Ruby (26 page)

“Charlie is bringing up the hip bath. We thought a good soak would help.”

“It will.” Belle spoke gently, but her jaw said she was thinking otherwise.

“Do you think any bones are broken?” Ruby took Cimarron’s hand.

Cimarron moved her head only slightly from side to side.

“Here.” Daisy handed Belle a spoon and the brown medicine bottle. “I got water here for her to drink with it.”

“Here, dearie, you take this now, and we’ll give you more after a good wash.”

Cimarron winced at the little she could open her mouth but swallowed the laudanum.

“You think her jaw is broken?”

Belle shook her head. “Just terribly bruised. Those dirty . . .” A string of names followed that made Ruby’s ears burn, but right now they almost seemed appropriate.

She and Belle worked together to remove Cimarron’s tattered garments.

“Take them out and burn them,” Belle instructed Daisy. “She won’t never want to wear them again.”

Charlie poured the final bucket into the tub. “We’ll be going now. Back when we can.”

Belle nodded. She and Ruby helped Cimarron into the tub, steadying her when she listed to one side.

Cimarron winced as the water covered her scrapes and bruises but sighed when she was finally settled in. Tears trickled down over her puffy cheeks, leaking from beneath the lid of the swollen closed eye. “Someday I’ll find them, and I’ll kill them, real slowlike, maybe use my knife to carve a little.” The words hissed, forced from between swollen lips.

Ruby wanted to clap her hands over her ears, run out the door, and keep on running.
It’s all my fault. I promised to take care of the girls, and I let them down
.

Later, when all the others in Dove House had found their beds, Ruby sat beside Cimarron, watching her sleep, grateful that she could sleep. So far, there had been no word from the men.

God, how could you let something like this happen? You say you take care of your children, but you don’t do any better than my pa did. He ran off and left us, and now you must have done that too. Who needs fathers when they do like that? Trust me, you say. Why? Why would I want to?Why would I tell these poor souls to trust you?

Who else is there?

The question came from deep inside her.
I don’t know. I failed her. I know Charlie is feeling the same way, but he’s doing something at least. And Cimarron always said she could handle anything that came her way. Her brothers made her tough and strong. But look at her
.

A tap on her shoulder made her jump. “I’ll take a turn now,” Daisy said.

“She’s been asleep ever since we put her back to bed.”

“Good.” She handed Ruby a cup of water. “Drink this. You’ve cried buckets.”

Ruby drained the cup and, after setting it down, rose and stretched. She laid the back of her hand against Cimarron’s cheek. “No fever.”

Daisy took the chair. “You go on and get some rest.”

Ruby staggered up the steep stairs and collapsed on her bed.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest
. The words seemed to float in on the breeze that lifted the light curtains and caressed Ruby’s skin.

I can’t do this.

But I can.

But you didn’t.

She’s still alive.

On the outside, but what about her heart?

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“I’ve hunted for that money box everywhere. There is nowhere else to look.” Ruby looked up from going over the ledgers. She’d been searching for any mistakes but was also trying to keep from thinking of the men who had attacked Cimarron, the men whom Charlie and Mr. Harrison had failed to locate in spite of two days’ searching. Disappearing into the badlands was an easy thing to do.

Charlie smoothed his mustache with the tip of his finger. “No, there must be another place.”

Ruby shook her head. “I can’t go into Belle’s room again, not without asking her first.” Belle. Why does everything come back to Belle? Even the thought of her set the fire inside to simmering. Perhaps this was the time to confront her.

“Unless she has found it and didn’t tell anyone,” Charlie said. “She’s as interested in it as you are.”

Ruby closed her eyes. The lion’s den. What an apt picture. God closed the mouths of the lions for Daniel.
Would He do the same for me? Why would He? When He didn’t even keep Cimarron safe, why would He bother with me?
Besides, if she remembered her Bible correctly, Daniel had been talking to God, praising Him every day. Even when praying to God was against the law of the land. Not like here, where there was no law to speak of. She looked up from studying the calluses on her fingers and her cracked nails. Belle’s hands always looked nice, but then dealing cards wasn’t exactly strenuous labor. “Is she home?”

“I saw her go up a while ago.”

Since the others were in the kitchen fixing supper, this would be as good a time as any to talk to her.

Ruby started up the stairs with Charlie close behind. Her heart thumped harder with each riser.
What am I going to say? How can I be gracious? Even Mrs. Brandon would have no idea what to do in this situation. Bestemor, Mother, if only you were here to help me
.

I am here
.

Ruby stopped so fast Charlie had to take a step backward or bump into her. The voice in her mind was certainly not her mother’s.

“What’s wrong?”

“Ah, nothing.” She started down the hall.
Lord, is that really you?

I am that I am
.

She remembered the words spoken so many years before.
“I am that I am.”
Spoken by God to Moses. She paused at the door to Belle’s room, took in a deep breath, and knocked.
Help me, please, Lord
.

“Come in.”

“Belle, Charlie and I need to talk with you.” Ruby blinked at the cigarillo smoke in the room. Why couldn’t Belle at least open the windows?

Belle came from behind the screen, tying her wrapper. She motioned to the two chairs. “Have a seat.” She pulled out the velvet padded stool in front of the dressing table and seated herself. “This looks mighty serious.”

“It is.”
Just get this over with
. Ruby took in a deep breath and leaned slightly forward. “Belle, I know you’ve been as mystified by the disappearance of the money box as we have. We’ve searched everywhere—”

“Except here in your room, unless you’ve already found it and just didn’t happen to mention it.” Charlie leaned back and crossed one ankle over the other knee.

“You sayin’ I stole it?” Belle’s eyes narrowed.

“No, just that we need to find it, and your room is the only place we haven’t looked.”

“I’ve looked.”

“Did you tip furniture over, tap the walls, the floorboards?”

“Well, no. But I didn’t take it—you got that straight?”

Might as well get it all over at once
. “There’s another matter also.” Ruby kept her voice low and gentle. “The ledger shows a payment made to the bank, and yet the bank has no record of it. Do you—?”

“You accusin’ me of stealin’ that too? You can look for the box here, but . . . but. . . .” Belle glanced off to the side instead of looking head on, one hand clenching and unclenching the skirt of her wrapper.

She looks like Jason when he tried lying to me. She’s lying. Now what do I do?
Ruby thought a moment about the difference between Belle’s first answer and this one.

“Charlie, why don’t you start searching for the box?”

“All right.” He heaved himself to his feet. “Where all you looked, Belle?”

“In all the . . .” She waved her hand around the room.

Ruby moved closer to Belle. “And in my room too, when we lived on this floor?”

“I didn’t take nothin’, just looked. That was my money too, ya know. I worked hard as Per, and those last months when he was so sick, I did it all.”

Charlie looked up from tipping a small chest of drawers forward and cleared his throat.

“Well, Charlie and I did the work . . . and the girls.”

“About that last payment? Who went to Dickinson with it? Perhaps there was an error at the bank.”

“Not me.” Charlie leaned his shoulder into pushing out the armoire.

Ruby stared at Belle.
Do I mention the skimming now or wait?
“Far didn’t go?”

She shook her head. “He could hardly get out of bed.”

“Would he have sent anyone else?”

Belle slammed her palm on the dressing table, sending up a cloud of face powder. “All right. I took it. He owed it to me, and after he made me send that letter, I . . .” She dropped her gaze, then glared at Ruby. “I worked hard for that money.”

“Belle, I know you worked hard, but if the bank forecloses on this place, we will all lose all the time and hard work we’ve put in here. Unless you were planning on buying it yourself?”

“With what?”

“With money from your pals down at Williams’ Saloon.”

“They don’t have no money.”

“But you asked them to make sure no one came here, didn’t you?”

“No, I never done that.” She stopped, her eyes narrowed like she was looking back. “I mighta mentioned that would be a good idea. But if they took it from there, it weren’t my fault. I was just thinkin’ out loud.”

Charlie took out his knife and began tapping the walls with the handle.

“Where’s the money?”

“I lost it at the tables.”

Ruby sighed, closed her eyes, and gave a slight shake of her head.
So much for that avenue
. In the blink of an eye, all she wanted to do was leave. Leave the room. Leave the hotel. Leave . . . She straightened her backbone. No, she wasn’t a quitter.

“Then I expect you will want to return the money from your earnings in the cardroom. Along with the extra you’ve been raking off the top.”

Belle half stood. “I never . . .” She glanced over at Charlie who stared at her without a trace of a smile, his face as washed of expression as a statue. “You got a lot of nerve comin’ in here like this and accusing me of all kinds of things.”

“Yes, I do, but my job is to keep a roof over all of our heads, and if you want—”

Belle held up a hand. She dug in a drawer of the dresser and pulled out a leather drawstring bag. She tossed the clanking bag into Ruby’s lap. “There’s fifty dollars in there—and your father’s watch. That’s all I got for now.” She gnawed her upper lip. “And there’ll be no more skimmin’.” The last words were muttered into her bosom, but Ruby heard them.

On his hands and knees, Charlie started tapping on the floorboards.

So how do I trust her after all this?

“Do you know of a box that my father referred to as the buksbom?”

Belle shook her head. “He didn’t use any of that Norwegian with me. Knew I didn’t understand a word. Toward the end, he slipped back into it at times.”

“I see.” Weariness washed over her like a huge wave and threatened to pull her out in the undertow.
You should ask her to leave, to move out
.

I can’t do that
. Sometimes she tired so of the arguments going on in her head that she wished she could pull the covers over her face and sleep for a week. That she’d been up twice during the night to check on Cimarron didn’t help.

Charlie pushed the bed over and kept on tapping. He stopped and tapped one place again. Sure enough, even the women could hear the difference in tone. He tapped around the area, then dug the tip of his knife into a corner of the floorboard.

Working his way around the section, he pried it up with a screech. Lifting out the box, he stood and brought it to Ruby.

“Here you go. It’s the money box.”

Ruby slid open the lid of the cigar box, her heart pounding, mouth dry.
Will there be enough here to pay the bills?
The pile of cash looked large until she realized it was mostly one-dollar bills, thirty of them, one ten and two fives. Fifty dollars. Disappointment warred with relief. Together with what she had, what Belle had given her, and this, they could at least pay the next payment.

“Huh. That old fox.” Belle rose and crossed to the stand beside the bed and, pulling open a drawer, removed a matching box. This one was full of her cigarillos. She took one from the box, bit off the end, and held it between two fingers. “If that don’t beat all. Guess I better go see how Cimarron is feeling.”

Ruby stood, the box in one hand, the pouch in the other. They’d made it through the confrontation. Perhaps they could go forward now and forget the things of the past, another verse from the Bible that had trickled through her mind lately. Perhaps.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“Is Cimarron any better?” Opal stood up from the table, where she had been helping Milly with her schoolwork, and traced a design in the flour on the counter with her fingertip.

“Some.”
Her body is better
. Ruby gave the pie dough another pass.
But the dead look in her eyes is still there
. Ever since her vow to get those who attacked her, Cimarron had not said a word. As soon as she was able, she had crawled up to her pallet in the attic, and if they hadn’t brought her food, she would not have eaten. Even then the plates came back more full than empty.

It’s all my fault
. The words had been beating on Ruby ever since they had brought Cimarron home. If she had paid more attention, those reprehensible men would have been chased away.

If she hadn’t set up the party in front of the hotel, this would not have happened. Had they not had the celebration, Ezekiel Damish would not have known Cimarron was still in the vicinity. Like the others, he’d have thought she moved on.

And now she wasn’t moving at all, at least very little.

Ruby pushed so hard on the rolling pin that it ripped a hole in the pie crust. Even “uff da” was no longer sufficient for relieving her ire. Nay, not ire. Ruby fought against fury and rage, the likes of which she had never known. Even though the money problem had temporarily eased, the men had not been caught and Cimarron lay suffering.

“You want me to finish the pie?” Opal spoke softly, as if tiptoeing around her sister might make things easier for her.

“No!” Ruby clamped her eyes shut. “I must not take my frustrations out on you. Forgive me, Opal. ”

“I do.” Opal came around the table and wrapped her arms around her sister’s waist.

Ruby no longer needed to bend over to rest her chin on Opal’s head. She sighed and, when that wasn’t enough, sighed again. She kissed the part in Opal’s hair and released the hug. “Thank you. I have no idea what I would do without you.”

“Do you miss Captain McHenry?” Opal looked up and wiped some flour off Ruby’s cheek. “I sure do.”

“Yes, more than I thought I would.” That was another thing that ate at her. They had yet to hear from him. He’d said he would write, but she had no idea how long it would take for a letter to come from Indian country in Arizona to her in Dakota Territory. And until she received one, she had no idea where to send a letter.

“Think I’ll go up and sit with Cimarron. She seems to like it when I read to her.”

“Opal, honey, if everyone treated each other as kindly as you do, we’d have far fewer fights.” That was another thing that added to her boiling temperament: the renewed bickering between Milly and Daisy, with a dose of Belle thrown in at times. Even Opal had been involved.

“I miss our old Cimarron. Do you think she’ll ever come back?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I sure hope so. Well, I’ll see if she wants company. Call me if you need help.”

Ruby watched Opal leave.
God, I know I don’t have any right to pray because of the way I’ve been ignoring you, but this is for someone else, not me. Please help Cimarron
. Ruby had found herself in this state a lot lately. But while she still doubted at times that God listened to her prayers, she knew He heard Opal’s.

She usually was too mad to pray anyway.

“You want I should peel more apples?” Milly looked up from her schoolwork.

“No, we have enough. You just keep doing what Opal told you.”

Milly sighed and returned to doing simple sums on the slate Charlie had fashioned for their schoolroom.

Ruby laid the patched pie crust in the pan, and after patting the remaining dough into a circle, she started rolling it out.

Daisy returned from cleaning the cardroom and took her bucket of water out to dump on the rose bush Charlie had planted by the back steps. On her return she glared at the seated girl. “Milly, can’t you help around here? We got two more rooms to clean, and without Cimarron—”

“But I . . .” Milly slammed her slate down. “Ruby tells me to study, and you tell me to clean. I been working all day just like you and—”

“Enough!” Ruby raised both hands in the air. “No more! Daisy, you’ve been at everyone lately. That’s enough!”

Daisy slammed out the door muttering something unintelligible.

The bell jangled over the door in the dining room. “Would you please go see who that is?”

Milly leaped to her feet. “Yes, ma’am.” She returned a moment later. “It’s Mr. Harrison, and he asked if he could speak with you.”

“Oh, land.” Ruby glanced down at her hands, covered with flour and pie dough. “Tell him to take a seat, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Should I take him some ginger swizzle?”

“That would be fine.” Ruby held the pie plate in one hand and, taking a knife, trimmed off the extra pie dough around the rim. She cut three slashes in the top of the crust, pulled open the oven door, and set it on the rack to join the other two.

She washed her hands and face, smoothed her hair back, and removed her dirty apron. The gingham dress she wore looked clean enough, thanks to the apron.

“I poured you a glass too,” Milly said. “I’ll start peeling potatoes now, if you want.”

“No, you better go help with the cleaning first. Opal can peel the potatoes.”

Milly rolled her eyes, and Ruby didn’t even bother to try and figure what that meant. What on earth could Rand Harrison want with her? Of course they’d been more cordial lately with all that had gone on, but she surely wouldn’t term that as friendship.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Harrison.” She hoped there was some semblance of welcome in her tone.

“Thank you for the fine drink.” He lifted his glass as he stood to greet her. “I hope I didn’t come at a bad time.”

What does that mean?
Ruby sat and motioned for him to do the same. “Now, how can I help you, Mr. Harrison?” She could hear Bestemor tsking at the abruptness of her tone.

“How’s Cimarron doing? Was anything broken?”

“No, but . . .” Ruby shook her head. “She’s not doing well.”

“Tell her if there is anything I can do . . .” he paused.

“Yes, I’ll tell her that. She—we all—appreciated you and Charlie trying to find those fiends.”

“Just sorry we didn’t catch the—” She realized he cut off the words he would normally say and right now she knew exactly what he was thinking. But thinking the words only made her more angry, for then she was mad at herself also. Ladies didn’t think that way, no matter what the provocation. She took a sip of her drink and concentrated on the coolness flowing down her throat.

Rand shifted in his chair and drank half his glass. He smoothed the tablecloth with the edge of his hand. When she glanced his way, he was studying the glass as if it might come alive any moment.

“Mr. Harrison?”

He nodded and took in a deep breath as if he couldn’t get enough air. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I’m not getting any younger and if I don’t get married and start a family pretty soon it might be too late and so I’m asking if you would be my wife.”

“You are what?”

“I thought we could get married and—”

Ruby shoved her chair back, hardly believing her ears. She stood and braced her hands on the table. “You are asking me to marry you?”

“Yes.” The look on his face made her want to shake him.

“You walk in here and toss this idea out like you’re wondering if I want to play five-card draw.”

“I didn’t know you knew how.”

“That is not the point. Marriage is a serious business, and if you think I want to undertake such a momentous thing with you . . .” She could hear her voice raising higher so she sucked in a breath of air, forcibly lowered the pitch, and leaned slightly forward. Her whisper left no room for him to claim misunderstanding. “You are addled.” She closed her eyes and shook her head as if it were too heavy to hold up any longer. “Good day, Mr. Harrison.”

She left the room without looking back, straight-arming the door to the kitchen so that it slammed against the wall.

Charlie came in through the back door as she blew through the front. One look at her face, and he took a step backward.

“Whoa, what happened now?”

Ruby rounded on him, shaking her finger at him as fast as she talked. “You men, what in the world is the matter with you? Thinking all women are just panting to . . . to . . . and just taking what you want without even asking. You ought to be tarred and feathered.” She clamped her hands at her sides, fighting the scream that threatened to deafen them all.

“Wait, now!” He held out his hands in a placating motion.

But Ruby ignored him. “No matter how hard we try to turn you into civilized creatures, you persist in . . . in . . .” She grabbed the sides of her hair with both hands. “I could just scream!” She huffed out a breath and stared at the ceiling, fighting the tears that shrieked for release.
I will not cry! I will not scream! I am a lady! I will behave like a lady!

Charlie wisely kept his mouth shut and, deducing that whatever set her off was beyond that swinging door, went on into the dining room only to see Rand stomping out the front door, setting the bell to jangling so hard it looked to fall off its hook. Returning to the kitchen, he found Ruby scrubbing potatoes so hard the red skins disintegrated before they hit the water.

“Where is everyone?”

“Milly and Daisy are cleaning rooms. Opal is reading to Cimarron, and Belle . . . well, who knows what she is cooking up now.” Her glare accused him of something over which he had no idea or control.

“I see.” He sniffed. “I take it we are having apple pie for supper. Can I help you with something?”

“The old hen you butchered this morning will soon be ready for dumplings.”

“And the potatoes?”

“These will be mashed. The carrots are about done and . . .” Ruby felt an attack of the vapors or a deep tiredness roll over her so that she could scarcely breathe. She closed her eyes and let her head fall forward.

Charlie’s hand on her shoulder and his gentle, “Are you all right?” cracked the staunchly fortressed dam. One tear meandered down her check, then another. She sniffed and swallowed hard. “I will be.”

“Why don’t you take a glass of tea out on the back porch and enjoy the sun setting over the rocks. Let me finish up in here.”

She nodded and did as he suggested. But the thoughts continued to batter her,
Who, why, what?
Fiends of Satan himself attacked, regrouped, and attacked again.

Guilt headed the troops.

By the time she caved in to all the “you ought to’s” and “you should have’s,” she wished only that she could go to sleep and not listen to them any longer. Instead, she dragged herself back into the kitchen and went about her duties for supper, not daring to look Charlie in the face for fear of mortification swamping her. What all had she said to him?

With only two guests, supper was a silent affair, the rest of them taking their cues from her. While the others cleaned up, Ruby took the ledgers into the dining room, lit a lamp on one of the tables, and set to work.

Sometime later Charlie placed a cup of tea on the table beside her, along with the piece of the pie she had turned down at supper.

“Thank you.”
Why are you being so good to me when I ranted and raved at you, and it wasn’t even your fault?

“Mind if I join you?”

“No, take a chair.”

He took a bite of his pie. “You know, you’ve gotten to be pretty good in the cooking department.”

“Thank you.”
Why don’t you just yell at me so I’d feel better?

“How bad are things?” He indicated the ledgers.

“Thanks to our treasure hunt the other day, we can make the loan payment at the bank and catch up at the mercantile.”

“That’s good.”

“I suppose so. I just want to pay off the debts, and so far there is no way to do that. If only I could find Far’s buksbom.”

“We’ve looked everywhere I can think of. Unless he took it out and buried it. We’ve been to the bottom of every barrel and crate, tapped on every loose floorboard. I just don’t know where it can be.”

“If only we could get more people staying here.”

“We’ve had more this last month than before. And the hunters will start coming now with the cooler weather. Sometimes it freezes here before the end of September. Then we have some beautiful weather before winter sets in.”

“How are we going to get enough wood for winter?We can’t buy coal unless we don’t pay the bank and mercantile the full amounts due.” Here she’d thought things would be easier with the extra money. Talk about only temporarily plugging the hole in the dam.

“Milly and Opal can help me get wood. I might ask that young private to help too. He’ll see it as a chance to be with Milly. The two of them are so tongue-tied, they don’t talk without having something to occupy their hands.”

Ruby smiled in spite of herself. “Charlie, you never miss a thing, do you?”

“I try to pay attention. Sometimes it keeps you alive out here.” He leaned forward. “I know things are tough right now, but you got to hang in there. The banker said you have until the end of the year to catch up, remember?”

If it were just the finances, I would not be in such a dither, but Cimarron . . .
She shook her head. The latter was so much more important than the former that they shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath.

Later when she lay awake in the darkness of her room, all the arrows of the enemy came flying back. No matter which way she turned, she felt the stings. When she woke after a far too brief sleep, she checked her dried-grass-filled pallet to see if she’d bled all night. Tired as she was, it seemed that the enemy’s arrows might well have caused her to bleed to death.

At the moment that seemed like a fair idea.

She sent Charlie off on the train to pay their bills and bring back supplies, even begrudging the cost of the train ticket. He took along a bedroll so he wouldn’t spend money at the hotel, assuring her that someone would loan him some floor space.