The Journey That Mattered

by scotchplaid

Bering & Wells AU. A horse opera with six shooters, cowboys, and a saloon called the Rusty Spur.

10. Chapter 10

A/N: I had some spare time so I was able to post another chapter relatively quickly, but that's not my usual modus operandi. Angsty B&W, but B&W. Next chapter will be from Myka's POV.

Helena was late for the Spur again. Another Saturday night, another influx of cowboys flush with cash and eager for a good time. And if her girls were already busy, the hands would take their pent-up energy out on each other. Freddie would be able to make a few of them think twice before starting a fight inside the saloon, pounding the top of the bar with a fist the size of an anvil. But there would be too many for him to keep track of. If she was present, she would be another deterrent. She looked at herself in the mirror; she was wearing one of her favorite dresses, a watered silk the color of jade, but it didn't fit her as snugly as it once had. She had lost weight in recent weeks, and when Leena chided her about her lack of appetite, she blamed it on the heat, but they both knew there was another reason. She frowned at her reflection, no need to dredge up the cause now, or at any other time, frankly; she fingered her earrings and tapped the locket she wore underneath her dress in needless reassurance that it was there.

Hurrying down the stairs, she was halted at the bottom by Leena's calling her name. With no attempt to hide her impatience, she said, "I'm late. Can this wait until tomorrow?"

Leena emerged from the library, a finger keeping her place in the book she held at her side. "Tomorrow you'll find another excuse not to listen to me. You need to talk to her, Helena."

"Talk to whom?" Helena knew it was pettish to act so obtuse, but she was in a hurry to get to the Spur, the late August heat, even at night, was debilitating, and she was nearly crazed by the fact that she couldn't rid her thoughts of Myka Bering. And here Leena was admonishing her for not speaking to her. Of course she wanted to speak to her, it was a struggle every day not to invent some excuse to go down to the Journal's office.

Leena didn't rise to the bait. "You need to give Myka some explanation for why you're keeping your distance. She's asked me several times if she's done something to upset you."

"I needn't do any such thing," Helena said with as much hauteur as she could muster, but she evaded Leena's eyes. "She's the daughter of the Journal's editor, whom I've befriended on occasion as I thought it would be only politic to ensure that the Berings feel welcome in Sweetwater. If Myka's assumed that we've become fast friends as a result, then perhaps this is the best way to disabuse her of that notion."

"Because avoiding her for weeks on end is the kindest form of rejection?" Leena asked sardonically. She put her book down on a table next to the staircase and folded her arms, her expression stern. "You couldn't look at me while you were spouting that bit of nonsense, and I doubt very much that it would convince her." Helena made a show of shifting her feet, but Leena only said, "I'm not finished. Tomorrow is the church social. I think you should attend it. Myka will be there as will all of Sweetwater. No one will think anything of it were you to spend time socializing with her, and it should put some of Myka's fears to rest." In a very Mrs. Frederic-like gesture, Leena raised her eyebrows.

The church frequently sponsored socials, usually to benefit missionary efforts in Africa or farthest Asia, and although Helena thought Africa and Asia would be better off if the church raised money to bring the missionaries back, she realized what was expected of her as one of the town's more prominent business owners, so she donated a minimally acceptable amount and attended the socials only long enough to ensure that her presence was registered and to say a few insincere words to Pastor Wallace, who, with equal insincerity, encouraged her to stay longer. The August social was a different matter altogether. While it was held on the church's grounds, it was more of a communal event, attracting farmers and ranchers from miles outside Sweetwater as well as those Sweetwater residents, few in number though they were, who never otherwise darkened the church's doorstep. Alcohol was prohibited and families tended to hover protectively around their daughters, but the social became something of a bacchanal once the sun went down, and flasks and jugs would appear and the daughters, in the company of their pimply swains, would disappear, and the town would wake up the next morning with a collective hangover. Pastor Wallace would decry the goings-on in the following Sunday's sermon and privately suggest to the town council that the social be held elsewhere, but the location never changed. Despite finding the latter stages of the social boorish and often sobering in their import for the young women wooed beyond the cemetery and into the stand of cottonwoods - there were a number of impromptu weddings occurring between eight and twelve weeks after the social - Helena applauded Sweetwater's sticking of its pagan thumb in the eye of Pastor Wallace and his moralizing.

Applauded, yes, but never so supportive as to actually attend. Helena arched her own eyebrows. "You know I get my fill of drunken citizens at the Spur."

"I'm not asking you to stay until sundown. I'm suggesting that you take an hour, visit with people, and sit with Myka for five minutes." Leena said imperturbably.

"I have nothing to bring. I can't go there empty-handed." It was a weak excuse, but Helena had little else to offer.

"I've baked a pie just for the occasion. It's on the counter, so remember to take it with you when you go tomorrow." Leena's expression softened. "You don't even know what you're fighting against, do you? You want to see her, and, to be honest, I need you and the storm cloud that's been trailing you out of this house for awhile."

Helena hadn't responded, just swept through the front door, but though her exit had been dramatic, she knew it hadn't fooled Leena. She would be showing up at the social tomorrow, pie in hand. As she entered the Spur's main room and surveyed the crowd, she felt the tension in her neck and shoulders lessen. Anywhere there were men and liquor and guns there was risk, but, in the end, it was all about need and the easing of need, and Helena was too experienced in managing the latter to fear an outburst of violence. She much preferred negotiating the men's abstinence-fueled surliness, which could generally be soothed with a promise that the girls would be down soon to attend to them and a drink on the house, if necessary, than trying to sort out her own complicated feelings regarding Myka. Desire generalized was cash in the till; any woman would do. Desire particularized was not transactional, Helena knew to her own increasing discomfort, not to mention surliness, and, thank God, it wasn't in evidence here at the Spur.

The men who saw her removed their hats and nodded, and she caught Freddie's eyes as he wove between customers at the bar. He jerked his head toward the back of the room as a signal that it was fine for her to retreat to her office. She scanned the second floor, all the doors were closed and none of the girls were out, which meant they were busy. As her eyes dropped for one last glance at the room, she saw Warren Bering at one of the gaming tables. He was studying his cards intently, a half-empty bottle of their cheapest whiskey at his elbow. It was hard to see his resemblance to Myka; the eyes were too close together and hooded, the mouth small and thin, like a slot. Sometimes she would see a similarity in the way he looked at things or people, curiously and without judgement like Myka, but the openness wouldn't last long; a cynical disinterest would spread over his face or, like now, when he realized that she was staring at him, his eyes would grow dark with suspicion. Helena waited him out impassively until his eyes cut back to the table, and then she left the room

It was turning out to be a quiet night. So far Freddie had rung the bell only once, to have her handle the complaint of a drunken cowboy who was distressed at having to pay for a half-hour with Sallie when, as he whined to Helena, "I ain't had my fun yet." Helena gave him the options of paying for another half-hour, leaving the saloon without further complaint, or leaving by means of a toss through the swinging doors by Freddie. After Freddie gave him a measured look and flexed his muscled arms, the cowboy staggered through the doors under his own power. Sallie said under her breath to Helena, "He had already got his fun before I could get his pants down." Helena rolled her eyes and said, "Next time let him sober up a little first before you take him upstairs."

That had been two hours ago. It was getting close to the time when Freddie would start ushering the last of the customers out of the Spur or, in the case of their hardcore drinkers, send one of the girls for Sheriff Lattimore. The Spur didn't have a set closing time, but Helena liked to have everyone out by two. Church service started at nine. She yawned and stretched. She had been going over the accounts again; in the last weeks she had made several mistakes, more often than not to the Spur's detriment. The bell rang. She was slowly pushing herself away from the desk when it rang twice more in quick succession. Three times. She fumbled to open the drawer that held the shotgun shells, her heart pounding. This never happened. She loaded the shotgun and hurried out of the office, trying to hide the barrel in the folds of her skirts

There were just four people in the main room. Freddie was behind the bar, his hands flat on its surface, and the other three were standing around a gaming table. One was a white-faced cowboy holding his hands up in surrender, the other two were Warren Bering and Nichols, one of the traveling card sharps who included the Spur on his circuit. Helena caught the glint of a small pistol in Nichols' hand, aimed at Warren Bering's chest. "That's close enough, Mrs. Wells," Nichols said, never taking his eyes off Mr. Bering. "You better drop that shotgun you're carrying by the time I count to three, or I'll plug this old drunk. I been around enough to know that your bartender gave you a signal."

Helena knelt and carefully placed the shotgun on the floor. A derringer was a horrible little gun, except at short distances. "What's the problem here, Mr. Nichols?" She asked as calmly as she could. She didn't like any of the card sharps, but she especially didn't like Nichols. His constant stroking of his facial hair, a neatly trimmed and heavily waxed Van Dyke, was almost as much of an irritant as the fact that he regularly cheated his customers, although most of them were too drunk to realize it. His deceptions were crude and clumsily executed, and it was only going to be a matter of time before someone more sober or aggrieved called him out on them. Unfortunately it had to be Warren Bering, always a bit truculent in his cups, and Helena uncharitably wished that he had passed out hours before, mouth agape on the table, as he not infrequently did.

"The old man seems to think I've cheated him. No one calls me a cheater - not unless he's willing to back it up. Or take it back."

Mr. Bering was trembling, but he was scowling too. "You did cheat. I saw that ace you palmed onto the table when you thought I wasn't looking."

"Mr. Nichols, you know that Mr. Bering is unarmed," Helena said, wishing Myka's fool of a father would take the wise, if unheroic, action of apologizing.

"Don't matter," he said. "He takes it back or I drill him. Can't have him calling me a cheat. It's bad for business."

The flatness with which he said it suggested to Helena that he meant it. She thought about pointing out to him that were he to shoot Mr. Bering she would be able to swing her shotgun up and blast a hole in his side, but that would probably only make matters worse. So she turned to Mr. Bering. "Mr. Bering, I will personally see to it that you are repaid in full for any money that you've lost tonight, but I beg you, please do as Mr. Nichols asks."

He shook his head, his jaw set stubbornly, and Helena saw then the unmistakable resemblance between father and daughter. "I won't back down before a cheat, and he's a cheat."

Helena closed her eyes, not seeing a way to defuse the situation, when she heard the doors swing back and Myka say, "Dad, it's time -." Her voice cut off as Nichols said grimly, "Tell your old man to say he's sorry."

Myka stepped farther into the room. No alarm showed on her face as she recognized that the gambler was pointing a gun at her father. "What does he need to apologize for?"

"Just stay where you are and tell your old man to take it back." Nichols' voice climbed higher with tension.

Helena's mouth grew dry as Myka slowly walked closer to the table, trying to put herself between Nichols and her father. Please, Myka, she silently pleaded, do as he says. "Sorry to have caught you cheating him?" Myka looked tired, but her gaze didn't waver from Nichols. "You can shoot only one of us, you know. So take your pick, a defenseless woman or a defenseless drunk. They'll be singing ballads about your bravery." She had never stopped moving as she spoke, and she was close enough now to put her arm around her father. "Dad, let's go home.

The color had left Nichols' face and his Van Dyke seemed to have drooped as well, but he kept his derringer trained on Mr. Bering. "I'll shoot him, you stupid bitch, if he doesn't take it back."

She turned her father toward the doors, looking back over her shoulder at Nichols. "You better shoot now, or we'll be out of range in another couple of feet. Of course, once you do, Mrs. Wells over there will pick up her shotgun and shoot you. None of this is worth dying over. My father won't remember a thing about this evening once he wakes up tomorrow, and God knows you didn't win enough money from him to make any of this worth your while. We barely have a pot to piss in as it is."

Helena felt the heat in her cheeks, although she wasn't sure if she was blushing at the unexpected vulgarity of Myka's language or the implication that she didn't pay Mr. Bering enough. She watched helplessly as Myka urged her father toward the Spur's entrance, and he began shambling in acquiescence at her side. Nichols didn't drop his arm, but he didn't fire either. The doors swung close behind them and as Nichols continued to stare after them, Helena reached for her shotgun and aimed it at him.

"You have thirty seconds to take your winnings and leave the Spur before I blast a hole in you big enough to drive a stagecoach through," she said, trying to keep her voice level but anger and relief both shivered through it. "And if you ever come in here again, I'll kill you. Do you understand?"

He nodded, touching the mechanism under his sleeve that retracted the derringer. He took off his hat, held it upside down, and swept the coins and crumpled bills into the crown. He pushed through the doors followed by the cowboy, who only now thought to lower his hands. Helena placed her gun on the top of the bar. "Find Sheriff Lattimer and make sure he understands that he needs to escort Mr. Nichols from Sweetwater first thing tomorrow. . . this morning." Freddie nodded, his eyes still big. "I'll close up."

As he lumbered out from behind the bar, Freddie hesitated. Bashfully he said, "Miss Bering was something, wasn't she?"

Helena couldn't miss the almost worshipful expression on his face. "Yes, something of a fool," she muttered. "She could have just as easily gotten herself or her father killed."

Freddie's eyes grew even larger and his mouth fell open before his confusion cleared. "She's all right, Mrs. Wells," he said gently. "He didn't hurt her."

Helena didn't say anything. She waited until she could no longer hear his heavy tread before she sagged against the bar. But only for a moment. She had to go reassure the girls that it was safe to venture out (thankfully they had remained in their rooms) and she needed to put the cash in the safe in her office. The bar needed to be swept out and the sawdust replaced, but that could all be done later in the day. It took longer to settle the girls down than she had anticipated, and it took several tries to open the safe because her hands still shook so violently that she couldn't fit the key into the lock. But, eventually, she was outside, drawing air deep into her lungs. It smelled stale and caught in her throat, but it was better than breathing the air in the Spur, which had smelled to her mainly of her own fear. She looked toward the comforting solidity of her house, but her feet pointed her in the direction of the Journal's office.

She tapped gingerly on the door to the Berings' quarters. They were dark, like the rest of the town, but she didn't care, she needed to see Myka standing alive and whole before her. Her taps became a vigorous knocking until Myka came to the door. "Helena," she said quietly and not a little wearily.

"I wanted to make sure that you were all right," Helena said. There was that telltale quaver in her voice again, but she didn't care.

"I'm fine. Really. You can go home now."

The curtness behind the words was unmistakable, and Helena knew she was being dismissed, but she didn't want to leave. If necessary, she could out-stubborn Myka. Myka's hair was down, and the breeze, what there was of it, was stirring her curls, just a little. Helena yearned to reach out and trail her fingers through the curls, but she pushed the thought away and tried to fix on Myka's eyes in the curved shadow of her face. "You scared me."

"I was scared," Myka admitted, "but it's not the first time I've found someone pointing a gun at my father. It's not always been in a saloon either." She laughed softly, but the laughter held no humor. "You learn to size up situations quickly if you find yourself in them often enough. I felt pretty sure I could call his bluff." She was talking more easily, but she sounded no warmer.

"Pretty sure?" Helena thought that her knees might give way again.

"Nothing's certain. But I found him easier to read than some people." Myka's voice sharpened, and Helena heard the hurt behind the jab.

Helena recognized that she could offer some vaguely worded apology, but apologies were only necessary if one had made a mistake. She didn't make mistakes. Or, she conceded - to the heavens or Mrs. Frederic or whoever kept score of such things - she was trying not to make a mistake this time. She wasn't sorry that she had been keeping Myka at arm's length; it frustrated her and she resented it, but it wasn't a mistake. After that morning in the Journal's office with the printer's ointment, when Myka could have had her at her feet with one more touch, and then, later, the encounter with MacPherson, when he had unerringly divined that she was vulnerable where Myka was concerned, it all reinforced her instinct to withdraw, push away. She didn't want to reexperience the vertigo that feeling Myka's fingers and hearing the huskiness of her voice had induced. She had been tumbling down, falling, and the speed of her descent had only delighted her. She hadn't looked for what was rushing up to meet her from the bottom of the chasm, and Myka seemed such a frail net to put her trust in.

Helena heard herself speaking, and she wondered if, despite her misgivings, she was going to apologize because she didn't know what else to do to keep Myka here in front of her, talking. But it was much worse than that. "I was planning to attend the church social. Perhaps you might accompany me?"

Myka's posture changed. She stood up straighter, as if surprised, and she leaned forward, trying to confirm that Helena wasn't teasing her. She must have found her answer because she drew back and restlessly tugged at the ends of her hair. "Uh. . . um. . . I'm already going with Sheriff Lattimer. But thank you for the offer. I guess we'll see each other there."

Of course she was going with Sheriff Lattimer. What a stupid, stupid thing it had been to ask. To think that Myka, at this late date, wouldn't have an escort to the social. As if she had only been waiting for the town's madam to ask her instead. After blundering through empty civilities about keeping Myka up too long and hoping that she would be able to get some rest, Helena turned away from the door. She hadn't made it past the Berings' quarters when Myka said, "We should talk to Charlie Graves about what he overheard about the line to Halliday."

"Charlie Graves is a windbag. I've made the mistake of relying on information he's provided before." Helena relished the return of crispness, of certainty.

"Just because he's cried 'Wolf' 99 times and there hasn't been one doesn't mean that he's wrong the hundredth time."

Helena thought she could hear Myka's jaw set, and she suddenly saw her again in the Spur, confronting Nichols. Jesus God, the Berings were sailing an ill-starred course. She should learn to stay out of their way. "Not that I think he'll say anything useful, but if you're determined to talk to him, you'll probably get more out of him if I'm not with you. He knows all too well what I think of him."

"That's hard to believe," Myka said dryly.

"And, Myka, when you see him, make sure you're wearing the blue gingham. If you don't mind my saying so, it shows your figure off to advantage, and Charlie always appreciates a pretty girl." The dress did show Myka's figure off to advantage mainly because it was old and a little tight on her, but Myka didn't need to hear the latter part. Helena frowned in consideration. Perhaps she ought to pay Mr. Bering more; his daughter could use a new wardrobe.

Lost in imagining how Myka would look in a watered silk dress the color of jade, Helena almost didn't hear Myka's question, soft and disbelieving in the night. "You think I'm pretty?"

It was late and though she was tired, Helena knew enough not to say the first thing on her tongue. With a dispassion she was almost exhausted enough to believe she felt, she said, "I make my living judging how attractive women are. There's no man who wouldn't find you pretty."

"That's good to know." Myka's voice had gone flat, lifeless. "Goodnight, Helena."

Helena had been on the verge of saying, you're lovely, I can't take my eyes off you. But saying that would have required an apology because saying it would have been a mistake - though no less true.

Sunday burned hot and dry and bright. The morning service had ended early, and Sweetwater, after a chance to shake the prayers and sermon from its ears, was collectively hurrying back to the church. Horses drawing buckboards crowded with families kicked up puffs of dust in the street. As Helena watched them through the window, mothers and fathers and children still dressed in their finery and holding picnic baskets, she was increasingly reluctant to join them. There was precious little shade to be found around the church, and Helena envisioned herself drenched in sweat under the relentless sunlight and watching Sheriff Lattimer parading among the townspeople with Myka on his arm. One hour. Fifty-five minutes of exchanging boring small talk with people, who, for the most part, were ill at ease in her company and five excruciating minutes of conversation with Myka spent trying not to see Sheriff Lattimer on the other side of her. She had no choice but to attend the social having told Myka she was planning to attend, and she also had no choice but to take five minutes and talk with her, as Leena had suggested, if only to prove to herself that Myka's deepening relationship with the sheriff was the best possible outcome. For Myka. And for her.

She was wearing a plain navy blue dress. It would be more uncomfortable in the sun than a lighter color, but going to the social was a form of penance anyway, so why seek comfort? Besides, when some child inevitably ran pell mell into her and left streaks of berry cobbler on her skirts, the stains wouldn't be quite so visible. She walked with dragging steps into the kitchen. On the counter, as promised, was the pie as well as a blanket to spread on the ground to sit on. Despite saying that she wanted the house to herself, Leena was absent, having gone out to pick herbs to replenish her stores. She had become known as a healer since their arrival in Sweetwater, and although the town's doctor routinely warned people against seeking her aid, since she was both more effective and cheaper, she had developed something of a following. People who were embarrassed to be seen talking to her as an equal or encountering her in Helena's presence anxiously reached out to her in private if little Tommy or Susie developed a sniffle. Helena groaned at the unavoidable prospect of chit-chatting with such upstanding citizens, feeling the inevitable headache coming on, and she was more than ready to infuse several cups of tea with Leena's headache remedy or, better yet, add some brandy to it. But that would have to wait until she had done her duty.

The church's grounds were filled with people, and the trail of buckboards and buggies along Sweetwater's main street showed no sign of ending. Helena deposited her pie on a table that held other desserts, and holding her blanket and her parasol to her almost as shields and wielding what she hoped was her most charming smile, she engaged the hostiles. A few women actually drew their children closer to them as she passed, but most simply returned her greetings with tiny smiles and an obvious disinclination to engage her in any extended conversation. Their husbands were little better, although Helena recognized many of them as patrons of the Spur. In the relative privacy of the saloon, they loved to bump up or brush against her, their hands trailing along the sides of her breasts or hips, and pass it off with a hearty laugh as an accident, with the less aggressive ones settling for tellng her off-color jokes, but in public, among their families and their neighbors, their faces reddened and their innocuous comments about the continuing heat or the drought sounded choked. In less than half an hour she had exhausted her small talk and hadn't yet spotted Myka; trying to keep her frustration in check, she searched for a patch of ground not already occupied. Preferably one that was on the fringes of the crowd. If worse came to worst, she could wander the graveyard to while away the time. Its presence never dampened the festivities, and the younger children would play games of hide-and-seek behind the gravestones, with their parents making only feeble attempts to chase them from it.

"I thought I saw you!" Claudia ran up to her, her face flushed with the heat. She took Helena's hand and began pulling her down the slope behind the church toward a large area of grass flattened by several blankets. Marta and Liesl were kneeling in front of several baskets, withdrawing plates and cutlery. Artie was sitting on a corner of the blankets, fanning himself with a flyer while Steve was wrestling with a watermelon. In a rare departure for her, Claudia was wearing a dress, although Helena could see trouser hems peeping beneath the skirts. "I witnessed the glorious reception. Are they afraid they're going to turn into pillars of salt if they look at you?"

"I always thought it was God, darling, who turned poor Lot's wife into salt." Helena grinned down at Claudia.

"What, false modesty? I think I've heard you claim God-like powers more than once." Claudia plopped onto the blankets. Helena more gracefully took a seat, coolly acknowledging Marta's and Artie's less than enthusiastic greetings. Steve smiled at her as he lowered the watermelon into a large bucket of water. He flicked water at Claudia, who squealed and grabbed Helena's arm.

Grunting, Artie pushed himself up from the blankets. Adjusting his spectacles, he squinted at Claudia. "I think I'm going to walk around for a bit. Stay out of trouble." With a warning glare at Helena, he pushed the spectacles back onto his nose and stiffly began to trudge up the grass toward the church.

"He's sparking the Widow Calder," Claudia stage-whispered to Helena. "She's supposed to meet him here today. Did you see how giddy he was acting?"

"Ah, yes, practically bubbling over with joie de vivre," Helena said. "Such a change from how he normally behaves."

"I heard that," Artie shouted.

Marta silently handed a plate to Claudia, Helena, and Steve. Helena attempted to hand hers back and was met with a steely look. "C'mon," Claudia said, bounding to her feet. "I want to get some warm potato salad and tough corn on the cob before it all runs out." She pointed at Liesl, who was sitting demurely next to Marta. "You too. Marta can be on ant patrol while we're gone." After an exchange of glances with her aunt, Liesl took a plate and joined them.

As Claudia ran up the hill, challenging Steve to race her, Helena fell into step with Liesl. While she felt bedraggled and slick with perspiration, Liesl seemed to glide through the heat, only the faintest tinge of red to her cheeks and her hair, turned white gold by the sun, remained immaculately swept up. The resemblance to Monika was astonishing, with none of the small differences in features or height that would make the likeness closer to that of a younger sister. This was Monika before whatever events or choices had led her to Mrs. Sloan's, and the dreams that Monika had indulged in of marrying dukes or performing on stage, which Agnes had mocked so many years ago, seemed not fantastic at all, but only a chance encounter away from being realized. Aware of Helena's attention, Liesl smiled at her, not flirtatiously or suggestively, but with warmth and good humor, and it was still a dazzling smile. But Helena felt no quivering, no desire to see that smile become more than it was. It wasn't only that the smile was open and friendly and communicative of nothing more than an appreciation of Helena's presence, which made Liesl so unlike Monika, but that even if her smile had confirmed she was Monika somehow reborn, dropped into Helena's life as if to tantalize her with the hope that some mistakes could be undone, Helena would have responded no differently. Monika would never have been Myka. And that was how she knew, for all the times that she had jeered at Leena's foretelling of her future, that Leena, and, well, her nanny, too, had been right.

It wasn't welcome knowledge, and Helena tried to banish it by engaging Liesl in light conversation about doings at the Donovan ranch. They came to the crest of the hill and followed the sound of Claudia's loud, bright laughter to tables that were in danger of developing a swayback under the weight of all the food that had been brought. "I want to thank you again, Mrs. Wells," Liesl said, almost shyly, "for suggesting that I work with Myka on my English. She's a wonderful teacher." Another smile and a sincere glance from blue eyes that were depthless in their clarity. Then the eyes narrowed, the smile broadened, and Liesl was enthusiastically waving her hand.

Helena turned and saw Myka with Sheriff Lattimer among the townspeople drifting toward the food tables. Myka recognized Liesl and lifted her hand in acknowledgment. Her eyes shifted and took in Helena at Liesl's side. The smile that had flowered on her face at Liesl's wave began to wilt at the edges, as if ready to fold back in on itself, but Myka straightened and aggressively hooked her arm around the sheriff's. Startled, he grinned at how closely she was holding him to her and, seeing where she was staring, he waved at Helena and Liesl. Helena didn't wave back but forced a slight smile. She was ready to retreat to the Donovan encampment, but Liesl stopped her. Liesl's smile was gone and there was a tightness about her mouth that Helena hadn't seen before. "It would be impolite not to eat something, yes?"

Bewildered by the change in Liesl's attitude and conscious now that the dull throb at her temples had become a steady pounding, Helena had time only to nod before Liesl was rather insistently urging her into line. She fell in behind a group of children, who alternately pawed at the offerings or whiningly asked what they were. All of it, the baked beans, the biscuits, the slabs of ham, the bowls of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, looked sticky or dried out, and everything was covered by a cloud of flies. But she didn't protest when, with a grim command that spoke of Marta's tutelage, Liesl spooned food onto her plate. Helena tried not to look at the mounds of food and followed Liesl as she marched at a quick pace, not down the hill as Helena expected, but to a scant space between two families and against a border row of shrubs, which were shrunken and brown. Awkwardly and reluctantly lowering herself to the ground, hoping not to tip her plate too much to one side or the other or slump back against the prickly branches of the shrubs, Helena looked questioningly at Liesl. But Liesl's gaze was fixed on something across from them, and Helena found if she leaned to her left, she could spot between a gap in the crowd Myka and Sheriff Lattimer standing next to another young couple. The woman on Helena's right, noticing Helena's shifting, clutched her toddler daughter closer, and Helena had to bite her tongue not to say, "She's a little too young yet to have her start at the Spur," and said, stiffly, instead, "A lovely afternoon." The woman perhaps smiled, perhaps grimaced - it was difficult to tell - and Helena pushed her plate behind her and studiously looked anywhere but at Myka.

Because she was beautiful. The dress looked new, a green the color of sea foam, and it fit her perfectly, emphasizing her long lines. The unruly hair, which always defeated Myka's attempt to keep it up, glinted red in the sun, and as she tilted her head back in laughter at something the sheriff said, the delicate arch of her throat reminded Helena of the elegant curve of a swan's neck, and she had a similar impulse to stroke it. Liesl wasn't eating either, and she seemed unaware of the admiration she was attracting from the men, married and unattached. Several had recrossed the grass in front of them for no other purpose, it appeared, than to stare at her; more than a few hesitated in front of them with the barely repressed excitement of competitors in a race. If Liesl had murmured that she would like a glass of lemonade, Helena wouldn't have been shocked if half the male population attending the social ran to the tables where pitchers of lemonade and water sweated in the sun. But Liesl had eyes only for Myka and her escort. Although Helena found the sheriff's taste for pranks and jokes when he had time on his hands - which was often in a town like Sweetwater - annoying, she could admit that he was a handsome man. Certainly he was better husband material than most of the other bachelors in and around Sweetwater; he was young (enough), he had steady work, and, if his attentions to Myka were any indication, he was a devoted suitor. Objectively Helena could understand why a young woman like Liesl would be interested in Pete Lattimer, just as Myka apparently was. Then the sheriff left Myka's side to wind his way to the table holding the pitchers, and Liesl's eyes didn't follow him. She continued to look at Myka, and Helena saw her own longing mirrored in Liesl's face.

Helena feared for a moment that she might laugh at the sad comedy of it, their mutual brooding over Myka's preference for someone else, but she bit her lip and plucked at a clump of grass next to her knee. It felt brittle between her fingers, and she dusted her hands against her skirt. She touched something that felt warm and thick. Inspecting her skirt, she found a streak of apple butter, and she sighed, holding out her skirt and fruitlessly dabbing at it. Leena would be in favor of trying to remove the stain, Helena would be in favor of burning the dress, considering how the day was turning out so far. She watched the crowd, avoiding looking in Myka's direction. Claudia was moving along the food tables for what had to be the second time, and, farther away, Artie was gazing soulfully into the Widow Calder's face as she cut his meat into bite-sized pieces. On the periphery, James MacPherson stood under the limited shade provided by the overhang of the church's roof, smoking a cheroot. His gaze intersected with Helena's, and he looked at her steadily, she would have sworn unblinkingly, until, with a smile more like a tic at the corner of his mouth, he walked out of her field of vision.

The afternoon dragged on, and Helena marked the passing of the hours less by the position of the sun and more by the incremental diminishing of the heat. She and Liesl had long since given up their patch of ground to return to the area where Claudia and Steve arm wrestled on the blankets and Marta gently snored with her head propped against a picnic basket. The only thing Helena had eaten all afternoon was a slice of watermelon, and even that rested uneasily on her stomach. She had stayed much longer than she had intended, but she had not yet had her five minutes with Myka. She had caught glimpses of her, chatting with townspeople, good-naturedly allowing a little girl to thread dandelions through her hair, always with Sheriff Lattimer at her side. Liesl had seemingly had enough of brooding, eventually joining a group of German farmers and their wives, and bits of their conversation floated across the grass, mainly talk of the weather and worries about their harvests from what Helena could decipher. Stretched out on the blankets, her hand cupping her head, she heard the crunch of feet on dry grass and looked up to see Myka towering over her.

Claudia scrambled to sit up and patted the blanket next to her. "Myka, join our merry pirate crew." Jerking her thumb at Helena, she said, "We're about to make her walk the plank. She's being a most uncooperative hostage."

Myka stepped over Helena without looking down at her and sat down beside Claudia. "She is difficult, isn't she?" Myka said it with a playful sigh, but the note of exasperation was real.

Her hair was almost completely free of its knot, cascading down her neck and onto her shoulders. Helena had never before thought that being unable to run her fingers through someone's hair could be experienced as a physical pain, but she was feeling it now. "Where's Sheriff Lattimer? I've seen more space between Siamese twins than the two of you," she grumbled.

Claudia frowned, sending her a warning glance. "Silence, swabby, or we'll feed you to the sharks." She nudged Helena's shoulder with a stockinged foot. "Oh, don't mind Miss Crabby Pants. She's been unhappy since her new best friend left her to play with others." Claudia gestured to where Liesl was sitting with the farmers' wives.

Myka looked over at Liesl and then turned her cool gaze on Helena. "I remember when we were out at the ranch that you seemed quite taken with her. I guess you're not lacking at all for company at all at the social."

"So, when are the banns going to be published for you and the good sheriff? People will come away from this event thinking you're practically engaged." Helena said with a light mockery that caused Myka to blush. She raised herself up to a sitting position and smiled sweetly. "In fact, shouldn't he be stumping down here about now, playing his lyre and rescuing you from Hades?"

"Would his music charm you into releasing me?" Beyond the sarcasm, something more wounded laced through Myka's voice, and Helena closed her eyes, telling herself to stop.

"Hard as it is to imagine anything charming about him, I suppose I would have to. Orpheus can't bear to be parted from his Eurydice, and she him. That's how the story goes, am I right, Myka?" She slowly fluttered her eyes open, and they danced away from the wistfulness of Myka's pale green gaze.

Myka's face hardened, and she looked over at Liesl once more. "You do have Persephone, after all."

"Yes, I do have Persephone," Helena repeated, mindlessly tugging at a stray string of the blanket.

Putting her hands to her head, Claudia complained, "What is going on with the two of you? Next time use pistols at twenty paces. There'll be less bloodshed. Jinksy, why don't you cut another slice of watermelon for Helena?" She put her head close to Helena's ear and hissed, "Be nice, or the next thing you'll know you'll be wearing that watermelon as a smile."

Myka touched Claudia's knee. "I should go. I just stopped by to say hello." She pushed herself up, stepping around Helena as she crossed the blankets. She hesitated, then leaned down, saying softly just above Helena's head. "Don't worry, there will be no looking back."

True to her word, Myka climbed back up the hill, holding her head high and rigidly forward. Liesl, belatedly realizing that Myka had been in the vicinity without the sheriff, jumped to her feet with a lightness and grace that Helena assumed could belong only to those who embraced their feelings for another rather than stuffed them into a trunk and hurried after her. Slamming a plate with watermelon in front of Helena's feet, Claudia said, "I'm the only one who can get away with being rude and that's because I'm young and most people think I'm strange anyway. You, on the other hand, can't afford to be rude because you don't have many friends. Leena and me and Myka at last count. Maybe only me and Leena now."

"I don't know," Steve said musingly. "Artie can be pretty rude."

"It's not rudeness with Artie. It's just who he is. If Artie wasn't rude, I'd be worried," Claudia answered. Refocusing her attention on Helena, she said, "But I know you can be sweet and charming and downright adorable, so that's why I don't understand why you were mean to her. You should go apologize to her. I'm serious here, get up and find her and apologize. And tell Liesl that she shouldn't be trying to coax a lesson out of her at a social." Throwing her hands up in the air, she exclaimed. "It's called a social for a reason. People are supposed to be sociable."

Helena did get up, witn no intention of finding Myka but wanting to escape Claudia's affectionate hectoring of her. Three minutes of conversing with Myka had devolved into childish digs at one another; she didn't want to find out what an extra two minutes would lead to. She would go home. Now. But with the sun sinking toward the horizon, the men who had been too self-conscious about being seen with her earlier in the day were pulling her aside to ask whether the the vice tax would result in an increase in prices or to suggest she hire more girls or to inform her that the saloon in Halliday had added a piano player. Removing one older man's hand from a place on her arm perilously close to her breast, she found herself scanning the groups of people who remained, half-hoping she would see Myka among them. But they were young men and women eagerly waiting for the sun to set, arms beginning to loop around each other's waists. Two men were playing fiddles and children, the few who were allowed to remain out this late, were jumping, joyfully and uncoordinatedly, in a circle around them. Other men, who had sent their wives and children home, squatted against the side of the church, passing a jug back and forth and boldly staring at any woman who was foolish enough to be unaccompanied.

Such as she was. Helena met their unabashed ogling with a glare. Rather than running the gauntlet of their looks and the innuendoes that they would say only half under their breaths, she would take the path behind the church, which went past the graveyard and around the stand of cottonwoods. She could cut across the fields toward her house. She might encounter a couple or two slipping into the trees, but they would all pretend that they hadn't seen each other. Twilight had thickened, and she stumbled over rocks worn bare in the path, the gravestones on her left looking not eerie but forlorn in the increasing gloom.

As she passed the cottonwoods, she heard voices close by, whispering, laughing softly. The woman's voice sounded familiar and, without even fully realizing why she was doing it, Helena edged around a trunk. In the clearing in front of her, Sheriff Lattimer was pressing Myka against a tree, his hands on her hips. His lips were on her neck, and it was arched like it had been so many hours ago when Helena had yearned to stroke it. A twig may have snapped in two under Helena's foot or, with the sensitivity lovers have to interruptions, Myka may have sensed another's presence. Her head lifted and her eyes met Helena's as the sheriff mumbled a protest. With a deliberateness that kept Helena transfixed, Myka touched his chin, her eyes not leaving Helena's face, and he obediently covered Myka's lips with his own. Helena watched as Myka pressed into him, her arms circling around his back, and then she spun away from the trees, walking unsteadily across the fields toward home.

The back door opened and after a few seconds was quietly closed. A procession of squeaking floorboards until Leena stood in the entrance to the library. Helena found it more difficult to focus on Leena than she had anticipated; her head, lolling against the back of the chair, was slow to straighten, and her eyes didn't want to work together.

Leena pointed to the drink in Helena's hand. "How many of those have you had?"

"Someone who liked smart remarks might say not enough." Her words didn't sound slurred to her ears but they did sound more British. She had indulged in several brandies to distance herself from thoughts of the social, but apparently she had drunk enough to put an ocean between her and the memory of Myka kissing the sheriff. "I blame it all on Henry. He taught me to appreciate a fine brandy." She drew her robe tighter around her. Purely a reflexive action in front of the woman who knew her every nook and cranny, inside as well as out. "Don't tell me you can pick herbs in the dark. Even you're not that good."

Leena came into the library and sat in a chair across from Helena. Lamps had been lit, but not many, and Helena sat in the shadows behind her desk. "Mrs. Lundquist sent for me. One of her children became sick after the social. Just a simple case of overeating. What's your excuse?"

Helena didn't answer her. "Do you remember that I said six months? And it's been, what, three years?"

"Something like that," Leena said cautiously. "I've wondered why you stayed."

"You said until the job was done, balance restored, some balderdash like that." Balderdash. Now there was a word only copious amounts of alcohol could pry out of her. "It took us over a year to figure out what or, rather, who the problem was. And then James MacPherson is not Elizabeth Sloan, an old whore no one was willing to risk anything for, and I can't use Henry's name to scare people." Since her glass, still half-full, was dangling from her fingertips, Helena decided to spare her rug and finished the brandy. "Besides, you were right as you always are. I wasn't ready then to go back to London. I would have made a mess of it."

"And you are now? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

Helena reached over to pick up the picture of her family. She traced the outline of her daughter's form. She had eventually written to Charles, a brief, stiff letter summing up the past ten years of her life in a couple of sentences, describing her relationship with Henry Tremaine as "several years employed as a secretary to a prominent man of industry." No mention of the family business or the fact that she now owned it, no mention of Christina other than a generic "I trust that my sister-in-law and niece are doing well." Charles had written back, a somewhat longer letter but no less stiff, informing her of the health of their parents and providing news of other family members. He didn't encourage her to visit and didn't close his letter with anything more affectionate than "Your brother, Charles," but a year later Helena had received the photograph in the mail. No note was attached. She wasn't sure whether to accept it as some kind of peace offering or a statement that her family was whole without her, but she framed it and put it on her desk. "No. She's almost a young lady, you know. They often don't want mothers at that age, but aunts may be acceptable." The smile she shot Leena was teasing and sad and a little drunken, all mixed together.

"What happened at the social?" Leena asked gently. "What upset you?"

Helena felt the smile slip from her face but she said as casually as she could, "Nature taking its course, my dear Leena, that's all." She stood up, swaying only slightly. She had taken a long, cool bath once she was home, hoping that she could merely wash the social from her. But it had clung to her, not so much the sight of Myka kissing the sheriff among the cottonwoods, but that more painful recognition when she had looked at Liesl, seeing only Monika in her face, and known that what she felt for Myka was something she had never experienced before. How ridiculous, how laughable, really, to have been what she was, to have aroused so many different sensations in so many others, and yet to have remained so untouched herself that when a woman with hair that she couldn't discipline for the life of her and an innocent fearlessness that was a danger to herself and everyone around her came to town, she was reduced to nothing more than a child's expectant hopefulness.

The Wellses were rational. Helena's parents had married because it was in the best interests of their families to do so. While her father might have given his devotion to his hounds and his club and her mother to Charles and their homes, both would laugh at the idea that they might have overlooked the one whom each was meant for. A bastardized Platonic concept, which held that everyone had his soulmate, would earn only their contempt. Mere claptrap. It was the same illogic that had little girls vowing to marry their dolls or ponies. To take her nanny to task, lids and pots were mass produced, and any one lid would fit any one pot. Helena had the example of her parents and her own experience to support her position, which was that no one individual was any more interesting or worthy or important than any other. The few times she had tentatively begun to believe otherwise, with Monika and Louisa and Henry, she blundered so badly that she hadn't found the more or less enforced celibacy of her time in Sweetwater any burden at all.

Until Myka. And then little girl dreams of marrying princesses (or ponies) made sense in a way that owed nothing to logic. It was believing that a lid in the Sandwich Islands and a pot in Siberia could be paired only with each other and hoping that someway, somehow the two could be brought together. It was proof against argument and sarcasm, of which Helena had an endless supply. But she couldn't let herself concede to it. She was still enough of a Wells to demand evidence that Myka felt the same before admitting defeat. Only that evidence wasn't forthcoming.

"Did you know when you first saw her?" Helena asked into the quiet of the room. "You told me you would."

Leena said, "It's only important when you knew. You knew today, didn't you?"

Helena sank onto the desk, a slipper hanging off her foot. "Leena, she's a woman who would think a Boston marriage is a marriage that took place in Boston."

"I don't know about that," Leena said, laughter bubbling between her words. "She found your secret collection." She pointed to the corner bookshelves that held slim, untitled volumes full of graphic drawings and very few words. "I've seen her leafing through them when she thought I wasn't looking." She added more seriously, "Whatever you saw today or thought you saw, it may not be what it seemed."

"Despite what you think the future showed you, Leena, I'm not the one destined for her." Helena slipped off the desk and was very proud that she traveled almost the entire length of the room and only stumbled once, against a chair she then clutched for support. "I think I'll go down to the ranch tomorrow. I haven't ridden Dantes in ages, and then after some time there, I'll go to New York and look in on my investments."

"Don't run away, Helena. It won't change things." Leena rested her chin on her arm and looked over the back of her chair at her friend. "You think I see the future in terms of faces and dates and events, as if it were a series of dioramas passing before my eyes. When I say I see patterns, I mean exactly that. Lines and shapes constantly moving and intersecting, and most of the time I don't know whose they are. To be honest, sometimes I don't know what they mean. But yours, it's been like a flame in the dark, Helena. I could trace it in my sleep." And Leena began moving her finger in the air, drawing loops that eventually broadened into waves. "And there's always been another pattern intertwined with yours. For a long time I thought it was your daughter's, but it became stronger the surer I became that we were needed here.

"Have you ever thought that it might be yours?" Helena asked, standing half in the library, half in the hallway and steadying herself against a tendency to list by bracing her arm against the wall.

"Hmmm, I should have said very intertwined. We're many things to each other, Helena, but we're not destined to be lovers." In the amber glow of the library's lamps, Leena's eyes were dark pools, and Helena couldn't tell whether she saw relief or regret in them.

Helena looked up the staircase to the second floor and pictured the overabundance of pillows on her bed with eagerness. She wanted to rest her aching, spinning head on them for at least an eternity. "I had greater faith in your abilities when I thought you waved your hands over a crystal ball," she said. Her tone was wry but fond as well. She winced as another image from the social flashed in her mind. She would scream, she would, if it was one of Pete Lattimer. But the dark eyes were both too cold and too malicious to ever be the sheriff's. MacPherson. How he had stared at her from his vantage point underneath the church's roof, how he had enjoyed making her squirm as he talked about Myka in her office.

The brandy fog began to lift. "You need to look out for her while I'm gone. I've pushed MacPherson too hard recently. He knows I . . . care about her, and he's not above striking out at her to get at me."

Leena's solemn "I will" followed Helena as she made her way up the stairs, cautiously, like the 105-year old woman she felt was. She stopped on the next to last step. "Can you explain to me why your patterns can tell you that I would meet my beloved in this godforsaken town or that the devil incarnate has risen in the person of James MacPherson and yet not reveal something practical, like the fact that I forgot everything I brought with me to the social?

Leena laughed and Helena stood on the step listening to it. She could wish that it was Myka downstairs laughing with such affection, but wishing to make things so was the province of the innocent and the powerful. She had never been the one and, her boasts to the contrary, she wasn't the other. The warmth of a friend's laughter at the end of a very long, unhappy day was a small thing to hold onto, but it was a good small thing.