Sage

by Cindy Caldwell

  “I’ll answer,” he said to Mrs. Baxter, gesturing for her to sit again. His father made a small noise in his sleep and she leaned forward, ready to be of service. They exchanged nods before he headed down the hall toward the front door.

  He passed by the heavy velvet curtains that shielded the funeral parlor from the main house and peered at the distorted figure of a woman beyond the etched glass in the door. He’d only seen Miss Archer twice, but he vividly remembered what she looked like, and he found himself smiling at the deep blue eyes he was met with when he opened the door.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Miss Archer said. Her blonde lashes fell over her eyes as she glanced at her shoes. “I was waiting for Maria to finish packing a basket for us. To eat.”

  Maybe tardiness wasn’t a perpetual condition, Clint noted. He returned her smile after she glanced back up at him, and all was forgiven—not that he’d really minded. That she’d thought to bring food was even more endearing as Mrs. Baxter was increasingly pre-occupied, and he couldn’t help but tease her.

  “A basket to eat? I hope it’s at least garnished with some fruit, as a plain basket has never been my favorite.”

  Sage’s eyes opened wide and her hand flew to her throat, her cheeks pinking until he could no longer hold in his laugh.

  “Oh, you’re teasing me again,” she said as she fanned herself and took a deep breath, the color in her cheeks receding.

  She looked even more charming when she was startled, and he thought it looked even more fetching with her dark blue dress and blonde hair.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, although he wasn’t truly sorry. He’d learned long ago that in times of grief, sadness or worry, levity and humor were very helpful. Some people thought it was disrespectful but he agreed with his father, who’d always taught him that comfort comes in many different forms, and right now he would take all the laughter he could find—or manufacture.

  She looked up at him and he knew she didn’t believe that he was sorry, either, but she raised an eyebrow and gestured toward the buggy at the side of the boardwalk, the leather reins of the single horse draped around one of the hitching posts that dotted the boardwalk.

  He peered around her as the horse stomped and neighed. In New York, he was within walking distance of most everything he needed, and for a longer trip his man hired a buggy or drove him. He looked up and down the boardwalk and didn’t see anyone with Miss Archer and wondered aloud, “Will you be driving?”

  It was her turn to laugh, and the sound was quite pleasant.

  “Well, I certainly am capable if you’re not interested—or willing. I mean, being from New York and all, not from the wild west frontier. You never know when javelina might attack and spook the horses.”

  He frowned as he reached for his hat on the rack inside, pulling the door closed behind him. He had no experience with wild boors and truly didn’t want any.

  “There are random packs of wild boors that roam Tombstone?” he asked, looking once again up and down the boardwalk. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stepped toward Miss Archer, stopping short when she laughed.

  He looked up to see her hand covering her giggle as her eyes flashed. It was his turn to color as she was obviously making fun of him, now. He supposed he deserved it.

  He laughed at his own gullibility—he’d never been this far west before—and unfastened the reins from the hitching post, tossing them up onto the buggy. He reached out his hand to help her in, and she lifted her skirts and stepped up, reaching for the reins. Her smile remained.

  “Well done, Miss Archer,” he said as he rounded behind the buggy to pull himself onto the bench seat beside her, under the cover and out of the sun. “It appears that you have a sense of humor, as well.”

  He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye as she expertly guided the buggy down the busy, dirt road. He covered his mouth with his handkerchief for the dust of the riders and buggies ahead of them when he saw her do the same.

  It wasn’t very long before they turned off the main street, and a group of buildings came into view. This lane was much less crowded and narrower. A long, haunting whistle blew, and as they got closer to the buildings, a steady stream of men came in their direction, most of them covered with dust and carrying buckets.

  “Who are these people?” he asked Miss Archer as she navigated the buggy down the narrow lane.

  “That is the mine,” she replied, pointing in the direction of the buildings. “And these are miners. The whistle was for a shift change. Have you noticed it? It sounds every few hours, around the clock.”

  “No. No, I haven’t,” Clint said slowly as he watched the steady stream of men pass the buggy. Miss Archer said hello to many of them, and they tipped their hats in return. Dust plumed from their boots as they stepped, almost in unison, toward town. Many of them turned down a different street and he leaned forward as his eyes followed them to what looked almost like a city of tents.

  Miss Archer followed his gaze and then turned her eyes toward the road.

  “We’ve had so many miners come in that some of them have to stay in tents until there’s room at the boarding houses. Or hotels,” she said quietly as she waited for a break in the stream of men to turn onto another road.

  She flipped the reins and the horse sped up now that the road was clear.

  “My goodness. Harsh conditions, those,” he said quietly as he pulled his hat on more tightly, the breeze threatening to relieve him of it entirely.

  “They don’t seem to mind much. They make very good wages, and seem to get a great deal of—um, satisfaction—spreading their resources across all parts of town.”

  He looked around slowly at the storefronts, hotel entrances and signs on second-story buildings.

  “There seems to be a wide variety of all kinds of establishments,” he said, clearing his throat as they passed Big Nose Kate’s, which was clearly a brothel. He felt heat creep from under his collar and he turned toward Miss Archer, hoping she didn’t notice. But of course she would notice. She lived here.

  She looked up at the sign with a wry smile, and gave a slight nod to one of the ladies on the balcony.

  “No need to be embarrassed, Mr. Jackson. You know as well as I do that in the medical profession, all people deserve assistance and care. If we turned a blind eye to the fact that there are many, many different types of people in the world—and now in Tombstone—we wouldn’t be doing our duty, would we?”

  “That’s a very progressive attitude, Miss Archer,” he said with admiration. It wasn’t everyone—particularly a woman—with such insight. One that he shared, as he himself would soon be taking an oath to do his best to end suffering and care for people as best he could. And above all, to do no harm.

  Chapter 11

  Sage turned her attention back to the task at hand as they meandered onto the road that would take them to a group of the miners’ smaller homes on the outskirts of town. Mr. Jackson had fallen silent, his eyes round as saucers, as they’d passed the miners and then the many different kinds of businesses that had flooded into Tombstone in the wake of the silver strike.

  “It wasn’t always like this, you know,” she said as they passed the city park next to the schoolhouse. The white bandstand had been freshly painted this year and the Fourth of July parade had begun there and headed down Allen Street. They’d all worked very hard to make it successful, and while many people bemoaned what Tombstone had become, she was still very proud of it.

  “No?” he asked as he wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. Trees dotted the small lane and they headed out into more open land, the vistas toward the mountains spreading before them. Cactus dotted the landscape along with rangy mesquite trees.

  “No.”

  “Have you lived here long?” He returned his handkerchief to his pocket and leaned back in the buggy. “You certainly are a very deft buggy driver.”

  She looked over at him quickly to see if he was teasing her again, but his soft smile seemed sinc
ere.

  “Yes, all my life.”

  “In Tombstone?” he asked, his eyebrows raised.

  She gently nudged the horse down a smaller path toward a small, white clapboard house.

  “Well, near here, actually. There hasn’t always been a Tombstone, per se,” she replied. “I grew up on a ranch nearby, but this wasn’t much of a town, just a stagecoach stop, until the silver strike a while back. That’s when things really changed.”

  “I hadn’t realized,” Clint said slowly. He turned to look behind them outside the buggy. “It’s certainly an interesting place now.”

  “On the way back, I’ll point out all of the interesting things besides brothels,” she said a bit shyly. There was a theater where proper plays were performed, concerts were held, and she’d definitely point out the churches and the courthouse. “There are many things besides the Bird Cage Theater,” she said, feeling a bit of a blush coming and wondering if he’d ever heard of the theater that provided bawdy entertainment for the miners and had been in operation now for years without closing. Ever.

  “I did read about that on my trip out. It runs twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week?”

  Sage laughed. It sounded ludicrous when put like that, but it was true.

  “Yes, and three hundred sixty-five days a year. Even Christmas,” she said, glancing sideways at him.

  He whistled and shook his head. “I bet that was an interesting development for people who had been here a while.

  “It was certainly not welcome in the beginning. Several women’s groups tried to stop it, Mrs. Samson particularly, but it was futile. The mining companies brought in so much money and felt strongly that it was in the best interest of the miners—and the company—to have ample entertainment. To keep the natives from getting restless, you could say.”

  Mr. Jackson laughed. “That’s one way to put it, I suppose.”

  “The townspeople and the mine owners were able to come to a compromise. The fees and taxes from the brothels and theaters pay for schools and public works. In fact, that was how we built the park and the bandstand.”

  Mr. Jackson shook his head. “I’d never in a million years expected such cooperation. It truly is a grand experiment.”

  Sage shrugged. “We all have to live together in a very remote place. Why wouldn’t we all try to get along? I will say that some people have more difficulty with it than others. It’s not as if all respectable establishments open their arms wide for some of these people, but we seem to have managed a truce of sorts. My mother was a champion of accepting anyone and everyone. I suppose it rubbed off on me a bit.”

  “I see that,” Mr. Jackson said. “And I can see why my father is so comfortable here. He has always been one to embrace people of all walks of life. Never turned down a single soul for a funeral, whether they had money or not,” he said wistfully.

  They fell silent as Sage pulled the buggy up to the small house.

  Clint hopped out, looped the reins over the hitching post and ran his hand down the side of the mare who’d brought them here. His gentle manner extended even to animals, and she watched as he took a candy out of his pocket and fed it to the horse, smiling as the horse took it from his hand.

  “I do know a small something about horses. It’s just been a long time,” he said as he patted the horse’s flank before reaching his hand to her.

  She took it and stepped from the buggy, turning toward the house.

  “I haven’t been to see Mr. Chapman for quite some time.”

  “No?”

  “No. He was doing well, and the doctor seems to have taken charge of him. I did provide a tonic for him in the beginning, which he responded to well. With the doctor reporting improvement, and my spending time in the office and with your father, I haven’t been back.”

  Clint hopped up the porch steps and turned, extending his hand for her as she lifted her skirts to follow.

  “I’m grateful for your attention to my father,” he said as they reached the front door.

  “Your father is a very kind man, and it’s a pleasure to look after him,” she said, hoping that on the ride back into town they could talk more about his father’s condition—although she had very little to share with him, unfortunately. He had been responding well, but that seemed to have taken a turn a while back.

  As they reached the door, a middle-aged woman in a clean, but worn, dress swung it wide open.

  “Oh, Miss Archer, how lovely to see you,” she said as she took a step back.

  “Mrs. Chapman, it’s lovely to see you as well,” Sage answered, noticing the red-rimmed eyelids of the woman in front of her. “Are you all right?”

  The woman took a quick glance over her shoulder before stepping forward and pulling the door partially closed behind her.

  “I should tell you, ma’am, that things aren’t going too well. Jeffrey was doing really well, his coughing all but gone. We’d hoped he could return to work before—well, before things got so bad we lost the house. But it’s not looking so good lately.” She pulled a worn handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes.

  Sage rested her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Oh, goodness. I had no idea. I thought he was responding well to the tonic.”

  The woman nodded vigorously.

  “He was. We were very hopeful. Even the doctor said he was doing well when he was here last week. Gave us more tonic and had us change even though the old bottle wasn’t empty. He was all smiles. So were we. But in the last few days, his cough has come back and he sleeps a lot and—I just don’t know. I wanted to tell you that before you come in.”

  She looked sadly up at Sage, and then toward Clint.

  “Oh, Mrs. Chapman, this is Mr. Jackson’s son, Clint Jackson. His father asked that he visit and I’m just accompanying him. He wanted to meet you.”

  “Thank you for coming,” Mrs. Chapman said as she nodded at Clint. “I’d sent a note to your father that things weren’t looking good and we might need an undertaker. When this all started, I went in to see him. He was so kind. It wasn’t until after I sent the note that I heard he’d been under the weather himself. If I’d known, I never would have bothered him.”

  “It’s quite all right,” Clint said to the woman as he rested his hand lightly on her forearm. “I’m happy to have come.”

  “Please, come in. I know Jeffrey will want to see you—if he’s awake, that is.” She opened the door and beckoned them to follow. She led them into a darkened parlor that Sage couldn’t help but notice was a bit stuffy. Mr. Chapman lay on the divan, a worn blanket pulled up under his chin. He resembled Mr. Jackson Senior in that he was asleep, his breath rumbling steadily from him.

  Sage noticed her tonic on the table beside the divan, the brown bottle familiar. She wondered what she could have done wrong. The tonic should have been perfect for this simple ailment and alleviated his symptoms, giving him time to recover and return to work. But it seemed she was mistaken. She leaned forward and narrowed her eyes at what looked like a rash peeking out from Mr. Chapman’s collar.

  “Mrs. Chapman, has Mr. Chapman developed a rash?” she asked, turning to the miner’s wife.

  Mrs. Chapman nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s just been in the last few days. It doesn’t seem to bother him much, but it’s on his chest and shoulders.”

  They sat for a moment and whispered with Mrs. Chapman so as not to awaken the patient. But Sage wondered as they did what, exactly, Dr. Folsom saw promising in this state of affairs. It certainly looked bleak to her.

  She listened as Clint spoke with Mrs. Chapman. She shared a few glances as Mrs. Chapman wanted to talk about funeral arrangements, and while Clint seemed to humor her and talk about it generally, he took great pains to comfort her and remind her that it was a bit premature.

  “I promise that if that time comes, we will make certain that the service is just as you and your husband wish,” he said quietly as he glanced at the ill man in his bed.

  Sage sighed deeply. She
certainly hoped that Mr. Chapman had no need of undertaking services anytime in the near future, but if that were the case, she thought that the family would be in good hands with Mr. Jackson, Junior. He was much like his father—kind, compassionate, reasonable and very comforting.

  As they stood to leave, Sage took the woman’s arm and walked her to the door, whispering encouragement.

  “I’ll speak with Dr. Folsom about this as soon as I see him. Maybe there’s something else we can do,” she said, shaking her head slowly and looking over her shoulder back into the parlor.

  Clint took a quick whiff of the tonic then set the bottle down on the table and joined them.

  “It was a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Chapman. I’m sorry it has been under such difficult circumstances, and I look forward to seeing you again in better ones.”

  He took her hand, gave her a slight bow, and she smiled wanly at the both of them.

  “Thank you for your concern for my dear, dear husband. It’s such a comfort to be in such good hands, no matter what happens,” she said before turning back to her husband.

  Chapter 12

  “Do you think you could slow down a little bit?” Clint asked as they headed back toward town.

  Sage pulled herself from her thoughts and glanced in his direction—he held his hat firmly on his head and his white knuckles gripped the side of the buggy.

  She pulled back on the reins, slowing the horse. She hadn’t realized she’d been careening down the dirt roads—all she’d been able to think of was Mr. Chapman, her tonic, Mrs. Chapman twirling her handkerchief.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, and tried to relax her grip on the reins a bit.

  “It appears you’re upset.” Clint still held tightly to the side of the buggy but did let go of his hat as he glanced at her from the corner of his eye.