Page 77 of The Prospector's Only Prospect
Not true, he wanted to say. It was all Marigold could do to speak to him in a civil tone, and all he could do to keep his wayward thoughts in check.
I need you as an employee. That’s all,he had told her, but it wasn’t true. She was under his roof every night, he saw her every day, yet he missed her. He wanted to go back to their easy friendship. If that meant literally softening her up in a warm bath, so be it.
Marigold was visibly taken aback when he told her the plan.
“I can’t leave the children to…sit and do nothing.”
“Have you tried it?” Ira asked with a smirk. “It’s pretty easy.”
“I don’t have a bathing costume,” she added with a discomfited look toward Virgil.
“Drawers will do. Or your nightdress.”
“Go on,” Emmett coaxed her. “You won’t catch Virgil being agreeable very often. Take advantage.” He waved his hands as though shooing a chicken from the garden.
With a waver of indecision and an anxioustsk, Marigold slipped into her room and came back with her shawl rolled around something. She set it in a basket with two leftover rolls, a chunk of cheese, and a jar of pickles.
“I nearly forgot the berry roots,” she said, flustered as she hurried about.
Virgil couldn’t tell if she was nervous about the outing itself or being with him.
A short time later, he secured everything to the saddle and mounted. Stoney boosted Marigold up behind him, tipped his cap, then went back to the spot where he had measuring chains staked out.
“It’s terrible weather for an outing.” Marigold retied her bonnet. “Are you sure about this?”
“I hate to break it to you, Marigold, but this is fine fall weather. ‘Terrible’ weather doesn’t let you out the door to use the john. Hang on.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist and hunched into his back, face between his shoulder blades.
He waited until he was facing away from the cabin to let himself smile.
…
They dismounted where tall grass stood brown and brittle around a wickiup that seemed to have withstood several seasons of winds and rain. A stream burbled nearby, and a squirrel with fat cheeks scampered from a fallen pine cone up the trunk of a tree.
Marigold turned to look back on their valley. This elevation afforded a view westward as well. Through the sleet, the mountains plaited one into another into the distance. Some wore red and gold skirts in their lower valleys. All wore white crowns and a powder of sugar.
“What a beautiful view.”
“’Tis.” Virgil removed their things from the saddle and led the horse into a crude barn that she imagined had been the home for whichever animals they’d brought from California. “I think of building a house up here sometimes,” he said when he emerged and stood next to her, surveying the world. “Mostly it’s a pipe dream to get me through a shitty day,” he said with a self-deprecating quirk of his mouth.
She almost said,Like this one?The spitting rain was more like ice pellets that stung her cheeks.Notterrible weather, he claimed, but it felt pretty abysmal.
“This spot loses sunshine for a few weeks in the winter. The streams make up for it, though. That one’s cold.” He nodded to the thin trickle moving down a line of rocks, then picked up the shovel and the paper-wrapped raspberry roots. He led her to where steam rose from a thicket of cattails that were turning to fluff.
As she followed, Marigold hugged the shawl she had rolled around her nightdress and her small towel. “Hot and cold running water? Where are we? New York City?”
He snorted. “The cold water is sweet, but this warm stuff makes coffee taste like the south end of a goat. We made ourselves drink it because the Arapahoe say its medicinal. Tom knew of it and brought us here. We dammed it, then lived in that wickiup.” He thumbed back at it. “We would have rather stayed down in the valley to protect against claim jumpers, but we would have died if we hadn’t had this bath to warm up in.”
The cattails hid a pool that had been dug into the embankment and was surrounded by stones. The water was deep enough in the center that she couldn’t see the bottom. She could hardly imagine a half-dozen men jammed into such a small space, but with frost biting at them, they probably hadn’t minded rubbing shoulders.
“Did you want to change in the wickiup?” He looked back at its barely there walls. “We always stripped here and, well, we were all men so we didn’t wear anything at all.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll scout a spot for your raspberries while you—” He abruptly brushed past her, leaving her standing on the muddy shoreline.
Marigold hesitated, but the biting wind had been trying to cut her in half for the better part of an hour. She glanced to the water, then looked for Virgil. He was gone.
She crouched to touch the water. It felt too heavenly and inviting to stand on modesty. She had brought her nightdress but decided her chemise would do.
She left her outer clothes and drawers under a small lean-to she suspected had been built for this very purpose, to keep snow and rain off one’s clothes while bathing. She carefully entered the pool, inching her feet along the slippery rocks as she slowly submerged into water that was so warm it was almost uncomfortable.
