Firefly (2 page)

"Who's that?" he asked while he scratched his unshaven chin.  The dark bristles were almost long enough to pull on; time to get a shave.

"Telegraph operator's daughter," Lucas informed him.

"Ed ain't got no daughter," Morgan argued, squinting determinedly.

"Ain't Ed's kid.  Ed moved to Denver six weeks ago anyway."

"Oh, yeah, now I remember."

Lucas shook his head and spat again.  Morgan tipped his battered, sweat-stained hat low over his eyes as he leaned back in the chair beside McCrory, but he could still see the girl, the swish of her skirt a dark green against the pale dust of the street.

"I remember.  Ed married that cousin of the preacher's and moved to Denver.  When did the new guy, the one with the daughter, move to town?"

"Twenty-eighth of May.  He's got a boy, too."  Simon drew a deep breath and swore softly.  "Aw, damn." He turned to Lucas and muttered, "I shouldn't've said that."

They both watched their companion for some reaction, but Morgan seemed not to have heard.

"What's today?"

"Eighteenth of June.  You want the year, too?" Lucas added with laconic sarcasm.

"It was 1884 when I passed out in the Castle two nights ago, and I don't think I been drunk enough to see another year in."

The red-rimmed green eyes watched the girl open the gate on the once-white picket fence and walk up to the porch.  When she had disappeared inside its walls, Morgan pushed his hat further down, to block out all light and sight.  The sun made his head throb.  The sun--and the memories of another afternoon almost six years ago when he had sat on this same porch and watched another woman walk down this same street.

A shout, or maybe it was a scream, pierced the somnolent silence.  Simon McCrory jumped to his feet, and Lucas Carter stood up straight, his hand edging instantly toward the gun at his hip.  Del Morgan didn't move a muscle.

"It's the Hollstrom girl," Simon observed.

"Runnin' like all hell was after her," Lucas added.  "What you s'pose is the matter?"

"There, she's goin' to Doc Opper's place.  Maybe somethin' happened to her ma."

"I saw Doc this morning," Lucas volunteered to his companions, though the girl couldn't possibly hear him.  "He was headed up to Steve Baxter's to see if his wife had that baby yet."

The green skirt settled about her ankles as Julie pounded furiously on the door and shouted the physician's name so loudly that the men in front of McCrory's could hear her quite plainly.  Neither her shouts nor her repeated thumps on the door brought any response.  Finally realizing no one was going to answer her summons, Julie turned uncertainly and headed for the only source of help she could find: the three men lounging on the porch of McCrory's General Store.  Disregarding the heat, the sun, the dust, and propriety, she lifted her skirt and petticoat and ran.

Lucas spat just as Julie reached the steps.  She ignored both the blob of brown spittle and the man who had jettisoned it.

She panted slightly, for she had run her fastest.  And Julie Hollstrom did not run very often.  Her mother forbade it.

"What's happened, Miss Julie?" Simon asked.

"My mother has fallen and hurt her arm," she answered. "The doctor seems not to be at home, and I hoped perhaps you might recommend someone who can take his place in an emergency."

"Opper's the only doc we got in Plato," Simon apologized sincerely.  "Unless Del here wants to take a look."

Her eyes followed McCrory's gaze to the indolent figure. The suggestion that this creature might be of medical use refused to find credence in her mind.  From four feet away, she could not mistake the odors emanating from his filthy form; whisky, sweat, and horse manure were the least offensive.  He had cocked his left ankle on his right knee, exposing the sole of a well-worn boot with a hole in it the size of a silver dollar.  The hem of a denim trouser leg would have trailed frayed ends if they hadn't been matted together with dirt.  The hat still didn't move.

"Hey, Del, you awake?" Simon asked cautiously.

"Yeah, I'm awake."

The angry rumble in that deep, slightly hoarse voice pushed Julie back half a step.

"The young lady here says her ma's been hurt and needs a doctor."

"Tell her wait 'til Opper gits back from Baxter's."

"Isn't there anyone else?" Julie begged.  "I think the arm may be broken and--"

"Can she move it?" Morgan asked.

"I…I don't know.  I told her not to.  But there's a place where--"

"Is it swelling bad?"

"I couldn't tell.  I was more concerned about--"

"How long ago did it happen?"

"Just now."  She hesitated to go on, expecting to be interrupted again, but this time the slovenly stranger remained silent.  "I had just opened the front door.  She was halfway up the stairs and apparently turned when I came in.  She lost her balance and fell.  I tried to catch her, but it happened too fast."

"Is she conscious?"

"She was when I left."

"Then as long as there's no bones sticking through the skin, she'll be all right until Opper gets back and can look at her."

"But there
is
bone sticking through the skin.  At least, I think there is.  I kept trying to tell you that," she scolded tartly, "but you kept interrupting me."

When the stranger suddenly dropped his chair to all fours and pushed his hat back, Julie jumped back another step.

"Oh, Christ," Morgan muttered.  "I should never have sobered up."

He looked up, squinting against the brightness, and saw a tall, reed-thin creature staring at him with huge doe-brown eyes over the wire rims of spectacles about to slide off the end of a small, straight nose.  He couldn't guess her age; she might have been a gangly fifteen-year-old or an unattractive spinster twice that.  Someone had pulled her hair tightly to the back of her head in a knot the size of his fist.  Almost as lumpy as his fist, too.

His eyes arrested Julie and halted her protest of his language.  Their eerie green color was barred with black, making it difficult to tell just where iris met pupil, except for the flecks of gold that floated iridescently in the green. The intensity of his stare forced Julie to see beyond the bloodshot whites and the puffy lids to the extraordinary beauty of those eyes.  That and the hint of sadness made her ignore the blatantly assessing character of his gaze.

"That kind of break needs immediate attention."  He struggled to his feet, swaying unsteadily while he held on to the arm of the chair.  "I don't know that I can do anything, but I'll have a look at it."

Julie's first thought as they began to walk toward her house was that if he fell or lost consciousness, she would have to leave him lying in the street.  Though she was far from petite, she doubted the top of her head reached his shoulder. He was a big-boned man, not just tall, with broad shoulders that stooped a little under his filthy shirt.  Only his unsteadiness prevented his long legs from quickly outdistancing even Julie's sturdy strides.

The smell of him, however, drove any appreciative thoughts from her mind.  She doubted he had bathed in a month or more, and his clothes very likely had never known soap.  He scratched repeatedly at his beard, probably to disrupt the noontime meal of the vermin happily domiciled there.

Halfway across the street, he asked, "How old is your mother?"

"Forty-six, I think."

"And you've a brother.  How old is he?"

Julie thought the man's voice choked, probably the effect of his unhealthy habits.  He sniffed and rubbed the back of one callused hand under his nose.

"Willy's nine," Julie stated flatly and was glad they had reached the porch of her house.  She held the door open for him and, without removing his hat, he walked inside.

Katharine Hollstrom sat crookedly on the bottom stair, leaning against the plain newel post.  She was a small woman tending to plumpness, with a pile of dark brown hair twisted into a tidy, becoming knot on the top of her head.  Her eyes slowly opened as Julie knelt on the floor beside her.

"Julie?  Who…"

"I brought someone to help, Mama."

Morgan looked down at the two women, noticing the faint but unmistakable resemblance.

"I, uh, I need a place to wash," he stammered.  Old habits, though not indulged for years, refused to die.

"The kitchen is behind the dining room," Julie instructed, pointing him to the room on her left.  "There's hot water in the reservoir and soap above the sink."

God, his hands shook so as he lathered them that the suds splattered on the wall and floor.  And those hands embarrassed him with their filth and cuts and calluses and the blackened nail where he'd smashed his finger in a door out of sheer clumsiness.  He hoped the girl was mistaken about her mother's arm, because he'd never be able to set a compound fracture with hands that couldn't hold onto a cake of soap.  He couldn't even remember where he'd left his surgical instruments; he hadn't touched them in years.  Maybe they were still in the bedroom he never entered, along with the memorabilia of an almost forgotten life.

He shook the water from his hands and dried them on a clean towel.  They were steadier now, not still but at least he could probably hold a glass of whisky without sloshing it all over himself.  Whisky.  That's what he needed.  A couple shots to steady his hands and quiet his stomach and ease the splitting ache behind his eyes.  A quick glance around the kitchen revealed no welcome bottle, though Morgan did notice that the room was spotless, with copper and cast iron utensils hung on hooks by the stove and a green checkered cloth on the table.  The pain behind his eyes began to throb and burn.

Upon returning to the hallway, he swallowed heavily and told his patient, "First I want to move you somewhere more comfortable and with better light."

"The sofa in the parlor," Julie suggested.  "I don't think she can walk further than that."

"She won't have to."

Making it look easier than it actually was, Morgan lifted the injured woman into his arms.  Her cry of pain might also have been a gasp of fright or disgust at being held by so unsavory a character, but before either she or her daughter could protest, Morgan had gently deposited Katharine on the black horsehair sofa and then retreated a step or two.

The bloodstain that had been concealed in a fold of Katharine's sleeve confirmed the worst of his fears.  The girl had unfortunately been correct about the seriousness of her mother's injury.  Morgan muttered an angry, silent prayer that Opper would come back in the next five minutes.

But he knew that prayer, like so many others, would not be answered.  Without even looking at Julie, he said, "I need something to cut away the sleeve."

He expected questions, but almost before he had finished asking, she reached into the wicker sewing basket on the floor beside the sofa and produced a pair of shears.  Still fighting the nausea, he took the instrument from Julie's outstretched hand.  Her calm seemed to give him a measure of resolve enough to steady his own hand to carefully snip away the pink linen fabric.  A long sigh escaped him when he had exposed the wound.  Blood oozed slowly from a long scrap, but there was no sign of protruding bone.