Firefly (14 page)

The combination of hopefulness and weariness that filled her eyes touched something inside him.  No doubt she had been through so much of this already that she didn't care.  He wanted her to care, wanted her to hope.  And he wanted to take those spectacles off her nose to see if he was right about her being more than almost pretty.

He swallowed thickly and took another puff on his cheroot.

"Tomorrow morning I want you turn over some of your chores to your mother.  She can dust, can't she?"

Julie nodded, and within a few minutes they had made a list of several tasks Katharine could take on.  Then, when she regained the use of the injured arm, she would tackle the heavier chores.

"Can you teach her how to cook?" Morgan asked.

"She knows how.  She used to do it all the time before Willy was born."

So the boy's birth had indeed been the turning point. Morgan found some of his suspicions confirmed, but other new ones were raised, too.  And he wondered why Julie had begun to lose her enthusiasm and turn surly.

Best to broach the subject now rather than let her stew.

"Miss Hollstrom," he said quietly, "is something wrong?"

"I'm fine.  Please, go on."

He'd used the wrong strategy.  Her spine stiffened and she was pointedly refusing to look in his direction.  Once warned that he might pry, she had her defenses up.  He would have to get her to lower them.

"In time I think your mother will recover fully.  There should be no reason why she can't take on her normal responsibilities to her family.  It isn't going to come overnight; changes of this magnitude never do."

She caught a corner of her lower lip between her teeth and tugged on it but that didn't still the trembling.  Though this was hardly the reaction Morgan expected, there was too much about Julie Hollstrom he didn't know, too many questions he dared not ask, especially in a place as public as McCrory's with the inquisitive Ada bustling about.  Before he could suggest they find somewhere more private to continue the conversation, Julie suddenly turned to him, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

In a whisper that let him know she was every bit as aware of Ada McCrory's presence as he was, she asked, "And just what am I supposed to do when they don't need me any more?"

Chapter Nine 

The desperation in her question caught him by surprise.

"I thought you were going to come work for me."

She blinked away those threatening tears but her hesitation made clear that she either didn't or couldn't quite believe him and needed confirmation. 

"You still want me to?"

"Of course, I want you to."

He wanted to laugh and tell her he wouldn't have gone to all this trouble if he didn't, but he knew she was too vulnerable now to appreciate even the most gentle of sarcasm.  Later, if necessary, he would tell her how much he needed someone with her strength, her calm.  And later, if possible, he would ask her why she seemed eager to leave her father's strict control and yet was also so very afraid to.

"Is it really all right with Papa?"

"He agreed, but only with certain conditions."

"Such as?"

"I didn't like his terms.  I agreed to them only because he didn't leave me any other choice." That stretched the truth a bit, but not very much.

"Did he leave
me
any choice?"

"Not much.  I'll pay you eight dollars a week, but five of it goes to him.  He said it was to pay off an old debt."

What kind of debts do children owe their parents?  What kind of parents demand payment? 
Why does your father hate you?
he wanted to ask, along with a dozen other questions.

"What else?"

"He wants you available to take care of your mother if the treatment I've prescribed for her doesn't work."

"That much at least is reasonable."

But something else wasn't reasonable.

"Look, I was prepared to offer you ten, so that still leaves you five dollars every Friday.  If you want, I'll give him the extra two bucks, and pay your debt off that much sooner."

He never meant to be so forward, especially in plain sight of Ada McCrory, but he couldn't help taking one of Julie's hands in his.  It lay limply, as though she didn't know what to do, and slowly he let his own fingers slide across the back of it.  He could almost count the bones, for there was little flesh under the skin.  He touched a knuckle covered with a rough scab where she'd knocked the skin off somehow, and when he turned the palm upward, he saw an almost healed cut undoubtedly made by a kitchen knife.

He didn't dare go further, up to her wrist where the bones were almost visible, or to the shoulders so painfully thin under her blouse.

"Are those terms acceptable, Miss Hollstrom?"

She heard his voice, but his touch deadened all her other senses.  She no longer felt the close afternoon heat or smelled the sharp tobacco smoke.  The sticky sweetness left on her tongue by the ice cream disappeared, and a warm dryness replaced it.  She knew, in some shadowy corner of her mind, that she was staring over his shoulder toward the front window, where Ada was displaying a bolt of blue calico to Estelle Kincheloe, but Julie's eyes saw nothing.  Morgan's fingers, gently stroking across her palm, were all that existed.

"Miss Hollstrom, are you all right?"

His voice, raised and sharp, broke through her spell.  Her hand lay on the counter; his were on his knees as he leaned toward her.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine.  Did you just ask me something?"

"I did." His voice dropped again.  "I asked if those terms were acceptable."

"Yes, I suppose so," she mumbled, folding her hands on her lap again.  "I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention."

"No, Miss Hollstrom, I'm the one to apologize.  This isn't something to be discussed over ice cream in the general store." 
But where?  And when
?  "Look, I have a lot of things to do this afternoon.  I'm going to talk to the marshal about opening Horace's house so I can sift through the wreckage and see if there isn't something of value to be salvaged.  Would you care to come and help me?"

*  *  *

Morgan and Julie spent the rest of Thursday afternoon cleaning the small house Horace Opper had lived in and used as his office.  They made so little progress that when Julie met Morgan at the house Friday morning, she could hardly see any difference.

Katharine did not volunteer to help, nor was she asked, but when Julie returned to her own house to fix lunch, Katharine agreed to take Wilhelm's to him.  How she was to carry the heavy tray presented a problem until Del suggested a picnic basket.  Horace, it turned out, had one he wouldn't be using.

Saturday was much the same, except that now progress could be seen.  The front parlor, which served as the waiting room, had been thoroughly cleaned.  The floor shone with a fresh waxing, the window sparkled after its first washing in several years, the two small tables had been dusted and outfitted with periodicals bearing the current year's date.  Katharine checked all of the magazines to make sure she hadn't missed anything of interest.

Late on Saturday afternoon, the first patient arrived. The two companions who brought him in explained they were prospectors working a small mine in the mountains north of town.  A shoring beam had given way, crushing their partner's right leg.

"We spent hours diggin' him out," the shorter of the two men explained.  They hadn't given their names, but the taller one addressed the patient and apparently forgot some of his caution.

"It's gonna be awright, Louie.  We found ya a doc, an' he's gonna fix ya right up."

Julie saw no signs of such confidence in himself when Morgan got his first look at the injury.

He helped carry Louie on his improvised stretcher to the room designated as the surgery, though it hardly looked the part.  The enameled table was clean, but the counters were still littered with assorted instruments, spools of ordinary sewing thread alongside surgical gut, rolls of gauze, and sundry items of dubious use and value.  The last thing Morgan wanted was to perform a major operation under these conditions.

Julie stood in the doorway and waited for instructions. She discovered her hands were clammy, and the sight of so much blood had done queer things to her stomach.

Morgan didn't seem to notice her.

"All right, gentlemen, we've got him settled now, so you go on into the other room and let us get to work," he told Louie's friends.  Then he signaled to Julie.  "Close the door," he whispered.

She did as she was told, then remained by the door, not daring to venture any closer.

"Is he still alive?" she whispered back.

"Unconscious, but alive.  I'm afraid you're about to have your first lesson in surgery."

"You have to operate to set his leg?"

He reached for a pair of shears tangled with other implements Julie didn't recognize.

"I don't think I can set it," he told her, snipping away at the bloodied trouser leg.  "This leg is going to have to come off."

She felt the blood drain from her cheeks and chin.  A queer numbness remained.

"Are you all right?" Morgan asked.

She nodded.  This wasn't what she had expected. Delivering babies and sewing cuts wasn't very difficult at all, but an amputation required more fortitude than Julie thought she had.

"Don't be afraid to tell me if you feel sick or start to faint.  You wouldn't be the first one."

She didn't altogether lose consciousness, but she came close.  And she did lose her lunch.

When it was over and Louie had been moved to a cot hastily set up in what had been Horace's dining room, Morgan calmly walked to the small unpainted building behind the house and followed Julie's example.  He had struggled for hours against a nameless fear, wishing a thousand times that Horace Opper hadn't dropped dead in McCrory's alley.  Wiping sweat from his eyes and spitting the last of the foul taste from his mouth, he cursed the woman who had brought him to this state.

"Damn you, Julie Hollstrom," he hissed in the near darkness while the nausea subsided.  "Why didn't you leave me alone?  Who appointed you to sainthood?  And why the hell do you have to drag me with you?"

Aware that she expected him back, he straightened and ran his fingers through his sweat-damp hair.  He couldn't indulge in this kind of self-pity when he had a patient to watch.

*   *   *

Katharine complained of a headache Saturday after supper, so Julie stayed home while Morgan watched Louie through the night.  Louie's two nameless friends volunteered to share the vigil.

Winnie Upshaw brought a pot of coffee around nine o'clock. She offered him supper and he felt guilty telling her Julie had already brought him sauerkraut and sausage.  He let Winnie bring the coffee.  Every hour he took Louie's temperature, watching it rise steadily as infection settled into the miner's old, tired, battered body.  Morgan began to doubt Louie would ever learn he'd lost the leg.