Grace of a Hawk Page 14

  At this compliment my brother grinned around a bite of breakfast. Cora sat near him and did not offer a smile, nor had she spoken other than to quietly answer Malcolm’s persistent questions; thus, before breakfast we had learned she was eleven years old, liked eggs but disliked onions, and agreed with Malcolm that Aces High was a fine horse. She did, however, decline the invitation to ride the animal, appearing frightful at the mere notion of approaching a horse. She was small for her age, pale as skimmed milk, near ghost-like, with a sweetly pretty face; what made it appear strange was her eyes, each of a different color, one a mossy green and the other dark as ground coffee. I tried my best not to stare at this irregularity; my grandmother would have insisted that a little girl with such eyes was marked for trouble.

  Superstitious claptrap, just like Granny Rose’s hoop snake tales, I reminded myself. I’d loved and respected my dear granny but she’d frightened the bejesus out of my brothers and me many a time with her tales of the Old World, delivered in the hushed voice of a born storyteller, tales inhabited by strange and clever creatures that tormented humans. I recalled Mama once admonishing Granny, who was in fact her mother-in-law, not to scare us so, and that afterward she and Granny were put out with one another for a solid week, until Daddy threatened to sleep in the barn instead of a house with fractious women. I smiled a little at the thought of Daddy’s blustering. I understood now, as well as Mama understood then, that Daddy wouldn’t last a night away from her; it was an empty threat at best. And to the end, this proved true; Malcolm told me Daddy died only hours after our mother.

  “I knew you’d be good company,” Grady said to Malcolm, with a continued air of satisfaction. And then, indicating my forehead with his fork, “What’n the hell happened to you?”

  “Wagon an’ me had a bit of a fallout,” I said, earning a round of laughter.

  “I gave your letters to my Mary,” Grady said. “She or one of the other gals will get ’em posted.”

  “Thank you,” I said, but immediately wondered, Oughtn’t I to have done it myself? What if Mary just plain forgets?

  “You’ll have no word until we return, but I do hope to get back this way before spring,” Grady said. “I posted a letter to my ma, in Kansas. She’d worry sore all autumn, if I hadn’t.” He looked at Virgil. “Isobel said to bid you farewell,” but Virgil only shrugged one shoulder, not glancing up from his breakfast.

  “My daddy had him a mare with one blue and one brown eye,” Malcolm was saying to Cora. He ate the egg pie with enthusiasm even as he spoke and the little girl did not seem embarrassed at his words. He studied her with keen interest, peering into her slim, fair face. He carried on, “My sister, Lorie, got eyes of green an’ blue mixed together, but yours are rightly two different colors. Was you born that way?”

  “Malcolm,” I warned, and his guileless gaze flashed to me; I beetled my brows, conveying as best I could that he was being rude, even if it was not his intent.

  Cora nodded in response to his question, stirring at her eggs with her fork. The utensil made a metallic scraping over the tin. She didn’t seem upset at Malcolm’s endless blathering; maybe because he was closer to her in years. I reflected that loneliness knew no age limits.

  “I was once acquainted with a feller with one blue and one brown, just like the horse you mentioned,” Grady said, scarfing his food. “And your pa, Corabell, once said his mama’s eyes was just like yours.”

  Cora shyly ducked her chin. Her hair, dark as winter oak, fell in long, heavy tangles around her cheeks. I wasn’t sure what drew my gaze Virgil’s way just then – maybe because he’d fallen so still – and spied him eyeing Cora even as he kept his head bent over his plate. His sideways look was guarded and reminded me of Isobel’s, the selfsame girl who’d asked Grady to bid Virgil farewell. Just as swiftly, Virgil looked back at his food.

  “My ma had a gold patch in one of her eyes, like a little sunbeam,” Quill remembered. He held his coffee cup loosely between both gnarled hands. The sun skimmed the earth now, streaking over us. He spoke of his mother with a note of sadness.

  “I don’t remember the color of my mother’s eyes,” Virgil said, shaking his head. “She passed when I weren’t but a young’un.”

  “Our mama too,” Malcolm said, and Cora stopped stirring her eggs, peering up at him.

  “And mine,” Quill said, with a small sigh.

  “You boys are making me sad,” Grady said, clunking his empty plate in the washbasin. “C’mon now, we got miles to go before dinner. We got cattle to drive.”

  The remuda consisted of an even dozen horses, sturdy head tethered to their picket line. Grady outfitted me with a faded blue bandana to tie about my neck and a fine lassoing rope, and together the two of us sat horseback, surveying the cattle herd. By morning’s bright, unclouded light, the prairie to the west of camp teemed with bovine stock, tones of brown to rival a hillside in early autumn. The animals bellowed and moaned, shifting their forelegs and stirring up dust, long tails twitching.

  “I never seen so many at a time,” I said. “Horses, sure, but not cattle.”

  “Shucks, this is nothing,” Grady said knowingly. “You should see the herds coming up from Texas way. Thousands of them, stock stretching out for miles. Of course, them drives have more than a dozen men, give or take.” He sat his saddle with ease, forearms crossed at the wrist and braced on the saddle horn; I didn’t get the sense that he was bragging over these facts, just speaking from experience. “You was cavalry, you said?”

  I nodded once, avoiding his gaze, not wishing to talk further on the subject.

  Grady seemed to understand without words and changed the subject; he spoke with a teasing air. “Cecilia was a mite put out that you didn’t return with me last night.” I felt my teeth come together at their edges and Grady nudged my arm. “Aw, I’m just funning you a little. Don’t mind me. The gals there like a new feller. Isobel was right disappointed too, but more that Virg didn’t come. She’s sweet on him, though he won’t admit it. Virg was sweet on Emilia, but he won’t admit that, neither, not since she run off from The Belle with no word to him.” Grady glanced my way when I did not respond and asked with a different tone, “You got a gal, Tennessee? My Mary said something of the sort.”

  I lifted my hat and swiped at my forehead; the gash there hurt as my knuckles scraped over it. I hardly knew Grady and yet I felt I could trust him to an extent; still, I didn’t rightly know what to say about what Mary had told him about Rebecca.

  Grady shifted in his saddle. Quartermain, his fine palomino mare, whickered and sidestepped. He tugged her gently back into line, murmuring, “Hold on, lady,” and then asked in a quieter tone, “Your gal’s wed, is she?”

  My voice was hoarse. “Not yet, she ain’t.”

  “Promised, then?”

  The bite of this went deep. I nodded, keeping my eyes fixed on the distant horizon.

  Grady shifted again. After a spell he said, “You shoulda joined me last night, Tennessee. Nothing takes a man’s mind from his troubles better than a willing woman. Or two!” So saying, he lightly cuffed my shoulder with a closed fist.

  “I used to think so,” I muttered.

  DRIVING A large herd was solitary work, I soon discovered. Grady rode point, roughly a mile ahead, keeping the lead bull moving; the rest of the animals fell into line as mannerly as children at a schoolhouse door, pairing up in twos and threes. It was an amusing sight at first and eventually just a tedious one, unchanging as the sun hammered down from a whitewashed sky. The cattle picked over the uneven ground with sure-footed diligence, heads bobbing with the rhythm of their steady progress, round hooves lifting a fine cloud of dust and cutting a wide swathe through the yellowing prairie grass; even the most novice of trackers could follow the trail we were leaving, and I wondered, for the first time, if I should have mentioned to Grady what had happened before we reached St. Paul. Malcolm remained quiet on the subject without my having to tell him, but he too must wonder why I hadn’t of
fered a word on the matter.

  Absently patting Fortune’s neck, I reasoned, You seen neither hide nor hair of the fellow, whoever the hell he was, since that night. And now you’s headed in a completely different direction. Ain’t no reason to believe he’s still following.

  My main duty was to keep the horses in a bunch and not let them give over to grazing. I rode at a small distance from the cattle, keeping the herds separate, as the horses were faster-moving altogether and it did not do well to mix them with the ponderous cattle. The sun rose along our backs; we would not stop until it began setting. Breakfast and dinner were both large meals; Quill explained they were not in the habit of breaking for a noon meal on any given day. We had to make time, as Grady insisted, and he was already chafing at the delay caused by Dyer Lawson’s death. Far behind me, Malcolm rode on the wagon seat with Cora and Quill; the old cook handled the team of mules, bumping tediously along, bringing up the distant rear. Virgil slept until late afternoon, on a narrow cot in the wagon, the one upon which Cora slept at night.

  The afternoon sun shone in my eyes for hours, creeping beneath my hat brim; I was coated in dust and my spine ached. I reflected that while the day’s work kept me occupied physically, riding alone was a terrible thing for more than one reason. I missed the company of my brother and Sawyer. I missed speaking with someone besides horses. I was never one for quietude; talking kept me sane after the War, back when all I could see when I closed my eyes was broken, torn bodies stacked up like hewn wood left in a hard rain. Gutshot horses and muddy bogs gone sickly, murky red with spilled blood. Field tents and severed limbs and my brothers ripped from life, the smell of death thick in my nostrils.

  Goddammit, I thought, and ground my teeth, willing those ugly memories back to their hidey-hole. I wanted to smoke, and grew ever more grim in temper. I hadn’t gone so long without tobacco since the War. I longed for my oldest friend riding Whistler beside me. I longed for my fiddle and its bow, and the sharp, pleasant scent of rosin. My restless thoughts turned over on themselves.

  May I compliment you? Rebecca had asked.

  We’d stood together in the dimly-lit intimacy of her home; Lorie, Malcolm, and Tilson remained out at the fire, from which Rebecca and I had just carried her sleeping sons. The boys had been tucked in their beds and I’d stood politely to the side while Rebecca descended the loft ladder behind me, clutching her skirts with one hand. As she’d come to the lowest rung I’d reached one hand and bracketed the air at her back, as I would were she climbing from a wagon seat. I did not dare touch her in that moment, too afraid such a bold gesture would startle her – or, worse yet, that I’d relent to the urge to grasp her elbow and tug her into my embrace; she would have been shocked, likely would have slapped my face.

  She stepped to the floor and shook out her skirts; the banked fire in the woodstove lent her front side a red-gold glow. Small flames flickered in her eyes as we stood in silence and I swore on my very soul I was not imagining the invitation present there. I opened my mouth to speak when she did first, asking if she could offer me a compliment.

  You may indeed, I’d replied, and felt my chest grow tight at her soft words, my vanity swelling.

  Her lips parted and the tip of her tongue stole out to wet them. Her long lashes threw patterns of warm light across her cheekbones as she studied my face, which was cast in shadow while the fire danced over hers. Her breasts lifted with an indrawn breath. It took the strength of a goddamn saint to keep from crossing the mere two feet of floorboards separating us. I felt like a criminal for my lustful imaginings, damning myself even as I gave over to the thought of taking her waist in my hands and closing the distance between us, of claiming that sweet, lush mouth and tasting all her secrets.

  She’d whispered, You play with such sincere passion. It is a joy simply to observe.

  Thank you kindly, I’d whispered. The tension in the air was so very taut I believed it would resonate if I drew my bow over it; I wanted to show her other ways in which I was sincerely passionate – oh Jesus, I had wanted that with a keen, finely-honed ache.

  Rebecca, oh holy Lord, woman.

  What would she say if she knew how exquisitely she tortured my thoughts?

  You made your decision, I reminded myself, and passed a hand over my face. She’ll never know. There’s no point thinking on it any longer.

  Riders approached my right flank when the sun was roughly an hour from setting and I turned to see Grady and Virgil cantering near. Grady lifted one arm in a wave. He rode Quartermain; Virgil’s mount was a fine, blue-roan gelding with raindrop patterning on its rump.

  “Hot, ain’t it?” I asked as they rode abreast of Fortune and me, glad for the company.

  Grady nodded. “And there’s still trees in these parts, where there’s some hope of cover from the sun. The farther west we venture, the fewer the trees.”

  “The country here is different than what I know, I’ll say that.” I scanned the horizon as though I hadn’t been staring at it all damn day, picturing instead the cool, shady forests and rambling creeks of my youth.

  “But not unpleasant,” Grady said. “I spent my growing years in Lofton, Kansas, along with Virg here. We knew each other long before the War. There ain’t much for trees on the Kansas plains, neither, not for miles at a time.”

  “It is quite a sight when you can see all the way to the edge of the prairie, unabated,” I allowed. “Back home, in the holler, the sun set early an’ you could see about as far as you could chuck a heavy stone.”

  Grady chuckled. He mused, “I was in Tennessee during the War but I reckon I wasn’t appreciating the countryside then. I feel I should return there, in peacetime, and see what I missed.”

  His words served to startle me, but I said only, “I’d like to return there someday myself, but I can’t rightly imagine when that might be.”

  Grady nodded slowly and there was a beat of silence between the three of us; I understood – perhaps for the first time, a slow dawning of awareness – it was strange for the two of them as well, conversing so civilly with a Johnny Reb. Had we met at such close range only a few years’ back, we would have been grappling to drive musket blades into each other’s flesh.

  Grady finally said, “Your kid brother could talk the hind leg straight off a mule, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “He is a jabberer.” A smile pulled at my mouth. “You can feel free to tell him to shut his yap.”

  “Naw, I don’t mind none. Quill gets a real kick out of him. And it is a fine thing to hear Cora-bell talking again. Not that she was ever much of a talker, but she’s been a church mouse since Dyer passed.”

  “Was she there when he was kicked?” I asked, thinking of her distress this morning.

  Neither immediately answered and I figured they were troubled at my rude, overly-familiar question, rightly so; after all, Dyer Lawson was a stranger to me and had been their friend. My mama and Granny Rose would deliver a sound scolding for this impolite mentioning of the deceased, especially a deceased man I’d never known.

  “Not as such,” Virgil said just as I opened my mouth to apologize for my rudeness; he drew a breath that lifted his narrow shoulders.

  Grady elaborated, “Dyer passed in the morning hours, in the boardinghouse. I didn’t want Cora to see him like that, near to death and battered as he was, and ordered her kept away. But she must have crept into his room after waking that morning because we found her there at dawn, her little head on his chest. He was already gone. Poor thing, Dyer was all she had left in this world.”

  “We had no business bringing her along on the trail,” Virgil said, gruff with impatience. “It’s no place for a girl-child, as I have stated many –”

  In the tone of someone taking up an old fight, Grady interrupted, “Dyer would never have wanted Cora in an orphanage. She ain’t of a strong constitution. There was no option but to bring her along to her kin.”

  “She seems to have taken to Malcolm,” I said, hoping to stave
off their bickering.

  A smile ghosted over Grady’s face as he nodded agreement. “That she has. He’s a likeable little feller and I’d hoped as such. Even my Mary had a thing or two to say about young Malcolm the other night.” At the mention of Mary, Grady’s smile broadened. He continued, “And Quill’s grown fond of him, encourages his chattering. All of Quill’s sons was killed at Gettysburg. He’s got two married daughters back in Pennsylvania, but no more boys. He said Malcolm brings them to mind.”

  “Malcolm and me lost our whole family during the War, the entire lot. I know he’s starved for the company of family, even family not his own,” I said. “Our uncle is the only kin we’ve left in the world.”

  “But Malcolm has spoken of a sister,” Virgil said, producing an apple from his pouch and crunching a bite of the yellow-red fruit.

  “Lorie,” I confirmed, wondering why even this simple statement from Virgil served to irk me. “She is my friend Sawyer’s wife, an’ very much like a sister to the boy an’ me. Closest I’ll ever come to a sister, I figure, until maybe Malcolm takes a wife.”

  Virgil said, “I’ve three sisters, all married, and all a fair piece older than me. I reckon they still have plenty to say about me roaming the country like I’ve done since the War. They filled my ears when I first came home, wouldn’t let up for nothing. I had to escape outside to get away from them.”

  “They believe you should be settled?” I guessed. I’d not heard him string so many words together since meeting him, and resolved to set aside my dislike.

  “They do indeed. Settled near to them, if they had their way,” Virgil said.

  Grady shifted, crossing his forearms on the saddle horn. “The thing is, they couldn’t understand, nor could my family, even if we went blue in the face explaining, why we feel the need to travel. Why we can’t stay in one place for any stretch of time. I tell you, Tennessee, when I was first home from soldiering I could hardly stay the whole night in my own bed. Here I was in the bed I’d longed for while sleeping in mud and guts, and yet I couldn’t rest for all the gold in them hills yonder. I ain’t too proud to admit I feared I was crazy, finding myself outside looking up at the moon in my underdrawers, figuring I was tetched for good.”