Sarah hugged Matthew tight and kissed him. “Good night, honey. Take this candle, it’s already lit. We’ll be in in a minute.” When he’d gone, she turned, smiling, to Karl. He looked back, strong and square-shouldered, his eyes warm with love for Sarah and her son. “Karl, I think you’ve slept in the tackroom long enough. Come in tonight. Every night.”
He reached for her hand. “Are you sure? People will talk. And not about me, but about you. The gossip could do us harm.”
“I don’t care. I want to be with you in the sight of everybody. Let people talk. I’m tired of hiding and sneaking in our own home.”
Karl spent the night in the main house with Sarah. In the morning the two of them stoically faced down the curious looks and half-heard jokes of the freighters. That afternoon, Karl’s things were moved into the master bedroom with Sarah’s.
Matthew asked why. “To keep a closer eye on you,” his mother told him.
All Colby had to say was, “It’s about time. I’ve been wanting to move into the tackroom for a while now.”
Dizable & Denning couldn’t have cared less; for the first time in years the Round Hole Stop was showing a profit.
39
IT WAS MID-JULY, AND AT SIX O’CLOCK THE SUN WAS STILL HIGH. ALL the windows were propped wide and the door blocked open to catch the breeze. Despite the heat, Karl had on one of the heavy flannel shirts he always wore, the edges of his long underwear peeking out at the neck and wrists. He wiped the bar and tossed the rag over a deer antler fastened to the wall. Round Hole Stop was full; the Reno coach had pulled in at four-thirty with seven passengers, miners bound for a rumor of gold northeast of Bishop.
Liam and Beaner sat slurping coffee with several of the young prospectors; sweat poured down their temples as they swilled the hot liquid. Keeping a low profile, Matthew built a wigwam out of kindling behind one of the tables near the fireplace. Flies buzzed in lazy circles and the company was dull with heat and day’s end.
Beaner swirled the last of his coffee around, polished it off in a gulp, and set the cup carefully back in the wet ring on the tabletop. “Liam,” he said, “I got a new lim’rick.”
The driver looked up from contemplating the toe of his boot, and Beaner winked a round black eye.
Liam nudged the young man across the table, a hard-faced miner of twenty-five, from the silver mines in Virginia City. “Watch this,” he grunted, and jerked his chin toward Karl. Liam’s face creased slightly but the smile didn’t quite break through.
“Hey, Karl,” Beaner called across the room, his dark eyes twinkling. “I got one for you.”
“Never mind, Beaner,” Karl said amiably.
“There was a young whore from Peru…” Beaner began, undaunted.
Karl turned several shades of red and, muttering some half-heard excuse, left the bar for the kitchen. The swamper pounded his thigh and laughed uproariously. “Isn’t that the damnedest thing? You can always get a rise out of Karl. I’ve seen him up to his ears in cowshit, castrating calves, but when somebody’d say something raw he’d color up like an old maid.”
“It ain’t like he don’t know what it is. He’s got it pretty friendly. I hear he’s been bedding Mrs. Ebbit damn near since the schoolteacher died,” one of the freighters put in. “You got promoted to the tackroom, hey Coby?”
“That’s right,” the young man said shortly, and stood to stretch.
The swamper winked at him. “Maybe when Karl moves on, you’ll get promoted-inside.” The others laughed.
“Watch yourself, Beaner,” Coby warned as he left the room.
“He won’t hear her made light of,” Liam explained. “And rightly so. You were getting out of hand there. Mrs. Ebbitt’s a lady, give or take a little, and oughtn’t to be jawed over by the likes of you.” The driver kicked Beaner’s chair and snapped his mouth shut again.
“She’s a widow woman, ain’t she?” a middle-aged, potbellied miner asked. “Why don’t he just marry her? She’s a good little gal-better’n most-cooks a meal that’s purely fit to eat.”
“Maybe he’s too damn tight to take a day off,” a freighter suggested, and even Liam laughed.
“Maybe,” Liam returned. “I’ve never known him to take a day off. Place looks a hell of a lot better than when Van Fleet had it. Food’s sure a damn sight better; Van’s missus couldn’t boil guts for a hungry bear, from what old McMurphy told me.”
Quietly, Matthew slipped from the bar unnoticed.
The spring was now completely enclosed by a fence built of heavy timbers. It had been Coby’s first job. Matthew skirted it and ran through the coarse grass, leaping over the creek that ran through the meadow from the spring. He found Coby mending fence down past the paddock near the southwestern corner of the pasture, and climbed up to sit on top of the post nearest him. He patted his knees and Moss Face leaped up into his lap. For a moment the boy and the dog teetered, but Matthew recovered his balance, the coyote in his arms.
“Every time you climb the wires like that, it makes more work for Karl and me.” Coby picked up a strand of barbed wire that had been stomped down by one of the horses, and nailed it back in place.
Before Matthew could respond, Karl came up. “Your Momma and I thought we’d take a ride up above the place. It’s a nice evening and there’s time before dark. Do you want to come with us, Matthew?”
Matthew deserted Coby without a backward glance.
The sun was on the horizon, flattened to a red oval. The sky was deepening to evening in the east and glowed a clear, translucent yellow in the west. Sarah and Karl rode up the hill single file, Karl in front. He sat stiff in the saddle, his spine rigid and his elbows out at the sides, more like a graduate of a riding academy for young ladies than one of the slouching Nevada cowboys. Sarah rode astride, her petticoats tucked under her, her hand resting on the pommel. Occasionally she’d lean forward to pat the neck of the little bay and murmur words of encouragement. She rode easily now, unafraid. Matthew rode behind, holding to her waist.
Up the hill behind Round Hole, a bluff of sandstone and rock pushed out through the sage, forming a shelf several feet wide that ran halfway around under the brown of the hill. It was just high enough to make a natural bench. Karl tethered his horse to a bush and helped Sarah to dismount. Matthew had already squirmed and slid his way over the round rump of the little mare.
Below, the desert spread out. The sunset touched the dead soil of the alkali flat to a living hue, and the mountains beyond were a dark, regal purple. Karl and Sarah sat several feet apart on the sandstone ledge and looked down over their home. Cattle dotted the landscape in small, isolated groups, with an occasional stray. A thin ribbon of smoke rose from the kitchen chimney. Those cottonwood posts that had sprouted around the spring continued to thrive, waving lacy green-black leaves over the water. Down by the icehouse, the windmill was utterly still. Several horses grazed in the meadow, and the hollow cracking of Coby’s hammer echoed up the hill. He was working on a bench near the barn door, his tow-colored head a small orange dot, dyed by the setting sun.
“The air is so clear you can see a hundred miles,” Sarah said. “In Pennsylvania, the world was smaller.”
“I’m used to the space,” Karl replied. “I like it.”
Matthew scrambled down the slope behind, a miniature avalanche announcing his arrival. He settled himself comfortably between them and began pitching pebbles at Moss Face. The coyote leaped and snapped at them a few times before he tired of the game and wandered off. Long shadows were creeping across the desert floor from the west; soon Round Hole would be in shade.