Lost Mountain Pass, page 6
He stopped, standing tall, all puffed up, full of himself, his face red from whiskey and rage, his eyes blacker than normal. The putrid smell of birth, soiled sheets, and something vile that he recalled from the worst aftermath of wounds he had ever encountered in the war caused him to shield his nose. His stomach lurched unbidden. He wasn’t prepared for what he saw, what he smelled, what he felt.
Maria, her white hair pulled back in a bun, short, squat, sat in a rocking chair next to the bed holding the screaming baby. Calhoun couldn’t get a look at the face of the new baby girl to be able to judge the state of her health for himself. The little body was wrapped in a fresh blanket that made her look like a moth’s cocoon instead of a swaddled child. The cloth wiggled and protested, and Maria did her best to shush the child. The effort was lost; the child didn’t know how to respond to requests and demands. The Mexican woman’s dark brown eyes were focused on Calhoun as he towered inside the door, fear painted on them by the sight and sound of him. A tremble rippled across Maria’s weathered brown face.
Calhoun looked away from the child and Mexican woman to the blood-soaked bed. A motionless lump, the body of his young wife, lay pulled up in the fetal position, knees to her chest, blanket to her neck, eyes closed, hair twisted in a ratted nest. There was not enough breath in her lungs to move the cover. She was unrecognizable. Any beauty that had lit the room she had walked into the first time Calhoun had laid eyes on her was gone, expelled, drained away with the blood on the floor and the cocoon in Maria’s arms.
Sally pushed up beside Calhoun and reached for his arm again to offer an anchor, a familiar touch of support. “I warned you about her, but you wouldn’t listen. I thought she was hiding something from the start. If something’s too good to be true, it usually is.”
“Is she dead?”
“No, but I don’t think it will be long before her battle to live is lost.”
Calhoun looked over his shoulder to the open door that allowed fresh spring sunlight to penetrate into the house. “Where’s Miguel and the doctor? They need to save her.”
No one answered. A tall grandfather clock in the main room of the house ticked loudly, echoing into the vaulted ceiling, mocking him in his twisted, fearful, angry mind. The baby still wailed. The jealousy that had gripped his fingers and curled them into a fist had subsided the moment he had opened the door to see Jessica, or what was left of her, laying in their marriage bed.
The baby cried a different cry after gathering her breath, begging for food, reacting to the world she had found herself in, bright, mixed with strangers and foul smells. Every child longs for their mother’s touch. This one seemed to understand that was not possible, that the opportunity was slipping away with every tick of the clock. Maria hugged the child, pulled her close to her withered breast, but there was no milk to offer the baby. That had dried up a long time ago.
“They should be here any moment,” Sally said. She wore no worry on her face, only concern for her brother. There was no acknowledgment of the baby or her screams. Sally Hoyle stood straight as a broomstick, her jaw hardened in place, while her heart operated in slow, protracted, uncaring beats. It might as well have been any normal day.
“She’ll be all right, then?” Calhoun said.
“You should prepare yourself for the worst, brother. I have seen this before, a woman struggling for her own life after bringing a child into the world. She was small in the hips to begin with, and the baby is large, though I fear that’s not the whole of it. There’s more going on that we cannot see. There is a smell of poison in her blood, and the afterbirth has yet to discharge.”
Calhoun looked to Maria and the bundle. “But it’s all right?”
“She, brother,” Sally said. “The child is a girl not an it.”
“What am I supposed to do with a girl? A boy I could have handled, bided my time until he could have walked and talked. You and Maria could have got the boy on his feet, and then I would have taught him what I know. I have always wanted a son.”
“You don’t get everything you want, Vance.”
“I don’t want this. A girl without a mother. This is not how this was supposed to go.”
“Childbirth is difficult on some women.” Sally maintained her grip on Calhoun’s arm, steadying him as he returned his gaze to Jessica. “I knew my own body well enough to know that I might not survive the ordeal. It is why I lack a man in my life and live here with you.”
“Spare me your sadness. I have heard your dreary stories more times than I can count. You are like our mother was, always looking for an audience.”
“I am only saying what is the truth. You knew little of this girl, Jessica, before you took up with her. One minute you were a satisfied man, living your life as a rancher, and then another minute you were a schoolboy melting under the dress of this woman. Her family had influence, something you have always craved. I’m not the only one with desires beyond myself. I understand that part of you better than you think I do. But I have never seen you give away your will and everything else so quickly. Especially to a woman who most definitely had her own shadows and past to contend with. You barely knew her before you brought her here and commanded that I respect her as the lady of the house, give over what I had worked years for to a mere stranger. I was dirt swept under the rug, and now you want me to clean up this mess, and save her from death? I don’t have that kind of wisdom or will of my own. She is your problem, brother. I can’t fix this for you. Not this time.”
Calhoun didn’t hesitate. He reared back and slapped his sister across the face. The crack was as loud and damaging as the door slam had been, provoking another rise of screams from the baby. Maria hugged the girl even tighter, recoiled into the chair as far as she could without falling over. She whispered into the blanket. Unknown Spanish words of comfort. Calhoun had never learned the language. He didn’t care to know what the Mexican said.
“She is my wife, sister,” Calhoun bellowed. “And you will speak of her with respect while she’s in this world and afterward, as far as that goes. Jessica is not some two-bit whore I brought home from the street. She is my wife. My one and only. Do you understand?”
The blow knocked Sally’s grip on her brother’s arm loose, separating her from him. The wall had stopped her from crumbling down to the floor. She touched the red sting on her cheek and her eyes flared with rage, anger, and tears that matched her brother’s fury, allowing their Scottish similarities to shine in the glow of three hurricane lamps that lit the room.
“There is more, you idiot,” Sally said. “You were so desperate to become what you think you are, a railroad baron and a greedy rancher, joining with that family in business and blood, that you failed to see what was right in front of you. If that child is truly a Calhoun I’ll gladly give you my last dollar. You were tricked into that marriage bed, set up like the fool you are so that woman could bring a bastard child into the world and give it a name, a place, a father, instead of bringing shame on the high and mighty family you think you’re connected to. You were tricked. Most likely by all of them, not just her.”
“What are you talking about?” Calhoun arched his head backward like he had been hit himself, kicked in the nuts by an invisible horse. The air went out of his lungs as he considered his sister’s harsh words.
Sally rubbed her cheek one last time, let a slight smile trickle across her face, then stood away from the wall, fully on her two feet, her shoulders squared, facing her brother without any fear in her eyes. “If you ever strike me again, I swear, I will walk out that door and I will never come back. You will be dead to me. I am not here for your money or whatever status you think you can achieve. I am here because you are the only family I have. But even I have my limits, brother. Don’t test me. Not now. When you need me the most.”
Calhoun was numb, didn’t know what Sally was talking about, what was going on. The smell was overwhelming. The baby continued to cry. Jessica remained motionless, on the precipice, about to fall into the darkness of death, leaving this world and him, forever. He had never considered the possibility of loss—or that he had been tricked. He had been thrilled to find himself as an expectant father so late in life. He was hardly a young man, but far from old. He had given up on love a long time ago.
Sally smirked and turned her attention to the lump lying on the bed. “I have been in attendance at enough Calhoun births to know one of our own when I see it. Thick black hair, blue eyes, small at the start, then grows bigger as the days go by. This one has brown eyes, blond hair, and is bigger than any Calhoun baby I have ever seen,” she said with an air of satisfaction and spite. “If I was you, I’d find out who this ‘Samuel’ is that your wife was crying out for in her time of need and delirium. My guess is that man has a story to tell you. One that involves a recent, broken relationship with the previous, and available, Jessica Marberry Tennyton of the fine Marberrys of Saint Louis.”
“You’re saying I am not the father of this child?”
“I can’t prove it. I’m just telling you what I see. And I don’t see one ounce of Calhoun in that child. We know our own, brother, and that baby is a stranger to me.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“What do I have to gain by making up a story such as this?”
“You said yourself that you resented Jessica’s position in the house.”
“I would never punish a child of our own blood. You know me well enough to know that is true. That child is not a Calhoun. I am almost sure of it. Time will prove me right or wrong. I’m right. You’ll see for yourself.”
For a moment, Vance Calhoun forgot how to breathe. Not only was he faced with the death of his wife and bringing up a child on his own, he had to consider, if his sister was right, that he had been bamboozled. Once his lungs refilled, his fists returned to their default position, and he felt the need to hit something again. The math worked. They had been married less than nine months, and their whirlwind romance had started and ended a month prior. It was possible that Jessica had been pregnant before they had married. Slightly possible. But possible because Calhoun had had his eyes set on something else: the wealth of her father. Wealth that would come to him some day. He didn’t grovel much about the pregnancy or count days when it arose. He saw an heir. A deeper path that led straight to the Marberry bank vault. He had dreams of being a rich man, and Jessica was his way to see his aspiration come true.
Calhoun didn’t make the effort to look at the baby, to see for himself if his sister was right or not. The seed had been planted by the only person he could trust in the world. “Go through her things, Sally. See what you can find,” he said, then turned and walked out of the room.
He didn’t slow at the sound that escaped Jessica’s throat, a wheeze and a gasp, the last attempt to hold on to life as death walked into the room and embraced her. Nor did he slow when Miguel and the doctor from town rushed in the door. Vance Calhoun stalked to the horse barn with his heart thumping inside of his chest, a plan and plot forming, two plus two that would turn out in his favor, so everything would add up, and he could still get what he had been after all along. Ownership of a railroad. That was the true road to riches. Buying and selling cattle and ranching was too much of a gamble, too much work. He wanted a wealth where everything was done for him. He wondered how much Theodore Marberry would be willing to pay for his dead daughter’s baby. He jumped onto the saddle of the grullo and tore out of the barn, intent on sending a telegram to St. Louis to find out. The scream of an orphaned baby caught on the wind and followed him all of the way there.
* * *
A day later, the funeral coach stood waiting outside the door with a drab horseman sitting atop it, in the bench across the front, dressed in black from top hat to boots, staring straight ahead, waiting for the command to move forward. Two tall black draft horses stood still, swatting flies with their thick tails, breathing in the country air, snorting respectfully, preparing for the long journey ahead. They didn’t know that their job was to carry sadness home. All they knew how to do was put one hoof in front of the other and pull the load that they were assigned to, that they were attached to. Work had no gauge of emotion or weariness to the horses. They had a reason to live when they were pulling; otherwise they were bored and waiting.
The coffin, simple, cut of freshly hand-hewn maple, sat unvarnished in the rear of the coach, only visible because the black curtains had yet to be pulled closed. A simple bouquet of delicate white flowers, lily of the valley, lay on the closed lid of the coffin, placed there by Jessica’s father, Theodore Marberry. He stood on the front step of Vance Calhoun’s ranch house, tall, withered with slumped shoulders, his head down, holding a brand-new brown leather satchel.
Vance Calhoun stood towering over the man, dressed in work clothes, his face cleared of rage and whiskey, his eyes as bright and sure as they were the day he had married Jessica Marberry Tennyton. Sally Hoyle stood at her brother’s side, an apron bound across her waist, still dusted with flour from the day’s bread; the emotion on her face deemed the event ordinary, just another day. Maria stood off to the right, cradling the baby girl in her arms, her own eyes streaked with red veins of sadness and worry. She rocked the baby with gentle hesitation in a clean white blanket. More Spanish whispers. More unknown words meant to soothe the baby girl who so far only knew good-byes instead of hellos.
“There you are, Calhoun, all of the shares I own in the railroad. You still lack a majority, but something tells me that’s your aim, and it won’t be long before you attain your desire,” Theodore Marberry said as he handed the satchel to Calhoun.
Marberry was Harvard educated, wore tailored clothes, had earned the gray hair on his head, and was known as a strict, savvy man with an eye for a deal, and a mind to make anything he took on profitable. On this day, he didn’t look like any of those things. Marberry looked lost and weak, which is exactly how Vance Calhoun had hoped his former father-in-law would look.
Calhoun took the satchel without a smile or any show of emotion. It held a load of railroad stock giving him twenty-five percent ownership in the “Frisco” railroad. “This was never my intent, Marberry. I expected to live with Jessica happily ever after.”
Marberry stood taller, stretched into his shoulders, and looked at Calhoun like he didn’t believe a word he had said. “None of us believed that, but there was no stopping our Jessica once she set her mind on something. Well, until now anyway. I warned her that this matrimony would come to a bad end.”
A flick of insult passed Calhoun’s face and his lip quivered, holding back a slew of hurtful words. He restrained himself, knew he had to control his temper. There were too many riders about that he would have to consider if things got out of hand or if he had to kill Marberry. That would have to wait for another day, or another lifetime. If there was any hope in the day, then Calhoun hoped he would never see Theodore Marberry or any of the Marberrys, tall or small, ever again.
“Maria, hand over the child to Mister Marberry. I have work to get to on the back forty. We’ve already lost enough time and effort on this day,” Calhoun said.
The air didn’t seem to be moving at all. No wind, no breeze, just an uncertain stillness that felt dry and uncomfortable. A carriage sat behind the funeral coach. More town coach than carriage, the top was up, shielding the occupants from the overhead sun—three females, Jessica’s mother and two older sisters. Like the funeral coach, the women’s transport was black and somber, but the team pulling it was a pair of tall Springfield mules—chestnut brown and proud as mules can be on such a sad day.
Maria nodded, nuzzled the swaddled child, offered another whisper, then did as she was told.
Theodore Marberry took the bundle, peered at the face, allowing a slight smile to cross his dour face; a deep reaction that he tried to fight away but couldn’t. “She looks like her mother.”
Maria backed away with her eyes to the ground, not able to watch the baby’s departure.
“We left the naming to you,” Calhoun said. He dug into his pants pocket and pulled out a piece of paper and offered it to Marberry. “This closes the deal. I agreed to your terms. I have no further legal right or attachment to the child.”
“I expected more of a fight from you for your own flesh and blood.” Theodore Marberry pulled the baby closer—who was quiet and calm—then took the paper from Calhoun and clutched it like it was gold.
“Believe what you will,” Calhoun said.
Marberry cocked his head and a curtain of confusion fell over his face. To his credit, the educated man said nothing. Instead, he backed away from Calhoun, deposited the baby into its grandmother’s waiting arms, stuck the paper in a pocket inside his coat, and said, “Good day, sir,” to Calhoun, and climbed into the town coach and settled in for the long ride home.
Calhoun and Sally Hoyle stood and watched the two coaches depart, not moving an inch until they were out of sight.
“Go find Haden and Gladdy and tell them to come to my office. I have an errand I need them to run for me,” Calhoun said.
Sally looked at her brother with a mix of dread and curiosity. “Be careful, Vance. Just because you cut the head off a snake doesn’t mean it can’t bite you.”
Chapter 6
Lost Mountain, Indian Territory, May 1888
By the time the trio reached the spot Trusty was aiming for, the rolling edge of darkness had caught up with them. Stars sparkled dimly in the west as the graying sky of the day surrendered to the black sky of night. Evening insects chirped and sawed without any nuisance or predator afoot to stop them. In the distance a flock of big birds, cranes, that Trusty had been told the French called horned screamers, lit onto the floodplain along the Kiamichi River, seeking shelter for the night. One of the four-and-a-half-foot-tall birds would have easily fed the three of them, the meat red and tasty, cooked over an open fire; it tasted more like beef than chicken. The thought almost provoked Trusty to go on a quick hunt, but that wasn’t possible. He couldn’t leave the judge alone with Amelia Darby. Trail food, jerky and beans, would have to do once dinnertime came along.
