“I never thought I’d see you again,” she said as they left the main street. Tears started and he held her, laughing down at her and patting her back with his big hands.
“I promised when I left, didn’t I? Well, there you are.” He surveyed her critically. “You’re just a little bit of a thing. No bigger’n a girl. And shyer than I remember.”
She tugged at a strand of his long hair. “You’re just like I remember you. Exactly.”
Addie came out on the porch with disapproval wrapped around her like a cloak. Her eyes raked David’s considerable height, from his balding head to the heels of his heavy railroad boots. Sarah introduced him as her brother, and the formidable little lady graciously let them pass into the backyard.
They sat under the elms, talking. David recounted his adventures, changing them where necessary to make Sarah laugh. He had started for the silver mines of Virginia City as he had planned, to strike it rich. A year had passed before he arrived. On the trip across the country, he had struck up a friendship with an engineer who worked for the railroad, surveying track, building bridges, and digging tunnels. They had sat up all night, passing a bottle between them and swapping tall tales. David admitted that as the younger and less experienced of the two, he’d invented most of his contributions. By morning it had been decided that David would travel with the engineer and learn engineering.
“Now I’m a regular railroad typhoon.” David laughed at his own joke and went on, “Danny’s dead, blew himself up tunneling through the gold country in California, but I’m building bridges the same way he would’ve done.” He was silent for several minutes, remembering his friend.
He asked Sarah what had brought her west, and had to be satisfied with the answer, “I came with Imogene.” She avoided the subject and looked so miserable when he tried to pursue it that he let it go.
In midafternoon Mac came by, carrying the parcels Sarah had forgotten in town. At first he was gruff and disgruntled, jealousy making him peevish. But a little coaxing from Sarah cheered him and he joined them on the grass. He and David knew a lot of people in common; the subject of family being exhausted for the moment, the conversation moved on to embrace people and events further afield.
Wolf was over his first fear of David and played close to the big man, missing no opportunity to get a good look at his beard. Finally, David invited the little boy to touch it. After a tentative pat and a tug or two, Wolf, evidently satisfied as to its texture and authenticity, wandered off to play in Addie’s rhododendrons.
“Where’d you come by the Indian kid?” David asked.
“I take care of him for his pa,” Sarah replied. “Wolf’s a good boy.”
David looked at his sister, warm and maternal, smiling at the baby as he played.
“Look!” Wolf crowed, waving a perfectly ordinary twig, and Sarah laughed and clapped her hands.
David winked at Mac. “Some Indian’s kid landed in a pot of jam.”
“He’s only half Indian,” Mac said. “Pa’s a miner up Virginia City way, though he gets around. Does a lot of things. Right now he’s over to San Francisco doing some damn thing.”
“Wife die?”
“I don’t know as they were rightly married, when it comes down to it. I don’t know if a white man can marry an Indian in Nevada. They had some Indian mumbo-jumbo, I remember. Me and Nate was pretty drunk. But not a marriage proper like you think of.”
“Did she die?” Sarah asked this time.
“No, Weldrick run out on her. Last I heard, she was shacked up with some miner up near Carson.”
“Wolf’s mother is alive?” The odd tone in Sarah’s voice caught Mac up short in his gossiping. Imogene and Sarah were closemouthed about their personal affairs, but Mac had seen the changes the Indian boy had brought about in Sarah.
“You getting at something I’m missing?” He cocked a wary eyebrow.
“Wolf ought to be with his mother,” Sarah said flatly.
“Now that ain’t so. After Nate lit out she took to the booze, can’t leave it alone. And besides, she run off and left the kid-guess her new fellow didn’t take to half-breeds not of his own making-and last November she left him outside a flophouse Nate was staying at. Naked as the day is long, and tethered to the horse trough with a piece of rawhide. If he hadn’t shied a horse by wiggling, nobody’d have found him till he froze to death. I guess the little fellow never set up a caterwauling like most kids would’ve done. That’s the Indian in him, I expect. You keep that boy, Mrs. Ebbitt. You take him back to his ma, he’ll die as sure as if you put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.” Mac’s exaggeration had the desired effect; the haunted look left Sarah’s eyes and she watched Wolf like a young lioness would watch a lone cub.
“Mrs. Ebbitt?” David looked at his sister.
“I married Sam Ebbitt.”
“That pigheaded, psalm-singing son of a bitch!” David exploded. “Jesus Christ, why?”
Sarah looked ready to cry.
Mac shoved himself to his feet, saying he had to see a man about a horse, and, excusing himself, hurried from the yard.
“Why?”
“I just did,” was all she would say. Another avenue of inquiry was closed and they sat without speaking, watching the clouds change shape overhead. With Wolf’s busy hands busied elsewhere, Manny came out from under the porch where he’d hidden himself, to lie between Sarah and David. He flopped down with a mournful sigh and rested his chin on his paws. Sarah scratched his ears for him.
“You like Manny?”
She nodded. The dog pricked up an ear at the sound of his name.
“I named him Emmanuel after Pa. He’s a fighter, takes offense at everything and starts in snapping.”
“You miss Pa?”
“Nope.”
“Remember Sam Ebbitt’s old yellow-eyed dog?”
“That damn dog bit me once. I like to killed him, but he got under that woodshed.”
“I did kill him.”
“You’re joking me!”
“No, I’m not. I choked him in a door.” Sarah smiled a little in spite of herself. “And I’m not sorry, either.”
David laughed so loud it brought Mrs. Glass to the window.
When Imogene came home from school, Sarah, David, and Wolf were indoors preparing dinner. When it was ready, Sarah said a simple grace: “I thank You, Lord, for my brother.”
After supper she asked David to stay with them while he was in Reno, and Imogene added her welcome, but David declined, making his excuses. “It’s just nine-way before my bedtime,” he said. “I’ll likely still be visiting with some of the boys long after you’re asleep. I can sleep anywhere. Besides, I’ve got to be in Auburn-over the Sierras-tomorrow, but I’ll come by in the morning and say good-bye. I’m in these parts a lot,” he assured Sarah. “I’ll be on your doorstep so much you’ll wish I’d stayed lost.”
He wouldn’t change his mind and so Sarah hugged him, said good night, and went in the bedroom to tuck Wolf in. David and Imogene could hear her singing to the boy through the door. David paused on the porch steps. “Could you walk with me a bit, Miss Grelznik? There’s some subjects I’m not clear on.”
The night had turned cold. Even in summer a wind came down off the mountains and cooled the valley at night. In the clear, dry air, there seemed to be half again as many stars as shone in the Pennsylvania skies. They walked in silence for a while, following the footpath along the river, David’s silhouette only slightly taller than Imogene’s.
“How do you come to be out West?” he asked. And Imogene told him of Darrel’s accusations and Karen Cogswell’s hysterical outburst, of Sam whipping Sarah and breaking into Imogene’s house when Sarah had run there for protection.