The thought brought a smile.
A gust of wind fluttered her shawl. She looked to the west, where the tips of stormclouds were visible beyond the mountain peak. As Imogene watched, the front grew and darkened. She hurried along the boardwalk.
McMurphy was lounging against the side of the stable across the street from the Wells Fargo office, his back against the sun-warmed wood. He jerked his hatbrim as she approached. “Afternoon, Miss Grelznik.”
“I haven’t seen you since August, Mac. Have you gone back to prospecting?” Imogene asked.
“No, ma’am, I got put up from stablehand to swamper. I been mostly on the run to Pyramid and Round Hole.”
“What does a swamper do?”
“This one reads.” He pulled a yellowed magazine out of his hip pocket, showing off to his teacher. The cover featured a cowboy and several dozen Indians. “I’m reading right now.” He tapped the magazine.
“After a fashion,” Imogene said dryly.
Mac laughed and folded the cowboy book back into his pocket. “What I do is ride along on the stage and see to the livestock, changing teams, hitching, unhitching, and feeding and whatnot. We’ve got horses at every stop, pretty near.”
Lightning flashed to the west, a great forked tongue licking down the mountain side. Half a minute later the rumble of thunder reached their ears.
Mac sniffed the air. “Whoo-ee! We ain’t long for it now.”
“It looks as if I’d best be going.” Imogene pushed her hatpins in. “Congratulations on your new position, Mac.”
“I hope you’re not thinking to go home,” Mac winked.
“Why not?” Imogene asked.
“Not more’n twenty minutes ago, Nate come by. He was slicked up and pomaded till a skunk wouldn’t have him. I asked him if he was going courting. He said, ‘Not today I ain’t. Today I’m going asking.’ He wasn’t just beating his gums, neither, he meant to do it. Figured he could talk little Mrs. Ebbitt around if they was alone. She’s a docile little gal. Maybe you want to hole up over to the office for a while, let them kids do their lovemaking. The judge’s got the stove going.”
Sarah was behind the house on the path, collecting colorful sprigs of leaves, when she heard Nate’s claybank on the drive. She stood poised for an instant like a doe ready to run, her basket of branches under her arm. Gusts heavily scented with the coming rain blew fire-colored leaves around her skirts.
Nate rapped smartly on the door. There was no answer and he opened it partway. “Anybody home?” Silence. He closed it and came around the end of the house. “Hello! Guess you didn’t hear my hullabaloo. I figured you might be to the outhouse.”
Sarah blushed. “I was collecting leaves, Mr. Weldrick.” She showed him her basket.
“Be your last chance, this storm blowing up’s going to pound them off.” He walked with her back to the house. In the closeness of the living room the smell of his pomade was overpowering. Sarah started to open a window and then stopped, embarrassed.
Nate grinned. “Guess I’m pretty ripe, ain’t I? I told the barber I was calling on a lady and he got kind of heavy-handed with the stinkum.”
Sarah smiled. She looked at the clock over the bookcase.
“You expecting Miss Grelznik home anytime soon?”
Sarah dropped her eyes. “Not for another hour or two.”
“Where’s the kid?”
“He was cranky. I think he was feeling a little peaked, so I put him to bed.”
Nate absorbed this information, nodding. “I’ll get right down to what I come about. I been calling pretty regular these past months, haven’t I?” He looked at Sarah. “You’ll give me that?”
“Yes, that’s so. You come to see Wolf.”
“You know that ain’t it; I come calling on you. You know that the same as you know I’m sitting here.”
Sarah didn’t say anything.
“What do you say to that, Sarah?”
It was the first time he had ever called her by her Christian name, and she looked up, startled.
“The way I figure it, I got no call to go on calling you Mrs. Ebbitt. Either Mr. Ebbitt’s dead or run out on you, and either way, according to my way of thinking, he’s lost his claim. You leave a property unmined for a while and pretty soon your claim’s no good. It’s anybody’s. So I figure you’re just plain Sarah Ebbitt now.” Nate was loud, argumentative.
Sarah sat in the straight-backed chair by the stove, pleating and unpleating her skirt between her fingers.
“You ought to have a husband and kids of your own,” he went on. “Not living with a dried-up old maid, keeping house for her and raising a half-breed Indian kid. You ought to have a man to look after you.”
A war look came into Sarah’s eyes. “I like keeping house with Imogene.”
“That ain’t the point!” He made a chopping gesture and banged the end of his little finger on the chair. “Damn.” He thrust the injured pinky into his mouth and got up to pace in front of the window. The storm had hit; rain drummed against the glass, obscuring the trees on the far side of the yard behind wavering curtains of gray. There had been no single drops to herald the downpour; it had come all at once, dinning on the roof and ringing down the stovepipe. It was dark enough to light the lamps, though it was just after two o’clock.
The bedroom door opened a crack, then all the way, and Wolf came out. “Sarie? I’m having bad dreams.” Sarah’s relief was evident as she turned her attention to the sleepy child. She knelt and pushed the lank hair from his face.
“What’s the matter, Wolf?” She laid the back of her hand on his forehead.
Nate turned from the window. “Damn it, Wolf, go on, get yourself back to bed. Don’t be bothering us now.”
Sarah folded Wolf in her arms. “Your pa doesn’t mean it, honey. What kind of dreams?” When she talked to the child, her shy, uneasy look evaporated, and her hazel eyes were warm, her small mouth soft. Wolf nuzzled into her shoulder.
Nate picked the boy bodily off the floor out of the comfort of Sarah’s embrace. “Come on, kid. This ain’t the time.” To Sarah he said, “You stay put. We ain’t done talking yet.” Before she could say a word he was out the door, Wolf with him.
The storm had broken before Imogene was halfway home, and she ran, her shawl pulled up over her head. Her skirts were heavy with water in a moment, and rain streamed off her face. Wet leaves blew against her, brown with the rain, clinging like seaweed.
As she turned off the river road, up the drive, thunder cracked overhead and a prong of lightning threw the cottage and the yard into sharp relief. Imogene slowed to a walk, clutching her side, panting for breath. Nate stepped out on the porch and slammed the door. Imogene recognized him and stopped. Instinctively she backed against the side of the main house, where she was half-hidden behind the stone chimney.
Nate carried Wolf under his arm; the boy’s face was tight with tears. Nate reached under the canvas waterproof over his saddle and jerked out his hat and coat. He jammed the protesting child into them, pulling the hat down around the boy’s ears. Then, carrying Wolf like a bundle of dirty laundry, Nate plunked him down on the top step of Addie’s back porch, where it was dry. “You stay put, you hear? Don’t you come in till I tell you.” And with that he strode back to the house and let himself in without knocking.
“The nerve of that man!” Imogene whispered. Color rushed to her cheeks and she began to shake. She stepped from the shelter of the chimney and stared at the house. Her lips twitched, thoughts forming and changing as she watched the mute facade of the home she shared with Sarah. Rain formed icy rivulets and ran down her neck and collar.
A chirping sound distracted her. She looked over to the porch where Nate had left his son. Wolf had managed to wriggle out of Nate’s mackinaw, and bareheaded and coatless, he played at boats in the overflow of Addie’s rain gutter. He was as wet as if he’d been tossed in the river. Quickly, Imogene bundled the child in her sodden shawl and ran for the house.
The storm covered the sound of the front door opening.
