***
Sloan was sleeping in one of the chairs from the saloon when Samantha and Harriet arrived near noon. He heard the women whispering instructions and reassurances to each other, and he wondered why he'd bothered coming down at all. These Neely women had everything under control. He might as well go back to bed with a bottle of good bourbon as Ramsey had done earlier.
He opened one eye and found the woman still rocking her infant. She was probably doing it out of sheer inertia by now. And they said women were the weaker sex. He grunted and opened the other eye. Weak, hell. They were stronger than oxen when they put their minds to it. He should know.
Sloan staggered from the chair, ignoring the beautiful twin gaping at him. Samantha already knelt beside the woman and infant. He'd sent her home once. Why the hell didn't she have the sense to stay there? There wasn't a blamed thing anyone could do here but watch people die.
He groaned inwardly as both women looked up to him with hope in their eyes. There wasn't any hope. There wasn't a single damned thing he could do about it. He took the infant from the woman's arms, examined the tiny, limp body, looked under blue eyelids, felt the fever raging, and shook his head. He put the child into Samantha's arms and pointed the terrified mother to an empty pallet. With luck, he might save the woman.
Hugging the infant to her breast, Samantha watched Sloan Talbott step over sleeping forms, test clammy brows, and lift weak heads for drinks. The infant in her arms didn't stir, but she made reassuring noises to the anxious mother fighting sleep beside her. The woman eventually gave up and fell into exhausted slumber. Sam clung more tightly to the infant. His breathing was ragged, and his diaper was still dry. She knew that wasn't a good sign.
She wasn't any good at nursing. She made a point to stay out of sickrooms. With her mother and the twins around to tend the ill, her services had never really been needed. But this time, she couldn't stay away.
Sloan came back and showed her how to persuade little sips of water down the baby's lifeless throat. She sponged the child with cool water as he suggested, finding the little pustules breaking out on delicate skin. She could feel her heart bleeding as the small body in her hands writhed with the pain of her touch. The cool water soothed him again, but she didn't think it was sleep that he fell into.
Sloan had ordered a quarantine of the saloon and its inhabitants, allowing in only those who could show proof that they'd been vaccinated. That included very few of the newcomers. Now that they'd found safety for their families, the men dropped like flies in the streets, leaving Sloan's men to carry them into the impromptu hospital.
Alice Neely returned with Harriet and some of the men that had been approved for admittance. They carried buckets of hot oatmeal and platters of biscuits for the healthy, a cold thin gruel for the sick. Samantha nibbled on a biscuit while trying to get the gruel down the infant's throat. Sloan seemed to inhale a bowl of oatmeal between one patient and the next.
Sam calculated they reached the height of the epidemic late that afternoon when almost the entire wagon train filled the saloon and spilled over into the lobby and down the hall. She prayed the rest of the town had either been vaccinated or stayed away, because she didn't think she would have enough strength to go through this again if the disease returned a few days from now in people newly exposed to it.
Sloan had gone out and found Ramsey and held him at gunpoint until the doctor had returned to nursing the newest patients. Samantha shook her head in weary confusion as she watched her nemesis work his way around the room, patient by patient. Sloan cursed. With two days' growth of beard, he looked like hell warmed over. He smelled of whiskey as much as Ramsey did. But he wasn't drunk, he washed his hands between every patient, and he spoke reassuringly and confidently to every man, woman, and child he tended. He was an enigma, a contradiction, a puzzle to solve as she rocked the infant and watched.
By the time the infant died that evening, the child's mother was too ill to notice. Tears of grief and weariness slipped down Samantha's cheeks as the tiny body in her arms hiccupped, gasped, and stopped breathing. She kept rocking back and forth, not knowing what else to do, unable to grasp her helplessness against the finality of death.
Something in her attitude must have changed because Sloan appeared beside her before she could even accept what had happened. He leaned over, touched his hand to the child's nonexistent pulse, spit a vivid curse, and walked away. Sam listened in exhausted amazement as he kept on walking through the doorway, down the hall, and up the stairs. A door crashed somewhere overhead as he reached his room. Then there was silence.
Her mother hurried over to relieve Sam of the burden. One of the less ill women from the wagon train joined her. Between them, they had the situation well in hand. Samantha was left with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling overhead where another outbreak of curses had erupted, accompanied by the crash of something breakable. More crashes followed. At this rate, there wouldn't be a single piece of glass left in the hotel.
She had no right to go to him. Sloan Talbott was an impossible man with hidden hurts festering behind that cruel facade of his. He wasn't her responsibility.
But he had stepped in where he didn't have to and helped when he didn't want to. For that, he deserved some modicum of compassion. Samantha went in search of Injun Joe.
The gunfighter was bleary-eyed with drink, but he staggered immediately to his feet when Sam told him what had happened. She watched to make certain he headed in the right direction, then dragged her feet back across the plaza toward home to get some rest.
Chief Coyote sat cross-legged on her front porch, smoking a long-stemmed pipe. Sam stopped some distance from him and waved him away. "Keep away from me, Chief," she called. "I might be contagious."
He gazed at her from dark eyes sunk behind masses of wrinkles. "I not die when people did," he informed her calmly. "I watch, see if white people die like my people."
She didn't want to get into that one. She didn't want to imagine sitting there day after day, watching one person after another dying until an entire tribe was wiped out, just as this wagon train of people might do. Death was something she had always accepted, but she had never watched an infant die before he even had a chance to live.
Catching her breath on a sob, Sam marched past the old Indian, leaving him to his deathwatch. Maybe he was right to hope they would all die. White people had probably brought the disease that killed his friends and family. But she had no stomach for retribution. She only wanted to go to bed and cry.
Coyote nodded his head as he heard the muffled sobs through the pane of weak glass behind him. He watched without expression as someone carried the tiny body wrapped in linen out of the hotel, and one of the men camped in the plaza began to wail his grief.
White babies died just as red ones did. The powerful medicine of Sloan Talbott couldn't stop death.
Chapter Ten
“Get the hell out of my sight, Ramsey!" The cry carried clearly through the windows of the hotel and into the street where Samantha stood.
Arms loaded with newly laundered blankets, she turned to the wiry figure lounging against the porch post. "Sometime I would like explained to me why the town saloon-keeper tends the sick while the doctor spends his time with the whiskey. I know men are queer creatures, but this goes a little beyond queer."
Injun Joe gave a laconic shrug as Ramsey came flying through the hotel doors headfirst, whiskey bottle still clutched in his arms. "Makes as much sense as a woman wearing pants, I reckon," was his only response.
Giving the gunslinger an ugly look, Sam stepped over Ramsey's recumbent body and into the hotel. She was beginning to accept things like bodies lying in the street and Indians on her porch. She wondered if her father had realized what kind of life he had led the gentle women of his family into. Back in Tennessee they'd had a comfortable farmhouse, a civilized town to visit, and neighbors who could be counted on. The women were ladies, the men were gentlemen, and if anyone stepped outside the
boundaries, the community as a whole dealt with them. In this blasted town there were a hundred different entities and no whole, and certainly not a gentleman to be found anywhere.
"I told you to get your ass out of here before I kick it out!"
The shout came from the saloon. Samantha held her blankets in front of her and stepped out of range, waiting for the next body to be heaved through the doorway. Talbott was on a real roll this morning.
"Take your infernal Bible and shove it—" The imprecation was cut short by a woman's soft warning.
The preacher who had arrived with the wagon train stumbled into the hall, shaking his head as he passed Samantha without seeing her. He clutched his Bible much as Ramsey clutched his bottle, hurrying to avoid his predecessor's fate. Glowering, Samantha marched into the makeshift hospital room to confront the human grizzly bear rapidly emptying it of its ambulatory inhabitants.
"Clear out, Talbott, and get some sleep before you murder the rest of us." She threw the blankets down on a chair and, hands on hips, faced the big man in the room's center—the man everyone was trying to avoid.
If he looked like hell a few days ago, he looked three times worse today. His dark curly hair was matted against his bare neck; his collar had wilted and disappeared long before. A week's growth of dark beard made him as hairy as any grizzly she could imagine, and the red, bleary eyes that stared out at her from behind that bush made her wince. His normally pristine white shirt was covered in soot and various human excretions. He'd rolled the sleeves back and tore open the neck to reveal a red flannel undervest that Sam thought rivaled his eyes for color. She grimaced when he turned his malignant stare on her.
He stepped over a body sleeping on a pallet and parked himself directly in front of her. "Maybe I should practice with you," he growled. "This is all your damned fault in the first place."
Oh, that was good. That was rich. Samantha drew herself up straight to face him and just barely resisted spitting in his eye. All her fault! As if she were God to visit pestilence upon the face of the earth. Just to spite one Sloan Talbott, no doubt.
"You're good, Talbott, I'll grant you that. First a drunk, then a preacher, and now a mere female. Why don't you heave me through the door like Ramsey? Show your masculine prowess. Prove you're bigger than all of us." She held up her arms to show she wasn't resisting.
"I am bigger than all of you," he roared. "And if you don't get the hell out of my sight, I'll heave you anywhere I like!"
He was looking for a fight. He was looking for someone to kill. Sam understood that instantly. His fists were clenched in fury. Sloan Talbott was a volcano just waiting to erupt. If another man stood here now, Sloan would splatter him against the wall and not look back. But something in his background kept him from hitting a woman. She understood that, too.
And she grinned. She held up her fists as men did and swung at him. "Make me, big boy!"
He caught her swing in one hand and shoved her backward. "I'll turn you over my knee and tan your hide if you don't know what's good for you."
"Bet you can't catch me!" She kicked his shin and darted out of his reach, keeping well within distance of the door to safety.
He roared. He grabbed for her. She dodged his arm and ducked under it, running for the door, still crying, "Bet you can't catch me!"
He was off after her faster than a hound on a possum trail. Injun Joe jumped out of the way as they flew out the door and into the street, Samantha half a dozen paces in the lead. Her trousers gave her the kind of stride she never would have had if she'd worn feminine finery, and Sloan regaled her with a string of vitriolic phrases expressing his opinions on her attire as she darted between the tents and wagons that had gradually found their way down the mountain from the snow-filled pass.
Men scattered as the two of them raced across the frozen plaza, down the wooden porch of the hacienda, around the wagon shed, and back again toward the empty blacksmith shop. Sam was laughing, her face red with the wind as she threw taunts over her shoulder. What could be seen of Sloan's face was red, but whether with wind or fury no one could say. Whenever he began gaining on her, Sam threw her agile legs into a leap over some obstruction Sloan had to race around and took off again in a different direction.
Injun Joe finally put a halt to the madness by the simple expedient of sticking his boot out just as Sloan passed by. Sloan hit the boot running, went reeling head over heels, and landed facedown in an ice-coated puddle in the street. He shoved himself up, spluttering, but before he could raise himself enough to murder anyone, Joe put his boot on Sloan's neck and shoved him down again.
"Reckon you'll kill yourself if you keep that up," he drawled as Sloan went down again.
Finding herself suddenly uncontested, Sam swung around and shouted a protest. "Hey, that's unfair! I was winning this fine without your help." She stalked up and kicked Joe's boot out of the way.
"Ain't no winning a contest with no beginning and no end," Joe replied dourly. "If you're gonna kill each other, at least do it with rules."
"I'm not going to kill her. I'm going to shove her into a dress and tie her there until she learns to act like a female," Sloan growled, pulling himself up from the street.
"Don't you like my pretty trousers?" Sam taunted, holding out her denim-covered legs for inspection. "At least they're cleaner than yours. You look like something a wildcat wouldn't touch."
"Then the wildcat's got more sense than you," Joe admonished with disgust. He turned back to a surly Sloan. "You wanna race, do it fair and square. First one to the dead pine wins." He pulled a Colt from his holster and raised it in the air.
"Wait a minute." Sloan halted him, glaring down at the irritating female panting almost as hard as he. He bet she didn't wear anything more than a man's undershirt under that flimsy cloth. He could see every curve and valley. That thought gave him the perfect vengeance. "I'm not running anywhere unless I get something out of it. If I can't tan her hide, I want some other reward."
"For losing? Not on your life, Talbott."
"If I win, you've got to wear dresses." He practically stood nose-to-nose with her.
Sam laughed. "If I win, you've got to wear dresses!"
They had gathered a crowd by now. The men hooted over this riposte. Money quickly began exchanging hands. Faces appeared at the hotel windows to see what the noise was about. Sloan's glare and Sam's laughter explained little. Joe raising his gun and the two combatants toeing the line someone had drawn in the mud spoke volumes.
The shot exploded in the chilly air. Both contestants took off with long, loping strides, easily keeping abreast. Sam's legs weren't as long as Sloan's, but she was lighter and more agile. She could leap over fallen tree limbs and icy puddles while Sloan had to slow to keep from falling on them.
But with a clear field and a straight shot, Sloan's greater strength and stamina had all the advantages. As soon as they cleared the debris of town, he was off and running, leaving the cheers and roar of the crowd behind. Samantha came in a very poor second.
He waited for her at the pine stump, arms crossed triumphantly over his chest. Sam really wanted to punch him now. She'd instigated this for his own good. He ought to be thanking her instead of looking so damned smug. She had probably been better off when he was exploding with fury. She didn't like the look in his eyes one little bit.
"I hope you have a nice selection of gowns, Miss Neely," he taunted as she stopped in front of him.
"It won't make any difference, Talbott. I can still beat you hands down, wearing a dress, if I want to." Sam shoved her hands in her pockets and glared. She was wishing she'd clarified this wager a little better.
"Just like you beat me now, huh? Well, what are you waiting for? Start with a green one. I bet you look real good in green."
"I bet I do, too, but you'll never know. I'll wait until you fall asleep before I come out. You can't stay awake forever."
Behind the beard Sloan's grin was slow and nasty. Sam preferred it when he didn't try
to smile. She gulped and took a step backward.
"I can't sleep forever, either," he reminded her. "You promised to wear dresses if I won. I didn't mean one dress. I didn't mean for a few hours. You've got to wear dresses just like any female. Dresses, not trousers. All the time."
Furious, Sam clenched her hands on her hips. "Now wait one cotton-pickin' minute! If you think I'm going to go around hauling skirts and crinolines when I try to hunt—"
"You'll have to give up hunting then, won't you? And fighting. And otherwise behaving like an undisciplined brat. Get your sisters to teach you how to act. You'll catch on in a few hundred years or so."
He stalked off, leaving Samantha to stand flabbergasted and red-faced behind him. A few hundred years or so? She was going to kill him. She would have to. He couldn't insult a Neely like that.
He could and he had. Sulkily, Sam followed Sloan's path back to town. Men were cheering and pounding the wretch on the back as he headed back to the hotel, hopefully to sleep. She'd just done them all a favor by letting him work out his temper, and they didn't even appreciate it. Instead, they whistled and yelled when she walked across the plaza to the house. Maybe it was time she found that valley. She really didn't like people all that much.
But she was a Neely, and she honored her bets. She came out again a little while later wearing one of her mother's old dresses over her shirt and denims. No one had specified what she had to wear under the dress, and the skirt was too short on her to wear petticoats with nothing under them.
A few men hooted as she crossed the plaza, but with Talbott out of the way, the contest wasn't as interesting. They went back to what they were doing while Samantha went back to work.
Her mother and sister looked at her questioningly, but gossip about the race had already made its way into the sickroom. They went on about their business and left Sam to hers. Talbott, thankfully, had finally gone to his room to rest.
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