Blessing Read online

  “I’ll miss part of the trial,” Uley said. “And it doesn’t sound like a very private place to talk.”

  “It will be. You wait.”

  “I’ve got to ask you something important.”

  “I’ll answer you best as I can.”

  “I’ve got to tell you something important, too. More important than you can guess.”

  “I’ll see you at the livery stable, Uley.”

  As it turned out, that morning was as good a time as any to leave the trial. John Kincaid practically went down every row, calling on every man in town who had the slightest interest in the case—and that was everybody—asking each one if he’d seen the defendant, Aaron Talephas Brown, actually aiming his gun at the marshal. Aaron sat at the front of the room beside the potbellied stove, his boot heels planted on the floor, one hand spread spiderlike on each knee, his eyes focused just above the heads of his accusers. Uley saw him scan the room just once, his eyes casting out over the crowd. His eyes paused when they came to her.

  He stared right at her.

  He didn’t bother to hide it.

  He sought her out in the room the way someone might seek out his best friend.

  Oh, Father. If he’s going to be hanged, help me know how to pray for this soul I’ve seen. And if You’ve got some other version of justice to be done, help that to come about, too.

  There he sat, on trial for his life, and he was smiling at her. Smiling in a way that made her remember yesterday…her laughter, his chuckling, the new spring grass that had smelled dank and sweet as he crushed blades of it beneath his back.

  She didn’t hear anything else going on in the room.

  She didn’t hear the man just to her left shout, “Just because he didn’t take time to aim, that don’t mean he wasn’t out to do a shooting.”

  She knew she needed to steal away and meet Laura. When she stood, she felt Aaron still watching her back, his eyes blazing into her back like two hot branding irons. She stepped over outstretched legs and scuffed boots, blindly trying to find her way to the door. She ran outside and up the street toward the stable. When she found Laura waiting beside the bright red wheels of a new carriage, she was still feeling the effects of Aaron’s eyes locked upon her.

  Chapter Seven

  “Hey. I been waitin’ for you the longest time,” Laura said, raising one laced boot and placing it daintily on a spoke of the wheel.

  “It wasn’t too easy leaving that trial.”

  “How’s it goin’? They gonna hang that man today?”

  “Nobody knows what they’ll decide. There’s a lot of talking going on. Could even be next week before they do it.” As she said it, a new and worrisome fear crept up inside Uley. Just suppose she started to care? Just suppose she started to care whether they hanged Aaron or not?

  Uley trailed Laura to the far side of the livery stable. Laura swung high atop an old horse Uley knew belonged to Moll. “Come on,” she said. “Follow me up. Charles and Hansen Smith are arguing price in there.”

  “He won’t miss you if you leave?”

  “Moll told him not to pay what they’d agreed on. She wants it for fifty dollars less. A hagglin’ man forgets everything but what he’s after. He’ll be here all day. I ain’t worried.” Laura moved her small foot out of the stirrup so that Uley could swing up onto the horse. “Come on.”

  Uley obliged, noting with some satisfaction that Laura didn’t think it necessary to ride sidesaddle. Uley swung up right behind her and wrapped arms around her friend’s tiny, belted waist.

  “Giddyap, Horace,” Laura hollered, whacking the horse with her boot heels and making him bolt forward. They took off up the deserted street toward the north end of town. When they passed Jack Strater’s cabin on the right, Laura turned Horace left, toward Willow Creek. “You ever been to the lily pond?” she called back over her shoulder.

  “Nope. Never have been. Didn’t know there was one.”

  “This is my peaceful place. Just wait ’til you see it.”

  The pond was a small, bean-shaped pool that reflected the clouds in the sky above it like a looking glass. Its edges were scalloped with brilliant green pads and floating yellow buds that would soon unfurl into flower.

  “Isn’t this the purtiest place?” Laura asked as she slipped off the horse.

  “Oh, it is,” Uley agreed, flinging one leg over Horace and dismounting. It was a magical, hidden place, laced with the heavy fragrance of the coming blossoms.

  Laura dropped Horace’s reins, and the horse immediately clattered toward the water, lowering his head to snort and drink. Uley’s friend seemed a different person as she raised her skirts and tiptoed through the mud to the water’s edge. “I wait all year for the lilies to bloom,” she told Uley. “This land belongs to Jack Strater. I don’t get Christmas presents or birthday presents from Moll. The lilies are mine…least they are in my head, anyway. They come ready about the same time each spring.”

  “Strater doesn’t mind you being down here?”

  “Don’t figure he knows. Don’t figure anybody knows, except for the moose, and an elk or two. You’re the first one I’ve brought down here, Uley. See—” she pointed to the mud “—there’s been a moose down here waterin’ since I was here yesterday afternoon.”

  “Thank you for sharing your place with me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Horace moved away from the water, switching his tail at the early-spring flies and pulling up clumps of grass with his yellow teeth.

  “What was it you wanted to ask me about, Uley?”

  “I’ve got to tell you something first, Laura. And it isn’t an easy thing to tell.”

  “Tellin’ things is never easy.” Laura swept up her skirts once more and ventured closer to the pads. Uley figured she was searching for a flower that was closer to blooming than the others. “I found that out a long time ago.”

  “This one is harder than most.”

  Laura sat down in the mud and pulled her boots off. “Hang on. I found a flower I want.”

  “Are you going to wade out?”

  “I always do. You want a flower, Uley?”

  “No. I suppose not.” It would never do to be seen admiring flowers. But then she remembered what she’d come to do. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all. “Yeah. Bring me one. I’d like to have one, too.”

  Laura wadded her skirts up to her knees and plunged in. “Ah!” she hollered. “This pond’s fresh from the spring runoff. Feels like it should still be ice up on the mountain. My feet’re already numb.” She splashed her way over to the pad she’d picked and snapped two buds off with one hand. She carried them back high atop her head, the hem of her skirt trailing behind her in the pool. “Here you go.” She sat in the grass beneath a huge lodgepole pine and handed it up to Uley. Uley plopped down beside her. “Look at my toes.” She leaned out over her knees and perused them. “They’re purple. If I’d have been in there any longer, I’d have frozen them plum off.”

  “Willow Creek’s cold like that this time of year, too,” Uley commented. “Doc Gillette had to treat all of the placer miners last year for rheumatism in their hands.”

  Laura tucked her lily behind one ear. “Know what I like to pretend the most when I come down here? I like to pretend I’m a grand lady. Like that Miss Elizabeth Calderwood. Goin’ out to a fancy barn dance with my beau on my arm. See?” She jumped up again and started to twirl around like a child playing in the wind. “It don’t seem so farfetched when I’ve got a flower in my hair.”

  “I don’t think it is farfetched,” Uley said quietly. She knew the time for the telling was upon her.

  “You’re just saying that, you know. Just because you’re my friend. And—” she blushed mightily “—because you might be sweet on me.”

  “No, Laura. That isn’t it at all.” Then she went on timidly. “I can say that…because I’m not who you think I am.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’ve got th
e same dreams as you. I know that may sound funny, Laura, but it’s true.”

  “How can you say it’s true?” she asked innocently, still half smiling. “How can you know about the dreams and hopes of a girl?”

  “Because—” Uley purposefully poked the lily stem up into the weave of her hat “—I am one.”

  Laura jumped up from the ground as quickly as if she’d just found herself seated beside a brown bear. “Don’t you tell me that. Don’t you sit there and expect me to believe that!”

  Uley jumped up, too. “I expect you to believe it. You’re the only one I can tell. The only other person who knows is my pa.”

  “I know I just met you,” Laura said, “but I’ve known who you are for nigh on three years. Now you’re tellin’ me you’re somebody different?”

  “No. I’m not different. I’m just me. Who I have always been.”

  Laura took a step back and narrowed her eyes at Uley. “You can’t be a gal.”

  “The clothes disguise it. Come on. Wrap your arms around my waist. Just the way I held on to you while we were riding Horace. You’ll know it.”

  Skeptically Tin Can Laura reached one palm and touched the side seam on Uley’s sweater. She followed with the second palm.

  Laura gripped the sweater with both hands and squeezed. Her hands inched in…and in…and in. At last, they found Uley’s shape beneath the shirt. She didn’t have a tiny waist by any means, but it definitely tucked in at the right place, then splayed out again where a feminine body would curve into hips. “Uley? I would never have known.”

  “I told you.”

  “Did your mama give birth to a girl child and name it Uley?”

  “No. But that’s what you have to call me. It’s what everybody thinks. Wouldn’t do to change that now.”

  “You’re a gal.”

  “I am.”

  “But why are you keeping it a secret?”

  Uley told Laura the story of her mother dying on the way here, before they’d even made it west of Ohio, and her aunt Delilah, who’d offered to keep her so that her father could come to Tin Cup to follow his dream.

  “My father never will get rich. He worked his own claim when we first got here, but he never found anything. That dream was theirs, Laura. It belonged to both of them. My mama, too. She’s the one who had to die for it. I sure wasn’t going to stay back there with Aunt Delilah. I wanted to come and do my share of the work. When we got closer, and Pa found out what kind of camp Tin Cup was, this was the only way he’d let me come. So I did it.” She couldn’t help the pang of conscience for the deception she’d made. She’d never known how wrong this would feel. “I didn’t know how confused I’d feel about things sometimes.”

  As she spoke, Laura’s gray eyes grew round and full of sparkle. By the time Uley had finished the tale, Laura’s grin spread all the way from one dimple to the other. “That means you really are my friend.”

  “Of course I really am your friend. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “But I thought you were sweet on me. And that’s why…why you wanted to be with me.” Laura was starting to stumble over her words. Maybe it wasn’t right to discuss these things with a real girl. A real lady. “Because you were a boy.”

  Uley smiled. She sat back down and flopped flat on the ground. “You cannot imagine how good it feels to have finally told somebody.”

  “That day you rescued me from the storm. Your pa knew what I was. He let me come with you anyway.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “You helped me. I would have frozen stiff out there.”

  “I think so, too.”

  “You—” Laura couldn’t quit staring at the girl sprawled out in the shade. “You jumped on Aaron Brown and knocked him flat in the dirt. You saved the marshal.”

  Uley sat up again and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I’ve done many things that aren’t…natural….”

  “Uley. You are a regular lady. You shouldn’t be goin’ around with me.”

  “You are my friend,” Uley said kindly. “That’s what matters. Not what you do. I’m a timberman in the Gold Cup Mine, you know.”

  “But you saved my life.”

  “And you gave me a kitten for it. And now, Laura, you may very well save my life, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have questions to ask you.”

  “About what.”

  “About men.”

  “Uley, you should know all about men. For three years, I’ve thought you were one.”

  “I don’t know about men in this certain way.”

  “Oh.”

  “I have no one else to ask. Mama is gone. You’re the only one who can help me.”

  Laura plopped down beside her. “I’ve never had anyone ask me for help before.”

  “I need to know things, and I need to know them quickly.”

  “What? I’ll answer you.”

  “When you start caring for a man, does it make you feel different? Or special? Or wise? Or happy? Or sad? Is it wonderful? Or is it detestable?”

  “Goodness, Uley. Slow down. I can’t answer all those questions at once.”

  “Try. Try to tell me….”

  “What man? Surely no one. They all think you’re a fellow yourself.”

  “Oh, Laura. Just tell it.”

  “If you cared about someone as you say,” Laura said, “you would know the answers.”

  “Not necessarily. Laura, I’m afraid.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ to be afraid about, Uley. You’ll see when the time comes. Fellows are generally all the same—” Laura picked up a rock and started scratching lines in the dirt “—except when one thing happens.”

  “What one thing?”

  “When you fall in love with one of ’em. That makes everything turn topsy-turvy, it does.”

  “Do you know about it?” Uley asked. “Have you ever fallen in love with one of them, Laura?”

  The scratches in the dirt grew deeper. “Once. It was a long time ago. Back in Pitkin, before I moved over the pass.”

  “Do you mind talking about it?”

  “Never talked about it before now. Nobody’s ever asked me about such things.”

  Uley waited.

  “Every time he came around, I felt something different. Something awful and wonderful and so strong I couldn’t sleep most nights. When a man you love kisses you, Uley, you feel like everything inside of you is so warm you’re gonna melt right there where you’re standing, just like those lit candles melt at Ongewach’s, in the vestibule.”

  When the afternoon session of the trial began, John Kincaid said: “Judge Murphy, I call the next witness for the defense to come forward—Elizabeth Calderwood.”

  Elizabeth Calderwood? Uley pondered. What could she know about the night Aaron stepped out of the darkness?

  Elizabeth stood and smoothed down her skirts, stepping carefully between the pine chairs and up onto the platform. So many men were packed around her that there was scarcely room for her skirts. Whispers shot through the crowd once more. Today Elizabeth wore a creamy muslin lined with ribbons as soft a shade as butter. The ribbons flounced prettily as she placed herself beside Murphy and laid one daintily gloved hand atop the massive Bible.

  “I, Elizabeth Calderwood, do solemnly swear…”

  It seemed to Uley that every man in the room took one step forward, crowding closer to her, exactly the way they’d crowd through the door of the assay office to examine the day’s intake of ore. “Now, Miss Calderwood,” Kincaid said, “may we proceed?”

  “It is Mrs. Calderwood, sir,” Elizabeth said. “I have been married once.”

  “Yes. Very well. Mrs. Calderwood. Will you tell us what you know of the relationship between Aaron Brown and Harris Olney?”

  “Yes.” Elizabeth twisted the lace-edged handkerchief she held in both hands. “Harris and Aaron have known each other a long time—since they were boys.” Elizabeth spoke in a light alto voice, smiling at
Aaron. “They used to play together in the churchyard. I used to watch them. I used to beg them to let me play, too, except they wouldn’t. I was a girl, you see, and they’d both decided I was too scrawny to be much good at climbing trees or fishing for cutthroats in the streams.”

  “So Harris Olney and Aaron Brown are lifetime friends, Mrs. Calderwood?”

  “No. They’ve known each other a lifetime. I wouldn’t call them friends.” She shook her head at the attorney, tossing her curls about her shoulders. “Not now.”

  “What occurred, Mrs. Calderwood, to change all that?”

  “A piece of land,” Elizabeth said, “and a French soldier’s grave.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “We owned a cattle ranch on the Cache la Poudre River, just north of Fort Collins. The French soldiers, when they were in Colorado sixty years ago, buried all their black powder on the banks of the river. Some say the soldiers found gold in the Poudre. Some believe—” here she glanced pointedly at Harris Olney “—they buried the gold for fear their commanding officer would make them turn it over to the government.”

  “Yes?”

  “Atop a knoll, about a mile from our house on the ranch, is one indentation in the ground, three feet across and six feet long, and marked with a stone. We believed, my husband and I, that the place was the simple grave of a young soldier. Harris saw the indentation and thought differently. He tried to convince my husband, Fred, to dig up the hole and find out what was beneath it. But Fred wasn’t one to disturb a final resting place. He told Harris to leave well enough alone.”

  Otto Violet, the attorney representing the state of Colorado, rose from his seat and began stalking back and forth in front of the podium. “What does this long tale have to do with Aaron Brown and Harris Olney, Miss Calderwood? Could you get to the point, please?”

  Elizabeth frowned. “It is Mrs. Calderwood. I believe I’ve already mentioned that once. And I am getting to the point, Mr. Violet. It isn’t easily shortened.”

  “Please—” he rolled his eyes and poked out his protruding belly “—do leave out the extraneous details, Mrs. Calderwood.”