The photographer the mayor had hired had taken pictures of the men at work, and once the men were done eating, he took a group picture of those participating in the café raising.
Once the men were back at work, the ladies took their turn eating, their laughter and talk punctuated by the rhythmic hammering nearby. After they ate and cleared away the dishes, some took out needlework, while others soothed children into naps on quilts in the shade. Mrs. Detwiler volunteered to go check on old Reverend Chadwick, Gil’s father, at the parsonage. The chatting continued, though once the boards had been nailed over the frame and the men turned to hammering down sheets of tin over the rafters, they had to raise their voices to be heard over the racket. It seemed impossible that the babies and young children would continue to sleep, but they did, lulled by their full stomachs and the drowsy buzz of insects that their mothers fanned away from them.
It was a peaceful scene, but Ella’s heart was not at rest. Despite her resolve not to let an absent man ruin a happy day, in her mind’s eye she kept picturing Nate among the workmen. From time to time, her gaze would involuntarily stray to the road east, hoping against hope she would see Nate trotting toward her. But of course that didn’t happen.
If he was truly gone, who would build the cabinets that would hold her dishes, silverware, cooking pots and dry ingredients? There was no one in Simpson Creek that she knew of who did that kind of carpentry. Having to pay to have them made would put her in debt from the start—something she’d resolved to avoid. But she might not have a choice.
“Does anyone know a good carpenter?” she asked when there was a pause in the conversation. “For my cabinets,” she added when she saw confused looks from those sitting nearest.
“But I thought Nate was building your cabinets,” Maude said.
Ella shrugged. “That was the plan, but...” She forced herself to say the worst of it. “What if he doesn’t come back?”
Maude’s eyes widened in surprise. “You don’t believe what he promised? Ella, honey, if that man told you he was going to build your cabinets, he will come back and build your cabinets.”
Ella darted a glance at the other women, but their expressions were carefully blank, their eyes unreadable. You know he’s not coming back, don’t you?
She shrugged. “All right, I’ll assume he’s going to do that. But what if he doesn’t? Does anyone know of a man who does that sort of work?”
Milly cleared her throat. “Prissy, wasn’t Frederick Von Hesse a carpenter? You know, the German fellow from Fredericksburg who married our Hannah.”
Prissy, whom Ella thought had been looking a bit nervous, brightened. “Yes, I’d forgotten about him. But I’m sure Nate will be back, Ella.”
She knew they didn’t want to be the ones to confirm her certainty that Nate was gone forever. No doubt they thought it was best to let her get used to the idea gradually, as the days went by and Nate didn’t come back to town. Then they wouldn’t have to witness her pain, and she wouldn’t be embarrassed because they had seen it.
* * *
Nate came awake to the poking of blunt fingers in his leg wound. Big, clumsy fingers that sent pain lancing up to his hip and down to his toes.
“Hurts!” he protested. “Stop!”
“Yes, I’m sorry, young feller, but your leg’s worse. I’m afraid I’m going to have to cauterize it after all.”
“No!” Nate cried. “Take me back to Simpson Creek. Dr. Walker’ll know what to do,” he added. What was wrong with his tongue? It was still so thick, and he couldn’t make anything but gibberish sounds.
“Yes, it’s either that or I’ll have to amputate it,” the man said grimly.
Now Nate began to thrash in earnest. He had to get away from this incompetent quack, had to get to Doc Walker! He couldn’t face Ella without both his legs.
His struggles sent agony rocketing through him, but he kept fighting.
“Now, you settle down, Bohannan, I’m trying to save your life!” the sawbones shouted in his ear, pressing down firmly on his shoulders so that Nate, weakened as he was, couldn’t sit up. “Junior, hold his mouth open so’s I can pour some more laudanum down him,” he said. “I’m outta whiskey, and what I’m gonna do is bound to hurt. We’ll let it take effect while I build a fire to heat that cleaver, then I’ll use the flat of that to cauterize.”
Junior? So this quack had a son he was training to be just as hopelessly incompetent as he was? He tried ineffectually to bite the fingers that pinched his cheeks open, then kept them open with something wooden—a spoon handle, maybe—until he tasted the foul brew that would send him into nightmare land again. He tried to fight against the drug’s effects, but he knew it was a losing battle.
Lord, let me die if he can’t save my leg...
Chapter Twenty
By late afternoon the last sheet of tin had been hammered in place and the stove from Ella’s old café had been moved inside. The sawdust had been swept, the outer and inner walls whitewashed.
The photographer herded them all together for one last group picture in front of the finished café.
“You should be sitting in the front of the group, Ella,” Maude urged her when she would have joined the other ladies in the front row. “After all, it’s your new café.”
Ella allowed herself to be pushed forward. She’d enjoyed watching her little building being built, but now that it was over and Nate had not appeared, she was ready to be alone with her thoughts.
After she’d settled into her position, she spotted a figure walking across the bridge toward them. It certainly wasn’t Nate, but an old woman with a much-stained apron—Mrs. Powell, Ella recognized with a start. The old woman shambled slowly toward them, leaning on a cane, which Ella hadn’t seen her use before. She stopped a few feet behind the photographer, staring at the new building.
“What’s she doing here?” Maude hissed from behind Ella.
“I don’t know,” Ella whispered back. Mrs. Powell was staring at them, unblinking, mouth slightly agape. Had she come to denounce the project that threatened her livelihood?
Intent on taking this last picture, the photographer seemed unaware of the newcomer. “Quiet now, and be still, all of you, so there won’t be a blur in the picture,” he cautioned them from under his hood. “We have to hurry or we’ll lose the light. Miss Ella, please stop looking to the side and face the lens,” he added.
Obediently, Ella stopped her wary watching of Mrs. Powell. The flash of the powder in the photographer’s tray dazzled her eyes and she blinked until she could focus without spots in front of her vision.
When she could see again, she noticed the old woman trudging back over the bridge, her shoulders hunched.
“Guess she came to see what the competition was going to look like,” Jane Jeffries muttered. “Did you see that blank look in her eyes? Creepy, if you ask me.”
“Poor old thing,” Milly Brookfield murmured.
It couldn’t have been easy for the hotel cook to see Ella’s brand-new café, all new and freshly painted, Ella thought, feeling a rush of compassion for the old woman, despite the way Mrs. Powell had bullied her in the past. Lord, please make sure there’s enough business for both of us, so she doesn’t lose her position.
The photographer, meanwhile, had folded his tripod and loaded it and the camera onto the curious hooded wagon that functioned as his darkroom in the field. Men gathered their tools, while the women collected their children and loaded their baskets with the dishes and silverware they’d brought.
Ella had thanked the builders and the ladies individually during the afternoon, but now she felt compelled to do it again. “Thank you, thank you, everyone,” she called, seeing that folks were beginning to leave.
“You’re welcome, Miss Ella,” George Detwiler said, apparently speaking for everyone, but then he a
dded for himself, “I’ll miss having your fine cooking handy in back of the saloon, but you let me know when you’re ready to open, and Ma and I will be your first customers.” With a wave, he turned and walked back toward town.
Ella stepped inside her new café so she wouldn’t have to watch everyone leave. “That is the question, isn’t it? When will I be ready to open?” she asked aloud in the empty interior. Dust motes danced in the fading sunlight let in by the west-facing window. When will I be ready to open, if Nate never returns?
“Talking to yourself?” Maude asked with a chuckle, startling her.
“Oh! I—I thought you’d gone,” Ella said. “I...I was just standing here picturing where everything would go.”
She knew from the skeptical expression on her friend’s face that she wasn’t fooled.
“I didn’t want to leave you alone out here, not with that addled old woman prowling around,” Maude said.
“Oh, I don’t think Mrs. Powell will be back. I imagine she’s busy making supper at the hotel by now.”
“So, what will you do about the cabinets you need?” Maude asked her. “Not that I think Nate won’t return, of course,” she added quickly—too quickly.
Ella shrugged. “I suppose I’ll wait a few days and see if he comes back. Then I’ll have to borrow the hutch and trunks I was offered, at least until I can contact Mr. Von Hesse, I suppose.”
“All right then,” Maude said brightly. “Let’s go back to the boardinghouse and rest up from our busy day. Tomorrow’s Sunday—let’s think up something fun to do after church. Maybe we could walk outside town to where that big pecan grove is and gather some up to make pralines.”
“All right.” She was grateful for her friend’s presence and her loyal support. Gathering pecans and making pralines would at least be better than sitting in her room, imagining Nate on a train to California.
* * *
“But I can’t discharge you today,” Dr. Gibson protested the following Thursday when Nate informed him he was leaving. “Young man, you still had a fever only yesterday, and the day before that I still thought I’d have to amputate that leg. You go jostling your wound over the road between here and Simpson Creek, and you’re liable to undo all the good I’ve tried to do.”
Without asking permission, he whisked the sheet off and squinted at Nate’s wounded leg without speaking.
“It’s mending,” Nate concluded for him. No thanks to you and that red-hot whatever-it-was that you branded me with like a calf at roundup time. “I can’t spend any more time here. I need to be back in Simpson Creek.” With Ella. “Now, hand over my clothes, or I promise you I’m going to ride out of Lampasas in this nightshirt!”
Gibson was still sputtering when a familiar voice said from the doorway, “Easy there, Bohannan.”
Nate looked past the doctor to see Sheriff Bishop standing there.
“You giving the doc trouble?” Bishop asked with a grin. “Thought it was time I’d better check on you again. Looks like I’m just in time.”
Nate was pretty sure Bishop had heard him shouting at the sawbones all the way down the street. “Sheriff, tell him I’d be perfectly able to ride back to Simpson Creek if he’d just hand over my clothes.”
“Consarned ungrateful patients,” the doctor muttered. “If he leaves now, he’s apt to get that leg infected again. I came mighty near to havin’ t’ cut it off, as it was.”
Nate saw Bishop glance at the still-uncovered wound and blanch at the blackened scar where the entrance wound had been cauterized. The sheriff quickly looked away and swallowed.
“Dr. Gibson, if you think it’d be better, I can rent a buckboard and take him back in that,” Bishop said. “I’ll have our physician in Simpson Creek keep an eye on that,” he said, nodding at the wound. “If that’s all right with you, I’ll settle up with you about his bill.”
“You don’t have to pay for me,” Nate protested, though he didn’t know how he’d pay for himself.
“You were serving on a posse, remember?” Bishop retorted. “The town can pay for your care.”
Nate wanted to say the citizens of Simpson Creek shouldn’t have to reward this quack for nearly killing him, but he figured he could keep that sentiment to himself until they were out of Lampasas. “Fine,” he said. “But I can ride—”
“If the doc here says you’re better off going in a buckboard, you’ll go in a buckboard,” Bishop said in a voice that brooked no argument. “The horse I loaned you can pull it. I’ll tie my mount to the back. Now, stop jawin’ and get dressed.”
Nate wanted to get out of Lampasas badly enough that he complied, and moments later, he followed Bishop out of the office. He was surprised at how weak he felt, taking those first few steps. The fever had really sapped his strength.
Suddenly he remembered something Bishop had said when he arrived. “You said you thought it was time you checked on me ‘again.’ Does that mean you’d been here before today?”
“When you didn’t show up back in town by Sunday morning, I thought I’d better come see what had become of you,” Bishop remarked as they made their way down the boardwalk. “I rode over here Sunday afternoon, and I could see for myself you weren’t in any shape to leave yet. You were talkin’ out of your head. Dr. Gibson said to check again today, unless he sent word otherwise, so I did.”
“You should have seen Sunday that the old quack was trying his best to kill me, and hauled me out of there. I don’t remember much from when I was feverish, but I do recall he and that son of his were awfully eager to cut off my leg. Simpson Creek’s lucky to have a good doc like Nolan Walker.”
“That’s a fact,” agreed Bishop. “Now, if you can wait a few more minutes before we start back, I’d like to stop in here and say a quick howdy to Sheriff Teague.”
Nate hadn’t been paying much attention to where they were walking, but he saw now that they were approaching the Lampasas jail. He was surprised—even a little touched—that Bishop had come to see about him before checking in with his fellow lawman.
Bishop hesitated at the door. “You can wait outside if you’d rather not see Salali—he’s in one of the cells.”
Nate found he wasn’t opposed to the idea. The next time he’d face the man, it would be across a courtroom during the trial, when he was called to testify. But he’d never gotten to say his piece about what the charlatan medicine man had done to him. “It won’t bother me,” he said, and gestured for Bishop to precede him inside.
“Mornin’, Wade,” Bishop said as they entered. “Just wanted to let you know I’m taking Nate, here, back to Simpson Creek to finish healing up.”
Wade Teague, a stocky man in his late thirties, said, “That’s fine. You feelin’ better, Bohannan? As I said the other day, I’m much obliged to you for capturing Salali.”
“Right as rain, thanks,” Nate said, though in truth his branded leg was beginning to throb. He felt Salali’s gaze before he looked over to the left cell behind Teague’s desk, and straightened. He didn’t want to show any sign of weakness.
As the two sheriffs began comparing notes about their respective jurisdictions, he met Salali’s eyes. The other man motioned him closer.
Curious as to what Salali wanted to say, Nate stepped behind the desk and looked at the man behind the bars. Was he about to be cursed by a man bound for the gallows?
But Robert Salali surprised him. “You know, I underestimated you, Nate Bohannan,” he said in a low tone. Clearly, he didn’t want his words to carry past Nate, but he needn’t have worried. The two lawmen were thoroughly engrossed in their conversation.
“Oh? How’s that?” Nate asked. “Are you saying that because I had a harder skull than you figured when you whacked me over the head with that skillet and left, not caring if I was dead or alive?” He shut his mouth, wishing he hadn’t let that bitterness slip
out.
Salali had the grace to look the slightest bit ashamed. “Not just that,” he admitted with a wry twist of his fleshy lips. “I just never figured you’d have the sand to come after me and be the one who brought me down. There’s more to you than I thought. I’ve had some time to think since I was brought in here—” he gestured at the small enclosed space “—and I want to say I’m sorry I stole from you.”
The words put Nate on his guard. Why would Salali say that? What did he want?
“You know, you didn’t get everything that day,” Nate said. “You missed the good watch in my front vest pocket.” He’d left it under the floorboard of his room in the saloon, and now he wished he could dangle it in front of his former employer.
Salali groaned. “Yeah, I remembered that later,” he admitted. “Too bad for me. It would’ve fetched a pretty penny—more than your banjo did, for sure. Good for you, Bohannan. Listen,” he said, motioning Nate closer, “I’ve got a proposition for you.”
The idea that this man had the gall to think there was anything he could offer him lit a spark of anger. “What? You’re going to offer to give me the recipe for that worthless swill you sold as Cherokee medicine so the secret doesn’t go to the grave with you?” he taunted. “No, thanks. I’m ashamed I helped you sell even one bottle.”
As soon as he said the words, he felt like a hypocrite. He’d known the truth of the Gospel since boyhood, yet he hadn’t even begun to live like a Christian till he’d come to Simpson Creek and seen how real Christians lived. And he was still in his infancy as far as living his faith went.
“Bohannan, look, if you break me out of here, we’ll be partners,” Salali whispered, urgency creasing his oily face. “Fifty-fifty. I’ll even let you call the shots.”
A Hero in the Making Page 19
