Nevada Barr - Bittersweet

The cottage had two small bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. Thirty yards through the trees and out into the sage stood the outhouse. In the kitchen and the bedrooms, the ceilings were just over six feet high, and though Imogene would not have bumped her head, she stooped. “The Chinese,” Mrs. Glass had explained, “are a small people. Mr. Glass didn’t want to waste the lumber.”

The wagon came up the drive beside the big house, Nate Weldrick walking alongside, Imogene and Sarah sharing the seat with Mac. Wolf, perched on Sarah’s knees, her arms around his middle so he couldn’t fall, watched the proceedings with the same serious demeanor he’d worn while playing pat-a-cake. Mrs. Addie Glass waved to them from her parlor window but didn’t come out; she was sitting with a young woman draped in the black of mourning.

“Cora Ferguson,” Mac said, making the gossip sound like news. “Husband killed by Indians up Susanville way. Fella on watch deserted-fella named Fox-and the Indians snuck in and killed five soldiers. Sleeping. The whole patrol. Hear she’s going back to New Orleans.”

Wolf was unaware he was half Indian, but Nate wasn’t and looked disgusted as he lifted the child from Sarah’s lap to the ground. He handed Sarah down with gentlemanly deference, then spoke over her head to Imogene. “I don’t think I ought to be leaving Wolf. Mrs. Ebbitt here’s weak as a kitten, she can’t hardly lift that kid, and he’s about half-wild, according to Hattie.”

To everyone’s surprise, Sarah spoke up. “I can lift Wolf.”

“She’ll hurt herself trying, Miss Grelznik,” Nate insisted. He leaned down and put his hands on his knees. “Mrs. Ebbitt,” he said gently, “you’ll go hurting yourself, trying to lug that boy around, and I’d feel real responsible. Old Hattie’s fine for him. You look after yourself and get your strength back. He’s a dirty little beggar; you don’t want him all over you.”

“I can lift him,” Sarah said, but the fear that she could not care for a child clouded her face and she sounded uncertain. Imogene climbed down to stand between Sarah and Nate. Nate had to straighten up and step back to look her in the eye.

“Mr. Weldrick, we shook on it. I’ve heard a handshake is legal tender in a court of law out West. Sarah, why don’t you take Wolf inside?”

Sarah wavered a moment, vague and unsure. “It’ll be fine,” Imogene said, and Sarah led the child away.

Nate looked after them while Imogene busied herself with the unloading. “Mac,” he said, “somebody once gave me brandy in one of those long-legged glasses that ping when you flick them. I bit right through it, the glass was so fine. Just took a bite right out of the rim. Cut my lip. That little gal makes me think of that.”

To add to their small store of goods from Pennsylvania, Fred and Lutie had given them two cots, Addie Glass had brought several chairs and a small table down from the attic to put in their living room, and Mac had pressed an old Colt.45 on them. “Law here’s often as not settled by the authority of Judge Colt,” he said.

While Imogene opened her boxes of books, dishes, and household goods, Sarah made a soft bed of blankets for Wolf in the room that was to be hers. Often, with Wolf pattering at her heels like an affectionate puppy, Sarah sought Imogene out with questions. Did they have a washtub for the child? Was there enough money for a new suit of clothes? Where were the scissors to trim his hair? Had Imogene seen the soap dish? Imogene had to settle the two of them in a comfortable corner with a picture book lest Sarah wear herself out.

They were both napping when Imogene finished cleaning their new home. Wolf sucked his thumb as he slept, a fold of Sarah’s dress clutched in his fist. Imogene tiptoed past them, outside, to dump her washwater.

“We’re a family,” she said. She tilted her head back and looked up at the patch of sky framed by a delicate golden tracery of leaves. “Thank you.”

OVER THE WINTER, SARAH GREW STRONGER. BAD WEATHER AND WOLF gave her an excuse not to venture out much, and except for Imogene and McMurphy, she saw no one. When summer came around, Imogene gave her the task of the household shopping to get her to go into town so she could overcome her shyness around strangers.

Sarah made Mac go with her.

“It smells summery.”

Mac flared his big nostrils and took a noisy sniff. “You’re the smellingest gal I ever knew, Mrs. Ebbitt.”

“I can smell the sage when it’s hot, and the horses, and the sun on the wood. Summer. Back home it’s not so dry, and the air’s got so many smells you mostly can’t sort them out.”

“It’s dry, I’ll give you that. Maybe later we’ll get some rain. August sometime’ll bring down thunderstorms.” They walked in silence for a while, Wolf at Sarah’s side, kicking up little puffs of dust for the pleasure of watching them fly. The wooden buildings soaked up the sunlight and sent it back into the air in shimmering waves. Sarah wore a sunbonnet to protect her face, and a new peach-and-brown plaid dress that Imogene had made for her on the Singer sewing machine at the school.

Mac had given up prospecting in late spring and had taken a job caring for Wells Fargo’s draft animals. Mostly he worked afternoons and evenings, currying and bedding down the teams in from the run across to Pyramid Lake and the Smoke Creek Desert. “I ain’t going shopping with you,” he said. “But I’ll be waiting around to carry. Find me. Don’t go trying to carry things yourself.”

He left her in front of the stationer’s. Imogene’s credit was good in any shop in Reno, and consequently so was Sarah’s, and the storekeepers were used to the shy young woman with the half-breed Indian boy. After leaving the stationer’s, Sarah went to the grocery and the dry goods, leaving her purchases to be called for at the counter. After a week’s letters to her son were posted, she looked for Mac.

The boardwalk that fronted most of the stores harbored scattered idlers in its shade, the sun sweeping them farther and farther under the overhang. Mac’s gnomelike figure was not among them. Above the town, the mountains faded to cardboard cutouts in the summer haze, with a speck of white here and there, where a pocket of snow escaped the sun’s detection. Shading her eyes, Sarah searched the far side of the street.

“Where do you think Mac’s got himself to?” Sarah asked Wolf.

Without hesitation the toddler thrust a round arm out and pointed across the street. “Saloon.” In his limited vocabulary, “saloon” was one of the few two-syllable words he used. Wolf was not given to much talk.

The doors of the Silver Nugget were open, the shade an even stronger draw on an August afternoon than whiskey, gambling, or women. After the dazzle of the day, nothing was visible inside. A howl, a human coyote baying at the moon, sounded from the darkness behind the open doors, and Sarah blanched. “I get him.” Wolf disengaged his hand from hers and started resolutely across the street, as though routing men from saloons was not a new experience for him.

Sarah caught up with him. “We’ll go together.”

Inside the double doors, the saloon floor had been cleared of tables. Men, talking and shouting, formed a tight circle around the open space, the beer in the mugs they held slopping onto the sawdust and other patrons. In the ring were two men and two dogs: a squat, beefy fellow in his mid-fifties straddling a black dog and sporting a bowler pulled down against his ears so that his snow-white hair thrust out in waves below the brim; and a long-legged, long-haired man with a red beard that covered his neckerchief, crouching on his hands and knees, face to face with a shaggy brown and gray mutt.