Bittersweet

“Will you read it?” Imogene asked softly.

“The Bible’s not for me to read or not read anymore,” Sarah replied.

Imogene took the Bible and opened it to the Twenty-third Psalm. Sarah stood beside her, her eyes averted from the bundles in the bottom of the trench. The two wagoners bared their heads and stood quietly by as Imogene read aloud in a deep, sure voice. When she closed the Bible, she had tears on her cheeks.

Cracker cleared his throat. “That was right. Me and Lyle would’ve forgot entirely.”

“Thank you, Sarah,” Imogene said, and they walked slowly back to the house.

That afternoon, when the stop was empty, Sarah and Imogene, the younger woman gloved and bo

31

THE CHICKENS ARRIVED, A ROBUST, STRINGY LOT WITH PARTICOLORED feathers. Only two had succumbed to the rigors of the journey, and they were eaten for di

Summer ended abruptly. Imogene’s saplings, planted in a neat line around the house’s side yard, lost their leaves almost overnight, and a biting wind blew out of the northwest all autumn and through December. Slate-colored clouds scudded dry and cold across a dome of scoured blue.

The valley was too dry for snow, but the mountain peaks were white, and frost covered the ground through February and March. Imogene made the trip by wagon the eighty miles to Loyalton to get hay. She was gone nearly a week, and Sarah ran the stop alone. On her return they spent the better part of two days breaking the bales into manageable lots.

The weather stayed bitter through April but held a suggestion of softness in the afternoons, and rain fell in cold scattered showers, the progress of a lone thunderhead often visible as it carried its dark streamers of rain over the face of the desert. High-voiced new frogs peeped from the spring, and the winter black of the sage was taking on a greenish cast. By the end of May, the bitterbrush was in bloom and spiny yellow and blue flowers half as big as a pe

The coach out of Reno rattled through the crisp spring air, the dust from the horses’ hooves and the wheels plumed up behind for three hundred yards. About a mile from the house, waist-deep in the fragrant sage, Imogene shifted the carcasses of two freshly killed quail and shaded her eyes to watch the mudwagon. Van Fleet’s old coat hung from her shoulders down past her hips, its mottled blue-and-brown plaid stained with use and the blood of rabbit, squirrel, and deer. The sleeves were too short and her bony wrists stuck out several inches. The dress she wore was faded and patched, an old housedress she reserved for hunting; it had shrunk over the years and didn’t quite reach the top of her wide-toed, lace-up, men’s boots-her tramping boots, Sarah called them.

Noisy was the first to look her way; she waved and started for the road. Noisy Dave hollered and waved back. Mac, half-asleep beside him on the high seat, jerked upright. Head bare to the weather, the Henry Repeater held easily in the crook of her left arm, Imogene strode through the brush.

“You’re a ways from home, Miss Grelznik,” Mac said as Noisy reined up. Several passengers craned their necks out the side windows to catch sight of her. Imogene had become a character people talked about even in Reno.

“Can we give you a lift home?” Mac asked.

“That would be nice,” Imogene thanked him. “Sarah ought to have lunch on; we’ll get there while it’s hot.”

Mac jumped to the ground and handed her up, as gallant a gentleman as if she were in satin slippers and a taffeta gown. When she was settled between them, Noisy shook the reins and hollered instructions to the lead team. The horses, excited by the smell of water and the sight of the barn, needed no second invitation and started off at a good clip. Noisy, hunched forward, his round belly on his knees, the leather leads strung between his fingers so that he resembled a puppet master, looked over at Imogene. “You want to give it a try? Take the wagon in?”

“No, thanks,” she laughed. “Two horses are enough for me, and it took me a while to learn to handle that. We must walk before we run. Maybe next year.”

A rut, cut in the roadbed by an old wash and revived by flash floods during the spring rains, jolted the coach, and a gu

“It’s a coyote pup,” Mac explained. “Don’t know if he’ll live or not, he’s pretty small. Noisy here spotted him off to the side of the road. The bitch had been shot-must’ve been near the den, because three pups had come out to her. The pups were no more’n three or four weeks old. This little fella was the only one left alive. Just bones, tail, and ears. He was so weak he couldn’t hardly stand, but he bit old Dave a good one.” Mac laughed.

“Damn pup,” Noisy growled amiably. “Be a good dog if somebody don’t kill him first.”

The pup stirred inside the burlap bag and Imogene laid her hand on it. She snatched it back quickly. “He was trying to bite me through the sack!”

“He’s quite a pup,” Noisy agreed.

“Watch him, Miss Grelznik, pups’ve got teeth like needles. You want me to hold him?” Mac offered.

Imogene shook her head and arranged her skirts around the swaddled coyote so he couldn’t reach her with his teeth.

The coach rolled into the i

“Look who’s come out to meet us! Maybe it’s my birthday or something and I don’t know it,” Mac teased.

“Imogene,” she gasped, grabbing the older woman’s arm, “a rat chased me out of the kitchen. It stood up on its hind legs and jumped at me. It was huge.” She held her hands, one above the other, about a foot apart. “This tall.”

“A rat ran after you on its back legs?” Imogene tried not to sound incredulous.

“Jumped at me.” The coach door opened and a round-but-tocked man backed out. Sarah made a couple of little hops to demonstrate the tactics of her attacker.

Mac laughed. “Must’ve been a kangaroo rat.”

“Mac,” Imogene admonished, “it scared her.”

He looked hurt. “I’m not fooling. Kangaroo rats come out around this time of year. About so high, big-bottomed, long tails-they hop around like kangaroos.”

Imogene and Sarah eyed him warily.

“It’s the truth if I ever told it,” he protested.

Sarah glanced nervously over her shoulder at the passengers emerging from the coach, knocking the dust from their clothes. “I better be getting on with lunch,” she murmured.