Cactus Rose, page 4
“Ranch?” he asked. “Looks like all you’re raising here is cactus.”
“That’s what Abner always called it, the ranch house. It’s a shack, Mr. Grant. Plain and simple. You’ll be sorry you took up with me with so few questions asked.”
“Are you sorry yet?” he asked.
“Not sorry. Guilty, maybe. I won’t have any pay for you… for a long time.”
“Figured as much,” he muttered to himself. Luckily it wasn’t a problem at the moment. They had no need of money here. “You seem awfully dedicated to your shack and cactus farm,” he said in a lighter tone.
She turned to gape at him and a smile suddenly tugged at the corner of her mouth. It was the first time he had detected humor on that thin face. It warmed him to see it.
“It’s the only home I can remember, Mr. Grant.”
Her only home? That was puzzling. Hadn’t she lived in a house as a child? He didn’t press with further questions. There were plenty of days ahead to fill in all the details of her past. His concern was with what he would tell her, and how much.
Del decided to ride ahead. He had followed her dust like a homeless puppy long enough. He heeled his horse and galloped ahead. Now he looked around to judge the lay of the land. Where might he expect to spot claim jumpers approaching? Where might he find the best defensive positions? He would need to know what had happened to her husband if he was going to defend her… and this place.
Goddamn, the house was ugly!
The foundation was local flagstone piled in layers in what he hoped were lines wide enough to support walls and a floor… was there a floor?
He reined at the door to wait for her.
The walls of an addition were covered with a collection of sun-bleached boards and what looked like kindling. The main part of the house was adobe that was crumbling off to reveal rocks, planks, and mud-bricks. The house was decorated amusingly with a store-bought pine door set in a frame along with a big nine-light window intended for a larger building, like a hotel. Both were set in crooked.
There were closely set pine log beams sticking out all along the roofline. The beams must’ve been hauled from distant mountains. The roof itself reminded him of a mounded apple pie made from tan gravel. A dirt roof. Oh, just what he wanted to live under. It wasn’t even a sod roof like he had seen on the prairie. It was dirt. A huge heavy pile of it. Luckily, it was not the rainy season. He screwed up his face and sighed. Now he was certain he was crazy. Welcome home, Delmar.
The nearby barn’s roof was constructed of the same mesh of mesquite branches they used to make all those porch awnings in town. He dismounted as Rosie drove the buckboard in close by the side of the house. Strolling across the sunbaked yard, Del looked up at the barn roof. It must’ve taken months to collect that much brush, climb that branch-built ladder over there, and pile the brush thick enough to keep out the sun.
She had a bag of cornmeal in her arms as she came up to him and squinted into the sun that was about to sink beyond the western ridge.
She grinned. “So, what do you think?”
The effect of a full smile on that young face was just as Del had anticipated. Her face was transformed. He gazed at her for a long moment and thought, I am married to this woman. The word conjugal crossed his mind and had to be quickly discarded.
Del grinned back. “I’d say this is just about the most pitiful excuse for a human habitation as I have ever seen. I can see why you’d stake your life to hold onto it.”
Oh, that had not come out quite as he had intended.
Her grin wilted.
He clamped his teeth together. The last thing she needed was somebody making fun of what she valued, he reminded himself.
“It’s taken a lot of work to keep these buildings from falling into piles of rubble,” he said, remembering he was her hired husband, not even a friend. No need to charm her. No need to cheer her up. She didn’t have to like him. If she didn’t pay up, eventually he would feel not the slightest twinge of regret in leaving her to this desolate valley. That’s what he told himself.
“Thank you,” she said, sounding surprised that he noticed. “I did the best I could. The barn roof was the hardest, but I just couldn’t let Faithful and Old Belle stand in the hot sun day in and day out.”
“You built the barn?” he asked. He was shocked a man let his wife do such work.
“Pretty much.”
He didn’t know what more to say.
She had said her husband was a hard worker, but the place was falling to ruin. He didn’t know what kept the house standing. The place was neglected beyond belief except for charming lines of rocks marking a path to the door and around to the barn and along the corral fence.
All around came the faint whirring sound of hummingbirds flitting in close to drink from little medicine bottles hanging from the jutting roof pine-log rafters. There was a badly made stool beside the crooked front door, an attempt at a cactus garden under the window. Signs of Rosie’s attempt to make this a home were everywhere. She had wind chimes made from packaging string and sticks and odd bits that clattered cheerfully in the breeze. The sound brought a smile to Del’s desert-dry face and warmth to his heart.
“Was your husband lame… or sick?” he asked before he could stop himself. Or lazy, he wanted to add, wondering why she had been forced to shore up the barn’s roof unassisted.
“He was always working,” she replied quickly in Abner Saladay’s defense. “Abner never stopped working. He would’ve worked all night if I had let him. I think he dreamed working, but this wasn’t where he did his work.”
That was plain, Del thought, without speaking. Rosie looked tired enough, trying to preserve the respected memory of her late husband.
Del swept the heavy bag of cornmeal from her arms and started for the house. Might as well survey the damage inside. Then he was going to find out just what sort of man Abner Saladay had been that a little thing like his cactus rose had to make a garden from rocks.
Del glanced back at the corral. Oh, yes. There would be no time for rest. The horses were still standing in the buckboard’s traces. He had his work cut out. He’d tend to them next. He followed Rosie through the badly set store-bought doorway. Oh, good. There was a floor. It was made of broad, flat fieldstone. He had never seen a better floor.
“The main room here was the only room we had at first,” Rosie said as she came inside and skirted a small table made of wind-twisted cedar in a surprisingly charming style. A thick pine post rose from the center of the floor to the roof rafters reassuring Del. At least there was something holding up that dirt-pie up there.
She had a small black iron cook stove, the kind that disassembled and could be mail ordered from a catalogue back when Diablo Rock had been a pebble in the middle of the trail up from old Mexico. The stovepipe likely needed cleaning. There was a dry sink stacked with a few precious pieces of china and crockery. Many were chipped. She had shelves on the walls lined with little baskets. Everything was crooked but cared for, tidy, homey-looking. He liked it at once. Curtains. Rag rugs. Would he find linens and quilts on his bed?
With dusk coming on, the big window still let in enough light to see by. But Rosie moved quickly, and perhaps a bit nervously, to strike a Lucifer match and light an oil lantern standing in the middle of the table. The sudden flood of golden lantern light added a surprising feeling of welcome to the otherwise humble room. There was a deep, squat adobe fireplace in the corner. It looked old. Really old.
She watched him look around.
“Abner built this place himself on the foundation that was already here. See this floor? Stone worn down by those who lived here long ago. Took him a year, he told me.”
“I didn’t think this area has been settled that long,” Del said, surprised by such a cool, solid place to stand.
“Not by white men, Abner told me,” she said. “Mexicans, perhaps. Long ago. Indians don’t stay put long enough to build houses with stone floors. Certainly not Apaches. The fireplace draws really well. I’ve never had any trouble with it. We were always warm here, not that it ever got very cold in winter.”
She walked to the back of the room where a calico curtain hung in a doorway, also set in crooked. “This was Abner’s room.”
She pulled the curtain aside. Del joined her, curiously intrigued, and poked his head in. There was a narrow plank bed in the far corner, coarsely woven rugs and boldly patterned blankets covering most of the walls. The floor was packed earth with a woven grass mat beside the bed. He saw a crude wooden desk cluttered with small wooden boxes and several leather-bound field journals, rolled and tied closed with leather thongs. On an arrangement of shelves he saw thick leather-bound books and small oddly shaped objects difficult to identify in the gathering dusk. On the floor was a small open basket filled with crusty looking blue rocks he knew to be valuable to Indians.
“What’s all this?” he asked, nodding toward the objects on the shelves.
“Abner called them artifacts,” she said.
She moved across the main room and stood in front of another curtain in another doorway. She didn’t draw that curtain aside. “This is my room. You’ll sleep in the barn. I’ll make up a nice—”
“Sorry, Rosie,” Del interrupted. He turned to face her. “If I’m here to protect you, I’m not going to be caught snoring in the barn when whoever you think is after you sneaks into this dirt pile of a house to kill you. I’m sleeping in here, with you.”
She backed away. She shook her head vigorously.
“No, you’ll sleep in Abner’s room then, or we’ll go right back to town and untie this ridiculous knot. Getting married seemed to make sense when I woke up this morning!” she cried. She looked around in a panic. “I just couldn’t stay here alone another night—”
He hadn’t meant to upset her.
“I didn’t mean that. His room will do fine,” he said calmly, resisting the urge to get closer and pat her on the shoulder or something to ease her mind.
She drew a pistol from somewhere in the side of her skirt and brandished it at him. It was an old thing. He could see that well enough in the lamplight. It was well oiled. It probably worked, and could probably do him some serious damage if she pulled the trigger. Her hands trembled badly. He had shocked her. She looked damned determined to use the gun on him, too. He had certainly underestimated her, he thought. For a ridiculous moment Del wondered if she had killed Abner herself.
“You mind yourself, do you hear?” she yelled. “I know how to use this gun, and I won’t think twice to use it on you. This is a business arrangement between us! Nothing more.”
“No conjugal rights,” he repeated flatly, wanting only to calm her. “I know the meaning of the word, Mrs. Grant. I’m always on the lookout for a good gun, though. Can I have a look?”
“No!” she snapped. “If you would, please,” she added with effort, “get the horses into the barn. I’ll light the fire and get supper on. It’ll have to be corn bread and fat back tonight. I’m tired.” She waited while he watched her, unmoving. “Just go outside. Please!”
She looked terrified of him.
To his knowledge, he had never terrified a woman before. He decided to have it out before she cocked that thing and killed him.
“So, you and your late husband didn’t sleep in the same room, in the same bed,” Del said.
Her eyes seared into him. Yep, he had spooked her but good.
That bed in Abner’s room hardly looked big enough for a man to sleep in much less have any kind of conjugal associations with a woman. Maybe that wasn’t any of his business, Del thought, but in a way it seemed like it had to be.
She still held the gun on him, but she wasn’t thinking about shooting him anymore, he concluded with some relief. She was remembering, and it was not pleasant, whatever it was.
“I came west to marry Abner six years ago,” she said. “He needed somebody to keep his house for him while he worked. He couldn’t do it all. He was near to starving when I got here. And he said he couldn’t have a woman here unless…” She licked her lips nervously.
Suddenly it all came clear to Del. An arranged marriage was all Rosie knew.
“Propriety’s sake,” he said for her, feeling sorry for her.
She nodded, her expression grim and sad. “He married me, but I was just his cook and housekeeper. After a while he didn’t do anything around here, he was so busy. I had to do what I could.” She stuck her chin out. “So I did.”
“That left him free to prospect.” Del thought he understood the arrangement completely.
“If you agreed to my proposition because you think there’s gold in it for you, Mr. Grant, you are wrong. There’s no gold. No gold mine. Got that?”
“All right,” he said, growing suspicious and wary.
“Ten years ago Abner came west for his health. He walked all over New Mexico Territory—this land was part of New Mexico Territory back then. He walked and got stronger. When he found this valley he bought it.”
“But not because he found gold,” Del put in, still not believing there was no gold. Not that he cared about gold. He just didn’t believe a man could work ten years on anything else.
“No, Abner was not a prospector. There’s no gold, I promise you. Abner found something more important. He used to be a professor back east. Union College, I think he called it. He had friends back there. He used to write to them a lot. He didn’t write in the last few years. He… he got so caught up in his work he didn’t think of anything else. If it hadn’t been for me, he would’ve forgotten to eat and sleep.”
“Then what?” Del realized he was feeling ever so slightly angry with himself.
“He bought this land because he found a special place, an ancient place where people used to live long ago. Long ago, Mr. Grant. Maybe even before Apaches and Mexicans. He told me never to speak a word of it to anybody. He made me swear a vow! But I have to tell you because now he’s dead. For a week I haven’t known what to do. I’ve been crazy with grief and fear. He valued this place more than his life. I almost hate the ruins—they killed him. Now they’re mine to protect. You can’t tell anyone, Mr. Grant. Promise! This is a solemn vow, more solemn than what we said in front of the judge. I swear on Abner’s grave, I will hold you to this promise!”
She cocked the gun.
Alarm prickled through Del’s body like heat lightning. This time she was serious. The widow lady looked crazy as a twice-dead… What had that man called her? He had married a lunatic. What harm would another promise do?
“I promise,” he said in a tone that had lured two men to draw on him in the past and regret it. “What kind of thing did Abner find?”
“Cliff dwellings, he called them,” she said in a hushed tone of respect. “Stone houses—as big as a village. At first he stayed around the ranch house with me, doing chores, but I knew he was just helping me adjust to life here. In time he had to go to the place where he did his work. I was just an ignorant mill town girl. I never cared about his ruins that much. He gathered his specimens. They made him so excited, those tiny scraps of things. He would bring them to me. His face would glow with something I never understood. Everything was so precious to him. He worked for hours. Hours! Days! Years! It didn’t matter the heat. It didn’t matter if he went hungry. I don’t even know what he did there. I would have to force him to lie down. Then he would sleep like the dead until he would jump up like a shot, go out at dawn without a word.” She shook her head, remembering. Her lips trembled with hurt and sorrow.
“Sit down yourself, Rosie,” Del said gently. He could see how distraught she was becoming. She might kill him accidently. “I promise I won’t tell. Everybody in town thinks there’s a gold mine here. Let them think it. So long as I’m here, they won’t get close to this place.”
He watched her study him as if he were a lizard on a rock and she was trying to decide if she should smash him or let him crawl away to safety. Finally she let down the hammer of her pistol and laid it on the table. Del realized he had been sweating.
She sank to a stool, trembling all over.
“When I first got here, the house was alive with scorpions,” she said. “I thought I’d die! I’d come so far. I couldn’t go back! I had nothing to go back to. At first I liked the quiet. Then I started to hear things. Whispers. Singing. That’s when I made the wind chimes. Oh, Abner got so mad one time. I used some little piece of a thing in one of the chimes. He called it… what was the word. A shard.”
Del wondered if she was going to cry now. Had she cried when she found her husband dead and realized she was completely alone in this desolate place with all these objects that meant nothing to her? It might do her good to cry except he didn’t know what he would do if she did.
“Abner was twenty years older than me,” Rosie went on. “At least I think it was twenty. He never told me how old he really was. Even after his lung fever cleared up, he kept his distance. He believed it was catching. He said it had claimed his whole family back east. After a while he had no money left. We went hungry. He apologized for being a poor provider. He brought pieces of baskets to show me. I got the idea to make them myself. I needed something to hold things around here. Then I made extra ones. Abner suggested I trade them for goods we needed… jerky, oats, pinto beans. Things got easier.” She smiled wistfully. “I think he came to care for me,” she said. “I always hoped he cared… just a little.”
Del’s heart went out to her. All those years here without even love to comfort her. It was heartbreaking.
“But what made you settle for a marriage like that?” he asked. “Didn’t you want a family?”
She rubbed the sleeve of her badly dyed bodice. He realized it was the same fabric as that hanging in doorways.
“I thought about it at first,” she said softly, as if the memory hurt more than she wanted to let on. “I hoped for more. When I was on my way here, that’s what I thought would happen. When he explained there was to be no conjugal union between us, I had to accept it. All I really wanted was a home anyway. This room became my home. I helped Abner add on his room, and then we built mine. Even when he was working at his site, I felt safe knowing he was out there and he would come home to me at night. Safe enough, anyway. A person’s never really safe, are they, Mr. Grant?”
