Yellowstone Memories (10 page)

W
yatt tried to speak, but his mouth felt dry, like he’d swallowed straw. “You’re serious.” His hands shook. “You’re really serious. What’s in the sack?” Wyatt tugged on the side of the outhouse roof as if to pull himself up, desperately wishing he could see.

“It’s the gold,” Jewel whispered. “Pounds of it. Nuggets of all sizes. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

She reached into the hole in the roof and then reached down toward him with cupped hands. Dribbling a rain of gold nuggets into his outstretched palms.

Wyatt turned the gold over in his fingers, speechless. Snow sifted down on the pile of gleaming nuggets in white streaks, sticking in ornately pronged flakes and then melting into tiny water beads.

“We’ve … we’ve found it,” he whispered. “So Ezra Kind wasn’t bluffing about the gold—and the Thoen Stone’s real. I can’t believe it. I never thought …” Wyatt glanced up at Jewel. “You were right about the outhouse thing.”

“A wild guess.” She tucked her neck and shivered in the wind.

“A good one.” Wyatt looked down again at the gold in his hand. Funny thing though—it didn’t look much like gold at all. He sifted it in his fingers, watching the light gleam on the dull, brownish edges of mottled nuggets, like dirty cracked corn. The kind he might fling to his uncle’s chickens without a second thought.

And to think this yellowish stuff was the metal of kings, of ancient currencies and Egyptian tombs.

He could buy a new suit now—a new team of the best horses—the best oats for Samson—repair the wagon—help Uncle Hiram pay off the rest of his cattle. Start a sheep business. By jingle, he’d run the sheep business! And books—the best books—new ones! He’d have a collection. No, a library!

And the land … oh, the land he’d longed for nearly all his life. Beautiful Cheyenne prairie that had nestled just out of his reach—occupied by the murderers who’d taken his family away from him. Not for sale exactly, no—but for the right price, even the US Cavalry would … ahem … negotiate.

He’d dreamed of the deed, the feel of the paper in his hands. The persuasive argument in favor of US interests, with all the right words and loopholes. The smirk of satisfaction as the judge signed his name in black ink:
“Land ceded to the United States Government, supervised by Mr. Wyatt E. Kelly.”
The bang of a gavel.

He’d have his revenge after all—the last say.

Long-lost wishes and thoughts swelled up in Wyatt’s throat in giddy delirium, nearly choking him.

Jewel was straining at something in the hole in the roof, pulling and twisting, and Wyatt barely had time to react when she heaved a heavy sack at him. He threw the handful of nuggets in his coat pocket and grabbed the sack before it bowled him over.

“Watch your aim, will you?” Wyatt grunted as he lowered the hefty sack to the ground. It slid sideways into a fat, lumpy pile, the threadbare patches on the sack nearly ripping open.

“You try balancing on a roof and handling a bag this heavy,” Jewel shot back.

“Well, just warn me next time.” Wyatt knelt and pulled at the top of the sack. Images spun through his mind: the abandoned inn outside Cody. Gold nuggets dripping through his fingers like yellow sawdust. His patched trousers, and a fat pocket full of heavy nuggets.

Time seemed to stop; the neck of the bag slipped open in a blurry haze.

“You’re not going to faint again, are you?”

“What did you say?”

And Wyatt looked up in time to see a black circle opening over his head, swallowing him whole.

“You’re really something,” Jewel was saying from the top of the outhouse.

Wyatt looked up from where he leaned against the log side of the outhouse, head bent. One arm against the wall for support.

“What’s wrong with you? Have you always been this … uh … fragile?” It sounded like she was going to say the word
weak
but slipped in a substitute at the last second.

Wyatt bristled. “I’m fine, okay?” He stood up shakily and wiped his face. “Just a little vertigo is all. Why’s it such a big deal?”

Jewel scooted down the outhouse roof and dangled off then let herself go. She dropped to the ground next to Wyatt and refolded her wool shawl. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just …” She shrugged and brushed the snow from her hair. “You’re different.”

“I’m who I am, all right?” Wyatt snapped. “I get overwhelmed by things, I guess. Too much emotion and not enough guts. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“I never said that.” Jewel pressed her lips together, and streaks of snow fell past her face like shooting stars. “I like who you are, Mr. Kelly. The most honest man I’ve ever met.” She raised her face boldly to his. “And you’ve got plenty of guts. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

Wyatt knelt by the sack, not looking up at her. Incredibly thankful the brim of his cowboy hat hid his burning face. “Of course not,” he fumbled, trying to pick up a couple of gold nuggets and dropping them clumsily in the grass. “You’d have figured it out already and been halfway back to wherever by now.” He looked up at her with a plaintive, hollow gaze. “I guess that’s what you’re going to do now that you’ve got the gold, isn’t it?”

“Maybe.” Jewel knelt next to him and opened the mouth of the sack, sifting her hand through the nuggets.

“I thought so.” Wyatt scooped up the scattered nuggets and dropped them lifelessly in the sack. “I guess I always figured you’d go back to your people someday.” He swallowed, barely peeking over the brim of his hat to see her. Wishing he had something to offer her—to make her stay.

But she was a rich woman now, and she certainly didn’t need him. Hurt seared under his breastbone, startling him.

Jewel didn’t answer, turning a golden chunk between her fingers. “I said maybe,” she corrected him softly, almost sternly. “But probably not. If you want to know the truth, I’ve already been back to Nebraska.” Jewel dropped her gaze and tied the sack shut. “And it didn’t work.”

“What do you mean it didn’t work?”

“I’m not one of them anymore, if you can understand.” Jewel tucked her cold hands inside her shawl and shivered, looking positively frozen. “I lived with the French community in Idaho for years, and I’m not who I was before. I don’t understand Arapaho ways like I used to. I walk differently, dress differently, even eat differently now. I’ve forgotten many of the old ways.”

“You could learn again, I guess.” Wyatt tugged on the sack of gold, the weight making him stagger off balance. Keeping his face turned away.

“I don’t know if I could or if I’d want to.” Jewel bent over and helped him catch a bulging corner. “I’m different now, and sometimes there’s no going back. They didn’t accept me and my new ways, just as they didn’t accept my French mother before she died. Only this time I was viewed as a deserter, a sellout. Like an ordinary white woman who left her Indian heritage behind.”

“Wait a second.” Wyatt grunted, hefting the sack to the other arm. “They sold you in marriage! How can they call you a deserter?”

“Marriages and treaties have been part of our culture for generations. My marriage was no different.” Jewel’s boots left tracks in the snow beside his. “But they expected something impossible—that I return to them the same way I left, when I was fourteen. It can never be done.”

She gave a soft sigh. “It’s like Abraham in that Bible of yours, Mr. Kelly. Try as he might, Abraham could never go back to Ur.”

“Of course not. He’d moved on.”

“More than that.” Jewel turned briefly to face him. “He’d come face-to-face with the living God, and he would never be the same.” Her breath misted. “Truth and character, Mr. Kelly, cannot be undone.” Her breath let out a frosty puff. “But I guess you don’t have a clue what it feels like to have no home, do you?”

“Me?” Wyatt chuckled. “You think I call my uncle’s ranch ‘home’?”

Jewel looked up swiftly, as if in surprise—and Wyatt shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong. My uncle’s cared for me since I was a boy, and I’m grateful to him. I respect him as my uncle, and I will until the day I die. But I’ll never fit in there. He thinks I’m a nobody—with no potential.” He paused to scratch his red head under his cowboy hat. “And he’s probably right. Truth be told, there
is
no place for me to go, Miss Moreau. I’ve lost my parents. My sisters.” He swallowed, and his throat seemed to swell two sizes. “The only people I’ve ever truly loved in my whole life. What kind of God would do that to a boy, I ask you?” He sent a severe look Jewel’s way. “Since you’re so enamored with this God of Abraham?”

Jewel spoke so softly Wyatt almost couldn’t hear over the quiet crunch of her boots. “The same God who gave up His own Son for you,” she said, looking up briefly. “Without sparing Him or holding anything back. That’s the way I see it, anyway.”

Wyatt nearly dropped the bag of gold. He grunted and fumbled for it, mumbling something about the burlap being too old and too damp, and pretended not to hear her. He tramped his way through the spruce boughs toward the horses, trying to push away the image of the family Bible on Uncle Hiram’s table. The words and lines, burning deep into his heart. Resonating suddenly, like the gentle thunder of wind in the pines.

“So what are you going to do, then, with your share of the gold?” he finally asked, gruffly changing the subject and feeling inexplicably ashamed. After all the years that Bible had gathered dust on Uncle Hiram’s mantel, had he ever once cracked it open of his own accord?

“I’ll use the gold to take me as far as I can go and build my own homestead. Far from Wyoming, where people are hunting for my life.”

“You’re right about the ‘hunting for your life’ part.” Wyatt set down the heavy sack, groaning, and stretched his back. “So do you want to divide up the gold now or wait until we get back to the ranch? I swear I’ll give you your share.”

“You can stop saying that, Mr. Kelly.” Jewel touched his arm lightly. “I believe you.”

“Oh. Well, thanks.” And he stood there like an idiot, not even moving to pick up the sack. Hands in his pockets and face hot as a griddle. Opening his mouth to say something—anything— that might make her stay at the ranch a little longer.

To forget Nebraska or her own homestead for a while.

“Let’s pack it on my pony, though,” she said, shivering as the wind changed directions slightly. “Bétee’s saddlebags carry more than yours, and she has more space. I ride bareback.”

“What?” Wyatt fidgeted in his pockets. She might as well have asked for the moon; he hadn’t heard a word she said. “Sure. Whatever you say.” He stepped over a clump of snowy roots and opened the pony’s worn saddlebag flap.

“What about you?” Jewel helped him tighten the twine at the neck of the sack, and they lifted it together. “You’ve never told me what you plan to do with the gold.”

Wyatt didn’t answer, and his face darkened. “Catch that end, will you?” he grunted, straining to hoist up the gold to a saddlebag. “This thing’s awfully hard to lift without splitting the burlap.”

“So you won’t tell me.” Jewel shivered again, and this time her lips took on a purplish sheen below reddened cheeks as she helped him shove the sack in the saddlebag. She hopped from one foot to the other, blowing on her hands to warm them.

Wyatt took a long time adjusting the gold in the saddlebag and shaking it out to even the weight. He squeezed the saddlebag closed after three tries and strained to strap it shut then fiddled with the clasp on the buckle. “My father was killed by the Cheyenne,” he said in a taut voice, not looking up. “I’ve hated those people all my life.”

Jewel hesitated, straightening the blanket under her pony’s saddle pack, which gaped at the stitches from the weight of the gold. “I’d probably hate them, too, if they killed my father.”

“I loved my father.” Wyatt’s knuckles bulged as he squeezed the strap. “More than anything. And they killed him. Not only that, but they butchered my mother and sisters, too. I lost everybody. Everything.” He shook his head. “I’ve got nothing left but my uncle, and he thinks I’m a shrimp. A nobody. A good-for-nothing who will never make anything of his life. And he’s probably right.”

“Says who? Why do you think you can’t compare to your father?”

“He was a big man. Strong. Brave and bold.” Wyatt scuffed a boot angrily on the grass. “I’m none of those things. Never have been. I’m a homebody. A … a guy who faints when he sees a spider.” He shook out the pack to make more space. “I had tuberculosis as a child and was always this feeble, sickly thing. It’ll never change.”

“You don’t have to be a copy of your father, Mr. Kelly, to be like him.” Jewel poured a handful of loose gold into the pack. “You can follow his path in your own way.”

“What path? I’m no good at anything. My father had built his homestead, produced three children, and arm wrestled grizzly bears by the time he was my age. He cut our cabin out of the woods, right under the noses of the Sioux, and made a hearty living doing whatever he pleased. If I lived my whole life, I couldn’t be half the man he was.” He straightened his hat. “I can’t shoot. I can’t really do anything well.”

That was an understatement. The last time he’d shot at prairie dogs on the ranch, he’d wasted fifteen shots and not hit a single one. He did manage to shoot a window out of one of the barns, though—and Uncle Hiram pitched a fit about that.