Page 14 of A Good Prospect

Tamasin Norris lay on her side, the side without the broken arm, cramped into the tiniest ball possible. For hours she had been trying to figure out what she’d done wrong to enrage Niall this time. She kept coming back to the same conclusion—He had been so drunk the night before, he’d forgotten that he’d eaten the last of the beans around midnight.

There had been plenty of beans, plenty to fill a stomach that was already bloated with whiskey. But around midnight, he had stumbled to the pot and had chawed the remaining beans while bellowing a song Tamasin had taught him:

So goodbye, Muirseen Durkin

I’m sick and tired of working

No more I’ll dig the potatoes

No longer I’ll be poor.

For as sure as my name is Carney

I’ll be off to California

Where instead of digging potatoes

I’ll be digging lumps of gold

He’d stumbled back to the tent, and this morning he’d forgotten he’d eaten the beans. The sunlight bouncing off the canyon walls gave him a blinding headache, so he’d gotten angry that there were only a couple of dusty tortillas and the usual jerked beef to put into his stomach. He’d started shouting about the cow those stately Californians had promised to bring, how if they had a cow, they could have milk and quesadillas. So Tamasin grabbed her fishing pole and headed for the river to catch a salmon, but Niall hollered that he was sick of fish too.

“We’re packing up and heading for that rich greaser’s house!” he shouted. “They’ll give us the cow if we show up on their doorstep.”

“I don’t think that’s proper,” Tamasin had the gall to say. “They offered it from the kindness of their heart, not as something we should be demanding.”

That’s when Niall grabbed her by the broken arm. She must have jerked in an odd manner, cringing from the sudden pain that shot through her as though it wrenched her very nerves. She feared Niall, but some strange self-preservation instinct must have overpowered the fear, for she twisted so oddly that before she knew it, Niall punched her in the stomach33 to prevent her from falling forward. She fell onto her tailbone, the fishing pole made of a pine branch cracking loudly under her haunches. The thudding of her bones created an echoing boom inside her head, and she was too dizzy to even stand for several minutes.

By that time, Niall had left the campsite, and when Tamasin struggled to her feet using the broken pole as a crutch, she realized she’d been sitting in a puddle of blood. The metallic smell wafted up her nostrils, and intense cramps gripped her abdomen like so many spiders sinking their fangs into her womb.

Even accustomed to pain as she was, she knew this went beyond the norm, so she hobbled to a nearby bed of pine needles and hiked up her skirts. She knew that her immunity to pain could lead to complications—if she didn’t feel pain warning her she was injured, she might continue operating as normal, and make things worse. So she squatted there for such a long time both her thighs went numb. Exhausted, she made it back to the tent before collapsing.

She was numb emotionally, just an unfeeling slab of granite, and she didn’t want to be unfeeling anymore. The women she’d met on the Plains and here in California seemed to experience joy once in awhile. There had even been a group of Mormons who had seemed downright cheerful as they laboriously built their road, taking a day to move each boulder twenty feet. Perhaps she could join up with the next Mormon party she met. Being religious didn’t mean they didn’t beat their women, but the gals helped each other out, and she’d always have someone to talk to.

An unfamiliar burning—tears?—seeped into her eye sockets as she recalled she had been “happy” once. When Niall had first come to take her from the Magdalene Asylum. Wanting an Irish wife who was a skilled laundress, the nuns had been happy to sell her to Niall, and Tamasin had been happy to go. The nuns told her she was lucky to get a husband who didn’t mind that she was over thirty years of age. The first week of freedom had been joyful. All the new sights and sounds that invigorated her soul. Then Niall had blackened her eye because she dropped a coal on the floor, and she concluded he was no better than the nuns.

Well, the Mormons didn’t appear to mind a woman over thirty years of age. Tamasin vowed she would ask the next group of Mormons if she could flee with them. I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

“Hey!” Niall’s stupid bellow echoed up the canyon, although Tamasin could tell he was standing not thirty feet away. “What’re you going to do with this damned disgusting mess you made? Just lie around in the tent feeling penitent? Well, you’d better feel penitent! You’re in need of loads of penitence, Thomasina!”

Instantly, and without forethought, Tamasin stretched her good arm out to wrap her fingers around the hilt of a Bowie knife she always kept under her bedroll. However, Niall’s voice softened a bit as he came closer to the tent.

“I know, Thomasina. That’s too bad you lost the baby. It’s all your fault, and we’ll say some prayers. But we can’t just leave this mess lying around—it’ll attract wolves, and they’ll attack us! So what do you say…” He was at the tent flap. “Come out and clean up this disgusting mess. It’s making me sick to look at it.”

With barely any energy left to open her eyes, Tamasin crawled to a sitting position, still clutching the Bowie knife. The tent flap fluttered, letting in a ray of pristine sunshine in a feeble attempt to tell her everything would be all right.

But Niall’s attention wasn’t on her now. “Oh. Hey!” he called out in another direction. “Good to see you again!”

Good to see you again?Could it be…? More lively now, she stuck her head out the tent flap. Uphill, away from the river and in between some pines, two imposing mounted figures stood. She knew by their flat-crowned black sombreros and the glinting of metal saddle ornaments it was the two Californios, and her heart actually thudded with hope. As the riders ambled toward the tent, she hauled herself to her feet, acutely aware that the entire lap of her skirt bloomed brightly with fresh blood.

A smile even started at the corners of her mouth when she recognized the darker American with the silky eyebrows, and the regal, lupine blue eyes of Señor Palomares. Tamasin nearly forgot she was bloodied until Señor Palomares looked at her with piercing hooded eyes. She was familiar with the look of pity and revulsion, but she didn’t return to the tent to change her skirt, as Niall was inspecting the cow the two men were leading.

The Californios dismounted. The dark American wandered toward the river, perhaps for the purpose of nature, and Señor Palomares came toward her. One hand on his hip displayed his six-shooter, and he swaggered toward her, the other hand stretched out to place upon her shoulder.

Lordy. A ragged shudder went up and down her spine at the touch of another human. And she didn’t cringe in fear of this man. His full, lush lips were turned down in disapproval, and he said quietly, “Now what has he done to you? Where is your baby? You don’t look so…” And he briefly glanced down at her sticky lap. “So full with child anymore.”

“Oh, ah, I fell,” Tamasin repeated obediently, but the horror of her words was imbued with the happiness she felt at Señor Palomares’ proximity. Just to stand next to such a regal man was an honor, especially since Niall was examining the cow’s udders and not placing his filthy judgments upon them.

“Fell.” He seemed skeptical. “You ‘fell’ once again, and bloodied your skirt, and seem to have lost your infant.”