A Hero in the Making

by Laurie Kingery

  Someday she’d have her café in its own building, she promised herself. Someday.

  After turning the card on the back door of the café to Closed, she washed the dishes, but instead of locking up and returning to the boardinghouse as she usually did, Ella found herself dawdling. She wiped down tables and chairs she’d already cleaned while she pictured Bohannan strolling by the creek, watching hungry bluegills jumping at dragonflies, or looking at the little fort that was built in the back lot of Mrs. Detwiler’s property, the one that had saved so many townspeople during the Comanche attack a couple of years ago.

  If she left now, would she run into him returning from his perambulation? Would he share his impressions of the town?

  How silly of her to be thinking that way. He was nothing to her. She should get a jump on Sunday-dinner preparations. She didn’t open the café on Sunday morning, preferring to take breakfast at the boardinghouse and get ready for church. She missed some business that way, but probably not much, and she wanted to prepare her heart for what the Lord might say to her through worship.

  But she realized suddenly that Bohannan might not know the café was closed on Sunday morning, and would come down expecting breakfast. Why the thought of him going hungry till after church should bother her, she didn’t know. He hadn’t cared enough to show up at midday, after all. She didn’t like feeling responsible for another person, particularly not a male person. When had a man ever worried about her, except for what she could provide for him?

  Nevertheless, she found herself slicing roast beef and bread for a sandwich and wrapping it up in a cloth. There. She’d done the right thing, the Christian thing. She walked quietly out into the saloon, careful not to draw the attention of any of its customers.

  She stepped over to Detwiler, who was leaning on the bar, and laid the sandwich beside him.

  “This is for Bohannan,” Ella told him. “Would you give this to him when he comes back from his walk, please? I forgot to tell him I don’t serve breakfast at the café on Sunday. We wouldn’t want him to starve before the café opens after church, would we?”

  Detwiler grinned as he looked down at it, then back up at her. “Noooo, we wouldn’t,” he said. “That was right considerate of you, Miss Ella.”

  She felt herself flushing. Why, George Detwiler thought she’d left Bohannan food because she was sweet on the man! She knew that any attempt at denying an accusation the saloonkeeper hadn’t actually made, though, might look as if she was protesting too much, so she merely tightened her lips and retraced her steps back through the darkened café and out into the alley, head held high.

  “Men are such contrary creatures,” she grumbled.

  Chapter Seven

  Nate donned the shirt he’d bought from the mercantile yesterday, leaving his other everyday shirt hanging on a hook on the wall. He’d used some of Ella’s soap and had soaked it in an empty bucket he’d found last night when he returned from his walk and found Miss Ella gone. It’d be dry by the time he returned to work at the lumber mill tomorrow. It had been nice of Detwiler to gift him with the four bits it had cost for the shirt.

  Unable to sleep once the saloon fell quiet about midnight, he’d gone down and played the piano he’d tuned, letting his fingers rove over the keys and playing lush romantic tunes like “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” and “Beautiful Dreamer.” The raucous crowd that had populated the place earlier likely wouldn’t have appreciated such music, but this music was more to his taste than “Camptown Races” or the other bouncy tunes he’d recognized from the minstrel shows he’d played with for a time.

  He’d gone to bed after that, only to dream of Ella Justiss standing beside him as he’d played. Fool. Why would she care to listen to me play, let alone gaze adoringly at me while I did so?

  Now he brushed the last crumbs of his breakfast sandwich off his trousers. He’d been surprised when Detwiler had given him the wrapped sandwich last night after the final customer had left, and he hadn’t missed the wink the saloonkeeper had bestowed on him.

  Obviously the other man thought Miss Ella’s action revealed some deeper feelings on her part, but Nate suspected she was just adhering to the “deal”—Detwiler provided lodging, Miss Ella provided food, until Nate finished his part of the bargain. It was nothing more. So why had her making sure he had something for breakfast left him with such a warm feeling?

  It was time to go. He’d learned when the church service began from Detwiler, who assured Nate he was welcome to sit with him and his mother. He stepped out into the street, careful to avoid anything that might sully his freshly cleaned boots until he could reach the boardwalk.

  The number of townsfolk heading for the church at the east end of town increased as he passed the mercantile and murmured good-morning to Mrs. Patterson and her niece. The proprietress returned his greeting.

  No one else spoke to him, but he didn’t think much about it until he reached the lawn of the church. There, a wizened old man, standing at the edge of a chattering cluster of people, narrowed his eyes and stared at him, long and deliberately. Then he spat into the grass and jiggled the elbow of a rotund woman next to him.

  Nate recognized the cook from the hotel, the one who had berated Ella on the street. The old man pointed right at Nate.

  Uh-oh. It’d been a mistake to wear the silver vest, Nate thought. Because of it, the old codger had recognized him as one of the medicine-show salesmen. No doubt he and the woman had bought some of the elixir, and after realizing they’d been sedated for a while but not miraculously cured, they were no longer satisfied customers.

  Nate looked away from them, hoping the two wouldn’t express their displeasure further. His gaze landed on Ella, who was accompanied by a red-haired lady, entering the churchyard from Travis, the street behind Main Street.

  The simple tan, brown-trimmed dress should have been dowdy and plain, but somehow it perfectly complemented Ella’s glossy, dark hair and eyes and petite figure.

  She looked at him then, as if she’d felt his gaze like a touch.

  Nate nodded in her direction, not risking a smile. It was possible that she wouldn’t want to acknowledge him away from her café. She gave him a cautious half smile in return.

  But the redhead, following Ella’s gaze, widened her eyes and started tugging Ella toward him. Ella seemed to be resisting. He was interested to know who would win the struggle, but just then he was struck by a verbal volley from the old man.

  “You got your nerve comin’ t’ church like you done nothin’ wrong,” he growled, baring yellowed teeth. “Why, I ain’t felt right since I sipped the first drop of that evil brew you dare t’ call medicine!” He spat again, and the viscid stream landed perilously close to Nate’s trouser leg.

  “Zeke’s right,” the old woman snarled, emboldened by the man’s attack. “That stuff left me weak in the head and so dizzy I could hardly stagger to the doctor’s.”

  Another in the group took up the cry. “You show up at church like you got a right t’be here, same as the rest of us God-fearin’ folks? You ought to be ashamed, mister, after defrauding us of our hard-earned money! My husband slept for fifteen hours straight after he drank that bottle! I liketa never woke him this side of the pearly gates!”

  Nate knew before he spoke it would be futile. “He drank the whole bottle? Madam, neither Mr. Salali nor I told him to drink so much at one time,” he protested. “In his presentations, my former employer always made it a point to say a person should take no more than a tablespoonful, two at the most, in a day.”

  Salali shouldn’t have made it taste so good, blast his hide. Nate guessed the woman’s spouse must have thought if two spoonfuls were good, the whole bottle might work wonders.

  “He’s defendin’ that scalawag!” a stocky middle-aged man crowed. “The very one that wrecked the saloon! This fella was probably in on it.�
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  “I’m not—” Nate began, then shut his mouth. This had been a mistake. He shouldn’t have come. Not daring to look to see Ella’s reaction, he started to turn on his heel and retreat to the saloon, only to find himself taken by the elbow.

  “Now, just a cotton-pickin’ minute, y’all. That’s not how we treat folks coming to our church,” Mrs. Detwiler, still holding on to him, boomed.

  Her voice was trumpet-like. Nate half expected the occupants of the graves beneath the weathered tombstones beside the church to emerge in response.

  “Mr. Bohannan was a victim of that Salali fella, too,” she reminded them. “The Injun-elixir peddler robbed him and left him for dead right over yonder,” she added, pointing to the meadow beyond the creek while her eyes roved the complainers as if she dared anyone to disagree.

  Nate thought “left him for dead” might be overstating the case, but before he could ponder it further, George Detwiler spoke up. “Yeah, and he’s workin’ to repair the damage that man did to my establishment. He didn’t have t’do that. He could’ve just skedaddled.”

  Reverend Chadwick and his wife appeared, seemingly from out of nowhere.

  “Mr. Bohannan, you are most welcome to our church,” the reverend said, extending his hand.

  “Yes, we’re happy that you’re here,” Mrs. Chadwick added, her smile sweet and sincere.

  “Thank you, Reverend, Mrs. Chadwick,” Nate murmured, and then felt a timid touch on his other arm. He looked down to see Ella standing there, with the red-haired woman next to her.

  “Mr. Bohannan, I’d like you to meet my friend, Miss Maude Harkey,” she said, her gaze steady, her voice unwavering. “Maude and I would be pleased if you’d sit with us,” she said, nodding toward the church door.

  The murmuring crowd fell silent.

  If Ella had said the moon was made of green cheese, Nate would not have been more astonished.

  “I’d be honored, ladies,” he said. “Please lead the way.”

  They settled themselves in a pew in the middle of the small church, Maude first, then Ella, then Nate. Mrs. Detwiler and her son sat on Nate’s other side. A solid show of support, Nate thought, amazed by this turn of events.

  Ella was looking straight ahead.

  “Thank you,” he whispered to her. “That was very kind of you both.”

  She half turned toward him. “I only did what’s right,” she said evenly. “People aren’t supposed to act the way those folks did outside then expect the Lord to hear their prayers.”

  “I agree,” Maude said.

  Nor were folks supposed to sell worthless potions and tout them as wonder-working cure-alls, Nate thought, ashamed all over again that he had ever associated himself with the likes of Robert Salali. He didn’t deserve his pewmates’ support.

  He felt even guiltier when the preacher announced his text. “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

  Had the text been selected beforehand, or was the preacher rebuking those of his congregation who had given Nate such a hard time outside? Either way, he knew he was certainly no angel in disguise.

  He caught Ella looking at him out of the corner of her eye, and guessed that she was also thinking he wasn’t any such creature. But he met her eyes nonetheless and gave her a deliberate wink—to which she responded with an indignant huff and turned back to stare straight ahead at the preacher.

  Caught up in pondering why some citizens of Simpson Creek were being so kind to him, while others had given him what he considered his just deserts before church, he didn’t hear much of the rest of the sermon, and before he knew it, the service was over.

  As soon as the last notes of the closing hymn died away, Mrs. Detwiler turned to him. “Would you like to come for Sunday dinner? If you’re one of those celestial beings the preacher was referrin’ to, I don’t want to miss another chance to entertain ya, Mr. Bohannan.”

  “I assure you I’m not,” he said, smiling. “May I come another time? I was planning to partake of one of Miss Ella’s delicious dinners,” he explained. He turned to Ella, to see what her reaction was to his words, only to find her already scooting out of the pew as if she hadn’t even heard him.

  “Miss Ella?” he called after her.

  “I have to go start dinner at the café,” she explained, and kept moving, greeting others who reached out to her, but never pausing to chat.

  Next to Nate, Mrs. Detwiler said, “That is one busy gal. I feel sorry for her, havin’ to work so hard all the time, with no family in town to lean on. But she doesn’t want anyone’s sympathy—she just goes on workin’ hard. She’s a member of the Spinsters’ Club an’ all, but she hardly ever gets to take part in their activities.”

  “The...Spinsters’ Club?” Nate repeated. “What’s that?”

  “You ain’t heard a’ them? Well, I reckon you ain’t been in town long enough,” George Detwiler said. “It was started by Milly Matthews—Milly Brookfield, she is now. We didn’t have no single men here after the war—’ceptin’ me, and I ain’t no marryin’ sort,” he added with a chuckle.

  “Which I never understood,” his mother said. “What man doesn’t want to get married and give his ma grandchildren?”

  “Aw, Ma, none o’ these ladies want to marry a saloonkeeper,” George protested, then went back to what he’d been saying to Nate. “Anyway, Milly figured she and the others would never git t’ marry and stay in Simpson Creek less’n they did something, so they started advertisin’ for mail-order grooms. They started bringin’ eligible bachelors to Simpson Creek. Miss Milly was the first to succeed, marryin’ an Englishman, of all things. Now several of ’em have gotten hitched.”

  “There’s Milly Brookfield and her husband now,” said Mrs. Detwiler, nodding toward a pretty young matron who was holding a little boy while she and a man Nate presumed to be her husband spoke with the preacher and his wife. “Let me start introducin’ you to the folks ya haven’t met.”

  “Thanks, but they might not want to meet me, after what my employer did,” he said. He wasn’t eager to experience a repeat of the confrontation before church. The preacher’s “angels unaware” sermon wouldn’t really change anyone’s mind about him; they might just be more apt to keep their contempt to themselves. Besides, he had wanted to follow Ella to the café and be one of her first customers, before the after-church folks got there. Maybe he could even get her to talk to him before she got busy, so he could determine if her change of heart toward him was permanent.

  But Mrs. Detwiler was not to be gainsaid. “Nonsense, the Brookfields were out on their ranch when you an’ that Salali fella were sellin’ your potion, and even if they hadn’t been, neither of them has a mean bone in their bodies. C’mon.”

  Mrs. Brookfield and her husband, who was indeed English, proved to be just as welcoming and friendly as Mrs. Detwiler had promised. Then a pretty blonde lady, the one who’d been playing the piano during the hymn singing, joined them, and Milly introduced her as her sister, Mrs. Sarah Walker, wife of the town doctor.

  “Welcome to Simpson Creek, Mr. Bohannan,” Sarah Walker said. “George tells me you’re quite the piano player.”

  “I was still workin’ in the office upstairs when you went down and started playin’ last night,” Detwiler said with a grin. “You’ve got talent, Bohannan. And don’t look so worried—it’s nothing to me if you don’t want to play for the yahoos that frequent my establishment. Shorty Ledbetter was glad to get the job playin’ for ’em. But he don’t have a lick of your ability, you know.”

  “Perhaps we should let the preacher know you can play, in case I’m unable to some Sunday,” Sarah Walker said then.

  Nate was astonished that she’d even suggest such a thing. Nate Bohannan, playing hymns? Surely the church would be hit by lightning. “Thank you, Mrs. Walker,
but I’m not even sure how long I’ll be staying in town. And in any case, my ability doesn’t extend itself to church music,” Nate said.

  “Nonsense. I’m sure you could do it, if need be,” Sarah Walker said. “Don’t hide your light under a bushel basket, Mr. Bohannan. I might be needing some time off in a few months.” The color rose in her fair cheeks.

  An auburn-haired man, who carried a sleeping baby on his shoulder, smiled proudly down at her, then up at Nate. “Yes, my wife will need to take some time off in a few months, so you might well be needed to play some Sunday mornings then. I’m Nolan Walker,” he added, extending his hand.

  Nate blinked. The town doctor. He must not know Nate had recently been peddling snake oil. He wouldn’t be nearly so cordial if he knew.

  Something in Nate compelled him to be honest. “Dr. Walker,” he said, shaking the proffered hand. “I’m honored, sir, but I have to confess, I—”

  The other man held up his free hand and interrupted. “I know all about the Cherokee Marvelous Medicine you and that other fellow were selling. But I also know that didn’t work out so well for you, and you’re no longer doing it,” Nolan Walker said, looking him steadily in the eye. “Many of us find we have to change course in life, Mr. Bohannan. So we’re glad to have you.”

  Nate got the feeling Dr. Walker was speaking from experience. “Well, I’m not sure how long I’ll be here, but—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, he was being introduced to someone else, then someone else, and someone else, and by the time he bid farewell to Mrs. Detwiler and her son, he and they were nearly the last ones to leave the churchyard. Without exception, everyone he’d encountered had been kind and friendly—if one didn’t count the hotel cook, who walked past him and sniffed, “‘Angels unaware’—humph!”