Watching Eagles Soar (13 page)

“Give me your keys.” She pointed the pistol at Father John. “Your keys!” she shouted.

Father John pulled a ring of keys out of his jeans pocket and tossed it across the boxes. She caught the keys in midair and turned to Vicky. “You're next,” she said.

Vicky unzipped the outside pocket of her bag, extracted her key holder, and set it in the hand stretched toward her.

“I'm gonna have to shoot both of you.” Tammy waved the gun back and forth. “Shoot you and be done with it. I'll be in Nebraska before anybody finds you.”

“Then what will you do?” Father John said.

“Just keep going,” she said, prowling past the boxes like a cat. She reached the door and yanked it open without taking her eyes from them. “Keep on runnin', like before. I can run forever.” She gripped the gun in both hands and pointed it at Vicky's chest.

“Don't be a fool,” Vicky said. She tried to keep her voice steady; she felt as if she were looking down an endless black pipe. “You could be lucky enough to get twenty years. If you kill us, you'll get the death penalty.”

Tammy seemed to think about this for a moment. Then she walked back into the room, yanked the phone off a table, and pulled the cord from the wall. Vicky held her breath, waiting for her to demand her bag with the cell phone inside. But Tammy went back to the opened door. “You stay here for one hour. Hear me? One hour!” she said, backing out onto the stoop. “You leave sooner, and I swear, I'll come back and kill you.” She reached inside and pulled the door shut. It was a moment before an engine rumbled into life followed by the sound of tires crunching the dirt, then the heavy noise of the U-Haul driving away.

Vicky felt herself starting to breathe again, but her legs had turned to liquid. She sank back into the chair and fumbled with her bag, aware of Father John's eyes on her. Finally she managed to pull out her cell phone. She pressed the keys for the Wind River police, gave the operator her name, and said that the woman who called herself Tammy Running Fast had just confessed to her and Father O'Malley that she had killed Jackie Running Fast. She was driving a U-Haul truck on Plunkett Road.

Vicky closed the phone lid and glanced up at Father John. “How long before the police stop a U-Haul on the reservation?” she said.

“Ten minutes,” he said. “We'd better report what happened. Come on, I'll take you to the sheriff's office.”

“Are you planning to walk me there?”

“I'm planning to hot-wire the pickup,” he said.

Stories from Beyond

Yellow Roses

S
he had wondered how long it would be before someone came to tell her what to do. It had required two weeks. Two weeks to the day that the horse-drawn cart had carried the plank coffin down Larimer Street and out onto the gold and red hills that wrapped around the settlement. The men had dug a hole in the hard earth, lowered the coffin inside, and shoveled the sandy dirt on top. She had grasped Little Mary's hand and followed the small crowd of mourners to the cabin on Larimer Street that she and Jed had moved into only a month before.

Now Tom Holt sat on the other side of the plank table that Jed had nailed and glued together a week or so before he had died. The coughing had been so bad he'd had to stop and catch his breath every few minutes. When she'd washed their clothes in the tub outside, she had found blood on the rag he used to cover his mouth.

“Have you thought on what you will do, Mrs. Salton?” Tom Holt looked uncomfortable. Forehead creased like an accordion, eyebrows drawn together in a bushy line. He had deep-set brown eyes that surveyed the chinked logs in the walls and the hard dirt floor.

“You may call me Mary Ann,” she said, trying to put him at ease. She gathered Little Mary onto her lap. Fitting that Tom Holt was the one delegated, she thought. She had half expected old Mrs. Ericson with the stone-carved face and the gray hair tightened into a knot on top of her head. But it was Holt who had guided the wagon train safely across the plains into the gold region. Only two families in the train—the Ericsons and the Saltons, and all the rest single men bragging about how they were going to strike it rich, go back home, and live like kings. They had all pitched canvas tents in the tent city not far from Larimer Street, but that was only temporary. In a few days, most of the single men had started for the mountains, and Jed had gone out looking for a suitable cabin where they could pass the winter.

“Nothing else I've been thinking on,” she said. The door stood open, allowing the early October warmth to flow inside. She was aware of the carts and wagons passing outside, the sound of metal wheels grinding into the dirt street and the footsteps pounding the wood sidewalk. “I'm afraid I don't have a plan.”

“In that case, Mrs. Salton—Mary Ann—may I suggest . . .” Holt cleared his throat, making a loud, strangling noise.

Mary Ann felt her heart beating in her ears. Now Captain Holt would tell her what to do, just as Papa had always told her exactly what she should do.

“Next few days,” Holt said, “I expect to organize the last train for the States before winter sets in. Number of men coming down from the mountains. Tired of standing in the creeks all day, freezing themselves, for a few nuggets and a lot of fool's gold. They're wanting to go back. It'll be best for you and the child to join the train.”

“I see,” Mary Ann said. They had passed the go-backs on the way out here—shoulders hunched in discouragement, mouths set in bitter lines, poorer than when they had started out. She and Jed had watched them pick up some of the leavings along the trail—heavy pieces of furniture that folks had pulled out of the wagons for fear the oxen would collapse before they got to the Denver settlement. Jed had set out her mother's mahogany desk and the organ he had loved to play. She wondered whether some of the go-backs had picked them up. She had never thought she would be one of the go-backs.

She brushed her lips against Little Mary's silky yellow hair. Such a docile child, holding on to a cloth doll. Not yet four years old, but listening to the man across from them with such calm acceptance that, it seemed, she grasped the way her future was now changed. How easily they would mold her at Madame Sylvestre's school in St. Louis into a proper young lady who spoke French and knew how to make lace. She would grow into a pinched and placid woman, like her grandmother, who took her pleasure every afternoon at the front window, watching the world pass by.

“This was our dream, Jed's and mine,” Mary Ann said. They had wanted something different for their child. A new land with new ways. Even on the trail, the women had worked alongside the men. She had loved striding next to the wagon, the swinging movement of her legs and arms, the blue sky all around, and Little Mary running ahead.

“I'm sorry for your loss,” Holt said. “But respectable women alone don't belong in a rough, uncivilized place like this. Indians everywhere. Never know when a fight with the Indians might break out.”

He glanced about the cabin, and Mary Ann followed his gaze. More like a store than a home, she'd thought when Jed had let her through the front door. Dark log walls, pieces of chink falling onto the dirt floor. He'd given one of the go-backs eighty dollars for the cabin and its contents—an iron stove in the narrow room attached to the back and the iron safe that took up one corner of the front room. Too heavy to move out, the safe claimed its space, squat and ugly, an unwelcome guest. The only safe in the settlement, Jed had told her, as if that would make it more acceptable.

Next to the safe was the barrel packed with sacks of flour, sugar, salt and hardtack, winter clothing, quilts and good china, everything she'd brought across the plains to make their new home. There had been no time to unpack. Jed was already in the last sickness by the time they had moved in. They'd laid the feather mattress and blanket on the dirt floor, and she had set about nursing him as best she could.

“The Indians seem friendly enough,” she said. She'd seen the Arapaho village at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte. She'd heard that the chief—Left Hand was his name—and some of his warriors had attended the play at the Apollo Theatre down the street. After the play, he'd jumped onto the stage and given a speech in English. Told the gold seekers to take their gold and go home. Once, when Jed had felt up to it, they had walked to a racetrack outside the settlement and watched the Arapahos and gold seekers race their ponies. The Arapahos had won. Every day on Larimer Street, Arapahos traded buffalo robes for tobacco, coffee, sugar, and whiskey that the gold seekers had brought.

“Friendly enough so far,” Holt said. “But hostiles have attacked out-lying ranches, killed innocent families. I hear Governor Evans is real worried that a full-scale war's gonna erupt. Like I say, this is no place for a lady and a little girl. Lots of desperate men on Larimer Street. Get drunk on Taos lightning and shoot up the place.”

That was true, she thought. There was a night when gunshots had rattled the paper that passed for glass in the windows. Sick as he was, Jed had pulled her and Little Mary close, shielding them with his own body. But Jed was gone now.

She looked over at the two tiny yellow rosebushes, still in the porcelain cups, that she had set on top of the safe. She had brought three roses from St. Louis, sparing her own drinking water to keep them alive. One was planted on Jed's grave. She meant to plant the others in front of the cabin before she had to go back.

“Best be ready in the next few days,” Holt said, getting to his feet. He worked the brim of his hat through his fingers. “I'm waiting for a family of go-backs with room in their wagon. Figure you'd be more comfortable with another woman around. Wouldn't surprise me none if the Ericson family decided to leave. Old man didn't have any luck in Gregory Gulch.”

Little Mary scooted off her lap as Mary Ann started to get up. The stern image of Mrs. Ericson ordering her about on the crossing was almost more than she could bear. She could feel the freedom that she and Jed had hoped for slipping away. She would return to her parents' home a failure, just as Papa had predicted.
Craziest notion I ever heard, traipsing across the plains thinking you're gonna find gold,
he'd said when she had told him that she and Jed and Little Mary would be leaving Westport in the next wagon train.
Nothing but Indians, buffalo, and desperados out there. You belong here with your own kind of people.

Mary Ann thanked Tom Holt for his trouble and showed him to the door. A warm breeze stirred up little clouds of dust along the street. The rolling hills in the distance had turned magenta in the afternoon sun. On the horizon, the mountain peaks, streaked with snow, floated into the blue sky. She could hear Jed's voice:
All that land and sky, Mary Ann. There's opportunity waiting for us like we never could've dreamed.

She watched Tom Holt make his way down the sidewalk, the long, rangy figure dodging the groups of men milling about, until he stepped into the street and disappeared in the pile of wagons and carts. Then she put on her bonnet. She tied on Little Mary's bonnet.

“Where we goin', Mama?” The child was looking up at her, the pink face so trusting and sweet and hopeful. Oh, how Madame Sylvestre would change all that.

“Out for a good walk,” Mary Ann said, taking the child's hand and leading her outside. Wagons clattered past, wheels kicking out sprays of dust. The air was thick with the smells of horse droppings. The sun burned through her gingham dress. They made their way through the groups of men standing about. Past two fine hotels, the Pacific House and the Broadwell House, past the drugstore and the news and periodical shop, past saloons and billiard halls and a barber shop. Some of the men tipped their slouch hats. The widow Salton.

Mary Ann tightened her hand around Little Mary's. What was there in such a place for a widow and her child? How could she earn their keep when all she knew was French and lace making? She might start a school, except there was only a handful of children in town and few families. She might take in laundry and sewing, she supposed, but most likely it would give them only a small pittance. This was a place of gold seekers. How could she traipse into the mountains and pan for gold like the men, with Little Mary to care for?

They turned into the confectionary shop. Mary Ann found two pennies in her skirt pocket, and Litle Mary selected a peppermint stick, which she sucked loudly as they continued down Larimer Street, weaving through the knots of men. Wagons clanked past, and sounds of laughter erupted from the saloon in Apollo Hall. Several men were lined up in front of the Eldorado eating house on the corner. Rough and uncivilized, Tom Holt had said, and yet Denver City seemed a place of energy and possibility. They would walk every day, she decided, until they had to leave. She would memorize every detail. She never wanted to forget.

They reached the dry bed of Cherry Creek and were about to start back when Mary Ann saw what looked like a crowd of prospectors bunched in front of the two-story plank building that stood in the middle of the creek bed. A sign that said Rocky Mountain News stretched across the top of the peaked roof. Wagons were rolling in, prospectors jumping out and joining the crowd. Each man gripped a drawstring canvas bag.

She walked the child a little way down E Street until she was close enough to make out the sign on the side of the building: Assay Office, Byers & Shermer
.
In an instant she understood why Jed had paid out so much of their funds for the cabin. Too ill by then to follow the creeks into the mountains panning for gold, he had searched for another way to earn their living. Then he'd met the go-back looking for somebody to take the cabin and its contents off his hands, and in the cabin was a safe.

She started back, pulling Little Mary along, something opening up inside her, like a rose turning to the sun. “We must hurry,” she told the child. Little Mary started skipping, as if she felt it, too, a new possibility.

Inside the cabin, she dropped to her knees in front of the dull green safe. The door held fast. Somehow she would have to work out the combination. She leaned in close—she'd seen Papa do this at the safe in the back room of his store countless times. She turned the knob slowly, listening for the tiny clicking sound. Ah, there it was.

She kept turning the knob. Another sound, then another. Still the door didn't open. She sat back on her heels, stung by the sharp sense of defeat, and closed her eyes a moment. She could almost feel the bounce of the wagon and smell the perspiration pouring off the oxen. She looked around at Little Mary, dancing her doll across the tabletop.

She got to her feet and went over to the small chest of Jed's things that she kept next to the mattress. Inside was Jed's second best shirt, the one he wore every day. She had seen that he wore his best shirt for burial. She set the few items of clothing on top of the bed and lifted out a mahogany box. She opened the lid and stared at Jed's revolver, memories tumbling through her head. They had walked along the bed of Cherry Creek a half mile or so from town, she and Jed and Little Mary, and Jed coughing so bad. He had placed the revolver in her hand. “You must learn to shoot,” he'd said. “Ladies here must know such things.”

She set the mahogany box to one side and drew out the canvas-backed ledger book. The lined pages contained the accounts of their life together, recorded in Jed's precise handwriting. The pay he had earned in Papa's store, the costs of household items and food. The last entry was for September 16, 1860. $80. Cabin and contents.

Beneath the entry was a series of numbers separated by dashes. She went back to the safe and turned the knob according to the numbers. The door sprang open. She clasped the ledger book to her chest, conscious of the salty tears stinging her eyes. “Thank you, Jed,” she whispered.

It didn't take long—not more than twenty minutes, she reckoned—to tear four empty pages from the back of the ledger book, then tear them again into narrow strips, the size of a calling card back in St. Louis. She copied down the same words on each strip:

KEEP YOUR GOLD SAFE!

THE ONLY SAFE IN DENVER CITY

L
ARIMER
S
TREET

P
ROPRIETOR:
M
ARY
A
NN
S
ALTON

She put the strips of paper in her pocket and tied Little Mary's bonnet under her chin. “We're going for another walk,” she said, guiding the child into the street. Little Mary skipped ahead, trailing her doll along the sidewalk, giggling in the afternoon sun.