Chapter 8

Even journeying amid the long days of summer, they had to continue on for hours after dark before finally reaching Sweetwater country.

At the swing-station, they put in for a change of horses. This was what passed for civilization in Hetty’s new neck of the woods—a glorified corral, abutted by a hovel where the broken-down old timer who tended the place could lie-in at night. Made Sulphur Springs look downright palatial.

In truth, that’s all that was needed. After a few minutes respite, the coaches proceeded straight on their way—towards either South Pass City or Rawlins, as the case might be. And with regards to Hetty herself, this was where she got off.

Johnny was waiting to pick her up. He and the driver (a new man, swapped in for McLean at Rawlins) offloaded her baggage and stowed it in a buckboard wagon. Then her husband helped her onto the vehicle’s high, hard seat, and they rattled off into the night.

Hetty sat stiffly on the bench. Her body was buffeted by every dip and rock in the road, but she hardly felt it. What she felt, mostly, was the wide, inky gulf that yawned between her and the man beside her.

To call what they were on a road was vastly over-charitable. More of a rutted, stony strip of ground that was slightly less overgrown and jagged than the surrounding terrain. It was a miracle Johnny could navigate it at all, aided only by a lantern and the full moon, and the task seemed to take up most of his attention.

Still, after an interval, he broke the silence, his eyes fixed ahead. “The stage was awfully late. You hit trouble?”

She glanced over, agitation threatening to boil up afresh. She knew Johnny’d passed no more than a dozen words with the driver, and hadn’t witnessed Mr. Darnell at all. Even so... “Nothing out of the way. Got delayed leaving Sulphur Springs on account of waiting for the mail.” Her eyes softened. “But I am sorry you had to tarry so long.”

“No matter. Just glad you came through all right.”

Hetty continued to examine Johnny for a time, lit by the harsh, flickering light of the lantern. He seemed thinner than before; and perhaps even more self-contained (if that was possible). But, she believed there was a new sense of vitality and purpose about him as well.

“I was wondering how you’d get my things shifted,” she said. “Surely this isn’t our wagon?”

“No. Borrowed it off Trimble. He’s sited a few miles up-river from us. But we’ll have our own, as soon as I go into South Pass.”

It took a good while, but eventually they turned off from the track and began picking their way across practically virgin scrubland. “This is the property,” Johnny said, with evident feeling. “You can’t appreciate it at night, but I believe you’re going to like it. It’s beautiful country.”

Then, at long last, they attained the homesite. Hetty’s travels were complete.

The cabin, although tiny, appeared sturdy and comfortable. Pride was audible in Johnny’s voice. “Mighty snug, I know, but I’ll add on next year.”

There was a pipe in the roof—and once they’d stepped inside, to Hetty’s amazement, a proper cast-iron stove to go with it. “What a pleasant surprise. I feared I’d be cooking out over an open fire.”

Her enjoyment brought Johnny’s eyes to life, twinkling in the lamplight. “Couldn’t have that, could I? I begged and cajoled the shopkeeper in South Pass, saying it wouldn’t do for my darling wife to have to keep house without a stove. In the end he took pity on me. Advanced the funds.”

He gestured around at the spartan appointments: “I fixed up some shelves. Enough food there to tide us over till I can go get proper staples. Rigged a bed in that corner. And I made you this.” Drawing Hetty over, he showed her a hand-built sugar chest, with lovingly-adzed boards fitted tight together, and proper brass hinges and handles. “Brought the fittings with me from back east, for the purpose.”

She smiled shyly. “You’ve been busy, Mr. Wilcox. It’s marvelous.”

They stood around awkwardly for a moment, and then he went to unload her things. Hetty kindled up the embers and started some water heating on the stove in their solitary cookpan.

Once he’d brought her cases and arranged them neatly against the wall, Johnny hovered uncomfortably for another spell, eyes cast down toward the swept-dirt floor. About the time the silence was getting insupportable, he cleared his throat and choked out some words. “It’s, um ... it’s been a long while, Hester, and I thought that ... perhaps if you ... we might ... lie together?”

She drew back reflexively—then prayed at once that her husband hadn’t noticed. She couldn’t have intercourse with him. Not now, not like this. It was too soon. “I ... I’m devilish tired from my travels, John. I just want to wash the road off me and then get some sleep. I’m sure you understand...”

The man’s expression fell, wounded, crestfallen, and it sent a dagger through her heart. She plunged ahead, hastily: “That is to say, I do want to be with you again, Johnny. Honest. Only—tomorrow evening, all right?”

He bucked up, the rainclouds on his face lightening a fraction. “I understand. It’s different for a woman—you need to ease into things. When you’re ready.” He stood there a moment longer, then moved toward the door. “I’ll go sit on the stoop for a stretch. Give you some privacy while you get cleaned up.”

Hetty was grateful for that. She’d spent the whole day feeling filthy and used. She was impatient to wash away the signs of what she’d done, and glad she could do it without the risk of Johnny picking up clues as to what had happened.

She stripped off her clothes as quick as she could, thrilled to be shed of them. Unexpectedly, Dapper George’s note fluttered to the floor. Hastily, without thinking, she glanced around for somewhere to conceal it in the tiny, bare-bones dwelling. Pulling out the drawer of the sugar chest, she worked the paper in underneath. That should keep it safely out of the way.

Employing the water from the stove, Hetty bathed herself off as best she could. Her crotch was still raw and sore, but she scrubbed it extra scrupulously anyway. Then, after pulling on a clean nightgown and tidying the room slightly, she barricaded herself under the blankets on the bed. “You can come in now,” she called, “I’m decent.”

Next morning, once the breakfast dishes had been cleared, Johnny decanted those precious gold coins onto their jury-rigged plank table, surveying them with a satisfied eye. “Mighty good to have these in hand.” Carefully he counted out the contracted number and put them in his pocket-bag. Then he returned the remainder to their leather sack, which he secreted under a floorboard.

After that, he hitched up the wagon and drove off toward Trimble’s.

Hetty spent the day trying to make the place look like it had benefitted from a woman’s hand. Cleaning, organizing, doing laundry. As her chores carried her to places around the property—toting wood from the pile, or hauling water from the river—she also took the measure of the new home-place. Johnny was right, this was striking country. Severe, perhaps even unforgiving. Certainly not easy. But dazzling. She believed she could be happy here.

And, while the sun rose to its zenith and began to descend, she also labored (using the back of her mind, and at times the front) to get herself in the proper mood for lying with Johnny.

The prospect of engaging in relations with her husband felt very different, somehow, than it had in Cuyler. There, it had been a wifely obligation—a sporadic, ad-hoc chore. More unseemly and embarrassing than most chores, admittedly, but not dishonorable, and therefore ultimately tolerable. And beyond that, well, just a chore to be gotten through, same as any other. Preferrable to scouring floors; conceivably less so than baking a pie.

Today, by contrast, coition seemed like another thing entirely—striking Hetty as infinitely more fraught, infinitely more unsettling, than it once had. The act appeared to mean more than it had before; bound up with greater risks, and greater possibilities.

Imagining herself doing that with Johnny this very evening, she felt weighed down by the sins she’d incurred on her journey, and painfully conscious of her own wickedness, and infidelity, and corruption. But at the same time, she also found herself tantalized by vague notions that something good might come of it. Like, that she might connect with her husband in a way she never had; or break through his taciturn shell at last; or elevate him to a rarified and much-deserved bliss.

Mental images of Tomosevesehe and Dapper George Sirico and Yuma Joe Brown were never far from these thoughts. Hetty contemplated the bandits neither with idealization and desire, nor condemnation and revulsion. They were simply there—part of her inner dialogue now, knitted up irretrievably in her mind with sex, and her relationship with her husband.

Those men had never known her at all. Not really. She’d been a momentary receptacle for their impersonal lust, nothing more. And yet ... in a way, they did know her. Parts of her, anyway. They’d witnessed intimate, private, backed-in-a-corner, stripped-naked, animal parts of her that no one else had ever seen. Parts she’d never guessed existed.

And every circumstance she encountered after this, from now until the end of her days, would in some way be inflected by her encounter with those outlaws. It was inescapable, woven in with all the rest. So yes—they were a part of her life, and they would be a part of her life. How could they not?

Dispassionately she found herself comparing Johnny to the three. He couldn’t read her hidden feelings and impulses the way Tomo seemed to have done. He wasn’t glib and shrewd like Dapper George. He lacked the sheer force and pugnacity of Yuma Brown. But Johnny also possessed so many qualities they didn’t. Integrity, solidity, visions for the future. He was a good man.

He didn’t deserve to be encumbered with a wife like her.

That morning, early, Johnny had rigged a sheet to be a partition for their single room, so that both husband and wife could change into their daytime clothes with the proper level of decorum. Recalling it now, Hetty’s lips bent up ironically. She’d seen more penises the preceding day than she ever expected to in her life—yet she’d still never seen her husband’s. It felt symbolic, somehow.

Be that as it may, Johnny sure had looked handsome as he prepared to head off to Trimble’s, wearing his brimmed hat and checked shirt and denims. Lean, taut, strong. And as she pictured him that way, standing proud, surveying things were in order before he left, master of his own small domain, she felt a bit of moisture between her legs. It surprised her. She couldn’t recall that ever happening before.

Toward sundown, Mr. Wilcox ambled home at the head of a knot of cattle. They were fine-looking beasts, and it did Hetty’s heart good to see them. It felt like the start of something.

Johnny hadn’t finished the barn yet, but he’d already set up a stockade days ago. Hetty left him there to get the animals squared away, while she put dinner on the table.

The meal itself was quiet, but companionable. Hetty elicited some basic facts about their nearest neighbors, and shared selected details of her day.

Once the dishes had been scrubbed and put away, however, a heavy silence settled over the small cabin. Hetty felt sure she knew where Johnny’s mind was, but had her doubts as to whether he’d end up mustering the gumption to speak. Marital intercourse was a topic he’d never been comfortable broaching, and doubly so if he apprehended being insensitive toward her delicate feminine nature.

Anyway, she didn’t intend to let the impasse drag out unnecessarily. “Mr. Wilcox, I believe we settled on plans for this evening?”

He coughed and eyed the wall. “Well, uh ... only if you’re up to it. But I ... yeah, I’d be gratified.”

Rising and gliding over to Johnny, as he sat there on a makeshift log seat, she put her arms about him—summoning a smile to her face, and looking down into his eyes with what she hoped was warmth. “I’m sure I’d be gratified as well.”