Carla Kelly (19 page)

Paul was standing on the sidewalk when she closed the front door behind her. He took her hand without a word, and they walked back to the city center in silence.

She put on the negligee that night, happy to offer herself to a husband in pain and hoping she could relieve some of it. Not that the negligee probably made any difference. He reached for her before the lights were out.

When they finished, she looked under the bed for the negligee. “I have the hardest time keeping track of my bedclothes,” she grumbled, her head hanging over the edge. She was rewarded with a drowsy laugh from her husband and a pat on the rump.

“Forget the nightgown, sport,” he said. He turned out the light by the bed and held out his arms to her. “Just stay close.”

“I'm good at that.”

He was silent a long time, but she knew he was awake. He ran his hand down her arm in a gesture so soothing that her eyes closed.

“I'm a lucky man,” he said finally. “I'm with my best girl, and we're heading home.”

“You'll be happy again.”

“I'm happy now, Julia. Just a bit tender. Treat me kindly. You know, as you would the King of the House of Hapsburg.”

Maybe it was the tumult in Julia's heart over James; maybe the baked chicken was more elderly than should have been served in the dining room. Whatever the reason, she had the dream again that night.

She could smell the smoke as she had smelled it for weeks last summer, hanging over the valley. In ponderous slow motion, she ran down the hill toward the shallow stream that looked no wider than a rivulet from Papa's garden hose. Her legs started to draw up toward her chest as she watched the flames roar over the ridge and explode in the house. She turned her face toward the cut bank, searching for air.

It was different this time, even though it took her a long, panicky moment to realize. She tried to draw herself into a compact ball, but Paul was pressing on her legs, his hands firm. She fought him for a moment, then woke up, her terror leaving her as he ran his hand down her leg. After a long, long moment, she began to relax. She slept, safe from the fires in her mind.

Julia woke before sunrise, her head on Paul's chest. She moved just enough to admire his profile. She touched his face, tracing the little wrinkles around his eyes. His was the face of a man used to weather, someone who faced the storm. “Let me learn from you,” she whispered.

He opened his eyes at her tentative exploration. “I'm all yours,” he said. “Any little thing. Julia, are you all right?”

She nodded. He kissed her forehead and settled his arm around her.

“I'm sorry…” she began.

“Don't apologize for something you have no control over when you sleep.” He rose up on his elbow to see her better in the low light. “We could make a deal, you and I.”

She watched his face, then nodded, wary. “It's simple: you don't worry so much about bad dreams, and I won't gnaw my fingernails off to the elbows, worrying about the house I didn't build for you. A deal?”

“It's easy to say,” she temporized. “Yeah, talk's cheap. I'll worry about your dream, because it doesn't bother me, and you can worry about the house, which doesn't bother you. It's right out of Mosiah 18. I'll bear your burdens if you'll bear mine.”

She nodded, touched to be reminded. He sat up and stretched. “If you have nothing better to do right now, Mrs. Otto, I vote we take advantage of that big tub in the next room. I'll scrub your shoulder blades if you'll scrub mine, and then it's back to a tin basin in the tack room. The honeymoon will be officially over.”

“Only if you want it to be,” she teased. “I like celebrating events early and often.”

“Early's always good for a stockman.”

After a quick stop at the Gillespies’, which meant an awkward hug from Sister Gillespie, who looked ready for her confinement any day, they made the morning Cheyenne and Northern to Gun Barrel with minutes to spare.

“I have to wonder that Heber would go out of town when she looks ready to deliver,” Paul said as they sat down. “That's about when I start pulling in my cows, keeping them close to the home place.”

“I will
never
tell Emma of that comparison,” Julia said, getting out her knitting again. “And you are
not
to sling the calving ropes in the tack room, also known as our house until further notice!”

Paul winced. “I'll be browbeaten and henpecked before we reach my property line.”

“
Our
property line,” she reminded him, digging him in the ribs with her elbow and not dropping a stitch.

He put his arm around her, his lips on her ear. “Whatever happened to that sweet little cook on the platform in Gun Barrel?”

“She's been replaced by a wife, cowboy,” Julia said, trying not to smile. “I distinctly heard you say yes in the Salt Lake Temple.”

“I did, indeed. Smartest thing I ever did. Just remember that when I carry you across the threshold into the tack room.”

Hours later, Julia expressed her pleasure at being in the saddle again with a yell, making her normally placid horse step sideways in alarm.

“Whoa, boys,” Paul said as he quieted Chief and tightened the lead on the pack horse Matt had left in the livery stable too. “We'll make it home before dark if we don't stop at the Marlowes’. Julia, I wish you could see your face. You look about as excited as James on Christmas morning.”

“I've missed the Double Tipi,” she said simply.

They rode steadily through the afternoon. The snow still lay in drifts and the horses picked their way carefully. Still, Julia could sense spring in the air. She pulled back on the reins suddenly and Millie stopped.

“Blue Corn,” she said. “Does he think it's still winter, or has he already left? I hate to think I've missed him.”

Paul reined in beside her and just looked at her for a long moment.

She knew; he didn't have to say anything. “He's dead, isn't he?” she asked, her voice soft. She leaned out to touch her husband's knee.

Paul nodded, and sat quietly for a long time, looking into the distance. Julia waited for him to gather his thoughts and compose himself.

He moved Chief even closer to Julia's horse. “He arrived on time last winter, and sure enough, the first snowfall came the next day. Charlotte took good care of him all winter, there in the old tack shed. She speaks a little Lakota, and he enjoyed that.”

He sat there, taking deep breaths, for another long moment. “We had some fair weather in early March. When I visited him with Charlotte one evening, I signed that I thought he would be gone by now. Blue Corn just shook his head. And wouldn't you know, the next morning, the last blizzard of the season rolled in.”

“He always knew,” Julia said.

Paul nodded. “Spring came after that. One night, I told Charlotte he would probably be gone the next day, and… and I suppose he was.” He couldn't say anything else.

“Did you bury him in the ground?” Julia had a hard time speaking around the boulder in her throat.

“Oh no. Charlotte and I built him a scaffold out where my parents are buried,” he told her. “Wind, rain, snow, and Wyoming will do their work.”

She saw the tears in his eyes and felt the tears in hers. “Blue Corn saw himself as your protector.” It wasn't a question; she knew it was so.

Paul nodded again. “All winter, he wanted to make certain you were coming. A week before he died, I assured him that in ten sleeps, I was going on the iron horse to get you.”

He brushed his hand across his eyes in that familiar gesture that she knew meant he did not want to talk. She waited.

“That satisfied him,” Paul continued, when he could speak. “He signed to me, ‘Your heart will be good again when she comes.’ ” He just looked at Julia for another long minute. “He was right, as right as he was about the weather. My heart is good again. He knew it was okay to join his ancestors.”

He touched her knee this time, then started Chief in motion, riding ahead in silence until the sorrow passed, then joining her again to ride by her side.

The air was brisk, but as Julia rode, she saw the signs of spring in the activity of small birds building nests in the lodge pole pines. She breathed the fragrance of earth waking up, thankful to be away from concrete and buildings. “You had quite a winter,” she said, riding close on the places where the trail was narrow because of snow. “There are some real ruts here.”

“Strange. Looks like someone pulled a heavy wagon or two. Funny I didn't notice them on the way down.”

“Maybe your sweethearts bought a player piano.”

“You nut.” He looked again at the ruts, and Julia smiled to see his good humor back. “I'm a dunce! I asked the hands to wrestle the new Queen Atlantic up here. They're supposed to have set it up in the horse barn, your new kitchen.”

“I'll be cooking for horses?” she joked.

Her husband laughed, and that was his last laugh as they neared the almost-hidden turnoff to the Double Tipi. Julia knew he still agonized over his inability to deliver the promised house. He was a man of his word, and she knew it pained him to fall short. House or not, she could barely resist the urge to race ahead to see the Double Tipi valley.

“Go ahead, Darling,” Paul said. “You're itching to see the place again, aren't you? The burned land still looks pretty bad, and I know the river's high now.”

Funny she hadn't thought about the river. She slowed her horse and then stopped.

Paul passed her, then obviously stopped to think about it. He returned to her side, leaned toward her with a creak of leather, and kissed her cheek. “Hey now, sport. You'll get used to seeing the cut bank again. You have to let it go.”

Julia nodded and kneed her horse into motion again, staying closer to Paul's side.

There it was, full of water from the spring runoff, swift and deep. To her relief, the burned branches had either been hauled away or swept downstream. She looked at the cut bank and felt her breath coming quicker.

“It doesn't look like the same river,” she said finally.

“It isn't. I see now why my father didn't build right on the bank,” Paul said. “The current's swift, so grip Millie tight with your knees. You know, kind of like you… uh… hang onto me.”

“You are a rascal,” she said, blushing furiously, and coaxed her mare forward.

They crossed the river carefully and headed up the valley, Paul looking ahead. Julia watched his face for disappointment, determined not to be unhappy herself.
He has to understand that it doesn't matter
, she thought.

“Whoa.” Paul jerked back on his reins. “Julia. Julia!”

His words sounded strangled, unnatural. Alarmed, she looked where he was pointing and sucked in her breath.

A two-story white-painted house with a deep veranda stood halfway between the unburned buildings and the river, the shutters painted sky blue. Was that a porch swing? Maybe it was a trick of twilight. She closed and then opened her eyes. The house was still there, with people coming out of the front door, waving to them.

“Paul, you were teasing me the whole time,” she said when she could speak. “Paul?”

She looked at her husband, who bowed his head forward until he was touching Chief's head. He sobbed out loud; she reached for him, clutching his arm as he cried.

“Paul. What…?” She edged Millie closer.

“They built it in two weeks.” He sobbed again, and her heart turned over. “As God is my witness, I had no idea.”

“I believe you,” she whispered and felt her own face grow tight. She leaned forward in her saddle, still clutching her husband's arm, and looked at the people on the porch now. “I see Karl Rudiger, and… oh my heavens, the whole Cheyenne Sunday School.” She shook his arm more vigorously. “Is that your cousin Ed Hickman?”

Paul managed a watery chuckle. “He did tell me at the reception two weeks ago that he had to catch the eastbound train.” He looked at her. “I don't know what to say.”

As she leaned closer to kiss his wet cheek, he reached out to steady her. “You're not so good at that in the saddle yet, sport,” he told her.

“But I'm great at it everywhere else,” she said. She reached into her pocket for a handkerchief and handed it to him. “Dry up, cowboy. You have a reputation to maintain.”

“It's gone,” he said as he blew his nose. “They can probably hear me bawling in Gun Barrel.”

“I don't care,” she whispered. “You're the best man in the world, and it appears that you have a lot of very good friends who agree with me. Come on! Do I have to take your reins and lead you?”

“Like to see you try,” he said, with his old humor. He took a long, shuddering breath that went right to her heart and kneed Chief forward.

The builders lined the porch. There were Doc and Matt, and even Kringle, as well as Dan Who Counts and Curtis McLeish, Paul's new hands, and a tall Indian girl she didn't recognize. Maybe it was Charlotte Who Counts. With a little sigh, she saw Karl Rudiger, his grin both wide and proud. He stood with two men she didn't know, but they all wore carpenter's aprons. “Oh, my,” she said, to see Charlie McLemore and Allen Cuddy, their nearest neighbors. The Marlowes were there too.

“No wonder President Gillespie wasn't in town,” Paul whispered, taking his own census of the porch's occupants. He gestured toward the little man next to Heber. “Cora Shumway did say Eugene had some hauling to do. Julia, I can't believe I'm too shy to get off my horse. I'm not sure my feet will hold me.”

“Well, I'm getting off,” she said. “I want to see this house!”

That was all it took. Paul dismounted and helped her from the saddle. He went straight up the front steps and wrapped his arms around Brother Gillespie, who gestured for her. In a moment they were in the center of the talking, laughing crowd, everyone speaking at once.

Finally, Paul held up his hand. It didn't surprise her even a little that everyone stopped talking.
Oh, and you think you've lost your reputation
, Julia thought, amused.

“Thank you,” he said simply. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Who… How…”

“Howdy to you, Chief,” Max Marlowe said. “We'll ’fess up after you pick up your bride—Julia, was there a shortage of men in Salt Lake?—and carry her across your threshold.”