by Lori Austin
She knew Mikey, but she had no idea where he was now. Ethan might have had some idea, but asking him today would provide information too out of date to be of any use.
“No,” she said.
The marshal lifted a brow. He was either very good at reading faces, or she’d become extremely bad at hiding things. Considering how long she’d had to practice deception . . . he was good at reading faces.
“As I’m sure you know,” she began, “I’ve been away.”
“Where?”
“Not here.”
“Why?”
“I’m sure you know that, too.”
“You had some trouble. A sadness.”
Annabeth didn’t answer. What could she say?
“You’d think folks would come together over that instead of fall apart.”
“You’d think.”
“You disappeared for five years. No one could find you.”
“No one tried.” Moze would have mentioned it.
“If they had, would they have been able to?”
“No.”
“You know what, Mrs. Walsh?” The marshal rubbed his thumb along the grip of his gun. “The more I find out about you, the more I think that shot wasn’t meant for him.”
CHAPTER 17
Annabeth managed to herd the marshal out the door without answering any more questions. Most folks weren’t even aware that they’d asked and she hadn’t answered. Unfortunately, she didn’t think Marshal Eversleigh was most folks. He knew she was evading him.
But she doubted he suspected the truth, that she rode with an outlaw gang and was considered—almost—one of them. That she’d done things that haunted her. She’d had little choice.
She considered the marshal’s words. Had the shot been meant for her? She’d think so, except for that visit from Fedya.
Ethan’s in trouble.
What had Fedya seen, heard, sensed? If someone had threatened Ethan, wouldn’t the sniper have killed them himself? Certainly there was no love lost between the two men, but she doubted Fedya would stand back and watch Ethan be killed if he could stop it. His guilt over Mikey wouldn’t allow that. His trip to Ellsworth to warn Annabeth of impending doom proved it.
But what if Fedya had thrown the sheriff out the window and then had to make a run for it before he could do anything to help Ethan? Though why would he have done that, she had no idea. If she ever saw Fedya again, she’d ask, but chances of that were slim.
Still, if there were trouble, why send Annabeth? Why not send Mikey?
Annabeth had no idea. All she knew was that Ethan was in danger, and she couldn’t leave until she found out why and then eliminated the threat. She just needed to do it before her other life caught up to her.
The distant breaking of glass caused Annabeth to hurry upstairs. The laudanum bottle she’d left on the bedside table had shattered on the floor; what was left inside had seeped into the planks. Ethan lay with an arm thrown over his eyes.
“Ethan?”
“Aye.”
Irish again. Damn.
“Are you . . . ?” She paused. He wasn’t all right. He might never be all right again. “Does your head ache?”
“A bit.” The accent was suddenly gone. He was making her dizzy. “I dropped the bottle before I managed to drink any. Would you get me another?”
“Of course.” She scurried downstairs, snatched up one more, and shoved it into her pocket. On her way out, she also grabbed the carbolic acid—during her night with the medical texts, she’d come across a paper written by Joseph Lister, which explained the rows of carbolic acid in the exam room—as well as a bucket with water and a clean cloth.
She returned to the bedroom, set the bucket on the floor, and tossed the cloth into it. Eyes still closed—no doubt the sun felt like stabbing needles—Ethan lifted his arm from his face and offered his hand. She placed the bottle into it, and he twisted free the top, took several swallows, and gave it back.
Annabeth set the container within reach but not too near the edge of the table. Her gaze went to the broken glass, and she frowned. There was something about it that—
“Was Fedya here?”
“I . . . uh . . .”
“I dreamed he threw the sheriff out the window, but that can’t be right.”
Annabeth kept silent. What else had he dreamed?
“Mikey was with him. He still didn’t know me.”
I’m sorry, she thought. She said nothing.
“They left. I told Fedya that I’d kill him if I saw him again.”
Which might be why Fedya hadn’t hung around to deal with whatever trouble remained. Although she’d never known the man to be scared of much; he certainly wasn’t scared of Ethan.
“Ethan . . .” she began, and his eyes opened.
“He murdered my brother.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“My little brother who trusted me to take care of him.”
“You did.”
“I led him straight into hell.”
“You went there together.” And if anyone had been leading, it had been Mikey. Scouts always went first.
“He did what I told him.”
“He did what he was ordered to do, same as you.”
“Where are they now?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“They were here?”
Annabeth hesitated, unsure if telling him that would hurt or help. He seemed to be remembering the past in his dreams.
“They were,” he murmured, his voice beginning to slur. “But you weren’t. And that . . . doesn’t make sense.”
“Hush,” she said.
“My head . . .” He reached for his stitches, and she grasped his wrist.
“I’m going to clean your wound.” His fingers were spotted with dried flakes of blood. “These, too.”
“’kay.”
She dumped the carbolic acid into the water, plunged her hands into it, then wrung out the cloth so that the solution didn’t drip into his eyes. She pressed the rag to his head.
She didn’t swipe at the wound or dab; she didn’t want to start it bleeding again. Instead, she continued to swirl the cloth in the solution, then wring it out and press it to the flesh around the wound until all the dried blood had dissolved. She did the same a few more times for good measure.
“Don’t dislodge the antiseptic crust,” he murmured.
“The what?”
He opened one eye. “A scab forms over the wound. If you use carbolic acid at the start, the crust that results will keep the miasma out.”
That he was discussing carbolic acid was encouraging. He hadn’t been using it when she’d left, which meant he’d learned about it during the time he had forgotten.
“Interesting.” She lifted his hand to wash it.
He closed his eye, frowned. “There was a man.”
Her fingers clenched, sliding across his damp flesh. Real or imagined? Dangerous or harmless?
“He had a brogue.”
The Scottish Dr. Lister? Ethan’s Irish father? Or someone else? Who knew? Not her and probably not Ethan.
“So did you at one time,” she muttered before she could stop herself.
“I’ve apologized for that, lass,” he murmured in the very same brogue. “Ye know why.”
“I do,” she whispered.
But he didn’t hear her; he’d fallen back to sleep.
Annabeth cleaned up the remains of the bottle from the floor and carried everything downstairs. The dress she’d appropriated sat on the counter where she’d tossed it when she’d run in after Cora.
Quickly she put it on, then nearly took it off again. Too small in some places, too large in others, the garment had obviously not been made with her in mind. However, the extra material around her middle seemed to disguise her lack of a middle, and right now . . .
She lifted her gaze to the ceiling. Right now that was for the best.
Annabeth considered strolling through tow
n, asking folks what she’d come to ask in the first place. What kind of trouble was Ethan in?
The only difficulty she’d uncovered thus far had been Cora Lewis, and the woman hadn’t been a problem until Annabeth turned up alive and not dead. But if there’d been something worse than a mistress threatening Ethan, wouldn’t someone—anyone—have mentioned it by now?
Life had been a little chaotic since she’d gotten back to Freedom. It wasn’t every day that a sheriff fell out the window, a federal marshal arrived asking questions, Annabeth returned from the dead, and the local doctor was shot in the head.
The front door opened. “Missus?”
She stepped out of the kitchen. Jeb Cantrell and a much younger man stood in the front hall. The stranger appeared ill.
“This here’s Major Tarkenton,” Jeb shouted.
Annabeth put a finger to her lips, and Jeb winced, shrugged sheepishly, and stepped onto the porch. She wasn’t sure a half-deaf old man would be any kind of guard, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him. At least he could see, unlike his wife. Perhaps the two of them together would make a single decent sentinel.
Annabeth turned her attention to the major. Where was his uniform? She couldn’t believe he was out of the schoolroom, let alone in the army with the rank of major.
Then again Custer, the boy general, had been twenty-three at his promotion. Considering the staggering loss of men during that damnable war, she shouldn’t be surprised to discover a major this young. In Richmond, she’d seen boys who hadn’t shaved yet toting a gun.
“Major?” she began, letting her gaze sweep his dirty, civilian clothes. “Is there a problem at Fort Dodge?”
The closest fort to Freedom, Fort Dodge was located on the Santa Fe Trail. At the intersection of the dry route, also known as the Hornado de Muerti, or Journey of Death, and the wet, which followed the river, the army base had been established during the war to protect the wagon trains that often rested there during their journey.
It hadn’t taken the Indians long to discover that the groups camping in the area were weakened after navigating a trail that often had no water for the entire distance—hence the name. They attacked with great regularity until the army arrived; then they found other places to raid.
Annabeth couldn’t blame them. The white man not only traipsed across their home, putting huge ruts in the ground so that more white men could follow, but they laid rails, built towns, and slaughtered buffalo as if they owned every blade of grass in the world.
“Problem?” the man repeated.
“The fort, Major?” Annabeth hoped the Comanche and the Kiowa, who’d once fought each other but had now joined together to destroy their common enemy, hadn’t grown bored elsewhere and obliterated the place. “Did something happen?”
“Uh, no. Yes. I mean . . . no.” He took a breath and tried again. “I’m not in the army; I’m not a major. My grandfather distinguished himself in the Second War for Independence, and my mother named me after him. So, there’s no problem at the fort.” He frowned. “That I know of.”
“What is the problem?”
“My wife’s havin’ a baby. But it ain’t . . .” His lips tightened; his gaze fell; his shoulders hunched.
“How long has she been in labor?”
“Two days,” Major said.
Annabeth snatched Ethan’s bag from the floor and went out the door. She’d climbed into the buckboard that waited out front before she realized Major had followed only as far as the porch.
“I . . . uh . . . came for the doc.”
“You’ve got me. If you want your wife to live, we need to hurry.” Two days of labor usually meant one day from death.
“But the doc—”
“Is unwell.” Her gaze met Jeb’s.
“I’ll fetch Sadie to sit with him,” he said.
Jeb probably hadn’t heard the majority of the conversation, but it wasn’t hard to decipher that Annabeth was leaving with Major and therefore Ethan was alone.
The old man turned his attention to the younger one. “Miz Walsh was a nurse in the war. Afore she . . .”
Jeb paused, and Annabeth waited for him to say: Afore she ran off like a thief in the night and left the man she’d promised to honor and obey, for better or worse, as long as they both lived, alone with his pain and his past and his demons.
But he didn’t.
“Sometimes she done took care of the birthin’s herself when the doc was busy. It’ll be all right.” He took the boy’s arm and led him to the wagon, urging him to climb up beside her. “You’ll see.”
• • •
The clip-clop of horses’ hooves and the rattle of a buckboard drifted through the open window. As Ethan had heard the same a hundred times before, he waited for a door to open, a shout to follow. The speed of the hooves and the intensity of the rattle meant someone needed him quick.
When the door remained closed, his name uncalled, and the rattle-clop had faded, Ethan climbed out of bed, ignoring the distant thrum of pain in his head, and dressed.
He’d dreamed of Gettysburg and John Law. Even when he opened his eyes, the memory of the blood, the death, the despair remained with him, and he had a hard time letting it go.
“War’s over,” he murmured. He lived in Freedom now. With his wife. Their soon-to-be-child. A whole new life awaited them.
“Beth?” he called. When she didn’t answer, he experienced a moment of confusion at the thought she wasn’t here, that his memories of her return—
“Return?” He rubbed at his head. “Where did she go?”
Somewhere that made him sad and also a bit mad. Anger roiled in his belly, mixing with an inexplicable sense of fear.
“Beth!” he called more loudly, then started down the stairs.
The waiting area was empty; no one stood on the porch, though why they should, he couldn’t quite recall. He stepped into the exam room. Also empty.
His hands had begun to shake, palms gone clammy, and the backs felt as if ants crawled over the surface. He scratched at them absently. His head hurt so badly, he couldn’t think.
Ethan crossed to the cabinet, took out a blue bottle, and sipped until the shakes and the itching and the pain went away. He had just picked up another when the door opened. He slipped both it and what remained of the first into his pocket.
A tiny blond woman crept across the vestibule and toward the stairs. Shoulders hunched as if to make herself smaller than she already was, she tiptoed, glancing behind her every few seconds.
“May I help you?”
Her indrawn breath was so loud, Ethan’s head ached again. Her big blue eyes turned his way, and he remembered. “Mrs. Lewis?” Her pretty mouth pinched; the line between her eyes deepened. “Are you in pain?”
She stared at him for several ticks of the clock; then her expression smoothed. “A bit.”
Her voice—low and a bit hoarse—was such a contrast to her petite, ethereal beauty, it beguiled. Or would have, if he were a man to be beguiled by anyone other than his wife.
“Perhaps I can help.”
The brilliance of her smile made something shimmer, just out of reach, but when she stepped into the exam room, pulling the curtain that hung in the doorway across the opening, it fled. Her smile might be as beautiful as she was, but there was something in her eyes that reminded him of a snake. Cold and hungry, ready to snap and strike with little warning. Danger hung in the air, and he wasn’t sure why.
“We should leave the curtain open,” he suggested. “Your reputation.”
Her loud, abrupt laughter made him start as if he had been bitten. “No need to worry about that.”
Perhaps she was the local madam. Why couldn’t he recall? Because he’d never had occasion to visit such an establishment, in Freedom or anywhere else.
“Should I lie down?” she asked.
Ethan opened his mouth, shut it again. Why did he feel as if he’d heard her say those words before?
Without waiting for his answe
r, she clambered onto the exam table. “What, exactly, is wrong, Mrs. Lewis?”
Instead of speaking, she captured his hand and drew it to her stomach. Yards of material lay between his palm and her skin, but for an instant Ethan could have sworn he had touched her before. He tried to pull away, but she held on.
“Can’t you feel it?” she whispered.
He swallowed, and his throat clicked loudly in the silence. “What?”
“The baby.”
He stopped trying to pull away as everything—or at least one thing—became clear. Mrs. Lewis was with child. She merely wanted him to make sure that the child was all right. Tell her when she could expect the birth, how far along she was. Why she made him so uncomfortable, as if he wanted to leap right out of his skin, he wasn’t certain.
“Congratulations.” He pressed her belly as low as was proper. She released him so he could continue the examination. He tapped high, then right, left. His gaze flicked to hers. She stared at him so intently, his unease returned. He cleared his throat. “Any symptoms?”
“I fainted!” she exclaimed.
“I’m sorry.”
Her eyes narrowed, as if he’d annoyed her, though he wasn’t sure how.
“Sickness in the morning?” She seemed to be asking rather than telling. Her eyebrows lifted as she waited for his comment.
“That happens,” he agreed, and she released a breath, her stomach deflating beneath his fingers. He pressed again.
“My . . .” Her hand went to her breast, and she cupped the weight; one thumb brushed over the place where her nipple must be. She moaned, and his shocked gaze lifted to hers. “They ache,” she whispered.
Ethan snatched his hand away from her stomach. There was something going on here he didn’t understand.
“Ethan?” She sat up. Why was she calling him by his given name and not—
“Doc!” The curtain flew back, and Sadie peered in. She took one look at Mrs. Lewis and snapped, “Get out.”
“Sadie,” Ethan began. “Mrs. Lewis is . . .” He paused. He wasn’t sure what was the matter with Mrs. Lewis, but it wasn’t Sadie Cantrell’s concern.
“We all know what she is,” Sadie muttered, making Ethan think he’d been right in his assumption of the woman’s profession. “And she knows she ain’t supposed to be here.” Sadie’s lip curled as she glared at Mrs. Lewis. “What’d ye do? Wait until Jeb come t’ get me, then sneak in?”