by Linda Hilton
“Oh.”
“What, is that guilt I hear?”
She lifted her eyes from her hands to look at him and saw that he was smiling at her.
He had a nice smile, she decided, if a little bit crooked, and there was warmth in the way his eyes crinkled at the corners. If he shaved regularly and had some of that shaggy hair cut, he might be quite a handsome man. A bath wouldn’t hurt, either.
“I just feel rather sad that Miss Upshaw, after all her dreams, couldn’t have been the one to do it. I mean, I’m a newcomer, and I feel I’ve taken a prize someone else has been trying for.”
“Well, you haven’t saved me yet, Miss New Girl in Town. And we aren’t far from town now, so you’d better put those spectacles of yours back on before somebody else notices you took them off. Vanity can put some pretty big obstacles in your path to trip over, too.”
So that’s what he thought! Rather arrogant of him to presume she’d removed the things because she wanted to appear more attractive to him. But it was probably less dangerous that way. If she went to work for him, she would simply have to be more careful.
But working for him was a terribly big “if” right now. Katharine might be persuaded because she needed a doctor’s care, and that need was Julie’s leverage. Katharine had already consented to tonight’s errand, and with surprisingly little protest, as Julie recalled with a puzzled frown. In fact, Katharine had hardly argued at all. But of course, Wilhelm had not been home at the time.
Wilhelm was a different matter entirely.
Chapter Seven
Morgan said good night to Julie while he walked her to the porch of the darkened house. Odd, he thought, that no one had left a light for her. He waited an extra minute or two after she had gone inside, just in case there was an argument, but the house remained as silent as it was dark.
He took the horses back to the livery stable, where he woke Gus and then helped the old Swede put the animals to bed. Tired in body but not ready for sleep himself, Morgan began the long walk back to the other end of town.
Main Street was bright compared to the track up to Baxter’s. Light spilled from the Castle’s wide windows and swinging door, and the saloon was noisy, too, even this late. Fred’s piano plinked away and raucous voices raised in what passed for song.
The temptation brought Morgan up short. He stopped and stood in the middle of Main Street, outside the lamplight so no one would see him but still able himself to see into the busy saloon.
Two days of sobriety. He couldn’t remember when he had last gone that long without the comforting oblivion. And tonight he needed it. He had delivered a baby, a living, kicking, nuzzling little mite who curled into the comfort of his mother’s embrace. It was a scene he’d never forget, and one he couldn’t bear to remember.
He turned away from the saloon’s enticement and headed home again, with a smile of self-satisfaction. It hadn’t been an easy delivery, but he had managed to save both mother and child. He didn’t know what made him insist the Hollstrom girl come with him, except maybe to pay her back for all the grief she had given him lately, but in the end he had been pleased with her.
And hell, she wasn’t a girl any more than he was a stripling boy. She was a woman, a quiet and strong woman who on more than one occasion in his sometimes patchy memory had done what needed to be done. And she made everything seem more normal, more like it had been with Amy.
He pushed the front door of his house open and dropped the black bag to the floor. Leaning back until the portal latched, he smiled at the lamp Winnie had left in the parlor window. No doubt she had filled a big basin of water for him in the kitchen, too.
He stripped off the filthy shirt and managed in the process to skitter another button across the floor. The garment was beyond salvage anyway; he ripped it in half and tossed the pieces on top of the cold stove. The pants landed there, too, though the worn denim resisted his efforts to separate one leg from the other. He would have disposed of the boots as well, but they had to serve one more day at least.
“You ought to be in bed,” he told himself aloud, “not trying to take a bath in a dishpan.” He dipped each arm in the tepid water and reached for the cake of soap.
He couldn’t rinse the soap completely off when there was soon more of it in the water than on him. Without bothering to cover any of his nakedness, he walked out the kitchen door and crossed the yard to the creek. The gravelly soil hurt his feet, but with some help from the bright gibbous moon he avoided any stray cactus spines. Well aware of the temperature of Cold Creek, he took a deep breath and placed one foot in the shallow stream. By this time of the year, there was barely enough water to splash in, and in another week or so it would completely dry up, but tonight it sufficed. By the time he had rinsed the last of Winnie’s home-made soap from his body, he ached and shivered. But he felt clean, and revitalized. He brushed droplets of icy water from the hair on his chest and then shook his head like a dog.
He found towels enough to dry his skin and hair, then walked through the house to the stairs, stopping in the parlor to take the lamp with him. He couldn’t remember if there was one in the closed second bedroom upstairs.
There was, on the table beside the bed, but the wick looked old and frayed and the oil was nearly gone, so he set the lamp he had brought beside it and then walked to the wardrobe. He didn’t look at the bed. He knew it was shrouded in sheets, the folds dark with the accumulated dust of six years.
The dark walnut wardrobe was carved in an intricate pattern reminiscent of Old Spain. The key in the lock turned easily. The tarnished silver hinges swung with only a slight squeak. Morgan stood for a moment and stared at the empty half of the wardrobe, letting the memories fill him. The party dresses, the apricot satin ball gown she had worn the night of their engagement party, the blouses she had so lovingly stitched and embroidered and tucked. And that nightgown of layer after layer of lace. All were gone now, though he could see them as if they still hung neatly just after she had put everything away.
His own shirts and trousers hung on his side, as dull and unexciting as Amy’s had been bright and gay. Of course, there was that pair of red suspenders she had bought him for Christmas one year. He opened the single shallow drawer in the bottom of the wardrobe and found them, along with a pair of gold cufflinks and a mismated pair of socks.
He took down a white shirt, dingy even in this poor light. He’d have Winnie wash it for him in the morning, and with a pair of black trousers and a coat, he’d be a long way toward looking respectable again. If they fit. He drew on the shirt, liking the feel of crisp linen after how many years of chambray and threadbare flannel. He had lost a little weight since he last wore this shirt, but that was better than gaining a paunch. He tried on the pants with a bit of hope that they, too, would fit reasonably well.
“I’ll need to pull in my belt a notch or two to hold them up,” he laughed in the empty room, “but I’ll be damned if I’ll wear those red suspenders!”
The sheets on his bed smelled of sweat and stale whisky, but he blew out the lamp and collapsed on them. He would get word to Winnie in the morning that he wanted the house cleaned thoroughly along with his laundry.
He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. So many plans, so many things to do. Tomorrow he would have to wire Denver or Santa Fe for medical supplies, and find some books to get caught up on the last six years’ medical advances. No sense being as out of date as Horace always had been.
But before that, he had some shopping to do. New boots and a decent hat were first on the list. Then a trip to the barbershop for a haircut and shave. When he stopped at the haberdashery for the hat, he’d ask Mr. Farnum about alterations to his present wardrobe. It would be a while before Morgan could afford new clothes, but these would suffice for a while if they were taken in.
If he was going to let the Hollstrom girl make a doctor out of him again, he might just as well look the part.
*
For the first few hours
of that restless night, Julie lay on her bed and dutifully tried to sleep. But too many thoughts rampaged through her head, all shouting and fighting for supremacy. Before there was even a hint of grey in the sky, she had left the wrinkled sheets to stand by the window and face the black western sky with its spangled stars already paling around the moon.
She remembered how joyful Mrs. Baxter had looked in her exhaustion when the ordeal was over and she held her new son in her arms. There had been no such euphoria when Katharine Hollstrom was delivered of Willy nine years ago, and the memory of that night with all its horrors came back to haunt Julie. She thanked Providence there was no tree in the silvered back yard under her window, especially no oak tree with wide-spreading branches that made such a convenient gallows. Death and new life. How strangely they had come together that night.
Now there had been death and new life again. Horace Opper had died and Morgan Julian Baxter had been born. Julie wondered if those events would change her life as much as when a drifter named Ted Sheen had lost his life at the end of a rope and a fragile seven-month infant named William Shakespeare Hollstrom had come squalling into the world.
And then there was Del Morgan. He stole into Julie’s thoughts no matter what other subject had momentarily claimed her attention. What right did she have to speak to him as she had, to demand he return to whatever his former life had been? She knew too little about his wife’s death. Winnie Upshaw had said something about Amy Morgan being killed, and Julie resolved to seek out the ebullient Miss Upshaw to learn the rest of the details. Knowing the cause of the man’s grief might help her in her crusade.
She tried to make herself believe Morgan’s rehabilitation was her only interest in the man. She used Katharine and Willy as excuses to urge him to take up his profession again, but such tactics didn’t fool her and she knew they would never fool her father. He had no more forgotten Ted Sheen than she had.
Which brought her back to why hadn’t Wilhelm waited for her until she and Morgan returned? It must have been long past midnight, and yet the house was dark and everyone had seemed asleep. Julie was so certain that Wilhelm had heard her come in that she waited a long time before she ventured to remove her sweaty, dusty clothes and don a cool nightgown. As the hours passed and still nothing happened, she became more and more afraid of what would happen come morning.
But nothing happened then either. Wilhelm said nothing to her, nor did Katharine, except to complain rather more than usual about her headache. Willy went off after breakfast to find Clancy without even asking Julie the details of her adventure.
Which was exactly the way she saw it as she busied herself with the dishes and then baked a batch of sugar cookies.
Katharine sat in the parlor with the latest Saturday Evening Post. Her occasional moans floated through the house, and twice she came into the kitchen to look for something to settle her stomach. Julie sympathized all she could, but she had no remedy for either that complaint or the headache.
The last sheet of cookies had just come from the oven when Katharine made a third foray.
“I don’t know how much longer I can bear this,” she groaned. “After your father comes home for lunch, I’m afraid I shall have to—”
“Papa’s coming home for lunch?” Julie interrupted.
He never did that. Never.
“Yes, didn’t he tell you?” Katharine looked and sounded surprised, but then with a little shrug of her shoulders she sighed, “Oh, no, I don’t think he did. I think he wanted me to tell you.” She sat down at the table and helped herself to a cookie from the barrel-shaped jar. “I’m afraid he’s not very happy about what you did yesterday.”
Julie slipped the spatula under a row of cookies on the sheet and lifted them to the wire rack to cool.
“I didn’t think he would be. But, Mama, it isn’t what he thinks. Dr. Morgan did need me, and there wasn’t anyone else,” she insisted.
“The chicken burned a little,” Katharine told her. “I had to lie down on the sofa for a while, and the chicken burned. And I put too much honey on the carrots.”
The accusation was clear. Wilhelm had complained of the poorly prepared meal. Had Julie been home, his supper would have been perfect the way it always was. She shook her head. Wilhelm complained when she wasn’t there, but he never complimented her when she was.
What would happen when she told him Morgan had asked her to work for him? If she accepted, it would mean changes in the Hollstrom household. Just the matter of turning the cooking over to Katharine was enough to assure Julie of her father’s refusal.
She had known from the start that the venture was doomed, but she hadn’t wanted to accept it. Even now she fought against it.
“Mama, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” she began, “but I think it’s time—. Who can that be?”
The light tapping on the front door was almost inaudible. Settling her spectacles back on the bridge of her nose where they belonged, she walked to the foyer and pulled the door open.
“Good morning, Miss Hollstrom.”
“Dr. Morgan?”
She tried to hold back the title he had forbidden, but he looked so deserving of it, standing there still smelling faintly of shaving soap, shampoo, and bay rum. He slid the brim of a new, low-crowned hat through his fingers nervously. Julie knew he probably could barely see her, for the hallway was dark and he’d just come out of the sunlight.
“I came to see if you and Master Willy were free for that ice cream I promised.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, really I am. Willy’s with Clancy McCrory right now, and in a few minutes my father will be home for lunch.” She felt like a fool, sending him away like this. He had gone to a great deal of effort and expense to change from yesterday’s derelict to the well-dressed, clean-shaven gentleman at her door this morning.
Despite her words, he seemed undeterred.
“Perhaps this afternoon?” he asked. “I have some business of my own at McCrory’s. We could meet there at, say, two o’clock?”
He could see her better now that his eyes adjusted to the shade on the porch. When she briefly smiled, he thought perhaps she was about to agree to meet him, but then anger puckered her brow.
He mumbled, “It’s all right, Miss Hollstrom. I understand.” He felt like a complete ass. He had just turned to leave when the reason for her scowl clumped up the stairs behind him.
“Off my porch, Morgan,” Wilhelm growled, pointing a finger towards the street. “I will deal with you later.”
“Papa, please.”
“You go in and leave this to me.” Now he shook the finger at his daughter. “I don’t want you—”
“Well, hello, Dr. Morgan!” Katharine sang behind Julie. She hardly sounded like a woman with a throbbing head and a churning stomach.
“Good morning, Mrs. Hollstrom.”
“It isn’t morning any more, Dr. Morgan. It’s five minutes after twelve. Have you had lunch?”
“Katharine, this is not the time—”
“Oh, nonsense. We have plenty for one more, don’t we, Julie?”
Julie felt trapped between her insistent mother and her obstinate father. Wilhelm shoved his way past Morgan and stood on the threshold, neither in nor out of the house. And Julie couldn’t move out of his way.
Julie could see Morgan clearly now, and he seemed to hide a sympathetic smile when he said, “I don’t want to put you to any trouble, Mrs. Hollstrom.”
“No trouble at all, Dr. Morgan.” Katharine reached past Julie to take her husband’s arm. “Come on in, Wilhelm, and don’t block the doorway.”
Without bothering to plead her useless arm as an excuse not to offer some assistance in the kitchen, Katharine led the gentlemen into the parlor while Julie gathered lunch. She found a platter of leftover chicken and discovered it wasn’t burnt as badly as Katharine had let on. Julie took a pint jar of corn from the pantry and dumped the contents into a pan with a lump of butter to heat while she sliced bread.
Though
she worked frantically, Julie couldn’t keep her mind off that image of Del Morgan as he walked through her front door. He looked so different that she had trouble recalling the man who had brought her home last night. Instead of faded denims he wore a pair of black trousers, plain but of good quality. The tattered plaid shirt was replaced by a clean white linen one, over which he wore a black coat open just enough to reveal a blue waistcoat and a heavy gold watch chain. She wondered if the black boots were new enough to hurt his feet and hoped that they didn’t.
Julie had boiled some eggs this morning and now quickly deviled them, then filled a bowl with applesauce. She carried these to the dining room and then began to set the table.
Katharine talked, but no one listened. Wilhelm glowered, and Morgan watched the girl in the dining room. She was quick and efficient and graceful despite her haste. And so thin. It was no wonder he had missed the resemblance between mother and daughter. Katharine was as plump as a spoiled cat. Julie only had hints of the dimples that sparkled in her mother’s cheeks.
When she finally called the others in to eat, Julie felt exhausted. And out of place. Katharine, as always, looked as if she had just come from the parlor and the Saturday Evening Post. Papa wore his usual office clothes and Morgan in his new incarnation put her old calico dress and scuffed shoes to shame. She pushed at a loose strand of hair and resituated her glasses, but that wasn’t enough to make her feel comfortable when he came to hold her chair for her. She blushed hotly.
He moved to the chair Katharine had indicated for him and sat down. As Julie picked up the platter of chicken and passed it to him, he noticed how thin, how fragile her wrists were. He could almost see the bones through the skin.
“I’m afraid I didn’t apologize for making you miss your supper last night,” he said, letting his eyes draw hers. He slid the serving fork under a plump breast half and placed it on her plate. “How about a wing, too?”
“No, no thank you,” she stammered. She knew Wilhelm was glaring at her.