Firefly

by Linda Hilton

  “I got it!” she breathed.

  Julie’s triumphant declaration brought a faint smile to Morgan’s lips, but it was some time before he could speak again.

  “Now get me sewn back together and we’ll take a look at Mr. Wallenmund,” he told her when he found his voice. “And don’t worry about the embroidery.”

  “You take your time with Del, Miss Hollstrom,” Grace Fulton countered. “I can take care of ‘Mr. Wallenmund.’ I’ve stitched up shot-off fingers before and I can do it again.” When Morgan tried to argue, she shushed him and went on. “I’m gonna send this big galoot that brought Hans in back over to your place for a stretcher and then him and the marshal are gonna tote you home. You ain’t doin’ no more doctorin’ today. You ain’t doin’ nothin’ but restin’.”

  Grace picked up a needle and threaded it with a length of catgut and then handed it to Julie.

  “I hear you’re quite a seamstress. Mebbe you could give me a few pointers.”

  After the unbearable pain of extracting the bullet, the pinpricks of the stitches were nothing. Morgan lay still, only his clenched teeth to indicate he felt even the jabs of the needle and the pulling of the thread through muscle and then skin. When Julie had finished and removed the tourniquet, she was pleased to notice that there was very little bleeding. And the bloodless hand that had grown so blue and cold now flushed with a healthy pink and warmed in her own grasp.

  Though he argued that he was perfectly capable of helping Grace with Hans, Morgan did not get up from the table when Julie placed a hand on his chest and ordered him to remain right where he was.

  “Mrs. Fulton is right. You need your rest,” she told him.

  Thaddeus Burton hesitantly approached and added his own insistence.

  “You do like Miss Julie says, Doc, or I’ll flatten you just like I flattened that fella what shot you.”

  Morgan laughed.

  “I expect you would at that. But I thought you shot Hans.”

  “Oh, I shot him all right. I walked all the way from the livery, though, and my leg was achin’ pretty bad. I guess that’s what threw my aim off. When I saw him standin’ there at the window, I hollered, but I had a feeling it was too late. I just pulled up the gun and fired. I meant to hit the barrel, so just in case he got his shot off it’d go sideways or somethin’. I hit his hand instead and probably the trigger, too. Maybe it’s all my fault.”

  “You didn’t shoot twice, did you?”

  “Nope, just the once.”

  “Well, then, it wasn’t your fault,” Morgan assured him. “I heard the two shots, his and then yours. If I hadn’t turned when Julie screamed, I’d have taken it in the chest. I don’t know what threw his aim off, whether it was her scream or your holler, but—”

  “But that’s enough, you two,” Julie cut in. “Mr. Burton, I think the doctor needs to rest now.”

  Hans moaned then, and Julie could see that Grace was closing the skin over the two stumps on his right hand, where Burton’s shot had done its damage.

  “I could use some help,” Grace called quietly. “I think he’s comin’ around.”

  Julie and Burton knelt on either side of the second patient and held him still while Grace finished her own stitchery. She worked quickly, if not as artistically as Julie, but even so Hans rapidly became aware of his situation.

  “Did I kill her?” he asked in a hoarse, terrified whisper.

  “Her?” Grace echoed. “No, you shot Dr. Morgan, but he ain’t even close to bein’ dead.”

  “It was Julie I wanted to kill. I knew she would never have me after he made a fool of me in there, in front of them all. She was promised to me, and I could not let him have her.”

  He yelped when Grace plunged the needle into his flesh again, and then he fell silent.

  “Wish I’da aimed at his head,” Burton muttered angrily.

  *

  Exhausted, Julie slumped on the chair someone had pulled up beside the table for her. It might have been Grace or Thaddeus or one of the deputies who came for Hans. Clark Garroway and the same chambermaid who had brought the towels now bustled around the ballroom cleaning up the mess. Clark brought a pillow that Julie placed under Morgan’s head, but he still complained about the hardness of the tabletop.

  “As soon as Marshal Phillips gets back, we’ll get you home,” Julie promised. “I still can’t believe Hans wanted to kill me.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Firefly. It’s all over. He’s not a killer, he just got his pride hurt pretty bad. And the way he was blubbering when Ted took him out of here, I don’t think we have to worry about him coming after you again.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. Maybe this whole thing will wake him up and he’ll start working on his farm. I won’t even press charges against him, but I do need to see the judge before he leaves town. Do you know where he went?”

  “No, I don’t, but what do you need him for if you’re not going to press charges against Hans?”

  “Oh, several things. For one, Ted told me your father had you locked in your room. That’s false imprisonment, or something. And selling you to Hans is slavery, or ‘involuntary servitude,’ as the Constitution puts it. We fought a war in this country over it, and I don’t intend to let anyone get away with something a couple million good men died to see abolished.”

  Later, perhaps, she would tell him that her own father, whom she had never known, was one of those millions. But for now there was only the future to consider, not the past. She laid a tired hand on his forehead.

  “Are you serious?” she asked. “Or just a bit feverish.”

  “If there’s any fever in my blood, it’s because of you, Firefly. And that’s another thing I need to see the judge about. You and I have some unfinished business. We were supposed to get married yesterday.”

  Julie tried to stammer a reply, but no words came to her tongue.

  “Wintergarden’s off to Staynes Junction to dedicate their new church, so I thought maybe I could prevail upon Judge Booth to make this legal between us.”

  “Now? Today?”

  “Why not? Yesterday was good enough.”

  “But look at me! Look at you! We’re both covered with blood, and you can’t even stand up.”

  “I can and I will, if I have to lean on my best man. I’m sure Mr. Burton won’t let me fall.”

  “Mr. Burton?”

  “Who else? You remember that letter he wrote to me, when he sent the bank draft.”

  “How could I forget.”

  “Well, he told me then that he wanted an invitation to our wedding.”

  Julie could hardly believe her ears, and yet she knew she wasn’t dreaming. Nightmares like the one she had been through these past few hours were something you woke up from; they didn’t fade into gloriously happy reality like this.

  “You are serious, aren’t you.”

  “Damn right, I’m serious.”

  He smiled, and in the kerosene flame’s steady glow she saw how his eyes sparkled.

  “But don’t you think we could wait a day or two, until you feel better?”

  “Not on your life! I don’t want the gossips to wag their malicious tongues when you move into my house to take care of me during my convalescence.”

  Julie blushed and tried to hide her hands in her skirt, but he managed to grab one first and brought it to his lips to kiss the tips of her fingers.

  “Do you think I’m going to let you go after what we’ve been through today? As soon as Ted and Mr. Burton get back here, I’m going to have them escort you home so you can clean up and pack your things, and then they are going to escort you right back to my house, where we are going to be married, today.”

  She knew he meant exactly what he said. She knew, too, that more than anything else she wanted the same thing. Seeing him shot, thinking even for a tiny second that he was dead, had been the worst part of the nightmare. The prospect of life without him was unbearable, and she had seen how very
precious each second of that life could be.

  She got to her feet and leaned down to kiss him softly, withdrawing before he could free her hand and put his good arm around her for an embrace.

  “I love you,” she whispered, just as Ted Phillips and Thaddeus Burton re-entered the silent ballroom.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Julie tried to convince her escorts they weren’t necessary, that she could find her way home without any assistance, but neither Phillips nor Burton paid any attention to her. With one on either side, she continued her protests across the now deserted hotel lobby.

  “Really, gentlemen, I appreciate your concern, but it isn’t far at all,” she insisted. The doors were closed; Phillips, without a game leg, jumped to open them. “I can’t imagine—oh, my goodness!”

  She gasped at the sight of the crowd that formed an almost solid barrier. Lucas Carter and Skip Jenkins had kept most of the gawkers off the porch, though a few youngsters dangled from the railing.

  “How’s Doc Morgan?” a dozen or more voices chorused the instant Julie appeared in the doorway.

  Surprised as much by the gathered populace as by the blast of heat and afternoon sunlight, Julie took several seconds to find an answer.

  “He’s…he’s just fine. Recovering nicely.” She blinked and shaded her eyes. The crowd stretched nearly all the way across the street, almost to the fence surrounding Wilhelm Hollstrom’s front yard. Julie tried to recall the times she had heard Morgan advise friends and family of a patient’s condition following surgery. “I’m sure he’ll be good as new in a week or so.”

  A cheer rose from the several hundred townspeople gathered in this, the worst heat of the afternoon. And somehow Julie knew part of the cheer belonged to her.

  They were still cheering when Phillips and Burton began to clear a path through them. Julie smiled her gratitude now and received a friendly wink from Thaddeus Burton as he waved his cane to make slow movers hurry. He knew as well as she that she could never have made it alone.

  But at the gate, aware of the still curious crowd slowly dispersing behind her, Julie stopped and turned to her escorts once more. What lay ahead was something she had to face on her own. She could not rely on borrowed courage.

  “Marshal, please,” she insisted again, more firmly than before. “I think you ought to go back and help Dr. Morgan. I’ll be all right, and none of us wants Del trying to do too much in his condition.”

  Burton gave her a slightly worried frown.

  “You sure, Miss Julie?”

  “Positive, Mr. Burton. I won’t be long; if I’m not at the doctor’s house in an hour, then you can come get me. Break down the door, the walls, if you have to,” she compromised.

  “Well, all right, but not a minute more.” He touched the brim of his hat and opened the gate for her. “And if anything happens in there in the meantime, you just holler.”

  “I will. And thank you. Thank you both.”

  She turned then, feeling a sudden chill inside, and lifted her chin proudly as she walked to the house without a single backward glance. She would feel no guilt, no shame now. It was as though she, not Morgan, had been declared innocent in that makeshift courtroom. She entered the front door calmly determined that Wilhelm would no longer have the power to frighten her.

  Something intangible hung in the air of the parlor, as though an argument had just ceased, interrupted by Julie’s arrival. She saw Katharine in her chair by the window as usual, Wilhelm standing nearby with his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze fastened on the closed curtains.

  “You will start packing now, Julie,” he said without looking at her. “You have made it impossible for us to stay here any longer. We will go to Mexico, I think. We will leave tonight.”

  Julie laughed softly with relief. It was one thing to anticipate defying him, quite another to actually do it.

  “I’m going to pack all right, Papa, and I’m going to leave, but I’m not going to Mexico. You can go if you like, but I’m staying right here in Plato.”

  Before Wilhelm had a chance to argue, Katharine cut him off.

  “I told you she couldn’t be bullied any more, you fool,” she said. “And neither can I.”

  He turned then, to his wife, not to Julie, but Julie remained where she was, standing in the archway between foyer and parlor as though she sensed a threat in Wilhelm’s anger.

  “You must go with me!” he shouted, but with a frantic pleading in his voice. “You have no choice!”

  “Oh, yes, I do,” Katharine chortled. “You made a very big mistake telling me about Clara, Wilhelm, and I intend to do exactly what she did: blackmail you.”

  “Who is Clara?” Julie asked, confused.

  “Wilhelm’s wife. His first wife, that is, the one he left behind in Berlin when he came to New York. They’ve been married for thirty-three years, and for the last twenty-seven she’s been blackmailing him.”

  “No, that’s not true! I sent her the money willingly because she was my wife. Only when she came to America and found out about…about you, then she blackmailed me.” His voice dropped to a defeated whine at the end. “I had no choice then but to pay her. I had Willy to think of.”

  Willy. Always Willy.

  “He was my son, and I could not let him grow up a bastard like me.”

  Katharine craned her neck to look around him at Julie.

  “Did you want something, dear? You needn’t stay and listen to us wash our dirty linen. Wilhelm has just been telling me he married me under false pretenses, and I’ve just told him he isn’t your father.”

  She seemed quite casual about it, and Julie suspected her mother was truly enjoying all these revelations. Or rather, she was enjoying a kind of revenge on the man who had been her bigamist husband all these years.

  Wilhelm, determined not to be defeated again today, insisted, “I don’t care what she wants! She is going to help you pack so we can leave this town. She has shamed me again, carrying on with this doctor and then lying when she has sworn to tell the truth. She will come with us!”

  “No, I won’t. Papa, Del and I are going to be married in just about an hour, which is what we were going to do yesterday, until you shoved your nose into business it didn’t belong in.”

  Now it was Katharine who laughed, with sheer joy.

  “Oh, this is choice!” she crowed. “Every day you will rub his nose in it, too. Because, Wilhelm, we are staying, right here, in Plato, with Julie and Willy and Dr. Morgan and Clara, too, if she wants to join us.”

  “No! If Julie wishes to stay, I will let her. But you are my wife, and I—”

  “Ah, but I’m not your wife,” Katharine slyly reminded him. “I’m your mistress or concubine or something like that, which makes your precious son a bastard whether you admit it or not.”

  Julie could see Wilhelm slump. His pride in his son was something too deep not to be wounded easily. He turned away from Katharine and would have walked out of the room rather than let anyone observe his shame, but Julie’s presence in the doorway blocked his departure. He looked at her, his fifty-seven years suddenly showing more clearly than ever. He had aged in the past few days, or perhaps, Julie thought, I just haven’t noticed him in a while. He looks old.

  “It is all your fault,” he snapped at her. “You slut, you have destroyed my son’s future.”

  She drew herself up defiantly until she felt as though she towered over him, his petty spirit making him shrink in her eyes.

  “No, Papa, you can’t do that to me any more. I know now that I didn’t have anything to do with what happened before. It’s your fault, not mine.”

  “Isn’t that what I told you she’d say?” Katharine called. “I must say I’m quite proud of myself. I hoped I had raised Julie to find a good man to marry, but I must have done a better job than I thought. My dear, you have a veritable prince in your Dr. Morgan. Go get your things and don’t be late for the wedding.”

  The wedding. The very word loosed a thousan
d butterflies in the pit of Julie’s stomach. She had so little time and so much to do, but she had to take a few moments of that time to say what she had come back to this house to say, and a few other things as well.

  “I won’t be late, Mama, don’t worry. Will you come?”

  “Oh, I’d love to! And Willy, too. He’s still over at McCrory’s, but I expect him home any minute. I don’t suppose you want Wilhelm here to play the father of the bride and give you away.”

  Julie shook her head.

  “I’m not going to be a hypocrite, not in this town.” She looked at Wilhelm and uttered words she never thought she would. “The people here trust me, far more than I trusted myself. They stood up for me today when I almost wouldn’t stand up for myself. They love Del, and I know they would have protested if he had chosen a woman who didn’t measure up against their standards. I heard them when I came back to this house a few minutes ago, and they actually compared me to his first wife. They didn’t find me lacking in any way.

  “Do you have any idea how that made me feel? These were strangers and yet they believed in me. They knew me and liked me for what they had seen of me, when my own father believed the very worst of me though he hadn’t seen a thing. You made me feel worthless; they made me proud.”

  Katharine’s applause broke the strained atmosphere as she walked from her corner to the foyer.

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself. You see, Wilhelm, it’s exactly as I told you it would be. I’m not going to go with you to Mexico, Julie’s not, and I seriously doubt if you can make Willy go either. Will you leave without him?”

  Wilhelm had no answer except the defeat in his eyes.

  Katharine continued, “You can’t run forever, you know. So what if Clara writes to the marshal or the territorial governor or even the President? What proof does she have? Haven’t you and I been living together as man and wife for the past twenty-eight years? Who’s going to dispute that?”

  “But, Mama, if—”

  “You had your say, Julie. You have your own life to lead, and I suggest you get yourself ready for it. I’ve already made my bed and I fully intend to keep lying in it.” Katharine smiled confidently. “I married this man because I wanted security, and I don’t intend to give that up. It’s a bit late for me to start thinking about romance and all that poppycock now, so I’ll settle for what I’ve had all along. Wilhelm and Willy and I are going to stay right here in Plato just as we are now. There will be a nice public apology for all the trouble Wilhelm caused the doctor, and of course all the debts will be paid. Including the bill for the dress goods at McCrory’s,” she emphasized. “It’s the least this dummkopf can do to make amends.”