Daniel's Bride, page 17
Meanwhile, Verena and Jolie saw to the necessary task of preparing Joe Culley for a final wagon ride to the churchyard. They were not repulsed by the work —the laying out of the dead was a task women were called to do, like bearing children and cooking for their men. Still, it was a sad interval, and tears slipped down Jolie’s cheeks as she helped Verena strip away Joe’s torn, dirty clothes, wash his waxen flesh clean, and dress him up again in his Sunday best.
When his hair was slicked down and combed, Verena laid pennies on Joe’s eyes to hold them closed and led the way out of the bedroom.
She and Jolie washed thoroughly, neither one speaking, and went out to sit on the stoop, on either side of Nan. They each took one of her hands and there the three of them sat, through the long, chilly hours of the night, waiting for Philias Pribbenow to drive up in his wagon and collect Joe Culley’s remains.
Jolie was half-blind with fatigue and despair when she returned to the wheat camp the next day. A dark-haired woman was there, cooking for the men, and her Latin eyes swept over Jolie with an expression of hot disapproval, but she offered no explanation for her presence. And Jolie asked for none.
Verena had taken Nan home with her, after Mr. Pribbenow and his assistant had carried Joe away in his new pine-board coffin.
Jolie wasn’t aware of Daniel’s presence until he took her elbow to help her up the cook-wagon steps.
“The funeral?” he asked, his voice barely more than a rumble.
“This evening, soon as it cools off a little,” Jolie answered, without looking at her husband, sighing and pushing a sweat-soaked tendril of hair back from her face. “Nan’s with Verena.”
Daniel halted her progress when she would have gone on into the wagon, where she’d intended to splash her cheeks and throat with tepid water and start preparing the next meal.
“Look at me, Jolie,” he said.
She had no strength left to rebel, so she met Daniel’s gaze and saw that he was regarding her gently. That was almost her undoing. “Nan’s going to sell the farm and go live in town until after she’s had the baby,” she said spiritlessly, because she knew Daniel expected words from her.
“I’m taking you home,” he said decisively. “You’ll be able to rest there.” Despite his husbandly statement, there was a certain distance in Daniel’s manner. He let go of her arm and stepped back. “Get your things.”
“I have all these men to cook for,” Jolie said, wondering what she’d done to displease Daniel now.
He shook his head. “Pilar will see to that. I won’t have you pushing yourself into a state of collapse, Mrs. Beckham, and that’s final. Gather up whatever you need—Deuter will take you back to the house in a few minutes.”
Pilar. The name had a stinging familiarity, though Jolie was too exhausted and distraught to piece together why the very sound of it bothered her so. She put the poetry book she’d been trying to read into her satchel, along with her spare dress, her nightgown, and the brushes she used to groom her hair and clean her teeth.
When Deuter appeared with a wagon, Daniel hoisted Jolie up into the seat behind the hired man.
“Don’t bother with the chores,” Daniel ordered his wife quietly. “Just get yourself something to eat and lie down and rest.”
Jolie nodded dumbly, and her distracted gaze wandered back to the stranger, Pilar. The woman’s hard yet singularly lovely face was turned toward her, and as Jolie watched, the full lips formed a small, triumphant smile.
When she and Deuter reached the farmhouse, Jolie didn’t even want to go inside. She yearned to stretch out in the cool, fragrant grass under the poplar trees instead, close her eyes, and not have to entertain another painful thought for years and years. She was sitting cross-legged on the shady ground when Deuter brought her icy well water in a metal cup.
“You see that I don’t miss that funeral,” she said, with all the sternness she could manage, after she’d taken a long drink. “Mrs. Culley will need all her friends around her.”
Deuter took the cup gently from her hand, his voice low and quiet. “Don’t you fret, Miz Beckham. I’ll look out for you.”
Jolie McKibben Beckham lay right down, weary as Eve after the flight from Eden, and slipped into a sound and desolate sleep.
Daniel left the wheat early that day, in order to wash off a couple of layers of field dirt and put on clothes fit for bidding a permanent good-bye to a friend. He grieved deeply for Joe, and for the young, frightened wife he’d left behind, but there was yet another process working inside Daniel, fomenting in the very core of his spirit. It was fear.
No one knew better than Dan Beckham did that life was dangerous and difficult and sometimes downright cruel; he could point to the graves out by the maple tree as proof of that. And now, just before sunset, he would see one of the best friends he’d ever had put into the ground—a man who’d been alive and well, working and dreaming, only a day ago.
Once again, Daniel was witness, in Nan Culley’s fierce pain and bewilderment, to the terrible cost of caring. In the muggy, pungent privacy of the barn, he fed and watered his horse. And despite his formidable strength, he could no longer fight off the fact he’d been holding at bay for twenty-four hours.
It might have been Jolie who’d been bitten by that snake, or one of the children.
The knowledge so terrified Daniel that he gripped the railed sides of his hay wagon and held on for a long moment. An onslaught of gruesome images swept over him in a thundering wave. His shirt, already stiff with dirt and dried sweat, was instantly drenched.
Once that moment had passed, however, the wash of fear subsided, leaving a raw void in its wake. Daniel ran his shirt sleeve across his forehead and strode out of the barn.
That was when he saw Jolie curled up under one of the poplar trees. Although she was not a small woman, she looked so vulnerable lying there, like a doll left out by a forgetful child, and at the sight of her Daniel’s insides clenched painfully.
He longed to gather Jolie up, carry her inside the house, and stand guard day and night for the rest of her life, to make sure nothing and no one ever hurt her. It was an impossible proposition, never mind that Jolie wouldn’t have put up with it for a moment.
Daniel searched inside himself, sorting through a tangle of emotions until he found a safe one: anger. Damn it, did the woman want to be bitten by a rattler? Hadn’t she told him herself that those two outlaws she’d been running with were around someplace, just waiting to start trouble?
He was about to hook one arm around Jolie’s waist and yank her unceremoniously to her feet when the sound of a pistol being cocked brought him up short.
“Don’t touch her, Dan’l,” a voice said evenly. “Not unless you mean to do it in a kindly fashion.”
Deuter was sitting just a few feet away, on an upended fruit crate, and he was pointing Daniel’s own Colt .45 in an ominous direction.
“Damn you, Deuter,” Daniel burst out, in a furious whisper, “put that thing down!” He still wasn’t over the shock of having Deuter—of all people—challenge him so brazenly. Besides, protecting Jolie Beckham was his job.
The farmhand sighed and laid the pistol down in the deep grass without comment.
Evidently awakened by the stir, Jolie sat up, yawning and rumpled. Daniel saw the realization that he’d come to collect her for a funeral dawn in her face and wished there had been some way he could shield her.
“Is it time to leave?” she asked.
That dreaded sensation threatened to sweep over him again, but Daniel shored himself up. “Get yourself tidied up, Mrs. Beckham,” he ordered gruffly. “We’re expected in town.”
With that, Daniel strode away to pump himself some water for a bath.
Jolie gave Deuter a sad smile as she got to her feet. She knew he’d been sitting nearby, practically the whole time she was sleeping, and she was touched.
She didn’t bother to heat water to wash with. Instead, she got herself a cloth and soap and a towel, along with fresh underthings and her brown sateen church dress, and bathed herself out in the well house. The cool bite of the water, pumped from the depths of the earth, braced her up for the ordeal ahead.
Or perhaps it numbed her. When Jolie and Daniel arrived in town in the wagon, an hour or so after she’d awakened from that dreamless sleep in the fragrant grass, she had an odd sense of unreality. She pinched the tender skin on the inside of her forearm, on the off chance that she wasn’t in town to see Joe Culley buried at all, but still slumbering underneath the poplar tree.
The churchyard was surrounded by buggies and wagons and lone horses tethered to the picket fence. Most of the mourners were dressed in their work clothes, having just left the sawmill or the harvest, the bank or the livery stable.
Daniel lifted Jolie down from the wagon. There was comfort in the solid strength of his arms and despair in the careful holding-away as he made sure their bodies didn’t touch.
Gemma and Hank appeared, their dandelion gold hair bright in the last fiery sunshine of the day, their blue eyes filled with fear and questions as they looked up at Jolie. She hugged them both close for a moment, and kissed each one on top of the head.
“Have you been minding Mrs. Dailey?” she asked, her voice husky.
“Yes, ma’am,” Hank said staunchly. “We surely have. But Gemma and me, well, we’ve got a mind to come home with you, if that’s all right with you.”
Daniel’s big frame stiffened at the word home, but Jolie pretended not to notice.
“We’ll be getting on with the harvest tomorrow, I’m sure,” she told the child. “Frankly, I could use somebody to carry water and pick berries and catch trout for the men’s dinner.”
The two worried little faces brightened. In that remarkably subtle way he sometimes had, Daniel herded his brood toward the graveside, where Joe’s other friends were gathered.
Although she would not have thought to lean on him, Jolie took blessed assurance from knowing Mr. Beckham was standing directly behind her, as solid and well-rooted as a cedar tree. She looked on, dry-eyed and oddly distant from the proceedings, while the minister said Bible words over Joe’s pinewood coffin.
All around her, women wept softly, and Jolie wondered if it was some lack in her spirit that let her endure the ceremony so stoically. Nan’s thin shoulders were moving with the force of silent sobs, and Verena’s eyes were suspiciously bright behind her black net veil.
This was what it all came down to, Jolie thought dispassionately. A person worked and hoped and dreamed and suffered for whatever number of years the good Lord had allotted to them. Then, if they’d lived a respectable life, a few friends would show up to cry for them when they were lowered into the ground some summer day—harvest allowing, that is.
Jolie raised her eyes to the pink and gold and crimson sky for a moment, wondering if there really was a place for folks to go after they’d left this world, like the preachers claimed.
When she looked at Nan again, and it took some doing to get up the courage for that, she was startled to see Ira January standing beside the new widow, holding her arm. The millowner was handsome, in an oily sort of way, but the sight of him made a shiver roll under Jolie’s skin, like it did when she saw Blake Kingston or Rowdy Fleet.
In due time, Nan Culley was led away from the grave, and the women of the Methodist Church, normally at odds with those of the Presbyterian persuasion, served a picnic supper to the mourners. Jolie ate, knowing she needed the sustenance, but the food seemed to have neither taste nor texture, and it didn’t come near to filling the hollow place inside her.
Nan had made up her mind not to return to the farm, except to fetch her things, and it was said that Mr. January had rented her a room at Mrs. Krayper’s boarding house. He was sure enough sticking close by her side during the funeral supper.
When he finally went off to smoke with the other men, under a leafy oak tree, Jolie approached Nan. She’d already said all the words of consolation she knew, so she just asked the question that was uppermost in her mind. “Is Mr. January some kin of yours?”
Nan raised her chin a notch. She was pale as winter moonlight, and her eyes looked like two burnt holes in a blanket. Her beautiful auburn hair was hidden under a dark bonnet. “He’s a friend,” she said stiffly. She looked away for a moment, and her ivory cheeks flushed apricot. “I’m not strong like you, Jolie,” she finished, giving the words a defiant tone.
If anything, Nan’s confession heightened the sympathy Jolie felt for her, but it certainly didn’t inspire the disapproval Nan seemed to expect. Jolie took her friend’s arm in a gentle grasp and lowered her voice to a whisper. “You mean, he’s going to be your— protector?”
“A woman needs a man to survive,” Nan replied, and there was a desperate glint in her eyes. “I have a baby coming—”
“You have a farm to sell,” Jolie reminded her friend, certain the proceeds from the sale of the land would allow Nan to support herself and her child.
But Nan shook her head. “There are too many debts,” she answered. “And Joe and I had just barely proved up on our claim when—” She stopped. “Mr. January will see to it that I have a place to live for the time being, and after—after a year—”
After a year, Nan and Ira January would be married. Jolie was about to protest that no woman should wed a man under such circumstances, but she stopped herself at the last moment. Who was she, Jolie McKibben, to lecture someone else on the proprieties of marriage? She’d had no say in the matter of her own wedding; Big Dan Beckham had plucked her out from under that hanging tree like he would a sparrow from a rain barrel.
Jolie took Nan’s cold hands into her own and squeezed them reassuringly. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking Mr. January is your only friend,” she warned kindly. “You’ve got Daniel, and me, and Verena, and all these other folks.”
Tears brimmed in Nan’s eyes. She bit her lip and nodded.
A few minutes later, the Beckhams left the churchyard. Hank and Gemma were asleep in the back of the wagon, replete with food and the excitement of a community event, funeral or not, and crickets sang in the grass. Daniel had lit the lamps that swayed on either side of the buckboard, though there was a moon, and he seemed so deep in thought that Jolie didn’t even attempt a conversation.
They returned to the wheat camp, rather than the farmhouse, and Jolie heard the lonely sound of a mouth harp even over the creaking of the harnesses and fittings and the braying of mules. It all flowed together to make a sad refrain—Joe Culley would never come whistling up to the Beckham’s back step again.
Daniel had forgotten all about asking Pilar to come and cook for the men while Jolie was helping over at the Culley place. When he brought the wagon to a halt at the edge of camp, though, he was bluntly reminded.
Pilar came sashaying toward him in one of those Spanish blouses that didn’t cover her shoulders and a ruffled skirt of such a bright shade of red that it showed plainly in the dark. Her hands rested on her full hips, and her eyes caught sparks from the bonfire as she looked at Jolie.
“Get your things,” Daniel said to Pilar, “and I’ll take you back to town.”
Pilar’s chin jutted to a downright mulish angle but, after a moment, she smiled vindictively and shrugged one fire-lit shoulder. “I guess I’ve got no call to be surprised,” she said, watching Jolie, who was standing stock-still, like a furious cat in that split second before it turns tiger and commences to screaming and clawing. “When Big Dan Beckham has no more use for his women, he just tosses them to one side and goes on to find another.”
Daniel started to speak, but Jolie cut him off.
“Pilar,” she breathed, glaring right back at the woman like she was about to let loose with a right swing. Just when Daniel thought he was going to have to restrain Jolie, she turned and looked up at him, and despite the darkness he could see the wounded fury in her eyes.
Obviously, she’d pieced together the facts: Pilar was a saloon woman, and her lush body had been a sweet comfort to Daniel on many a bleak night.
It was clear enough that Jolie believed Daniel had brought Pilar to camp for some other reason than cooking.
Pilar’s smile widened—she’d done what she’d aimed to do with only a few words—she was evidently satisfied. She swished over to the cook wagon and climbed the steps to collect her things.
Daniel started to defend himself, then decided it was probably better if Jolie thought he was low-down enough to sleep with one woman when he was married to another. That would make it easier for her to head off to San Francisco when the harvest was over and make some sense of her life.
After setting her jaw and favoring Daniel with a look hot enough to melt the ice off Onion Creek on the coldest day in December, Jolie swept the skirts of her church dress up in both hands and stomped off to see to the children.
Keeping himself from going to her and swearing he hadn’t sullied their vows was one of the hardest things Daniel had ever been called on to do. As he helped Pilar into the wagon and then handed up her carpetbag, he reasoned that it didn’t really matter if he kept his promises to Jolie or not. Their marriage ceremony hadn’t had any real meaning, after all; he’d only been trying to save the woman from being hanged.
The wagon springs creaked as Daniel climbed up into the box and took the reins. Come to that, Jolie could just go ahead and think whatever she wanted.
He turned his mind to the Culley farm, waiting to be harvested, and despite the genuine grief he felt at the loss of a good friend, he coveted the rich land and the sturdy little house with an intensity that shamed him. If he bought those acres—and he couldn’t because of the money he’d spent to save Jolie from the noose—his farm would be the most substantial piece of land between Spokane and the Oregon border. Better still, his younger brother, Enoch, could finally bring his family west and settle in at Joe’s place.
