Carla Kelly (26 page)

Julia busied herself with peeling potatoes again, looking up now and then at the men and cattle milling around far enough away from the chuck wagon not to raise the dust. Soon came the dreadful smell of burning hair and flesh as the branding began.

She must have passed some test yesterday, because both Alice and Elinore were talkative this morning. “I fainted the first time I smelled that atrocious odor,” Elinore said. “You must be made of stronger stuff.”

I owe it to my husband,
she thought, her attention on the potatoes again. “Just lucky, I suppose.”

She looked for Paul and saw him and the men of the Double Tipi riding and roping. She wished she didn't have to peel potatoes. The fun was obviously going on by the iron fires, where there was loud laughter and cussing, all of it punctuated by the bellows of cattle and the snorting of horses. Dust was everywhere. She finally gave up trying to brush it from her hair.

Lunch was much like supper the night before: endless beef, beans, and potatoes. She chewed her food thoughtfully, always aware of texture and taste.

“You're a good cook,” she told Cookie, when he sat down beside her with his own tin plate. She held up a forkful of steak. “I believe that's the best steak I ever ate. What's your secret, or do you share?”

“A cow chip fire,” he said. “You don't even need pepper.”

She laughed out loud.
Keep smiling
, she told herself later, when a whole delegation of cowboys came toward the chuck wagon. Cookie had laid out coffee and lemonade on his sawhorse table, to accompany a washtub filled with bear sign that Julia and Elinore—not a talkative woman—had made.

“Here it comes, Julia,” Alice said. “Ready for this?”

“As I'll ever be.”

With barely suppressed smiles, the men carefully brought over a wash basin brimming with testicles. The basin was so full that two men had to steady it. Paul had been right; the range fires had meant more stray cattle, which meant even more branding and castrating at the cow gather this May.

“Set it on the work table, please,” she said, taking Paul's little knife out of its sheath.

“We like'um all nice and crisp,” someone ventured, before Cookie shooed them toward the coffee.

“Drink up, gents,” Cookie boomed out in his usual ear-busting voice. “As I live, these ladies made you dirty, vile wretches a washtub of bear sign. Now aren't you ashamed of yourselves?”

All that little speech earned was raucous laughter. “Sure you know what to do with them little balls, Mrs. Otto?” someone called.

“You'd be surprised, gentlemen,” Julia said. She took a deep breath and plunged her hand into the mess, commanding her dinner to stay where it was, digesting merrily somewhere inside.

Several cowboys squatted down to watch as she began her task, slitting, popping, and cutting until she established a rhythm to it. The smell of the blood bothered her less after an hour of work, but Paul had not prepared her for the swarm of flies that appeared from out of nowhere, or maybe from their last engagement in Exodus as one of the ten plagues of Egypt. Attracted by the blood, they swarmed around her nose and eyes until she wanted to scream, but that would only have invited them into her mouth.

She could barely breathe as she slit and popped. She felt panic rise in her, a weird sort of claustrophobia out in the widest of open spaces. Only the greatest stubbornness she had ever known kept her seated there, skinning the oysters. Absurdly, “If thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high,” jumped into her mind, even though she was pretty sure the Lord never had Rocky Mountain oysters in mind when he told that to Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail.

“That's enough. It really is! Julia, stop.”

She looked up in relief at Paul's familiar voice. She absorbed the pain in his eyes right into her own body and shook her head. She doggedly continued at the task set for her by a cow gathering full of rough men, who took their fun where they found it, living out their own dangerous lives on the range. She decided right then that she would die before she would stop. She had cast her lot with a cowman and that was that.

Heavenly Father, just let there be a breeze,
she prayed as she worked, ignoring Paul, who was talking to Cookie now. Paul seldom raised his voice, but she could hear him now.
That's all I want
;
just a breeze. Don't worry about me, Paul
.

The breeze never came. The crowd of men squatting on the ground grew quieter as she continued her way through the bloody basin, her breath as shallow as she could make it.

“Move over, sport.”

She looked up and shook her head fiercely as Paul sat down beside her, knife in hand.

“You're a boss. You don't need to do this,” she whispered, even as she felt the tears start in her eyes.

“Yes, I do,” he said, picking up a bloody sac and draping it over his fingers. “I guess I never realized quite how cruel this is to the newest tenderfoot until I saw my eternal companion sitting there. Shame on me. ‘Evelina’ or ‘Redeemer’? I'll just hum, or I'd swallow way too many flies.”

“Redeemer,” she said. She was crying now, but it didn't matter, because her face was covered with flies, and no one could see her tears. The tears slid down her dirty face. She moved closer until they were touching shoulders.

“Got another knife?”

Julia glanced over to see Mr. Kaiser squatting down by the basin. “Thanks, Cookie,” he said, when the cook silently handed him a knife. “Three of us ought to see this finished. Nice tune, Paul. I didn't know you were so talented.” Mr. Kaiser reached into the basin too.

His voice was so calm in the middle of all this chaos. When she looked up again, the baiting cowboys had drifted away.

“We'll be done in no time,” Mr. Kaiser said. He swatted at the flies, then gave up too, and just applied himself to the task. “What plans do you have for these jewels?” he asked, when the last oyster was shucked.

“Big plans,” she told him, appalled at the flies that clung to her clothing and face, and finally yielded to panic. “Paul, help me.”

Quickly, he picked her up, blood, flies, and all, and carried her toward the river. He called over his shoulder to Mr. Kaiser. “There's a valise in my wagon and some towels. Just leave them on the bank.”

“Will do,” the stockman said. “How about when I get back, I just sit on the bank, facing away, with my rifle?”

“Good plan. We'd rather not be disturbed.”

“You got it, Paul.”

She couldn't stop her tears as Paul stripped off her clothes and put her in the cold water. She gasped, then held her nose and went under, finally free of the torment of the flies. Paul was bare and beside her in a minute, just holding her as she sobbed.

“I knew it would be bad, but I didn't realize how bad. Julia Otto, why'd you marry such a big fool?”

“Because I love you!” she wailed.

He started to chuckle then, and it grew into a belly laugh that come from somewhere deep inside. She couldn't help herself and started to laugh too. She had tapered off to a giggle that grew again, when a bar of soap came flying over the bank and into the water.

“Are you two all right?” Mr. Kaiser hollered, and there was a noticeable quaver in his voice.

“Couldn't be better,” Paul hollered back. “I'm still the envy of nations.”

“I don't doubt that. I'll just sit here with my rifle until you lunatics are done.”

Still humming “Redeemer,” Paul scrubbed her from hair to heels. When he finished, she took the soap and worked him over.

“Stay in the water,” he said when she finished. He climbed the bank and brought down some towels and the valise. “Wrap up in this,” he said as he handed her a towel, and took the other one for himself.

He helped her dress when she was dry. “What a relief to be clean,” she said finally. She sat down on the bank and took the comb he handed her, grateful for short hair. She watched him dress, her eyes going to the awful scar under his armpit and down his ribs, put there by his former wife in her insanity.
This is a hard place
, she thought.
Not for every woman
.

“Paul, do you know what I was thinking while I worked?”

“How much you'd like to bean me with a barrel stave?” he asked as he sat down beside her.

“Not at all. A scripture from the Doctrine and Covenants just popped into my mind. “You know: ‘If thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high.’ ”

Paul glanced up the bank, where she could just see the back of Mr. Kaiser's head. “Remember the rest of it, sport? ‘Thy friends do stand by thee…’ I'm not sure I would have thought him a friend, not after what happened this winter. What now?”

“Back to work,” she said. “I'm clean and the flies won't be interested.”

“You still going to make those fancy oysters you cooked for me?”

“Better believe it, cowboy.”

Cookie had a few weak objections, but they amounted to nothing, considering the remorse on his face. “You can make some of the oysters the way you do, on that griddle,” she told him, calm and confident, “but I think I've earned the right to do the rest my way.”

He didn't argue. Paul nodded and walked away, leaving her alone. As she watched the set of his shoulders as he walked away, Julia had a sure idea how hard that was for him, but how necessary for her.

“Do you need some help, Julia?” It was Alice, and there was something close to remorse on her face too. She looked down at the ground. “I… I never had to do that. Max wouldn't let them. Why did Paul…?”

Julia knew why. She had figured it out in the river, but it wasn't anything she could put into words for Alice. Max Marlowe was a good man, but he had a small ranch. He didn't control a large chunk of southeast Wyoming. Max had no real reputation to maintain in their hard society, where a man's word and deed could mean the difference between life and death. Maybe that man's wife too. Julia understood clearly what had happened, and why.

“I had all the help I needed, but thank you, Alice.” And it wasn't just Paul and Mr. Kaiser, she knew.

It was a nourishing thought that kept her content through the rest of the afternoon, as she breaded the Rocky Mountain oysters and fried them in the kettle full of lard. Cookie agreed that salt was all the seasoning they needed. A smile on her face, she watched him dip the crisp little package in ketchup and then pop it in his mouth. His expression changed from skeptical to beatific.

“Don't change a thing,” he said. “I'll fix a few of those puny ones we used to cook on hot rocks, but I doubt we'll get many takers, once they try yours. Miz Otto, if you ever get tired of old Paul, there'd be a place for you to cook with the Clyde brothers.”

Cook for the men who tried to drive out my darling?
she asked herself.
And maybe me too?
I’ d die first
. “Cookie, that's a compliment,” she said instead and called it good.

Supper was a signal triumph. Julia chewed her steak—cooked medium rare the way she liked it, and not blasted to a crisp—and watched the men eat.

“You're doing it again,” Paul told her in an undertone.

“I know. They look pleased,” she whispered back. “I hope I never see another Rocky Mountain oyster…” She stopped and smiled at her husband. “… until the next cow gather, or even tomorrow, where Cookie will assign a man or two from each outfit to skin and shuck their own. I'll be happy to fry them, though.” She leaned closer. “Cookie doesn't know this yet, but I'll tell him.”

“You'll
tell
Cookie Brown? Julia, I doubt even the Clyde brothers tell Cookie Brown what to do in the kitchen.”

She gave him her best look. “Paul, I am prettier than the Clyde brothers. I smell better, and I might even be beautiful.”

The satisfied smile he returned told Julia exactly what had happened to her. Her heart grew lighter as she realized she wasn't the young woman hiding in her bedroom last fall, afraid to even look at her own scars.
When did this happen?
she asked herself, wondering, as she watched her husband.

“I know you are,” was all Paul said, but it was enough to put that demon behind her forever. “Let me tell you one more thing, and I hope it doesn't swell your head: no greenhorn has ever done what you did. None of them ever lasted more than an oyster or two.”

“You're joking,” she said, even though the hard look in his eyes belied her words.

“Nope. Usually the cowboys just bring over one or two to be shucked and everyone laughs. The boys cut the rest themselves, and the initiation is over. I thought there might be maybe a dozen, since you're my wife, and everyone likes to kid a boss, but not hundreds.” He looked in the direction of the Clyde's camp. “Apparently Malcolm instigated this. I'm so sorry. I had no idea he would go to such lengths to humiliate you.” He sighed. “And me. You still my friend, sport?”

“You know I am,” she said quietly. “We got through it.”

Julia couldn't help but notice the change in mood at the roundup. When the next day's branding finished, each outfit brought their own prepared oysters to the chuck wagon, where Julia breaded and fried them, adding just a pinch of sage this time. No one objected. Maybe they were afraid to; maybe they liked it. She didn't care. Her only food critic was Paul Otto, and she saw the delight in his eyes. And there was no denying the respect in Cookie's eyes, especially since it was reflected in the other men's faces too.

Besides the Rocky Mountain oysters that night, and everlasting steak, Julia had convinced Cookie to flavor the rest of his pinto beans with molasses and maple syrup left over from flapjacks the day before. It did her heart good to see some of the cowboys lingering around the trenches of Dutch ovens, looking for more.

“Walk with me, Darling.”

I'll never tire of that
, she thought as she glanced at Cookie, who nodded, and then took Paul's hand. “I have to get back to wash dishes,” she said. “Where are we going?”

“I was minding my own business, when some of my former poker-playing colleagues said they want to meet you.”

“I'm skeptical,” she said, tucking her arm in his. “These are the same gentlemen who didn't want a blamed Mormon at their precious poker table in Denver?”