“Could we make it another Sunday?” Sarah asked. “Nick’s taking me to dinner at the hotel, and then for a buggy ride.”
“Of course we can!” Milly exclaimed with a pleased grin. Then, seeing Nolan had been buttonholed by Mrs. Detwiler to discuss her grandchild’s teething woes, she pulled Sarah aside out of the earshot of others.
“If you’re not coming to the ranch, then you’ll have to tell me now when Jesse Holt reappeared like Lazarus coming forth from the grave!” she said in a low voice. “Why didn’t you warn me? I nearly swooned in surprise when I turned around and saw him. And what’s he doing with that Ada Spencer, who I see is no longer ‘with child’? Dear Sarah, how do you feel about all that?”
Sarah couldn’t help but chuckle at the spate of dramatic questions, and told her all about her surprise encounter with Jesse and what had followed.
“Well, I think you’ve made the right choice,” Milly said a few minutes later, just before they walked back to rejoin Nolan and Nick. “Jesse Holt will come to no good end if he doesn’t change his ways.”
Dinner in the hotel had been wonderful, and since the weather had cooperated to produce a sunny, mild February day, they took Nolan’s buggy out to the meadow west of the creek. Nolan couldn’t believe he was actually sitting in his buggy with Sarah close beside him and stealing frequent smiling glances at him. If he was dreaming, he didn’t want to wake up.
A mule deer doe and twin fawns hopped away as the buggy crossed the bridge. The cottonwoods and live oaks along the creekside were bursting with pale green leaves unfurling from their stems. Birds warbled their songs from the trees or flitted from branch to branch, twigs clutched in their beaks, building their nests.
“Just wait a month, and this meadow will be carpeted in bluebonnets,” Sarah promised him. “And the next month, gold and red flowers, Indian blanket, Mexican hat, primroses—Nolan, you can’t believe how beautiful it is!”
“I can’t believe how beautiful you are, Sarah,” he said, cupping her cheek. “And as I said in church, how kind, how brave…”
“Brave? Me? I’m not brave at all,” she protested. “Milly would tell you I’ve been a quiet little mouse all my life. She’s been the brave one, the leader.”
“I don’t think she’d say that anymore, Nurse Sarah. In fact, I think you have all the qualities to make an excellent doctor’s wife.”
When his words hit her, she gaped at him. “Dr. Nolan Walker! Did you just propose to me, on our very first outing together?”
He grinned. “Ayuh,” he said, in a deliberately exaggerated “Downeast” accent. “We men of Maine don’t waste time. Am I going too fast, sweetheart? I promise you’ll get your courtship, never fear, but you and I both know I’ve been courting you every time we met—as much as you’d let me, anyway—ever since Founder’s Day last fall.”
She considered his words. “I guess that’s true. All right, as long as you don’t stint on the courtship—we Texas ladies set great store by courting, I’ll have you know—I agree.”
“Did you just say yes, Miss Sarah, on our very first outing as a courting couple?”
She nodded, blushing a rosy pink that made her even lovelier still.
He couldn’t wait any longer, and lowered his lips to hers.
They were still exchanging kisses interspersed with sweet words when they heard horses approaching them from eastward beyond the town.
Letting go of one another, they lifted their heads.
Sarah’s first thought chilled her heart—was it another Comanche attack? They were not far from the road—there was no time to hide—they’d both be killed… She sat paralyzed, wondering if there was time for them to run and conceal themselves in the underbrush along Simpson Creek.
Then common sense asserted itself and she relaxed. No, these horsemen didn’t seem to be in any hurry, and she could hear the jingling of bits and spurs and the creaking of leather saddles as well as snatches of talk and laughter. Just some ranch hands coming into town for the afternoon…
But the riders who came into view did not look like any cowboys from the outlying ranches. They were bearded and rough, and each had loaded saddlebags with rifles and bedrolls strapped to the cantles. Their hats were worn low over their foreheads. They passed by without seeming to notice the buggy sitting in a grove of trees near the road, and there was something about them that put Sarah in mind of a pack of wolves—or of Jesse.
“Wonder where they’re bound for?” Nolan murmured in a low voice. “They look like trouble.”
Sarah nodded, keeping her eyes on them.
Snatches of talk drifted back to Sarah as they passed. “…Said he’d meet us east a’ town. Hope he’s got some whiskey—saloon’s probably closed up tighter’n a drum on account of it bein’ Sunday…”
“Reckon he’s made up his mind by now…”
“Yeah, well, if he ain’t, we ain’t hangin’ around while he chases some skirt…”
Sarah put a hand out to steady herself against Nolan’s arm. “Nolan, I think those men are the Gray Boys—the gang Jesse spoke of being their leader.”
He gazed after the cloud of dust they had left behind, then back at her. “Perhaps we’d better wait no longer to tell Prissy’s father what we’ve seen. It’s all very well to advertise for a new sheriff, but in the meantime, he’s got to have a plan in place to deal with troublemakers.”
By tacit agreement, they left the peaceful glade and drove back across the creek into town.
Mayor Gilmore, wakened by Prissy from his Sunday afternoon nap, listened attentively, absently stroking his full beard.
“I don’t know that I’m convinced that those men have anything to do with your Jesse Holt, Sarah—”
“Papa, he’s not Sarah’s Jesse Holt anymore!” Prissy cried, her gaze apologetic as it flew from Sarah to Nolan.
The mayor blinked and cleared his throat. “Pardon me, Miss Sarah, I spoke without thinking—meant no offense—but it would probably be prudent to appoint somebody as temporary sheriff, until the right man answers our advertisement, just in case. Trouble is, I don’t know who’d be up to the job. His deputy sure isn’t. How about you, Dr. Walker?”
Sarah saw Nolan’s jaw drop at the question.
Nolan said flatly, “Mayor, I’m a physician, not a lawman.”
“I know, but you were in the war…I’ll warrant you had to be capable with a firearm in the army, even if your weapon was more often a scalpel.”
Sarah saw Nolan’s jaw tighten, and sensed the turmoil churning inside him from his rigid posture.
“There are several men of the town who were actually soldiers in the war,” Nolan argued. “Naturally, I’d be willing to assist whoever you select—”
“Yes, there are, but the job calls for judgment and common sense, and the ability to lead, and I’m convinced you have that in good measure, Dr. Walker,” the mayor retorted briskly.
“Thank you for the compliment, sir,” Nolan said, “but I think I can serve the town better as its doctor.”
The phrase “ability to lead” sparked an idea in Sarah. “Mayor Gilmore, what about my brother-in-law, Nicholas Brookfield? He was a captain in the British army, and he certainly led the effort to have the fort built in town last fall.”
The old man blinked. “Of course, of course. I think that influenza must have boiled my common sense, not to mention my memory! Do you suppose he’d accept, Miss Sarah?”
“Until a permanent sheriff could be hired, yes, sir. But we won’t know till we ask, will we?”
The mayor rubbed his chin whiskers, then said with a flash of his old decisiveness, “I believe we’d better act quickly. Doctor, would you be willing to take Miss Matthews out to the ranch now and ask Brookfield if he’d do it? Of course it’d be subject to town council approval, but I think they’ll follow my suggestion if he accepts.”
“Of course, Mayor,” Nolan said.
“Good. Prissy, would you go ’round to the councilmen’s houses now and t
ell them I’m calling an urgent meeting at ten o’clock tomorrow?”
Sarah sprang up along with Nolan feeling relieved to be doing something to help in the crisis, but she couldn’t help wondering if even Nick Brookfield would be enough to stop the trouble that was coming.
Chapter Twenty-Four
By the time they left the ranch that evening, they had not only secured Nick’s agreement to serve as the temporary sheriff if the council agreed, but had been given a delicious early supper by Milly.
“Your sister and brother-in-law are delightful people, Sarah,” Nolan said as they neared Simpson Creek.
Sarah smiled in the darkness as the horse trotted along. “I can tell they like you, too. And Milly’s relieved that I’ve finally seen the error of my ways. Once she’d met you, she was so upset with me for rejecting you because you’re a Yankee.” She chuckled. “I wonder what she’d say if she knew you’ve already proposed, this very afternoon!”
Nolan favored her with a teasing sidelong glance. “Why didn’t you tell her?”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Because then she’d say I gave in too easily! She can’t let go of being the big sister who knows best, you kn—”
Her voice trailed off as the saloon came into view, all lit up. From within, the strains of tinny piano music drifted out on the chilly evening air.
“What’s going on?” she murmured aloud. “The saloon’s never open on Sunday, never. I’ve always heard George Detwiler would like to, but you know Mrs. Detwiler, his mother—she’d never stand for it.” Then she spotted a handful of men striding into it, laughing and talking loudly—and one woman, around whose waist a man’s arm was curled.
The buggy drew closer, and Sarah saw the woman turn to hear something the man was saying. Sarah recognized Ada Spencer. The man touching her so familiarly was Jesse Holt—which meant the men pushing open the batwing doors were the Gray Boys. “Nolan—”
“Unfortunately, there’s nothing illegal about a bunch of drifters visiting a saloon, even if it is Sunday,” he said, guessing the cause of her apprehension. “And they’ve committed no crimes, as far as we know. We’d best get you inside out of the cold, sweetheart,” he added, seeing her shiver.
That night, she was wakened by gunfire from the direction of the road, and went to her window, which looked out on the street. Pulling aside the curtain, she was in time to see horsemen galloping away. Even through the closed window, she could hear their raucous whooping and hollering and shooting into the air.
Sarah came out the next morning with a load of pies for the hotel just as Nick was mounting his horse at the Gilmores’ stable.
“Nick, am I to call you Sheriff Brookfield?” she called, raising a hand in greeting.
“For the time being, yes,” he confirmed as he swung his leg over the saddle. His face was grim, absent of the good humor that usually marked it. As he turned to greet her, she saw the five-pointed tin star already pinned to the collar of his coat.
A premonitory trickle of apprehension skittered down her spine. “Has something happened?”
“The ranch was hit by rustlers at sunrise,” he told her in his crisp British accent. “They drove off all the cattle in the back pasture, every last head. Micah happened to be out there checking on a cow with a new calf, and they shot him.”
She couldn’t stifle the sound that escaped her. Micah was the youngest of the Brown brothers who were all cowhands at the ranch.
At her cry of alarm, he held up a hand. “He’ll be all right, I think. He’s at the doctor’s right now, getting the bullet removed from his arm.”
What he wasn’t mentioning, Sarah knew, was what a devastating effect the loss of the cattle would be to the ranch if they were not recovered. They’d lost almost half their herd last year when the Comanches had raided. Milly and Nick had hoped to build up the herd enough to make a profit when drovers came through next year.
“I—I’ll go see him,” she said, feeling unfocused, “and see if there’s anything I can do to help Nolan.”
“You’re a good woman, Sarah. I know Micah would like that. Milly’s there, but she’s rather shaken up, you know, what with waking up to the sound of gunfire, then seeing Micah riding in, his arm all bloody…”
Sarah could well imagine, having awoken to the sound of gunfire herself. And as stalwart as her sister was, she never could stand the sight of blood, and now she was expecting a child…
“Is Milly all right? Shouldn’t you be with her?” She heard a sharp, disapproving edge in her voice, and was sorry, but this was her sister. “Perhaps she should stay at the cottage with Prissy and me while you’re serving as sheriff.”
“I tried to stay with her at the doctor’s,” Nick protested, “but she knew I was supposed to be at the council meeting here and chivied me out the office door. Besides, your Nolan said he’d check her to make sure all was well with the child. And I did already suggest she stay here with you while I’m away from the ranch, but she insists that since there’s nothing left to steal, we won’t be troubled again.”
Milly was probably right. Reassured somewhat by the news that her sister was behaving with her characteristic feisty resolve, Sarah felt her tensed shoulders relax some, though the worry remained.
“Josh and the others have already rounded up a posse to catch the rustlers. I’m riding to join up with them now.”
She didn’t know if it would prove helpful, but she told Nick about seeing the group of men and Ada going into the saloon last night.
His eyes narrowed. “Your erstwhile friend Ada sounds a right foolish woman,” he said. “But thanks for letting me know. Leave word at the jail, if you spot them again.”
Stopping only long enough at the cottage to tell Prissy the news and ask her to deliver her pies, Sarah picked up her skirts and hurried down the street to Nolan’s office, arriving out of breath and feeling her carefully pinned hair falling down her back.
Milly jumped up from her straight-backed chair in the waiting room and fell into Sarah’s arms. “Oh, sister, I’m so glad you’re here!”
Elijah, Micah’s eldest brother, rose more slowly beside Milly, his face betraying his anxiety.
Milly’s shoulders shuddered with sobs. “Your Dr. Walker says Micah’ll be all right as long as gangrene doesn’t set in….”
Sarah stayed with her sister and Elijah until Milly was calm again, then went through the office door to see if she could be of help.
As she entered, the sharp tang of carbolic stung her nostrils. Nolan looked up sharply from the roll of linen he was winding around the cowhand’s arm, but his stare softened as he recognized her.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” Nolan said, his gaze caressing her. “I was afraid it was your sister trying to help again. She means well, but she turned white as this bandage when she attempted to be my assistant a few minutes ago.”
“Hello, Miss Sarah,” Micah said from the doctor’s examining table. Under his dark skin, he looked a little pale himself.
“Hello, Dr. Nolan, Micah.” Their formality in front of the cowboy felt odd after what had happened between them at the creek yesterday. “Micah, how are you feeling?” She tried to avoid looking at the small, round metal container beside him in which a bloody, misshapen bullet lay.
“Better now, Miss Sarah,” he said in his soft, slurred drawl. “This Dr. Nolan, he’s one fine bullet remover. I barely felt it,” he said. The pain shining in his eyes, and the beads of sweat shimmering on his brow, however, belied his words.
“Young Micah, you’re a very polite liar,” Nolan told him. “It’s all right to say it hurt like h—that is, it hurt very badly. You bore up well, though.”
“Thank ya, Doctor.”
Nolan assisted the other man down from the exam table and into the waiting room, where Elijah and Milly waited. Sarah followed.
“You keep that bandage clean and dry, Micah. I’m going to send along enough linen that Mrs. Brookfield can change the dressing every day. Mrs. Brookfield, please
have someone notify me at once, day or night, if there’s any fever or a great amount of swelling, or any cloudy drainage—any of that, understand?”
Milly, Micah and Elijah all nodded solemnly.
“I’ll send some morphine pills with you in case Micah’s pain gets worse,” Nolan told Milly, “though the willow bark tea may well be sufficient.”
“Now don’t worry about Nick, Milly,” Sarah said while Elijah helped his brother into the wagon. “Prissy and I will take his supper down to him at the jail every night.”
“And don’t you worry about your sister, neither, Miss Sarah,” Elijah assured her in return. “I’ll guard her and the house like a hawk.”
By the next day, word reached town that two other ranches had been struck by the rustlers, as well. At those ranches, the thieves hadn’t contented themselves with only the cattle, but had raided the ranch houses, too, and had stolen the ranchers and their wives’ valuables, including the heirloom pocket watch of one and the garnet earbobs from his spouse. Sarah couldn’t help but wonder if Milly and Nick’s valuables had been left alone at Jesse’s order because of her, or if the gang had merely grown greedier as they went along.
Nick and the posse returned the second evening without having caught up with the robbers and the stolen cattle, but with the news that yet another ranch had been hit. This time, the rustlers had killed a foreman and gravely wounded one of the cowhands who had attempted to drive them off. He was brought into town to Nolan, but the man had been shot in the chest and died despite Nolan’s efforts to save him.
Now that the gang had added murder to their list of crimes, the ranks of the posse swelled and the president of the Simpson Creek Bank announced the formation of a reward account for the apprehension and conviction of any or all of the Gray Boys gang. Sarah heard threats to hang Jesse highest of all since he’d been one of their own, yet was now leading the pack of outlaws who preyed on them.
The Doctor Takes a Wife Page 17
