Timothy shifted and he chewed on his lip for a few moments before answering. "I know that you didn't much like the idea of baby-sitting two greenhorns like Adam and I, especially such a long way across the country. We'd never have made it without you." His face grew quiet as he met Jonathan's steady gaze. "Fact is, we'd not only have had our cattle stolen, but we'd likely be dead now."
Adam brought his father a steaming mug of coffee and sat at the table.
"Thanks, son."
"You held your own, both you and Adam." Jonathan sipped tentatively at his coffee, and then took a longer drink after judging its heat.
"That's generous of you. I may be foolish at times, like attempting to start this ranch with no more experience than what I've gleaned from books, but I'm no fool. Those three men we met north of Salt Lake had no good intentions when they asked to sign on and help us with the cattle. You knew that."
Jonathan shrugged his shoulder and leaned forward, resting his elbows easily on the table. He was a good judge of character. He'd learned that from years of tracking down men gone bad from greed and stupidity. And Timothy was right, those three men had venom in their blood, as bad as they come. But Timothy was a trusting man and he just hadn't seen it, hiring the men against Jonathan's advice to the contrary.
"So, what's your point? We made it through. This is a fine piece of land you found, and you have enough stock left to establish yourself as a rancher." He winked at Adam. "And Adam, here, well. . .he's shown he's made from strong stock himself."
Adam cast his eyes to the table, color rising to his cheeks at the compliment.
Timothy nodded. "You're right. And I know we agreed that you would only stay through the winter, but. . ." He glanced over at Adam before continuing. "Well, Adam and I would like you to stay on."
Jonathan sat back, his face an expressionless mask.
"Really, Jonathan, why not? There's that parcel down by the river between here and the North Fork. It's a nice piece of land and plenty of range for your own herd." He was talking fast now. "If you like, we'll cut out half the herd come summer. You've got the summer months to build yourself a snug little cabin near the stream that feeds into the river. We'll be neighbors!" Timothy's voice had raised a pitch.
Jonathan remained stoic.
"Where else do you have to be?" It was Adam who spoke. When Jonathan turned his attention to him, Adam said, "Isn't this as good a place as any to settle down?"
Jonathan gave the boy a thin smile. "Who said I wanted to settle down?"
There was a long silence, broken only by Jonathan as he took another long drink of coffee. Jonathan saw the boy's shoulders sag. The boy was so young, and probably more suited to the study of those books in the boxes his father had insisted on toting with them. He just didn't seem cut out for frontier life from Jonathan's perspective. But he also knew the boy was devoted to his father, and by extension, his father's dream.
"Look, Timothy, I appreciate your offer, but I'm no cattleman. I told you that." He put his cup down and spread his hands on the table while he considered what Timothy was asking and offering. "I'll do this. I'll stay through the summer."
Timothy grinned at Jonathan. "I appreciate it. We both do."
Jonathan picked up his fork and stabbed at a slice of ham. It was a concession that didn't cost him anything but time, and he knew the boy was right. Where else did he have to be? Besides the cooking was mighty fine.
Adam left the cabin to start his chores. Timothy remained at the table and watched Jonathan for a short time before asking, "But will you at least consider staying on? You're a good man, and I think the boy can learn a lot from you. I can teach him Latin, mathematics, and the classics, but I can't teach him how to be what you are."
Jonathan continued chewing, with the air of a man more interested in digesting words than ham. He picked up his cup and took a slow drink hoping the warm coffee would make the bite wash down more easily. At last he looked up and asked, "And what do you think I am?"
Timothy leaned forward. "You're a man of integrity. You're strong and self-confident. You're everything a man needs to be in a country like this."
Jonathan gripped the fork handle until he felt it begin to bend in his hand. Perhaps that was who he had been, once upon a time. But now?
Chapter 3
Disciplines of Restraint
nathaniel Meriwether chewed with interest the vaguely familiar substance he'd willingly placed into his mouth. He was aware that he needed to swallow it, but was reluctant to do so. He was also keenly aware of his daughter, Kat, watching him with the intensity of a falcon. A man known for supreme self-control, he worked the muscles of his throat and managed to swallow. At the same time, he reached rather rapidly for his coffee and swallowing it successfully moved the last stubborn bits down his throat. He might have fooled anyone else, but not Kat, never Kat.
Kat lifted the biscuit to her open lips and stopped. She studied it for a moment then lifted her eyes to meet her father's placid expression.
"Papa, you are one of the bravest men I've ever known. This is awful!"
Nathaniel dropped his gaze to the half-eaten biscuit, scorched eggs, and wedge of shoe leather still on his plate that had once been from some fine juicy hog. He picked up the last of the biscuit and tossed it in his mouth, chewing with enthusiasm. He mumbled, "I have no idea what you're talking about. This is great!"
She watched him chew for a full minute. "You're also one of the worst liars."
Nathaniel choked, a combined result of the dry biscuit awkwardly lodged in his throat and the laughter he could no longer control. He reached for his coffee again.
Kat covered her mouth with her napkin and laughed. Tears were streaming down her face before she could manage to say anything. "I'm so sorry. I really wanted to make you something special. I should have let you cook. You always were better than I was in the kitchen."
"Nonsense! The coffee is magnificent!" He patted her hand and chuckled.
Kat shook her head, then rose to her feet and threw her arms around her father's neck. "I've missed you so much, Papa!"
He pulled her down to sit on his knee. "I've missed you too, honey." Pushing a lock of hair from her face, he said, "You know, when I picked you up from the stage station, I hardly recognized you. You were dressed so grand and looked so poised, so stylish and grown up. But then you saw me and smiled. Your eyes crinkled the way your mother's did when she would tease me, and I knew my little girl had come home." He patted her arm. "I'd feared some young doctor would have snatched you up while you were in Boston and I'd not see you again."
Kat frowned and punched him playfully. "Papa, how could you think that?"
"Because it's only natural. Because you are a pretty young woman, smart, funny, and quite a catch!" He touched the tip of her nose. "Cute as a button."
Kat hugged his neck again. "You've always been a romantic. Besides, didn't I tell you I wouldn't let anyone, even if he were as handsome as you," she touched his nose, "keep me from finishing school?"
"And you didn't, did you?" There was a tone in his voice of something she couldn't quite identify, melancholy perhaps.
"No!" Kat stood and smoothed her skirt before beginning to clear the table.
Nathaniel took her hand in his, staring up into her brown eyes, so much like her mother's. The shocking resemblance made him falter. "You know how proud I am of you, don't you?"
She put her hand over his, her face softening. "Yes, Papa. I know."
"I wish I could have been there when they gave you your honors. I really do."
"Papa, please, you don't need to explain. I know what your life here is like. Haven't I spent most of my life right here watching you caring for everyone in this town? They could ill afford to have you leave for even as much as a day, let alone the weeks it might have taken."
She knelt down beside his chair, still holding his hand. "Besides, you were there. You've been with me these past six years, every day. When I was studying a textbook
and I read about the proper way to set a fracture, I could hear your voice telling me how to do it. Because you were my first teacher. I learned so much from you before I even walked through the door of the school, or heard my first lecture, or performed my first autopsy. Dr. Nathaniel Meriwether made me the doctor I am today."
Nathaniel leaned forward and brushed her forehead with his lips.
"Now go put on your town clothes and I'll take you to Mrs. Halverson's boarding house for some breakfast."
He looked at her with mock severity. "You really are an awful cook."
She realized that she should have left the hat at home two minutes after walking into the mercantile and catching the stares of two women she didn't know. This was Snowberry, not Boston.
"Kat!" The voice came from the back of the store, where a cheerful, middle-aged woman stepped from behind the counter. Her arms opened wide as she crossed the room. "I was wondering when you'd get around to visiting me!"
Kat stepped forward, allowing the older woman to pull her into an embrace. "Mrs. Forester, I've missed you." She immediately forgot about her discomfort in the presence of her father's oldest friend in Snowberry, a woman who'd done her best to keep Kat from turning into a complete tomboy. Somehow. she'd managed to persuade not only her father but Kat herself to wear a proper dress on the first day of school, a dress she'd sewn for her.
Amy Forester stepped back, still holding Kat's hands and looked her up and down with an appraising eye. She beamed at her. "You're quite the stylish lady now! So pretty. No one would know how much of a fuss you put up about skirts and petticoats when you were a girl."
Mrs. Forester dropped Kat's hands and took another step back one hand holding her chin. "Spin around for me."
Kat, feeling foolish, spun once. She was hardly dressed to current styles fashionable in the East, not even wearing a bustle to enhance her figure.
"So, this is the latest fashion I suppose. I knew that hoops were no longer being worn." She tipped back her head. "Sure am glad for that! I can't imagine any woman came up with that idea, can you?"
Kat felt the movement of air and rush of cold as the door opened behind her. Before turning, she noted the straightening of posture and sudden altering of expression in the faces of the three other women in the store. Kat turned to see a young man, slender, the cut of his clothing suggesting he was either himself or connected to someone with substantial means. She discerned this in an instance, but what arrested her attention for a second longer were his eyes, a shade of blue she'd never imagined God would have given to any human. They were unusually pale, like a mid-day sky in the height of an Idaho summer. She tugged at her ear and returned her attention to her friend.
"Mrs. Forester, are you still sewing for those unfortunates like myself without the skill? I had a skirt I was hoping you could help me to alter."
"Why yes, Kat. I'm still at it." Mrs. Forester stepped behind the counter again. "I'd love to help."
"That's wonderful," Kat said as she turned to the door again. "I'll bring it by later. Maybe I can catch you when you aren't as busy."
"That sounds fine. I'll look forward to a longer visit. We can have a cup of tea and I'll catch you up on all the town gossip." She winked and resumed her conversation with her customers.
Kat took a step and ran head on into the man who seemed to have intentionally placed himself into her path. "Pardon me!" he said as he raised his hat.
Kat stepped back. "No, I'm sure I wasn't looking where I was going." She stepped to the side. "Excuse me."
He backed up and leaned forward to peer at her beneath the cover of her hat as he asked, "You're new here, aren't you?"
"Not really. I was born and raised here, actually. I've just returned after being away for a while." She took another step to the door. He followed.
"Oh, you must be Dr. Meriwether's daughter! Well, please let me introduce myself." He made a slight bow of his head. "My name's Ethan. Ethan Hall."
Kat dipped her head and extended her gloved hand. She instantly wished she'd left the gloves at home as well as the hat, thinking how pretentious she must appear. "Dr. Kathryn Meriwether."
Ethan took her hand in his, and bowed his head again. "Very pleased to meet you, Dr. Meriwether."
She realized that this was the first time anyone in Snowberry had called her that. She felt a warm rush of blood to her face, not able to hide the pleasure his response had given her.
"Are we going to be seeing more of you here? I mean are you staying for a while?" His mouth curved into a slow smile, revealing straight white teeth. "It would be a pleasure to get to know you. The town's growing now with the new silver strike near the Salmon River to the north. We may have need of your services. Doctors are scarce out here, worth their own weight in gold."
There was something about his easy smile she found disturbing, but those startling eyes intrigued her. She broke off her study of the man, then realized that he was still holding her hand. As graciously as she could without leaving her glove in his hand, she withdrew from his grasp. "Well, I would suppose my father can continue to care for the needs of the town. He's been doing it for a very long while."
Even as she said it, she felt the quiver of doubt, doubt that had begun when the wagon she'd arrived in had crested the hill, beginning its descent into the valley. Surprisingly, the valley floor had become a network of streets with twice the houses and businesses than had comprised the town she had left. It would be a lot for one doctor to handle such a fast-growing community.
Ethan took her elbow, accompanying her to the door. "Well, whether you stay or not, I think my father and I should have you and your father join us for dinner. The new boarding house serves a very respectable dinner, even for someone with refined tastes, such as you must have developed in the East. Boston wasn't it?"
She nodded. He'd certainly done his homework.
Ethan straightened, pulling himself to his full height. At five feet two inches, Kat's head barely reached his shoulder. He was an impressive specimen she decided, appraising him with what she told herself was a doctor's eye. Blond hair, mid-twenties perhaps, certainly not more than 30, long muscular arms and legs, broad shoulders, narrow waist. She tugged on her ear, wincing as she did, reminding herself that such distractions were not for her at this time in her life. Nodding to him, she strode past him with quick steps to the door, her skirt sweeping against his leg as she passed.
Ethan called after her, "It was nice to have met you. I'm certain we'll be seeing each other again."
She turned back at the door. "Yes, Mr. Hall. That's very possible. It's still a small town." She lifted her hand waving to her friend. "Goodbye, Mrs. Forester! I'll see you soon."
Her eyes hesitated for only a second as she turned again, arrested by those ghostly eyes. Yes - a fine specimen indeed. And as she stepped through the door she laughed to herself. A fine specimen for someone else, not you, Dr. Meriwether. He's the kind that would insist you give up everything you've worked for to have his babies and cook him burned biscuits every morning. And odds are in favor of him one day turning those baby blues on someone younger and more gullible than you!
chapter 4
Unpleasant Changes
Kat sat bolt upright throwing off the quilt, her eyes attempting to focus in the sliver of moonlight that streamed through her window. It took her awhile to remember where she was, then to work out the puzzle of what had awakened her.
"Doc! Doc! Open the door! We need you!" The voice was followed by another pounding on the front door, more insistent this time.
Throwing on her dressing gown, she made it to the door of the office before her father emerged bleary eyed from his own bedroom. She opened the door to a gush of chilling wind and was nearly knocked over by the two men who squeezed through the doorframe, stumbling into the room. One was obviously hurt, a trail of blood leaving a crimson streak on the floor.
Kat lit a lamp and led them into the examining room where she hung the lamp over the table. The
injured man was not conscious, and judging from the look of his stained clothing, he'd already lost a considerable amount of blood.
"Hello Gabe, who'd you bring me?" Nathaniel asked the question in that same exaggerated slowness of speech that Kat had heard him adapt whenever he was faced with a medical case. He'd told her years ago it was his way of slowing his mind to take in the whole picture, not just the injury or the fever. If he didn't, he'd told her, I can miss some important details, a secondary wound that might even be more life-threatening, or an infected cut on a foot that might be the cause of the fever. It was that same thinking that had caused her to examine the boy's head as well as the cut from the horse's hoof. But sometimes his intentionally slow approach to a crisis, unnerved her - like now.
"He's the wagon driver from the silver fields, Zack Clark." The man's voice was husky, and Kat assumed from his obvious concern that he knew the injured man well.
"We found him when we went searching after the wagon was late arriving at Smith's Ferry. He was just lying there in the road where they left him. The wagon with the cash box was taken, and they just left him there to bleed to death." Kat could see the man's simmering rage contort his face.
"The guard's gone. Don't know if he was part of it or not. Name was Tom, new man." Gabe rubbed a bloody hand across his face after he and Nathaniel lifted his friend onto the table.
Her father had pulled on his apron, already cutting the man's clothing from the wound. He spoke to Gabe as he did. "Why don't you make yourself some coffee and go sit down in the kitchen. You look worn out."
Kat hadn't wasted time and in those few minutes had started water boiling on the cook stove and was now gathering the necessary instruments from her father's cabinets. She stepped to his side with a tray containing an assortment. She watched him, keeping her tongue, while he concentrated on his examination.
Nathaniel spoke while he worked. "Looks like the bullet went clear through. That's good. I can't see any damage to the vital organs." He stepped aside, nodding to Kat. "What do you think?"
Kat's Law Page 2