Eula Mae took one step inside. She was short enough that she didn’t have to bend forward as the two men would have to do. She stopped, removed her shoes and put them to one side.
“Shoes off in our house.” Her order sang out to the others. “Unless you’re wearing moccasins, of course.” She slid her feet across the fur-covered floor. The sensuous touch against her stockinged feet caused a hum of delight to rise to her lips.
“Um, um, um. What luxury. How marvelously soft and warm.”
Directly behind her, Twila pointed to the two fur covered pallets, one to the right, one to the left.
“Beds!” she shouted, and put a hand over her giggle.
“Yeah. Sweet grass mattresses, wrapped in fur.” Starr smiled down at Eula Mae as he toed off his shining boots. “That’s what my family wants my little Missus to rest upon.”
“Your little ‘missus?’” Twila said.
“You two getting married?” The Deputy Marshall had to reach for Twila’s shoulder to get his well-worn boots off. He lowered himself to the pallet Twila indicated and she sank down to sit beside him.
“Oh, the Doctor is teasing, as usual.” Eula Mae twirled to look over her new home. “I love this, Bartlett. It’s so cozy, so luxurious to the touch, so comfortable.” She appealed to the teacher, “I hope you won’t mind cooking over an open fire?” She pointed to the rim of stones around the center of their circular home. “Or we can cook outside. Let’s have Bartlett and our Marshall to supper tomorrow night, Twila.”
“I’ve cooked over open fires,” Twila confessed, “But not often. Mama has a stove.”
“Oh, we’ll both just practice on these two old boys.” Eula Mae could not control the excitement circling within her. “What do you guys say to a supper party, maybe not tomorrow night, but by Friday? We should have our domestic chores all figured out. What do you say?”
Both men nodded eager agreement.
“I got to send word to Judge Parker about what’s going on over here.” Cord stood and pulled Twila up to stand with him. “Why don’t you and me go down to the railway office? We oughta let the Doc have a minute with his ‘missus.’”
“Now don’t you start that stuff, Marshall.” Eula Mae returned his grin but turned to look daggers at the Doctor.
Later she and Bartlett sat side-by-side on the fur covered, sweet grass pallet, while their friends reclaimed their footwear and left the tent together.
“I love this, Bartlett,” she murmured.
“Could you love me, too?” He took her hand, turned it palm side up, and placed a kiss there.
“We shouldn’t be doing this, Bart, we should be searching for Sweet Jud and Willadene.”
“Um hm,” he whispered, and placed a kiss on her other palm.
Chapter 10
“I’m thinking about moving my hat stuff into the tipi, Bart.” She looked into the brown gaze of the doctor. “Things have gone missing from my trunk, recently. What do you think?”
“What is missing?”
“Nothing big. Just a gold plated buttonhook my granny gave me, and a spool of flowered ribbon, so far as I can tell.”
“If you’d feel more secure I think you should conduct business here. I’ll help you move your things.”
Shouts from the street drew Eula Mae and Bartlett back to the world of Tulsey Town. Both stood from the sweet grass pallet, and Bartlett bent to slip out first, boots in hand. He held the door flap to allow Eula Mae to duck out behind him.
The man used her shoulder to steady his quick rebooting. Eula Mae couldn’t help taking that opportunity to sneak a peek at the doctor’s feet just to admire the elegant, white clocked, dark blue silk stockings he wore. Everything about the man breathed money and breeding, she thought, but she decided his best quality came from his innate inner self. He had a sense of humor. She loved that. Maybe she loved the man himself?
In the distance a woman wailed. She realized it was Willadene’s cry which rang across the town.
“Gone! My sweet Jud is gone!”
They watched the Deputy Marshall plunge into the mud of Main Street to take the arm of the distraught woman mired there. The grocer, Mr. Boudreaux, stared at the drama below from the high front boardwalk of his store.
“Willadene.” Eula Mae murmured. “Does she mean that she thinks that Sweet Jud is dead?”
“I’m afraid so. Let’s walk up the street and find out what happened. Maybe I….” He hesitated. “Maybe we can help.”
Deputy Marshall Cord Vincent half carried the crying ferry operator’s wife to the bench on the boardwalk in front of the smallest Mercantile building.
Bartlett and Eula Mae angled into the space behind Cord, who was helplessly patting the plump, little woman’s shoulder.
“Can we help, Marshall?” Bartlett peered over the lawman’s shoulder, but Eula Mae could see nothing but the Marshall’s wide shoulders and broad back.
“Don’t know. She ain’t told me yet just what she thinks might have happened to her husband.”
Eula Mae edged around the two men.
“He’s done gone.” Willadene’s whisper of despair was spoken into her clenched hands, which lay in her lap.
“I ain’t never gonna see him again, and it’s all my fault.”
“Where has Sweet Jud gone?” The Marshall patted the woman’s slumped shoulders.
“Gone!” she cried. “Gone South.”
“Willadene, can we help you to my office?” Bartlett bent to visually search the woman’s back and neck for wounds or cuts. “I need to examine you. Are you in pain? Do you hurt anywhere?”
Eula Mae tucked a hand under Willadene’s right arm. “Bartlett, get her other side and we can help her stand so she can walk to your place.” She looked back at the Deputy. “Is that all right with you, Marshall?”
“I’ll just mosey along with youall,” the Marshall muttered. “After you look her over, I need to try to make some sense out of what all she’s telling us.”
“Gone,” Willadene whimpered the word once as she allowed Bart and Eula Mae to aid her in her walk toward the Doctor’s office. Her sobs brought the curious citizens of Tulsey Town to their doors.
When they entered the doctor’s office a male voice shouting, “Fire, fire!” and the sound of the volunteer fire wagon being slogged through the muddy Tulsey Town street tore their attention away from Willadene.
Chapter 11
“I’ll stay with Willadene, if you and Cord want to join the fire fighters, Bartlett.” Eula Mae felt a quick jolt of fear at the thought of this lovely man stepping into a burning building.
The Doctor has become much too important to me in the few days I’ve known him, she cautioned herself. Whatever he does, it is really none of my business. I have to remember that. Of course, his well being… Cord’s well being… anyone’s well being, should be of concern, one supposes… just because I’m a decent person. She couldn’t help the small inner voice that murmured, “This Doctor is important to you more than as just a fellow human being, deny what you will, girl.”
Willadene sat motionless on the chair the doctor had furnished her. Her eyes seemed fixed on something that wasn’t in the doctor’s office. Her sobs had subsided, her moans quieted. Eula Mae suspected the little woman was contemplating what life after the loss of her Sweet Jud would be. The suffering woman still hadn’t explained what had happened to her tiny love.
Shouts and clanging sounds from the fire scene penetrated the quiet of the office.
“I’m just going to run to the front of the drugstore, Willadene, to see what’s going on,” Eula Mae explained. “I won’t be gone more than 5 minutes. Will you be all right with that?” She bent to look into Willadene’s face.
The woman continued to stare blankly into space. She didn’t move a muscle and she made no answer. Eula Mae decided she could chance a quick trip to the front of the building just to snatch a quick look up Main Street toward the fire. Willadene seemed fixed in place.
The mill
ing about of the fire wagon volunteers seemed centered on Boudreau’s Store, so far as she could tell. If the Mercantile went up in flames, that meant the destruction of her own trunk, books, and furbelows. The loudest sounds appeared to be coming from the back of the grocery store, probably from the Boudreau’s living quarters. Really, there was little to see.
She took a step toward the scene of the fire, but stopped herself. There was nothing she could do. She’d promised Willadene she’d be only a moment, so she forced herself to turn her back to all the hullabaloo and retrace her steps to the rear of the building where Bartlett’s office was located. Willadene might be frightened. The woman might have wakened from her reverie and wondered why no one was with her. Eula Mae hastened her steps. She freely admitted curiosity had always been one of her character traits, as Granny had said, and “Curiosity killed the cat.”
Better get along, she told herself, but she turned to glance once more at the Boudreau store. Things had quieted some and people were drifting away from the scene, although the back of the store remained a center of interest, so far as she could tell.
When she arrived at the office door she realized it had been standing slightly open. I was in such a hurry, I must have left it open, she thought.
Inside she was shocked to see that the chair where Willadene had been perched was empty. She hurried to the second room, the Doctor’s living quarters. Maybe Willadene had wanted to go to bed. She searched the room including the closet area behind a linen screen. No Willadene. The ferry operator’s wife had disappeared.
She hurried back into the office, searched every nook and cranny of the room. Willadene was gone. Guilt washed through Eula Mae.
“Granny was right,” she said aloud. “Curiosity killed the cat. I hope my curiosity won’t be the cause of the killing of Willadene.” She raced to the door. “What will I tell Bartlett?” And she lifted her skirts to race toward the dispersing crowd and the volunteer fire brigade, toward the Doctor, toward the only real security she’d discovered in Tulsey Town.
Chapter 12
A search outside the Doctor’s office yielded nothing. No clues. No signs of the woman. The walk to the Boudreau Store felt as if it took an age. What could she say about Willadene? How would she be able to explain the woman’s disappearance? She’d have to confess to that few minutes of inattention.
What was happening with Willadene? Was she in danger? Eula Mae shook her head. Someone would have to search for the little woman, but search where, was the question.
Inside the mercantile Eula Mae glanced at the corner that held her trunk. It seemed fine. Other than the missing buttonhook and the spool of pink ribbon which she knew about, she was sure all was well. She’d heard that other people in the town had also lost small items. Lots of speculation as to who was purloining other people’s things. Indians? Local kids? Mr. Montmorcey? Who?
She pushed through a small crowd of onlookers who stood behind the fire fighters. The back wall of the store showed scorch marks and signs of burning. Firemen were lifting the burnt body of Jesse Boudreau from the floor, to place her on the fire wagon. One man held a blackened box which he took from a niche in the wall, then placed it on the wagon next to the storeowner’s dead wife. Dr. Starr bent over the woman’s body. Eula Mae swallowed the gorge that rose at the odor of burnt flesh.
“Set herself on fire,” someone behind Eula Mae muttered, “Who’d a thought it?”
“I knowed Jesse Boudreau for years,” a second person answered, “She never seemed out-of-whack to me.”
“Why’d she do it?” a third man asked the question uppermost in Eula Mae’s mind, “And where was old Boudreau?” Yeah, Eula Mae thought, where was old Boudreau during all this? Wife beaters get off way too easy when the woman takes the blame.
“Dr. Starr,” Eula Mae kept her voice low so she wouldn’t be a disturbance to the men working on the clean-up. Only one or two women remained in the crowd. “Could I talk with you, please?”
Bartlett’s face showed surprise. “Eula Mae?”
“Willadene has disappeared.” She let her gaze drop. “My fault. I took a few minutes to look at the fire fighting crowd and when I ran back to your office, the woman was gone and now I can’t find her. I’m so sorry.”
“You weren’t appointed to be her keeper, hon.” Concern flashed in his eyes. “She’s a grown woman. Whatever she did, it’s not your fault.”
“What about Mrs. Boudreau?”
“She doused herself with coal oil and set herself on fire. Her blaze caught some of the back wall. She was hovering over a locked box.” He put a hand on Eula Mae’s shoulder, “She wanted to do this, she did it on her own.” He shrugged. “No one has seen Boudreau.”
“What’s in the box?”
“Let’s look.”
Eula didn’t want to approach the burned body but she forced herself closer.
The Doctor strode toward the fire wagon. He used a knife from a nearby table to pry the lid from the blackened box. “Guess Mrs. Jesse Boudreau was our sneak thief.”
Eula Mae looked into the container. Her Granny’s button hook lay near the top of a pile of small items, a hand mirror, a comb, her roll of pink ribbon, an ostrich feather, two bracelets, a dozen hatpins, an embroidery hoop and a pair of knitting needles with a ball of brown yarn.
“Why was she stealing this stuff?”
“I think they are calling this behavior a disease, kleptomania, which is an irresistible impulse to take other’s belongings with no profit motive in mind.”
“Jesse just couldn’t help herself?” Eula Mae felt a strong twinge of pity for the dead woman.
“I think that’s right.” He closed the blackened box. “Cord may want to look at this before we give all this stuff back to their owners.”
“Where is her husband, Bartlett?” Eula Mae whispered the question.
“No one seems to know.” The Doctor answered with his own whisper. “He didn’t show up at all while we were putting out the fire.”
“I want you to do me a favor, Bartlett.” Eula Mae hesitated, but at his smile she continued, “Could you move my trunk into my tipi? I think I’d be happier working on hats in my own place.”
He nodded, lifted her hand in his blackened fingers, “Good idea,” he said, then let his lips graze the back of her hand.
A tiny frisson of lightning shot through her veins as it always did whenever this man touched her.
“I know you can’t leave now, Bartlett, but just so you’ll know where I am, I’m going to search around every inch of our village, to see if I can locate Willadene.” She held the hand he’d kissed with her other hand. She realized she was holding it as if she were holding something precious. “I think I’ll walk down to the ferry landing as well.”
The Doctor nodded. “I’ll get your trunk moved when we’ve finished here. Let me know what you discover.” He smiled, but his voice was serious. “Keep your eyes open. Too many bad things happening.”
Eula Mae made her first circuit of Tulsey Town’s muddy two block Main Street, with a stop at her own tipi.
Twila and the Marshall volunteered to join her search. Their sheepish smiles and the blush that rose in the redhead’s cheeks let Eula Mae know a great deal about what the two of them had been doing while almost the entire rest of the town attended a fire. “The Marshall is a good man, Twila,” Eula Mae murmured to her friend as they strolled through the muddy alley behind the drugstore, while the lawman walked ahead of them, beating the bushes and peering into junk stacked behind each store. “Are you considering a move to Ft. Smith, since he’s headquartered there?”
Chapter 13
“Let’s look inside Bartlett’s horse barn.” Eula Mae pointed toward the structure set some distance behind the Doctor’s office. “Room enough for Willadene to hide in there.”
The Marshall swung the double doors wide open. The pack mules greeted them with sounds and restless movement.
Twila peered into their enclosure. “No person in he
re. The Doctor keeps his stock nice and clean. Someone has mucked out this mule pen just recently.” She waited until Cord moved toward the back of the stable.
“I believe the Marshall is thinking on resigning from Judge Parker’s court, Eula Mae. He thinks Tulsey Town might need a permanent law man.” She kept her voice low. “If I could teach and he could keep the peace, we’re thinking about settling here.”
“Getting married, maybe?” Eula Mae asked in the same quiet voice. This was private woman’s business.
Twila answered with a nod. The redhead’s face again flamed. “We’re talking on that, Cord is going to approach the town fathers at the festival.”
Impatient stamps from Ringling’s single stall alerted the two women.
“Ain’t nothing back here but Bart’s horse,” the Marshall called.
“Oh, Twila, I know you’ve seen Ringling but do see what tricks he can do.” Eula Mae took Twila’s arm. “You aren’t afraid of horses, are you? Ringling is a darling.”
“Good looking horse, all right.” Cord completed his survey of the silvery white horse’s stall. “No one in here with him, either.”
Ringling thrust his nose forward toward Eula Mae’s reaching hand.
“You beauty.” She smoothed the animal’s velvet nose. “And I didn’t bring you a thing.” She smiled when the huge beast nodded at her. “Do either of you have a lump of sugar or an apple, or something for this darling?”
“He wouldn’t want tobacco, all I got in my pocket.” The Deputy Marshall patted his vest pockets.
Twila moved closer to the horse.
“Ringling,” Eula Mae announced, “This is Twila.”
Ringling nodded toward the schoolteacher.
“Twila is a school teacher. Do you like teachers, Ringling?”
The horse nodded his massive head twice and pawed twice with his right front leg.
“He likes teachers.” Twila’s voice held delight. “What a gorgeous creature he is.”
“He can do lots of other things as well,” Eula Mae embraced the animal’s neck. “But we’d better be searching elsewhere, I suppose.”
Foxy Statehood Hens and Murder Most Fowl Page 21