The Rose Legacy (8 page)

Quillan leaned on the porch post. “I’ll wait here.” Raising his hat, he shook back his hair. A cricket sang from under the porch, and he could smell Mae’s cooking. Maybe he’d eat here tonight. Though Mae seated more than she roomed, he was early enough to get a place.

And if he could get past Miss DiGratia’s defensiveness, he might even teach her to shoot. She “understood the mechanism.” He laughed softly. Point and shoot. That’s what she needed to know.

Upstairs, Carina pulled the bills from the carpetbag. There were few enough left, things coming, as Mae said, dear up here. She smiled at how she had improved Mr. Shepard’s price for the gun. His face showed he’d not expected it, but it was only one small part of all he owed her.

Taking the money, she went down. Mae was nowhere to be seen, but the aroma of dinner filled the lower rooms. Stewed beef and potatoes. Always stewed beef and potatoes, though twice a week onions and carrots would be added, and once a week it was bear meat in the pot. Carina tried not to think about it.

How she longed for the rich smells of sausage and spicy tomato sauce thick with basil and garlic and oregano. But no one else seemed to care. As soon as the sun dipped below the peaks, the men would come to eat. Like locusts.

She stepped back out to the porch. “There you are, Mr. Shepard.” She handed him the money.

“I prefer Quillan.” He took the bills and tucked them into his shirt pocket without counting. “Shepard’s only loaned to me.”

Loaned? How could a name be loaned? Was it not passed down with pride, father to son, regardless of station? “Loaned, Mr. Shepard?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“What were you called before it was loaned?”

“Quillan.”

Carina studied him, looking, as Papa would have said, under the skin. For a moment, she glimpsed something, but it was gone too soon. She felt as though she had intruded, and he’d put her out like a stray dog nosing where it didn’t belong.

“Have you plans for supper?” A smile quirked his mouth. “Mr. Beck, perhaps?”

Mocking again. Bene. “Mr. Beck is my employer.”

He raised his eyebrows to that. But before he could respond, a crowd of miners drawn by the scent of food rounded the corner of the porch. They climbed the two low stairs and swarmed between them to the door. She recognized three of her fellow boarders, Elliot, Frank, and Joe Turner, whose room she had taken, but who now slept in the dead man’s bed. Each tipped his hat in turn.

Four others she knew but couldn’t remember their names. The rest were strangers. When they had passed, she found Quillan Shepard gone. Looking down the street, she saw him striding away, no doubt thinking already of the next business he would transact.

Later that night Carina joined Mae at the sink. She rinsed and dried the dishes that Mae swabbed in the water, thick and cloudy with soap and the remains of the stew. How many plates had been filled and emptied? As there was no time to wash dishes during the meal, when the plates ran out, those waiting were served on the dishes already used. Carina would never eat unless she was in the first seating.

Carina felt the grit beneath her boots. How long since the floor had been scrubbed? Why would Mae allow such filth in her own kitchen? Carina knew the mice came out at night and ate the scraps that fell. Their traces lined the floorboards. Did Mae not notice or care?

Carina pulled a plate from the steaming rinse tub and wiped it. “I won’t need to use your pistol again. I bought a gun of my own.”

“That’s what Quillan brought you?”

Just Quillan. “Yes.” She stacked the plate and took up the next, the tips of her fingers smarting in the scalding water. “Why does he not have a second name?”

“He has one. Just prefers not to use it.”

“Why?”

Mae shrugged, then hauled a stack of plates to the shelves and slid them into place. She clicked her tongue, shaking her head. “Don’t know how he does it. Those long days on the wagon with no one but himself for company.”

Long days alone. She pictured him walking away from the crowd. She pictured his smug smile. She didn’t want to picture him. She had wanted Mae to talk, to fill the silence. But Quillan Shepard would not have been her choice of topic. Carina turned the plate and dried the back side. “Why doesn’t he take a partner?”

“Can’t say, really.” Mae slid the next plate into the rinse basin. “It’s not that he isn’t liked.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t like in return.”

“Oh, I don’t know that I’d say that.”

Carina started a new plate stack. “He doesn’t like Mr. Beck.”

Mae laughed. “Honey, most of Crystal doesn’t like Mr. Beck.”

“That’s not true. He is always treated with respect. People come to him for help.” She pictured the magnanimous smile, the crates and crates of legal cases he had handled, cases she had only just succeeded in bringing to order. “His table is always held at the hotel, no matter how many others are waiting.”

Mae laughed, deep and heavy.

“He is kind. And
he
did not push my wagon over the cliff.”

Mae’s eyes widened, but her chest still rumbled. “Is that what happened? Quillan sent your wagon over?”

“Mr. Beck says he had the right, but I say,
beh!
” Carina curled her fingertips to her lips with the word, then flung open her palm.

Mae stilled the chuckle. “Well, Quillan’s a strange one. Comes and goes like the devil’s on his heels.”

“Maybe he is.” Carina crossed herself.

Mae laughed right out again. “You’re a strange one, Carina DiGratia.” She seemed to settle inward. “But I’m glad you’ve come.”

Carina sensed the warmth in the words within her own breast. Her throat filled with tears, and at that moment she could have cried out her homesickness and the hurt that had sent her on this crazy flight to Crystal, Colorado. But Mae hung the washrag and left the kitchen. Carina guessed it was closer than Mae had come in a long time to speaking her heart. Why it should be to her, she couldn’t say.

Carina boiled water and scrubbed the floor with green lye soap. On her knees, she remembered each member of her family and blessed them one by one: uncles, aunts, godparents, grandparents living and deceased, and her brothers, Angelo, Joseph, Vittorio, Lorenzo, and Tony. She blessed Mamma and Papa. But she did not bless Divina, nor did she allow a thought for Flavio.

Quillan set the half-eaten plate of beans on the ground before the brown-and-white mottled dog. Resting his forearms on his knees, he sat back against the crate inside the tent wall. “Thanks for dinner, Cain.”

“Nice of you to stop in.” Cain Bradley raised the left stump of leg that ended at the knee and adjusted the flannel pant leg, tied in a knot at its base. “Don’t get around too easy now.”

Quillan nodded, absently stroking the dog’s ear like a swatch of velvet between his fingers and thumb. The animal had lapped the beans in three quick strokes of his long pink tongue, then collapsed at his side in bliss.

“You got to get you a dawg.”

Quillan half smiled.

Cain waved a finger. “I mean it, now. Man needs a dawg near as much as vittles.”

“Don’t have time for a dog.” He stroked the underside of the animal’s jaw until it rolled over and suggested its belly. Quillan rubbed the matted fur along the ribs and soft tissue between.

“Now that’s just the thing. A dawg makes you slow down, take time for livin’.”

“I’m livin’, Cain.”

“Yeah, yeah. You and that half ‘count son o’ mine.” Cain scratched his own side clear up to his armpit.

“He’s bringing in the ore.” Quillan patted the dog’s belly.

“And spendin’ twice what he takes out in the saloons and bawdies.”

Quillan shrugged. “You only live once.”

“I don’t see you throwin’ yer gold down the gully.”

“Don’t have time.”

“Son, when yer sixty-eight, you can talk to me about time.” The old man slapped his hand on the crate at his side. “What are ya? Twenty-three, twenty-four?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Hah. You got more years left than a porcupine’s got needles. You ever been skewered by a porcupine?”

Quillan grinned. “No, can’t say I have.”

“Man alive, it hurts worse’n almost anything ‘cept losin’ a leg.” Cain rubbed the stump.

“I’ll remember that.” Quillan curled his hand around the dog’s forepaw. “You got everything you need, Cain?”

“What man alive can say yessir to that? I make do on what the good Lord allows me.”

And the Lord allows you precious little, Cain
. Quillan glanced about them. “Well, then is there something I can pick up for you?”

“Tobaccy. Bull Durham, for smokin’, don’t ya know. It’s a vice, but the Lord Jesus ain’t perfected me yet.”

Quillan patted the dog’s neck, then pushed himself up.

Cain’s eyes followed him. “You’re off again, then?”

“Bright and early.”

Cain shook his head. “There’s such a thing as too much comin’ and goin’. Ain’t natural.”

Quillan shrugged. “It’s my job.” He shook back his hair and put on his hat. “I’ll be back with that tobacco.” He stooped to exit the tent.

“Thanks for stoppin’ by,” Cain hollered after him.

Quillan waved, then started for his own tent. The wagon stood behind it, already loaded with ore to leave at the smelter on his way out. The horses were in the livery, fed and rested, and he pulled open the canvas door flap and went inside his tent. It was only slightly larger than Cain’s, but sewn and treated by a man named Levi so that it repelled the rain like duck’s feathers. And unlike Cain, he lived in it by choice, not necessity.

He pulled the cash from his vest pocket and knelt beside the bedding neatly tucked around the straw mattress on the canvas floor. Pulling aside a flap of canvas, he touched dirt, then found the edge of the box with his fingertips. He lifted it, dropped the money inside with the rest, and laid the lid in place.

Smoothing the canvas, he sat back on his haunches, considering the disguise that hid his stash. He didn’t know how much was in there, made a point not to count it, a small defiance of his dependence on it. Not dependence literally. Once the money was in the hole, he never took it out. He used what he needed for food and essentials before he put the remainder under his floor.

But it had a hold on him nonetheless. It was his means to personhood, his proof of worth, his guarantee he would never again be indebted to anyone. He smiled grimly at his weakness. No, he did not throw his gold down the gully as Cain said. He buried it under his floor for a tomorrow that might never come.

But then again, it might. Quillan rubbed a hand over his eyes, stretched, then settled into his bedding. He rolled to his side and tucked an arm under his head. Morning would come soon enough.

Staring at the tent flap after Quillan left, Cain felt a familiar pang. What was it about the young man that stirred him so? Though he knew the parts of Quillan’s past that they’d talked of directly—and some few that Quillan might not even know—it wasn’t that. It was in the fabric of the man himself.

Everyone had flaws, and Cain was sure Quillan was no different. But there was in him a basic goodness, try as he might to hide it in nonchalance and sometimes downright surliness. Quillan had a good heart, though maybe he showed it more often to an old cripple and his wayward son than most others. Still, there was a shell around that goodness like a limestone geode holding the crystals inside where none could see.

Why? And why did he resist the Lord’s call? Cain knew it was so. Soon as the name of Jesus came up, Quillan got all quiet and closed up, then skedaddled. It was sure enough the quickest way to show Quillan Shepard the door.

Cain reached down and grabbed his soft, worn leather Bible. He held it in one palm and caressed it with the other as a man might the warm cheek of his first love. Quillan was like the rich young man who came to Jesus asking, “What must I do to be saved?” The man walked away sad because he couldn’t do the one thing the Lord required … give over himself.

Had nothing to do with riches, really. That was just where that story-man’s heart lay. Quillan wasn’t wrapped up in worldly goods, but his worth was bound up somewhere and locked away where the good Lord couldn’t get at it. Cain shook his head. “I cain’t figure it, Lord.”