Trail of Longing (Hot on the Trail Book 3)

by Merry Farmer

  “What’s going on here?” Dean discreetly asked Emma as he pushed through the onlookers to her side.

  “Oh, Dean,” she appealed to him. “I didn’t want this to—”

  “This fine young lady here was just appealing to me to cure the illness that has beset her.”

  Russ marched up to Emma and dragged her in front of the curious crowd before she could finish her plea for help. Her heart pounded against her ribs in dread—dread for the people watching her and dread for the bottle in Russ’s hands.

  “Now, what is your complaint, young lady?” Russ asked. His words had the practiced feel of an actor delivering lines.

  “I have no complaints, really,” she said, voice shaking.

  “What’s that?” Russ leaned closer to her, then whispered. “Tell the crowd how you’re feeling. The worse the ailment, the better. It sells more medicine.”

  “I… I….” What have I gotten myself into? Emma thought.

  “Timidity!” Russ exclaimed, standing straighter. “Our dear Miss Emma Sutton is complaining of timidity. You’ve all come to know her in the last few weeks. What a pleasant and pretty creature she is, but timid.” He said it as if she were routinely flatulent, then shouted, “Sandifer’s Special Serum!” causing Emma to jump in shock. “Here, my dear. One teaspoon will make you as bold as tacks.”

  He uncorked the bottle and poured thick, green liquid into a spoon. Emma backed away.

  “No, please.” She shook her head.

  “What’s all this?” Her mother arrived on the scene, eyes wide with curiosity.

  “Mrs. Sutton, Dr. Sandifer is attempting to administer an unknown substance to your daughter,” Dean jumped to greet her, budging aside a few curious Irishmen to bring Emma’s mother into the center of the scene. “You must stop him.”

  “Oh?” She glanced from Dean to Russ.

  “Madam.” Russ nodded to her, as regal as the king, “I am about to demonstrate the amazing healing powers of Sandifer’s Special Serum. Your beautiful daughter has kindly offered to let me treat her ailment for the edification of all these people.”

  “She offered nothing,” Dean defended her. Emma would have melted with joy, but for the dozens of sets of eyes staring at her. “This man has dragged her against her will before all these people to ply her with…. What are the ingredients of your concoction?”

  Russ’s smile stayed fixed in place, although it looked more like a wild animal baring its teeth when he turned it on Dean. “Why, it is a proprietary blend of herbs, sir. I couldn’t possibly give out the formula.”

  “I will not let you force Emma to consume anything that might hurt her.” Dean stepped forward to stand on Emma’s other side, facing Russ down. He turned to the crowd. “Most medicines and snake oils being sold across the West, and even back home, are nothing more than alcohol, laudanum, and spices you’d find in your kitchen. And those are the harmless ones. Elixirs like these have been known to contain traces of arsenic and other poisons, they—”

  “How dare you accuse me of selling poison?” Russ boomed. “I will have you know, the herbs contained in Sandifer’s Special Serum were given to me by a medicine man of the Lappapawnee Indians when they invited me to share in their secrets.”

  “There are no Lappapawnee Indians,” Katie called him out.

  “How would an ignorant Irish chit like you know?” Russ clipped.

  Emma flinched. It was the first time she’d heard Russ address Katie directly. The shock of it filled her with anger. She wasn’t the only one. Russ had evidently forgotten that he was addressing a wagon train of mostly Irish immigrants. A few muttered to each other. Russ covered his mistake with a smile and a laugh and rushed on.

  “Let me demonstrate the amazing restorative powers of Sandifer’s Special Serum,” he said. “Emma, come here and take your medicine.”

  “I… that is, I’m feeling much better,” she protested, inching away.

  Her mother had walked up behind her, and Emma stepped right into her.

  “Go and take Russ’s marvelous medicine,” she ordered. “You should be honored to be treated by such a fine orator.”

  “Mother,” Emma whispered in protest.

  It was no use. Her mother huffed in exasperation and pushed Emma forward. Reluctantly, head lowered, Emma shuffled closer to Russ and the spoon in his outstretched hand. The crowd around them held their breath.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Dean said, touching her arm.

  Oh, but I do, she thought to herself. You don’t know how Mother can be. It was just one spoon. Surely one swallow of the nasty stuff couldn’t kill her. She gave Dean a weary smile. His frown deepened.

  She reached Russ and took the spoon from him in shaking hands. It can’t be that bad, she told herself. One spoonful. Just swallow one spoonful of medicine and you can run and hide. The crowd held its breath as she raised it to her mouth. A strong scent of cloves wafted up her nose, giving her second thoughts. She pushed them aside, held her breath, and tipped the spoon into her mouth.

  It was vile, far worse than anything she could have expected. The syrup was sharp with alcohol. Sugar had been added to make it cloyingly sweet, but underneath that first punch, the mixture was bitter and acidic. She swallowed it as quickly as she could, then burst into a coughing fit.

  “There you have it,” Russ announced, yanking the spoon out of her hand. He beamed at the murmuring crowd, ignoring Emma’s continued coughing. “See how her color is restored? How lively she looks? One little spoonful will cure all of your ailments. Just you watch, our dear Miss Emma will be bounding around the wagon train, bursting with vigor, in no time at all.”

  Emma clenched her fist over her stomach. If she seemed lively, it was because she was desperate to get away. It didn’t help that the alcohol continued to burn the back of her throat, making it impossible for her to take a breath.

  “Only one dollar per bottle, folks,” Russ went on. “I have plenty in the wagon to go around.”

  “How splendid,” her mother exclaimed. “I shall take a bottle myself and dose Emma on a regular basis.”

  Emma would have rolled her eyes or attempted to protest, but her stomach was too tender. The thought of having to take more of the vile medicine made her want to cry.

  “She needs a glass of water,” Dean said above the growing din as half a dozen or so of the travelers stepped toward Russ waving money.

  “I’ll fetch some,” Katie offered.

  Emma choked in earnest, staggering to the side to keep from being stepped on by Russ or his customers. Dean slipped an arm around her shoulders and moved her out of the fray. Her eyes watered with her efforts to take a deep breath and swallow. She was only vaguely aware of Dean leading her to a bench and helping her to sit, staying by her side.

  “Here, drink this,” he said after a moment, presenting her with a glass of water delivered by Katie.

  Emma grasped the glass in both hands and drank, gingerly at first. The water helped to clear her throat and still her coughing, but her stomach still roiled. More than that, she felt like a fool for letting herself be talked into the whole mess.

  “That man is a charlatan and a menace,” Aiden said as he joined their group.

  “For once, we agree on something.” Katie nodded.

  Dean shook his head. “He could hurt someone with that concoction of his. I’ll have to do something about it.”

  “What can you do?” Aiden asked. “The man may be a phony, but he talks a good talk. There’s plenty of sad fools who will swallow what he’s selling, in every way.”

  “The least I can do is try to make Mrs. Sutton see sense,” Dean replied.

  “No,” Emma croaked, still holding her stomach. “Please don’t.”

  Dean gaped at her. “You don’t want me to have a word with your mother? Or explain the harm that stuff could have?”

  Emma shook her head, but she couldn’t form the words she needed. There was no point in convincing her mother she was wrong. It was
n’t so bad that she couldn’t humor her for just a while. She would never let anything go too far. Although now she wasn’t so certain that was true.

  She pushed herself to stand, Dean standing with her. “I just want to lie down,” she said weakly.

  “Emma, I can’t let things keep going on like this,” Dean said.

  Every part of Emma wanted to stay with Dean and help him end her torture in any way she could, but the sight of her mother supporting Russ in the center of a throng of eager customers, her face shining as if she would earn a percentage of his proceeds, was too much for her to bear.

  “Mother has had so little to be happy about lately,” she said. It was her only explanation. She glanced to Dean, pleading with her eyes for him to understand. “Everything will work out for the best, you’ll see.”

  Instead of smiling at her as he had at the way station, Dean’s frown deepened. “How? How will things work out, with Russ and your mother thick as thieves?”

  She didn’t know, but oh how she wished she did.

  “I’m sorry,” was all she could say.

  She hesitated, waiting for him to let go of his tension and smile. He didn’t. There was nothing left for Emma to do but turn and walk away.

  Chapter Eleven

  Russ had been irritating from the moment that he had walked back into Dean’s life, but after his demonstration with Emma, he became downright insufferable. He set up a medicine show at Ft. Laramie during the two days they were stopped there, convincing the residents of the fort that he was the best thing since the wheel. When they moved on, Russ was several dollars richer, but still managed to have an enormous supply of his snake oil. Worst of all, the injured and sick in the wagon train stopped consulting Dean for help, opting to take a swig of Sandifer’s Special Serum instead.

  “Don’t let it bother you overmuch,” Aiden counseled him as the two of them walked together.

  The terrain they now crossed was hillier than the flat prairie they had just traversed. They were climbing up into the mountains, where the trail was narrower and the threats more dangerous. Dean was convinced that was true on more than one level.

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Dean told him, shaking his head. “Imagine if people stopped listening to your fiddling simply because a baboon with a trumpet joined the wagon train.”

  Instead of being sympathetic, Aiden laughed. “A baboon with a trumpet.”

  His new friend’s laughter was contagious enough that Dean cracked a smile. “But you see my point.”

  Aiden shrugged. “It’s a bloody shame,” he admitted, “but how big of a problem is it in the grander scheme of things? Where will Sandifer’s Special Serum be once we reach Portland and your life begins anew?”

  Dean huffed a bitter laugh. “You don’t know Russ. He’s dogged me from the day we were seated next to each other in freshman anatomy class. The man has always been incompetent. He bought his way into medical school and coasted through his classes by cheating off his classmates and claiming their work as his own.”

  “Ah,” Aiden said, nodding over the problem. “Then the answer is simple. A poor fiddler who relies on the music of his bandmates for his reputation is left playing a sad song once those other fiddlers stop.”

  “Are you saying I should stop practicing medicine?” Dean asked. The idea made him feel as sick as Emma had looked after her fiasco with the medicine. “How will that help when Russ is incompetent and people need medical care?”

  “Not stop practicing.” Aiden tilted his head to the side. “Not entirely.”

  “Dr. Meyers?” a middle-aged man jogged up behind the two of them.

  “Patrick,” Dean greeted him, making space between him and Aiden. “Is something wrong with your hand?”

  The lanky man held his hand out in front of him. A blood-stained handkerchief was pressed to his palm. “Just a little scratch,” he said. “I was hoping you could take a look at it.”

  Trying to muster his good humor, Dean said, “Are you sure you don’t want a dose of Sandifer’s Special Serum poured over the wound, and one down your throat, to heal it?”

  Patrick gave a humorless laugh. “That’s precisely what I’m hoping to avoid.”

  The tension that had Dean tied in knots loosened. At least there were some sensible souls left in the world. As discreetly as he could, with the wagon train moving, he drew Patrick aside and took a look at his hand. It was a simple cut that needed nothing more than a few stitches and a clean bandage. For Dean, it was the work of only a few minutes.

  The whole incident would have drifted right out of Dean’s thoughts, but two days later, Russ came strolling up to him as they stopped and unpacked their things for their evening rest.

  “What’s this I hear about you treating patients behind my back?” Russ asked him with a smile as false as George Washington’s teeth.

  Aiden sat with his back to his family’s wagon, playing his fiddle. He switched from a sweet ballad to a song full of anxiety and tension as soon as Russ stopped in their camp. Dean couldn’t help but grin over his friend’s sense of humor, but the grin only lasted a moment.

  “I didn’t realize I was forbidden to practice medicine without your permission,” Dean told Russ without pausing as he helped Mrs. Murphy organize the supper dishes.

  Of all things, Russ laughed. He crossed the camp to where Dean worked, slapping him on the shoulder. The slap stung.

  “My dear old friend,” he said, a smile on his lips and acid in his voice. “You know there are no such rules. Come, walk with me.”

  Aiden’s song took an even more ominous tone as Russ tugged Dean away from the fire where Mrs. Murphy worked and around to the far edge of the wagon. They were out of earshot of the rest of the camp, but Dean could still hear Aiden’s playing.

  “Dean, Dean, Dean,” Russ began with a sigh. “You and I have been friends for a long time.”

  Dean kept his mouth shut, crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn’t going to buy into whatever game Russ was playing.

  “I know you would never want to hurt my career,” Russ went on.

  It was torture not to snap back, not to tell Russ he had no career to speak of, that he was a malicious charlatan, but he managed to stay silent.

  “That is why I insist that you back off.” Now Russ’s tone was threatening. Dean shifted his weight and let out a breath, curious to see where the new tactic would take him. “I have a future to think of,” Russ said, slipping his arm around Dean’s shoulders like a python about to squeeze. “That future involves building Sandifer’s Special Serum into an empire. That future is dependent on the good opinion of my customers, women like Elizabeth Sutton.”

  “Then you should be speaking to her and not me,” Dean said.

  “I have spoken to her,” Russ went on. Dean’s gut clenched. “She is in perfect agreement with me and has consented to recommend me to all of her society friends.” Russ paused, gripping Dean’s shoulder hard enough to bruise. “Her daughter is the key to my future success and happiness.”

  Russ would have been better off punching Dean in the stomach.

  “You leave Emma out of your quack medicine show,” Dean warned him. “You leave her out of your life.”

  Russ laughed. “You don’t understand. We’ve already come to an understanding.”

  Dean’s heart sank. They couldn’t have. It had only been a week ago that Emma had let him steal a kiss behind the wagon, since she had looked at him with so much affection and innocence. Whatever Russ had to say, it had to be her mother’s doing.

  “I need her,” Russ continued. “I need that girl. I need the money her family connections will bring me. Doctoring is thankless work, you know. All that blood, all those guts. You remember how it was.”

  “The physician’s art is a noble one,” Dean protested. “We are sworn to help people. The war was horrible beyond horrors, but we served an important purpose. We comforted the dying.”

  “I don’t give a fig for the dying,” Russ sai
d. “I plan to grow rich off of the profits of my elixir, but I need capital to do it.”

  “And you expect Emma will go peacefully along with her mother’s machinations?”

  “Of course she will.”

  Dean laughed mirthlessly. “Then you don’t know Emma as I do.”

  “Oh no? How do you think she’ll react when every man, woman, and child in this wagon train learns the truth about you?”

  “What truth?” Dean balked. “You’ve already brought up my dismissal from the military, which was your fault. You’ve brought up medical school, which you manipulated. She didn’t believe you.”

  “I don’t need her to believe me,” Russ said. “Once everyone else believes me, she’ll be too ashamed of you to give you the time of day.”

  Dean hesitated. Could Russ have a point? He didn’t think of Emma as the kind of person to be swayed by anyone else’s opinion. Anyone else’s opinion except her mother’s, that is. And her mother would absolutely go with the crowd.

  Russ must have caught on to his doubts. He was back to being all smiles, sliding up to Dean and putting his arm around him, thumping his back. “It’s simple, my friend. I’m not asking you to give up medicine entirely, just to leave off practicing it while we’re on this journey.”

  Dean narrowed his eyes. His plan sounded similar to what Aiden had told him, only from a completely opposite motivation.

  Russ went on. “Stop treating patients and let them come to me. There may be a share of the profits of Sandifer’s Special Serum in it for you if you do.”

  Dean jerked away from him. “You intend to buy me off?”

  “No, no, no, I would never dream of it.” Russ laughed.

  There was no use trying to call Russ out with words. Every time anyone tried, he merely turned the words around or denied them altogether. No, action was the only thing that would expose Russ for the fraud he was and save Emma from his machinations. Aiden was right after all.