The Captive Within (A Prairie Heritage, Book 4)

by Vikki Kestell

  Out in the hall, Breona whirled to face Rose. “Miss Rose, ye mus’ be keepin’ Billy, Marit, an’ Will from th’ house.” Her tone conveyed fear.

  Rose grasped her meaning. “Certainly. I-I will send Mr. Wheatley to tell them immediately.”

  Breona’s fierce response startled Rose. “Nay! He canna go t’ them!” Her brows drew together sharply. “If ’tis bein’ catchin’ . . .” She left her sentence unfinished.

  Rose shivered. Flinty likely had only a bad cold, but if it were something more, Mr. Wheatley was already exposed—as were she and Breona.

  Breona was right. They must ban Billy, Marit, and little Will from the house as a precaution. Breona led the way to the kitchen where she and Rose scrubbed their hands with hot water and strong soap.

  By Friday, sniffing, sneezing, and coughing were heard throughout the house. Maria, who shared a room with Tabitha, coughed incessantly until her chest and throat were inflamed. Nancy and Flora, who shared a room, took to bed with fevers.

  They sent word to Nancy’s employer, the school teacher, saying she could not come to watch the children. The young woman shivered under the piled on blankets and fretted about the children she cared for and whether they would become ill.

  Mr. Wheatley kept the fireplaces in the sick rooms alight until, as Breona had feared, he, too, came down with an aching fever and was confined to his bed as was Flinty.

  “’Tis th’ grippe,” Breona muttered darkly as she filled hot water bottles. They called Doctor Murphy, who confirmed her diagnosis, calling it a harsh “seasonal influenza.”

  “Influenza is not commonly dangerous but can be concerning in the very young and the elderly,” the doctor cautioned. “I don’t like how Mr. Flynn is faring. We may need to move him to a hospital where he can receive around-the-clock care.”

  “No.” Tabitha, who had listened to the exchange from a few feet away, shook her head firmly. “I will care for him. I want to do it,” she insisted to Rose. “I can do it. Breona has more than enough on her plate. And you cannot do it! You must be careful also.”

  Rose frowned at Tabitha’s tactless reference to her age . . . and then realized with a start that she would be turning 63 in a few short months. She then tried to suggest that it was, perhaps, indelicate for an unmarried woman to care for two men.

  “It’s not as though I’m a blushing virgin!” Tabitha rejoined tartly. Rose was the one to blush then and, finally, admit to Tabitha’s logic. Reluctantly, she turned all care of the two old gents over to Tabitha.

  Within a day Tabitha was running the sick rooms upstairs as well as down. Rose wondered how Tabitha might treat Nancy, given their history of quarreling, but Tabitha surprised them all. She consulted with the doctor on the patients’ needs, drew up a schedule, and invested herself completely in the care of “her” patients.

  Rose remarked to Breona that it was the most content they had seen Tabitha. Breona lifted her eyebrows but nodded in silent agreement.

  Joy and Grant were in a quandary regarding the store. They quickly recognized that if any of the store’s staff gave Billy the flu while he was at work, their quarantine at home would be in vain. They ordered him to remain at home with Marit and Will. He would have to content himself with running errands for Palmer House and adding to the renovations within their cottage.

  —

  O’Dell listened as the sister recited a long list of injuries to him: severe concussion, perforated ear drum, broken jaw, two lost teeth, broken nose, broken collarbone, dislocated shoulder, recent gunshot wound to the same shoulder—the nun frowned at him, the two lines between her eyes deepening, before concluding—three broken ribs, bruised kidneys, cracked hip and pelvis, fractured right hand.

  O’Dell felt broken indeed. The pain was excruciating, his mind a tangle of confusion and uncertainty. He stared at the hospital walls. Knew he’d never been as helpless as he was now and had been for more days and sleepless nights than he could count.

  Gradually he began to recognize the man who came every-other day to check on him. After a week he could even remember his name: Something long and impossible-to pronounce followed by “Liáng.” A Chinaman. That puzzled him.

  So did the fact that the nursing sisters addressed their patient as Mr. Jones. O’Dell was too exhausted to correct them, and each time the Chinaman visited, he repeated that he would be safer if no one knew his real name.

  Slowly, he was able to retain other things Liáng told him: He was a minister. He knew O’Dell’s friends in Denver. The police had brought him, O’Dell, to this hospital in Seattle because he had been beaten. He had nearly died.

  He had nearly died . . .

  During the long, pain-racked hours of the night he turned that over in his mind, looking at it, feeling the legitimacy of its claim in his battered body.

  What if he had died? What then?

  The ward he lay in had twelve beds, eleven other men in various stages of illness or recovery. The nights were often filled with groans of pain and sometimes, hardest to bear, the muffled weeping of grown men.

  He listened as families came and went during visiting hours. Overheard wives murmuring to their husbands and children struggling to be on their best behavior. No one other than Liáng came to see him, of course.

  In the night he was assaulted by anxieties and, surprisingly, regret. He regretted that he had placed his work above all else. He regretted that he had no wife, no home, no family.

  On the little table by his bed sat a lone pot of hothouse geraniums, their spicy scent comforting him. Our dear Mr. Jones, We are praying for you daily! Come home to us soon. Rose Thoresen, the card read.

  Rose. Grant. Joy. Breona. Billy. Marit. Baby Will. Mei-Xing. Mr. Wheatley. Flinty. The closest thing to family he had in this world.

  He regretted that he wouldn’t be able to “come home” to them. They were part of God’s family. He was not. He understood that. Arnie Thoresen had explained it that last evening before the lodge burned.

  God’s family. He had paid scant attention to the daily Bible studies Rose and Joy led during his stay at Corinth Mountain Lodge. Even so, somehow, whole passages and intact discussions seemed to have stuck somewhere inside him.

  Of their own volition they replayed in his head during the long, wakeful nights. He heard them so often he likely could have preached them himself.

  Some phrases even seemed to play along with the rhythmic throb of his aching, mending bones:

  Throb. Throb-a. Throb. Then. Jesus. Said.

  Throb. Throb-a. Throb. Come. Unto. Me.

  Come unto me.

  Come unto me.

  —

  Before many more days passed, Sarah, Corrine, and Joy had also come down with high fevers, coughs, and congestion. Grant manned the store alone as best he could until, mid-week, he felt the aching of a fever rack him.

  With head pounding and hands pulsing in pain, he scribbled a note that read, “Closed due to illness” and pasted it in the front window. Then he locked up, walked up the street, and stood in the biting wind, hunched over and shivering with ague, until the trolley came.

  By the end of the week, only Tabitha, Breona, and Gretl remained untouched by the flu. Tabitha, tireless and determined, ordered the care of those confined to bed with the precision of a general commanding an army.

  Gretl spent her days brewing mugs of tea and honey, simmering nourishing broths, and concocting soft puddings, all designed to sooth aching chests and raw throats. Billy and Marit did the marketing and ran errands, leaving supplies on the back porch.

  Tabitha and Breona ran upstairs and down placing poultices on congested chests, supplying steaming basins to which a tincture of camphor had been added, administering aspirins and drops of vitamins, bathing fevered bodies, and changing and washing linens and bed clothes.

  Even Breona conformed to Tabitha’s schedule and dictates. She was too exhausted to do otherwise. Besides, she had witnessed Tabitha roundly scolding Miss Rose and sending her to bed!
Breona would never admit it, but she was a tiny bit afraid of this new, self-assured Tabitha.

  —

  The sisters finally allowed O’Dell to be discharged into Liáng’s care, but not before Liáng had carefully thought through the situation. He was determined to keep O’Dell’s identity secret.

  In the Chinese community, secrecy was often difficult. Businesses and empires were owned and operated by the family. Good marriages and family connections meant opportunities, favors, and advancement, and so family loyalty was stressed from birth.

  The Chen family, wealthy, powerful, and controlling many businesses, had listening ears everywhere. One never knew if neighbor, acquaintance, friend, parishioner, or household help had loyalties to such a family. Liáng trusted only a handful of close Christian friends upon whose discretion he could completely rely.

  When Liáng visited O’Dell, he mentioned to his housekeeper that he was visiting an old mate from school who was ill. Liáng had gone to Bible school in Los Angeles. If prying ears were listening, they only heard mundane details of his acquaintance’s condition and eventual discharge. Nothing of note or value.

  Liáng had made several discreet telephone calls to the Chicago Pinkerton office and spoken to a man named Parsons who claimed to be O’Dell’s boss. “Whatever costs are involved, I will stand for,” Parson’s tinny voice shouted down the line. He wired monies to Liáng and sent his address, demanding, “I want weekly reports on his condition.”

  While Liáng continued with his regular pastoral duties, his trusted friends located and rented a small bungalow far into the outskirts of the city. The sisters engaged a full-time nurse for him and arranged O’Dell’s transportation. Now all was ready.

  Liáng waited for O’Dell to be settled at the secret house before he left his church office. He drove the well-worn motor car his congregation gave him the use of for paying calls. When he arrived, the nurse let him in.

  O’Dell was sitting up in a chair, freshly shaved, but obviously fatigued from the efforts of the day. His broken hand was slung close to his body. A cane rested against the chair.

  “My friend,” Liáng greeted him with real pleasure. “I cannot tell you how happy I am to see you out of the hospital and out of bed.”

  O’Dell grinned. And then grimaced. “Soon as my fine nurse puts a cigar in my hand, it will be a perfect day.”

  His nurse, a no-nonsense woman perhaps in her mid-thirties, grinned back and then caught herself and frowned. “We have a great deal of work ahead of us, Mr. Jones—walking, strengthening your muscles, rebuilding your stamina. Smoking will inhibit your bones knitting properly and delay your rehabilitation.”

  Liáng and O’Dell exchanged a look. Even the nurse would not know O’Dell’s real name.

  “Miss Greenbow, if you don’t mind, I’d like to speak privately with my, ah, minister,” O’Dell replied, still trying out a cocky grin on her.

  She turned away smiling in spite of herself. “Shall I make you both some lunch?”

  She left the room and O’Dell looked at Liáng. “We have a lot to talk about.” His jaw still hurt abominably if he opened his mouth too wide, so he had gotten into the habit of talking through his teeth. “You didn’t happen to bring some cigars with you, did you?”

  Liáng shook his head but affably added, “If you’d said, ‘say, d’ya play checkers?’ I could help you out, Mr. er, Jones.”

  “Ha! You have met our Mr. Flynn.”

  Liáng settled himself in the other chair in the small living room. “Yes. When I got off the train in Corinth to look for Mei-Xing Li.”

  At O’Dell’s shocked expression, Liáng added, “I believe I arrived in Corinth about the same time you arrived in Seattle. We have been, shall I say, working at cross purposes?”

  He studied the Pinkerton agent. A lesser man might have died from the beating he’d sustained. Or perhaps it was truly only God’s grace that he was still alive.

  He saw the questions in O’Dell’s eyes begin to bubble over. “Why don’t I talk for a while and you stop me when you have questions.”

  O’Dell studied him a minute and then nodded.

  “I told this same story to your friends at Palmer House,” Liáng said, gazing out the window. “It is the tale of two families . . .”

  —

  Gradually fevers dissipated, appetites returned, and wan faces appeared at the breakfast table one by one. Coughs lingered, and Tabitha was firm that Billy, Marit, and Will were not to be admitted to the big house until all coughs and fevers were gone—after which every square inch of the house would be thoroughly scrubbed and disinfected.

  “Young lady, you have done as well as any trained nurse could have done! I give you great credit for that,” Doctor Murphy praised when he came to check on the progress of the patients. “With nurses in short supply at present, you have been a god-send to your friends.”

  Tabitha flushed under his praise.

  “And you may well have saved Mr. Flynn’s life,” he confided. “He is no longer robust, and such an illness is often a death knell.”

  Life at Palmer House began to resume its usual rhythm and order. Although Tabitha never succumbed to the influenza, she had worn herself thin. For the first night in many, she did not feel the need to make the rounds of sick rooms. She slept soundly and was amazed and embarrassed to find the day half gone when she finally woke.

  “How could you let me sleep so long!” she hissed at Breona in the kitchen.

  “Aye, an’ ’tis servin’ ye well, Miss Tabitha,” Breona grinned. The two women stared at each other a few silent moments, understanding and new respect flowing between them.

  After a flurry of cleaning, the outcasts were again allowed in the big house. Billy, Marit, and Will joined Joy and Grant and the inhabitants of the big house at the breakfast table. Two long weeks had passed. Rose opened her Bible and smiled around the table with love and appreciation. Fourteen pairs of eyes smiled back.

  “The great blessing of family is never so dear or more appreciated as it is after such a trial,” she said quietly. Heads nodded, and more than a few voices whispered “amen.”

  They had weathered the storm together and come out on the other side unified. Finally the dream of Palmer House was becoming a reality.

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 34

  (Journal Entry, February 26, 1910)

  Our dear Flinty is still weak, but he is in such good spirits and cheers the entire house. He is spending much of his recovery in the comfort of his favorite old chair in the great room.

  How the girls of the house pamper and fuss over him! They are always fetching blankets and books and tea, keeping the fire built up, and generally spoiling the old gent.

  He nods off frequently, but between naps he can be found grinning and thanking his gentle nurses with a hearty, “The Lor’ bless ya, miss!” and “Yessir! Yer jes’ what th’ doctor ordered!” How precious is the sound of laughter and tall tales heard so often these days!

  I must say, dear Lord, that Tabitha is a changed woman. She, too, spends many hours perched on Flinty’s ottoman, listening raptly to his stories. I cannot explain it, Lord, but she has softened and, in a deep way, has fully opened her heart to our convalescing gent.

  Indeed, through this fortnight of illness and hardship Tabitha has bloomed. She has even forged other relationships that, I confess, are quite amazing. The most notable is a friendship with Breona.

  I see these two very different women smiling and agreeing with each other and then I know, Father, you have done great things!

  —

  Mei-Xing sat at the little table with her New Testament. She had retired to her room alone to ‘take a rest.’ Rather than lie down, she pulled the little book from her purse and stared at it.

  She had not opened it for days, perhaps weeks. Instead, she and Su-Chong had lived in a make-believe world where only the two of them existed.

  But they could not stay here in this fantasy forever. Su-Chong was ag
ain healthy and whole. The forced inactivity was not to his liking. And he could not steal their food and supplies forever.

  She sensed his unrest and noted the dark mood when it settled on him. In those moments she heard a still, small voice calling to her.

  How was she to respond to that voice after what she had done? She laid her head atop the little book and wept in shame and sorrow.

  —

  “How are you today, my friend?” Minister Liáng greeted O’Dell.

  O’Dell was bundled against the misting rain, walking steadily about the enclosed garden behind the bungalow. His splinted right hand hung in a sling about his neck; his gloved left hand gripped his cane with determination.

  “Fighting boredom on two fronts,” O’Dell replied tersely. “Miss Greenbow insists on a strict regimen of exercise and fresh air. Tiresome. The remainder of my time is spent sitting, reading, and thinking. Maddening! I need to be out there, investigating Mei-Xing and Su-Chong’s families so that we can find Mei-Xing.”

  Unvoiced but written across the lines on his face was fear. Fear that Mei-Xing was already beyond his help.

  Liáng nodded. “I understand. Perhaps I can provide more information today. I have held back some things, not wishing to add to your frustration, knowing that you were unable to act on anything. And today I bring a bit more news.”

  O’Dell jerked his head toward the house. “Let’s go in.”

  “I have told you about Wei Lin Chen’s nephew, Bao, and his role in sending Mei-Xing to Denver,” Liáng said as he shook the rain off his coat and took his seat.

  O’Dell’s eyes narrowed. He had never seen this man Bao, but he despised him nonetheless.

  Liáng looked cautiously at O’Dell. “What I haven’t told you is that much of my information comes directly from Bao.”

  If possible, O’Dell’s eyes grew harder.

  “You see, I meet with Bao every week.”

  “Why?” O’Dell’s voice grated on the single word.

  Liáng studied the man opposite him for several minutes. “Do you believe in forgiveness, Mr. O’Dell?”