Tie My Bones to Her Back Read Free Page A

wedges of geese flew south, their high, distant cries sounding festive. She spoke of the bank’s foreclosure, of rope and acid, her tone cold with the ugliness of it. He stopped to look down at the Heldendorf Mercantile Bank, a solid, solemn structure built of gray limestone from the local quarry, with heavy wrought-iron grillwork over its windows. A fortress of financial integrity. Not even Jesse James could rob this bank. It would turn him to stone before he set foot inside the door. Most of the buildings in Heldendorf were built of stone or brick, many of the larger homes as well. It looked foreign to him after the raw-plank architecture of the West, where sudden towns bled sap all summer long and warped the winter through.
    “How much was left to pay on the mortgage?”
    “Less than a tausend dollars—nine hundred and a bit.”
    “I’ll pay it off.” He slapped the new carpetbag he had carried from the train. “When the wire arrived, my partner and I were in Dodge City selling a load of hides. Twenty-four hundred dollars’ worth.” He smiled.
    She frowned. “Are you coming back? I’ll not work the place by myself.”
    “No, but you could hire help. I’m sure there must be some strong young backs looking for work. Maybe two or three?”
    “And how would I pay for their Arbeit , in buttermilk and manure? Vati couldn’t even meet the loan payments, with the price milk is bringing these days—even buttermilk. There’s no money anywhere.”
    “Dock zwar ,” Otto said. “Too true—except on the Buffalo Range. But might you not marry, Hanna? Have no lads come a-courting?”
    “ Keine ,” she said firmly. “Not a one, thank God! And by the way, my name is no longer Hanna. I call myself Jenny now—proper American.”
    “Tschenny?” He laughed. “No wonder the local boys aren’t coming round. To them you’re a Tenny.’ And don’t stare daggers at me that way. Why are women always so serious about their names? Why have all the girls I’ve ever known felt bound and determined to change them?”
    He looked at her and laughed again, winked and composed his face in mock seriousness.
    “Well then, with no marital prospects in sight, you could sell the herd and rent out the pastureland. Or keep the herd—fine stock it is—and make an arrangement with some good farmer in the neighborhood to go shares with you on the milk, in return for his labor. Wieland always had his eyes on our herd, as I recall.”
    “Ja sicher ,” she said. “True indeed. Frau Wieland has invited me to move in with them, and in return allow Herr Wieland to work our herd. But I won’t live with the Wielands. I won’t be a replacement for her dead Hannelore.”
    “Then perhaps we might sell the place,” Otto said, “even at a loss, if necessary—I want no money from this farm, it would all be yours—and you could move to town.” He glanced at her quickly, striding along beside him, and saw the hard set of her jaw.
    Suddenly he knew what she wanted.
    She wanted to go West with him.
    She must be thinking that it would be like those hunting trips they’d made together when he got back from the war. Another lighthearted outdoor adventure. Or perhaps she wanted to be with him wherever he went—after all, she was his little sister, she loved him as dearly as he loved her, and now, with Mutti and Vati gone . . . She was only sixteen, after all. But the West? The only women there were whores and outlaws.
    “It’s not like up north, Jenny,” Otto explained quietly. “It’s different out on the prairies. An alien world—there are no trees, only grass. Little or no water, and what you do find is bitter or full of buffalo dung. Rattlesnakes everywhere. Wolves as big as yearling calves. We sleep on the ground most of the time, and the ground is hard. And the wind blows always, always, day and night. Sometimes it’s so cold that mules freeze stiff, standing up. Sometimes so hot and dry that your eyelids crack just from blinking,