The Rustler (24 page)

“The only folks who come to me for care are bigots who don't want a Chinaman in their sickroom.”

“Ephriam's not a bigot, at least as far as I can tell,” Wyatt said. “He trusts you.”

“That's because he thinks I saved his life. We were both young then. Soldiers, fighting a holy war. It was pure luck I didn't kill him, ignorant as I was. Back then, medicine was more like butchery. Nobody knew about sepsis—we operated with horse shit on our boots and other people's blood on our hands. There was never enough ether, let alone morphine.” Doc paused. “Sometimes I can still hear those men screaming.”

Wyatt laid a hand to the doctor's back. “You did the best you could with what you knew and what you had,” he said, though he doubted the words were any comfort to Doc. He'd heard stories about the war from various old-timers who'd served on both sides of the conflict. Every one of them remembered the gore more than the glory, the horror more than the honor, and dealt with it as they were able.

A shudder went through Doc. “I lived to have a beautiful wife and a lovely daughter,” he said, gathering himself to rise, go into the house, and examine Ephriam Tamlin one more time.

Wyatt rose, too, and just as he did, the door sprang open behind them.

Owen stood white-faced in the chasm. “Something's wrong with Mr. Tamlin,” he said. “His eyes are open, but he won't talk to me!”

“R
UN AND FETCH
Sarah from the bank,” Wyatt told Owen, before following Doc toward the front of the house.

Owen nodded and left on a barefoot run.

Doc had his stethoscope on, the horn-shaped end pressed to Ephriam's chest, by the time Wyatt located the old man's study.

“Is he…?” Wyatt began.

Ephriam's eyes were open wide behind his glasses, just as Owen had said, and his mouth looked distorted somehow, and slack.

“He's alive,” Doc said, listening earnestly to Tamlin's heartbeat. “I'd say he's had a stroke. Soon as I'm sure he can be moved, we'll carry him up to bed.”

Wyatt nodded, feeling as helpless as Lonesome, now sitting on the floor beside him, whimpering low and deep in his gullet. “Should I fetch water or something?” Wyatt asked.

Doc shook his head, removed the earpieces of the stethoscope, and patted a too-still Ephriam on one shoulder. “You're going to be all right, old friend,” he said gruffly. “You're going to be all right.”

Ephriam Tamlin didn't look all right to Wyatt. The blue eyes, looming watery and wide behind their smudged spectacles, shifted slowly in his direction, and Wyatt thought he saw a fierce, proud plea in them.

He approached, crouched beside the old man's chair. “I'll take care of Sarah,” he said.

“Owen.” Ephriam labored to say the name; it was drawn out and garbled.

Wyatt nodded again. He had no more legal rights than Sarah did, where the boy was concerned, but he'd do his best for Owen, and he wanted Ephriam to rest easy in the knowledge.

Doc and Wyatt waited for five or ten minutes, then Doc took Ephriam's feet, and Wyatt gripped the old man under the shoulders, and they carried him upstairs to his room.

Sarah flew in, hair coming loose from its pins, eyes half-wild with alarm, while they were making the old man comfortable. Owen popped up right behind her, stone quiet and half again as scared as Sarah.

“He's just sleeping, Sarah,” Doc said quietly. “He's had a stroke, and there's no knowing, just yet, how serious it is. He could linger for years, or pass over today.”

Sarah bit her lip, nodded. Hurried to her father's bedside.

Watching her, Wyatt figured he'd have done just about anything to make things better for her right about then. Changed places with Ephriam, gone forward at an altar call, anything.

Owen huddled close beside him; Wyatt put a hand on the boy's shoulder.

Doc caught Wyatt's eye, indicated the door. Wyatt, Doc and Owen left the room, descended the rear stairway to the kitchen, leaving Sarah alone with her stricken father.

For something to do, Wyatt brewed up a pot of coffee.

Doc and Owen sat numbly at the table, while Lonesome curled up at the boy's feet, with a heavy sigh of dog despondency.

“Is he going to die?” Owen asked, after working up his courage for a while.

Doc sighed, as sorrowfully as the dog had moments before. “I don't know,” he said, and caught Wyatt's eye. “I mean to ask Hon Sing's opinion. Might be something he can do.”

Wyatt nodded. Doc's despair was palpable. It was easy to see that he felt overwhelmed by his friend's illness, and hoped the Chinese doctor would have a solution. “I'll find him for you, if you want,” he said, wishing there'd been some way to keep from treading on Doc's professional pride.

“He'll be over at the old Porter place,” Doc said, and gave directions.

Wyatt didn't like leaving the house, lest Sarah need him for some reason, but he went off to fetch Hon Sing.

Wyatt found the Chinese doctor at home. The man was ridiculously small, but there was a profound dignity in his bearing that made Wyatt like him immediately. He fetched a satchel and accompanied Wyatt back to the Tamlin house without questions or comment.

Sarah had come downstairs to sit staring, numbly, at the table.

Someone had given her a cup of coffee, or she'd poured it herself, but it sat, untouched and still steaming, before her.

Doc and Hon Sing went up the back stairs, conferring quietly as they climbed. Owen was on the floor with Lonesome, his head resting on the dog's back.

Wyatt, watching Sarah the whole time, helped himself to a cup of coffee and eased a chair back at the table. He longed to comfort Sarah somehow, but there were no words for it, at least none that came to mind. He sensed that the best thing was to let her be, but for his own sake, as much as hers, he couldn't bring himself to leave her.

Presently, her eyes found his, caught.

He nodded toward her coffee cup.

She picked it up in both hands and took a sip. Seemed to hearten a little, color rising in her cheeks, some fight in her eyes, though she still didn't speak. She drank more coffee, though, and seemed less like a saint staring at a death vision. Gradually, to Wyatt's profound relief, she rejoined the living, became more present somehow.

“Owen,” she said, surprising everyone. “Come and sit here with us, at the table.”

Owen got up off the floor and did as he was asked.

“I have something to tell you,” Sarah said. She'd rallied that quickly, and was ready to undertake delicate work. Wyatt felt a surge of admiration, and something harder to identify.

Knowing what was coming, he slid his chair back quietly, meaning to make himself scarce.

“Stay,” Sarah said. “Please.”

Wyatt stayed. He couldn't have refused her anything, then or any other time, no matter how rocky a trail she was traveling.

Owen sat straight-shouldered in his chair, his gaze pinned to Sarah. And she told the story of his birth, the true one, and in great detail, but Wyatt noticed, if Owen didn't, that she took care not to lay any blame at all on Charles or Marjory Langstreet. Again, Wyatt marveled at her.

The boy listened with a sort of stiff stoicism—no tears, no interruptions, no questions. When Sarah finished, he got up out of his chair, strode across the kitchen, wrenched open the door and ran.

He'd run and run and run, Wyatt supposed, trying to use up the energy that had surged up inside him as Sarah spoke. Once, when Wyatt was just seven years old, his mother had given birth to a baby girl. The child, much wanted, was stillborn. And he'd run, just as Owen did now, until he couldn't run anymore, his feet pounding a rocky country road.

“Should I go after him?” Wyatt asked, when a few moments had passed.

Sarah shook her head. “He'll come back when he's ready,” she said, sounding spent.

“That was a brave thing you did, Sarah. Telling him the truth, I mean.”

She gave a tiny grimace. “My father is upstairs, probably dying,” she said. “That makes the truth an urgent thing, don't you think?”

“I think you're a remarkable woman,” Wyatt said.

A tear slipped down Sarah's cheek, and it was all Wyatt could do not to lean in and wipe it away. He didn't because, with all she had to endure, she had a right to any tears she needed to shed. “You don't know me,” she said. “You don't know how many lies I've told. How many mistakes I've made.”

“When it comes to lies and mistakes, Miss Sarah, you'd need to go a far piece to beat
my
record.”

She chuckled at that, though with no amusement. Then, without another word, she got up, wandered toward the front of the house. Wyatt stayed behind, and in a few minutes, he heard the first soft strains of the piano. The song Sarah played was “Lorena,” a Civil War favorite, mournful and poignantly sweet.

She was serenading her father, the old soldier.

Reaching out to him in the only way she could.

Wyatt was glad he and Lonesome were the only ones in that kitchen, because tears smarted in his eyes.

He hadn't wept since the baby girl died. Not even when he got word of his ma's death, or when his first horse, Whispers, succumbed to the colic and had to be shot, or when he lay down on a filthy cot to sleep his way through his first night in prison.

But Sarah's music, and the love she poured into it, tore a jagged rip in the fabric of his soul.

 

K
ITTY
S
TEEL PRESENTED HERSELF
at Sarah's door bright and early the next day, wearing a modest calico dress and carrying a valise. She'd colored her bright red hair brown, and pinned it up in a bun at the nape of her neck. The transformation was so complete that Sarah almost didn't recognize her.

“I've come to attend to your father,” she told Sarah. “I've had some experience minding the sick.”

Sarah, numb-brained after a mostly sleepless night—though he'd eventually come home, and refused supper, Owen wasn't speaking to her, and Ephriam's condition hadn't changed—stared at the woman, struck speechless.

“I don't need any pay,” Kitty said, stepping past Sarah into the house. “Just a room and a meal once a day.”

Sarah finally managed to wrap her distracted brain around what was happening. Kitty wasn't there out of the goodness of her heart, though she did have a kindly side to her nature. Her daughter, Davina, was due to roll in on the train any day now, and when she arrived, she'd find her mother working as an invalid's nurse, not a prostitute.

“Kitty—”

“I've quit the Spit Bucket,” Kitty broke in, with dignity, though her eyes were desperate with hope. “There were hard words spoken and I can't go back there. If you won't take me in, I'll have no choice but to leave town before Davina gets here.”

Sarah sighed. She loved her father with her whole heart, but tending to him in the intimate ways that would be required would be too painful for both of them. She needed Kitty's help, whatever the other woman's true motivation might be.

“All right,” she said. “But the whole town can't be expected to lie for you, Kitty. Davina will hear about your…former employment.”

“I know,” Kitty said. “This way, though, she might not turn her back on me before I get a chance to explain things. And I
am
a capable nurse. I took good care of my mother until she passed, and I had a husband and two babies then.”

“You can have the room next to mine,” Sarah said, and started up the main staircase to show Kitty the way. Kitty put her valise on the floor beside the bureau, took in the simple furnishings—a narrow bed with an iron headboard and foot rail, the one dresser, and a washstand with a bowl and pitcher on top.

“This will do nicely,” Kitty said.

“Papa is across the hall,” Sarah told her.

Kitty nodded. “Go on over to the bank,” she told Sarah.

Sarah opened her father's door, stood just inside the room, watched as Kitty approached the bed.

Ephriam was sleeping.

Kitty adjusted the sheet covering him very gently—it was too hot for blankets or quilts—and drew a rocking chair up beside the bed to keep the vigil. The white lace curtains on the window behind her billowed in a blessed breeze.

Sarah watched for a few moments, swallowed, and then went out, closing the door behind her.

Owen, Wyatt and Lonesome had gathered in the kitchen. All three were eating fried eggs and toasted bread—Wyatt's handiwork, Sarah supposed—and a place had been set for her.

“If you're my mother,” Owen said, as she sat down to eat, surprised by the ferocity of her hunger, “then Mr. Tamlin is my grandfather.”

“That's right,” Sarah replied carefully, smoothing a cloth napkin across her lap. She was conscious of Wyatt watching her.

“Who was at the door?” he asked, after an interval.

“Kitty Steel,” Sarah said, stealing a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. “She's going to look after Papa, for the time being, at least.”

“Why didn't you bring me back to Stone Creek with you?” Owen asked, having mulled over the fact that the man lying upstairs, hovering somewhere between life and death, was his grandfather. “When I was a baby, I mean?”

“Your father wouldn't have allowed that,” Sarah said.

“Why not? He didn't want me. Neither did Mother. Didn't
you
want me, even a little?”

Sarah's throat constricted, but she managed to speak in a fairly normal tone. “I wanted you a whole lot,” she said. “But we don't always
get
what we want in this life, Owen. Mostly, it's a matter of making the best of things.”

“Amen to that,” Wyatt said, then looked as though he wished he hadn't spoken.

“I don't want to go back to Pennsylvania,” Owen announced. “I want to stay here in Stone Creek, with you and Wyatt and Grandfather and Lonesome, even if I have to go to school.”

“You definitely have to go to school,” Sarah said. “In fact, it starts on Monday morning. I read it in the newspaper.”

Owen digested all this. “When Father comes back, he'll take me away with him when he leaves.”