Waiting for Morning (The Brides Of Last Chance Ranch Series)

by Margaret Brownley

Robert shrugged. “What a pity your mother didn’t start a library rather than a cattle ranch. It would have saved you a lot of heartache.”

  She laughed. Only Robert would think books preferable to cattle. She grew serious again. “Something has to be done to stop Hampshire,” she said. The question was what?

  “You can’t stop progress, Eleanor.”

  “Progress? You call this progress? The railroad was progress.” Before the rails arrived, she had been forced to drive her cattle all the way to Kansas. “The telegram was progress. This . . . this is madness.”

  “I told you what I think, Eleanor. I think you should sell.”

  “You know I can’t do that, Robert.” If only her daughter had lived. It had been more than thirty years since little Rebecca died at the age of five, but the least memory of her still hurt. If anything, it hurt even more with each passing year. Not only had she buried a daughter but very possibly the future of her ranch and certainly her family’s legacy.

  “I could get you a fair price. That is, if we act now,” Robert said. “I know someone who might be interested in the ranch house.”

  “And for good reason,” she snapped. The ranch house was fairly new, built after the, ’87 earthquake and subsequent fire destroyed the old ranch house and most of the outbuildings.

  “We can subdivide the rest of the land,” he added.

  “I’m not selling and I’m certainly not dividing the land.”

  Robert was too much of a gentleman to show impatience or exasperation, but she sensed his disapproval. “You said it yourself,” he reminded her. “Something must be done. I’m offering you the most practical solutions.”

  “You’re offering no solutions at all.” What she needed was fresh blood and new ideas to meet the challenges the ranch now faced. She had good men working for her, but day-to-day chores consumed their time and energy. What she lacked was someone with vision and foresight, someone who could help her take the ranch into the twentieth century. So far none of the women who’d answered her advertisement had worked out and it was too soon to know if Molly would.

  “So what do you plan to do?” he asked.

  “Fight them,” she said. “I asked my lawyer to arrange a meeting with Mr. Hampshire. I hope you’ll be there.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “What do you expect to accomplish? To talk him out of it, just like that?”

  “I know it won’t be easy.”

  “An understatement if I ever heard one.” He stroked his goatee. “You can’t keep running this ranch forever,” he said. “Even Doc Masterson had the good sense to retire.”

  Eleanor gripped the bridle reins tighter. Nothing irritated her more than a reminder of her advancing years. “You know I’m trying to find someone to take over.”

  No doubt this latest woman, Molly, would soon go the way of the others. Eleanor sighed. She had to be out of her mind to let a dance hall girl and her brother hang around even for a short while. She should have sent them back to town the day they arrived. If only the boy didn’t have so much trouble breathing.

  “Each one who has applied has been progressively worse,” he said.

  “I had high hopes for Kate Tenney.” Had indeed been ready to sign papers making her the official heiress. If only the girl hadn’t fallen for the town smithy. Eleanor shook her head just thinking about it. Hard to believe that a woman as smart as Kate would settle for something as dull as marriage.

  Eleanor shifted in her saddle. It would take years to train her replacement. As Robert liked to remind her, at age sixty-six she no longer had time on her side.

  Could this latest girl with her ill-conceived clothing, brassy demeanor, and sickly brother be her last chance to save the ranch? The very thought made her head spin.

  As if to concur with her doubts, a steer let out a bellow followed by a loud mournful moo that sounded like an emphatic no.

  My thoughts exactly.

  Chapter 8

  Molly was breathless with excitement and even finding Donny half off the bed earlier had failed to quell her enthusiasm.

  Now he sat wolfing down his midday meal, his plate piled high with meat, potatoes, and gravy. It wasn’t a meal—it was a feast.

  He preferred to take his meals in his room rather than the formal dining room. Molly suspected he felt intimidated by Miss Walker, but learning to live with the brusque ranch owner was a small price to pay for a chance to live in such a wondrous place.

  “Oh, Donny, I just know this is going to work out.” She loved working with the horses and couldn’t believe how quickly the morning had flown by. “Did you ever imagine a finer home?”

  Donny’s fork stilled. “Does this mean I’ll never have to go to an insane asylum?” Such institutions housed not only mental patients but the crippled and deformed.

  Molly sat on the bed and stared him straight in the eye. “We’ve already discussed this.”

  “But Dr. Weinberg said—”

  “I don’t care what that bag of wind said. As long as I have a breath left in me, you will never have to live in that horrid place.” She squeezed his hand. “I mean that, Donny.”

  He studied her with eyes far too old for his years. “What if you get married and your husband hates me and—”

  “Donny, if I stay here I can’t get married.”

  He frowned. “Why not?”

  “I’ll have to sign a document forbidding it. It’s one of Miss Walker’s stipulations. So you see? You have nothing to worry about. It’s you and me together, forever. Now eat up.” She glanced at the mechanical clock. “Oh no!” She was already ten minutes late getting back to work. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be back in two hours. I promise!”

  With that she dashed from the room, hoping Brodie hadn’t noticed the time.

  Whenever Caleb drove through town, curious bystanders gawked at him. Today was no different. The moment he rumbled down Main Street in his horseless buggy, men, women, and children poured out of stores and businesses to get a better look at his amazing gasoline machine. Indeed, they almost seemed to crawl out from under the boardwalk.

  As if enjoying the attention, Bertha backfired—not once but twice. The loud booms echoed through the town like cannon fire.

  The doctor’s office was situated on Main between the Silver Moon Saloon and the Cactus Patch Gazette, directly across from the hotel. The only sign left of its former tenant was the neatly printed wording on the door that read Dr. Masterson.

  The patient room was furnished with a leather examination table, sink, water pump, and a cabinet filled with carefully marked vials. Saws, knives, scalpels, scissors, clamps, and other surgical tools were arranged neatly on a tray. The W. Watson and Sons compound microscope occupied a metal table.

  The room had two doors, one leading to the waiting room and one leading to a small office in back. The office had a desk and two chairs and an impressive library filled with medical books and periodicals.

  Caleb sat at the desk, the swivel chair squeaking under his weight, and glanced at his newly hung diploma on the wall. He couldn’t remember when he didn’t want to be a doctor, and what better time than now? The medical profession was just beginning to emerge from the dark ages.

  Most people called the West the new frontier, but medicine was the true frontier. With the discovery that germs caused disease, and the subsequent development of vaccinations for cholera and diphtheria, Caleb envisioned the day that disease would be a thing of the past.

  But that wasn’t all. Recently he’d read an article about a new form of photography that could penetrate flesh and expose bones to the human eye. It was hard to imagine anything so amazing.

  It wasn’t that long ago that a medical diploma could be obtained with only three months’ schooling and no clinical experience. It was only six years ago that the National Association of Medical Colleges officially established a three-year curriculum and clinical training requirements. Unfortunately, poor schools still existed and it was almost impossible for a patient to
know if a doctor had received proper training. The field was still filled with quacks and charlatans who continued to spread their ignorance and harm people’s lives.

  Caleb had attended Harvard Medical School, one of the best schools of medicine in the country. Even so, he felt ill-equipped to take on the responsibility of providing medical care for an entire town. Medical knowledge had doubled since the War Between the States, but the human body, for the most part, remained a mystery. Some things, like blood transfusions, were still hit and miss. Caleb was convinced there were more elements in blood not yet discovered or understood.

  The bells on the front door jingled, disturbing his reverie. Magic woke from his nap and looked up as if to say, Well, what are you waiting for?

  Caleb rose, smoothed his hair down, and stepped into the waiting room. A woman and a boy of about five or six sat waiting for him.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I’m Dr. Fairbanks.”

  “I’m Mrs. Trotter and this is my son Jimmy. You must be the new doctor.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  She was a thin, bird-like woman with work-hardened hands. The bags under her hazel eyes made her look older than her years, which he guessed was somewhere in the mid- to late thirties.

  “How can I help you today?”

  “There’s something not right with Jimmy and I don’t know what it is,” Mrs. Trotter explained. Jimmy was a rail-thin child with skinny legs and arms and a gaunt face that seemed too small to support his mop of unruly brown hair. A good wind could blow him away.

  “Come in and we’ll take a look.” He held the door open for mother and child and led them into the examination room. Magic took one look at them before flopping down to resume his nap.

  “You can sit on my special bench,” Caleb said, pointing to the leather-covered table.

  Jimmy stepped on the footstool and seated himself on the edge of the table, his skinny legs dangling over the side. His mother sat on a ladder-back chair and Caleb lowered himself onto a stool. “You said something’s not right,” he probed.

  Mrs. Trotter nodded. Her salt-and-pepper hair was swept into an untidy bun beneath her bonnet as if she had pinned it up in haste. She was dressed in a no-nonsense gray skirt and plain white shirtwaist that had seen better days.

  “He complains of stomachaches and hardly eats. He can’t even get through his daily chores.”

  “How long has he been this way?” Caleb asked.

  “Since the first of the year.”

  Caleb arched an eyebrow. “So he’s been like this for several months?”

  She nodded. “His father says he’s just lazy.”

  It was the kind of response Caleb had come to expect from paternal parents. An illness was often viewed as an indictment against a man’s ability to care for his family and consequently discounted or ignored. “Do you have other children?”

  “Six altogether, including Jimmy.”

  “Do any of your other children show similar symptoms?”

  She shook her head. “No, they’re healthy as horses.”

  Caleb turned to the boy. “Take off your shirt and we’ll have a look.” The boy glanced at his mother for permission before stuffing a silver foil ball between his legs and reaching for his buttons.

  “How old are you, Jimmy?”

  “Eight.”

  Caleb had guessed wrong. The boy was clearly undersized for his age. “You said he doesn’t eat.”

  “Not when his stomach hurts,” Mrs. Trotter replied.

  Jimmy slid his suspenders down his arms and took off his shirt. Caleb noted several bruises on the boy’s chest. “How often does your stomach hurt, Jimmy?”

  “Most every day,” Jimmy said. He stared down at the floor as if admitting to some misdeed.

  Caleb reached for his stethoscope, slipped the ivory ear bits in place, and lifted the bell-shaped chest piece to Jimmy’s bone-thin torso. Jimmy pulled back, eyes wide.

  “It won’t hurt you,” Caleb said. “It’s called a stethoscope and it helps me hear what’s going on inside.” Dr. Masterson, like many older doctors, still used the percussion method of examination, which involved tapping the chest and listening for sounds.

  Jimmy relaxed but kept his eyes on the chest piece. His lungs sounded fine but his heartbeat was weak. The boy’s skin was pale but clear except for the bruises. His temperature was normal.

  “Any fever?”

  Mrs. Trotter shook her head. “No.”

  “Make two fists for me.” Caleb held out his hands to demonstrate.

  Jimmy followed Caleb’s lead.

  Caleb checked the boy’s reflexes and looked in his ears and throat. “Did you know that your heart is a muscle and it’s the same size as both your fists?”

  Jimmy’s eyes widened as he looked down at his hands.

  Caleb smiled at the boy’s expression. “I bet you don’t know the strongest muscle in the body.”

  Jimmy looked up. He had his mother’s hazel eyes, only his were ringed with fatigue instead of worry. “The heart?”

  “It’s the tongue. But I wouldn’t try picking up a rock with it.”

  Jimmy fingered his tongue.

  “Say red leather, yellow leather,” Caleb said.

  “Red leather, yellow leather.”

  “Now say it fast.”

  “Red leather, lellow feather.” Jimmy laughed. “Red flether, bellow—

  Even Mrs. Trotter laughed at her son’s attempt to say the tonguetwister. Caleb was willing to bet the woman hadn’t laughed much in recent months.

  While Jimmy was occupied with trying to get the words right, Caleb pricked the boy’s finger, took a blood sample, and reached for a bandage. Jimmy hardly seemed to notice.

  “You can put your shirt back on.” Caleb pulled off his stethoscope.

  All kinds of possibilities ran through Caleb’s head. Some, like cancer, were serious, others not so much. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen a child with similar complaints. One of his instructors at medical school gave a lecture on the “mystery” illness that seemed to run rampant in city slums. So what was this illness and why was it suddenly affecting so many children?

  Jimmy’s lack of dental or skeletal problems ruled out the possibility of rickets. Nonetheless, he questioned Mrs. Trotter on her family’s diet.

  “I have a vegetable garden,” she said. “We raise chickens and goats, so our children also get plenty of meat and milk.”

  “What does he do in his spare time?” Caleb asked.

  “He doesn’t have much spare time.” She smiled fondly at her son. “I make him practice readin’ and writin’ every day. And he still has chores. Mostly he sleeps. He seems tired all the time.”

  Caleb tapped his chin and considered other possibilities. A number of diseases could cause exhaustion and swollen lymph nodes. Could be a low-grade infection or allergy. Mrs. Trotter said her other children were healthy, but as Lucretius pointed out in the first century BC, what was food to one might be poison to another.

  “What do you think, Doctor?” Mrs. Trotter’s voice and demeanor pleaded for good news.

  “The bruises and pale skin suggest anemia. That means his white blood count is probably high. Anemia can be a symptom of many things.”

  She knitted her brow. “Like what, exactly?”

  “Uh . . . allergies. Infections.” He cited other possibilities. “I’d like to run some tests.”

  Mrs. Trotter looked him square in the face. “Dr. Fairbanks, I may not be what you call an educated woman, but I know when someone’s beating around the bush. I reckon there’s not much ground left around that bush about now.” As if to brace herself for the bad news to come, she straightened her shoulders and raised her chin. “Doctor?”

  He glanced at Jimmy playing with his foil ball. “Why don’t you wait in the other room while I talk to your mother?” He glanced at Magic asleep in the corner. “You can take my dog with you.”

  Jimmy slid off the examining table, clapped his hands to ge
t Magic’s attention, and left the room with the dog at his heels.

  Caleb blew out his breath and sat forward, hands folded on the desk. Would he ever get used to delivering bad news? “There is a . . . condition called leukemia. I’m not saying that’s what your son has, but we have to consider it.”

  “Is this . . .”

  “Leukemia.”

  “Is this . . . leukemia serious?”

  He sat back, as if distancing himself from her would make what he said any easier. “I’m afraid it is.”

  She took a sharp intake of air but otherwise remained motionless. After giving her a moment to gather her thoughts, he continued, “Leukemia is a cancer of the blood cells. I’m not fully convinced that’s what we’re dealing with, but like I said we have to consider it.”

  Her shoulders sagged and her lips trembled. His words had sunk in. “How . . . how contagious is it?”

  “It’s not. Or at least not that we know of.”

  She studied him from beneath tightly drawn brows. “If it’s not contagious, how would he have gotten such a thing?”

  “It’s hard to say,” he said. “We know a lot more about diseases than we did even a few years ago, but we still have a lot to learn.”

  “In other words, you don’t know.”

  “I’m afraid not. Like I said, it’s just one possibility. Meanwhile, I’ll give you a tonic to help replace any nutrients he might be missing. Just to make certain, we don’t want to overlook the possibility of an allergy. It would help if you keep a diary of everything he eats and drinks. Also, list any of his symptoms and the time of day he experiences them.”

  A doctor was only as good as his detective skills. He stood and reached into the cabinet for a bottle of cod liver oil and handed it to her as a measure against scurvy and rickets. No one knew why cod liver oil worked, but it did.

  She sat perfectly still for a moment, as if she needed time to brace herself before moving. Finally she stood. “I’ll bring him back next week.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “I want to see him tomorrow.”

  She hesitated. “My husband and I . . . we can’t afford any luxuries.”