Kat's Law

by Samantha St. Claire

  Nathaniel remained on the bench, his eyes following her as she swept across the porch and into the kitchen. It wasn't the reaction he'd imagined. Before he had the time to ask her anything, the sound of a wagon being driven up the hill at a rapid rate drew his attention to the road. Hearing the shout of the driver, Kat stepped back onto the porch.

  "Doc, we found the guard!" The man shouting at her father was not someone Kat recognized. He looked haggard and nearly frantic.

  "He's been shot up pretty bad!" he called from the driver's seat.

  As they pulled into the yard, Kat saw that one other man sat in the back with the injured man. Before the wagon had come to a stop, the man riding in back jumped down. While all three men carried the guard into the examining room, Kat led the horses the rest of the way up to the house.

  When Kat stepped into the office, she pulled an apron from the wall hook and stepped up to the examining table across from her father. The patient's face was ashen, his breathing coming in rasping gasps.

  "We've been searching for the last two days. I heard him groan when I passed the place we'd searched yesterday near Bear Rock. I couldn't believe he was still alive."

  Nathaniel looked up at Kat and made a slight nod of his head to the man's chest. Now that his clothing had been cut away, Kat could see the wound that had opened the man's chest. Shotgun, she thought, and close range. The man was drowning in his own blood.

  The man coughed, blood spilling from his mouth, scarlet on white lips. Kat heard him trying to form words, gasps really. She leaned closer to his face turning her ear close to his lips.

  He said the word twice more, then gave another strangled cough. Then there was silence, punctuated only by his last death rattle. His eyes no longer squeezed shut in pain, he lay with them open, staring into eternity.

  "Did you hear what he said? Did it make sense? I heard him trying to talk earlier, but couldn't make it out."

  Kat straightened and turned to the men. "I think he said 'law' or it could have been 'lawman.'"

  The driver stared down at the guard. "Maybe he wanted us to tell the law. Poor devil. This was his first run."

  Kat doubted the man's conjecture, but what else could the guard have been wanting them to know? But there was something far more disturbing about her examination of the man's injuries, and by the look on her father's face she deduced that he too had made the same observation. For some reason he seemed to keep it to himself and so she did not voice her own concerns. But she was certain that this gunshot wound was not two days old. No one would have lasted so long with that amount of blood loss and type of injury. He'd been shot within hours of them finding him, not days. That was something a first-year student would have known.

  The men carried the guard's body back to the wagon. They'd take him to the livery where a coffin would be constructed. He'd be buried by tomorrow afternoon, along with any evidence his body might provide for further investigation.

  Kat stood beside her father on the porch watching the wagon slowly move off down the road, the guard's body wrapped in a sheet, now stained red. For long moments she waited for her father to speak of what they'd both observed. When he walked into the house without saying a word, she followed.

  "Papa, why didn't you tell them the man had to have been shot today, last night at the earliest?"

  Nathaniel Meriwether sat heavily in a chair at the kitchen table, and pulled a hand slowly across his face. He looked older in the dim lantern light, shadows hollowing his eyes and mouth. Kat could hold her tongue no longer. "Papa, why didn't you tell them?"

  "Honey, it's complicated." Her father bowed over the table, palms pressed together, thumbs pressed to his forehead. A casual onlooker might mistake the posture for either prayer or the misery of a drunkard.

  Kat sat opposite him waiting, knowing that in time he would explain. He always did. Even when she was just a child, he'd take the time to explain things she would understand only in the years to come. But his openness with her had helped to form a special bond of trust.

  "Something's going on that just doesn't add up. There's been the sudden change in route for the wagons carrying ore from the mines, the growing number of men who seem to have money to spend in town, but no livelihood, and then there's the sheriff's vigilantes. Even with the increase in lawmen," he said it like he meant to say 'miscreants,' "the violence hasn't decreased. The simple explanation is that I don't know who to trust anymore."

  Shadows deepened the creases of his brow. She studied him with the eye of a daughter, rather than a physician. At his age, he should be creating laugh lines around his eyes, the memory of smiles at the corners of his lips. Every new line that marked his face was graven by fear and worry. His joy and relief at her return was cast in a new light as she realized the strain he had been enduring alone. Night time emergency calls, mutterings in the town, his own dark premonitions - all evidence that very soon, one doctor would not be enough to serve the needs of this town.

  Kat rose and circumnavigated the tiny table. From behind, she wrapped her arms around his chest and pressed her cheek against the top of his head, enfolding all of him - his worries and cares - in the comfort of her presence. "Then we'll just have to trust each other."

  Paper crinkled against her thigh. In her pocket, her secret sat heavy as an ingot of silver.

  Chapter 7

  Shifting Perspectives

  With tendrils of steam puffing from its nostrils into the morning air, the calf pulled itself awkwardly onto shaky legs to stand weaving for long moments before collapsing in a heap to the ground again. He stretched his neck and bellowed to his mother who stood but a few yards away, munching on frost-crisp shoots of grass. Turning her head, she answered with a louder more resonant moo. Once more, the calf hoisted itself in one great lunge to its feet.

  Jonathan slouched comfortably in the saddle, his heavy coat buttoned to his throat to keep out the last attempts of winter to hold onto its claim of the high valley. Silently watching the mother and calf, Adam stood nearby holding the reins of his horse.

  He whispered to Jonathan, "Can I touch him? The calf, can I touch him?"

  Jonathan straightened as his mare shifted her weight from one leg to the other. Studying the cow before giving the boy an answer, he threw the boy a half-cocked smile and nodded. "Take it easy, so as not to bother his mother. She might take exception even to a pup like you."

  Adam handed his reins to Jonathan and stalked warily across the new spring grass. This was not yet the lush valley it would become in late spring when the sun would shine down benevolently upon the meadows and low foothills, bringing warmth and new growth. His footfalls made soft squelching sounds in the moist earth still saturated by melting snow. Adam stopped when he was ten feet from the calf, the two eyeing each other with curiosity.

  With infinitesimal movements, Adam reached out his hand to the calf. Its tongue extended, stretching toward the boy's fingers with curiosity. Adam took another cautious step forward, slipping a bit on the wet grass. The calf took a shaky step back and gave a low moo. The boy tried again, a step forward and fingers again inviting the calf forward. With its soft wet tongue, the calf met the boy's fingers.

  Adam's face cracked wide open with a smile of delight. "He sucked on my finger," he whispered, ecstatic and reverential all at once. Like he'd just had his first kiss, rather than been sampled for edibility by a calf.

  Something about the moment drew out of Jonathan a distant, deeply half-hidden memory, one from when he was a boy even younger than Adam. That look of wonder on Adam's face, the slightly open mouth, body inclined toward this new living thing called up a memory, long buried. For Jonathan, it had been a colt lying next to its mother in their barn. The smell of wet straw, manure, horse sweat, and blood encased the moment forever in the boy's memory. He'd been drawn to that new life just as Adam was to the calf, drawn to the wonder of it.

  When was the last time he'd experienced the wonder of anything? But here it was, a surprise as beautif
ul as the fresh smell of morning in the mountains.

  Adam slowly moved his hand, reaching for the calf's delicate muzzle. Ever so gently, he stroked it. Jonathan observed the slight lowering of tense shoulders in both the boy and calf at that moment of contact. A fleeting moment of trust held them there. Jonathan found himself pulled into the magic of it. Years of harsh reality that had left him jaded, blinded to the simple pleasures were, for a brief time, forgotten.

  Jonathan pulled his gaze from the scene to the rich pasture land that stretched a mile on either side of the river. A man could make a good home for himself in such a place as this, where grass grew plentifully and the river flowed down from high mountain springs through every season. In his mind's eye he saw a modest cabin nestled on the low rise at the far side of the valley where it would command a view of two mountain ranges, with rugged peaks snow-capped in winter and verdant green in summer.

  "How old do you think he is?" Adam asked softly.

  Jonathan returned his attention to the boy, not answering right away. "Looks to me, he's not more than a few hours old."

  "He's a beauty, isn't he?"

  Jonathan checked himself from responding with a wry remark. Seeing the boy's enraptured expression, he looked once more and saw the calf as the boy did. The perfectly formed ears, the wide nose that would function just as it should, the sturdy legs designed to carry him for miles across rocky terrain or muddy grasslands, his short brown hair, a perfect match to his mother's sleek coat, made him beautiful indeed. So, Jonathan simply nodded to the boy's question that was not a question.

  But Jonathan also noted the bloodied earth where the cow's after-birth had stained it crimson. Something beautiful had come from pain. As suddenly as the moment had transported him to a state of pleasurable memories, he fell back into the vision that held him captive for these many months. Again, he was there staring down at the snow, stained red by the girl's blood. He shivered and closed his eyes tight, forcing the memory back down into the dark place that bound it. There it remained protected by a door that, against his will, swung both ways.

  "What were you thinking!" Ethan, face burning with a combined fuel of frustration and anger, raged at the man who slouched sullenly against the wall.

  Liam Brewster's reply powered across the room, thrown at Ethan like a rock in a school yard fight. "I did what needed being done! He pulled a gun on me! And he'd have talked as sure as anything if I hadn't killed him!"

  Ethan chewed on the corner of his lip, his hands hanging stiff at his sides, clenching and unclenching. He shook his head in disgust, then turned from Liam to Noah, a stoop-shouldered giant, with downcast eyes. "And you? What have you got to say for yourself? You were supposed to keep this one under control."

  "I don't need no nursemaid!" Liam shot back.

  "Oh, I think this proves you do," Ethan said without turning.

  "He did try to talk us into taking out a part of the silver," Noah offered.

  "There are ways to deal with problems that don't end with a dead body," Ethan growled. "Bodies leave trails, gentlemen.'" He strode three steps to the window, staring out across the open space to the paddocks beyond. He shook his head and spun back to face them. "And you left one obvious trail. You could have at least disposed of it somewhere else and they might have believed he simply made off with the shipment. Did either of you think of that!"

  "It just didn't seem right to leave him there. I thought his family might...you know." Noah stuttered to a halt when he saw Ethan's face.

  Ethan blew in disgust. "But it was all right to shoot him." He shook his head slowly, chewing on his lower lip, then spoke his thoughts aloud. "Well, if the men who found him don't figure out that he wasn't shot where they found him, Doc Meriwether and his daughter are sure to. That will raise questions."

  Ethan spun back to the window. The attractive face of Kat Meriwether materialized in Ethan's mind's eye. He had no desire to think of her as the enemy. In fact, under different circumstances, he might even convince her to yield a bit of that educated aloofness to see him in a favorable light.

  More and more he felt ensnared, like a rabbit, not like the clever man he prided himself to be, one who could always out think his enemy. He knew how to use his wits to avoid using force. These brutes had no such mental acuity. But one thing was certain. He was not going to hang for murder. That was unthinkable.

  More to himself than to the two men he muttered, "And somehow, I have to fix this."

  Chapter 8

  Lost Places of Solitude

  Josie swung her legs over the side of the bed as Kat stepped to the basin to wash her hands. "I don't think you'll make it to the end of the month for this one to be born."

  Patting her swollen belly, Josie laughed. "My babies have always been impatient. They all seem in a hurry. Still are."

  Kat dried her hands and closed her medical bag before taking a seat at the long kitchen table where the oldest girl of Josie's three children sat tearing strips of cloth. "What are you making Caroline?"

  "Mama's teaching me how to sew a rag rug." The face that beamed up at Kat was just a younger version of her mother. This was the face of the girl she'd grown up with, her partner in mischief.

  Kat knew the girl could be no older than six, but being the oldest, she was growing up quickly. Her mother would need her help even more with this new child. "Those are nice colors. My mama taught me to do that when I was a little girl, but not as little as you. You must be a great help to your mama."

  "Oh, she is!" Josie declared. She carried two mugs of tea to the table and placed one in front of Kat before sitting across from her. She groaned softly as she eased herself to the chair. "Caroline, why don't you go on outside and play with those new kittens for a while. I know you've been dying to."

  "Thank you, Mama." Caroline finished rolling the last strip of cloth she'd torn from her father's worn shirt. Before running out the door she turned to Kat. "Miss Kat, won't you come and see the kittens too?" She giggled and put her hand to her mouth. "That sounds funny. Miss Kat do you want to see the cats?" She giggled again.

  Kat smiled. "Yes, it does. I'd love to see them. I'll do that before I go."

  Caroline had barely closed the door when Josie leaned forward, eyes glowing with anticipation. "Now, Kat, tell me everything! You must have visited museums and restaurants and been adored by dozens of men. It must have been so exciting and romantic!"

  Kat laughed lightly. "I tell you honestly, I spent most of my time with my nose in a book, studying until my eyes burned. It wasn't glamorous. And the only exciting part was the fearful kind that filled me with dread before every examination!"

  Josie sat back, her hand pressing the small of her back. "Well, it had to be a lot more exciting than living here in Snowberry for the past four years."

  "What I remember most was the hard work." Kat ran her fingers lightly over the table-cloth, recalling the long nights alone in her room with nothing more for company than the medical tomes piled about her desk.

  Josie shook her head, disbelieving. "But your aunt? Didn't she introduce you to society? You certainly don't look much like the girl that left here! Look at you!" She waved at Kat as if her attire was evidence of the glamorous life she'd left behind.

  Kat glanced down at her newly altered, split skirt. "This?" She laughed. "I asked Mrs. Forester to alter a skirt for me so I could ride more easily."

  But she knew that wasn't all Josie was seeing. She was different. From her aunt, she'd learned how to carry herself with poise, how to dress to show off her best features, how to choose colors to flatter her complexion and hair. Even the leather jacket she wore now had been carefully tailored to flatter her figure, just shy of the skirt waistband to show off her slim waist. Delicate embroidery on the collar and cuffs softened the overall look.

  "I always envied your thick hair, even when you wore it in braids. Now, you wear it up, so stylish!" Josie tipped her head, tucking a stray lock of her own pale hair behind an ear. She scowled.
"But I still think you aren't being honest with me about the men you were with every day. Surely, one would have taken an interest in you!"

  Kat examined her chewed thumbnail, before folding her hands in her lap. "There might have been one. But most of the male students resented me for being there, and the women only saw me as a threat, competition. So, on those rare occasions when I did go out, it was usually with my aunt to teas and ladies' social events."

  "But there was one, wasn't there? I can tell. Remember? I'm your closest friend."

  Kat rose to her feet and brought the kettle back to the table to fill their cups. "If you insist on knowing..."

  Josie leaned forward. "Yes! I insist! He was handsome, wasn't he? Was he a doctor too?"

  Blowing into her cup, Kat smiled at her friend's obvious hunger for a romantic tale. She knew she'd be disappointed at the truth.

  "There was a third-year student that was one of the few men who treated my interest in medicine seriously. But the other one was a rather good-looking man I met through my aunt's friend. He was British. He wasn't a doctor, and that's probably why we saw each other more than once." Kat sat down again, and looked up at her friend's eager face, amused. She couldn't help herself. The moment invited her to take advantage of her friend's gullibility.

  "Well, it was sad, really," Kat began dramatically. "We seemed to be getting along so well. He took me to dinner three weekends in a row. We even attended the opera, The Marriage of Figaro. It was quite lovely. The costumes were elegant, brocades and velvets, and more lace than you could ever imagine."

  Josie's eyes widened. Her hand fluttered to her throat. "Did you wear white? I've heard that it's very fashionable. Did you wear long white gloves?"

  Kat nodded. "And my aunt loaned me her mother's pearl necklace."

  Josie clapped her hands gleefully. "I can just see you! Oh, how heads must have turned when you walked in."

  "I think I was just one amidst many young women and jewel bedazzled ladies of society."