What Once We Loved Read online

  “Always,” he said. “Leave the jack tied to the back though,” he said. “'Til I can hobble him myself. He's a character.” Ruth looked up at the bigheaded jack. The animal stood almost as tall as her Jumper had been, sixteen hands at least. “Old Doc picked him up. Someone coming on Noble's Trail sold him. Imagine making it all that way across and then just having to let him go.”

  Like Jumper, Ruth thought, having to let him go. If you always do… She'd have to try something new, even a new way to grieve loss. “What will you do with him?”

  “Oh, break him if I can. Or breed him to some fine mares. He's good stock even if he is a little ornery. I guess they all are. The army's always looking for mules. Some of the big ranches east use ‘em for haying and such, now that people are back to working instead of just crazy for gold. Yup,” he patted the big black mule and raised a puff of dust. “I figured I'd find some use for him.”

  “Or sell him to someone who would?”

  3

  French Gukh, Northern California

  “Hand me Schimmelbusch's kit, the complete one. Yes, yes, hurry. With the stop-cock bottle.”

  “You will not use the ether?” a woman said.

  “No. Chloroform. It should have been done earlier…1 don't know. We'll be fortunate to save that portion of the leg now.”

  “He wished you to wait.” loo risky now.

  “Will he live?”

  Zane Randolph heard the voices as though far away. Above him loomed a night sky of heavy black broken by the sounds of crickets. No, not the sky but dark wallpaper of reds and purples with squares like crossed prison bars marching around the perimeter. The sounds were clicks of metal against tin.

  “Hold the lantern high, dear. The fiimes.”

  “Oui, “ the woman said.

  The lanterns light flickered against a blade. Zane smelled something. Kerosene.

  As he came out of this delirium, Zane became aware of his body. It felt heavy, as though a horse had rolled onto him, pinning his limbs beneath water. His arms did not belong to him. The hand he raised to reach for the knife was pale and white, not his. He was so tired of these people always pushing at him, poking. Prison guards, holding him hostage, smelling like antiseptics. He'd ridden away from them, hadn't he? No, he'd made his way to them, and now they did this. He lunged for the blade.

  “Here, here, no need for that,” the man said. “I'm a doctor.”

  Zane heard heavy breathing and wondered if someone else hovered in the room. He tried to turn his neck to look, but a sharp pain stopped him. His head burned with fever. “Where am I?”

  “In my surgery. Someone brought you in, barely alive, I might add. You've been in and out of delirium for days. Now, we must do something more. You have serious lesions and infections. I'm afraid…your leg…must come off.”

  Zane grabbed for the scalpel again, reached the woman's arm instead. She squealed, tried to jerk back, the lantern casting a hollow light against wood walls.

  “Non!” the woman shrieked.

  “It must be done,” the doctor said, prying Zane's weakened fingers from the woman's arm.

  “Why should I…believe you?” Zane managed.

  “You have no choice.”

  Zane clutched the man's shirt sleeve now. “Who are you?” he whispered.

  “I'm a doctor. A surgeon. You've nothing to fear. We'll get started if you just lie back down. Chloroform will put you under. You won't feel pain. Please. You're frightening my nurse.”

  As if frightening a woman was afoul thing.

  Zane leaned on one elbow, panting. The room spun around him. He willed himself to control his mind, his thoughts. He must not let himself do something impulsive, something to later hurt his plans.

  He let go of the man's shirt, lay back from the frightened eyes of the woman.

  “Do you have a name?” the man asked, leaning over him, the light behind him turning the opening of his nostrils into dark caverns, dark holes in prison walls. “Do you remember your name?”

  The little squares on the wallpaper moved now, circled around and around the ceiling edge. Zane heard a buzzing sound in his head, felt a linen mask drift like cobwebs onto his face. The table was a casket board, hard against his back. He could tell now that the sounds of labored breathing came from his own throat. He was alone with the doctor and nurse in this room.

  “Your name. Before we cut.” They were waiting for him to speak.

  “Beckworth,” Zane told him, pulling the name from something he'd read or heard. “Wesley Beckworth.” He willed himself to remember for when he would awaken, hoping that he would, had to. “But only cut away the infection. Leave the leg. Leave it. It will heal.”

  “My good man—”

  “Leave it!”

  “Spray the chloroform on his mask, dear. Careful with the inhaler. Yes. That's right. Now then. Let's see if we can get rid of something you wont be able to live with.”

  Zane looked up at the woman, she was ghostly and far away. She reminded him of someone, he couldn't think whom. Ruth, he thought, his dear wife, Ruth. He heard sounds of metal splintering the fuzziness of his head, the knife hitting the side of a tin pan. He took in huge gulps of air. He would not be confined, not with a missing limb, not with Ruth laughing at his imperfection. Better death than that. Better death.

  “No!” Zane ripped at the linen mask.

  “Careful! The lantern! You'll cause a fire, man!”

  “You take my leg, I'll have your life,” Zane finished. He was sinking, sliding down a slope of talus, sure that at the rocky bottom his head would separate from his body.

  As in a nightmare, he heard the doctor say, “When we've amputated, we must get his name from that poster we saw. I am sure it is the same man, though the name he told us is different. Send it to the Shasta post office. Whoever is seeking his whereabouts should know quickly…” And then Zane's world went black.

  Mazy pushed her head into the side of Jennifer, one of her Ayrshire cows. Her fingers strong and firm, Mazy pulled at the cows udder. The smell of the fresh milk and the hard splash sounds into the foamy pool usually soothed her. Not now. Ruth hadn't spoken a word to her directly since this dreadful thing happened. Oh, Mazy'd allowed herself time this morning—while it was still dark—to write and have her conversations with God. “Ponderin with the Lord,” her mother might say, that was what she was doing. Asking why bad things had to happen, why good people ended up hurting, bearing more than their share of suffering and separation.

  She was thinking about Ruth's suffering. Ruth had been different since Jessies return, more willing to let others…come close. Then just when she'd taken that leap, to make a difference in her life with her family intact and old lies out in the open, this happened, this tragedy stealing her hopes. It was the first thought that had filled Mazy's mind when she saw Jumper lying there. Ruth's dream, gone.

  The second thought had been of her own miserable self. It was her fault that the brute had been there at all, her procrastinating about getting the bull south. She'd waited for Jeremy's brother to come and get it if he wanted it so badly. That was her right. She was within her rights to wait like that, to make him come forward. See what her stubbornness had gotten her? She was right, but being right didn't make her happy. She was also sorrier than she'd ever been in her life. At the very least, she should have found her own place to live long before now, and taken the animal there so it wouldn't have been here for Ruth's Jumper to encounter. Or she should have asked if David Taylor could take the brute to his cabin at Mad Mule Canyon.

  But Mazy was building her cowherd up, she reminded herself. She'd wanted the breeding to be perfect, knew just what days to let the animals breed so she could plan when the calves would come. She had plans too. Her plans. See what they'd gotten her: tragedy for her friend and perhaps the severing of their relationship forever.

  It was Jeremy's fault, this whole thing. For buying the brute in the first place, for selling her home, making an emigrant of he
r. And then he'd had the gall to die. No, she had to stop blaming. It just kept her stuck in the muck.

  Mazy had stood at a distance when her mother held Ruth the morning after Jumpers death. She noticed that her friend would not look at her and turned away when Mazy started toward them. Then, still wearing a blanket Matthew had draped across her shoulders, Ruth had disappeared into the dark of the barn. Mazy followed, finding her friend bent over a pack box half filled with her bridles and spade bits and spurs.

  Ruth straightened at the sound of Mazy s entrance, but she kept her back to Mazy. Mazy moved around so she could see Ruth fingering silver bells that lined the leather of a Spanish bridle. The tiny silver globes ended at the spoon spade bit.

  “That looks like it would hurt a horse,” Mazy said, nodding toward the steel hump of the bit meant to touch a horse's tongue. “But Seth said the vaqueros use them because a horse can go farther without water with that bit. You probably knew that. I guess it keeps their mouths moist. The Indians use little pebbles the same way. Have you heard that? Funny that something that looks to hurt could have anything good in it.

  Ruth remained still, gazing down. She wore a shirt and pants meant for miners she'd probably bought at Adora and Charles Wilson's mercantile. She just kept rubbing the bridle, not saying a word.

  “Of course your animals are tough anyway. They weathered the trip across in fine form,” Mazy babbled. “Seth was amazed when I told him that you let Mariah ride Jump…” She cleared her throat.

  Ruth just kept rubbing that bit.

  “Can I help you? That's what I came to do,” Mazy said. “Just tell me what you want in which pack box. I'm good at organizing things.”

  Ruth stayed silent.

  Mazy looked out through the open barn door, her heart pounding with the disappearing of a friendship. “Koda looks good,” she said. “Maybe you should go for a ride. It always made you feel better.”

  The little bells at the bridle in Ruth's hands shook.

  Mazy just wanted to hold her, to take her in her arms and make the hurt go away. Instead she said, “You're a good horse trainer, Ruth. Those yearlings, they'll need some work, won't they? That'll keep you busy. Keeping busy is good for grieving, it is.”

  Ruth threw the bridle into the pack box then and pushed past Mazy into the morning sun.

  Later in the day, with Ruth and Elizabeth and a few others standing about, Ruth spoke to someone else when Mazy asked a question. Ruth turned to answer Elizabeth when Mazy was talking or nodded toward Matthew to have him hand something to Mazy that was easily within Ruth's reach. Her friend didn't want to talk to her, or look at her, and surely not touch her. And Mazy couldn't bring herself to say what she feared most, that she'd somehow lost a friend in this, just as Ruth had lost her horse.

  Maybe it was just as well, her not being able to bring the subject up. Ruth was leaving, and Mazy would have to live without her friend around. Maybe this was God's way of making it easier for Ruth to leave. Something good rising from the rubble. She'd keep telling herself that.

  Mazy grabbed at the cow's tail just before it swatted her in the face. “Almost done here, girl,” she said. The cow danced a bit, raising her back hooves up and setting them down. “Almost finished.”

  What good could come from this? Mazy wondered. There had to be something. Maybe she'd spend more time with her mother this way. But Mazy would have done that just with Ruth's leaving anyway. She might take Mariah under her wing. The girl was quick with her letters and such and compassionate with David Taylor and Oltipas little Ben. And she was a good hand with stock, had always liked riding and looking after the animals. They might find something more in common now that Ruth was leaving. Mazy thought she'd put the lamb's ears cutting into Mariah's hands instead of giving it to Ruth. Ruth might not want to take anything Mazy had to offer her.

  Maybe Jumpers dying was a sign that Ruth was supposed to stay! Ruth could make her way here, with help from her friends, instead of pushing herself north to a place she'd only heard of, where she said she could get a land grant of nearly a quarter-section just by showing up. Oh, she knew Ruth liked to do things on her own—what woman didn't? But Mazy could help her buy this place. They could own it together! They could buy Poverty Flat instead of Ruth's leasing it as she had for a year.

  She warmed to her subject, milked faster and harder now, ignoring a small voice inside that said to slow down. To not let her hopes outrun her reason.

  The cow stepped sideways, her tail flicking at Mazy's face. “Now, now, Jennifer. It's all right. Sorry. Didn't mean to pull so hard.”

  She was mind mumbling. Ruth would never want to go into a partnership with her now. Mazy sighed. It couldn't be fixed; they couldn't go back to what was. Ruth would leave, and Mazy'd have to take the cow brute south. Mazy might not have a pure dairy herd if she bred her cows with a Durham bull, say, or some of the Mexican stock, but she'd still have good milkers and she'd get rid of this…bad memory. For now, Mazy didn't want to miss a chance that she and Ruth could bridge this rushing river the bull had tipped them into.

  Mazy pressed her fingers at the small of her back, rubbing. Bending over to milk was hard on a tall body like hers, having to squat on a stool. Probably on a short frame, too. It was worthy work though.

  Milking required a commitment to routine, that was certain. And anyone who said every milking was the same—just like any journey— had never done it more than once. Something was always challenging a dairywoman: A cow with porcupine quills stuck in her nose at milking time or a calf refusing to suck required thinking. And yet Mazy always ended satisfied, as though she'd completed a chapter of a good book.

  She carried the milk to the river trough she'd built for cooling. She poured the white gold into flat tins to wait until the cream rose for churning, then emptied another bucket into tins that looked like chimneys settled in the water. She had to move the cooled tins from a previous milking and place them at the end of the trough where she'd pull them out in the morning for delivery in town. She'd ask Mariah to skim, then churn the risen cream. She'd be glad when that goat and the treadmill she'd ordered arrived. The goat could do the hard work then of churning cream into butter. These were tasks with beginnings, middles, and ends that filled her like good bread. She'd begun feeling empty and alone this evening. Yet in the rhythm of pulling and squeezing and listening to cats meow and cows chewing their cuds, she'd found a respite from the ache of splintered friendships.

  Mazy watched as a mallard paddled off in a pool of rushes near the trough, the sun glistening on his emerald neck. Browned grasses eased in the breeze and Mazy inhaled. A pleasant place. That was what she had always wanted. She and Ruth had that in common. Maybe that shared dream would be enough to mend them back together.

  The younger children sat along the wall like lily pads around the outside edge of a swirling pond. Eyes moved back and forth between herself and Matthew, Ruth noticed, as she cut the noodles, stopped, then held a knife to punctuate her point, waiting for Matthew to counter, his own knife sending whittling chunks of alder onto the wood floor.

  “You wanted my honest opinion,” Matthew said. Ruth nodded. “I think its nuts. Crazy. Break ‘em for working cattle? You got to be kidding.”

  “And to sell to the military. Look at the freighter market alone,” Ruth said.

  “You don't see any mules drawing stages though, do you?”

  “But good solid, big mares, bred to a big jack would bring about a sturdy animal. It would. And it would still have the same agility because they're built differently I just never paid that much attention before, but it's true. And with people getting back to field work, growing crops and making hay, big mules could be a premium to the Spanish ranches right here in California.”

  “So are you saying you'd stay here, in California?”

  “Now Matthew's getting interested,” Jason teased.

  Ruth frowned. She lifted the strips of egg noodles and hung them over the towel holder behind the washbowl, c
hecking their thickness. She busied herself, made a new hole in the mound of flour on the dough boy, broke an egg inside, added oil and beat them, pinched in more flour until it felt right, and she pressed the new mass flat.

  “Got enough noodles there for an army,” Matthew said.

  “People are coming out. Mazy, too, I suppose. I wish your mother'd sharpen my knives,” she growled then as the dough bunched up along the blade.

  “Maybe she doesn't want any weaponry within your reach,” he said.

  “I know how to make noodles, and I like the idea of going north with big jacks. Maybe because that's where Jed and Betha and me hoped to go all along. Maybe because I don't really like all the memories of this place.”

  “New diggings don't change a person or their memories,” he said. “It's how they see what they got already that does that.”

  “Sometimes a change of scenery can take the work out of what you have to look at though. And I don't want to see…what happened to Jessie or Jumper in every rock I stumble over.”

  A part of Ruth wondered why she even had this discussion with Matthew Schmidtke. He wasn't her brother, no kin at all. He had given her his honest answer, which she'd asked for though. And he did know some things about stock. He'd been clear and truthful, who could ask for more? So why was she so irritable?

  “You said you thought I could go north with the children alone. Why is my wanting to take a couple of jacks along so much different?”

  “Because they don't herd well. One would be bad enough, but two?”

  “Jumper's foals will be good size, or should be. I'll breed them and their mothers to good jack stock.”

  “Too small,” Matthew said. Ruth raised the blade in protest. “Well, they are. Fine looking brood mares, don't get me wrong, but they don't bulk up the way you'd want for what you're talking about.”

  She thought to argue, but she had to agree. She just wasn't ready to say that yet. “If I can find myself a good jack, he'll make up for their smaller size. It would work. Who knows, maybe they aren't so unruly with other jacks around the way stallions and geldings can be.”