She did not come to him immediately, and a sensual languor settled over Pemberton. He gazed at her body, into the eyes that had entranced him the first time he’d met her, gray irises the color of burnished pewter. Hard and dense like pewter too, the gold flecks not so much within the gray as floating motelike on the surface. Eyes that did not close when their bodies came together.
Serena opened the curtains so moonlight could fall across the bed. She turned from the window and looked around the room, as if for a moment she’d forgotten where she was.
“This will do fine for us,” she said, returning her gaze to Pemberton as she stepped toward the bed.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING Pemberton introduced his bride to the camp’s workers. Serena stood beside her husband as he spoke, wearing riding breeches and a flannel shirt. Her boots were different from the ones the day before, the leather on these scuffed and worn, the toes rimmed with tarnished silver. Serena held the reins of the Morgan she’d had freighted down from Massachusetts, the horse’s white coloration so intense as to appear nearly translucent in the day’s first light.
“Mrs. Pemberton’s father owned the Vulcan Lumber Company in Colorado,” Pemberton said. “He taught her well. She’s the equal of any man here, and you’ll soon find the truth of it. Her orders are to be followed the same way you’d follow mine.”
Among the gathered workers was a thick-bearded cutting crew foreman named Hartley. He hocked audibly and spit a gob of phlegm on the ground. At six-two and well over two hundred pounds, Hartley was one of the few men big as Pemberton in camp. Serena opened the saddlebag and removed a Waterman pen and a small spiral pad. She spoke to the horse quietly, then dropped the reins and walked over to Hartley, stood exactly where he had spit. She pointed toward the office, where a cane ash tree had been left standing for its shade.
“I will make a wager with you,” Serena said to Hartley. “We’ll estimate total board feet of that cane ash. Then we’ll write our estimates on a piece of paper and see who’s closest.”
Hartley stared at Serena a few moments, then at the tree, as if already measuring its height and width. He was not looking at her when he spoke.
“How we going to know who’s closest?”
“I’ll have it cut down and taken to the sawmill in Waynesville. Soon as we’ve made our estimates.”
By this time Buchanan and Dr. Carlyle had come out of the office and watched as well.
“How much we wagering?” Hartley asked.
“Two weeks’ pay.”
The amount gave Hartley pause.
“There ain’t no trick to it? I win I get two weeks’ extra pay.”
“Correct,” Serena said. “And if you lose you work two weeks for free.”
She offered the pad and pen to Hartley, but he did not raise a hand to take it.
A lumberman behind him snickered.
“Perhaps you want me to go first then?”
“Yeah,” Hartley said after a few moments.
Serena turned toward the tree and studied it almost a minute before lifting the pen with her left hand, writing down her number. She tore the page out of the pad and folded it.
“Your turn,” she said and handed pad and pen to Hartley. He walked up to the cane ash to better judge its girth, then came back and looked at the tree awhile longer before writing down his own number.
AT DINNERTIME, EVERY worker in camp gathered in front of the office. The Pembertons and their partners were there as well, watching from the porch as a sawmill boss named Campbell mounted the ash tree’s stump and took a pad from his coat pocket, announced the estimates and then the total board feet.
“Mrs. Pemberton the winner by thirty board feet,” Campbell said, and he stepped down without further comment.
The workers began to disperse up the ridge to their stringhouses, those who had bet and won stepping more lightly than the losers. As Pemberton followed their progress, he saw Mrs. Chaney on her porch. Her white hair was knotted in a tight bun and she wore a black front-buttoned dress Pemberton suspected was sewn in the previous century. She raised her milky eyes and though he knew the old woman was blind, Pemberton could not shake the sense that she was staring directly at him. She can see things other folks can’t, Pemberton had heard one worker tell another, and she don’t need eyes to do it.
“Time for dinner,” Buchanan announced, “and a celebratory drink of our best scotch.”
He and Peabody followed Carlyle and the Pembertons through the office and into the small back room whose sole furnishings were a bar on one wall and a fourteen-foot dining table, a dozen well-padded captain’s chairs surrounding it. They had barely sat down when Campbell, who’d been bent over the adding machine in the office, appeared at the door. He did not speak until Pemberton asked if there was a problem.
“I just need to know if you and Mrs. Pemberton are going to hold Hartley to the bet.” He gestured behind him. “For the payroll.”
“Is there a reason we shouldn’t?”
“He has a wife and three children.”
The words were delivered with no inflection and Campbell’s face was an absolute blank. Pemberton wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to play poker with this man.
“His having a family is all for the better,” Pemberton said. “It will make a more effective lesson for the other workers.”
“Will he still be a foreman?” Campbell asked.
“What do you think?” Pemberton asked his bride.
“Yes,” Serena replied. “For the next two weeks. Then he’ll be fired. Another lesson for the men.”
Campbell nodded and stepped back into the office, closing the door behind him. A few moments later the clacking, ratchet, and pause of the adding machine resumed.
Pemberton turned to Carlyle.
“I understand we had another rattlesnake bite today.”
“Yes,” the doctor replied. “He’ll live but lose his leg.”
“How many men have been bitten since the camp opened?” Serena asked.
“Five before today,” Buchanan said. “Only one has died, but every man who’s been bitten save one had to be let go.”
The doctor turned to Serena.
“A timber rattlesnake’s venom destroys blood vessels and tissue. Even if the victim is fortunate enough to survive the initial bite, lasting damage is often incurred.”
“I am aware of what happens when someone is bitten by a rattlesnake, Doctor,” Serena said. “Out west we have diamondbacks, which are even deadlier.”
Carlyle gave a brief half bow in Serena’s direction.
“I yield to the lady’s superior knowledge.”
Peabody, who’d seemed lost in some internal reverie, spoke.
“The rattlesnakes cost us money, and not just when a crew is halted by a bite. Men get overcautious, and progress is slowed.”
“The snakes are a problem,” Serena said, “and so they must be killed off, especially in the slash.”
Peabody frowned.
“Yet that is the hardest place to see them, Mrs. Pemberton. They blend so well with brush and limbs as to be invisible.”
“Better eyes are needed then,” Serena said.
“Cold weather will be here soon and will send them up into the rock cliffs,” Buchanan said.
“Until spring,” Peabody said. “Then they’ll be back, every bit as bad as before.”
“Perhaps not,” Serena said.
II
It was in early spring that Harmon’s daughter returned to camp. By then Boston Lumber Company had become Pemberton Lumber Company. Peabody had suffered a stroke during a Christmas visit to New England, allowing the Pembertons to buy his share. In February, Pemberton and Buchanan went bear hunting alone near the headwaters of Hazel Creek. Buchanan had been shot. An accident, Pemberton had claimed, but Sheriff McDowell had been openly skeptical.