Firefly (59 page)

Hans moaned then, and Julie could see that Grace was closing the skin over the two stumps on his right hand, where Burton's shot had done its damage.

"I could use some help," Grace called quietly.  "I think he's comin' around."

Julie and Burton knelt on either side of the second patient and held him still while Grace finished her own stitchery.  She worked quickly, if not as artistically as Julie, but even so Hans rapidly became aware of his situation.

"Did I kill her?" he asked in a hoarse, terrified whisper.

"Her?" Grace echoed.  "No, you shot Dr. Morgan, but he ain't even close to bein' dead."

"It was Julie I wanted to kill.  I knew she would never have me after he made a fool of me in there, in front of them all.  She was promised to me, and I could not let him have her."

He yelped when Grace plunged the needle into his flesh again, and then he fell silent.

"Wish I'da aimed at his head," Burton muttered angrily.

*   *   *

Exhausted, Julie slumped on the chair someone had pulled up beside the table for her.  It might have been Grace or Thaddeus or one of the deputies who came for Hans.  Clark Garroway and the same chambermaid who had brought the towels now bustled around the ballroom cleaning up the mess.  Clark brought a pillow that Julie placed under Morgan's head, but he still complained about the hardness of the tabletop.

"As soon as Marshal Phillips gets back, we'll get you home," Julie promised.  "I still can't believe Hans wanted to kill me."

"Don't worry about it, Firefly.  It's all over.  He's not a killer, he just got his pride hurt pretty bad.  And the way he was blubbering when Ted took him out of here, I don't think we have to worry about him coming after you again."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure.  Maybe this whole thing will wake him up and he'll start
working
on his farm.  I won't even press charges against him, but I do need to see the judge before he leaves town.  Do you know where he went?"

"No, I don't, but what do you need him for if you're not going to press charges against Hans?"

"Oh, several things.  For one, Ted told me your father had you locked in your room.  That's false imprisonment, or something.  And selling you to Hans is slavery, or 'involuntary servitude,' as the Constitution puts it.  We fought a war in this country over it, and I don't intend to let anyone get away with something a couple million good men died to see abolished."

Later, perhaps, she would tell him that her own father, whom she had never known, was one of those millions.  But for now there was only the future to consider, not the past.  She laid a tired hand on his forehead.

"Are you serious?" she asked.  "Or just a bit feverish."

"If there's any fever in my blood, it's because of you, Firefly.  And that's another thing I need to see the judge about.  You and I have some unfinished business.  We were supposed to get married yesterday."

Julie tried to stammer a reply, but no words came to her tongue.

"Wintergarden's off to Staynes Junction to dedicate their new church, so I thought maybe I could prevail upon Judge Booth to make this legal between us."

"Now?  Today?"

"Why not?  Yesterday was good enough."

"But look at me!  Look at you!  We're both covered with blood, and you can't even stand up."

"I can and I will, if I have to lean on my best man.  I'm sure Mr. Burton won't let me fall."

"Mr. Burton?"

"Who else?  You remember that letter he wrote to me, when he sent the bank draft."

"How could I forget."

"Well, he told me then that he wanted an invitation to our wedding."

Julie could hardly believe her ears, and yet she knew she wasn't dreaming.  Nightmares like the one she had been through these past few hours were something you woke up from; they didn't fade into gloriously happy reality like this.

"You
are
serious, aren't you."

"Damn right, I'm serious."

He smiled, and in the kerosene flame's steady glow she saw how his eyes sparkled.

"But don't you think we could wait a day or two, until you feel better?"

"Not on your life!  I don't want the gossips to wag their malicious tongues when you move into my house to take care of me during my convalescence."

Julie blushed and tried to hide her hands in her skirt, but he managed to grab one first and brought it to his lips to kiss the tips of her fingers.

"Do you think I'm going to let you go after what we've been through today?  As soon as Ted and Mr. Burton get back here, I'm going to have them escort you home so you can clean up and pack your things, and then they are going to escort you right back to my house, where we are going to be married, today."

She knew he meant exactly what he said.  She knew, too, that more than anything else she wanted the same thing.  Seeing him shot, thinking even for a tiny second that he was dead, had been the worst part of the nightmare.  The prospect of life without him was unbearable, and she had seen how very precious each second of that life could be.

She got to her feet and leaned down to kiss him softly, withdrawing before he could free her hand and put his good arm around her for an embrace.

"I love you," she whispered, just as Ted Phillips and Thaddeus Burton re-entered the silent ballroom.

Chapter Thirty-one

Julie tried to convince her escorts they weren't necessary, that she could find her way home without any assistance, but neither Phillips nor Burton paid any attention to her.  With one on either side, she continued her protests across the now deserted hotel lobby.

"Really, gentlemen, I appreciate your concern, but it isn't far at all," she insisted.  The doors were closed; Phillips, without a game leg, jumped to open them.  "I can't imagine--oh, my goodness!"

She gasped at the sight of the crowd that formed an almost solid barrier.  Lucas Carter and Skip Jenkins had kept most of the gawkers off the porch, though a few youngsters dangled from the railing.

"How's Doc Morgan?" a dozen or more voices chorused the instant Julie appeared in the doorway.

Surprised as much by the gathered populace as by the blast of heat and afternoon sunlight, Julie took several seconds to find an answer.

"He's...he's just fine.  Recovering nicely."  She blinked and shaded her eyes.  The crowd stretched nearly all the way across the street, almost to the fence surrounding Wilhelm Hollstrom's front yard.  Julie tried to recall the times she had heard Morgan advise friends and family of a patient's condition following surgery.  "I'm sure he'll be good as new in a week or so."

A cheer rose from the several hundred townspeople gathered in this, the worst heat of the afternoon.  And somehow Julie knew part of the cheer belonged to her.

They were still cheering when Phillips and Burton began to clear a path through them.  Julie smiled her gratitude now and received a friendly wink from Thaddeus Burton as he waved his cane to make slow movers hurry.  He knew as well as she that she could never have made it alone.

But at the gate, aware of the still curious crowd slowly dispersing behind her, Julie stopped and turned to her escorts once more.  What lay ahead was something she had to face on her own.  She could not rely on borrowed courage.

"Marshal, please," she insisted again, more firmly than before.  "I think you ought to go back and help Dr. Morgan.  I'll be all right, and none of us wants Del trying to do too much in his condition."

Burton gave her a slightly worried frown.

"You sure, Miss Julie?"

"Positive, Mr. Burton.  I won't be long; if I'm not at the doctor's house in an hour, then you can come get me.  Break down the door, the walls, if you have to," she compromised.

"Well, all right, but not a minute more."  He touched the brim of his hat and opened the gate for her.  "And if anything happens in there in the meantime, you just holler."

"I will.  And thank you.  Thank you both."

She turned then, feeling a sudden chill inside, and lifted her chin proudly as she walked to the house without a single backward glance.  She would feel no guilt, no shame now.  It was as though she, not Morgan, had been declared innocent in that makeshift courtroom.  She entered the front door calmly determined that Wilhelm would no longer have the power to frighten her.

Something intangible hung in the air of the parlor, as though an argument had just ceased, interrupted by Julie's arrival.  She saw Katharine in her chair by the window as usual, Wilhelm standing nearby with his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze fastened on the closed curtains.

"You will start packing now, Julie," he said without looking at her.  "You have made it impossible for us to stay here any longer.  We will go to Mexico, I think.  We will leave tonight."

Julie laughed softly with relief. It was one thing to anticipate defying him, quite another to actually do it.

"I'm going to pack all right, Papa, and I'm going to leave, but I'm not going to Mexico.  You can go if you like, but I'm staying right here in Plato."

Before Wilhelm had a chance to argue, Katharine cut him off.

"I told you she couldn't be bullied any more, you fool," she said. "And neither can I."

He turned then, to his wife, not to Julie, but Julie remained where she was, standing in the archway between foyer and parlor as though she sensed a threat in Wilhelm's anger.

"You must go with me!" he shouted, but with a frantic pleading in his voice.  "You have no choice!"

"Oh, yes, I do," Katharine chortled.  "You made a very big mistake telling me about Clara, Wilhelm, and I intend to do exactly what she did: blackmail you."

"Who is Clara?" Julie asked, confused.

"Wilhelm's wife.  His first wife, that is, the one he left behind in Berlin when he came to New York.  They've been married for thirty-three years, and for the last twenty-seven she's been blackmailing him."

"No, that's not true!  I sent her the money willingly because she was my wife.  Only when she came to America and found out about...about you, then she blackmailed me."  His voice dropped to a defeated whine at the end.  "I had no choice then but to pay her.  I had Willy to think of."

Willy.  Always Willy.

"He was my son, and I could not let him grow up a bastard like me."

Katharine craned her neck to look around him at Julie.

"Did you want something, dear? You needn't stay and listen to us wash our dirty linen.  Wilhelm has just been telling me he married me under false pretenses, and I've just told him he isn't your father."

She seemed quite casual about it, and Julie suspected her mother was truly enjoying all these revelations.  Or rather, she was enjoying a kind of revenge on the man who had been her bigamist husband all these years.