Ruby (25 page)

“Thank you, Cimarron, oh thank you.”
It has all been worth it. There really is a reason for all this
. Ruby thought awhile before asking, “Would you go back?”

“Not on your life. I know now that I’ve got some other choices.” Cimarron held up her needle. “I can sew about anything, and while the pay isn’t as good, at least it would be money made through honest work. Belle thinks we’d go back, but she ain’t never asked us, just figured she knows best. Like she always has. But she ain’t earned her living on her back in a long time.”

Ruby flinched at the plain language, but she’d asked. “Do you want to get married?”

“Yes, I do. But finding a good man isn’t the easiest, even with all the men around here. Think about it. There’s your captain, and he’s leaving.”

“He’s not
my
captain.”

“He would be if you gave him any encouragement. And then there’s Rand Harrison.”

“You call him a good man?”

“Most certainly. And some of the guys over in the barracks are all right, but they’d just as soon pay for their pleasure as marry us soiled doves. That’s why Daisy and me, most likely we got to get out of here and start over someplace else—where no one knows our past.”

“You are welcome to stay here.”

“I know. We’ll just have to see what happens.”

Opal and Milly came through the door from the dining room. “I’m hungry. Can I—” Opal stopped, made a face, and sighed as if she was the most put upon girl in the West. “I know—
may
we have a couple of cookies? Milly is reading better and better. You want to hear her?”

“Of course. Why don’t you put cookies on the plate for all of us? Milly, sit by the lamp so you can see better.”

Opal passed around the cookie plate. “Do any of you want a glass of milk?”

The others shook their heads, so Opal poured one for herself and sat down at the table. “Go ahead, Milly, read some of that chapter in Matthew.”

Milly found her place. “‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.”’

Opal dunked her cookie in her milk. “What’s a yoke?”

“A yoke is carved out of real solid wood and laid across the necks of oxen so they pull together. You hook the wagon tongue to the yoke between them.” Cimarron drew a picture of a yoke in the air with her hands.

“So why would God say, ‘take my yoke’?”

“Perhaps He is saying that when we yoke with Him, He will pull harder so we don’t have to work so hard.” Cimarron looked toward Ruby. “You think?”

“Could be. I could use some of His rest right now. Thank you all. I’m going to bed. Are you coming, Opal?”

“Soon as I finish this.” Opal took another cookie.

Each step seemed three feet higher than the one below, or was it just the heavy yoke she carried all by herself? As she folded back the sheets, she thought of the verse again. “‘Come unto me . . .”’
Lord, I’m just too tired to even look for my Bible. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll look
.

After the send-off for the captain at the train, where everyone gathered to tell him good-bye, Ruby felt on the verge of tears for the rest of the day. To overcome the voices arguing in her head, she threw herself into a frenzy of cleaning and polishing in the dining room. Cleaning the windows, she thought of their conversation down by the river, replaying it word by word. While washing, then waxing the counter, she wondered what he’d really meant.

Was it friendship you wanted or more? And what does more mean?Were you asking me if I’d be amenable to courting?

She emptied the cigars out of the ornate box that sat on the counter and wiped it down, inside and out.
What does love really feel like?
Smearing beeswax on her cloth she rubbed it into the box, making sure that every tiny corner and nick got a wax feeding.

How is love different than the enjoyment I felt in just being with you?
Taking a clean cloth, she buffed the beautiful box until it shone. She put the cigars back, set the box on the now burnished counter, and stood back. It needed flowers.

Captain McHenry had brought her wild daisies once. The tears brimmed again. Could all this be the beginning of love? At least there would be letters.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“No! No! Get away from there!”

“Ruby, stop. It’s all right. You are dreaming.”

Ruby forced her eyes open, trying to still her pounding heart. “What?” She reached through the fog to panic. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. You were dreaming, yelling at something.” Daisy stroked damp tendrils of hair from Ruby’s face. “You go on back to sleep. Everything is all right.” She rose and glanced over at the other pallet where Opal slept on, sprawled across the pallet like she’d collapsed there and not moved again.

“Thank you.” Ruby rubbed her eyes. The dream had been so real, no wonder she’d been shouting. A hawk dove down through the lattice Charlie had built across the chicken pen and stolen one of the half-grown chicks. She’d tried to grab it but the hawk beat her with his powerful wings, never dropping the chick. The bird’s talons had dripped red blood.

Ruby shuddered and, after turning her pillow to the cooler side, pulled her sheet back up over her shoulders. She took in a deep breath, held it, and let it out again slowly. On the second repeat, she could feel her body soften, her breathing slow, and warmth start in her feet and work its way up—not the warmth of too much heat but of peace and comfort.

She still remembered the dream when she woke at the rooster’s crow.

“You all right?” Daisy asked when Ruby entered the kitchen some time later.

“Just such a crazy dream.” Ruby described the hawk and the chicken. “How that bird flew right through the lattice, I’ll never know.”

“Dreams don’t have to make sense, you know. There’s an old song, ‘We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder,’ that’s based on Jacob’s dream in the Bible. He saw angels going up and down on a ladder.” Daisy sang a couple of lines. “I heard some Negroes singing that once. My, could they sing.”

“I don’t think I ever remembered a dream in such detail.”

“I had to call you a couple of times to wake you up,” Daisy said. “Some dreams seem to go on forever.”

“That one did.” Ruby shivered as she tied her apron in place. “You want to make the biscuits this morning or shall I?”

The Frenchmen were getting ready to leave for hunting right after an early breakfast. It took three packhorses to carry all their baggage, much to the dismay of their guide, Frank Vine.

“Never saw anyone with so much gear,” he muttered as he adjusted one heavily laden pack saddle. They were finally mounted, and the three Frenchmen waved a jaunty good-bye.

“You’d think they were going to be gone a month or more.” Daisy stood beside Ruby on the porch watching them ride to the river ford where they would head south.

“Well, give Mr. Vine enough to drink, and he’ll get over his ill humor. You about ready for a cup of coffee?” Together they returned to the dining room and began to clear off the tables on their way back to the kitchen.

By the time Ruby had told her dream to each of the others, it no longer held such terror, but that didn’t keep her from wandering out to the chicken pen and checking to make sure all the lattice was in place.

“Dreams can be like that,” Charlie said with a smile.

“You caught me in the act.” Ruby pulled a carrot and, after wiping off all the dirt, took a bite. “You sure have had a good garden out here.”

“I know. We got just enough rain this year. I’ll dig all the chicken manure in this fall, and by spring this ground will be so rich we won’t even have to plant the seeds.”

“Oh sure. They’ll just volunteer. About like Opal does at the dishpan.”

Charlie went down the row, pulling the smaller beets and laying them in a basket. “We can cook the tops in one pot and boil the beets in another. The rest will be ready for pickling and canning anytime.”

Ruby took the basket. “Thanks for working so hard out here. I’ve heard people comment on the variety of food we offer, and that’s all thanks to you.”

“Working in the garden is just about as good as going to church, not that I’ve done that in many a year. When you think that’s where God met man during the cool of the evening, walking in the garden, I guess He loves gardens too. I ’spect that garden was some bigger than ours, with trees and rivers and all manner of beautiful growing and blooming things.”

“Why, Charlie, how beautifully said. You keep coming up with things to surprise me.”

Guilt stabbed Ruby like little pins. Perhaps in the winter she would have more time for reading her Bible again. As Milly had read,
“‘Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden . . .”’
That certainly did apply to her. So why was it so hard to do that?

She looked up from studying the lay of the beets in her basket. “Charlie, do you mind if I ask you another question? About my father, I mean.”

He leaned on the handle of his hoe. “Ask away.”

“I . . . I remember my father as a good Christian man. He took Mor and me to church on Sundays, and I remember him reading the Bible. He read so beautifully, his voice so deep— sometimes I thought it was God himself talking.” She worried her bottom lip. “So how could he have a . . . a saloon with . . . with the girls?” Her voice dropped on the final words.

“I’m not sure I can give an answer that will help you.”

“Please try.”

He nodded. “Per didn’t start out with . . . with . . .”

“Soiled doves?”

Another nod while he leaned down and smashed a potato bug. “He won big at the tables for a whole week in a row and thought he was rich. All he could talk about was going someplace small and building a real nice hotel. By then he had hooked up with Belle, and he asked her to come along. She said she would, under one condition—that the girls came too. She told him they might end up in the cribs if she didn’t take care of them. Well, Per couldn’t let that happen, so we all came up here and built Dove House. At first the girls were just singing and dancing, but one thing led to another and . . .”

“But he took money from them.”

“Well, out here on the frontier, a man does what he has to do to survive.”

“I see.”
What a thing to say. No, I don’t see at all
.

“If they’d ever wanted to go, he woulda let them. It weren’t like they were slaves, like some other places. And he gave them the best life he could.”

Ruby watched a gold-and-black butterfly taste a bean blossom.
He did the best he could
. But what if his best wasn’t good enough?

“He talked about you and Opal often. And he hoped to provide for you with Dove House.”

“Right. And if I don’t pay the bills, we will lose it. And then everyone will be out in the cold.” She raised her gaze to his. “I’ve got to find that money box and the buksbom.”

“Do you have enough to pay the bank?”

“If I don’t pay Mr. Rumsford. The money we bring in goes out so fast, like water running through my fingers.” She glared at her hands as if they were indeed the culprits. “No matter how hard I try to be frugal, feeding people takes a lot of money.”

“It will get better soon.”

Ruby sighed, started to leave, and turned back. “Do you think Belle is keeping out more than her share of the evening’s take?”

Charlie shrugged.

Ruby waited for him to say something, but when he returned to his hoeing, she nodded once and took her basket of vegetables back to the hotel.

The next afternoon, Opal burst into the kitchen. “Mr. Harrison is here, and he asked if I would like to go riding. I can, can’t I?”

Ruby shook her head. “You have lessons and—”

“Oh, for goodness’ sakes.” Cimarron gave a snort. “Let her go. Rand Harrison is trying to do somethin’ nice, so let him. He’ll take good care of her.”

“It’s not that. I—”

“You and he can’t be in the same room without gettin’ in a tangle, but you know Opal wants to ride more than anything, and with the captain gone, she—”

“All right.” Ruby raised her hands in front of her as if to stem the torrent of words. “You may go.”

“Oh, thank you, Ruby. Thank you, Cimarron. I’ll do extra chores later.”

“Just get on up those stairs to change before he changes his mind,” Cimarron said. “I’ll take him a cool drink. We got any of that plum swizzle left?”

They could hear Opal thundering up the stairs.

Ruby turned to Milly who was working sums on the slate. “Please go remind her to wear her boots.”

The speed with which Milly put down the slate let Ruby know that Milly would rather be doing about anything else too.

After supper that evening, Ruby glanced around at everyone gathered to listen to another chapter of
Oliver Twist
, the book she was reading. “Where’s Cimarron?” To the best of her ability she ignored Rand, who’d stayed at Opal’s invitation.

“I don’t know,” Daisy answered. “Guess I haven’t seen her since shortly after supper.”

“Last I saw her, she was sitting out on the back porch. Said she had a bit of a headache.” Milly looked up from her paper where Opal had set her to copying a paragraph out of the Bible. She could sign her name now and had learned to print the alphabet.

“Opal, please go upstairs and see if she is lying down. It’s not like her to disappear like this.”

Opal came racing down the steps minutes later. “She’s not up there.”

“Did you check Belle’s room?”

Back up the stairs and down. “No, and Belle says she hasn’t seen her.”

“I’ll go out and look.” Charlie laid down the ax he was sharpening with a file.

Rand stood and reached for his hat.

“Me too.” Milly set her work aside.

“I think we’ll all go, but in pairs,” Ruby said.

“Maybe she went down by the river and tripped or something.” Opal followed Milly out the door.

“You two go up the street, Rand and I’ll check over toward the buttes.” Charlie wore a frown that made Ruby wonder if he suspected something he wasn’t telling. As she and Daisy went up the street, they could hear the girls calling down by the river.

“Cimarron!” Ruby and Daisy called together.

“Has she said anything about wanting to leave?” Ruby asked just before they reached the cantonment.

Daisy shook her head. “Cimarron wouldn’t just take off without telling anyone. You know her better than that.”

“I thought so.”

“Is there a problem, Miss Torvald?” The soldier on guard met them at the corner of the parade grounds.

“Miss Cimarron is missing.”

“Since when?”

“We’re not sure. Perhaps since right after supper.”

“Maybe she just went for a walk? Or . . .”

“Or? Just what are you implying?”

“Well, perhaps she . . . ah . . . went back to her former line of work.” His words trailed off at the end as Ruby nailed him with a look that would have shriveled the most hardened of campaigners.

“Thank you for your assistance.”

“But I never . . .”

“No, I know you never. And you never will!” She took Daisy by the arm and hustled her away so fast her feet hardly touched the ground. “The nerve of him, why I could—”

“Ruby, that’s just the way it is out here. Once a whore, always a whore, far as most of these men figure.”

“Well, he better not hope to eat at Dove House again.” She kicked a clump of dirt in the road, and it shattered into pieces.

Just the way she wished she could have kicked that man with the hopes of the same ending.

“The soldiers could ride out and see if she really got lost out walking.”

“If we don’t find her, I’ll go back and talk with Lieutenant Wilson.”

Opal came running up the street. “Charlie found her! She’s hurt bad.”

Ruby and Daisy picked up their skirts and ran toward Dove House.

“They put her in Belle’s bed.” Opal followed them inside and up the stairs.

Ruby pushed open the door. Belle sat on the edge of the bed, sponging dirt and blood from Cimarron’s face, murmuring words of comfort.

“What happened?”

Charlie shook his head and motioned her back out of the room. “Opal, you go on down and help Milly.”

“But I want—”

“Do as Charlie says.” Ruby waved her sister away. As soon as Opal went down the steps, she turned back to Charlie. “Where did you find her?”

“Out behind those ramshackle sheds to the north. They tied her up and”—he gritted his teeth—“and raped her.”

Ruby felt her knees go weak and leaned against the wall.
God above, how can this be?

“Took two of ’em to do it. I find ’em, and I’ll kill ’em myself.” He flexed his hands, hands with the power to throw men out of Dove House. “Rand is saddling the horses.”

Ruby had no doubt he meant it. “Do you know who did it?” She swallowed against the urge to vomit.

“She told me.”

“How bad is she hurt?”

“Beat up mostly. Unless she has broken ribs. She said one of ’em kicked her.”

“What kind of monsters are they?” Tears burned as rage burst into flame.

“Just men who thought she oughta do what they wanted, and when she wouldn’t—”

“They near to killed her.”
How I wish that Captain McHenry was here. He’d find them and mete out the punishment they deserve
. “How can I help her?”

“Don’t leave her alone. Get her wounds dressed. Belle has some laudanum, and that will make her sleep. Right now a good shot of whiskey would help.”

“Do we have any?”

“Nope. Got rid of it all. Laudanum will do the same. You go on in and help Belle. Before I leave, I’ll bring up more water and the hip bath.”

Ruby nodded and stepped back into the room.

“I . . . I thought I could ch-change, Belle. I’d even started to believe it.”

The broken words tore at Ruby’s heart. She crossed the room and knelt by the bedside. She stroked Cimarron’s forehead, fighting the nausea at what she saw. One eye was already swollen shut, a split in her bottom lip swelled her mouth, and another cut on an eyebrow did the same. One side of her face was scraped as though she’d been dragged through gravel.

Though Belle had covered the young woman, Ruby could see the front of Cimarron’s dress had been ripped from the shoulders and one sleeve was missing. “Oh, Cimarron, I am so sorry.”

“Not . . . your . . . fault.” The swollen lips made talking difficult.