Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Susan Lang grew up on her mother's homestead in a remote canyon nearly as wild as her fictionalized valley. Director of the Southwest Writers Series for more than fifteen years, Lang also founded the Hassayampa Institute for Creative Writing in 1995. She is instructor of English at Yavapai College in Prescott, Arizona.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

SMALL ROCKS RISING
A NOVEL
By Susan Lang

UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA PRESS

Copyright © 2002 Susan Lang.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-87417-504-6

Chapter One

When Ruth arrived on the truck loaded with her supplies, she headed straight for the first of four pinyons that enclosed her cabin site. While Matt guided John Olsen's backing of the flatbed, she boosted herself up the trunk of the pine and inched her way out onto a wide lower limb, until she could wrap her hand around a rusted tin can hanging from the branch above. Ruth had been picturing that moment since the day she signed the form and paid the fees for her homestead, March 15, 1929, nearly three weeks before. At that moment, she had made up her mind to erase all sign of the place's history as a stopover for cowboys who couldn't tolerate a few drops of pine pitch on their shirts. Can-Tree Springs, indeed: not a fit name for her land.

    Ruth yanked on the can, but it remained stubborn. After twisting the tin several times to loosen the baling wire, she jerked down again. Both wire and can came off in her hand. After she had removed the three other cans, Ruth patted the rough bark beside her. She would free the other trees once the men left. With a finger she caught one of the clear drips of pitch that covered the sides of the can?trying the turpentine taste on her tongue. The rest of the sticky drip she smeared on the back of a hand, its scent merging with her own, then she dropped to the ground to help the men unload her belongings.

    Matt and John had already begun piling building materials in front of the furthest pinyon, beside an odd-shaped boulder that reached to just above Ruth's waist.

    "Wait," she called out to Matt, who was ready to throw more planks onto the pile. "Not there. Don't put any more there. How about over by that scrub oak?"

    "What's the matter with here?" Matt leaned the planks against the boulder and swiped his forehead with the back of a hand. Sunlight turned his hair the color of fresh-churned butter. "Seems here would be handier for you." His pale blue eyes settled on her as John Olsen came up beside him lugging a huge sack of cement.

    "I'd just have to move it all again" she said. "That's why." Ruth picked up a fallen twig. "Look. I'll show you," she said, pacing out the area as she drew an approximate rectangle in the dirt. "Here's where my cabin will be, between the pinyons, where the ground's nice and flat. You can see you're putting all that inside my cabin."

    "If you draw your rectangle the other way, we won't be," Matt said. "Just turn your house around." With one foot he began to redraw the floor plan.

    "No," Ruth said. "I want to walk right out into morning sun. My front door has to face east."

    "Ya, Rute," John Olsen said, hunkering beside the stone. He rubbed at the white stubble on his jaw. "But what you do about the boulder?"

    Ruth walked over and squatted beside the old Swede, who smelled of goat and infrequent baths. Baths would not come easy here in this canyon, she realized. She ran a palm across the cold exterior of the rock. It appeared strangely alive. The smooth saddle of its back, the way it rested on a rounded belly made it seem like some kind of mineral beast. "I guess I'll have to move it, then" she said.

    Both men laughed. Matt patted her shoulder. "Ruth," he said, "you may be the most capable woman I ever met. Honest. But not even John and I together could move that boulder."

    Ruth felt her face flush. For once Matt's big smile didn't turn her to goo. "Just put the building materials over there, Matt Baxter," she said. "I'll move this rock. You wait and see." She marched toward the truck to escape the men's looks of amusement. John Olsen rose and began shifting the pile.

    With three of them, it didn't take long to finish the unloading. While Matt and John set up her tent and carried in her cot and chest of drawers, Ruth gathered wood and built a fire in the circle of rocks that cowboys in the past had constructed. Then she picked up a bucket and walked across the wash to the patch of green that surrounded her spring. She knelt among the wiry sprigs of succulent grass, some more than a foot high, and dunked her bucket into the shallow pool of water?careful to avoid skater bugs and the gray beetle floating upside down near the water's edge. Behind the spring, the exposed roots of a cottonwood dropped a tangled skirt down the bank. When her bucket was full, she dipped a cupped hand into the water and brought it to her mouth. No water had ever tasted so sweet. Her very own, fresh from the earth. Her earth.

    Later, the three of them sat in canvas camp chairs and christened her new homestead with cups of cowboy coffee. Containing her eagerness for the men to leave, Ruth sat savoring the smell of coffee and campfire smoke. She listened to the drone of passing flies and admired the sunlight puddling on Matt's soft curls. Caught up as she was in details close to her, she almost didn't notice, just over Matt's head, a man descending the bluff across the wash, dropping so smoothly he appeared almost to float down the rocks. She was too surprised to say a word, but her face spoke for her: John Olsen followed her eyes over to the stony base of Rocky Mountain.

    "It just Jim, Rute. Indian Jim," John said, pulling pipe makings from his pocket.

    "But I thought you and Kate were my nearest neighbors," Ruth said, "What is he doing ..."

    "Ya, Rute. Jim stay on the mountain sometime. In summer. He set svedges at the mine. Good worker, Jim is. Smart too." Olsen tamped the tobacco in his pipe.

    Ruth got up and walked to the campfire, where she wrestled the enamel pot off to the side of the rocks. Using a stick to tip the hot pot handle, Ruth poured coffee into her cup while the man made his way toward the camp. She wondered what she would have done if Matt and John hadn't been there. What could she have done? She decided to take up Matt's offer and borrow his rifle until the one she had ordered came in at Matt's General Store. Not that she'd ever shot a rifle.

    The man was dark-skinned, with definitive, rugged features. Abundant black hair hung loose halfway to his waist, except where it was bound by a red bandana around his forehead. Ruth had seen Indians before in El Paso, Mexican Indians who came across the border for supplies or business. She had never spoken to one, but had always been curious because of the rumors about her mother, Cally. No one in the family would speak of it directly?not even her mother?but Ruth had overheard enough hushed snatches of stories those years she lived with her aunt, whispers about the "half-breed bastard" her grandfather had brought home to raise. And once when Ruth was very young, she remembered a time on the streets in El Paso when a well-dressed woman spat at her mother's feet and hissed the word squaw.

    Matt nodded when John Olsen made the introductions, did not rise or offer his hand. Ruth was surprised to see suspicion and discomfort in his face. She could tell the Indian noticed it too: not that the expression on Jim's face did more than harden around the eyes as he looked at Matt. She made a point of walking over to offer her hand, though Matt's disapproval lent stiffness to her action.

    "There's hot coffee," she...