The door closed, and husband and wife looked at one another. “We did it,” Karl said, and expelled his breath in a long sigh.
“Yes.” Sarah laughed shakily and sat on the edge of the bed to unpin her hat.
“I have something for you.” He pulled a chair up near the bed where he could sit facing her. “Something I memorized from one of the books your old-maid schoolteacher had. It’s my wedding gift to you.” He took her hands and began:
“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least-
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sing hymns at Heaven’s gate,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”
Sarah leaned over and kissed him. She was crying, and his eyes were moist. “I have nothing for you,” she said.
“You are everything to me, Sarah.”
40
THE DAY AFTER THEY CAME HOME TO ROUND HOLE, MATTHEW RAN three-quarters of a mile to meet the Reno coach so he could be the first with the news to Liam and Beaner. “Karl and Momma got married,” he puffed as Liam hauled him aboard by one arm.
“It’s about damn time,” the taciturn old driver replied, but he was pleased and paid his respects with his hat in his hand when they arrived at Round Hole.
The weeks passed and Sarah grew as quick to answer to “Mrs. Saunders” as she had been to “Mrs. Ebbitt.” Karl was slower, and suffered the good-natured teasing of the old customers when he referred to his wife as Mrs. Ebbitt.
The weather turned cold in late September, and life moved indoors. Sarah or Karl would leave the guests after supper and find a quiet corner where they could teach Matthew his lessons. Sometimes they held hands or sat close, but Karl still absented himself from the stop on nights when Sarah raised the calico flag.
The Saunderses saved enough money over the winter so that the following spring they were able to buy a bull. They hoped to have a healthier crop of calves the following year. Coby’s pay was raised to two dollars and a quarter a day. He took better than half a week off, and rode to Elko to pay his debts. When he returned, a free man, with some money left over, he settled back into the tackroom and showed no inclination to move on.
Several more of Sarah’s hens disappeared and she reinforced the wire fence around the coop. There were no more raids for a while; then, early in November, Matthew forgot to latch the gate behind him after gathering eggs for supper and in the morning three hens were gone. One was Sarah’s best layer.
Karl and Coby had gone to Standish to buy hay and firewood for the winter. Sarah, enjoying the solitude, whistled breathily to herself as she checked the roost one more time, peering into the gloomy recesses of each box and poking her arm in to feel behind the messes of straw nesting. Her missing hens were nowhere to be found, but she inadvertently discovered an egg so old it broke when she touched it and the smell drove her out into the open. The sharp November air cleared her lungs of rotten-egg smell. Wrapping her arms in her apron for warmth, she took a last look around the henyard. Her flock, small and brown-and-white-speckled, scratched complacently. Corn kernels from the morning still littered the ground near the fence. Two snow-white feathers blew by her feet, catching her eye. She picked one up and turned it over in her fingers; the end was mangled and there was rust-colored matting near the tip. She let the wind take it, left the chicken coop, and hurried across the yard. Under the porch steps, out of sight from a distance, were more feathers-half a handful. Sarah knelt by the steps and stuck her head under the porch. Shadowy and indistinct, something crouched behind the feathers.
“Moss Face,” she called, “come here, fella.” Slowly the shadow crept forward, hunched down, his chin low over his paws. Sarah reached in, ducking her shoulder under the porch floor. Moss Face stopped, his brown eyes bright in the dimness. Small white feathers were stuck to the fur around his jaws. “Come on now, come here, boy, attaboy,” she cajoled. The coyote crept forward another few feet and she grabbed at his neckerchief. “Gotcha!” she cried as she dragged him out into the light. All around his mouth the fur was spiky with dried blood. Holding on to his collar, Sarah smacked him. “Bad dog!” He growled and bared his teeth. “Don’t you growl at me! And don’t you go killing my chickens!” She spanked him hard. Writhing in her grasp, rubbery lips pulled back in a snarl, Moss Face twisted to bite. His teeth grazed her wrist, barely breaking the skin, but it scared her and she let him loose. He was around the corner of the house and out of sight before she recovered herself.
“It’s Moss Face been killing the chickens,” she told Karl that night as she brushed out her hair. He sat on a chair beside the bed, his heavy workboots neatly side by side under the window, sewing a button on one of his shirts.
“I thought it might be,” he replied. “I guess no one wanted to know it for sure. Did you catch him in the henhouse?”
“No. Almost, though. He was under the house, too full to do anything but sleep. I got him to come out. He had feathers and blood all around his mouth.” She pulled back her sleeve. “I spanked him and he turned and bit me. I think he’s going back to being wild.”
“Maybe. I remember Mac said he might. I guess we’ll have to get rid of him.”
Her hand flew to her cheek as though he’d slapped her. “That’s Matthew’s dog!”
“He’s killing chickens. Today he bit you.”
“We can’t kill him.” She brushed her hair vigorously for a hundred strokes. Adjusting the lamp, Karl squared up his spectacles and pulled the thread around and around the button before tying it off. With the light so close, his face showed the years, the lines chiseled through the flat cheeks and fanning out over the high cheekbones.
“We can’t kill him,” Sarah said again.
“We can’t keep him, if he’s killing chickens.”
Sarah put the brush down and tied her long hair back at the nape of her neck with a faded blue ribbon. “Couldn’t we take him somewhere and leave him? Let him go wild again?”
Karl thought for a moment. “We could do that. I’ll do it tomorrow. Coby and I planned to ride south of here, toward Tohakum Peak. I think the cattle may be ranging too far; I’m afraid to let them get too near the Paiutes or we’ll lose them.” He smiled. “I don’t want them eaten before they’re paid for.”
Sarah came to kneel between his knees. She still slept in the old flannel gowns Imogene had given her when she’d left Pennsylvania with nothing but the dress on her back. The fabric was yellowed with age, the hem frayed. She put her arms around Karl’s waist and rested her head on his chest. “Oughtn’t you be getting ready for bed?” she asked. “I laid out your nightshirt.”
He let her bound hair slip through his hand, long and silken. “Mrs. Saunders,” he said, and smiled.
“Mrs. Saunders.” Sarah turned her face up to be kissed. “You need a haircut,” she commented. “Put it off much longer and we’ll have to get out the hairpins.”