Carla Kelly (36 page)

“Elinore, I'm a dunce,” she said quietly. “Doc…”

Her friend looked up quickly, her face troubled. “It's nothing. How could it ever be anything?”

“There are lots of reasons,” Julia said.
In for a penny, in for a pound
, she told herself. “Last week, Doc got a letter from his former wife. He certainly didn't share it with me, but Paul told me she had written because someone wrote her to say that he was a reformed man and maybe she ought to take another look.”

Elinore was silent, her eyes on her knitting, even though her hands were still. Julia leaned forward. “You wrote to her, didn't you?”

Elinore nodded. She chewed on her lip, still not raising her eyes.

“Why? Call me slow sometimes, but why would you do that? Why tell her that her husband has changed? I mean, especially if you… if you like him a little.”

“I like him a lot,” Elinore said finally, still staring at her knitting. “I doubt he has any idea how I feel about him.”

“You could let him know,” Julia said. “There are ways, even for ladies. Trust me.”

She looked at Julia then, and Julia saw the pain in her eyes. “If I were pretty like you, I would,” she said finally. “I'm not.” She held up her hand. “And you're too honest to try to convince me otherwise.”

Please, Father, help me say the right thing
, Julia thought.
I like this kind woman
.

“Elinore, when I saw you coming toward me at the cow gather, determined to help with that dreadful sonofagun stew, I knew you were solid and true,” Julia said. “I've been long enough on this hard range to know that those are the qualities that endure.” She touched her scarred neck. “I… I used to be just pretty and a good cook. Now I hope I'm solid and true too. Why did you write to her?” she asked again, coaxing as if she spoke to a stubborn child.

Elinore went to the window, her knitting balled in her hand, her voice filled with intensity. “I thought she ought to know how wonderful her husband was and that he had changed. I told her to give him another chance.”

“What if she agrees and wants him back?”

“Then I've done my duty.”

“And if she doesn't?”

Elinore turned around, her eyes bewildered now. “If she doesn't, who says he would look at me?”

Julia dabbed at her eyes and continued knitting. “Silly girl, who did he think of first, when he wanted to make sure I had the care I needed? Alice Marlowe is closer, but you were on his mind.”

Elinore sat down and started knitting faster. “I suppose I was,” she said, her voice hesitant, as if afraid to let the idea take root anywhere.

“Let's leave it at that for now,” Julia told her gently. “There's time.”

Time. She thought about that on the way home, Paul handling the reins. She watched the slight smile on his face, wondering if he was happy about Maisie's ladylike gait, but sure it was more. She tucked her arm through his, and he glanced at her, that same smile on his face.

“I've spent my life keeping busy and doing things, some more productive than others,” she said.

“You're describing most of the human race, sport,” he replied.

“True, but now all I have to do is breathe and eat, and I'm involved in the biggest production in all the universe,” she told him. “It simply amazes me to think what's going on inside my body. I think I never really understood tender mercies until right now.”

Paul spoke to Maisie and stopped the buckboard. He gathered Julia in his arms, and they sat close together until the wind picked up and Maisie shook her harness politely to remind them that time was passing and grain waited in the horse barn.

They took the wagon to Gun Barrel on Saturday because on Monday they were transporting Karl Rudiger, his crew, and their tools to the Double Tipi to build the new bunkhouse. Along with some windmill parts, there was a box marked Singer and addressed to Julia Otto, waiting for them in the freight office. Julia patted the crate, which made Paul chuckle.

“Mama said it would be arriving soon,” Julia said as Paul signed the lading bill. “I'll set up my Singer in the dining room. You might even get a shirt or two out of this, if you play your cards right, cowboy.”

“Put it in the office,” Paul told her. “I always like your company in there.”

“Maybe I will. I could use your desk to cut out patterns.”

He winced. “Marriage.”

“You know you love it.”

As much as she wanted to be with the Cheyenne Deseret Sunday School Union, Julia had to screw up her courage to even think about walking down the stairs in the Plainsman Hotel. She felt supremely conscious that there wasn't any disguising her interesting state, in a dress without a waist.

“You know, Paul, there are some ladies in my folks’ ward who won't leave the house when they start to show,” she told him as he hooked the clasp on her necklace. She looked around the room, speaking softly in case the bellhop lingered outside, his ear to the door panel. “I mean, everyone knows what we've been up to!”

He laughed. “Do you mean what we were up to in May, or the other night? Julia, you're a funny one. Men see the matter differently. I think I'll like parading you on my arm, as obvious proof to the world what a stud you married.”

She rolled her eyes. “You have a regrettable tendency to speak in ranching terms.”

“But you love me anyway. Come on. We'll be late to church.”

Funny she had ever thought it strange to attend church in the Odd Fellows Hall, with a picture of Custer dying at the Little Big Horn behind the pulpit. She looked around with pleasure to see her Cheyenne friends—the men talking in one corner and the ladies in another, with children running when they should have been walking. She knew what Elinore meant by enjoying the fellowship of women, a rare commodity in Wyoming.

“I was a little embarrassed to start wearing anticipation dress,” she admitted in a whisper to Emma Gillespie.

Sister Gillespie fingered the delicate lawn, the color of cornflowers. “This is a pretty one. Believe me, you'll get mighty tired of the same few dresses by the ninth month!” Her hand went to Julia's cheek. “Motherhood becomes you, now that you're over the icky stage. You have that glow.”

Julia's hand went to her other cheek. “That's what Paul says, but I look in the mirror and see the same old me.”

“He's right. Come, my dear, Heber's looking at his timepiece. If you're game, you can hold the newest Gillespie for practice while I struggle with Mabel. Good thing I memorized all the hymns years ago. What mother can hold a hymnal?”

After an evening at the Gillespies’ and a visit to Eugene Shumway, who was packing his bags for a trip to Utah to retrieve Cora and James, they spent another night in the Plainsman Hotel. They met the Denver train early in the morning, with Karl Rudiger and his crew aboard. By noon they were in Gun Barrel again.

“Don't forget my sewing machine,” Julia said as the liveryman hitched the horses to the wagon.

She walked over to the wooden crate, a smile on her face, thinking about the baby clothes to come and a shirt or two for her best beau. She looked closer at the crate and felt her face go pale. She took a deep breath and looked again, then backed away as though the crate were on fire. Scratched next to her name were the words,
If I can't find James, you will do
.

“Mr. Rudiger, get Paul,” she demanded, sitting down suddenly on a bale of hay because her legs wouldn't hold her. “Please hurry!”

Once glance at her white face kept him from asking questions. Paul was there in moments, his hand on her shoulder.

“Darling, what's wrong?”

She pointed at the crate. The puzzled look on his face changed into shock and then fury as he read the message. “Slattery!” he shouted to the liveryman as Julia started to cry. “Come here!”

She had never heard that tone of voice from her husband before, and it frightened her as much as the message on the crate. It must have startled the others too, because no one moved a muscle except the liveryman, who couldn't get to Paul fast enough.

The man looked where Paul pointed, then at Julia. “Mrs. Otto, I don't know what to say.”

“Someone already said it,” Paul snapped. “Get the sheriff. I want him to see this.”

He sat down heavily beside her on the bale. He took her hand, and she was startled to find that he was shaking. “That's it, Julia,” he said in a low voice. “You're going back to Salt Lake City on the next train.”

“No, I'm not,” she said in a louder voice, a voice that sounded strangely fierce to her ears. “If you put me on the train, I'll just get off at Laramie and come back. Don't you dare think I'd ever leave you.”

The look he gave her took away her breath. She had never seen such anguish in someone's face. “Please don't send me away,” she sobbed. “I couldn't bear it.”

“Julia, I won't toy around with your life,” he said, his voice softer, but no less intense. “This discussion is over.”

“No, it isn't,” she said, matching her intensity to his. “Not by a long chalk.”

She might have been sitting next to a stranger on the long, painful journey to the Double Tipi. The men in the wagon were silent, and so was Paul as he stared straight ahead into the warm afternoon. For a change there was no wind, and the air was mild, even teasingly cool, as though summer was having second thoughts about hanging around much longer in Wyoming. On any other day, it would have been a beautiful ride through the pass to her beloved home. Now all Julia could do was turn away from the man she loved and stare at the sagebrush and the occasional meadowlark, stirred to motion and song by the passing wagon and horses.

I won't go back to Salt Lake
, she thought as they made the turn to the Double Tipi.
I couldn't survive another separation
. Just the idea of days stretching into months without him made her shoulders start to shake. She cried great, gulping sobs that she could no more have contained than a narrow stream could hold back the spring runoff.

“Julia,” was all Paul said. His arm went around her, and she turned her face into his shirt, weeping.

He stopped the wagon and motioned to Karl Rudiger, sitting grim in the wagon bed. “Rudiger, take the wagon in and unload. Matt will help. Julia and I are going to walk.” He turned to look at her. “You
will
walk with me, Darling, won't you?”

He sounded so uncertain that her heart broke. “Only with you,” she whispered and held out her arms as he helped her down.

“There's too much at stake now, Julia,” he said as they walked slowly along. “I'd sell out here before I would take such a risk with you and our child.”

“I never imagined I would hear you say something like that,” she said, when she thought she could speak without tears. “I know what the Double Tipi means to you.”

“You mean more.”

She stopped and just held her hands to his face. She took a deep breath. “Paul, if we can't face this together, then how are we going to deal with everything else in this wonderful, terrible, amazing place?”

She felt angry then as he stood there with that inscrutable look, his hands at his sides, making no move to touch her. “I'm convening a meeting of the cowpunching corporation. Don't think I'm not aware of what you're doing, putting my name on all legal documents, making sure I can harness and drive a buckboard, letting me read your journals so I could run this ranch if I had to. You know how hard it is, and you're preparing me.”

He opened his mouth to speak, and she gave him a look so fierce that he closed it. “I nearly died in a fire last summer. The Lord didn't keep me alive to cut and run when a madman decides to toy with us. The range could burn up again. I might lose this baby. Chief could step in a prairie dog hole and throw you like your father was thrown. Borrow my light, my dearest; I borrowed yours last year. I didn't survive to run away, and I won't. You can't make me. Meeting adjourned.”

She started walking rapidly toward the ranch, praying so hard that there weren't even any words to express the deepest feelings that tumbled through her tired brain.
Take this burden too, dear Lord
, she prayed, when she was coherent again.
I can't handle it and I don't want it. I'm calling down all the powers of heaven to keep me safe. I have a share in Paul's priesthood now, and it's my right to ask
.

She stopped and took a deep breath as the greatest feeling of relief she had ever known covered her whole body. She turned around. Paul hadn't moved.

“Are we in this, Paul?” she asked, never more serious in her life. Her mind became a jumble again as she prayed without words.

“We're in this, sport,” he said, equally serious after a long, excruciating time. “You're not going anywhere except our ranch.”

He walked toward her, and she watched the determination grow on his face, turning him again into the man she loved. She sighed with relief, then felt something strange.

It felt almost like a hand was strumming fingers gently against her belly. Fascinated, she put her hand to her abdomen, touching lightly in response to the touch within. “My stars,” she whispered as she felt a responding touch. There it was again, not her imagination, but their child. “I guess you wanted a say too,” she said, looking down.

“What's that, sport?” Paul asked, taking her by the shoulders and gently pulling her close to him.

“Wasn't talking to you,” she said, her voice calm now, where it had been so fierce. “I feel the baby, Paul.”

She didn't have to say anything more. She went to her knees again, not from anxiety this time but conviction. Julia knelt on Double Tipi land and her husband's firm hands went automatically to her head as he asked the Lord to bless her and their child and called on heaven to protect them.