Her need for vengeance was a rank seed she watered daily, until even her husband grew afraid. After Star’s funeral, she spent two days sweating and praying, her husband and child left alone. Then she consulted the oldest woman on the reservation, the one person who held enough wisdom to help. The visit did not go well, and she left feeling more alone than ever before. It was her task only, she decided, although the woman told her that the world would die in a flood many lifetimes beyond, and that all creation would be called to justice, so there was no point to vengeance. She said too much wrong had tilted the people into chaos that would not be righted in her lifetime or her child’s or her child’s child’s. Her task was to survive, merely to survive. Rose jumped up from her chair and rushed out the door.
She had thought hard as she and Dulcinea rode back to the Bennetts’ ranch, and sent a message to Some Horses to meet her in town. She assured him she would not take any action that would endanger their family, their child, and that she merely wanted to bring the killer to the attention of white authorities. They both knew she lied, but in a marriage, one agrees to certain stories in order to survive. She would be careful, she promised herself. Her husband and child were part of her spirit and she theirs. She would die before seeing them harmed.
The runabout slowed and pulled to the side as Dulcinea and Graver galloped up and hauled their horses to a prancing stop. The two boys came whooping out of the little draw ahead and Rose saw Dulcinea watching her sons, a fearful expression on her face. Had they done the killings? Rose had asked around the reservation about Star and heard strange tales from her aunt’s husband, of some Lakota boys and white boys at the last rodeo. She wondered if these were the boys. She would find out.
As she drew up to the runabout, Some Horses glanced down at Lily squirming on the seat, then out into the flat expanse. The girl needed to pee. “Traveler’s stop. You go on ahead,” Rose said as she pulled up beside them.
Rose climbed down, handed the lines to Graver, and took her daughter out a ways, finally stopping in a patch of soapweed tall enough to screen the squatting child. Lily was about to stand when they heard the warning rattle behind her and both froze. Rose waited, tried not to hold her breath, and was on the verge of greeting the snake in Lakota when it uncoiled so she could see its huge head and thick body as it stretched to its full six feet. It gazed at her, tongue fingering the air, then oozed away, leaving a signature trail etched in the sandy dirt.
“Thank you, sister,” Rose whispered. Lily stared at her before she dropped her eyes and whimpered.
PART THREE. FALLING TOWARD the WOUND
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Dulcinea slept long and hard after the trip to town. She woke to find breakfast over and the ranch yard alive with men, horses, and bawling cattle. She paused on the front porch and looked for her boys. Were they already working? Somehow she doubted it, and the thought troubled. Then she recalled Cullen’s reaction to the stallion and trotted down the walk to the gate. Two men on horseback were coming down the road toward the ranch. Where was Graver? Or Rose and Some Horses?
Inside the cool shadows of the barn she stopped to let her eyes adjust, and then headed to the back, where they’d stalled the new horses. Relief washed over her as the gray stallion poked his head over the stall door and nickered. The black mare paced uneasily, her coat damp, while the bay munched hay with a contented eye. They needed to stretch their legs. She searched for the halters and found them in the dust on the ground.
Sloppy. J.B. wouldn’t put up with hands treating equipment this way, and neither would she. Time to stand up to these men. She raised her head and straightened her shoulders. They’d hate taking orders from her, but they’d learn.
She led the mares out one at a time, starting with the bay, who helped settle the nervous black. The horses needed names. Maybe she should let the boys decide. She recalled Cullen laughing at her and knew it was likely a waste of time. She turned them loose in the big square pen beside the barn, and each let itself down with a groan, rolled over and over, then stood, shook off the dust like a dog, spun and galloped and bucked around the pen until it tired. It had been a long train ride from Kentucky for the two pregnant mares, but they seemed in good shape.
She went back in the barn for the stallion. As she caressed his long neck, she wondered what J.B. would have thought of her gift, bought with her own money. She had planned it so carefully. He would bring both boys to her, the three of them reunited, a family. Of course, they’d have to work out the problems, but it would be a fresh start. She’d used an old acquaintance of her father’s, who owned racehorses, to procure these three from a reputable breeder. The gray was just below the rank of top sires. He’d broken down his first race with a badly bowed tendon, so he was cheap. The two mares were of the same quality: good, not excellent. Perfect for her plan. She imagined J.B. walking through the stable door, whistling, hands thrust in the pockets of his jeans, smiling to see her. She started to think of good things to tell him, but the illusion faded and foamy salt filled her mouth like blowback from a running horse. He had written her about the spotted mare, a brief note she’d pondered, wondering if he had killed her himself or had one of the men do it, or maybe done as he’d suggested so many years before and turned her loose to die of cold, starvation, or mountain lions. It was another stone she stacked on the wall between them. Go get your son, she’d ordered him in March. Now he was dead. Drum had to be the killer. She felt a chill on her face, stopped and heard the men yelling and whistling at the cattle in the branding pen outside. Cullen was home now, yet the thought gave her little comfort. Something was wrong with the boy.
“Damn you, J.B.,” she cursed under her breath as the stallion swung around and headed toward the water bucket, shoving it with his nose so it splashed. It shouldn’t be so full, Dulcinea thought, why wasn’t he drinking?
He pushed the bucket again, and more water slopped over the sides. “Stop it,” Dulcinea said and pressed her hand to his chest, backing him away.
The mouse was a small brown field variety, with a long tail that lay on top of the water like a thick piece of string unfurled, weaving back and forth as if steering the exhausted body between scrabbling attempts to climb the slick sides of the bucket. It didn’t seem to notice the woman watching. It was far beyond that scale of worry and menace.
Dulcinea cupped her hand underneath to lift it, and it managed to swim over her fingers. She tried again, this time with both hands, raising it up, water streaming, the soft mewling exhausted and angry. She thought to close her hands, but didn’t want it to bite or scratch. The mouse had suffered enough. She released it by a small hole in the corner of the stall. Outside she heard a commotion of voices rise then quickly fall. Maybe it was the boys. She should let them grieve, although a part of her wished they were more like their father and didn’t put themselves on display so much. Without her family’s social courtesies, and lacking the code of western men, they were more like dogs let off the chain. Although she would not admit it to a soul, they frightened her. If only she and Rose could find the killer. Then she would leave these hills and take the boys with her; they would improve with education, she was sure of it.
When she led the stallion out to his pen, she saw Larabee, Irish Jim, and Willie Munday resting in the shade beside the barn, their clothes and faces streaked with dirt-soaked sweat, three shovels propped next to them. They’d been working on the road between the ranches since Drum demanded they improve it. She wanted to tell them not to spend much muscle because she intended to put a stop to his plans this week. As she turned the horse loose, someone called her name from the hayloft window. Rose stood in the opening, pointing toward the house, where Percival Chance stepped down from a tall, narrow bay mare with a crooked white stripe down her nose that veered to the right at her nostrils. Beside him, Alvin Eckhart, the sheriff, struggled to dismount from a nondescript shaggy brown horse that could only be another refugee from Dun Riggins’s livery stable. Overweight and unused to riding, the sheriff looked pale and sweaty as he stumbled to maintain his feet and stand beside the horse to loosen the girth.