Why on earth would such a pretty girl be jealous of a plain woman nearly ten years her senior? It could only be because they considered her an heiress, the sole beneficiary of Devin’s unwritten will. Unwritten only because the Millers didn’t bother to write their laws, but obeyed some primitive slate of laws all their own.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, this is beyond absurd,” she muttered. “If I don’t soon get away, I might do something desperate.”
Like shoot her way out. She didn’t even have that option any longer since the men had gone through the house and shed, claiming everything of Dev’s except for his tooth powder. They had taken his guns, his clothes and every bit of mining equipment he owned, most of it bought with the proceeds from the sale of her house and furniture.
She hadn’t argued at the time because—well, because one didn’t argue at such a time, one simply went through the rituals, a few of them rather bizarre, and quietly made plans for the future.
For all the good her plans had done her.
“Help me, Varnelle,” she whispered to the glossy dark rhododendrons. “Come back and tell me what to do. Help me to get away and you can have anything of mine you want, including this cabin.”
Her clothes? Varnelle was short and nicely rounded, while Eleanor was tall and skinny as a walking stick. If anything could be made over to fit her, Eleanor would gladly hand over every stitch she possessed, even the rose-colored silk she’d been married in.
Oh, yes—especially that.
Her books? Varnelle could read and write—just barely. But she had never expressed the least interest in borrowing any of the books Eleanor had brought with her.
They could have found something to talk about, though, Eleanor was sure of it. “You could tell me how you manage to make your red hair so shiny and smooth,” she whispered, touching her own hair, which she managed to tame only by ruthless brushing, braiding and pinning it up before the braids could unravel.
“I’m no threat to you, Varnelle,” she said plaintively, seeing a glimpse of faded pink some five hundred feet below as the younger woman left the laurel slick and hurried past Alaska’s cove. “In my best day, which was too long ago to recall, I was never anywhere near as pretty as you are. Why do you resent me so?”
Dropping down to sit on the edge of the porch, she nibbled a cold biscuit from the basket and wondered idly how close the kinship was between Varnelle and Hector. Hector was easily the best looking of all the Millers now that Devin was dead. He’d been guardedly friendly to her whenever he’d been the one to bring her supplies.
Miss Lucy had explained when Devin had first taken her down the hill to introduce her to his family, that for years she’d been responsible for keeping track of such things in order to prevent inbreeding amongst the clan. The old woman had seemed pleased at the time that Devin had married an outsider, saying that new blood in the clan would make arranging marriages easier in the future.
Come to think of it, she had mentioned Varnelle and Hector at the time. Eleanor remembered thinking that Varnelle was still a child. She was definitely no child now, not the way she had filled out her faded gowns. As for Hector, Devin had once told her that his cousin had gone all the way through the third grade.
My God, Eleanor thought—she had taught the third grade.
“One day, when Heck makes his strike,” Varnelle had confided back in those early days when she hadn’t been quite so resentful, “he’s a-gonna marry me and move to Charlotte or maybe even New York, and we’re not niver comin’ back here n’more.”
“Then who would work Heck’s share?” Eleanor had asked. The gold shares were vitally important to everyone in Dexter’s Cut, whether or not any more gold was ever found.
“They’s plenty that would for a cut.”
Share and share alike, that was the Millers. Hound dogs and chickens, moonshine and occasionally even women, but not the gold. At least not with outsiders.
Looking back—an occupation that filled far too much of her time lately—Eleanor marveled at how any woman who had once been considered intelligent could get herself into such a fix. She’d been a whiz at mathematics, good at literature, history and geography, although not quite so good at the sciences. When it came to the subject of men, however, she was no wiser now than she’d ever been. In other words, dumb as a stump.
Rising, she swept up the covered basket that had been left on her front porch in exchange for the empty one she’d set out that morning, and went inside. The house smelled of lye soap. She’d scrubbed the floors and washed the curtains again that morning, more for something to do than for any real need.
Just last week someone had left her a quarter of salty, hickory-smoked ham. She’d been eating on it ever since. Today’s piece of fried chicken was a welcome reprieve. Still, no matter how hard she worked, she never felt much like eating. Years from now, she thought, bitterly amused, another generation of Millers would be bringing food baskets to the batty old woman who lived alone on Devin’s Hill, leaving them on her porch, dashing back down the hillside, giggling and telling yarns about her.
Probably call her an old witch.
Maybe she would grow a wart on her nose, cultivate a cackling laugh and practice riding her broomstick. Maybe she would send a note down the hill asking for a cat, preferably a black one.
Or maybe she would write a note, put it in a bottle and drop it in the narrow, whitewater creek that churned its way down the mountainside, where it would doubtlessly be panned up by one of the damned Millers downstream, who in turn would guard her closer than ever.
Now she rummaged through the basket again, in case she’d missed some little treat. The last time Heck had brought her supplies she’d been so desperate for someone to talk with that she’d asked him to stay for supper.
“Can’t.” Crossing his arms over his massive chest, he’d looked her square in the eyes. Not for the first time she noticed that no matter what he was saying, whether he was being friendly or noncommittal, his expression never varied. Blue eyes, clear as a summer sky and just as cool.
“Then let me go home,” she pleaded.
“Can’t.”
He didn’t have to explain. By now she knew all the reasons by heart. She’d heard them often enough. As Miss Lucy had explained, “Chile, they ain’t niver gonna let you go. They’re all a-wantin’ Devin’s share and you’re a-settin’ on it.”
“But I offered to give up any claim I might have,” Eleanor had explained countless times. “Besides, you keep telling me I don’t even have a claim.”
The old woman shook her head. “You do and you don’t, that’s just the way things is. We let you go back to the city, next thing we know they’ll be flatlanders a-swarming all over the place, lookin’ for old Dexter’s gold mine. If they’s any gold left, it b’longs to us. My best advice is to take your pick of the men here, hitch up and commence to breedin’.”
And so they kept her here. Knowing she wouldn’t have any one of them, they all watched over her lest she escape, for if that happened, Alaska had told her, the first single man who saw her would want her.
A fallacious argument if she’d ever heard one. A woman wearing gowns that had been several years out of style three years ago, that were now so faded as to be colorless? A woman whose hair had grown wilder than ever for lack of decent care? A woman valued only for her property—a three-room log cabin perched on top of a hill that was riddled with more holes than a gopher farm?
She was twenty-seven years old, for heaven’s sake. Too old to want to attract another man even if by some miracle she could, but far too young to spend the rest of her days in isolation.
In desperation she had offered to deed them all her interest in everything her late husband