“That’s the one bright spot in this affair. Or rather, the two bright spots. Two healthy baby boys. I think they’ll be fine.”
Doc closed his eyes for a second. He wasn’t a praying man, but he couldn’t keep himself from sending a few unspoken words of thanks heavenwards.
But there was still Lettie to see about. He followed the doctor into the room.
She was propped up a little on some pillows, and her face was so pale and drawn that the sight of it made Doc gasp. Her eyes were closed and for a horrible second he believed she was dead. Then he saw the sheet rising and falling slightly over her chest.
There was no guarantee how long that would last, however. When the doctor motioned him closer, he went to the bed, dropped to a knee beside it, and took hold of her right hand in both of his.
Her eyelids fluttered and then opened slowly. She had trouble focusing at first, then her gaze settled on his face and she sighed. A faint smile touched her lips. “Doc . . .” she whispered.
His hands tightened on hers. “I’m here, darling.”
“The . . . babies?”
“They’re fine. Two healthy baby boys.”
“Ahhhh . . .” Her smile grew. “Twins. Are they . . . identical?”
Doc glanced up at the physician, who spread his hands, shook his head, and shrugged.
“They look alike to me,” Doc said to Lettie, although in truth he hadn’t actually looked at the babies yet. They were in bassinets across the room, being tended to by the nurse. Of course, to him all babies looked alike, Doc thought, so he wasn’t actually lying to Lettie.
“That’s . . . good. They’ll be . . . strong, beautiful boys. Doc . . . you’ll raise them?”
“We’ll raise them. You’ve no excuse not to marry me now.”
“No excuse,” she repeated, “except the best one of all . . .”
“Don’t talk like that,” he urged. “You just need to get your strength back—”
“I don’t have . . . any strength to get back. This took . . . all I had.” She paused, licked her lips, and with a visible effort forced herself to go on. “Their name . . .”
“We’ll call them anything you like.”
“No, I mean . . . their last name . . .”
“Margrabe,” Doc said. “Your late husband—”
“No,” Lettie broke in. “I’m ashamed to admit it . . . even now . . . but I was . . . never married to their father. His last name is . . . Jensen . . . I want you to name them . . . William, after my father . . . and Benjamin, after my grandfather . . . William and Benjamin . . . Jensen.”
“If that’s what you want, my dear, that’s what we’ll do,” Doc promised. “I give you my word.”
“You’ll take care . . . of them?”
“We—”
“No,” she husked. “You. They have . . . no one else . . .”
Lord, Lord, Lord, Doc thought. This couldn’t be. He’d barely spent time with her, barely gotten to know her. She couldn’t be taken away from him now.
But he couldn’t hold her. He sensed she was slipping away. A matter of moments only. He felt a hot stinging in his eyes and realized it was tears—for the first time in longer than he could remember.
“Take . . . take care . . .” she breathed.
He could barely hear the words. Her eyes began to close and he gripped her hands even tighter, as if he could hold on to her and keep her with him that way. “I will. I’ll take care of the boys. I love you, Lettie.”
“Ah,” she said again, and the smile came back to her. “And I love . . .”
The breath eased out of her, and the sheet grew still.
Doc bent his head forward and tried not to sob.
The doctor gripped his shoulder. “She’s gone, Mr. Monday. I’m sorry.”
“I . . . I know,” Doc choked out. He found the strength to lift his head. “But those boys. They’re here. And they need me.”
As if to reinforce that, both babies began to cry.
“Indeed they do,” the doctor agreed. “Would you like to take a look at them?”
Gently, Doc laid Lettie’s hand on the sheet beside her and got to his feet. He turned, feeling numb and awkward, and the doctor led him over to the bassinets. Doc had seen babies before, of course, and always thought of them as squalling, red-faced bundles of trouble.
Not these two, though. There was something about them . . . something special.
“William and Benjamin. Those are fine names, but . . . so formal. I’m not sure they suit you. We’ll put them down on the papers because that’s what your mother wanted, but I think I’ll call you”—he forced a smile onto his face as he looked at the infant with darker hair—“Ace. And your brother . . . well, he has to be Chance, of course. Ace and Chance Jensen. And what a winning pair you’ll be.”
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Copyright © 2015 J. A. Johnstone
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-3448-2
First electronic edition: June 2015
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3449-9
ISBN-10: 0-7860-3449-1
Notes
1 When World War II began, Frederick Faust did become a war correspondent, despite being well into middle age and having a heart condition. Like Ernie Pyle, Faust became a favorite of the soldiers with whom he served. Then, on May 12, 1944, while with American soldiers fighting in Italy, Faust was mortally wounded by shrapnel. He was personally commended for bravery by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
2 Today, Wild Horse is an unincorporated community and a U.S. Post Office in Cheyenne County, Colorado. A few of the structures still stand. It is being preserved as a genuine ghost town.
3 The global nature of World War II created new escape and evasion (or “E & E”) challenges for airmen. For the first time, U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) airmen received specialized equipment and formal instruction in escape and evasion techniques. During WWII the techniques were just being developed. Today SERE (Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape) classes are much more thorough.
4 Jesse James’s first tombstone read: Devoted husband and father, Jesse Woodson James, Sep 5, 1847 murdered April 3, 1882, by a traitor and a coward whose name is not worthy to appear here.
5 The ice cream cone was born at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. George Bang, owner of the Bannery Creamery, apparently ran out of bowls in which to serve his ice cream at the fair, so he started using rolled-up waffles. They proved to be so popular that he stopped serving in bowls and served the ice cream only in the rolled-up waffles. That was direct precursor of the ice cream cone.
6 It is believed, though it has never been definitely established, that the remains of the giant Ferris Wheel are buried under Skinker Blvd., near Forrest Park.
7 James Cummins lived near
Kearney, Missouri, and, like Jesse James, rode with Quantrill. He joined the James-Younger gang after the war and took part in train robberies at Winston and Blue Cut, Missouri. He was suspected of being involved in the plot to kill Jesse James because his sister, Artella, married Robert Ford. After the breakup of the James Gang, he became a farmer in Arkansas. He died in the Old Soldiers Home at Higginsville, Missouri, on July 9, 1929.
8 The only way to check on the validity of J. Frank Alexander’s claim to be Jesse James is to, when possible, authenticate certain aspects of his story with historical fact. It seems unlikely that he would have an easy command of relatively obscure historical events, but this story is verifiable. During the morning rush hour on September 11, 1905, a train was mistakenly switched from the straightaway track, onto the curve. The train was traveling at 30 mph when it entered the sharp curve, for which 9 mph was the company-mandated limit. The motorman, realizing the error, braked quickly, but it was too late. The lead car remained on the tracks but the second was thrown off the trestle and down to the street, coming to rest with one end on the ground and the other across the third rail on the trestle, which sparked an electrical fire. The roof was torn off and some passengers were crushed under the car by a falling truck from the third car. The rest of the train also derailed but, fortunately, did not leave the trestle. The motorman, Paul Kelly, later went to prison for reckless endangerment which resulted in the death of 13 passengers, and 48 serious injuries.
9 The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 struck San Francisco at 5:12 in the morning on April 18, 1906. The quake was followed by a conflagration that burned, unabated, for three more days. Because the quake had destroyed the city water supply, there was not only no water to fight the fire, there was also very little water to drink. Over three thousand people died, and approximately 85 percent of the city was destroyed. The San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 remains one of the greatest natural disasters in U.S. history.
10 J. Frank Alexander (Jesse James) did outlive Frederick Faust by seven years, Faust being killed in 1944, whereas Alexander didn’t die until 1951.
11 No one ever connected Jesse James, or J. Frank Alexander, with this case, and none of the perpetrators were ever identified, with the exception of thirty-six-year-old Nicholas “Chaw Jimmie” Trainor who was killed during the shootout. The gang, which got away with $200,000.00, fled, taking the mortally wounded Trainor with them after one of the guards, Charles Linton, was killed. Not until January 14 was Trainor’s body found in their getaway car after it had been dumped in a Gilpin Street garage. No one was ever charged with the Denver robbery, and the case was closed on December 1, 1934, still officially listed as unsolved.
12 Thought to have been born in either Missouri or Texas in 1853, Jesse Evans had his first brush with the law when he was arrested along with his parents on June 26, 1871, in Elk City, Kansas, for passing counterfeit money. In 1872 he drifted into New Mexico, where he worked on John Chisum’s ranch. Evidently, he found cow handling too hard, as he soon became an outlaw, committing cattle rustling and armed robbery with the likes of Billy the Kid, Frank Baker, Pony Deal, Tom Hill, and others. Evans was sentenced to prison in Huntsville in 1908, was paroled in 1915, but failed to report to his parole officer in December of 1916 and was never heard from again. Was he, as J. Frank Alexander (Jesse James?), one of the unidentified perpetrators of the Great U.S. Mint holdup in Denver, as described in this narrative? And did he go to Hawaii? That would certainly explain why he was never heard from again.
13 The news release intimated that the Doolittle Raid was without cost, but this isn’t true. None of the aircraft was shot down, but all the aircraft were lost. One aircraft crashed into the sea, fifteen reached China, and one landed in the Soviet Union. Eight crewmen were captured by the Japanese Army in China; three of those were executed, as were thousands of Chinese as punishment for helping the American flyers.
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