Firefly

by Linda Hilton

  “Yes, it’s me,” Winnie cheerfully replied. “I brought Miss Hollstrom with me. She was lookin’ for you and I told her you were here. She didn’t want to come by herself, so I came with her.”

  “What the hell do you want now?” Morgan bellowed. “Your daddy stub his toe or something?”

  No man had ever made her feel so childish. Her father filled her with a sense of guilt and inadequacy, but this man made her want to cry and run away. Or scream. Or hit something, preferably some part of his anatomy. There he was, no doubt leering down at her from that balcony, ready to burst into laughter when she told him she’d come for his assistance in locating a headache powder.

  “Well, what did you want me for?” he yelled again.

  “My mother has a headache.” She knew he probably hadn’t heard her, for she’d kept her voice low, but the simple absurdity of the situation sent blood rushing to her cheeks.

  “What? Do you expect me to hear your little mousy squeaks all the way up here?”

  Julie turned to Winnie in panic.

  “Oh, Miss Upshaw, I’m so sorry I troubled you, but I really think I’ve made a mistake,” she apologized in a voice as quiet as before. “I shouldn’t have made you bother him, and I hope he won’t—”

  She was cut off when his booted footsteps pounded slowly down the stairs.

  “Go on home, Winnie,” he ordered quietly. “I’ll holler if I need you.”

  Still chuckling to herself, Winnie Upshaw skipped past Julie. Julie wanted to follow her, but there was something so terrifying in the way Morgan looked at her that now she couldn’t move in the opposite direction either.

  He filled the doorway, one hand reaching up to the top of the rounded frame while he crossed one foot over the other so the toe of his boot rested right in the corner. Sometime since Monday afternoon he had gotten a shave, but already the black stubble shaded his cheeks and chin and jaw again.

  “Are you going to tell me what you came here and woke me up out of a sound sleep for? It isn’t often I actually sleep, and I really hate to be disturbed unless it’s for a damned good reason. You do have one, don’t you?”

  If he had been angry, Julie could have found the courage to run away from him, or even to tell him the truth. But to have him stare at her, with his green eyes like river ice in the middle of winter, unnerved her.

  “I told you before that my mother’s health is not good. She was under Dr. Opper’s care and he had given her a headache remedy. She has taken the last of it and wondered if you could help me go through his effects and possibly locate some more of this…compound.”

  “If I did, I’d probably throw it in Cold Creek here and hope it didn’t kill the fish.”

  She didn’t laugh. He wished she would. She had a nice mouth, not too wide, and the lips were a little thin, but he thought she might actually be pretty if she smiled. And there went the glasses, sliding down her nose again. She didn’t seem to notice and just went on staring at him over the tops.

  “Please, Dr. Morgan, I do not—”

  “Don’t call me that, Miss Hollstrom. I let Winnie get away with it, but no one else.”

  A small spark of fire blazed in his eyes, but the ice quickly doused it and cold returned.

  “I’m sorry. But you don’t understand my position. My mother is a very sick woman. If I can’t find some way to relieve her suffering….”

  She could not have put it into words, much less uttered those words to him.

  He looked down at himself, at the faded denims, the dilapidated boots, the shirt that needed laundering and patching and two buttons replaced. He had shaved yesterday, fully intending to go to Horace’s funeral, but in the end he had chickened out and sat home. Only when it was too late to go into the crowded church did he venture to the graveyard and there he had witnessed the desecration of the roses. He hadn’t been so filled with fury in almost six years.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Hollstrom, but I can’t help you. You saw what happened the other day; that’s what I’ve become, and I can’t go back to what I was before. Eventually there’ll be another doctor in Plato, and your mother can get her headache medicine from him. Now, go on home and brew her a nice cup of tea or some cold lemonade and for God’s sake, leave me alone.”

  The ache in that gentle plea and the knowledge of what caused that ache helped Julie stand her ground. She would have gone if he had raised his voice or if he had simply turned around and slammed the door, but she had known that same desperate pain herself, and for an even longer time.

  “If you won’t help my mother, would you at least keep your promise to Willy and get him his ice cream?”

  The knot in his chest tightened. He couldn’t count the empty promises he had made and broken over the years and never given them a thought afterwards, but no one had ever called him to task for them, either. He probably would have ignored them anyway, but somehow or other he just couldn’t bring himself to ignore Julie Hollstrom.

  “Not today, Miss Hollstrom. I don’t think I’d be very good company today. How ‘bout we meet tomorrow afternoon at McCrory’s and have regular sundaes, all right?”

  “It…it would be better if you just came to…to our house and took Willy,” she stammered, turning her gaze downward again. She would make sure Katharine was in attendance, so there was no quarrel with her father.

  Morgan was about to tell her that he would be happy to, though he couldn’t figure out why he would want to give her that kind of answer. Before the first word was out of his mouth, however, a man on horseback turned off the main street and thundered recklessly down the narrow lane. In the dust and with the sun in his unshaded eyes, Morgan couldn’t identify the rider, but the man’s furious ride boded ill news.

  Julie coughed on the dust but still heard the stranger’s impassioned plea.

  “Del Morgan? You probably don’t know me; I’m Steve Baxter. Bought the old Chernicky place north of here. My wife’s havin’ a baby and Doc Opper’s been keepin’ an eye on her, so I come to town to tell him it’s time, and they tell me he dropped dead yesterday.”

  “I can’t help you, Baxter,” Morgan croaked in a voice barely audible. Under the bluish shadow of beard his face was white, and his eyes glazed, then glittered, and he blinked as though to hold back tears.

  “You can’t mean it?” Julie whispered to him.

  He looked at her, at those eyes enormous with shock, at those lips he had thought too thin now parted in disbelief. She couldn’t know what went through his mind now. If she had, she wouldn’t ask this of him. But she didn’t know, and she was asking.

  “Is your wife alone?” he asked Baxter, the voice louder now but not any steadier.

  “Grace Fulton’s with her.”

  “Grace will take care of her. She’s got six kids of her own and delivered a helluva lot more, so she knows what to do.” Oh, God, but he needed a drink now, and there wasn’t a drop in the house. Just as there hadn’t been any last night when he’d been so furious about the roses and he didn’t even have the money for a bottle at the Castle.

  Why the hell did Opper have to die like that?

  Morgan ran his fingers through his hair and tried to think. Baxter wasn’t the type of man to show fear, but he was plainly terrified. Morgan couldn’t send him away alone.

  “Okay, Mr. Baxter, I want you to go back home. I’ll get my things together and ride out as soon as I can. I know the place. You go home and stay with your wife.”

  “I got your word you’ll be there?” Baxter asked doubtfully.

  “My word.”

  The man tipped his hat and wheeled the horse back down the lane, raising another massive cloud of dust.

  Chapter Six

  “Well, don’t just stand there,” Morgan told Julie. “Go get Winnie and find out where the hell she hid my instruments. And tell Bert, that’s her nephew, to go down to the livery and saddle a couple of horses, Sam for me and probably Woody’ll do for you. You ride much?”

  She collected all
her scattered thoughts and replaced her sliding spectacles. Squaring her shoulders, she faced him with firm determination.

  “Mr. Morgan, I will ask Miss Upshaw where she has hidden your instruments, whether in hell or anywhere else, and I will ask her nephew to hire a horse for you, but you certainly don’t expect me to come with you!”

  “Why not?” The normal color came back to his face, though his eyes still sparkled a bit too brightly. He resumed that lazy stance in the doorway. “You said yesterday you were, if I may quote you, prepared to see to my rehabilitation. Apparently you weren’t very prepared at all or else you wish to do it from a polite and safe distance.”

  “I don’t see how my accompanying you on an errand of mercy can…”

  Though he didn’t change his position, didn’t come any closer to her, he lowered his voice almost to a whisper that seemed to pull her toward him against her will.

  “Look, Julie, are you gonna help me or not? Peg Baxter might very well die if you stand here arguing. And you’d better tell your mother her headache is going to be around for a while. We may not get back until sometime tomorrow.”

  *

  The argument with Katharine lasted just as long as it took Julie to fetch a shawl and a pair of gloves and to give final instructions for supper.

  “I’m going, Mama, because the woman may die if I don’t,” she explained, wondering if what Morgan had told her was really a lie.

  “But what will I tell your father? This Mr. Morgan is so…so….”

  “So unsavory, Mama? Yes, I suppose he is, but he is also a doctor. He said he might be able to find something for your headaches, but he has to see to Mrs. Baxter first.” Pacify her, Julie thought. Play on her own needs.

  “How come I can’t go with you?” Willy asked.

  “Because it isn’t a place for children,” his mother explained. “It isn’t as though Julie is going visiting, you understand.”

  And yet as she dashed out of the house and ran towards Morgan’s, Julie felt as excited as if she were going to a party.

  *

  Woody was a sorrel mare with a broad white blaze and a pink nose. Morgan introduced the girl to the horse in four or five words and then hoisted Julie roughly onto the saddle. She settled her skirt around her and under her legs to prevent leather burns. When he had hooked his own version of Opper’s black bag over the saddle horn, Morgan mounted a buckskin gelding he called Sam.

  Julie had little experience with horses, but she knew enough to stay on even when Morgan quickly urged them to a loping canter up the road and towards the mountains. He said nothing, though he did glance at her often, probably just to make sure she was still in the saddle. The road was wide and rough and very dusty, and Julie finally dared to let go the horn in order to hold one corner of her shawl over her nose and mouth to keep from choking.

  Steve Baxter’s ranch nestled in a shallow valley in the mountains some four or five miles north of Plato. Morgan pointed out the log and stone house as soon as they had crested the last hill. It was a small building, single storied, with a porch at one end. Chickens pecked in the yard until scattered by the horses, and a barking dog bounded up to greet them, too.

  The woman in the doorway must be Grace Fulton, Julie guessed. Iron-haired and built as sturdily as many of the men in Plato, she looked at the visitors with cautious eyes.

  “You sober, Morgan?” she called before they had dismounted.

  “Yes, ma’am. And alive, which is more ‘n you can say for Horace.”

  She didn’t appear to approve of his humor, but she backed up enough to let him enter. Julie followed.

  “Who’s she?”

  “Julie Hollstrom. I’m training her to be my nurse.”

  Grace Fulton snorted.

  “What happened to Winnie Upshaw?”

  But by the time she finished that question, Morgan had already passed through the main room of the house to the bedroom where Steve Baxter stood guard.

  “We lost one last year,” the rancher said quietly. “She wants this one real bad.”

  *

  Julie sank to the bench at the kitchen table and stared at the cup of coffee in front of her. She was too tired even to pick it up. The clock on the mantel chimed softly eleven times.

  Morgan Julian Baxter was an hour old.

  Seated next to Julie, Grace Fulton commented, “I seen breech births before, but never one like that, with the cord around the neck.”

  Steve Baxter poured another tin mug full of coffee and held it out to Morgan, who sat across from the two women. He took it and blew gently as he wrapped his fingers around it. Even though he braced his elbows on the table, his hands still shook.

  He sipped the scalding coffee and said, “Your wife’s a good healthy young woman and I don’t see any reason why she shouldn’t be up and around very soon. Just remember to take good care of her and that baby, and watch for any signs of fever. If anything goes wrong, you come get me, understand?”

  The young rancher nodded gravely.

  A gentle silence descended for several minutes, broken only by the occasional snap from the fire in the cook stove and the chirp of crickets outside the open door. When he had finished his coffee, Morgan set his cup down and got to his feet. It was a queer feeling to stand up and not sway or feel like the floor was made of pudding.

  “Thanks, Morgan.”

  Baxter extended his hand, and Morgan shook it with a firmness he himself found surprising.

  “You’re welcome. You coming, Miss Hollstrom?”

  Grace put a hand on the girl’s weary shoulder, but she addressed her words to Morgan.

  “You can’t mean to ride all the way back to town now. This poor child will fall right out of the saddle, if her horse don’t stumble in the dark and throw her first.”

  Julie smiled weakly. The thought of that long ride when she was so utterly exhausted was terrifying, but more so was the thought of arriving home in the morning.

  “Miss Hollstrom is needed at home,” Morgan explained. “Her mother isn’t well.” He pulled her shawl from the wall rack where someone had hung it earlier and draped it around her shoulders. “Here, you’ll need this now that it’s cooled off. Got your gloves?”

  “Yes, here in my pocket.”

  Reaching for them, she felt something else in the pocket of her skirt and for a single instant she panicked. When had she taken the glasses off and put them there? Had anyone noticed? Had she even had them on when she arrived, or had she taken them off on the ride up here? It was too late to worry about it now, and she wouldn’t need them in the dark.

  And the night wasn’t so dark after all. A brilliant yellow moon rode high in the western sky, almost full and bright as a lantern. Julie’s eyes had adjusted to it by the time she unhitched Woody and let Morgan boost her onto the animal’s back. Shadows of mesquite and cactus stood out eerily in the pale light, and the skittering of nocturnal birds and animals set Julie’s nerves on edge. But at least she was awake and alert.

  After they had passed that first hill and were out of sight of the little ranchstead, Morgan said, “I must say, you surprised me, Miss Hollstrom. You held up pretty good.”

  “Thank you, I think. I mean, that was a compliment, wasn’t it?”

  He chuckled.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Morgan, but I’m very tired, and I guess I’m not thinking very straight. I’m probably not speaking very straight, either.”

  “You’re doing fine. And yes, it was a compliment.”

  When was the last time he had paid a woman a compliment? He must be out of practice, if she didn’t recognize it. Or maybe she’s out of practice, he thought. Probably doesn’t get too many, tall skinny girl like her with that hair pulled back and those glasses.

  He looked at her, riding next to him.

  “What happened to your spectacles?”

  “What? Oh, well, I…I took them off when we left so I wouldn’t lose them if I fell asleep.”

  She held her breath and prayed
that he wouldn’t—but he did.

  “No, you didn’t have them on all evening. In fact, I don’t remember you having them on since we got to Baxter’s place.”

  She had one more chance, a slim one, but she took it.

  “Of course, I did. You just don’t remember, because you were busy with Mrs. Baxter.”

  “No, I remember perfectly.”

  He was tempted to rein in Sam and question the girl out here where she’d be scared to death and would tell him anything, but he let the horse plod on towards home. He didn’t want Julie Hollstrom afraid of him.

  Not after tonight.

  So he dropped the subject abruptly and went on to something else.

  “I kind of enjoyed tonight myself,” he said quietly. “It’s been a long time since I helped deliver a baby, saw the way a woman looks when she holds him for the first time. I kinda missed it.”

  The horses negotiated the path down into a rocky wash and then up again. Julie used those few moments to frame the response she knew she really shouldn’t make but was going to anyway.

  “All you need to do is go back to the work you left,” she said when they’d reached the other side. “It’s waiting for you.”

  “It wouldn’t be quite that easy. I’d need some help.”

  “Someone to keep you rehabilitated?”

  “No, more than that. Well, that, too, but before I…when I was practicing before, I always had a nurse, someone to lend an extra hand, and calm people down in emergencies when I wasn’t right there.”

  It was painful to talk about it even in such an oblique way. Julie heard it in the lowering of his voice and saw it in the way he turned his face away from her. She wondered if he had ever talked about it to anyone.

  “What about Miss Upshaw?”

  “Winnie? Winnie faints when she pricks her finger with a darning needle.”

  “But I thought when Grace Fulton mentioned her that…”

  “Winnie is a dreamer. She comes over and cleans my house once in a while and she pretends she’s my nurse and we are saving lives by the thousands. She was fourteen when…when I stopped practicing medicine, and I think she had it in the back of her mind to bring me back to it someday.”