Authors: Leaving Whiskey Bend
“Now what seems to be the matter?”
“My friend almost drowned,” Hallie blurted, the spell of silence broken. She quickly moved over to where he stood at the edge of the long porch. “She fell into the river and has a cut on her head.”
“That’s quite enough!” Adele said angrily.
“Madam, please. I ask of you—” Abe began.
“I told you that I have made up my mind and that I expect you to leave!” Mrs. Morgan continued, deaf to her other son’s words. “Just get back in that wagon and go!”
Abe held up a hand to silence her, his voice loud and firm. “Madam, if you please! It is my duty to hear all the concerns of the people. If I did not, what kind of president would I be? After all,” he added with a gentle smile and a wink in Hallie’s direction, “I can’t rightly have them going back home and telling potential voters that I am deaf to their concerns, now can I?”
Mrs. Morgan looked as if she wished to protest further, her mouth opening and then quickly closing, but she held her tongue.
“Please continue, my dear,” Abe prodded Hallie.
“My friend is badly hurt,” she told him, hope leaping in her eyes at the thought of someone listening to her plight. “She fell into the river and would have drowned were it not for Eli braving the waters. If Mary doesn’t see a doctor soon—”
“Mary?” Abe asked worriedly. “Did you say her name was Mary?”
“Why, yes, she—”
Without another word, Abe made his way down the steps and to the wagon’s side. The look on his face was one of dread and confusion. Reaching into the wagon bed, he clutched one of Mary’s limp hands to his own and held tight.
“Oh, my beloved Mary! My dear sweet, Mary!” he exclaimed. “What in the name of Heaven has happened to you?” Turning to Eli and Hank he ordered them to action. “Generals, Mary is in dire need of medical attention. The two of you bring her into her quarters at once before fetching the top army surgeon. Act now or you will find yourself in the guardhouse!”
Without hesitation, Eli and Hank lifted the unconscious woman from the wagon and carried her gently but quickly up the stairs. All the while, Abe stayed at their heels, offering words of encouragement and admonition. When they passed Mrs. Morgan, Eli never even glanced at her, his body coiled for any words of disagreement, but she gave none. Then they were in the house and out of sight. Finally, the older woman followed, slamming the door closed with a bang.
“What in the name of all the stars above just happened?” Pearl exclaimed. “That fella acts like he’s Abraham Lincoln. On top of all of that, he seemed to think he knew who Mary was, but that just ain’t possible!”
Suddenly, the answer dawned on Hallie. “He does know her . . . in a way.”
“Don’t tell me you done gone crazy too. How is that possible?”
“It’s really quite simple,” she said, turning to Pearl with a smile. She was suddenly thankful that she’d read as many history books as she had. “Mary was the name of President Lincoln’s wife!”
An hour later, Eli walked into the barn with Hallie at his heels. As she entered, the sharp smell of manure and hay filled her nostrils and she absently rubbed her nose. She took in all the sights: ranching instruments of many shapes and sizes that lined one wall, the airy loft piled high with straw, and the three stalls sunk deep into the back of the building. It was to these that Eli walked with a bedroll under each arm.
“I’m sorry my mother was so disagreeable,” he said over his shoulder.
“We’re the ones who should be apologizing,” Hallie disagreed, “because we are imposing upon her. As soon as Mary is able, we’ll do just as I told her and leave.”
After all the fuss of their arrival, Mary had been safely put into a dry, warm bed in an unused room. They’d found her a loose gown and done their best to settle her. Pearl had begun to fret that Mary was running a fever. It was decided that the doctor should be fetched just as soon as possible.
While Mary was being cared for, Adele Morgan had silently smoldered. At her first chance, she had managed to make her demands known: Only Mary would be allowed to stay in the house, and the others would have to sleep in the barn. As long as Mary was to be provided for, Pearl and Hallie had no objections.
Through it all, Abe had steadfastly remained at Mary’s bedside.
“I’m sorry I didn’t warn you about my brother’s . . . strange appearance,” Eli continued. “It’s hard enough for me to get used to. I can only imagine what you must have thought.”
“I have to admit that I was startled,” Hallie replied. “I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. But as soon as he spoke, I knew that he was a good man. My grandmother used to say that what matters is a person’s heart; and from the look of things, his is in the right place.”
“Indeed it is.”
Hallie paused for a moment, unsure whether she should give her thoughts voice before finally asking, “Has he always been this way? Has he always believed that he was Abraham Lincoln?”
“No, not always,” Eli answered with a shrug. “But my older brother was the sort who would go his own way no matter what was expected of him. For that and many other things, I always looked up to him. He’d always loved school and books and had studied Lincoln. After his illness, he awoke believing he was the president . . . and does to this day.”
They walked to the farthest stall in silence. Eli knelt and spread the bedrolls out beside each other. Fetching an old oil lamp from where it hung on the wall, he blew the dust off the cover and checked the wick.
“It’s not much, but I reckon you’ll be better off than you were in that rain.”
“Thank you, Mr. Morgan,” Hallie said, taking the offered lamp. “Thank you for all that you have done. Without you and your uncle, I don’t know what would have happened to us. I do know that Mary wouldn’t have a fighting chance, and for that I will always be grateful.”
“I only did what was right,” he said. “But you’re welcome all the same and, please, call me Eli.”
Even in the deep gloom of the barn, Hallie could see Eli’s eyes drinking her in. As he continued to stare at her, she returned his gaze, not out of fear or even of shyness but because of something . . . different. In that moment, she was glad for the semidarkness, if for nothing more than to hide the deep crimson that had covered her face.
“Hank and I’ll be going to Bison City to fetch the doctor for Mary,” he explained. “If I were you, I’d try to get a little rest. You need it after all you’ve been through.”
“I’ll try,” she answered.
As he turned and strode out of the barn, Hallie watched him. Her heart beat a little faster, and she could feel her breath quickening. One thing was painfully clear to her: In all her years, in all her travels, she was certain that she’d never met a man quite like Eli Morgan.
B
ISON
C
ITY LOOKED
as if it were bursting at the seams. Farm and freight wagons, buggies and saddle horses clogged the town’s main thoroughfare. The boardwalks that fronted the stores were crowded with a motley lot: old mixed with young, tall with short, well dressed with those barely covered by an untorn stitch. Once the small town could have been described as calm and sedate; it was now busy and boisterous. As Eli brought his horse into town at a canter, he strained to find a face that he could recognize.
“Can it really have changed this much?”
“Like I done told ya before,” Hank answered, “time has a way of changin’ things.”
“I reckon you’re right.”
Since the day he had arrived on the train, Eli had not set foot in Bison City; life on the ranch was complicated enough without confusing it any further with a visit
here
. Hank or one of the other ranch hands was always willing to go to town for supplies. But now that Eli had finally arrived, his eyes couldn’t drink up the changes fast enough.
New houses nestled against new businesses, all of them populated by new folk going about their daily lives. Several of the sights were the same; Malek’s Mercantile remained, although its banisters and awning were sagging and worn. But much was new, and everywhere he looked he saw something different. A barbershop, a saloon, and a telegraph office were all bunched together along a street that simply hadn’t been there before.
“I’m beginning to think I don’t know this place anymore.”
“A lot of it you don’t.” Hank chuckled before pointing further on up the street. “Doc Holland’s place is right where it’s always been, just up the way and around the corner.”
Eli gave his uncle a nod and urged his horse toward the doctor’s office. He knew in the pit of his stomach just why he had hesitated to come to Bison City: Somewhere on these streets, his brother had died alone in a pool of blood. He couldn’t help but glance down each narrow alley, wondering if that had been the spot or if it were the next. Anger and sickness raged in his gut. He had always felt that a part of him had died alongside Caleb that night; and now being here, where it had actually happened, the feeling was raw.
Doctor William Holland’s office wasn’t much—a two-room building fixed to the back end of the postal station just off the main street. Eli and Hank tied their horses to the hitching post and went in.
“Afternoon, Sawbones!” Hank hollered just inside the door.
Doc Holland peered over his shoulder at his visitors. He was thin as a reed, with thick-lensed glasses and sparse, white hair that he combed over his bald pate.William Holland had been the physician for Bison City for as long as Eli could remember. He was always seen about town dressed to the nines, in a suit coat and tightly knotted tie, his wife of forty years on his arm.
“We ain’t bargin’ in on nothin’, is we?” Hank asked.
“As a matter of fact, gentlemen,” Doc Holland replied. He stepped to the side to reveal a middle-aged man sitting on a long table, a look of excruciating pain written on his weathered face. Eli recognized him immediately; Jefferson Hughes had been a distant neighbor of the Morgans for years. A large man in both appetite and heart, Jefferson had been a close friend of Eli’s father and had spent many a night at their kitchen table, laughing until his ample belly heaved and rolled. At the moment, there was no laughter in his eyes, his right arm cradled gingerly against his chest.
“Sweet Christmas!” Hank exclaimed with a wide grin. “What the devil happened to you?”
“This ain’t no laughin’ matter,” Jefferson protested with a frown. “When a man gets hurt he goes to the doc to get fixed up. He ain’t supposed to be made a fool of.”
“That depends on what you did!” Hank said.
Turning to Eli, Jefferson said, “Good to see you again, young man.” He gave a wink and added, “It’s really a damn shame you’re related to this cantankerous bastard. I wouldn’t spend too much time around him or folks might get to thinkin’ just as badly of you!”
“I worry about that myself.” Eli chuckled. “That arm looks like it’s giving you a lot of pain. One of those horses of yours didn’t up and kick you, now did it?”
Jefferson looked down at his cradled arm and wrinkled his nose as if he’d just taken a whiff of rotten meat. “’Cept this is on account a me fallin’ off the ladder I got in the barn. I was movin’ along as right as rain when I turned, took a step, found out there weren’t nothin’ there, and fell on my arm!”
“Ya fell off ’cause you couldn’t see past yer gut!” Hank cackled.
“Just keep on laughin’, Hank!” Jefferson growled, even though Eli thought the old rancher could see the humor in it all. “You mark my words . . . the next time you so much as fall on your ass, I’m gonna be there a-laughin’ my head off!”
“You’d have been fine if’n you’d fallen on yer head!” Hank kept on teasing.
Eli butted in: “I’m sure the doc’ll fix you up fine.”
“I was about to do that very thing when you two characters barged in,” Dr. Holland explained. As he spoke, his hands sank into a large bowl of a thick, white liquid. Sheets of cloth swam in the murky fluid like ships on a misty lake. Eli recognized the plaster used to set broken bones from his time in the army. “It’ll take a while for it to heal,” the doctor continued. “But he’ll mend.”
“And the first thing I’m gonna do when it’s off is punch Hank in the chops!”
As the two old friends continued to tease each other, Eli slid over beside the doctor and said, “I’m afraid this is more than just a friendly visit, Doc. We’ve got ourselves a bit of a problem out at the ranch.”
“What seems to be the matter?”
Eli told the physician about Mary; from finding her half drowned in the Cummings River to Hallie and Pearl placing her in a bed at the ranch. When he had finished his tale, he said, “I was hoping you could come out and take a look at her.”
“I’ve got to get Jefferson’s arm set and the cast dried before I can turn him loose,” he said, nodding to where his patient and Hank continued to argue. “By the time I get finished with him it will be afternoon. Go on home and I’ll be out as soon as I can.”
“Is there anything we can do until you get there?”
“Do what you’re doing,” Doc Holland answered, stirring the contents of the plaster pot with both hands. “Keep her warm and comfortable and let her rest as much as she wants. When she does wake, give her something hot to drink—tea or soup, if you’ve got it. After the ordeal she’s been through, she’s likely to be as weak as a kitten and need to get her strength back.”
“Anything else?”
“The hard part is already done—you fished her out of the river.”
Eli grinned down at the small man. “If the water had been running any faster, neither one of us would’ve needed your attention. All we’d need is a pair of pine boxes!”
“I lucked out there.” The doctor smiled, finally making a joke of his own.
“So did I, Doc.”
“You best make sure someone takes ole Jefferson home, Doc,” Hank said with a laugh. “He’s liable to put the wrong foot in front of the other and end up back here for you to fix his other arm.”
“And
you
best get out of here before I give you a reason to stay!” Jefferson barked, shaking his good arm in mock anger.
Back out on the street, Eli lifted his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his arm. The day was going to be another scorcher. Squinting, he looked up into the cloudless sky, the sun hanging directly above. He’d been on the move since they had set off after the missing heads of cattle, and he could feel the ache of fatigue in his bones. The sooner he got himself home and managed a bit of sleep, the better.