Pearl (27 page)
‘‘I . . . would it be all right if I went out walking, to view the land?’’
‘‘Suit yourself. Just don’t get out of sight of the river. Easy to get lost in these hills. Oh, and the river flows north here.’’ Charlie closed the door as he left the room, leaving Carl to put away his things. He pushed his tools under the bed, hung up his clean shirts, and pulled his Bible and a copy of John Donne from the bag, along with a canteen. Tucking the books under his arm, he whistled as he went back down the stairs and out the front door. Surely there was a tree nearby that would offer its trunk for a backrest and its leaves for shade. Somehow, even though nothing had changed, a feeling of expectation lifted his spirits. Surely God brought him out here for a reason. If indeed God had been behind it all.
He managed to keep from getting lost. After all, sitting under a huge tree with bark so thick it looked like there were canyons carved into it and reading until his eyes drooped and he slept didn’t allow one to stray far. What he saw of the town didn’t impress him. One saloon smelled worse than it looked. He shuddered at the thought that men drank what stunk so terrible. The ramshackle buildings looked stuck together by a capricious giant out to play. Giant trolls had been the warp and woof of his childhood stories. Tales of the old country, his father called them.
Back at Dove House he inhaled the fragrances of fresh bread, baking meat, and some kind of dessert as he climbed the stairs to his room. Young women in full white aprons bustled about setting the tables, laughing and chatting. One with glorious red hair waved at him.
‘‘Supper will be ready in about fifteen minutes.’’
‘‘Thank you.’’ He picked up the pace. Surely he had time to wash up and shave.
‘‘You can sit anywhere you like, sir,’’ Milly greeted him when he came back down. She smiled over her shoulder as she set a plate in front of one of the other guests.
Carl smiled an acknowledgment and took a chair at an empty table where he could watch the servers come and go.
Wonder if
the owner comes in during a meal? Perhaps she has something she needs
fixed or built or carved so I can stay here longer
. The tables were about half full, some by obvious drummers, making him wonder what they were selling. Several others wore the flat broad-brimmed hats he’d come to think of as cowboy or rancher garb. He’d seen enough of them on the train and, with boots and spurs, they cut an imposing figure.
‘‘Welcome, stranger, my name is Cimarron, and I’ll be bringing your supper in just a moment.’’
He smiled back. The one with the glorious hair. ‘‘That suits you. I am Carl Hegland from Minneapolis.’’
‘‘Hope you are extra hungry. We got a lot of good food out in the kitchen.’’
‘‘I am.’’
‘‘Good. I’ll be right back.’’
‘‘Coffee, Mr. Hegland?’’ Charlie stopped at his table, gray granite pot in hand.
‘‘Please. And call me Carl.’’
By the time he’d used a slice of bread to clean off his second plateful, Carl had watched later diners replace those in a hurry to leave. Several of the men had lit up cigars and rocked their chairs back on the rear legs. But when a young woman with sun-kissed hair entered the room, they all snapped back upright, the chair legs slamming the floor in unison. She moved from table to table, greeting the guests and bringing smiles to the faces of all the males present. Several followed her with their eyes, although she seemed blissfully unaware of any admiration. She couldn’t have been more gracious if this were her private home and all present were invited guests.
‘‘Good evening. Mr. Hegland, is it not?’’ Her voice held a trace of Norwegian accent, one that he would recognize anywhere. ‘‘Ja, from Minneapolis.’’ Now why did he keep telling everyone that?
‘‘Charlie said that you are a carpenter.’’
‘‘Ja.’’
‘‘There will be plenty of work for carpenters soon.’’
Will
and
soon
weren’t what he needed.
I need work now. Or at
the latest two days from now
. He studied the cup in his hands, the coffee black against the pale mug. When he glanced up, she had moved on.
Mor, you would not be proud of me now. I am not only
without work, I am without manners
. That must be Miss Torvald. Tomorrow I shall bring my book with me to read. Talking with these people is not what I want.
Joseph Wainwright didn’t return the next day nor the next. Carl met the train each day, his spirits sinking like the coins in his pocket. He wandered back to the hotel, ready to pack his things and go ask at the buildings that used to house the military if there was a spare blanket and corner to sleep in.
‘‘Miss Torvald would like to see you,’’ Charlie called when Carl came through the front door. ‘‘She’s out back.’’
‘‘I hear you are looking for work, Mr. Hegland?’’
‘‘Yes. Yes, I am. At least until Mr. Wainwright returns. The advertisement said they needed carpenters here, and so I came.’’
‘‘I see. So what you really need is something for right now?’’
‘‘Ja, that is right.’’
‘‘Would room and board be enough pay for you to do some work I’d like done around here?’’
‘‘Ja, that would be very good. What do you need?’’
‘‘I’m thinking of putting more beds in a couple of the larger rooms.’’
If only Belle would leave, I could put four beds in there
. She’d been thinking of volunteering to start the school in the cardroom. Would that be enough reason to ask Belle to move into the attic or leave or—or whatever Ruby needed to do in order to capitalize on the coming boom? Already there were several tents up in Medora, as the marquis had christened the new town with a bottle of wine smashed on a tent pole. But not everyone wanted to live in a tent.
Lumber and other building materials were coming in daily on the train. The Frenchman had not lied when he promised her there would be a new town. And soon.
She glanced up to see Mr. Hegland still standing before her, hat in his hands. ‘‘Sorry, my mind sometimes takes off on its own. So much to think about.’’
‘‘Do you have the wood to build beds? I have the tools.’’
She wanted to smile at his Norwegian accent, such a welcome sound. ‘‘I’m thinking of stacking one bed on top of another, what do they call them. . . ?’’
‘‘Bunk beds? In all the rooms?’’
‘‘No, just a couple. Then I was thinking of enclosing the western porch and putting several more out there.’’ She was also thinking of raising her prices on the single rooms. She closed her ledger and stood. ‘‘Come, let me show you what I mean, and then you can make a list for me of the materials you will need.’’
‘‘So I will stay here then. But what if I get a job before I am done here?’’
‘‘Then you could finish here in your spare time. That way you would always have a place to stay. I have a feeling space is going to be at a premium soon.’’
As they walked around the porch, she glanced out at the garden. Jed Black, hoe in hand, was busily attacking the weeds that grew inches by the minute after a rainstorm like they’d had yesterday. ‘‘You would want windows in the wall?’’
‘‘I’d think so.’’
‘‘And a door at either end? A dividing wall in the middle?
Stove?’’
‘‘Could you move that window out of the wall there and put it in the new one?’’
‘‘Ja, I can do so with that window. Finish it inside like the rest of the walls, but then your pantry will have no window.’’
By the time they’d completed their planning, Ruby had a new appreciation for the quiet man who chose to sit by himself in the dining room, he and his book.
‘‘I will measure and have the list for you by tomorrow.’’
‘‘You can ask Charlie about what we have on hand. I’d want you to break the list into sections, one for the addition and one for the beds.’’
‘‘Ja, I will.’’
‘‘I wish I could pay you too.’’
‘‘Nei, this is just fine.’’
Ruby left him to his measuring and headed back into the hotel. Another letter to the board of education was needed. What did they expect of the local people? There was no school building here, and if she had any idea of what a boom could look like, thanks to Charlie’s colorful pictures of life in a gold-mining camp, pretty soon every square inch of roofed and walled buildings would house the people building Medora. Perhaps they needed to start praying now for a mild winter.
She was about to sign her name to the letter sometime later when a voice saying ‘‘Miss Torvald?’’ caused her to drop a blot of ink on the paper.
‘‘Must you sneak up on me so?’’ If glares could cut, Jed Black would have bled to death on the spot. Now she’d have to rewrite the entire missive. ‘‘See what you made me do?’’
‘‘Sorry, miss. I thought you heard me.’’
‘‘Well, I didn’t. What do you need?’’
‘‘Something more to do. I thought maybe I could dig up some beds along the front of the hotel. Put in some seeds. Flowers out there would look real nice.’’
‘‘Mr. Black, I cannot pay you for all the labor you are doing around here now.’’
‘‘Did I ask for pay?’’
His quiet question snapped her up short like a calf at the business end of a rope.
‘‘No, and that’s something else that bothers me. People don’t just work for free.’’
‘‘Got nothin’ better to do, and if it gives me pleasure, why let it bother you?’’
Good question. With anyone else, it wouldn’t bother her. She’d give them extra cookies or bushels of appreciation. But she wished Jed Black were on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, and that might not be far enough away.
And yet she’d said she forgave him.
She pulled another sheet of paper from the dwindling stack. ‘‘If that’s what you want, so be it. And please, take your meals here at Dove House. You’ve more than earned them.’’
She didn’t hear him leave either. How could he be here one second and gone the next?
‘‘Those are the skills of a good hunter,’’ Charlie explained later when she asked him. ‘‘He learned from the Indians when he lived with them.’’
‘‘Oh.’’
Is he part Indian?
She had questions darting through her mind like small birds after a big crow. She’d watched three dive at and harass a scavenging crow one day until the big ebony bird flew away, ducking and flapping. They made her think of David and Goliath. Size might not count if speed was greater.
But she’d not been able to outrun him, and now her mind and body remembered, even though her soul said he was forgiven.
Lord, how do I do this? I keep saying I forgave him, but I cannot
stand to be around him. I feel like running, and yet to the others Jed
Black is . . . Oh, Lord, please, I don’t even know how to pray about this
anymore. I know that when you forgive, you forget, the Bible says so, but
I cannot do that. I just can’t
.
She recopied her letter that night, signed it quickly before anyone else could interrupt, and listened with half an ear to the men playing cards.
Belle’s soprano laugh played against a man’s
basso profundo
. If she closed the cardroom, would Belle move on? Where would she go?
That’s none of your business. You can’t worry about the whole world.