Bride of the High Country

by Kaki Warner

  Tait caught him just as he was finishing lunch, and was able to see him without the usual long wait.

  “Haven’t seen you in . . . what? Two years, sergeant?” the doctor asked as Tait stepped out of his trousers and sat down on the end of the examination table. Greenwall was better with faces and rank than he was with names.

  “At least.”

  Pulling a wheeled chair from the corner, Greenwall hooked the earpieces of a pair of thick magnifying spectacles over his ears, then sat down. “What the hell did you do this time?” he asked, idly chewing on a fancy toothpick as he poked a finger at the old bullet wound in Tait’s thigh. “Did a good job here, it seems.”

  “You did. But I’m more concerned about my knee.”

  “Hmm.” The doctor shifted his attention to Tait’s other leg. “What the hell happened?”

  “I fell down a slope.” Tait winced as Greenwall twisted his lower leg to the right, then the left. “Actually, I fell off a train first, then fell down the slope.”

  “Hmm.” The doctor rolled the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. Back in the war days, he had combated the stench of the surgeon’s tent by holding in his teeth a slim piece of wood to which a wad of cotton soaked in oil of eucalyptus had been tied. It had become a habit, although now Tait saw he favored the more fashionable imported toothpicks with carved grippers and spiral shafts that were made of Portuguese orangewood.

  Pushing the spectacles up on top of his head, Greenwall looked hard at Tait. “You a drinker now, sergeant? Or just goddamn clumsy?”

  “I was pushed.”

  “By the lady’s husband?” Pleased with his quip, he gave a short bark of laughter that almost shot the toothpick out of his mouth before he clamped down on it with his teeth. “Well, however the hell it happened, you definitely did something to yourself.” He gave the swollen knee one last thump that almost sent Tait off the table, then sat back. “The knee is a complicated, complex joint with a lot of connective tissue. Seems you’ve either torn some loose, or stretched them good. Can’t tell which unless I cut it open.”

  “Cut it open?”

  “I know, I know,” Greenwall broke in before Tait could add further protests. “You’d rather walk with a limp the rest of your life than risk losing your leg on the cutting table. Understandable. But how the hell else are we surgeons to learn what works unless we get to operate on the living? Goddamn cadavers don’t heal all that well.” Another bark of laughter.

  “So you can’t help me?” Tait asked once the doctor’s merriment faded.

  “I look like your goddamn fairy godmother, soldier? Hell, no.” Suddenly all business again, Greenwall checked the watch in his coat pocket, then rose. “As long as there’s pain, keep it supported with wrappings, stay off it, and elevate it as much as you can until the swelling goes down. If it’s not better in three months, come see me again. And quit falling off trains. That’s just goddamn stupid. Pay on your way out. Dismissed, sergeant.”

  Three months. Hell.

  Thirty minutes later, Tait was hobbling back through his front door, wondering why he’d ever left in the first place. O’Rourke gone, Mrs. Throckmorton gone, and no help for his knee. It had been a wasted day.

  He was just finishing a lunch of cold cuts, sliced tomatoes, and cucumbers, followed by a piece of pecan pie with molasses, when Elder came in with the day’s post. In it was a letter from Abram Yoder. Tait quickly tore it open.

  Smythe had been found buried under a pile of rubble halfway down the slope. If the authorities come, Yoder wrote, I will show them where. If not, we will leave him to rest where God put him. Abram Yoder.

  Smythe was dead. Lucinda was safe.

  Tait pressed his palms against the table as a sudden rush of emotion left him almost lightheaded.

  Thank God.

  Elder hovered at his shoulder. “You all right, Mr. Tait?”

  “They found him.” Tait held up the letter. “The man who tried to rob me. He’s dead.”

  “Thank the Lawd for that.”

  Tait pushed back the chair and reached for his crutch. “Whistle up a cab for me, will you, Elder? I have one more errand to run.”

  This time, he didn’t wait for Pringle to go through his routine, but shoved past him as soon as the old man opened the door on Sixty-ninth Street. “I have news for Mrs. Throckmorton,” he said, heading directly to the front room. “If she’s not here, I’ll wait.”

  A few minutes later, Mrs. Throckmorton came in, worry clouding her pale blue eyes. “Pringle said you had news? Is it about Margaret? What’s happened?”

  “Smythe’s body was found.”

  She lifted a hand to her throat. “Dead?”

  Tait nodded.

  “Oh, my.” She seemed to waver, her hand tightly gripping the head of her cane. “So Margaret is safe?”

  “For now.”

  “Thank heavens.” Crossing to her chair beside the unlit hearth, she sank down with a sigh. “I wish there was some way to tell her that. I know she’s probably worried, although she never mentioned him in her wire.”

  Tait took the seat across from her and laid his crutch on the rug beside his chair. Resting his elbows on the armrests, he studied the elderly woman. “You have no way to contact her?”

  “How could I? She’s always traveling. Until she reaches the mountains and settles in one place for a time, I won’t know where to send a letter or even a wire.”

  Tait thought for a moment, plotting her route in his mind. If she went west out of St. Louis toward Kansas City, she could take the Kansas Pacific all the way to Colorado Territory. Once there, she might have to take small branch lines farther west, or even a stagecoach here or there. But if she hadn’t tarried along the way, it was possible she could be nearing the Rocky Mountains any day now.

  “Do you think she’ll stop when she reaches the mountains?” he asked.

  “Possibly. We spoke of it, but she never said for certain.”

  They sat for a time without speaking. Tait contemplated the strange alliance he had formed with this stubborn old woman. It was obvious a strong bond existed between her and Lucinda, and Tait admired her sense of loyalty. But until the person who sent Smythe was in the ground, too, Lucinda would never be completely safe.

  “Did Margaret ever mention a man named Franklin Horne?” Tait remembered Lucinda asking about him that last night on the train, but she hadn’t told him why. In fact, she’d shied away from the subject when he’d pressed.

  “The gentleman rumored to be seeking the governorship?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Mrs. Throckmorton gave it some thought, then shook her head. “She may have mentioned the name once. But I don’t remember what she said, or even if it’s the same man. This old memory fails me sometimes, you know.”

  Tait smiled to reassure her. “It’s not important. By the way,” he added, watching her carefully, “I went by Father O’Rourke’s church today. A priest told me he was in Ireland and may not be back for several months.”

  “Is he?” Mrs. Throckmorton stared down at her clenched hands. “I wasn’t aware.”

  An evasion if he ever saw one. Leaning forward in the chair, Tait gave her a hard look. “So unless there’s someone else I might ask, ma’am, you’re the only one who can answer my questions about Margaret.”

  The frail hands clenched tighter. “I told you I cannot.”

  Defeated, he sat back.

  “But if she sends me a way to contact her,” she offered after a moment, “I will ask her if you can correspond directly with her. Then you can ask your questions, yourself.”

  Tait sighed. “Then let’s hope she writes soon. I have a feeling once this unknown enemy realizes Smythe is dead, he’ll send somebody else after her.”

  Thirteen

  �
��Two weeks. Here. Surely they’re jesting.” Ignoring the men gawking from the windows of the Red Eye Saloon, Lucinda set her two valises down on the boardwalk in front of the Heartbreak Creek Hotel and looked around.

  It was scarcely even a town. A string of unpainted buildings—many of which were boarded up—along a single street sandwiched between a rocky canyon wall on one side and a tumbling creek on the other. A second set of structures—mostly patched tents and tilting lean-tos—sat deeper in the canyon where the creek spilled down a rocky slope. High above it, the spindly scaffolds of a mining operation clung precariously to a thousand-foot-tall rock face.

  “I wonder what they mine,” Maddie said, squinting up at the figures moving about on the high platforms.

  “Nothing lucrative. This place is one breath away from being a ghost town.”

  “A ghost town! How marvelous.”

  As the other passengers stepped off the wagon that had transported them from the stranded train five miles beyond the mouth of the canyon, Lucinda asked Maddie to watch her cases, and marched over to the conductor, who stood in the open double doorway into the hotel, shuffling through his passenger list.

  “Does this happen often?” she asked.

  He looked up, his gray brows drawn in a line above a bulbous red-veined nose that proclaimed him a drinker. “What?”

  Raising her voice over the tinkling piano music coming from the Red Eye Saloon next door, she said, “The trestle washing out. Does it happen often?”

  “Every spring. Name?”

  “Then why don’t you reroute? Why not come through the canyon here?”

  He scowled at her, clearly out of patience. “Have you tasted the water in Heartbreak Creek?”

  “Not yet, but—”

  “Trains run on coal and water. You fill the tenders with water as hard as what flows through this town, the pipes and valves and gauges would be fouled in a week. Name?”

  Realizing she would get no more from him, Lucinda gave her name.

  He read carefully down the list, stuck the tip of his tongue past the gray mustache that looped around to join equally bushy sideburns, primed his pencil with spit, then marked off her name. “Go on inside, ma’am. Yancey there at the front desk will give you a key.”

  Lucinda glanced through the open doors, grimacing with distaste at the peeling wallpaper, frayed carpets, and stained upholstery on the worn chairs scattered around the lobby. “Is there indoor plumbing?”

  “Of course,” he said, with some indignation. “A full water closet and bathtub on the ground floor.”

  “Only the one?”

  Clearly offended, he didn’t bother to answer. “If you’ll move on so others can—”

  “Have they any suites with two bedrooms?”

  “One, I think. Number twenty. But it costs double, and the railroad won’t pay it. You’ll get a regular shared room like all the other—”

  “Number Twenty will do nicely,” Lucinda cut in with her best smile. “I will happily share it with three other women, which should not add to the cost for the railroad. Thank you so much, you’ve been most helpful.” Then before the harried man could argue, she turned and walked back to where Maddie stood guard over their valises and her photography equipment. “I hope it’s acceptable with you to share quarters with two other women,” she said as she picked up her valises. “The place is questionable, and I thought we might at least have safety in numbers.”

  “Not at all,” Maddie said cheerfully. “Perhaps we could ask the two ladies we met earlier—the mail-order bride and her Negro traveling companion?”

  “Precisely what I was thinking.”

  An odd pair, Edwina and Prudence. Both were southerners, which might account for it. Apparently in her desperation to escape the excesses of the reconstruction in Louisiana, Edwina had answered an advertisement in the Matrimonial News placed by a Colorado widower with four children. Having married the man in a proxy ceremony, she was now suffering grave doubts about her decision.

  Lucinda didn’t blame her. Her own recent experience with Tait had only strengthened her belief that men were intractable, unforgiving creatures incapable of viewing the world through any perspective other than their own. She couldn’t imagine the disappointments awaiting poor Edwina at the hands of a complete stranger. At least she would have Prudence, her traveling companion, beside her for moral support.

  But by the time she and Maddie made it into the hotel lobby, Edwina and Prudence had already received their assigned room and were stepping up to the front desk to be issued their key.

  “Room number?” the grizzled clerk asked.

  “Twenty,” Lucinda answered, cutting in front of them with an apologetic smile. “I hope you don’t mind sharing a suite with Maddie and me,” she added in a whisper. “It’ll be safer with four of us.” Without waiting for a response, she turned to the slack-faced clerk. “Where do I sign?”

  The man gaped and sputtered and stuttered. It was intriguing to watch, considering the gaps in his rust-stained teeth. “But that—that’s the Presidential Suite,” he finally managed. “And you’re not the president.”

  “Alas, no.” Another broad smile, a deep breath that brought his gaze to her bosom, followed by one small lie, and they were heading up the stairs behind Billy, the freckle-faced bellboy, who was laden with fresh linens and a pitcher of the murky water they had been warned not to drink.

  “Are you really Ulysses Grant’s niece?” Edwina asked as they neared the “big suite” at the end of the hall.

  Lucinda laughed. “That old drunk?” Ignoring Edwina’s look of puzzlement, Lucinda stepped into their suite, relieved to find it in surprisingly better condition than the rest of the hotel—probably because of the rarity of presidential visits to Heartbreak Creek.

  “Is this the water we’re not supposed to drink?” Edwina asked, peering down into the pitcher the bellboy had left on the bureau.

  “I’ll stick with brandy,” Lucinda muttered, moving toward the bedroom she and Maddie would be sharing. She would have preferred champagne but doubted there was such a thing in Heartbreak Creek.

  On her way past, Maddie stopped beside the pitcher, took a look, and shuddered. “It looks used. How vexing.”

  “I wonder what’s wrong with it?” Edwina asked with that puzzled look again. “With a creek running right through the middle of town, how can the water be so bad?”

  “Probably the mine.” Prudence hung her coat on a hook beside the door and straightened the cuffs on her dress. She was always fussing with something, Lucinda had noticed. “They often use harsh chemicals,” she went on in her low, melodious voice, “to leach gold or silver from the raw ore. If it seeps back into the ground, it can taint the entire water table.”

  Edwina stared at her companion. “How do you know these things?”

  “I read.”

  Watching through the open doorway of the bedroom she was to share with Maddie, Lucinda had to smile. Never having had a close friend until meeting Maddie, she found their gentle bickering amusing. The two acted more like sisters than companions, although they seemed opposites in every way. Edwina Brodie, thin almost to the point of brittleness, her lively blue eyes so filled with life her energy seemed to charge the room. Prudence Lincoln, calmer, despite her fussy attention to details that betrayed her need for order. More prone to thought than reckless action, Pru seemed highly intelligent and well educated, in addition to being one of the most beautiful women Lucinda had ever seen. She might once have been part of Edwina’s southern household, but Lucinda doubted the woman had ever been a slave. There was something about her and the way she carried herself. Pride, perhaps. Or a lack of illusion. Prudence struck Lucinda as a woman who knew her place in a white-dominated male world, but rightly placed her self-worth much higher.

  Impulsive, high-spirited Edwina
and thoughtful, fastidious Prudence. Lucinda liked them both.

  “Why would you read about mining practices?” Edwina asked, clearly astounded that anyone would find the subject in the least interesting.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” As she spoke, Prudence set herself to rights, straightening her sleeves, brushing her skirts, running a hand over her tightly pinned hair. “I’m only guessing, of course. But since the mine is upriver of the town, and I did see some sluices and a thick canvas pipe running down from one of those waterfalls to what I assume is a concentrator, I can only deduce the water is being used to leach out unwanted chemicals.” She paused in thought, one long, graceful finger gently tapping her full lower lip. “Or maybe it’s for a water cannon. I’ll have to check.”

  “Oh, please do.” Shaking her head, Edwina walked into the bedroom she was to share with her Negro companion.

  An hour later, their clothing unpacked, their beds made, and as refreshed as four women could be sharing one pitcher of cold water between them, Lucinda marched back into the sitting room with her valise in hand and Maddie on her heels. “We’re famished,” she announced. “Shall we brave the cooking in this place and go down to the dining room?”

  “Dare we?” Edwina asked.

  Prudence straightened her collar and checked her buttons. “I’m willing.”

  “Excellent.”

  It was far from excellent. But at least the company was enjoyable.

  When they returned after choking down the barely edible meal of something mostly brown, they found a folded note had been shoved beneath the door. It bore the name Edwina Brodie, written in bold script.

  “Who is it from?” Prudence asked, as Edwina bent to pick it up.

  “Not bad news, I hope.” With a deep sigh, Maddie sank into one of the worn wingbacks by the flyspecked window. “I deplore bad news.”