20
WEST AND CAY RETURN EMPTY-HANDED. THE NOISE of the crowds scared off the game. We huddle around our fire with bowls of turnip-corn mash.
“Well, kids, with Fort Kearny a whoop and a holler away, looks like we’ll have to cut you loose soon,” says Cay as we chew.
Andy nudges me. I open my mouth to speak, but Peety beats me to it.
“We getting boring of you, chicos,” says Peety.
Andy drops the nut she was about to put in her mouth.
“Bored. Speak English, vaquero,” says Cay.
“We’ll give ya rope you can use for the snakes at night,” says West. “But remember, it don’t keep away bears.”
“What do we do about those?” I ask, dreading the thought of climbing another tree.
“Bears are funny,” says Cay. “See, what they really want are your boots. They like to chew on them. Something about our feet smells good to them. Especially Peety’s. How do you think he got that hole?”
We look at Peety’s boots. Sure enough, his big toe pokes right through the leather. He wiggles it for us.
“You let a bear chew on your foot?” Andy exclaims.
“I’m not loco. I took off boot first. The bear chew on it for little while, then he give it back.”
Peety’s face does not crack. But when I look at West and Cay, they are doubled over with laughter.
“Bear say, ‘Gracias, se?or, tastes like chocolate.’”
Andy stabs Peety with her glare. “Shame on you jackals and you’s nasty toes.”
“It’s like this, boys,” says Cay, his voice still hoarse with laughter. “We ain’t going to California for another drive. We’re going to dig for gold, too, and we want you to come with us. What say you?”
“Yes!” yells Andy, throwing up her arms and grinning at me. I muster a smile, though not much more. Despite our good fortune, the thought of Andy leaving still troubles me. It puts a hole in my mood, through which all other good feelings seep out.
? ? ?
Later that night, we pat down our pockets and pull together a total of twenty-four dollars plus Ty Yorkshire’s rings. Nobody knows exactly how much those will fetch. I debate whether to tell the boys they’re stolen, then decide they probably already know. We need enough supplies to last the month until we arrive at the next trading post, Fort Laramie. West tears out a sheet from his journal for me to write a shopping list and tally costs. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Andy counting on her fingers, her lips mouthing the numbers. She loses her place and grimaces.
“We’ll need about fifty for everything,” I inform our group.
“Peety needs new boots,” says Andy.
Peety tucks his foot under him. “No, new horseshoes more important.”
“One day, Peety, we’re going to find enough gold to shoe all the horses,” says Cay.
“How they gonna walk, hombre?”
“They’re not gonna need to walk. They can sit around and drink tequila. We just better get there before everyone else digs it all up.”
West doesn’t look up from his journal where he’s sketching a picture of the fort on the hill. “We’ll get there when we get there.”
Peety uncaps a silver flask. Before taking a sip, he says, “I know you want to pan for gold, but I got another idea.”
“What’s that?” asks Cay.
“Mexican governors grant mucho land for ranchos to Mexicans. Miners going to need cattle and horses.”
“If I wanted to drive cattle, I woulda stayed in Texas.”
West puts down his charcoal. “That wasn’t an option for you, remember? Peety’s on to something. We’d be the bosses, instead of the beef herders. Do something respectable for a change.”
“Maybe I like being unrespectable,” says Cay, turning his socks inside out.
West sighs. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
Before the good humor of the night is wasted, I summon my most casual tone. “So who wants to do the supplying?”
All the boys raise their hands.
“Great. Andy and I will meet you at the Platte River crossing.”
“That’s ten miles past the fort,” West says.
“I know. I don’t like supplying.” I spit onto the fire. “Women’s work.”
Andy hoists her eyebrows at me but adds an emphatic, “Me neither.”
West looks at Peety, who shrugs. I brace myself for questions, but to my surprise, Cay says, “Suit yourself.”
Andy stops counting and knits her fingers over her knees. “When you get to the fort, you mind asking how to get to Harp Falls?”
Cay puts down his sock. “I thought that was a made-up place.”
“Never said that.”
West tips up his hat. “Why do you want to know?”
“Got some people going that way. Thought I might join them.”
West’s face is an unreadable page. “Okay, we’ll ask.”
Cay slaps his socks against his saddlebag. “All right, all right, too much business and not enough play today. Time for ‘Miss Mable’s Table.’” He can’t get enough of that dirty ditty about two lovers who meet under the furniture.
I cough. I can’t play that here with all these people around, or any other song for that matter. Folks always flock to a violin, no matter how rusty it sounds.
“My arm hurts from roping. But I can strum.”
This, at least, I can do quietly. I remove my fiddle and place my hands, left on the fingerboard, right over the bridge. E for exquisite, Father, even without the bow. Tonight I play for three princes and one princess.
“‘West Is Where My Heart Lies,’” I announce.
I usually let others take care of the singing, but since not many know this song, I croon the words in my soft singing voice and strum as quietly as possible. Even my normally cranky D-string gets along with the others this time. Andy hums along in a pitch-perfect alto.
West’s shoulders relax as he listens, and his eyes follow my fingers. When I sing the refrain, West is where my heart lies, my eyes flit to his, though I drop them quickly before I tip him off to my longing.
? ? ?
Later, after everyone falls asleep, I take my violin and steal away to the water. I kneel on a patch of dry grass. The waxing moon casts just enough light to give me a reflection. My hair sticks out in different directions and I’m grimacing. I shiver, wishing I still had my shawl, the one Father had Mrs. Kurtz knit for me out of the softest lambs’ wool. He tied it tight over my shoulders and told me not to mislay it, the way I did its predecessor and my bonnet with the daisies.
But I lost it anyway. The same day I lost him.
I cradle the Lady Tin-Yin to me, her warm wood as comforting as the touch of an old friend. Then I pick out Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Father loved any instrument he could strum—banjo of course, guitar, harp, even washboard if that was the only thing available. Lady Tin-Yin understands my sorrow like no one else, singing my pain through mournful triplets, filling my speck of the world with a poem of aching sound.
A tear breaks through my resolve, then another, and soon I’m crying hard enough to set off hiccups. I swipe my face with my sleeves and try to calm down.
Well, at least now I have nothing left to lose. I should have been a boy. A son would have been more dutiful and less of a watering pot—though maybe that’s just the Snake in me. I wouldn’t be such a mess under these stolen clothes. And you, Father, would still be alive.
Smoothing my hand over the water’s surface, I rub out my reflection. Something rustles behind me, but when I look, there is nothing but wind in the rushes. With a last glance at the disappearing moon, I head back to the others.
When I get there, I find West’s old shearling coat laid across my bedroll.