Tumbleweed

by Jane Candia Coleman Narrated by Nanette Savard

Overview

She was Wyatt Earp's woman. He tried to protect her, but the battle at the OK Corral was the beginning of the end.

This is Tumbleweed, a short story by Jane Candia Coleman.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171662493
Publisher:	Audio Holdings
Publication date:	01/01/2009
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Tumbleweed

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By Jane Candia Coleman Dorchester Publishing

Copyright © 2004 Jane Candia Coleman
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8439-6104-1

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Chapter One

Wyatt, Sadie, Virge, and me were sitting around the campfire after supper, and Tombstone seemed as far away as Los Angeles. But we carried the memory of that place with us all the time-the violence, the lies, Morg's death, and Virge's crippled arm. He hated being a cripple, but he'd learned to live with it just like I learned to put up with his anger. That's what a wife does-keep going, hide her feelings from her man, and always looking over her shoulder in case the past shows up-armed.

I figured going out to the desert to hunt for gold was Wyatt's way of putting Tombstone behind him. No ghosts out there, no old enemies hiding in ambush, only the quiet, the shadows of big mesquites and ironwood trees, the sun's last light on the Colorado River, and out in the brush a couple of coyotes hunting.

Sadie? Well, I never could figure her. She loved the desert same as Wyatt, but I thought she came along on his treasure hunts because she wanted a gold mine of her own, and because she always kept an eye on Wyatt in case he got an idea to stray. After all, he'd left Mattie for her, and he always had an eye for the ladies, so how could she tell when he'd do it again? If her conscience pricked her over Mattie, though, she'd have died before admitting it. She was a proud one, and tough.Had to be just like the rest of us Earp women. You married an Earp, you took the good along with the bad, and there was more than enough bad to go around. Seemed like trouble followed all of us all the time except out there on the Mojave Desert with night coming on and a little horned moon painted on the sky.

Maybe it was because I was remembering Tombstone that Sadie started talking about it. I tried not to listen because going over the past ain't a cure for the present. She threw a log on the fire, and it blazed up and shone on her face-the same face that started all our trouble-and she said: "Maybe tomorrow we'll get lucky. Maybe tomorrow we'll strike it rich. I've got a feeling about this place. There are lucky spots. We just haven't found one." She frowned, and her eyes caught the fire like a mirror. "There's places that have a curse on them. Like Tombstone. Evil came up out of the ground and infected everybody, and there was no getting away from it. Even out here it's like that evil's still with us."

She'd put her finger on the trouble, but I wondered what she'd have said about Ponca Bottom where I was born. That country along the Missouri had a power, too, but it was a power that came from good, a kind of magic that I recognized even as a kid. A magic that couldn't be got rid of even when the Border Wars started and kept us all on edge day and night. Especially at night with the sound of horses passing, and the riders up to no good. We lived through seven years of fighting before Pa went off with the First Nebraska to fight for the Union. He never came back, but by that time I was old enough, had seen enough to know that magic doesn't help you through the bad times. You got to help yourself as best you can or get tromped on. Nobody's ever tromped on me. Tromp on Allie Sullivan Earp and get bit afore you know it.

"Allie's tongue can cut rope," Mum always said, but when you're little and a female to boot, you got to find some way to win. I've been mean when I had to and stubborn as a goat. I've cussed and hit out at whoever needed it and never been sorry.

Why'd Sadie have to talk about it? I wondered. Why'd she go and bring the old trouble into our peace? Maybe I was getting old, or maybe I figured I'd save my ammunition for a better time. Whatever, I kept quiet, got up, and walked out to where the horses was hobbled, where the Injun, Dude, who always camped with Wyatt sort of like a bodyguard, sat with his back against an ironwood. He was some kind of California Injun, not like the ones I grew up with in Nebraska, but like any Injun he understood a person's need for a little privacy. He nodded when I passed, but all he said was: "Don't get lost."

Well, hell, I never been lost in my life! "I can find my way good as any Injun," I told him, and kept on walking till I'd left them all behind. Them and any thoughts of that place that had marked us.

Ponca Bottom. Funny how my mind turned back the years. How I could almost see it-our cabin, and Pa in the cornfield, plowing, and all around the fruits of the earth there for the picking-wild plums, blackberries so sweet they was like honey, and in the fall enough nuts to last us all winter. Back then, it seemed I could make time stand still just by holding my breath, closing my eyes, and making a wish. Usually I wished the same thing. That nothing would ever change, that we could all stay just like we were-Mum and Pa, Melissa, Lydia, Frank, Mary, and me-in what I believed was the same as the paradise told about in the Bible.

I was too young to know that nothing ever stays the same, that sooner or later the world finds you. I was four, maybe five, when the Kansas-Nebraska Act brought trouble right to our doorstep. All of a sudden there was death in the air and folks shouting words I didn't understand-Abolition, state's rights, slavery-and Mum kept the shotgun by the door when Pa was out in the field. We didn't get the shooting and hanging Kansas did, but wagons headed there went through Omaha, some even through our pasture, and always there was night riders up to no good.

"It'll come to war," Pa said one night when we was at supper. The light in the lamp flickered when he spoke, and all of a sudden he looked old.

It scared me. Like I was seeing the future, seeing change, and helpless to stop it.

Mum sighed. "Seems it's already war here. All these folks coming and ready to fight. What'll happen to us?"

"I don't know. I wish I did. But the day anybody brings slaves to Nebraska is the day I start my own fight."

"What's slaves?" I asked, although us kids weren't supposed to interrupt our parents.

Pa stared across the table at me. "It's one man ownin' another. Or a lot of others. And it's wrong."

I thought about that. "Like we own Sally?" Sally was our cow.

"You might say that. 'Cept men ain't animals, and Sally's treated better than some of the slaves I heard about."

By the time us kids crawled into bed, my five-year-old mind was running off in all directions. "I don't want nobody ownin' me," I whispered to Melissa.

She giggled. "You will one day. When you're grown."

"I won't, either." Growing up to me meant trouble.

"Anyhow"-she gave a big yawn-"folks like us ain't slaves, and we sure don't own any. Now go to sleep."

"What if there's a war? Will we get to fight, too?"

"It's men who do the fightin'. Women stay home and worry."

"I bet I could fight good as a man," I said. "Even if I am a girl."

"And if you don't hush talkin', you'll be a sorry one." She turned over, her back to me.

"You ain't my boss," I mumbled, but she didn't answer, and I lay there, hearing all the night sounds-Pa snoring on the other side of the quilt that divided the rooms, the wind in the leaves of the big cottonwood, an owl calling from the creek bottom.

One thing I knew for sure. I didn't want anybody bossing me. Not then, not ever. What I didn't understand was that, when you love somebody, there's no question of who owns who or who gives orders.

That's what I was thinking when Virge found me later that night, a long ways from camp. My feet had taken me up the big wash to where the hills turned rocky, and the trees thinned out.

"I thought you'd got lost." He put his good arm around me, and I leaned up against him.

"Lost!" I said. "All you men can think of is a woman who can't find her way in the dark. I was just rememberin' back."

He shook his head. "Seems we never stop talking about that place. We're marked. Like Cain. I wish we'd never left the farm. Or stayed in Prescott. Had a family instead of followin' some pipe dream." He sounded bone-tired.

"Spilt milk," I told him.

"I'm not cryin'."

"I know that."

The Earp men didn't waste time on tears. That was left to us women, but, if we cried, we did it alone where no one could see. The faces we showed were masks, but I reckon everybody does that-hide behind a smile or a pokerface. You're safest that way.

I put my arm around Virge's waist. "Let's go on back. Let's go to bed."

His laugh began down low. I could feel it moving up into his chest. "You got somethin' in mind, Allie?"

"How'd you guess?"

The laugh spilled out, big and jolly, Virge's laugh. "Because I know you down to your toes."

And that's a comfort. Being understood and no need to play games. But being me, I had to have the last word. "That's what you think," I said.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Tumbleweed by Jane Candia Coleman Copyright © 2004 by Jane Candia Coleman. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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