. He continued to watch the bidders, the milling of men, the smells of human sweat fed by greed excused by the mob. And in the midst sat this big man as though above it all, yet driving it. He'd seen lots of men, big men like that, with a kind of presence, but they usually didn't attract his attention. Maybe because some folks said David was big and broad too. Maybe it was just this place on the Sacramento River and the yeast of desire raising the mass of men to do things they otherwise wouldn't do.