Forgiven (2 page)

I spun away and ran as hard as I could in the direction of the hoofbeats. I expected that bullet in my back at any second, but it didn’t come, and I figured old Snake-eyes was more bent on saving his own skin than on shooting me.

I ran out of the clearing, through the ring of trees, and met the men on the hillside as they came near to the camp.

Pa, riding at the front, saw me coming, and he slowed. I threw my arm toward the camp. “Stranger, Pa! In the camp! He . . .”

I had no need to finish. Pa read the rest in my face. He alone could read me like a book. His jaw set, and he reached down and took my arm and swung me up behind him in one swift move.

Snake-eyes was on his way, spurring his horse in the opposite direction, already crossing the Yellowstone, the water rising around him like blasts from a geyser.

Gus leveled his rifle. But Pa said, “No.”

“You sure, Nat? It’s a clear shot.”

“Kula?” Pa asked.

Snake-eyes scurried up the slope, kicking that gelding’s belly for all he was worth. “He didn’t hurt me,” I said. I knew my pa had never killed a man. Never. Had never let any of his men kill anyone. All those years living as outlaws, hiding out in the woods, robbing trains, stagecoaches, my father as the head of his gang had made sure they’d done no killing. I didn’t want this to happen now on my account. “Don’t, Gus.”

“Let him go,” Pa said to Gus. And to me, “What happened?”

“He was looking for something.” I didn’t say how scared I’d been; I didn’t need to. Pa could surely feel my thumping heart.

And Kula Baker doesn’t speak of fear.

The rest of the men dispersed ahead of us into the camp. Pa spurred his horse. When we reached the picket rope, Pa helped me slide off before he dismounted and faced me. “What’d he say he was looking for?”

“He wanted a box, about this big. I had no idea what he was talking about.”

“He didn’t hurt you?”

I touched my scalp, still burning. Anyone else, I’d lie, say, “No.” But I couldn’t lie to Pa. “He grabbed me by the hair. Bruised my arm some. And my knees.”

Pa touched my head, all gentle, but his jaw was set so I could see his teeth.

“But I gave him one heck of a whack on the shoulder.”

Cookie, bent over by the fire, retrieved his fry pan from the dust and wiped it clean with his bandana. Pa brought this on me, had practically invited Snake-eyes here seeking a box the gang had likely stolen. I was tired of this life, sneaking, thieving, hiding. I wanted Pa out of it. To leave and take me with him. But I had to approach it sidewise. I dropped my voice. “What box was he looking for, Pa?”

“Can’t truly say.” He had his back to me as he lifted the saddle and let the mare off to graze. He chewed his lip as his hands finished working through the rest of the tack. “But this settles it. I should’ve seen this coming, you being of age and all. Strangers take one look at you . . . Kula. It’s time for you to be off.”

I scurried behind as Pa walked away from the camp to the line of trees. “So it’s time for what you’ve been promising me? You’ll quit. We’ll go off together, you and me.”

Pa lifted his chin toward the snow-covered mountain peaks. Here in the valley snow cast a thin blanket, too, but russet patches of bare ground showed where the chinook winds of the past week had blown through and warmed things a little. The sky was the same color as Pa’s eyes.

I waited. What I wanted, more than anything, was a yes. Leave, Pa, yes. Come with me, Pa. Help me get up in the world. I held my breath, hoping.

“I can’t go yet. There’s one more job I’ve got to do. I can’t leave here until after the new year.”

And hope crashed. “What job, Pa? It’s time you quit. You promised me.”

“Don’t try to tell me what to do, girl.”

Only one person in the world was as stubborn as me, and that was my pa. But my recent fright set my tongue loose. “You said when I turned seventeen, we’d go. I want to be out in the world. I want to move up in the world.”

“You will be out. I’m sending you out. This is no fit place for a grown girl.”

No fit place for a grown girl—I wasn’t sure what it meant to be a grown girl, with no one to teach me the ropes. Times like these were when I missed my ma the most. A girl needed her mother, and I’d never known mine. Now if Pa sent me away, I’d really be alone in the wide world. “You can come with me. Leave this place and let’s both go.”

“Not yet. Not for me. You’ll have to make do.”

“But not without you!”

“I can’t go yet. I won’t say it again.”

Pa’s final word. And another broken promise. My cheeks burned, and I stabbed the toe of my boot at a lump of dirty snow. “But without you, how am I supposed to make do?”

He pursed his lips and raised his hand to lift his hat and scratch up his hair. Snatches of gray ran through it, like the rivers of old snow that dressed the distant slopes. He looked older than his years. “I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve been thinking about that for a while, and this business makes me see that I was right for thinking ahead. I took the liberty of writing a letter to Mrs. Gale a month ago. You remember her.”

“I remember the cleaning and the washing and the mending.” I also remembered Mrs. Gale as kindly, but I wasn’t about to say so. She had treated me well when I was employed by Maggie even before we knew about our connection, Maggie’s and mine. I’d admired Mrs. Gale for her pluck as she came and went through the park in summers, where she took modest rooms and worked hard as a photographer for the Haynes Studios, but I wasn’t about to say any of this to my pa. My words came out all grumbly. “I remember the work, all right.”

He raised his hand to silence me. “I sent her back her rings.” His mouth twisted a bit. “Kept those rings all this time, instead of selling them. Anyhow, I returned them to her a few months back as a token.”

“A token? A token of my eagerness to spend my life scrubbing other folk’s things?”

“So she’d not think ill of me. She’s already fond of you, girl. She sent word back. She remembered you. And she’s got a nice place in Bozeman. She’s ready to take you in. You can live with her and earn your keep.”

A nice place in Bozeman—what I wouldn’t give for such—but Pa wouldn’t be there. And I’d be slaving for a rich woman. Again. Hurt rose in me like bubbles in a spring. “I’m tired of earning my keep!” My voice rang, and a couple of the men looked our way.

Pa’s eyes cut at me, but that spring was hot.

“I’ve waited and waited for when you’d quit this business and leave here with me. We’d go together. Don’t send me away. You have to come with me.”

I bit my lip till my eyes smarted.

“My mind is set. You’re going. I’m sending word to her today and sending you after. You’ll leave tomorrow, Kula. Get yourself ready.” Pa left me with my hands gripping the picket rope like it was a lifeline.

I should’ve known—I wanted to hurl the words at his back. I should’ve known I couldn’t trust you.

I marched away from the camp and up the hill, my knees complaining from their bruising and my heart breaking from Pa’s words.

I should’ve let Gus pull the trigger. Got rid of those snake eyes, those yellow teeth. This was his doing, Snake-eyes.

I strode right up to the crest, to where the valley pulled away south with the bright silver thread of river that wove through it, patches of snow in the hollows, pale ovals in the piney blue-black, and the mountains all snow covered at their sharp tips. Steam rose up from spots where the hot springs vented into the cold bright air. My lungs contracted, and a little sound escaped me that was too close to a sob.

Kula Baker doesn’t cry. Pa’d just given me what I’d wanted, hadn’t he? I’d leave this rough place. I’d be in Bozeman. A city, brimful with possibility. A place for me to rise up in the world, raise my station.

No. Pa was packing me off to another wretched situation, where my station would be that of slave. Cleaning and washing for Mrs. Gale. Suffering the rudeness of men who’d think nothing of open gawking at a girl with native looks.

I had this dream. In the whispering restless dark I saw myself dressed fine, because my pa and I had made a proper home, because Pa had taken on proper employment. I could read books all day long if I wished, in my own parlor, in my own silks and velvets. I could catch the eye of a gentleman. A gentleman who would treat me right so I’d never have to cook or scrub or sew again. A gentleman who’d look on me with soft eyes.

I had been a maid before, seen how gentlemen treated a lady. I never would understand Maggie—she’d been rich once. And as good as she’d been to me, I took her for a fool. Turning her nose up at an offer of marriage. I’d have left with that rich gentleman if he’d asked me, but he didn’t. And a man like him would not ask me, a ladies’ maid—at least, not until my pa and I together had a fresh start. That’s what we both needed. A fresh start at a new life.

A new century lay open before us, where all things could be made clean and shiny, even a man’s soul. Why, I’d heard that men could get up in the air in flying machines, men flying like birds. If that were true, why then, anything was possible. It might even be possible for me, the part native daughter of an outlaw, to become a lady.

Wasn’t it? Couldn’t I lift out of here until I was wrapped in the blue bowl of the sky, free? Couldn’t I fly like a swallow out over these thick-timbered woods, these braided rivers and steaming rocks and sullen springs and hulking peaks?

Oh, I’d leave these woods, yes, but without Pa and without that fresh start. I’d still be a servant. Even with Mrs. Gale, nice as she was, I’d still be her servant.

I tightened my hands, balled up my fingers, raw and callused. Whatever start I made would be fashioned by me.

“Hiya!”

Gus galloped away north, snow and mud spitting up behind his mount’s heels. Carrying Pa’s message to Mrs. Gale, no doubt.

I turned back toward the camp to make my preparations with an unsettled mind.

Chapter
TWO

November 28, 1905

 

 

 

 

MIN WAS THEONLY CHINESE I’D EVER MET.

I didn’t live in the camp most of the time. Pa’d reared me and schooled me in my letters and numbers, and his men were like a passel of uncles teaching me this or that about hunting, or scouting, or sensing change in the weather.

He’d seen to it I’d never met a true threat. At least not until recently.

Once I’d reached an age where my two good hands could be of service, Pa’d found me work here and there in the park. Someone was always looking to have their clothes washed and mended, or their tea served, and I’d scrub the sour look off my face and pull back my hair in my blue ribbon, and they’d pay the poor sweet Indian-looking girl to take care of their things. Even house me pretty nice, some of them, so I didn’t have to stay in Pa’s camp.

Min showed up in Mammoth Hot Springs a few weeks earlier, and I noticed her right off. She was like me, foreignlooking. There weren’t many of us in Mammoth itself.

She floated in and out of Yellowstone Park, from Mammoth to Gardiner and back, picking up chores, washing, and mending. We’d exchanged only a few words, but straight off I thought of her as kin. Both of us wore our skins like they didn’t quite fit.

Now, in the railway station in Gardiner with travelers and tourists, Min came to my mind as I felt the appraising stares, the bold ogling looks, the recognition that I didn’t fit, and I shrugged in my discomfort.

An animal that shows fear is easy pickings.

Kula Baker does not show fear.

The train from Gardiner to Livingston was near empty, and I sat alone by the window with my gloved hand pressed flat against it. The valley rose hard and knifelike to either side of the train: it rose steep, offering the way forward or back, and I was going forward past the edge of known territory.

When that valley broadened out under a gray sky, under the snow-covered hills and flanking mountains, the Yellowstone slowed as it tumbled out of the mountains, easing out into the plains and into the broad unknown beneath the bare cottonwoods and perching bald eagles. I tried to slow my own breath and let myself flow out with the river, even while my heart was galloping down the vertical face of a cliff.

I’d learned a thing or two from my employers, and most from Maggie, who had tried over the last year to school me in worldly things. Now she was off at that college of hers, and I hadn’t seen her since summer. But it didn’t matter what she’d taught me; I’d never ventured this far out of Mammoth, out of the park. Terror blazed through my innards. And then I tucked in tight.

I touched the cameo that had been my present from Maggie, and beneath it and hidden by the placket of my shirtwaist I felt the small key Pa had given me just before I left. “Keep this key close,” Pa’d said as he slipped the chain around my neck in the early morning light. “You may have need of it.”

At the ticket window in Livingston, I asked after the Bozeman train.

“Three o’clock,” the man replied, his head bowed over his paperwork. “One way or round-trip?”

“One way.”

He glanced up at me through the iron bars, and I could feel his eyes take in my features. “Second class’ll be a dollar fifty.”

I glared. But I curbed my tongue, wishing I had the money to demand first class. I slid the coins across the wood counter and took my ticket and sat on the oak bench near to the door with its arched sign: LADIES’ WAITING ROOM.

I would’ve gone into the Ladies’ to wait, but did I dare, with my second-class ticket? With me being so obviously not a true lady? I squared my shoulders and stared at the wall.

Men prowled the station, catlike.

Cougars came into the camp on a rare occasion, and I knew well what to do when facing down a cougar. Stand tall, do not run, show no fear—that’s best. Cats do not like to be challenged, but they love a chase. I straightened my shoulders and made sure my thick hair was still pinned well up. Everything about me, still tucked in tight.