A Claim of Her Own (37 page)
“Wise of you,” Tom murmured as he looked outside.
“You’re working late tonight.”
“Not working so much as worrying.”
Mattie looked around. “Where
is
Freddie, anyway? This is no night for that boy to be out hunting.”
“Oh, Freddie will be fine,” Tom said. “He’s got little hidey-holes all over this area. He took me hunting once, and we got caught in a downpour, but we were sitting by a warm fire in a little cave almost before either of us got wet.” He paused. “It’s not Freddie I’m concerned about.”
Mattie looked back outside. “You think it’s doing this down South?”
“As far as I can tell this
came
from that direction.”
She sat down at the table. “I see.”
“So,” Mattie asked after a few moments of silence, “what do freighters do when they’re caught in a storm?”
Tom shook his head. “They weather it. They don’t have a choice.”
“I remember Swede telling me that a couple of the men she usually freights with used to live with Indians. They’ll know what to do.” Mattie reached over and patted Tom’s hand. “She’ll be all right. They won’t let anything happen to her.”
He sighed. “Not if they can help it.” He looked out at the snow again. Shook his head. Finally, he stood up. “Well, I believe I’ve proven a man can’t worry snow away, so I’ll be going.” He nodded toward the stairs. “It’ll be really cold up there. If it were me, I’d bunk by the stove down here tonight.”
Mattie agreed and took his advice.
Justice barking at the back door brought her fully awake on Sunday morning, her hand at her gun. When she heard Tom’s key in the door lock, Mattie hastened to stoke the fire in the store. When she returned to the kitchen, she saw that Aron Gallagher had come in with Tom and was already setting the coffeepot on the stove.
Mattie looked in question at him. He smiled and shrugged. “There’s going to be another rescue mission. Only this time it’s just Tom and me and a string of mules.”
“You’re going after Swede and the others,” Mattie said.
Aron nodded. “There’s no way to know if they’re all right or not, but Tom just can’t stop worrying.” He winked at her. “Mostly about the baby, to hear him tell it.”
“How can I can help?”
“Pack supplies,” Aron said, his arm sweeping toward the store. “Canned oysters. Meat. Anything that will travel well.”
“Aunt Lou and I baked a dozen loves of bread yesterday,” Mattie said. “I know she’d be glad to—”
“I’ll go get it,” Tom said, and left without another word.
Mattie and Aron went into the main store and began setting supplies on a counter. “Is this—are they in serious trouble?” she asked.
“No way to know,” Aron said, “although I’m inclined to believe they all have enough experience on the trail to weather it fairly well for at least a few days, and this time of year it should warm up again before too much longer.”
Mattie blinked back tears. “I just can’t believe God would let anything happen to Swede or Eva.”
Aron didn’t give her the answer she wanted. “His ways are not our ways” was all he said.
“That’s not very comforting.”
“Actually,” Aron said as he packed a saddlebag, “it can be very reassuring. Who needs a god they can understand—or order around, for that matter?”
Mattie worked for a few minutes before blurting out a question. “How do you live with the things you don’t know about God?”
Aron smiled without looking her way. “By clinging to the things I do.”
Mattie recited the litany of things she’d heard in his sermons. “Hope. Eternity. God plans. God knows. God allows. God permits. All for our good and His glory.” She didn’t try to keep the mocking tone from her recitation.
“I’m glad you’ve been listening. That’s a good start.” He paused. “I just hope you take things past the list you just repeated.”
“Aunt Lou says faith just gets dumped on a person.”
Aron chuckled. “I suppose it does sometimes.”
“Well, that’s probably what it’s going to take if I’m ever going to change what I think of preachers and sermons.” She glanced at Aron and hurried to correct herself. “Present company excluded, of course.”
“Thank you. I’ll accept that as a compliment, especially coming from a woman who my friend Tom says has a highly developed manure detector.”
Aron and Tom had talked about her? What did that mean? Mattie climbed a ladder sitting in front of the shelves and began handing down canned meat. As she descended the ladder, Aron took her arm. She’d reached the third rung from the bottom when he grasped her around the waist and lifted her down.
“Thank you,” she said. Feeling her cheeks burning, she hustled toward the kitchen. “You and Tom should have a big breakfast before you head out into this.”
And they did.
It might be snowing, but it was Sunday, and with the weather against them, miners descended on Deadwood with a vengeance. By noon Mattie had heard gunfire at least twice and endured a tittering visit from the Underwood girls, who came over because they were concerned that the reverend was in ill health because church had been canceled. When they heard what had happened, they sighed with admiration and promised to pray for the “victims.”
“I don’t think there will be any victims,” Mattie said, more harshly than she’d intended.
“Of . . . of course not.” Kitty Underwood blinked. “I didn’t mean—” She took a deep breath. Mattie was grateful when the two girls fluttered their way out the door. Let them bother someone else. Of course, once they were gone the silence in the store was almost as annoying as the Underwood sisters.
Worry descended. After a fruitless attempt at distracting herself with shelf-dusting, Mattie decided that if Kitty Underwood could talk to God, she could, too. Maybe it wouldn’t be a prayer exactly. Aunt Lou and Aron had said God was always planning and permitting and allowing and all of that. So maybe a little reminder wouldn’t hurt.
Clearing her throat, Mattie spoke aloud, “So Aunt Lou says that you give people faith. Well, I’ve never had any, but Freddie and Swede do. And Aunt Lou and Aron do. And they’re good people and you know I care about them.” She paused. Gulped. She had said it aloud. She cared about Aron. “So. I guess you being God and all, that’s no news to you, is it? The thing is, it would be a very bad winter if these people I care about, if they weren’t all right. Especially Eva.
Especially Aron
.” Had she said that part about Aron out loud or not? Her voice wavered as she concluded, “And I think it’s already been a hard enough year for me. Don’t you?” She swiped at a tear. “So I hope you don’t mind listening to someone like me. And if you decide to dump some faith on me sometime . . . I wouldn’t mind.”
Mattie O’Keefe, what have you gone and done now, praying to a
God you aren’t even sure listens . . . and falling for a man of the cloth.
Freddie came limping into the store along about suppertime that day.
“You’re hurt!” Mattie exclaimed. “What happened?”
“Nothing much,” he said, shrugging out of his fur coat and holding his palms up to the stove. “I slipped is all. My ankle hurts. It’s not broken or anything. The snow made it slippery. I stopped at your claim and you were gone. And I slipped.”
“Get your boot off,” Mattie said. “Let me see it. We might have the doc take a look at it—”
“It’s all
right
, I said. Where’s Tom?”
“Tom and Aron put together a supply train and headed south.” She hastened to add, “They weren’t sure the snow would be all that heavy further south, but—”
Freddie interrupted. “You don’t have to make up a story. I saw the storm come in from the south. It’s already been down where Mor is.” He pressed his lips together for a moment, then he smiled. “But I prayed. And she’ll be all right. And Eva, too. You don’t have to worry.”
Looking up into Freddie’s calm blue eyes, Mattie wished she had faith like that.
He knew. Knew everything he needed to know. And just when it all came together, just when he had a plan . . . snow. Jonas cursed the snow as he shivered by his campfire on the ridge above Mattie’s claim. Dillon must be mining somewhere else. Or dead. That was still an unanswered question, but everything else . . . he knew.
Her claim was paying. He’d seen her take nugget after nugget out of the ground. But he’d never seen her go to the bank. Not once. Which meant the gold was hidden somewhere on the claim. Likely in the tent. Now that he knew she didn’t own that store in town, he was convinced she also still had most of the money she’d taken from him. He would get it back. She didn’t own the general store and she didn’t really work at the hotel. Oh no. Mattie O’Keefe had made
friends
in Deadwood. She’d even started going to church. It was all so touching. And it was all going to be so short-lived.
The key to it all was the simpleminded boy. He and Mattie had some kind of bond. He hunted for her, and it was obvious from the way she acted when he was around that she cared about him. Of course, she probably cared about the mealymouthed preacher, too, what with his perfect face and smile. But Jonas’s plan would be easier to work using the simpleminded boy. He would be easy to snare.
It was time. Jonas despised the snow and hated the cold, but it was proving useful, for the preacher and Swede’s husband had left with a mule train that morning. Jonas grinned in anticipation. This was going to be fun.
The soul of the wicked desireth evil.
Proverbs 21:10
I
t was quite comfortable, really, sheltered inside of what was essentially a snow hut with a canvas roof. The roof was slanted, so the snow had not accumulated, and there was no threat that it would fall in. The hard-packed snow stacked all around at ground level ensured they were out of the wind. Eva, her little face and sweet hands barely poking out of her fur bunting, was sitting atop a bedroll playing pat-a-cake with Red Tallent while others played cards. One of the boys had a mandolin. He played amazingly well. Being caught by an early snowstorm was not at all the terrifying event it could have been.
The snow had stopped, praise be to God. Finally. After three days. How they would fight their way through the drifts that must be awaiting them, Swede did not know. How long it would take to get back to Deadwood, she could not know. But the grip of fear that had kept her awake at night was gone.