Waltzing Montana by Mary Clearman Blew

Author:Mary Clearman Blew [Blew, Mary Clearman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC014000 Fiction / Historical, FIC033000 Fiction / Westerns
Publisher: Bison Books

17

Pat went back to his papers while Evangeline and Josie moved their field of operations from the kitchen to the downstairs bedroom, which he guessed was going to be Albert’s and Evangeline’s bedroom now. Wondered what the women would uncover there, where Ferrell had gone on sleeping after Pat’s mother’s death. Probably slept there the night before his shoot-out with the sheriff’s deputies.

The women interrupted Pat now and then with questions. “Pat, furniture! Cost lots money! What do?”

He looked up—what do, indeed. “The furniture belongs to the house,” he finally told them, and they looked at each other.

Next, “We found curtains in a box. What should we—”

“God, I don’t know! Wash em and hang em up if you want to.”

Now a rising patter of women’s voices from the bedroom. Excitement? Awe? And here came Evangeline and Josie, and when he saw what Josie was carrying, he stacked papers on papers and cleared space on his desk for Josie to set down his mother’s jewelry box.

“Pat,” she breathed. “We look quick and close it.”

Mahogany box, inset with ivory patterns on its lid. Pat felt his mother’s hands on his as he raised the lid on the scent of his mother’s perfume rising from the velvet lining. “God,” Pat said, and lifted out a rope of his mother’s pearls.

And elaborate pearl earrings that, unlike Evangeline’s hoops that went through the lobes of her ears, fastened with little screws on their backs. When he laid them on his desk, Josie picked one up. Dangled the pearls in her brown hand.

“Protestant woman not pierce,” she explained.

“Whatever,” Pat said, hardly hearing her. He lifted out a silver locket on a chain he didn’t remember his mother wearing and a silver watch on a chain that he did, and he wound the little watch and saw its hands move.

Two rings in the velvet slot for rings. His mother had been buried in her wedding ring, and Pat didn’t remember these. Yeah, maybe he did. The faceted deep-blue stone in the silver ring—not silver but white gold, he thought—the stone was a sapphire. He must have asked, and his mother must have explained, because he knew it was a Yogo sapphire.

He laid the ring beside the pearls and took out the gold ring set with a big faceted ruby in a circle of diamond chips, and he heard Evangeline’s drawn breath.

Albert hadn’t given her a ring. Didn’t have the cash for it, Pat supposed. “Want to try it on?”

He saw that Evangeline sure did want to! She slipped the ruby ring on her ring finger, and it fit. The ruby shone and the diamond chips sparkled to be in sunlight again, and Evangeline stood by Pat’s desk for a long minute, admiring her hand with the ring on her finger while Josie admired it with her. Reluctantly she slipped off the ring and handed it back to Pat.

“Oh, hell, Ev,” he said. “I’d give it to you, except”—he had to laugh at the expression on her face—“I think instead I’ll give it to somebody you’d probably rather gave it to you than me.

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