Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

Waltzing In Ragtime (7 page)

The ranger looked up from his task. “Do you get lonesome?”

“I … no, of course not!”

He ventured closer. “You like Dickens? Mr. Twain?”

Olana could feel her face brighten with remembrance. “I was reading
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
at home. Mama wouldn’t let me take it along. She says Mr. Twain is coarse, and has dangerous ideas.”

“Got it!” He disappeared into his refuge and returned with a stack of books packed under his chin. “Top,” he directed. Her
fingers righted his cocked spectacles instinctively. Their eyes met, and he smiled at the contact she’d initiated. Olana took the new edition of the book from the stack. “Order came in to Mrs. Goddard’s day before I left,” he explained. “You read it first.”

“Perhaps we could read it aloud — to each other.”

“Sure. We could do that.”

He reached into his back pocket for a soft cloth and began dusting his older, well-used books. “Brought out more Twain, a Poe collection, Hawthorne. Got Dickens’
A Tale of Two Cities. David
—”

“These will keep me company for awhile!” Olana took the cloth from his hand and resumed his dusting. “You are a scholar, Mr. Hart.”

His face widened again, this time into a grin that was boyish, despite the beard. “No, I ain’t. Just like a ripping good story.”

Olana continued dusting, then became entranced with the soft cloth. “Even your rags are beautifully woven, like your shirts.”

“You want more?”

“More?”

“Of the cloth, I mean.”

He disappeared again, rumbling through another of his trunks. Cloth and books. Bluebeard, indeed, Olana almost laughed to herself. He returned and set bright, deep-colored fabric before her. Cards of needles, too, and spools of thread, a pair of scissors. Olana felt like a child at Christmas.

He cocked his head. “You can sew?”

“I am somewhat useful, Mr. Hart.” She couldn’t maintain the irritation in her tone, when he looked so roundly chastised. “May I use … choose from all this?”

“Sure.”

For the first time, the way he pronounced sure like “shore,” made her smile. He pulled off his spectacles and searched her face.

“Give it time. It will come back,” he promised.

Two days. Two days was all it took. Olana was mortified. She fixed her gaze on the venison he was cutting for her.

“I — will now be able to use the clean rags you mentioned.”

No anger. No flaming vindication. Only a warm smile. “It’s come. Good.”

He rose from the table and brought a bottle of dark wine from the recesses of his curtained room. As Olana watched him fill her cup, she dared to think that his new attentiveness might not stop, even now. Still, she must apologize. For assuming the worst from a man who’d kept her alive, who was doing his best to return her home. But how? How could she find the words for such private, forbidden things?

He touched the rim of her cup with his. “To your continued recovery,” he offered a shy toast.

“And to the discontinuation of wretched tasting sea kelp!”

He laughed. She joined him, hardly recognizing the deeper tones her voice was making in its mirth. She stopped suddenly, realizing they were celebrating what every woman she knew kept her own dark monthly secret.

“Mr. Hart, you are the strangest man I’ve ever encountered!” No, that was not what she meant to say at all.

But he only laughed again. “And you are hardly the first indelicate enough to make that observation, Miss Whittaker,” he assured her.

five

The air was crisp, clear, not as cold as it had been. Was it the beginnings of a thaw? Matthew had been tricked before, in the Klondike. The mistakes he’d made there kept him cautious. If he were just sure her feet could take the cold in case they got caught somewhere on the way down to Three Rivers.

He scanned the wide, white horizon, enjoying the stillness. He was used to his winters alone. Even if he had no duties, no charts to make, no wildlife to observe, he would need time daily, alone. That was part of his nature. Would her eyes ever cease their pull, give lie to her nod, her “Until later then” when he left?

Still, he had to keep reminding himself who she was, that he was responsible for her until he could get her back to her own people. Then his life would return to its constants — his books, his fire, his trees. Why did the anticipation of that no longer give him peace?

Out here was beauty surpassing the glowing descriptions of her father’s house, the life she led in San Francisco. He’d only been in San Francisco long enough to get himself shanghaied on a Pacific freighter, then to get Lottie’s girls launched. He saw the youth that city had stolen from him in Olana Whittaker’s eyes. They were too bright, her cheeks too glowing.

She’d transformed the cloth he’d heaped upon her into clothing that fit her shape a sight better than his. Though he’d had little trouble treating her frostbite, it was now hard to bid her goodnight when her arms were bare, shimmering in the fire’s light. When the ties of her dressing gown were loosely drawn he’d caught himself staring, remembering the delicate pink blush that spread from her breasts to the roots of her hair when he used to change her bandages. Staring, when she’d forgiven the kiss, when she trusted him like a brother.

The ranger’s eyes narrowed at something moving in the distance. A thin trickle of gray smoke. He mounted his horse.

The freshly abandoned camp had all the earmarks of the Carson brothers — whiskey bottles, food, smoking fire. How did they get up this high, this early? He’d been ejecting them from the park for two years now, confiscating the equipment of their latest scheme, first shepherding, then prospecting. Matthew had driven them to the park’s western boundary twice. Sent them on their way, the last time with revenge in their eyes. There was nothing stronger he could do, considering the California legislature and federal government were still dancing around each other over protection of natural resources.

Mr. Parker had warned him that the Carsons were heating up a personal grudge. Warned him of what he’d already known from too many men like them — the brothers were in full possession of a lethal combination of meanness and greedy intentions. He’d tracked them down twice. They’d come back when it was just him on patrol, Mr. Parker had predicted. Here they were, though the road and trails were blocked in drifts. Damnation. Where was their passage?

Matthew kicked the half-empty can of beans. A low sound. He listened. An echo of the skittering can? His own growling thoughts? He had a few, along the lines of Olana Whittaker was problem enough. Couldn’t the Carsons leave him some peace until he’d returned her?

Olana. Alone. The tingling intensified. Fear crept up Matthew’s spine as his eyes followed the men’s tracks. Due west. Toward
his tree. Could he overtake them before they reached her? He was so absorbed in figuring how long it would take that the animal’s breath, hot on his neck, was a surprise. As were the claws lashing through the coat on his back before he’d even turned around.

Halfway through with the laundry, Olana peeled off his blue woolen shirt and tied the sleeves around her waist. The steamy hot water had moistened her self-fashioned camisole as well. She sat, exhausted, before the fire and smiled at the clothesline he’d helped her string up that morning, at the great potful of snow she’d brought in to melt.

Matthew had grumbled that he never did a wash until Christmas. But she’d teased him about it until he brought forth the tub, fetched her the line in one of those bottomless trunks of his. They laughed more than they argued now. And he never left her angry.

But still he left. Every day. He was the park’s only ranger in winter, she reminded herself. It was not so bad. While he was gone she had his generous supply of worn books, so different from the pristine volumes in her father’s library. But the worlds inside were the same — colonial New England, revolutionary Paris, and the place they shared nightly, Mr. Twain’s version of life at King Arthur’s court. His fine-timbered voice read well, and with a child’s enthusiastic anticipation over what would happen next. She’d forgotten how to read like that, she’d been so busy playacting at being bored in recent years.

Matthew Hart always returned with the darkness. He’d pull off his boots and sit, talk with her by the fire before supper. She needed him to do that, to break the silence that the day without him had imposed on her. She showed her appreciation by helping him prepare their meal, trying to assist him afterward, if he didn’t chase her back to bed with her feet raised.

Then he’d pull on his rimless spectacles and return to his chapbooks full of charts, sketches, figures. He would talk about where he’d been, about the creatures and sights he labored to
represent on paper. The only thing that tried his patience as much as she had was his own sketchings. Olana was even finding his grumbles over his artistic limitations endearing.

The warm fire had already dried her six-paneled skirt. She slipped it on. It had shrunk, and fit her hips better now. Olana turned and let its lovely deep colors swirl around her ankles. How she missed dancing. Could Matthew dance? She laced her camisole tighter and cleared a curling strand of hair from her forehead, before setting herself back to work in the steaming water.

Tramping feet, outside. Already? At an hour before sunset? She smiled, turning. But her smile was erased by the cold blast of wind, the faces of strangers. The door slammed shut behind them.

“Well, the ranger went and got himself a woman to do his squaw work this year!”

Olana’s hands gripped the side of the tin washtub behind her. The fur-clad men were as tall as Matthew Hart. One was twice his girth. Their faces, compressed by the cold, were monstrous duplicates of each other. One stepped forward, yanking off his hat, shucking his coat into the arms of his bigger twin. His face was sharp, gaunt, pockmarked above the beard.

“Can you talk, woman?”

Olana’s voice emitted a low growl.

“Ain’t the welcoming type, is she?” the other man proclaimed, circling. Olana’s mind raced. Scissors. Needles. Could she get to them? Was anything long enough to pierce their heavy clothing, their skin? They were both circling her now. The larger man took hold of her braid and yanked her head back. Olana felt his massive hand paw her thigh. Her eyes appealed to the other.

“Why don’t you break a few things, brother mine,” he suggested.

“Aw, Cal,” the brother complained with a high whine. But like a well-trained dog, he released her and headed for the back room, where Matthew Hart’s jars were soon shattering.

Olana edged toward the sewing supplies. She found scissors, but couldn’t raise them before the one called Cal caught her
wrist, twisting it hard. The scissors clattered on the floor. She gasped out her pain.

“Skittish, like a fawn.” He grinned. “And a little dangerous. Charming.” His breath reeked of whiskey. Olana saw rotting teeth in the stale confines of his mouth. He twisted her wrist while his free hand scraped the sleeve of her camisole off her shoulder, baring a breast. Her breasts were not monstrous anymore, but tender, new skinned, vulnerable. Olana felt the hot tear glide down her face.

“Please,” she whispered.

“Ah, but surely you’re not so shy for him. And we men of the forest share even our most prized possessions. Didn’t he tell you?”

“Cal —” the whining voice of the brother returned along with his bulk, crowding the small room. “Let me have a quick run through her first, will you?”

They were all distracted by the door’s slam. Matthew Hart yanked back the cartridge of his rifle. He took aim. All the anger the ranger had shown toward her paled in comparison to what Olana saw in his eyes now. “Step away from my wife, Carson,” he said quietly.

“Wife? She didn’t say —”

“She didn’t say anything at all!” his brother insisted.

Cal Carson lowered his voice. “Except ‘please.’ Your wife was asking for it, Hart. Begging us.”

Olana took advantage of the man’s lightened hold to twist away. But her feet felt frozen again and she stumbled, falling against Matthew’s side. She saw a flash of relief invade his hard eyes.

“You want me to take them outside, not make a mess?” he asked her.

That incongruous whine burst from the mammoth brother. “Christ, man, she’s only a fucking woman!”

“Your woman, of course,” Cal Carson amended.

The small eyes of the bigger man next appealed to Olana. “If
we could just go, Ma’am. We’d never bother neither of you nor his woods again. Wouldn’t we never, Cal?”

Cal looked perplexed, as if he’d written off his life already and was not prepared for this second chance. He was the brighter one, the one to watch, Olana knew, and something was dawning on him. She looked up at the ranger’s set face, saw the sweat lining his forehead. And his rifle shook. Slightly. Perhaps only she was close enough to see. Yes. Something was wrong. She replaced the camisole to her shoulder and lowered her eyes demurely.

“They hadn’t yet touched me, Matthew,” she said.

He shifted his weight to one side. “Take off your boots,” he commanded the men.

“What?”

“Off!”

They obeyed.

“Now get out.”

The ranger backed out of the two men’s paths. Olana saw the smile creep over the clever brother’s face. Her sharp intake of breath was warning enough. Matthew Hart kicked the Bowie knife Cal drew from his hand. It slammed into the washtub. The larger man grabbed his brother’s shoulder. They ran into the gathering dusk.

The cold ran up Olana’s arms as she bolted the door. She wound them in the sleeves of the blue shirt still tied at her waist. Matthew Hart lowered his rifle. He was breathing hard.

“There’s a pistol. A Colt Peacemaker. In the back room, ’Lana. Middle trunk. You think you might fetch it?”

She returned to find him in the same position.

“There. Good. Hammer’s down and on an empty. But it’s got five loaded cartridges. Aim at the head or heart, hear? They don’t stop, you keep firing. ’Lana?”

“Yes?”

“You all right?”

Her wrist burned, her scalp ached. But she managed a quivering
smile as she shook her head yes and put the firearm in her apron pocket.

“Good,” he breathed, finally easing his stance. To Olana’s astonishment, the rifle came apart in his hands.

“Damned grizzly,” he muttered softly.

“Grizzly?”

“Broke it across his snout. I’d of killed them both where they stood if I’d had the means, ’Lana, I swear it.”

His grammar was slipping, his accent leaning on its soft Southern intonation. He put the parts of his rifle on the table. Sweat ran into his eyes now, making him blink.

Olana touched his sleeve. “Take off your coat, Matthew,” she reminded him.

He looked up at her sharply. “You’re all right?”

“Yes.”

He tried to stroke her cheek with the back of his hand. But it went through the air, inches away. He dropped to his knees with a soft blasphemy. Olana finally saw the blood-stained slashes in his back. She covered her mouth to choke back her cry.

“Ain’t as bad as it looks —”

“You can’t see it!”

“Well. That’s true.” His head dropped between her breasts. “You smell wonderful,” he whispered.

“That’s lye soap.”

He managed a thin laugh. She took his face in her cold hands. “Matthew!”

His eyes struggled to focus on her. “Yes, darlin’?”

“I don’t know how to help you!”

“You did real well, Mis’ Hart.”