Bittersweet

by Anita Mills

  “I have to believe he knows we’re in good hands,” she said softly. “I have to believe he’d be pleased.”

  “You don’t think about him much, do you?”

  “I do when I look at her—she’ll hold her head in just such a way sometimes that I can see him in her. And there’s an emptiness, a sadness that doesn’t completely go away. But it’s tempered with happiness, because I’ve got you. We’ve got something that he and I never had—we talk, we share, we show our love to each other. Maybe he wanted to, but he couldn’t do those things. I know he loved me, and I know I loved him, but in a lot of ways, the depth just wasn’t there. He made up his mind about things, and that’s the way they were. He never asked, he just told me what I wanted, Spence. I had to follow him to Nebraska because he wanted to go.”

  “You’re following me to California.”

  “Maybe that’s the difference—I don’t want to be without you. I got used to being without Jesse.”

  The late afternoon sun haloed her brown hair with gold and lit those light brown eyes, filling him with pride, not only in her beauty, but her artlessness. Everything about her was the genuine article.

  “You’re always honest, aren’t you?” he said softly.

  She cocked her head at that, and the corners of her mouth lifted into a elfin smile. “Well, not quite always,” she murmured. “I told you to go when I didn’t want you to leave. When I told you to pack your clothes and take them with you on the rep track, I had to figure out some way to make you come back.”

  “Oh?” ‘

  “The morning you left, I told you I couldn’t get all your clothes ready, that you’d need to stop back by for them, but since I’d already ironed the shirts, I had to stick them in the washtub so they wouldn’t be done. I wasn’t going to chance never seeing you again.”

  “But you weren’t going to let me live there. You’d already told me I’d have to find another place to stay.”

  “That part of it wasn’t a lie. I just wanted you to have to come by for a visit. I thought maybe if you’d had time to clear your head some, you might rethink your proposal.”

  “As I recall it, it was you who turned me down,” he reminded her.

  “Well, there wasn’t any enthusiasm in it. You thought you were obliged to marry me, but you didn’t want to do it. If I didn’t mean anything to you, that proposal wasn’t worth anything to me either. I may be practical, but I’ve got my pride, Spence.”

  “I know. I must’ve heard the charity speech a dozen times.”

  “Some people take a while to learn.” Changing the subject abruptly, she noted, “We ought to be stopping before long, so I’ve got to figure out what I can fix that will have enough leftovers to feed Abby and her family.”

  “Food for six people isn’t leftovers, Laurie. It’s the whole meal.”

  “I know, but she’s got her pride, too. If she thought I’d made something up just for them, she wouldn’t want to take it, and those boys of hers are beginning to look kind of scrawny. Here she’s got a baby teething, another one on the way, and four more under the age of six. If I ever cross Matt Daniels’s path again, I’ll horsewhip him. Spence, that’s a baby a year!”

  “So much for your mother’s theory about nursing.”

  Ignoring that, she went on. “And day before yesterday, Jimmy tore a hole in his leg when he fell out of the wagon. He caught it on an old nail sticking out the side.”

  “Which one’s Jimmy?”

  “He’s four. I think you ought to take a look at it, Spence. She says it’s beginning to fester.” As he took on a pained expression, she shook her head. “I’m not asking you to practice medicine—I’m asking you to look. Maybe you can tell her what to do for it.”

  “That is practicing medicine.”

  “You’re a surgeon. I’m not asking you to cut it off. Besides, I told her you’d give her some advice when they come to supper.”

  He suppressed a groan. “I don’t mind feeding them, Laurie, but I’d rather not eat with six little heathens. I’m tired, and they’ll be crawling over everything,”

  “It’d be better if they weren’t all boys,” she conceded. “But there’s only five—it’ll be a couple of months before there’s six.”

  “They’re like a litter of mongrel puppies, fighting and yipping all the time.”

  “You don’t even know them. All you see is them running around when we make camp.”

  “Everywhere. If they were mine, I’d tie ‘em down.”

  “There’s no room in that supply wagon. How does ham and greens with bread and jam sound?”

  “Meager for nine people.”

  “Nine?”

  “I can eat at least enough for two.”

  “Well, there’s enough ham for that,” she said. “I’ll have to boil it before I fry it to get some of the salt out, and that’ll make it swell up some. You don’t mind, do you, Spence?”

  “I guess not. I just hope they don’t get Jessie tuned up for the night.”

  “They’re more apt to tucker her out. After I feed her, she’ll probably sleep like the dead until morning. And as cozy as it is back there, that’s not exactly a bad thing, is it?” A slow, seductive smile curved her mouth as she added huskily, “I’ll make the inconvenience of company up to you later.”

  “You’re shameless—you know that, don’t you?”

  “But you love me.”

  “Very much. Heart, body, and soul.”

  “She’s definitely going to sleep tonight,” Laurie said. “Even if I have to wool her around a little myself.”

  As Spence washed up after tending to the mules for the night, he heard the shrieks and laughter that told him the Daniels’ brood had found his wagon, and he wondered why the woman couldn’t make them behave. Every night, two of them ran wild in camp while their mother hid out in a supply wagon with no thought to anybody else, and the collective sympathy was shrinking daily.

  “Spence, you haven’t actually met Abby, have you?” Laura said as he came around the side of the Conestoga. “Mrs. Daniels, this is my husband, Spencer Hardin.”

  “Right pleased,” the woman murmured.

  He was stunned. While he’d seen her around, he hadn’t paid much attention, but she looked worse up close. The only real curve in her body was her big belly. Everything else just hung from her bony frame. And the thin, stringy hair didn’t help the overall gauntness at all. Her nose had obviously been broken more than once, and when she smiled, two front teeth were missing. She walked slowly, obviously with pain. She was a young woman made old by poverty, too many children, and a brutal, loutish husband.

  “Mrs. Daniels,”

  “She didn’t bring Jimmy, Spence.”

  “He wasn’t feelin’ up to it, bless his soul—said he wasn’t hungry,” the woman explained apologetically.

  “Maybe you ought to go take a look,” Laura told Spence.

  “Oh, no—he’ll be all right. He ain’t felt really good since his pa left. Maybe he’s missin’ him—I don’t know. But you know how kids is, always under the weather with something.”

  “Laura says he hurt his leg,”

  “He did. Fell out o’ the wagon day before yesterday mornin’. Got hisself cut up on a nail stickin’ out,”

  “What did you treat it with? Turpentine?”

  “Didn’t have nuthin’—we just tied it up t’ stop the bleedin’, that’s all. It ain’t the first time he’s hurt hisself, and it ain’t going t’ be the last. You get boys, you expect ‘em to get all scarred up, you know. If it ain’t him, it’s one of the others—always something.”

  “But you washed it?” Laura asked quickly.

  “I was goin’ to, but I wanted to keep the blood from gettin’ over ever’thing in the wagon, since most of it ain’t mine, so I just covered the hole. Washed it this mornin’, though, in the river, and it was festerin’ some, so I put a piece of pork over it. That’ll draw it out, you k
now.”

  “My husband’s a doctor, Abby.”

  “That so? Then I reckon he knows that’s about all t’ do for something like that.”

  “Spence—”

  The warning tone of his wife’s voice kept him from saying what he really thought. “It depends on how deep the wound is,” he explained diplomatically. “If he starts running a fever, or if the area feels hot and has red streaks, it could be serious. If it’s swollen or discolored, I’d be worried, too. There are several things that can happen to a puncture wound—tetanus, blood poisoning, gangrene, cholera, to name a few—and they’re all serious. You can wash with river water if you boil it, but otherwise with the dirt and animal dung in it, you’ll run the risk of introducing infectious material into the body.”

  “He ain’t drinkin’ it,” Abigail Daniels hastened to assure him. “We just been washin’ with it.”

  “Spence will look at Jimmy’s leg,” Laura volunteered.

  “Ain’t no need—it’s just a hole. And I ain’t got no money for a doctor, anyways.”

  “There’s no charge, Mrs. Daniels,” Spence found himself telling her. “When you go back after supper, I’ll send you some medicine to put on the wound, but it’s a little late now—there’s already been close to sixty hours for anything to incubate.”

  “It ain’t got that—it’s just a little pussy, that’s all.”

  “Anyway, I want you to wash the area thoroughly with boiled water as hot as he can stand it, then put two teaspoons of salt into a cup of hot water and make a compress with it. Keep it hot, and keep it on the wound at least half an hour, and it’ll help draw the pus out better than pork. And burn that piece of meat before you throw it out, or somebody’s dog’s apt to get sick from eating it.”

  “That hole’s just got to bust open, then it’ll heal,” the woman insisted.

  “Not if a deep infection is present. When you get back, I want you to light a lantern and hold it close enough to get a good look at the wound. If any of those conditions I mentioned—in dry gangrene, the area will be dark and without feeling, and the skin above it will be red; in the wet form, it will look the same, but there will be blisters on it, and it’ll stink to high heaven; in blood poisoning, there’ll be red streaks down the limb, and it will feel hot.”

  “What about the other two—cholera and that other thing you mentioned?”

  “Tetanus—you probably call it lockjaw. It’s too early to tell yet. I’d say if he develops a bad stomach ache with a fever within the next week, he’ll be coming down with typhoid or cholera. Lockjaw takes a little longer to manifest itself—usually about two weeks, sometimes more. He’ll have a stiff neck and jaw, fever, and joint pain, followed by an inability to talk, a drawing of the body backwards, and light will cause convulsions.”

  “Spence, you’re scaring her,” Laura protested.

  “I’m just telling her what she needs to look out for,”

  “Where did you learn all this stuff?” the woman asked, awed.

  “Medical school and the army.”

  “He graduated from one of the finest institutions in the country, Abby—and he was the best surgeon in the whole Confederate Army,” Laura told her proudly.

  “You don’t say,” Mrs. Daniels murmured, looking at him with new interest. “And we was all thinkin’ he was just a plain mister. I’ll have to tell it around.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t. I’m not practicing right now,” Spence declared flatly. “I’m giving myself time to discover if I want to do it anymore.”

  “He cut off thousands of legs, Abby, and he had one of the highest recovery rates recorded. He just got a little sick of it.” But as Laura explained the situation, she realized that he’d cracked the door a smidgeon. “Four years of seeing nothing but dead or broken bodies was hard for a man who cared. He sees all those dead men, but he forgets the thousands who went home alive because of him.”

  “Laura—”

  “Well, it’s the truth.”

  “Anyway,” he said, returning to the matter at hand, “if any of those conditions I mentioned exist, you’ll need to bring him over here so I can take a look at him. Do you want me to repeat the symptoms again?”

  “I understand what you said.”

  “Good.”

  “Jimmy’s going to be all right. He’s my sweet boy—makes me wish I had a dozen of him. Nate and Frankie’s the wild ones, you know. Jack’s too little to be much trouble, and the baby’s teething right now. I guess you could say I got my hands full. But I’m better off without Matt, I keep tellin’ myself. I just wish he hadn’t took hisself off with all the money, that’s all. It’s gettin’ hard to feed my boys.”

  “Mmm—you smell good,” he murmured, nuzzling Laura’s neck while his hands explored her body beneath the covers.

  “It’s that French perfume—when we’re doing this, I close my eyes and think I’m somewhere else instead of in a wagon.”

  “As long as you don’t think you’re with anyone else.” He found the hem of her nightgown and began easing it up. “Someday, Mrs. Hardin, we’re going to be enjoying ourselves in the finest hotel in San Francisco.”

  “I wouldn’t have anybody else, Spence.” Twining her arms around his neck, she pulled his head down for her kiss.

  “I’s got to find the doc! I’s got to find the doc! Ma says he’s over here somewheres, but I ain’t findin’ ‘im!”

  A child’s high-pitched, agitated voice penetrated the cocoon of intimacy, breaking its spell. “What the hell—?” Spence muttered. “It’s too late for a kid to be out”

  Pulling her nightgown down, Laura sat up. “You’re the only doc around, Spence. He’s got to be screaming for you.”

  “The hell he is.”

  Somebody stuck a head out of another wagon, cursing. “Get out of here, you goddammed little varmint—we ain’t got no doc!”

  “I gotta fetch ‘im! I just gotta! It’s Jimmy, and he’s taken bad!”

  “I’ll find your bag,” Laura murmured, rolling from the feather mattress. Calling through the hole in the gathered canvas, she shouted, “He’s in here! He’ll be right out!”

  Spence sat still for a moment, taking several deep breaths. He didn’t want to do this, he told himself. If the wound was making the boy sick, it was going to be bad, all right. He just didn’t want to face any more sickness and death.

  Holding his bag in one hand, Laura laid the other on his shoulder. “Spence, you’ve got to—you said you would.”

  “I don’t have to do anything, Laura! If it’s the wound, the stupid woman’s already killed him! What am I supposed to do?—sit there and watch a kid die?”

  “You told her—”

  “I know, but the way she was talking, it was nothing—she didn’t even care enough to clean it up! Now she wants me to make it right—and I’ll bet she never even put the carbolic acid I sent with her on it!”

  “It could be something else. You don’t know what she’s thinking now.”

  “She’s thinking I’ll fix him up!”

  “Spence—”

  The small boy crawled through the hole, sobbing. “My ma’s skeered, mister! Jimmy’s out of his head, and he ain’t feelin’ nuthin’! She’s a-cryin’, sayin’ he’s a-dyin’!”

  “Did she put the medicine my husband gave her on his leg?” Laura asked the child.

  “She couldn’t right away, ‘cause—”

  “I told you she didn’t,” Spence muttered.

  “‘Cause Billy was a-crying, mister! He’s yallerin’ his head off, too, ‘cause his teeth ain’t wantin’ to come in, an’ that sugar titty ain’t doin’ ‘im no good. Ma’s got to keep ‘im quiet, else folks is gonna turn ‘er out. But she just got around to gettin’ everything quiet, so’s she could help Jimmy.”

  “You’re Nate, aren’t you?” Laura asked gently. Pulling the scruffy kid onto her lap, she wrapped her arms around him. “It’s got to be hard bein’ the m
an of the family,” she added softly, soothing him. “Spence, where’s the horehound candy? Nate needs a piece to calm him down.”

  He felt as though the walls of a prison were closing in on him, that he was trapped. “I don’t know—under the seat, I think.” Heaving himself to his feet reluctantly, he reached for the leather bag. It seemed as though it had the weight of the world in it.

  “Ma ain’t got nobody else,” the child whispered, resting his head on Laura’s breast. “I gotta be strong, she says, ‘cause I’s the oldest one,”

  “How old are you, Nate?” she asked, leaning as far as she could to reach under the seat. Holding him with one arm, she managed to open the sack with the other. “I’ve got something little boys like right here. If you suck on it, it’ll make you feel better.”

  “I’s five.” As he popped a piece into his mouth, he looked up at her. “Kin I take some to m’ brothers?”

  “It’ll make it easier for her to keep them quiet, Spence,”

  “Yeah. Well, come on, Nate—you’ll have to show me where we’re going. And don’t give any candy to the baby, or he’s apt to choke.”

  As he walked across the dark and silent camp with Nate Daniels’s small hand in his, Spence almost wanted to cry himself. Five was too young for a kid to be bearing such a burden. Hell, he didn’t want to bear it himself.

  “What seems to be the matter with Jimmy?” he asked finally.

  “He cain’t feel nuthin’ in his leg—when Ma took the hot water to it, he didn’t cry or nuthin’. And the stuff you give ‘er for ‘im—she said it was supposed to burn, but it didn’t do nuthin’ to ‘im neither.”

  “I see.”

  “That’s bad, ain’t it?”

  “Well, it might be.”

  “He gets well, I’m givin’ ‘im this whole bag of candy,” Nate decided. “He’s always been a mite sickly long as I ‘member, but he ain’t a bad brother, mister.”

  “How old is he?”

  “He ain’t but four.”

  Laura had told him that, Spence recalled now. “Four,” he repeated.