Painted by the Sun Read online

  They all seemed to be hanging on what the tall man said. He looked down at the tintype, then up at Shea. "And you claim you can make us all look as fine as this?"

  Shea shrugged. "A potter is only as good as his clay," she answered. "I make likenesses; I don't perform miracles."

  One corner of the man's mouth twitched, though Shea wasn't sure if he was amused or offended.

  "All right, then," he agreed and rubbed at his chin. "Will I have time to shave?"

  Shea let out the breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. "Of course you will. A man wants to look his best when he has his portrait made."

  "Good enough," he said with a nod. "I'm Wes Seaver. I expect you'll meet the others by and by."

  "Indeed, I hope I will," she answered. Then she turned her attention from her customers to the narrow, sharp-sided valley. Bisected by a six-foot-wide ribbon of rippling stream, the camp consisted of cabins and mine tailings sprinkled along both banks.

  "I'd like to set up my camera here on the rise where the light is good, if that's all right."

  "It's fine with me," Seaver agreed. "I'll send my brother Jake out to the cabins so everyone knows you're here."

  While Shea parked the wagon and tended the horses, the crowd dispersed. By the time she climbed into the back, Owen was getting things unpacked.

  "Don't like this," he grumbled under his breath. "Just don't like it."

  Shea glanced across at him. "Well, it's not quite what I expected either, but we're here now and we're going to make the best of it. We'll be making mostly tintypes this afternoon, but have a few glass plates cleaned and ready, just in case."

  Leaving Owen to organize the chemicals to his own exacting specifications, Shea picked up her camera and tripod and went back outside. The bench that sat in front of the general store and "dispensary" was a perfect place to pose her customers.

  As she set up the camera, the boy she'd seen in the crowd earlier crept toward her. He was nine or ten, wiry, dark-haired, and grimy from head to toe.

  "You really a photographer, ma'am?" he asked her, his eyes alight. He was all but dancing with excitement.

  Shea couldn't help but grin. "Yes, I am."

  "You really gonna charge a dollar for the photographs?"

  Shea nodded, adjusting the tripod's legs.

  "See, I ain't got but eighteen cents." He pulled a handful of pennies out of his pocket. "I earned most of it mucking out Old Digger McNee's cabin over yonder. I swear he had beans in his pot that went back to last spring!"

  Shea laughed in spite of herself. "Maybe your folks can come up with the price of a photograph," she suggested as she ducked beneath the dark-cloth and twisted the knob on the lens to bring the bench into focus.

  "That ain't likely," she heard the boy say. "My ma died two years ago, and since then Pa spends most of our money on whiskey."

  Shea was taken aback by the boy's forthrightness, and she couldn't think of a thing to say to him.

  "Whatcha looking at under there, anyway?" he asked her a moment later.

  Shea lifted one edge of the dark-cloth. "You want to see?"

  "Sure!" His eyes fired up with excitement again. They were pretty eyes, set in a smudged and sunburned face, golden brown and flecked with green. Sharp eyes filled with eagerness and energy.

  He ducked beneath the drape of fabric, and Shea positioned him in front of her. He had to stand up on his toes to see the image on the focusing glass, and instinctively she curled a hand around his shoulder to steady him. As she did she caught the sweaty, earthy smell of a boy who liked exploring these hills and digging in the dirt. She wrinkled her nose, but couldn't quite bring herself to back away from him.

  "The store's upside down!" he exclaimed. "How come it's upside down? Will the picture come out upside down?"

  Shea smiled to herself, remembering her own confusion the first time Simon had allowed her to look through the focusing glass. "There's a lens inside the camera that takes the light from things out front and flips it over. It's that light passing through the lens that makes an image on the photographic plate."

  He looked back at her in the close confines of the tented dark-cloth. She could see him gnawing at the chapped curve of his lower lip. "What's a photograp-pic plate?"

  Right then and there Shea made a decision. "All right, boy, if you want to help me while I take the photographs, I'll show you how all this works."

  "I'm good at helping," he hastily assured her.

  Shea flipped back the dark-cloth. "I need to know what to call you if you're going to work for me."

  "I'm Tyler Morran," he said and stuck out one dirt-encrusted hand. "But Pa calls me Ty."

  "Ty it is, then." Shea took his hand gingerly in hers. "I'm Shea Waterston."

  Shea took a moment to think what she wanted him to do. "Well, first," she began, "I want you to wash your face and hands all the way to the elbows. Handling plates and chemicals requires cleanliness. Then we can go inside the photography wagon, and I'll introduce you to my assistant."

  "Am I your assistant, too?" the boy asked hopefully.

  Shea hesitated, wondering if he'd expect her to pay him for his services. Then she acknowledged that even if he did, he needed the pittance she'd give him far more than she. "I guess you are," she answered.

  The boy snuffed and spat. "Hot damn!" he said.

  After giving Ty soap, Shea climbed inside the wagon, where Owen had things all laid out.

  "Water reservoir?" he asked her, indicating the collapsed rubber bladder that would hang from one of the ribs in the wagon's top so they'd have running water during the processing.

  "I'll have our new helper take care of it."

  "Some kid," he guessed.

  Shea just laughed.

  "Better than the last?" he murmured.

  "Well, yes, I know the last one tried to pocket two of our lenses," she admitted. "But I'm sure this one is far more—"

  "Mrs. Waterston?" Ty called from just outside. "I'm all washed up."

  Owen gave a snort of derision.

  "Come on in, Ty," she shouted.

  The boy climbed into the wagon. "I can't say as how I've ever seen so many of the men washed up and clean at once!" he declared, reporting back from the stream.

  Shea bit her lip to suppress her smile. "Do you suppose you could bring us a bucket of clear water?" she asked him.

  Ty nodded and took the bucket.

  "Better than some," Owen allowed.

  They were just filling the rubber bladder with water when someone rapped on the side of the wagon.

  "We'll be ready for you in a few minutes," Shea called out. Tying the edges of the flap at the back of the wagon closed to keep out the daylight, Shea went to where Owen had everything mixed and ready. It was warm inside the wagon, and the only light came through the yellow calico window in the top, giving the tiny space a dim, orangey glow.

  "Now we're going to flow the plates," Shea told Ty in her most instructive voice.

  There were two kinds of plates, ones made of black coated iron and others of glass. She took one of the metal plates and dusted the japanned surface with a camel-hair brush. Carefully balancing the plate on the fingertips of her left hand, Shea took up a bottle with her right.

  "This is the collodion," she said pouring a substance about the consistency of thin molasses into the center of the plate. She turned her wrist as she did, tipping the plate carefully in what she'd always considered a graceful sleight of hand. The liquid ran slowly toward her thumb, then, with another tip, toward her forefinger. She moved the plate side to side, coating it evenly.

  A cloying drift of vapor rose from the liquid as she worked. "Collodion is made from ether, alcohol, and guncotton," she said, holding the bottle beneath the last corner of the plate and dribbling the excess into the neck. "Collodion can catch fire or make you dizzy because of the ether. It dries fast, so we work quickly. Once the plate is tacky, we'll dip it into a chemical that will react with the collodion and make the p
late sensitive to light."

  Ty looked up at her and nodded.

  "While I am posing our subjects," she went on, "Owen will be sensitizing the plates and putting them in the plate holders. What we'll need you to do, Ty, is bring the plates to me out at the camera. Do you think you can do that?"

  Once he'd assured her he could, Shea tested the edge of the plate with the tip of her index finger. "Perfect," she pronounced, and showed Ty how to set the plate into an inverted-T-shaped holder. "This is the dipper," she said as she lowered the coated plate into a canted, black envelope-like apparatus that was filled with clear liquid.

  "This is silver nitrate," she explained. "It makes the plate sensitive to the light that comes through the lens of the camera." She supposed to a boy Ty's age all this must seem like sorcery.

  "Now I'm going to pose the first of our customers. I'll need you to bring me the plate when I call for it."

  Outside the wagon five miners were lined up to have their photographs made. Shea gestured the first one forward, settled him on the bench, and eased him into the stemmed, semicircular headrest Owen had set up for her behind the bench. The headrest functioned as a guide to help the sitters remain in position long enough for Shea to make her exposure.

  After she'd collected her fee, Shea strode to the back of the camera, ducked beneath the dark-cloth, and looked through the lens. "Take off your hat," she instructed. "Hold it in your lap if you like. Otherwise it casts a shadow on your face, and we won't be able to see you."

  Moving carefully so as not to dislodge the headrest positioned behind his ears, the man did as he was told.

  "Ty," she shouted and checked the focus one last time. "I need that plate."

  She was just replacing the lens cap when the boy eased out of the wagon. Moving with exaggerated care, Ty brought her the loaded plate holder.

  "The plate sort of glowed when Owen took it out of that silver nite-tate stuff," he whispered.

  Shea took the rectangular wooden frame. "I'm pleased you carried this plate holder just the way Owen showed you."

  The plate holder had a latched wooden door on one side where Owen had inserted the sensitized plate, and a slide on the other. Taking care to keep it upright, Shea eased the plate holder into the slit on the side of the camera so it—and the sensitized plate—were positioned in front of the lens.

  She turned to her subject. "I need you to sit absolutely still for this," she told him.

  Once she had judged the strength of the sun streaming over her subject's face and calculated the exposure, Shea pulled the wooden slide with her left hand and removed the lens cap with her right. She allowed light to enter the camera for a count of six, then replaced the cap and pushed in the slide.

  "You're done," she told her sitter.

  "That all there is to it?" he asked her.

  Shea removed the plate holder from the camera and sent Ty into the wagon. "Sitting for a tintype is easy, isn't it?"

  "How long before I can pick up my picture?" he wanted to know.

  "An hour," she told him. For all his eccentricities, Owen had been one of the most skilled and efficient photographic processors in New York City. "And I'm sure you'll be delighted with the picture when you see it."

  The next man took his place on the bench, and Shea went through the posing again. They worked methodically all afternoon, and as the men saw how a sitting worked, they began to include things in their poses that gave hints to their personalities. One pretended to be playing his guitar. Someone else brought his shovel and pickax. Two of the women posed together, each wearing a lovely lace mantilla.

  When one of the sitters seemed particularly colorful, Shea made a second exposure on a glass plate. Though she didn't explain what she was doing, these pictures were for her. After she and Owen were settled somewhere, she'd take the glass negatives and make copies to sell back east. The easterners fancied almost anything that captured the feel of the West, and these men were as much a part of it as the prairies and the mountains.

  Midway through the afternoon Wes Seaver showed up and took his place on the little bench. He'd shaved, slicked back his luxuriant blond hair, and rewaxed his mustache. He'd donned a handsome broadcloth jacket, a jay blue vest, and a black string tie. Before seating himself, he eased a fancy pearl-handled revolver from the holster on his hip.

  Shea noticed he wore his holster tied down like the gunfighters she'd seen in Dodge City and in Abilene. He seemed unaccountably comfortable with that pistol. But then, many of the men who'd fought in the Civil War handled firearms with the same unnerving nonchalance.

  Seaver struck a pose, and once Shea had exposed the plate for his tintype, she asked Ty to bring a second plate.

  "What are you doing?" Seaver asked her.

  A guilty shiver slid up her back. None of the other men whose pictures she'd taken for herself had questioned her.

  "I think you moved during the first exposure," she lied, her heart thumping. "I'm making a second to be sure you're happy with the portrait I make of you."

  "Oh, all right," Seaver answered. He settled back on the bench and carefully turned his gun so the beautifully etched barrel and the polished grip showed to best advantage.

  Shea's last customer was preparing for his photograph when a rail-thin man wove down the inclined path from one of the nearby cabins.

  "Ty?" he called out, as the boy climbed out of the wagon, balancing the plate holder in his two hands. "Ty, what are you doing there? You're not bothering that lady, are you?"

  "Hullo, Pa," Ty called out to him. Giving the photographic plate to Shea, he ran up the rise to meet his father. "I'm glad you're awake, Pa. There's someone I want you to meet."

  As the two of them came toward her, Shea could see that the man's hair was mussed and his eyes were bloodshot.

  "This is my pa, Sam, Mrs. Waterston," Ty made the introduction. "Mrs. Waterston's a photographer, and I been helping her."

  Morran laid his hand on his son's curly hair. "And you are a good worker, aren't you, lad?"

  Why wouldn't a man who touched his son so gently see that he was bathed and fed and wearing clean clothes? Shea wondered. How could any man sleep away the afternoon when his son was hard at work?

  I'd take better care of Ty if he were mine, Shea found herself thinking.

  "He's been a big help to me, Mr. Morran," Shea said, wanting to be sure Ty's father knew how much she appreciated his son. She'd even seen Owen give the boy a nod of approval. "I'm afraid we've kept Ty running most of the afternoon."

  Ty beamed at her praise of him.

  "Hey, what about me?" Shea's last customer shouted from the bench where he was posed and ready. "You gonna jaw all day or take my picture?"

  While Ty gave his father an explanation of everything photographers did, Shea took the photograph. When she was done, Ty looked up at his father. "Can we have our picture made, Pa? It costs a dollar."

  "Aw, no, Ty. I don't think we can afford—"

  "I got eighteen cents," he went on hopefully and dug into his trouser pocket.

  Shea couldn't bear to watch him offer up those hard-earned pennies, and spoke impulsively. "I'll take the photograph for free! I—I had intended to pay the boy for his help, but if Ty would rather have a tintype made..."

  Tyler's eyes glowed. "You'd do that, Mrs. Waterston?"

  Shea smiled. "For such a fine helper, indeed I would."

  "Oh, son, I don't know," Ty's father began, smoothing down his boy's hair.

  "But we don't have any pictures of Mama," the boy cajoled, "and sometimes I wish..."

  The grief that flared in Morran's eyes was proof of the man's feelings for his dead wife.

  That's why he doesn't take care of Ty. There isn't room in him for anything but his pain and loss. The flash of insight made Shea twitch inside her skin. It wasn't something she wanted to know about this boy, or about his father. She shifted on her feet, unsettled and angry, convinced that Ty deserved better than his father was giving him.

&nb
sp; "Please, Mr. Morran," she found herself saying. "Let me take the picture for the boy's sake."

  Morran must have read her judgment of him in her eyes, because he took a moment to compose himself, then looked down at his son. "All right," he agreed.

  Shea positioned the two of them side by side on the bench. She straightened Morran's hair as best she could and noted it was no cleaner than his son's. She tugged at the frayed collar of his work shirt and draped his arm around his son's narrow shoulders.

  Ty snuggled in, absorbing the contact with his father like rain seeping into dusty earth. He laid his own small hand on his father's thigh.

  The hunger in that simple gesture made Shea's throat close up, and she couldn't help remembering her own da's spontaneous hugs. He'd always had a place on his knee for one of them, and stories to tell by the cottage fire.

  She sensed that Tyler Morran's father never told his son stories, never held him close, never made him feel safe. With the realization, a knot of conviction tightened beneath Shea's breastbone.

  When she found her son, she'd take such good care of him. She'd feed and care for him. She'd hold him in the evenings and play games with him and spin tales for him. She'd make sure he knew he was loved, knew he was safe. Every child deserved that, even if he wasn't hers.

  Shea peered at Ty and his father through the focusing glass, determined to get the photograph taken before they lost the light. Owen was humming when she went in to retrieve the last plate they'd expose this afternoon.

  When she returned, she adjusted the focus one last time, put in the plate holder, and pulled the slide.

  "I'll give this tintype to Ty when we are done," she told Morran as he pushed to his feet the moment they were finished.

  "You sure you don't mind having him underfoot?" he asked her, shifting uneasily and glancing to where the lights had come on in the dispensary.

  "Heavens, no! Ty's been a wonderful help this afternoon."

  "Good," Morran said. "Good." Then without another word he went inside.

  It seemed that the dispensary was a gathering place for many of the men at the close of the day. As Shea put away the camera, she could hear them in there talking and laughing.