“What we need is someone we can trust who has the money to develop this latest discovery,” Joyous sighed one evening after Angus announced he had literally stumbled over what might be a rich vein of ore. He showed her a piece he had chipped off in the spot miles from town and away from most of the other miners.
“Aye.” He fingered the sample of ore.
“We can trust the storekeeper and the Millses, but they don’t have enough money,” she went on. “Those who do, I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw a pick and shovel.”
“Aye.”
Impatient with his brief responses she still couldn’t help giggling. “I wonder what Reverend Mills would say if I stood up in meeting and asked God to send a rich, honest man.”
The sometimes dour Scot’s gray eyes twinkled, and he threw his head back and laughed. “The reverend would be shocked, but Mrs. Betsy would probably say ‘Amen.’ ”
Joy could just picture it. When she stopped laughing she gasped, “Well, we’re supposed to make known to our Father those things we need.”
“Aye.” Angus reverted to his usual taciturn self, but his gaze followed her adoringly when she caught up a light shawl and announced she planned to walk a little before dark. “Don’t go far,” he warned. “We never know what beastie might be lurking near, four-legged or two.”
“Two-legged!” She turned a startled face toward him.
“Aye. Ye are getting uncommonly handsome, lass. The laddies and some not so young have already approached me, seeking your hand. ’Twas better while ye wore the veil, I’m thinking.”
“As if I’ve seen anyone here I’d marry.” Joy dismissed the suggestion with a wave of her hand. “Why, I scarcely know any boys or men except for the storekeeper and—” She broke off and color flared in her cheeks. “He wasn’t one of them, was he?”
Angus shook his head and chuckled. “Nay, but ’twouldn’t surprise me if he should.” He cocked his head to one side, scanned her as if deciding whether to speak, and finally added, “Don’t take on airs, but a mine owner old enough to be your daddy vowed to bestow the value of your weight in silver on us should I but put in a good word for him.”
Shock imprisoned her tongue for a moment. Then angry red streaked her neck and face above the blue-and-white-checked dress she wore so often.
“Lass.” A timbre in Angus’s voice she’d never heard before silenced the building protest inside her. “Ye are the only decent girl or woman in Virginia City so far, except for Mrs. Betsy.” He struggled with words and she realized how hard it was for him to speak.
“Even men who. . .who seek the other kind bow before your innocence. Virginia City has more than a lust for gold and silver. A madness sometimes comes to men who are away from homes and families.” Dull red suffused his worn face. “Ye are safe from harm because everyone here knows that should a wretch threaten you in any way he would swiftly be brought to justice.”
Joy shuddered, thinking of the growing number of those in Boot Hill.
“Just never open the door to a stranger,” Angus went on. “Those who are coming in won’t know the rough code this brawling place still abides by and any danger would be from those.”
“But won’t our Father protect me?” Joy’s eyes dilated with fear at the revelations.
“Aye, and yet we canna always understand His ways. Sometimes He permits bad things to happen. The sun rises and He ‘sendeth rain on the just and the unjust,’ the Auld Book tells us in chapter five of Matthew.” He reflected for a moment. “Don’t be afraid. Just be canny. Now run along for your bit of a walk.”
Joy soberly stepped outside, but she didn’t go far. She couldn’t help being frightened, although all the times they had traveled in the desert, mountains, or valleys her fearlessness had given her peace. Or had it been faith in God and Angus? She paced back and forth in front of their crude home and thought about many things she had taken for granted. How still it was, away from the town, whose lights twinkled below her. From it rose the evening din she remembered from the rare times she and Angus had been here at night, mercifully dimmed by distance.
Her soul revolted within her, and she cried aloud, “God, why must those You created be like this? Toiling and moiling, little recognizing or caring for You?” Sickened by what Angus had told her, her voice broke. “Please, we need someone to help us mine the silver. As soon as we can satisfy this strange urge within Angus that is so unlike him, we’ll leave here.” Yet the tired faces of the Millses’ rose to haunt her. If she and Angus weren’t here, could the reverend and Betsy carry on? Without vanity she knew her voice drew ever larger numbers to the tent, filling the benches and spilling out into the dusty street. Some had confessed their sins and asked the Lord into their hearts. They encouraged rough comrades to do the same and yet lawlessness prevailed, fights ended in death, and the number of rowdies and gunmen far outshone the “church crowd” as one resentful saloon owner who feared a loss of business called them.
Joy still wore the gray veil when she went to town but lifted it once inside the store. With new awareness after her talk with Angus, she noticed things she had overlooked before. The way the men glanced at her, shuffled their feet, and looked away. Whispers, “That’s the red-headed gal who sings at church.” Doors to business places quickly opened by bowing men. She wisely held her head high and didn’t let on there had been a change in her knowledge. Yet she dreaded a time that seemed inevitable.
One afternoon Joy stayed longer at Betsy’s than she had planned. She started toward home and got out of town safely, but a half mile from home, on the sloping hillside she must climb, a furtive rustling in the sparse brush along the way sent her heart shooting to her throat.
“Who’s there?” she called, forcing her voice to steadiness.
The noise stopped.
She walked on, breathing hard from the upward turn and her increased speed. The brush moved.
Anger replaced her touch of fear. “Whoever you are, come out of there this instant!”
Again the noise stopped, but a gentle bray and a shaggy gray brown head that poked out of the growing darkness brought a gasp of relief.
“Jenny, what are you doing here?” She put her arms around her burro friend’s neck and rubbed her cheek against Jenny’s nose, then picked up the dangling lead rope and led the trotting burro toward home. Worry consumed her. Jenny shouldn’t be loose and wandering. Had something happened to Daddy Angus? Fear lent speed and she scrambled up the last of the hill and ran across the open space to the cabin. “Daddy?”
“Here, lass.”
Gladness washed through her. A voice so strong couldn’t come from one hurt or sick.
Angus appeared in the doorway. “I grew concerned and sent Jenny to meet ye.” His quick glance betrayed that concern. “It’s not like ye to be late.”
“I wasn’t paying attention to the time,” she told him and gave the old man a quick hug before turning her attention back to the burro. “My rescuer almost scared me to death by loitering in the brush looking for food instead of staying on the trail.” She tied Jenny, lovingly scolded her, and brought a handful of precious oats along with a bucket of water.
In spite of promises and determination not to be caught in the dark again, a few days later Joy found herself in the same predicament.
“Wait for the reverend,” Betsy advised. “He can take you home.”
Joy thought of how tired he was when he got in from his visiting those located for miles around and how his nag looked even more tired. “I’ll be all right,” she assured her friend. “Daddy will send Jenny for me.” She told about what had happened a few nights earlier, while tying on her veil and preparing to leave. They shared a good laugh and Joy set out for home.
About the same place she had encountered Jenny the other time she heard a familiar rustle of bushes.
“You can’t fool me, you wretch! Come out of there,” she called. She heard a funny sound, a drawing in of breath. “Come on, will you? We have to get ho
me?”
Her blood froze when a dark-eyed, dark-haired youth stumbled into the path before her, clutching a bloodstained shoulder of his coat with his right hand. “Si, señorita.”
A heartbeat later he collapsed at her feet.
What should she do? Thoughts raced like locomotives through her mind. All of Angus’s warning rose to attack her. Yet the pleading look in the pain-filled eyes, clear even in the increasing darkness, and the faint memory of familiar words Angus had read to her about those who passed by a wounded Samaritan overrode caution. She dropped to her knees, shook the uninjured right arm. “Who are you? What happened?”
He roused enough to utter but one word, “Bandidos.” Bandidos. Bandits, common to the area. Why would they attack a lad who looked even younger than she? “What does it matter?” she fiercely told herself. She slipped her hand under the stained coat. It came away slippery and smelling of blood. Joy forced the boy’s right hand away, yanked opened the coat and shirt, and recoiled at the hole in the fleshy part of his shoulder. She bit her lip, reached for her petticoats, and rapidly tore a great length from the bottom. Half became a pad, the other half she bound over the pad and around his upper arm.
He stirred, looked at her from great black gulfs of pain, and tried to speak.
“Don’t talk,” she ordered sharply. “I’ll go for help.” Thank God she had been late this night! Joy gathered up her skirt and mutilated petticoats and ran the rest of the way home panting for breath. She burst into the shack. “Daddy, come quick, I—” Her voice failed. Her eyes opened wide with shock.
A man lay prone on the floor in a pool of blood that seeped from his head. Angus bent over him, anger, grief, and worry etched into the furrows of his face.
“Who—what—?”
“He’s been shot. The bullet didn’t go deep, but he’s lost too much blood. I canna say if he will live.” Angus’s gaze shot to Joy. His eyes became slits. “Lass, ye have blood on your hands!”
“A young man, a boy, really,” Joy breathlessly told him. “Shot through the left shoulder. I bandaged him as best I could and came to get you.”
“Did ye stanch the blood?”
“Yes.” Again she bit her lip to steady herself.
“Then we must care for this lad first.” Angus dropped to his knees. “Get me the whiskey. ’Twill burn like fire, so it’s good our visitor’s not awake.”
She ran for the bottle never used for drink but always available for medicinal purposes. “Where did you find him?”
“On our doorstep. He and the young one must be pardners.”
“The boy said they were attacked by bandits.” Joy knelt by the man on the floor, appalled at the whiteness of his face, so in contrast with the bronzed neck exposed by the open collar of his shirt. Rich red blood streaked it like Indian war paint.
With steady fingers, Angus poured whiskey the length of the furrow, gently probed it, poured on more whiskey, and shook his head. “We need a doctor, but we canna both leave him, and what of the other lad?”
Joy’s quick mind examined the possibilities. “Take Jenny, load up the boy, and bring him back. I’ll watch over the two of them while you go for a doctor.”
“Aye. Bring me clean cloths for bandaging the wound. The doctor will need to do stitching, but we must stop the bleeding.”
A half hour later, the older of the two strangers lay on Joy’s blanketed cot in her tiny room. Angus returned with the lad, and they got him onto Angus’s cot. “Now, if they wake, tell them they’ve been hurt but are among friends. I canna say how long it will take to find the doctor and get him here. If they ask for water, give it sparingly.”
Joy nodded but had to keep from crying out that she’d go for the doctor. It would be useless. Never would Angus allow her to go unaccompanied into Virginia City at night, even to save a stranger’s life. Feeling this couldn’t be real, she set herself to tasks that would release her from the trance she felt surrounded her: scrubbing the bloodstains from the floor, washing her hands, making a pot of coffee, and cutting bread for supper when someone wanted it. The beans she had left cooking earlier would serve, and she opened a tin of peaches, costly though they were.
A low moan roused her from her stupor. She rewashed her hands, dried them on an old towel, and hesitantly stepped into her room after a glance at the lad to see he still slept.
To her horror, the tall stranger sat bolt upright, eyes glazed. “Carlos, watch out!” he yelled. A spasm shook his body and he fell back as one dead.
With a little cry, Joy ran to him and gazed at the matted dark hair and parchment face that yet betrayed manliness and strength. She knelt beside him and poured out her heart in prayer, then slowly rose and braced herself for the long wait until Angus and the doctor arrived.
seven
All thought of mining fled before the grim necessity in the little shack perched away from Virginia City. Joy would never remember without a shudder the hours before Angus came back with the doctor. The boy named Carlos slept, but twice more the other one roused. It took all the strength in Joy’s arms to press him back against the pillow.
“You have been hurt. You are with friends,” she repeated again and again. Yet he thrashed restlessly until Angus’s bandages shifted and she had it all to do over. She also told him, “Carlos is all right,” and he relaxed a little until the spasm came.
The overworked doctor shook his head over the blood loss, rolled up his sleeves, and went to work. “He needs care but can’t be moved.” He eyed the white-faced girl. “Are you a good nurse?”
“I don’t know, but I can follow orders,” Joy quietly said.
“Good.” The doctor finished his neat stitching. “He needs rest, broth when he can take it, and a chance to recover from the loss of blood. Wound’s good and clean and shouldn’t infect. Now, for a look at the other one.” He strode into the front room that combined Angus’s bedroom, cooking area, and living space.
“Hmm. He’s lost blood, too, but not so much as the other one. Better put in couple of stitches.” He did so. “Same orders. Rest. Quiet. Food.”
“And prayer,” Joy added.
The doctor’s shaggy brows almost met above his keen eyes. “That, too. I’ll drop in soon. If you need me before then, holler.”
“What’s your charges?” Angus inquired.
Joy caught the doctor’s quick glance around the room before he gruffly said, “I’ll collect from the parties I doctored when they’re able to pay.”
Joy swallowed hard at the goodness in the frontier doctor’s reply. “We thank you.”
“You’ll need a couple of extra cots, looks like,” the doctor said. “The lad will wake before the day’s out, and you can put him into the other room. I don’t want the older man moved. I reckon you can put up some kind of curtain so Miss McFarlane will have privacy.”
“Of course.” Angus nodded. “In the morning I’ll bring Jenny down. But where can I get cots?”
A grim smile crossed the doctor’s face. “I have a couple that aren’t being used just now.”
Not until he had gone did Joy realize those cots had in all probability held some of the newest residents of Boot Hill. She pushed aside the thought. Squeamishness had no right to interfere with the task ahead. The stranger thrust into their home needed all her attention.
All night both Joy and Angus kept vigil. Once he urged her to roll up in a blanket on the floor but she would not. They alternated between Carlos and the quiet figure in the little bedroom who moaned and struggled until a deep sleep claimed him. Joy also took what she would need into the other room.
“Is he dying?” Joy asked when his breath stilled. Her heart caught.
“I canna say. He’s in our Lord’s hands.”
Yet when morning came, their unexpected guests both lived. Carlos opened his eyes, wildly looked around, then focused his eyes on Joy, who held a cup of water to his lips. “Señor Brit?” Fear shone in his face and in the way his long fingers plucked at the blanket covering
him, even while he drank.
“He is alive and resting, which is what you must do,” Joy ordered. “We are friends.”
Carlos drained the cup and wearily closed his eyes after a low, “Gracias.” He slept until Angus returned with Jenny and the cots, roused when they moved him in next to his friend, and smiled before drifting back into sleep.
“He is dressed like a peon, but I’ll wager he is pure Castilian,” Angus commented. “His hands are patrician; so is the lad’s manner. Brit, he called the other. Sounds like he’s from the Emerald Isle.”
“He rolled the r in Carlos a bit,” Joy said.
They rigged up a worn blanket across one end of the main room and set up Joy’s cot behind it and Angus’s in the cooking area. She put away her belongings as best she could and set meat to cooking for broth, but with a heavy heart. Would “Señor Brit” rouse enough to sip it, or to recognize his friend in the cot beside him? The strangers had woven themselves into her life. She couldn’t bear it if one of them died.
❧
Strange days followed. Carlos, with the resilience of youth, good nursing, and high spirits quickly bounced back. He dogged Joy’s footsteps and clung to Angus’s assurance that “Señor Brit” would indeed live, in spite of the fever that burned and left the tall frame wasted and pale.
The boy proved invaluable in relieving the McFarlanes with Brit. He set his hand to everything from sponging the patient with the least amount of water possible to helping cook. He made friends with Jenny and whistled dolefully, sometimes bursting into snatches of song when Brit became conscious. Carlos also saw faith in action. Never a day ended without his host and hostess kneeling in prayer. The first time he opened his eyes wide, then closed them and respectfully bowed his head. After that, he murmured prayers of his own, perhaps the first ever said before others.
Carlos also spared them the burden of expense for the two guests. As soon as he could coherently speak, he had shown them the clever way he and Brit carried money in the lining of their coats, with the seams sewn flat.
Veiled Joy Page 7