“Fine, I’ll pay you the going rate to come over and mow.”
“Can’t do it.”
“What?”
“Dane wouldn’t let me take your money after I nearly scared you out of your skin that night. Then there’s the fee you never charged us for this.” He gestured to his healing scalp. “I’ll be over after school tomorrow.” He greeted Red and Bertie and Mildred, then left to join Ramsay down at the dock.
Cheyenne invited her new visitors into the house. She’d already learned Mildred was housebroken. If her friends in the Columbia ER could see her now…Still, she’d always enjoyed older people. She’d had a good relationship with her grandparents when they were alive.
“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in setting up a clinic while you’re here,” Bertie said. “You’d have people knocking your door down. Shoot, you could probably support half your practice with Cook alone.” She shoved the pan at Cheyenne, who took it.
“Who’s Cook?” Cheyenne asked.
“He’s the older fella who lives over at the ranch. He’s a chon-dromaniac with hemorroids.”
Cheyenne paused for a moment to allow time for that statement to make sense. It didn’t work. “He’s a what?”
“Chondromanaic. You know, one of those folks who always thinks they’re sick.”
Ah, a hypochondriac. “Sorry, Bertie, I didn’t know. But I can’t open my own practice. My professional liability insurance is through the hospital where I’m employed. It only covers me in that facility, and it’s against the law in most states to practice without insurance.”
“Hmph. Can’t you get your own?”
“I couldn’t afford the premiums.”
“Couldn’t afford it? I thought doctors made all kinds of money.”
Cheyenne sighed. Why bother to explain? She lifted the lid from the pan. “What’s this?”
“Black-walnut cake,” Bertie said as she, Red and Mildred crowded into the living room. “Figured you hadn’t ever tasted one, down from the big city like that.”
Cheyenne thanked them and led the way through the house to set the cake on the kitchen counter among all the cleaning paraphernalia.
Red handed her the package he’d been carrying. “Goat cheese,” he announced, his blue eyes shining with pride. “Make it myself. Boys at the ranch love it, and Dane purty much buys all I can manage to make.” He leaned forward and winked. “But I saved this out for you.” He patted the lump of cheese lovingly. “Been making it for years. Had no complaints.”
“And you won’t get any from me, I love cheese.” Cheyenne opened the package and took a knife out of her utensil drawer. “Would you like a piece?”
Red cocked his head forward. “Cheese!” he shouted. “It’s cheese!”
“Red, she knows that!” Bertie shouted back. “Why don’t you wear your hearing aid?”
“Hmph. I cain’t hear with that stupid thing. It just stops up my ears,” he grumbled. “When the wind blows, those things make it sound like a storm’s about to hit.”
Bertie reached out and touched Red’s arm, watching his face with focused concern. “You feeling okay?”
“Fine,” Red muttered. “I feel fine.”
Cheyenne reached in the cupboard for some plates. “Can you stay and share it with me?”
“Sure would like that,” Bertie said. “Have a seat, Red.” Again, that focused concern.
Cheyenne cut the cake into generous pieces and added some goat cheese to each plate. It smelled delicious.
“You like goat’s milk?” Bertie asked as they settled at the table. “It’s good for you, and if old Mildred here doesn’t stop trying to get my cake, you can have goat burgers, too.”
“I’ve never tried goat milk,” Cheyenne said. “But I don’t think I could eat Mildred.” She watched the goat inch up beside Red and sniff at his plate.
Red nudged Mildred away, brushed cake crumbs from his overall bib and looked at Cheyenne, blue eyes wide. “How d’you like that cheese? Good stuff?”
Cheyenne sampled it. “Delicious.” The texture was smooth but not too soft, and the flavor was mild, almost sweet.
Red’s face flushed with pleasure. “Knew you would.” He took another bite of the cake. “This cake of Bertie’s ain’t bad, either. Her black-walnut cake’s won ribbons at the fair.” He jerked his plate away from Mildred’s eager nose and spilled crumbs across his leg, which the goat snatched up.
Under Bertie’s watchful eye, Cheyenne cut a small corner from the square of cake and put it in her mouth. She tried not to gag as the strong aroma and taste of dirt filled her nostrils and coated her tongue.
Ugh! People liked this stuff?
Bertie leaned slightly forward, just as eager for approval as Red had been.
Cheyenne couldn’t spit it out. She would not make a face. She forced a smile through the tears forming in her eyes, smashed the moist cake with her tongue and chewed. She tried not to breathe until she swallowed.
“Well? What do you think?” Bertie asked.
Somehow, Cheyenne managed to smile. “So this is black-walnut cake, is it?” She swallowed again. “It’s very different from English walnut.”
Bertie beamed. “It sure is. Lots of people say it’s a delicacy. It’s richer than pecan, and makes English walnuts taste like baby food, no flavor. If you like this, you ought to try my black-walnut pies.”
Cheyenne silently vowed never to be in that predicament.
“So you two walk everywhere you go?” she asked, hoping to distract Bertie’s attention. “You don’t have a car?”
“Nope. We use the boat to get to town, and when we need to go to a bigger place for something, Dane takes us.”
“What’s that she’s asking about?” Red asked his wife.
“About why we don’t have a car!”
Red frowned. “A car? What would we need a car for? Them things ain’t nothing but trouble.”
“Oh, what d’you know?” Bertie jeered. “You only drove once, and gave up because you couldn’t get the hang of shifting.”
Red turned a playful glare on his wife. “Well, you didn’t do no better! You drove into the goat’s pen and crippled our best doe!”
While they continued to glare at each other, Cheyenne crumbled some of her cake and slipped the crumbs to Mildred.
“If you hadn’t been in the back seat, screaming to high heaven about us all dying, we’d’ve been okay!” Bertie retorted.
Mildred nudged Cheyenne’s elbow for another bite, and the swift movement caused Cheyenne to drop her fork, which attracted Bertie’s attention.
“Goat, you’re a nuisance. Red, take her on outside, would you? We’ve got to be going in a few minutes.”
“Ain’t you gonna invite her to church?” Red asked. “I thought that was why—”
“Sounds like that’s what you just did,” Bertie said.
“Thanks, but not this morning.” Cheyenne hoped they wouldn’t push it.
As Red stood up, he reached toward his chest and stumbled backward, nearly tripping over the goat. He righted himself and left the kitchen, limping slightly.
Cheyenne looked at Bertie. “What’s wrong with Red?”
Bertie avoided her gaze and reached for her husband’s plate. “He gets a little gimpy once in a while.” She carried the plates to the counter and set them in the sink, suddenly quiet.
“That wasn’t just gimpy—he reached for his heart. Bertie, how long has it been since he’s seen a doctor?”
Bertie ran water over the plates and covered the cake pan. “A while.”
“How long?”
“Long enough we don’t even have a doctor. Maybe twenty, twenty-five years.”
Bertie’s earlier comment made sense now. “Why don’t you let me listen to his heart with my stethoscope? I don’t have to have insurance to do that.”
Bertie hesitated. “I didn’t mean to come over here and take advantage of you. I just thought if you could take a look at Red’s left leg, we c
ould pay you for—”
“What’s wrong with his leg?”
“He fell last week and bruised it up pretty bad.”
“Did it break the skin?”
“Yes, and now it’s all hot and red and pitted, like an orange peel. He’s got a lot of swelling farther up…you know…”
“In the groin area?”
Bertie nodded. “I’ve been trying my own home remedies, and nothing works.”
“Why don’t you let me drive him into Kimberling City? There’s an urgent-care facility—”
“He won’t go. Says he’s made it this long without a doctor, he’ll make it fine now.”
“Is he having fever or chills?”
“He felt warm to me this morning. That’s one reason I wanted to come over—that, and invite you to church—but I didn’t know about all that insurance stuff.”
“Forget about that insurance stuff. See if you can get him back in here. And see if Mildred wouldn’t mind waiting on the porch.”
Dane watched Blaze and Ramsay pull up at the dock, thick as thieves. He automatically glanced toward Hideaway, which was only about a quarter of a mile from the place where Cheyenne Allison was staying—by boat. By car it was about a mile.
For some reason, he’d glanced that way quite a few times the past few days. He’d considered boating over there, but didn’t have a clue what he’d say once he arrived.
He envied Blaze, who seemed capable of plunging into any situation headfirst and keeping up a running monologue of words—Blaze’s own special defense mechanism. When he wouldn’t let them get a word in edgewise, people were prevented from asking questions or interacting with him.
Apparently, Cheyenne had accepted the hen and eggs, because Blaze and Ramsay got out of the boat without the sacks.
Soon afterward, Ramsay got into his own boat and sped across the lake toward town. He’d be wise to make sure his father didn’t know he was muddying the waters here at the ranch. Austin Barlow had his good points, but leniency wasn’t one of them.
Dane glanced again toward the farm across the lake as Blaze came up the slight incline from the dock, past the barn. “Did she take them?” he asked when Blaze drew near.
“She took them. I think I bullied her into it, though. I don’t think she was ready for her own little farm.”
“You did assure her, didn’t you, that you’d be over to help her with them?”
“Of course I did. I couldn’t let that hen and her chicks suffer just because we’re trying to be nice to the neighbors. I’m going over to mow for Cheyenne tomorrow.”
“Good.”
“Red and Bertie are over there now.”
“I saw them walk up.”
Blaze gave him one of those knowing grins. “Oh, you did, did you? Watching the place pretty close lately, aren’t you?”
Cocky kid. “Breakfast is ready, and you’re running late.”
Red’s leg was, indeed, warm to the touch, and he had a temperature of 101.5. He wouldn’t let Cheyenne get close to the area where his lymph nodes were affected, but she took Bertie’s word for it.
“Ain’t worth shooting, am I Shy Ann?” he said as she placed her stethoscope against his chest.
She nodded as she listened. He had a rapid heart rate, low blood pressure, swollen nodes and other symptoms of serious cellulitis. Unfortunately, these were also symptoms of deep vein thrombosis—a blood clot deep in the leg.
She removed her stethoscope and sat back. “Red, you need to see another doctor so they can run some tests.” She nearly shouted the words so he would hear her.
“What’s the problem?”
“I can’t be sure, but your symptoms imply you have a serious infection caused by the injury you suffered a few days ago. Your body has been invaded by some kind of bacteria, and if that’s the case, you need a strong antibiotic to go after the germs. With tests, another doctor might be able to find out what—”
“Don’t want any of them new-type tests,” he said. “If you can’t do anything for me, I’ll be fine. I’ll just get back on home and tough it out.”
Rats. She’d been afraid he’d say that. Cheyenne glanced at Bertie, who shrugged at her helplessly.
“Okay, look, is there a pharmacy in town?” Cheyenne asked.
“Nope,” Bertie said. “Dane tried to get a pharmacist to set up shop at the back of that little soda fountain beside his store, but without a doctor here, he can’t get one to come.”
This was ridiculous. There was no earthly reason Red couldn’t let Cheyenne take him to Kimberling City, swallow a little pride, see a doctor at the urgent-care center and get this thing taken care of.
But then, how many patients had Cheyenne seen in the past year with this kind of problem? Columbia had a high population of retirees, many of whom did not have the best of incomes. They went to a doctor—sometimes even came to the ER—got their prescriptions, paid for the medication if they could. If they couldn’t pay, they did without.
If Cheyenne’s diagnosis was correct, Red would need the big guns to stop it. That meant a hundred dollar prescription, and she wasn’t even authorized to write a script outside the ER.
And yet, what was she supposed to do? Risk Red’s life over a few rules?
Rules that could give someone a reason to yank her medical license.
She put her stethoscope away. “Okay, you two, Red doesn’t need to be walking, he needs to lie still with his leg up as much as possible. I’m going to drive you back home.”
Bertie frowned at her. “Mildred, too?”
“Of course. I’m taking a trip to town, so I’ll pick up the medication Red needs while I’m there.”
“You’re going shopping on a Sunday?” Bertie exclaimed.
“That’s right. Now, let’s get you back home.”
Thankfully, Bertie didn’t offer her any kind of animal in payment.
Chapter Fourteen
The bells echoed across the water from the community church in Hideaway, where Dane had attempted, years ago, to attend with his boys. Now they belonged to a smaller congregation down in Blue Eye, right on the Missouri-Arkansas border. It was a little farther to drive, but Dane felt the degree of acceptance his boys received from Doug and Brenda, the minister and his wife, far outweighed the deficit in transit time.
Not only were his brood welcomed with enthusiasm, but they were encouraged to take part in the small ministry—not quarantined to the right front pew every Sunday, watched carefully for any sign of mischief by Austin Barlow and his mother.
Jinx sat in the driver’s seat of the van while the boys and Cook climbed inside. Dane was just about to lock the front door of the house when the telephone rang.
Ordinarily, he would let the answering machine get it, but he’d been waiting for a telephone call from Clint about a new prospect to replace Jinx in a few weeks. Jinx had been accepted at College of the Ozarks, and he had a summer job lined up, working in the restaurant on campus.
Dane picked up the receiver before the machine could respond. It was Cheyenne Allison.
“I need some directions,” she said after the greeting. “Do you know of a pharmacy anywhere in the vicinity where I could fill a prescription for an antibiotic?”
“This morning? It’s Sunday.”
“It’s an emergency.”
“Are you sick? Is something—”
“No, it’s Red Meyer. He has a bad infection, and I need to…anyway, I was hoping you’d know where I might be able to find a pharmacist open on Sunday morning.”
“I see.” Why would a vacationer know more than the rest of the town about Red Meyer? Red hadn’t said anything this past week about any infection. “You don’t have a boat, do you?”
“No, I was going to drive to—”
“You stay put and I’ll be right over. I have a friend near Kimberling City I can call. He’ll fill the script, and he’s close to a dock. It’ll be quicker for us to get there by boat. What’s the script for?”
“A
ntibiotic, but—”
“Give me the dosage and I’ll call it in. We can give him the prescription when we get there. Meet me down at your dock.”
By the time Cheyenne stepped out the front door, she heard the boat racing across the lake toward her cove. Dane sat behind the wheel of a Mystique power cruiser, dressed a few notches up from casual.
“Thanks for coming,” she said as he pulled up to the dock. “Really, if I’d had directions, I could have driven.”
“You said it was an emergency.”
“It is.”
“Then get in.” He tossed her a life jacket. “Buckle up. I didn’t realize you knew Red and Bertie so well.” He backed away from the dock. “Ordinarily they don’t like to share their problems with anyone.”
She fumbled with the jacket and finally figured out how to put it on. She hadn’t been in a boat in years. “I just happened to be nearby at the right time.”
“But where’s the prescription coming from? They don’t have a car, and Red hasn’t been to a doctor—”
“I got it for them. Don’t worry.”
Their speed gradually increased as they aimed north along the smooth lake. Cheyenne huddled behind the windshield, aware of Dane’s curious attention as he glanced at her from time to time.
“I’m still impressed by that little trick you used to stop Blaze’s bleeding,” he said at last.
She nodded.
“And now here you are rushing to get some medication for Red Meyer. With the prescription in hand, I presume.”
“That’s right.” Good grief, just tell him. It isn’t like this is some big secret.
“I guess Blaze warned you this morning that half of Hideaway is talking about the mysterious stranger who moved in two weeks ago.”
“He warned me. I’m not manufacturing meth, in case you’re worried.”
He chuckled. “I’m not, but I am curious.”
“About a crazy woman who charges at you with a mace gun?”
“No, I understood that perfectly. I guess what I meant to say was, I’m interested in how you’re doing, and the boys and I have wondered if there’s anything we can help you with besides mowing the lawn and—”
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