on a cot.
“Mighty nice of your uncle to come all this way,” Lorna said, though she knew Cynthia wouldn’t answer.
It was twilight. The men were talking outside. From her cot, Lorna listened.
“Does she really want to go back to the Comanches?” Tommy Kelliher said, and Isaac Parker said, “Son, no good deed . . .”
“. . . goes unpunished,” Lorna whispered. Her ears pricked up at the sound of whoops and shouts. Indians, she thought, her mouth going dry.
“She’s asleep,” Isaac Parker called out. “Come back in the morning,” and Lorna understood that news of Cynthia had spread, and people wanted to see her.
“You been took twice, Cindy,” Lorna said, her voice hollow in the darkness. “First by Indians, now by whites, and you ain’t either one.”
There was not a word from the seething, lactating presence in the corner.
Lorna tried again. “Your uncle looked for you for years. Offered a reward, trying to get you back. Nobody’d pay to get me back.”
Specifically, Lorna meant Tommy Kelliher. She had been in love with him for three days, ever since he’d returned with the woman in tow and a swagger in his step. Lorna was ten years older and had whored around with so many soldiers that she held scant hope of being a prize for anyone. She didn’t envy Cynthia her fame, but did begrudge her the love behind the ransom that had never been paid.
The next morning, while Lorna scrubbed clothes and bossed the girl tending the fires beneath boiling pots, Isaac Parker led Cynthia out of the fort, he astride a big horse and her and her baby on the meanest mule in the army. Spectators, who had indeed come back at sunup, cheered and applauded. Isaac Parker tipped his hat, but Cynthia gave no sign. Lorna watched them fade into dots far out on the plains. She let the washing fall from her hands. Tears filmed her eyes and spilled over. Her heart was a rockslide, a wagon train, a circle of fire.
“What’s the matter, Lorna?” Tommy said.
“He came all that way for her. Nobody would do that for me.”
“Aw, honey.”
“I could die, and nobody notice.”
“I would,” Tommy said.
“You would?” Joy rose up in Lorna’s heart. She beamed at him, and together they went to her room.
Ruth took over, stirring the wash and thinking. A captive rescued after twenty-four years—seven years longer than Ruth had been alive—a woman so dirty she’d changed color, and sore headed about being found, and her uncle come to fetch her? Amazing. It was like—the girl struggled to compare. Like something in the Bible. There was another emotion in her heart, too, a welter she couldn’t parse.
“She ugly,” she said to the suds, “but the baby . . .”
Was darling, she admitted. The child’s name was Topsannah. A half-Indian cook had translated: it meant Prairie Flower. Ruth thought of sunflowers and rambling roses. She abandoned the washing, sought out the cook, and asked him what else he knew about Cynthia Ann Parker. He prided himself on being an authority on the white squaw.
“She got two boys by the chief,” the cook said. “Quanah, about seventeen years, he’s killed men already. Big warrior. Younger son is Pecos. The chief had another wife, a full-blood Comanche woman. They shared him.”
Ruth shivered. This was better than what the clapping people got. Let the clothes boil over in the pots. If Lorna didn’t care, she didn’t have to, either. From an oven, the cook took a pan of bread and offered her a slice.
She bit into it. “How come she do that to her face?”
“Broken heart,” the cook said.
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