Crazy Woman Creek (14 page)

Mrs. Nolan nodded.

“As for what
did
happen to him, why he hasn’t returned ... I honestly don’t know what I believe, Etta,” Lenora shook her head. “I’m tormented day and night by that question. I think about one scenario then another. I never come to a logical answer. And when I don’t find an answer, I go over all the facts again. It’s all I ever think about. Not knowing is making me crazy.”

The women sat silently a few moments, overwhelmed by the awfulness of the story Lenora had just shared and the frustration of the unknown. The disappearance of James Rose loomed before them like a mighty, unscalable wall. There was nothing to do but wait. They’d said everything there was to be said.

“How long will you wait, Lenora?”

“Wait?” Lenora looked eye to eye at Mrs. Nolan. “Forever. I’ll wait forever, Etta, if that’s how long it takes.”

“You mean until you have his body?”

“Yes, until I have his body.”

In the heavy silence that followed, Lenora pushed back her chair and reached for her dirty plate and silver. She carried them to the bucket of sudsy water by the dry sink where they landed at the bottom with a muffled clunk.

“And if they don’t find a body, will you sell?”

“Give up the ranch? Never.” Her words were resolute but her heart was quavering. When James was there the long hours of arduous ranch work were meaningful; they were building a dream. The ranch had purpose, and working it together gave them power. Without James the ranch was lifeless and dull, mere equipment, buildings, and dirt. Until now Lenora had not realized how very much more important relationships were than possessions. She hid this thought from her friend. She may have already lost James. If she lost the ranch she would have lost it all. She had to keep believing that James would return. Any other scenario was too painful to contemplate. She wouldn’t put flesh on the bones of her fear by voicing them aloud.

“Body or no body, people are already talking,” said Mrs. Nolan. She folded her napkin and placed it on the table.

“Oh I’m sure they are. And what do they say about the wacky woman who refuses to play the grieving widow?” Lenora already had a good idea of the nature of the gossip circulating around town, but it wouldn’t hurt to hear specifics. “Whatever wild tales you’ve heard, I just hope they won’t lead to a dunking.”

Mrs. Nolan chuckled at Lenora’s reference to a colonial witch test. “It’s not that grave. Some just think that the juices of grief have pickled your brain,” she said, making a circular motion with her finger near her head to indicate insanity.

Lenora rolled her eyes and shrugged. Mrs. Nolan laughed at her histrionics.

“Others are offended that you’re not wearing black.”

Lenora stopped drying the dish in her hand. “I’ll shroud myself in mourning clothes when I have a reason to!”

“Of course you will, dear. You always do the right thing.”

“Meddlesome busybodies,” muttered Lenora, drying the dish distractedly.

“Then there’s the scuttlebutt about you and Deputy Davies.”

This time Lenora put down the dish and rag and turned full around to face her friend. Oh dear. “And what blather is that?” She tried to sound casual, as if she hadn’t a clue, but the knowing look she saw in the older woman’s eyes told Lenora this was no casual moment.

“People can be cruel, Lenora.”

“What have you heard?” Lenora almost stopped breathing from the strain. She walked to her chair at the table and sat down.

“Some are making a big to-do out of the coincidences.”

“Coincidences?” Lenora was truly puzzled.

“Deputy Davies seems to be around you or your place a lot.”

“Hmpf,” said Lenora. “That much is true. But I’m under investigation for murder, so he tells me. Naturally he watches what I do and searches for opportunities to question me.” She said this matter-of-factly, but her heart was pounding like a drum. She had worried from the start that the handsome deputy’s many public appearances with her would start the rumor mill grinding. Now that she found herself attracted to the man, she feared her feelings were etched across her forehead for all to see, like that hapless Esther Prynne and her scarlet letter. Only Lenora hadn’t indulged in anything more scandalous than looking and admiring. Life was not fair.

And were the deputy’s intentions entirely grounded in a legitimate need to perform investigative tasks? Lately Lenora had taken to wondering.

Mrs. Nolan observed Lenora’s emotional response but said nothing.

“Murder
and
adultery. Well, I can’t sink much lower, can I?” said Lenora, bluffing. “I have no children to beat or starve, and it’s been so long since I robbed a bank that I’ve quite forgotten how, so I guess I have truly hit bottom.”

Lenora hoped to deflect the seriousness of the gossip she’d just heard with humor. It worked. Both women laughed out loud, though Lenora was shaking within.

“I’m glad you haven’t lost your sense of humor,” said Mrs. Nolan, still laughing.

“No, only my mind. But that’s no big loss, is it?” said Lenora, wiping the tears—this time from
laughing—from her eyes with the dish rag. “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.”

“True.”

Laughing released the tension in the kitchen. Then Mrs. Nolan sobered a bit and turned to Lenora.

“Besides the worries, how are you feeling otherwise?”

“Tired, all the time tired. I go to bed early enough but when I wake up it’s like I never slept.”

“The strain of waiting and not knowing takes a lot out of a body.”

Lenora nodded in agreement.

“Mrs. Slocomb tells me Ben’s helping out with the chores,” said Mrs. Nolan.

“Yes, God bless him. I don’t know how I’d manage without him. I can’t keep accepting his favors, though. I have to hire Sam as soon as I can find him.”

“Favors?”

“I’m not paying Ben. He refuses money.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Nolan. “I see your dilemma.” That seemed to put her in an odd state of consternation. She tapped her fingers on the table, thinking. “Perhaps he just wants to be a good neighbor in a practical sort of way.”

“Perhaps. But for how long?”

“Don’t let pride provoke you into something rash, Lenora. James must have had good reason to dislike Sam Wright. Perhaps he knew something about him that you didn’t. Men talk.” Mrs. Nolan
dragged her cake plate toward her again and took a bite, daintily wiping her mouth with her napkin.

“I can’t keep leaning on neighbors, Etta.”

“They don’t seem to mind. Only you mind.”

Lenora sighed
. “The one piece of information I really need is not whom to hire but how long to hire. If I thought James would show up at the door tomorrow or next week I’d say fine, Ben can keep coming over without pay. But I can’t take advantage of the boy. He could be working for nothing for a very long time. Only God knows how long. I have to hire someone.”

“
Hmm,” said Mrs. Nolan, putting down her fork. “Maybe you should talk to Deputy Davies about that.”

“Deputy Davies?” Lenora stiffened in her seat like a hound dog on alert. “What does he have to do with this?”

“He might have some thoughts on hired hands and who’s reliable and such. It’s his job to know what people are up to. Perhaps he can give you some names.”

Lenora eyed her friend. “You know something?”

“Nothing in particular. I do know that Sam Wright and Deputy Davies both spent time near Fort Laramie. Perhaps the deputy knows something about Sam’s background.”

“I see.”

“What are you going to do, dear?” asked Mrs. Nolan.

“I don’t know. I’m too tired to make all these decisions, Etta. I’ll sleep on it one more day.”

The friends chatted a while longer and then said their good-byes with much hugging and well wishes. Mrs. Nolan promised to return soon and made Lenora promise to call on her if she needed anything. Lenora watched wistfully as her friend’s buckboard rode away in a thin cloud of dust. As the dust diminished to a tiny gray dot on the prairie, Lenora felt more sad and lonely than she ever had in her life.

#

Lenora’s eyes popped open for no apparent reason. In the soft and silvery moon glow she saw the fuzzy shape of Ulysses, fully abandoned to secret doggy dreams, lying on his side on the floor next to her bed. Though she could not see anything distinctly in the dimness, she imagined his chest rising and falling in rhythmic cadence. She imagined him sleeping deeply, as he should, without a care in the world.

Before she had enough time to start missing James’ warm body next to hers, the door latch jiggled in the front room. Lenora’s heart jumped to her throat. With one seamless motion her hand was on James’ rifle, the bed quilt was flung into the air, her feet were on the chilly wooden floor, and Ulysses was out the bedroom door and in the front room, jumping madly, front paws on the door, barking with all his might. Over the hullabaloo from her dog, Lenora heard the sound of someone’s
feet sprinting through the yard. She peered through the front window, but even with the faint moonlight, she saw nothing but ghostly silhouettes of her out buildings and a few trees.

Luke sat astride his horse, scanning the horizon a few miles outside town. It was too early for the purple lupine of summer to shoot their arrowheads upward to the sun, too early for Indian paintbrush to wash the landscape with bold strokes of yellow, persimmon, and scarlet. But even in their absence the beauty of the Wyoming prairie in spring was an immeasurable bounty for lovers of all things created. Where grass was sparse, delicate sand lilies, their waxy-white star points set on tufts of dark green, were interspersed with nosegays of Alpine wallflowers, cheery yellow bursts of blooms as welcome as a pot of gold at the end of a treasure hunter’s trail.

The temperature was moderate, and a soft breeze gave Luke some relief from the ravages of hours in the saddle, unprotected from an endless sun. It was a good day to return to the North-East
Creek to look for more clues to the disappearance of James Rose, which is what drew Luke out of his dreary office in town this fine morning.

As he rode Luke wondered at his motivation. Was it curiosity, an innate zeal to unravel a mystery that kept him on the trail of the missing rancher? At one time, when Luke was young and starry-eyed about the work of a lawman, this might have been the case. He’d learned since that most criminal investigations contained disappointingly little of the mysterious. If someone went missing there were logical reasons: they were hurt, guilty, or dead—rarely kidnapped. He wasn’t sure which applied to James Rose. But he knew from the start that the unlucky Mr. Rose had not willingly abandoned his wife. And every day that passed, Luke became more certain that Mrs. Rose had not
murdered her husband.

Well then, was it curiosity about the life of James Rose that kept Luke on the hunt, curiosity about what he could have been involved in, criminal or otherwise, that could have led to his death? Luke was curious. But not curious enough for the search for James Rose to crowd out all other thoughts twenty-four hours a day, as it had since the plucky, the prickly,
the exquisite Mrs. Rose had first stepped into his office.

Then there was the matter of Christian charity. Mrs. Rose was surely a widow. And we ought to look out for widows and orphans. Luke knew this to be true because his ma had taught him that and
other moral principles from the Good Book. Of course, Mrs. Rose didn’t think she was a widow. But in everything that mattered, she was widowed. Her husband had been gone some time and showed no signs of returning. She didn’t have children to care for, but she had a ranch and animals—almost as much responsibility as a house full of children. The only problem with Luke showing Christian charity to Mrs. Rose is that if he, being single, demonstrated even a hint of brotherly love in Mrs. Rose’s hour of need, he would only complicate things for her in a most embarrassing way.

Which is why Luke had made Mr. and Mrs. Slocomb promise not to divulge that the chore money they gave their son for helping Mrs. Rose came from the deputy’s pocket.

And then there was Mrs. Rose. If Luke were honest, he would admit that in all the hours of searching and in all the tasks he’d completed in town related to the investigation, it was Mrs. Rose’s pretty face and womanly form, not a certain rancher’s watery fate, that anchored his thoughts to the search. He searched for Mr. Rose, but his search hours—and his off hours—were filled with thoughts of Mrs. Rose. Did Luke even care for the welfare of the man? It was a difficult question.

Well, he certainly didn’t wish him any harm.

But what Luke felt about the luckless James Rose didn’t matter. The man was dead. Luke knew it in his bones, had known it from the day his widow had first come to town with her report just as surely as the big sky of Wyoming hung over his head, just as surely as if an angel had whispered in his ear. It was more than just a lawman’s sixth sense, honed by years in the saddle, tracking criminals and missing people. And the sooner Luke found his body, the sooner his widow would mourn him and get on with the business of living.