“Impossible!” It burst from the depths of Adam’s heart. He must be mad to think of it. Yet wouldn’t a stunt like this be just like Miss Ivy Ann Brown?
“I am to tell you that Miss Brown will see you at the Widow Terry’s where she has taken up residence in one hour, or whenever you’re free.”
It was all Adam could do to keep from rushing to Mrs. Terry’s cabin. He bathed, shaved, and dressed in fresh clothing from the skin out. He ignored the gleam in Nat’s eye and his innocent comment.
“Wish I had a pretty girl from the East to visit.” A few minutes before the appointed time, he presented himself at the front door of Ivy Ann’s new abode, willing his usually steady heart to stop pounding.
The pink gown swirled around Laurel’s unsteady feet as she slowly walked to the door. She hesitated, one soft hand on the latch. Then she took a deep breath, lifted her chin with all her heritage of southern pride, and opened the door.
A tall, deerskin-clad figure stood before her.
Laurel’s quick survey took in the new man. Dr. Adam Birchfield in the western garb he had adopted for comfort and practicality outstripped the young man in fine broadcloth and immaculate linen she remembered.
“Hello, Adam.” Why did she stand frozen before the familiar stranger? She anxiously scanned his face, lean from hard work and outdoor calls, and felt relieved to discover the beginnings of a smile. Yet what shadow lurked in the watching dark eyes? It couldn’t be disappointment, could it? Her spirits that had been shored up by the warm bath and the pink gown fell. The next instant the look vanished and laugh crinkles half closed his eyes.
“Well, Miss Ivy Ann, you’ve done it this time! I thought you were the young lady who refused to give up the comforts of home for the good of our expanding country.” He threw back his head and laughed, just as his brother had done in the street earlier.
An icicle pierced Laurel to her very soul. So Ivy Ann had won again, in spite of everything. She opened her mouth to cry out the truth, but was stopped by Adam’s hearty voice.
“Don’t look so stricken.” He took her hand and shook it. Genuine welcome lightened his face. “It’s wonderful for you to be here no matter what the reason.” He led her to a settee and sat down beside her. “When I didn’t hear from you for a time I thought you had probably forgotten all about your Wild West doctor friend.”
“I could never do that.” Laurel’s lips moved of their own accord. Her mind ran in a dozen directions.
“How’s Laurel? And your father and mother?”
With a tremendous effort the distraught girl managed to mumble, “All my family is well, or at least they were when I left.” Inside she wanted to shriek. Any hope that the doctor had escaped Ivy’s charms without regret faded when Adam continued.
“Nat told me how you mistook him for me in the dusk.” Another laugh escaped. “Would you like to know what else he said about you?”
“Why, of course.” She nervously pleated her frothy pink skirt, hating it with all her heart and wishing she’d worn calico. Yet, would it have changed anything? Although Adam had heard her feelings about the West, never in a million years would he believe the quiet twin capable of the escapade she had just completed.
“It’s still hard for me to believe you’re here.” Admiration shone in Adam’s face. “Say, but we’ll have a good time. I have places to show you that will make you turn traitor to even your beautiful Red Cedars.” He went on making plans while Laurel numbly prayed for Mrs. Terry to return before she betrayed her identity. She must think and decide what to do. Laurel had been prepared for disapproval, even shock. She hadn’t even considered that Adam would take her for Ivy Ann.
By pasting a smile over lips that wanted to tremble, she oohed and ahed in all the right places and knew how a prisoner given a reprieve must feel when the Widow Terry swept in, greeted Dr. Birchfield, pointedly looked at the clock, and ushered Adam out.
“She’s going to be here for a spell. Now you get home and get your rest…The good Lord knows there are few enough uninterrupted nights for you.”
At last Laurel escaped from her landlady, if she could be called that when she obviously intended for Laurel to replace the daughter who had married and gone. In a tiny, piney-smelling room Mrs. Terry hastily cleared of cloth bolts and trims, Laurel stared out the single window at stars that looked near enough to pick. What would she do now? Seek Adam out at the first opportunity and confess?
She tossed and turned, remembering how above all else Adam hated deceit. Her courage failed. At least until she made new friends Dr. Birchfield must remain a staunch ally to whom she could turn in this faraway land. “If I can do all the wonderful things he has planned we’ll be together,” she comforted herself. “Dear God, it isn’t that I won’t tell him. I will, but just not now. Besides, I never said I was Ivy Ann. He said I was. I just didn’t correct him.” She moved again and kept her gaze on the majestic stars. “I know you hate deceit even worse than Adam does, but I just can’t—”
Misery took over and the longing to be safely back at Red Cedars. She had thought nothing could be worse than living forever in her twin’s shadow. Now the shadow of her own making lay long and dark over any chance for happiness in this forbidding land. A wail in the distance didn’t help. A wolf? Coyote? She shivered under the warm, beautifully made quilts Mrs. Terry had brought out from her “saving for comp’ny” closet. Did everyone who broke free from home, especially those who slipped away without the family knowing, feel this way?
Before she finally slept, Laurel had wrestled with her knotty problem and decided she had no choice. Until she got close enough to Adam Birchfield to feel that he cared enough to forgive her, she must be Ivy Ann—not in what she said but in what she did. Perhaps he would attribute the differences she knew she could not hide to her being in a new place. Or maybe he had forgotten some of Ivy’s little ways.
She sighed. All the times she had played parts in young people’s entertainments hadn’t prepared her for the monstrous role she faced in playing her own sister! Perhaps she should have corrected Adam immediately. The one other option lay in going home.
“No!” She sat upright in bed. A surge of protest drowned out the sensibility of that move. “I’m here and I’m staying.” She slid back down under the covers and a hard core of stubbornness formed within her. So what if Adam built on his gladness to see Ivy Ann and fell in love? It would really be with her, Laurel, wouldn’t it? She fell asleep hugging the thought to her heart. If that happened, surely he would forgive her….
Laurel hadn’t counted on a new complication entering her already topsy-turvy plans. Blond-haired, amber-eyed Dan Sharpe had ideas of his own. Before Mrs. Terry and Laurel had finished breakfast the next morning, Dan rapped on the door.
Mrs. Terry’s cup hit the table with a little crash. Her thin face turned toward the door. “My, my, isn’t your beau impatient?” She marched to fling open the door and welcome Dr. Birchfield, then scowled in surprise.
“Morning, Mrs. Terry.” Early sun turned Dan’s hair to molten gold.
“Land sakes, Dan Sharpe, what’re you doing coming around here at the crack of dawn when a body’s getting ready for work?”
“Just paying my respects. Is Miss Brown here?”
“Bees to the honeypot,” Laurel heard her hostess mutter before she grudgingly allowed Dan to enter.
“I just wondered if you’d care to go riding a little later,” Dan drawled. “Every unmarried man around’s going to come calling.” He sent a significant glace at her bare ring finger. “According to Mrs. Greer, Doc has a prior claim but I don’t see any sign of it being staked out.”
In the middle of Mrs. Terry’s indignant gasp Laurel coolly replied, “I don’t quite understand your meaning, Mr. Sharpe, but it doesn’t really matter. I am to help Mrs. Terry and my work begins immediately. I’ll have little time to go riding, at least until I get settled,” she amended when she saw his reaction. “I do appreciate your calling, however. It’s ni
ce to have the local people welcome me to my new home.” The next instant she wished she had bitten her tongue.
“You plan to stay permanently?” Dan’s gaze sharpened and drilled into her.
Again she thought of that tiger, under control but still dangerous. Laurel smiled in the way she had seen Ivy Ann do a hundred times, a smile guaranteed to disarm her inquisitive suitors. “Who knows?” She shrugged her shoulders in a dainty gesture. “I suppose much will depend on how I like Antelope. Now, if you’ll excuse us, I’m sure it’s time for Mrs. Terry and her new apprentice to go to work.” She held out her hand.
Danger signals in Dan’s eyes warned her the battle had neither ended nor been won but he merely bowed over her hand. “Remember, I asked first,” he said, then bowed toward Mrs. Terry and swung out, whistling the first few bars of “Dixie.”
“Well, of all the—I knew Dan Sharpe was presumptuous but this really beats it all!” Mrs. Terry’s astonished reaction sent Laurel into a fit of giggles.
“‘Remember, I asked first,’ “she mimicked. “Who does he think he is? I get the feeling he’s convinced that any girl would just be waiting for him to confer attention on her.”
“That’s Dan Sharpe.” Mrs. Terry’s thin lips closed tightly. Then she added, “I’m not one to spread gossip but according to the whispers there’s a whole lot about Dan Sharpe no one knows. Or at least if they do, they aren’t telling.”
Laurel stopped, her hands filled with the breakfast dishes she had gathered up. She impulsively said, “Mrs. Terry, I’m a stranger in a strange land who’s going to need a lot of help in understanding the people and the place. I really need you to guide me.”
A pleased expression lighted the older woman’s face. “I think we’re going to get along real well, child. Real well.” She folded the breakfast cloth, shook it outside the cabin door, and smiled in a way that did more to settle Laurel down than anything since she left West Virginia.
Chapter 10
I like your Ivy Ann,” Nat told Adam one late spring afternoon. The brothers had reined in on top of a grassy knoll above Antelope to let their horses rest after a climb. “I wouldn’t have thought such a girl as you described could so quickly adjust and become part of the community.” His fine eyes looked into the blue heavens. “But something seems to be troubling her. Have you noticed the way she bubbles at times and still carries an almost brooding look at others?”
Adam relaxed in his saddle. “Yes, it’s strange. The Ivy Ann I knew at Red Cedars cared for little except getting her own way.” His lips curved in remembrance. Aspen leaves decked in new-leaf green whispered secrets not to be shared with the riders. A confession Adam wanted to make halted on his lips and a worry line formed between his dark brows. Even though the Bible said to share burdens, right now Nat didn’t need a heavier load. Nat’s efforts to get more law and order than Antelope wanted had resulted in bitterness, especially from the owners of the Pronghorn and Silver saloons.
Suddenly Adam’s horse shied and Nat’s whinnied. Like a stab of lightning, a dark form appeared in front of the startled brothers. Adam’s mouth fell open. A magnificent Indian warrior, powerful and naked to the waist, calmly grabbed the reins of both horses.
“Who—what—?” Adam sputtered as fear gnawed at him. “What do you want?” Nat took charge.
“Grey Eagle.” The Indian pointed to himself. “You come.” He pointed to Adam, then Nat. “Son sick, maybe die. Running Deer no die! You medicine man. Make well.”
In bits and pieces they learned Grey Eagle’s story. When the tribes had been rounded up and forced to go on reservations, a small band refused and hid in the vast wildness of the Wind River area. The government could spare neither the time nor troops to find and capture the wily group. They moved from time to time and lived as their ancestors had lived for hundreds of years, free and drifting.
Grey Eagle, who seemed to know more about the area’s happenings than the Birchfields, had discovered the presence of a white medicine man in Antelope. He had tucked the information away, perhaps never intending to use it. In desperation, he refused to accept the death sentence his tribe’s medicine man prescribed and now stood before Adam on behalf of his son.
“You go with me. Both go.”
Adam didn’t hesitate a moment. “Of course we’ll go with you, Grey Eagle. When I became a doctor I promised to go anywhere and to anyone who needed me.” He held out his hand to show his good faith.
The dull black eyes glowed with dark fire and Grey Eagle took Adam’s hand. “No tell where you go?”
Adam looked at Nat who quietly explained, “Grey Eagle is putting the safety of his tribe in our hands.” With slow movements he loosened the catch of his saddlebag and took out his worn black Bible. “Grey Eagle, do you know what this is?”
“Great Spirit book.”
Nat nodded. “My brother and I pledge by the Great Spirit we call God not to tell.” He placed his and Adam’s hands on the Bible.
Grey Eagle grunted and the semblance of a smile creased his aged, angular face. Without a word he slid into a cluster of trees and reappeared riding a shaggy horse, his only saddle a worn blanket. “Come.”
Hours later they reached their destination, a cragbound valley only the tribe who called it home or an eagle on the wing could find. Ice-cold water bubbled from a spring, so cold Adam’s teeth ached when he flung himself to the banks and drank. Spring flowers sent thrusts of color through the rich, green grass. A dozen tepees made up the village and horses grazed nearby. Grey Eagle led the brothers to the largest tepee. Wailing sounds sent chills through Adam. Had they come too late? He followed Grey Eagle and Nat into the smoky interior. A stripling Indian lay on a bed of rich skins. Sweat glistened on his copper skin. The look in his eyes when he turned toward his father pierced Adam’s heart. Terror, pain, and hope combined in the age-old expression that binds father and son.
“White medicine man.” A sinewy arm drew Adam nearer.
A cry of rage from the howling Indian medicine man was cut short with a single wave of Grey Eagle’s mighty arm.
“Clear everyone out,” Adam ordered Nat with such authority in his voice the huddle of Indians silently obeyed without question.
Adam quickly examined Running Deer. “You’ll have to help, Nat.” His lips felt stiff. “We’ve got a red-hot appendix.”
“Not again!”
Adam nodded. “Just like Mrs. Hardwick.” He pressed the lower right area of Running Deer’s abdomen. A moan of pain escaped the tightly clenched teeth.
“Make you well.” Grey Eagle stood to one side, his arms folded across his chest. A muscle in his drawn face showed his love for his only son, now lying defenseless against the white medicine man’s probing.
Adam straightened and fearlessly looked into the dark wells of Grey Eagle’s eyes that had seen bloodshed and peace, sunrise and sunset. “I will do all I can and my brother will ask the Great Spirit to help me.”
“Bad spirit in son.”
“We must let it out.” Adam compressed his lips. What a setting for his second emergency appendectomy since reaching the Wyoming Territory! He quickly made what preparations he could, calling for boiling water and the tepee flap left open for extra light. Then with the most fervent prayer he had ever offered, he began.
Grey Eagle unflinchingly watched the thin red line that followed Adam’s initial incision. He gave not a sign of inner turmoil yet both Adam and Nat knew how torn he must be. To go against his medicine man’s advice, to let a white man cut his son, had been a terrible decision.
Again the years of training and prayers met to triumph. Again, the diseased appendix burst, but outside of the patient. Humility and thankfulness filled Adam and he quickly sutured and bandaged. “Nat, I want you to go back and leave me here for a few days. I have to be sure Running Deer gets the proper care.” Adam stretched to full height. “Grey Eagle, I believe your son will live but I want to stay with him.”
Grey Eagle solemnly nodded and turned
toward the open tepee flap. “Tell tribe.” A string of unfamiliar phrases followed his exit from the makeshift operating room.
“Why don’t I stay, too?” Nat frowned.
“And miss your Sunday services? Antelope would have a search party out!” exclaimed Adam as he washed his stained hands in the clean water Nat brought. “Give me a week, will you? If anything’s going to develop, it will by then.” He watched Nat ride off with Grey Eagle, who would make sure he could find his way back, then called a warning. “Don’t tell everything. Just say I’m staying with an out of town patient, will you?”
Nat signaled and disappeared after Grey Eagle.
Of all the experiences so far, the week in the small and hidden Indian camp affected Adam most deeply. Running Deer’s young body healed incredibly fast. Adam spoke through him and his father to the old medicine man and pleased the ancient by carefully listening to what he had to say. Certain herbs and primitive knowledge made good medical sense and he gratefully expressed his appreciation. By the time Nat returned, Adam felt a certain reluctance to leave, although eager to get back to their own place. When they did go, they carried the pledge of the tribe’s eternal friendship and gratitude.
Adam had also found time to think while in the hidden village. The problem he’d concealed from Nat came out into the open of Adam’s mind and had to be dealt with. Ivy Ann’s face danced in the firelit shadows, but so did another. After prayer and much consideration, Adam set his jaw firmly. The showdown with Ivy Ann had to come soon, for both their sakes.
Laurel had, as Nat said, settled into Antelope the way a broody hen settles into her nest. Her moments of homesickness had little chance against the enticement of spring in the Wyoming Territory. Although sensible enough to know part of the masculine attention could be credited to lack of competition, she couldn’t help rejoicing over the unqualified approval of most single Antelope males. She treated them all alike, to Dan Sharpe’s chagrin and Mrs. Terry’s secret delight, and she never acted like Ivy Ann to anyone except Adam—and only when she remembered.
Wildflower Harvest: Includes Bonus Story of Desert Rose Page 9