The Rose Legacy by Kristen Heitzmann Page B

doesn’t like Mr. Beck.”
    Mae laughed. “Honey, most of Crystal doesn’t like Mr. Beck.”
    “That’s not true. He is always treated with respect. People come to him for help.” She pictured the magnanimous smile, the crates and crates of legal cases he had handled, cases she had only just succeeded in bringing to order. “His table is always held at the hotel, no matter how many others are waiting.”
    Mae laughed, deep and heavy.
    “He is kind. And he did not push my wagon over the cliff.”
    Mae’s eyes widened, but her chest still rumbled. “Is that what happened? Quillan sent your wagon over?”
    “Mr. Beck says he had the right, but I say, beh! ” Carina curled her fingertips to her lips with the word, then flung open her palm.
    Mae stilled the chuckle. “Well, Quillan’s a strange one. Comes and goes like the devil’s on his heels.”
    “Maybe he is.” Carina crossed herself.
    Mae laughed right out again. “You’re a strange one, Carina DiGratia.” She seemed to settle inward. “But I’m glad you’ve come.”
    Carina sensed the warmth in the words within her own breast. Her throat filled with tears, and at that moment she could have cried out her homesickness and the hurt that had sent her on this crazy flight to Crystal, Colorado. But Mae hung the washrag and left the kitchen. Carina guessed it was closer than Mae had come in a long time to speaking her heart. Why it should be to her, she couldn’t say.
    Carina boiled water and scrubbed the floor with green lye soap. On her knees, she remembered each member of her family and blessed them one by one: uncles, aunts, godparents, grandparents living and deceased, and her brothers, Angelo, Joseph, Vittorio, Lorenzo, and Tony. She blessed Mamma and Papa. But she did not bless Divina, nor did she allow a thought for Flavio.

    Quillan set the half-eaten plate of beans on the ground before the brown-and-white mottled dog. Resting his forearms on his knees, he sat back against the crate inside the tent wall. “Thanks for dinner, Cain.”
    “Nice of you to stop in.” Cain Bradley raised the left stump of leg that ended at the knee and adjusted the flannel pant leg, tied in a knot at its base. “Don’t get around too easy now.”
    Quillan nodded, absently stroking the dog’s ear like a swatch of velvet between his fingers and thumb. The animal had lapped the beans in three quick strokes of his long pink tongue, then collapsed at his side in bliss.
    “You got to get you a dawg.”
    Quillan half smiled.
    Cain waved a finger. “I mean it, now. Man needs a dawg near as much as vittles.”
    “Don’t have time for a dog.” He stroked the underside of the animal’s jaw until it rolled over and suggested its belly. Quillan rubbed the matted fur along the ribs and soft tissue between.
    “Now that’s just the thing. A dawg makes you slow down, take time for livin’.”
    “I’m livin’, Cain.”
    “Yeah, yeah. You and that half ‘count son o’ mine.” Cain scratched his own side clear up to his armpit.
    “He’s bringing in the ore.” Quillan patted the dog’s belly.
    “And spendin’ twice what he takes out in the saloons and bawdies.”
    Quillan shrugged. “You only live once.”
    “I don’t see you throwin’ yer gold down the gully.”
    “Don’t have time.”
    “Son, when yer sixty-eight, you can talk to me about time.” The old man slapped his hand on the crate at his side. “What are ya? Twenty-three, twenty-four?”
    “Twenty-eight.”
    “Hah. You got more years left than a porcupine’s got needles. You ever been skewered by a porcupine?”
    Quillan grinned. “No, can’t say I have.”
    “Man alive, it hurts worse’n almost anything ‘cept losin’ a leg.” Cain rubbed the stump.
    “I’ll remember that.” Quillan curled his hand around the dog’s forepaw. “You got everything you need, Cain?”
    “What man alive can say yessir to that? I make do on what the good Lord allows me.”
    And the Lord allows you