by Lyn Cote
Pierre still didn’t recall anything of his life before the mine accident. How was that going to play out? Lon Mackey had kissed her and was now avoiding her. Why did Lon’s drawing away hurt her so?
In spite of these worries, Mercy had been able to sleep in her own bed last night, uninterrupted for the whole night—fatigue had simply overcome worry. Since Indigo didn’t have to work at the café this morning, she had kept watch over the three patients last night, allowing Mercy the night off. Indigo had returned a short time ago.
Indigo had told Mercy that every morning, Lon Mackey ate breakfast at the café and then left directly for the mine. Would Lon leave his gambling days behind? She scolded herself for thinking about a man who was fighting himself so hard, there clearly wasn’t room for anyone else in his life. She would do herself no favors harboring any illusions about Lon Mackey.
Not that she had room in her life for him, either, she reminded herself. She rose and walked to the window, gazing out at the majestic mountains surrounding the valley. The trees blazed with autumn colors—bronze, red, yellow and orange—and stood out against the evergreen trees on the slopes to the towering Rocky Mountains. It was a breathtaking vista and she often wondered how she had been allowed to settle here amidst this grandeur.
She stopped the rim of her cup at her lips. Curiosity halted her.
A man she didn’t recognize was limping with a crutch under his arm straight for the Dunfields’ house. His expression was intent.
Mercy turned and placed the cup on the tray where the remains of her breakfast had cooled. She scooped her hair into a tail, twisted it up and secured it at the nape of her neck with several bent hairpins. She donned her bonnet, picked up the tray and opened the door quietly so she wouldn’t disturb Indigo.
Who was this man and what did he want? And why did she expect bad news?
Mercy tapped on the door and entered as Ellen called, “Come in!”
Dressed in a mix of buckskin and plaid flannel, the stranger was standing by the cot where Pierre sat. The man swung around on his crutch to face her, his expression cautious. “You’re the woman docteur, n’est-ce pas?”
Refusing to give in to her concern, Mercy handed the tray to Ellen and offered her hand to the man. “I am Dr. Gabriel. And thee is…?”
He squinted at her and then replied, “I am Jacques Lévesque, Docteur. This is my bon ami, Pierre Gauthier. When I returned to town, I heard he couldn’t remember, and now I see for myself. He doesn’t recognize me—we who have known each other since we were children.”
Mercy looked to Pierre, who appeared puzzled. He should have started to regain his memory by now. Weeks had passed since his injury.
The door opened and a disheveled Indigo entered. “I woke and you were gone, Aunt Mercy.” At the sight of the stranger, she halted.
“You are Indigo?” Jacques asked. “Before the mine accident, Pierre and I worked together. He pointed you out to me. I am a friend of Pierre and of his family who lives north of here.”
Mercy stood very still, her clasped hands tight.
Indigo moved forward and greeted Jacques. He shook her hand, but kept looking at Pierre. “How can I help my friend, Docteur?”
Mercy was torn between concern for Indigo, her daughter, and concern for Pierre, her patient. She decided she must voice an idea she’d been considering, but had thought impossible. “You say you know Pierre’s family? Do you know where they are?”
“Oui, oui, I had heard that mon ami had been injured and had trouble with his memory, but I thought he would be well enough now. I am planning on leaving for home this morning and hoped that Pierre would come with me and finish healing there.” Jacques looked pained. “A few supply wagons are headed north. We can hitch a ride with the wagoners.”
Mercy took a deep breath. “I think, Mr. Lévesque, that thee should take Pierre home with thee.”
This forced a sound of wordless denial from Indigo.
Mercy moved to her daughter, her heart wrung with pity. “Indigo, seeing his family may jog Pierre’s memory. He should be starting to recall things by now.”
Indigo visibly struggled with tears and then nodded. “If it’s for his best.”
“It is.” Mercy put an arm around Indigo’s shoulders, trying to lend her daughter strength. “Jacques, Pierre can walk well enough and his fever broke yesterday. Take him home to his mother and we will pray that she will help restore his memory.”
Pierre rose from the bed and donned the hat and jacket that Ellen handed him. He thanked Ellen for her kindness and then paused beside Indigo. “I… You…” His expression tugged at Mercy’s heart as she ached for Indigo. “Take care, Indigo.” He touched her cheek and then the two men departed.
Indigo remained silent until the door closed behind the two. Then, weeping, she bent her head to Mercy’s shoulder. “I love him so.”
Mercy stroked Indigo’s back and murmured comforting sounds. Regret lodged in her throat, making further speech impossible. This falling in love was chancy at best. It came without warning and left one without recourse.
For a moment, she lost track of whether she was thinking of Indigo, or of herself.
A week later, Mercy stood at the front of the church. The ladies who had come to her first lesson on sanitary practices had returned—and brought friends for today’s lesson.
While she waited to begin her talk, she recalled the nights and days she’d spent in this building, treating the injured from the mine cave-in and avalanche. Digger was resting at the mining office while Lon ran the day-to-day operations of the mine with Athol.
Since Pierre’s departure, Indigo walked around in a daze of misery for which there was no cure. Would Pierre return and know Indigo again as he had before? Mercy ached for her child, but dwelling on what one couldn’t change helped no one. She tried to keep Indigo as busy as possible.
Standing straighter, Mercy began the topic for the day. “Ladies,” she announced, the quiet murmuring fading, “today I want to let thee know of something thee might not have heard of but which has been done for nearly seventy years now in Europe. It is called a vaccination, and it will protect thee and thy children from smallpox.”
“What’s a vaccination?” Ma Bailey asked, from the front row, back to her old pugnacious self.
Mercy couldn’t help but grin. “Very simply, a vaccination is dosing thyself with a very mild form of a disease so that if or when thy body comes in contact with a virulent form of the same disease, thy body can fight it off.”
“Is that possible?” Ellen asked, sounding hesitant.
“No, it isn’t!” a voice boomed as the doors at the back of the church burst open.
Mercy looked up, nearly groaning aloud with dismay. Dr. Drinkwater was bustling up the aisle toward her with a stern-looking man in his wake. She forced a smile. “Dr. Drinkwater, I see thee has come for another visit.”
He gave her a scathing glare and then rudely positioned himself right in front of her, facing her audience. He said, “You women shouldn’t be listening to this quack female. She’s filling your heads full of nonsense—”
“Why’re you so rude?” Ma Bailey demanded, leaping to her feet. “You walk in here and treat Dr. Mercy like a…like a slave or something. You’re no gentleman.”
Mercy stood straighter, stunned as much by Ma Bailey’s defense of her as by the man’s extreme nerve and bad manners.
The other women surged to their feet, and a clamor billowed through the church. The Boise doctor shouted to make himself heard and was ignored. The other man, who wore a large brass star on his chest, stayed to the side, silent but with an uneasy expression.
Cringing at the noisy argument, Mercy stepped around to Dr. Drinkwater’s side and raised her hands. “Ladies, please.”
The women, most red-faced and glaring, sat back down and pointedly gave their attention to Mercy. Mercy turned to Dr. Drinkwater, who looked as if he were about to have an apoplectic fit.
“Doctor, perha
ps it would be best if I proceed, and then we can discuss the merits of vaccinating against smallpox later.”
“We’d like to hear how to protect our children from smallpox,” Mrs. Willis said.
“No!” Dr. Drinkwater objected.
The women jumped to their feet again, scolding the doctor.
Mercy closed her eyes, praying for inspiration. She opened them. She would give this man one more chance to prove he wasn’t as foolish as his behavior branded him. “Dr. Drinkwater—” she began. The women fell silent again. “—why doesn’t thee have a seat and listen to what I have to say, and if thee wants to give thy—”
“I will do no such thing,” he snapped. “I told you I’d come back and stop you. I’ve brought the territorial sheriff with me—”
The rest of his words were drowned out by the general outcry. Fuming, Mercy pressed her lips together. This man was one of those unreasonable people her mother had always warned her about. “You can’t persuade an unreasonable person with reason,” she’d said. “Go to the real issue and stick to it.” Mercy raised a hand.
Instant silence.
She smiled, knowing that this would goad Dr. Drinkwater to reveal more of his foolhardiness. “Doctor, I am a qualified physician and will continue to practice medicine. Thee does not intimidate me.”
He leaned toward her, his face contorted with anger. “Does the sheriff intimidate you?”
Mercy looked to the other man, who had kept his distance and now appeared unhappy. Mercy decided to follow her mother’s advice and be done with this irritating man. “Did thee bring the sheriff to arrest me?”
The sheriff chewed the ends of his mustache.
Silence. Every eye was on the sheriff. Mercy decided to push one step further. She walked directly in front of the sheriff with her hands outstretched, wrists together, as if ready for manacles. Was this sheriff as determined as the doctor to make himself a public spectacle of folly?
“If I am doing something against the laws of the Idaho Territory,” Mercy stated calmly, “arrest me.”
The story of Mercy’s near arrest blazed through town within an hour. Lon was seething when he finally tracked down the obnoxious doctor and the territorial sheriff with the big brass star on his chest. The two of them were sitting at a table in the café, eating supper. “You!” Lon declared, advancing on them. “Foolish doctor! I should have blacked your eye the day you pushed Dr. Gabriel down. For two cents, I’d do it now.”
The sheriff looked up, his fork poised in midair.
Len switched his attention to him. “What do you mean coming to town and threatening to arrest our doctor?” Lon stood, glaring down at the man.
The sheriff merely gawked at Lon, but the doctor was fired up. “We didn’t arrest that blamed woman, though she should be put away where she can’t be a danger to others with her quackery!”
“You be quiet, you old goat,” piped up Ma Bailey, who’d been chatting with the café owner at the counter.
The doctor reared up from his chair. “Don’t badger me, woman. The females in this town obviously don’t know their place.”
Lon gave the man a disapproving look. Regardless of Ma Bailey’s foolish tongue, Lon didn’t want the confrontation to descend into a public free-for-all. And while he was at it, he had another complaint to air. “You’re the sheriff, right? What have you done to track down the man who stabbed me months ago?”
The sheriff put down his fork and rose. “You the gambler who got stabbed here?”
“No one else that I know of here has been stabbed,” Lon said in a mocking tone. “Have you arrested the man responsible?”
“Well, it’s a big territory—”
“If it’s so big, what’re you doing here?” Ma Bailey interjected, looking as if she were enjoying herself. “Is our woman doctor that big a problem?”
For once, Lon was forced to agree with the quarrelsome woman.
The sheriff frowned and looked at Lon, ignoring Ma. “I came to town to talk to you. I’ve got my deputies looking for him. And when we find him, we’ll arrest him and you can identify him and testify against him.”
Lon didn’t believe for a minute that the sheriff had come to town to see him. He settled his hands on his hips, still glaring at the man. “I think you two had better go back to Boise. I would think that by now you’d have realized that we’ve adjusted to having a lady doctor in town. And we don’t like interference from outsiders.”
“For a gambler,” the doctor said in a sneering tone, “you act like you’re a pillar of the community—”
“Oh, he’s not a gambler anymore,” Ma Bailey crowed, rosy with excitement and in her element. “He’s managing the mine and kissing the lady doctor. He’ll be a respectable husband before you know it!”
A moment of shocked and total silence held them all in place. Then chatter erupted, cascading over and around Lon.
Furious now, Lon stalked out the café door and headed straight for Mercy’s cabin. He rapped on the door and walked in before Mercy could even say “Come in.”
She looked up from her chair, startled. “Goodness, what is the matter?”
Lon struggled to contain his outrage. I shouldn’t have come here. This is the last place I should be. “Nothing’s wrong. I heard that the territorial sheriff tried to arrest you.”
She rose. “I told him to arrest me if I was breaking the law by practicing medicine. Of course I’m not, so the sheriff and the doctor left the church. And I went on with my talk about smallpox vaccinations. Lon, are thee all right?”
He wanted to say, “No, I’m not.” Instead, he clapped his aggravation tightly under control. “Why would you tell Ma Bailey we kissed?”
“I didn’t, of course. Does thee think I’ve taken leave of my senses?”
Now he burned with chagrin. Of course Mercy wouldn’t have revealed the kiss to anyone, least of all the town’s busybody. Why couldn’t he think straight when it came to Mercy Gabriel?
His irritation still molten, still flowing, he said, “Fine. Good. Great.” He turned toward the door and then said over his shoulder, “Tell Digger I won’t be working at the mine tomorrow. I’ve got to leave Idaho Bend. It’s time I finally got out of this town.”
With that, he marched out the door.
“Hey!” A hand shook Lon’s. “What’re you doin’ here? You forget to get up for our breakfast meetin’? Digger’s drinkin’ coffee at the café, waitin’ for you.”
It was Athol. Lon rolled on his back and stared up at the ceiling. He’d been bunking at the mining office, but last night he’d returned to the saloon. After working all day at the mine and gambling all night, he’d staggered here and collapsed, falling into an almost drugged sleep.
“I heard about you tellin’ that sheriff and the Boise doctor off. Still hasn’t got a lead on who stabbed you, huh? And that doctor has a nerve stickin’ his nose into our town’s business. Who does he think he is, tellin’ us who we can have doctorin’ us?” Athol asked. “My ma always said, ‘Keep your nose out of other people’s business and it won’t get snipped off.’”
Paying scant attention to Athol’s rant, Lon thought over last night. He had hated every moment of last night’s gambling. Why?
Mercy intruded into his thoughts unwelcomed. He might as well face the truth. He didn’t want to spend another night gambling. What he really needed to do was leave the town. But he didn’t want to leave Digger and the miners high and dry. At least that was what he told himself.
“Well, ya sick? Or you comin’?” Athol demanded.
“Isn’t Digger well enough to go back to work?” Lon hedged.
“Needs his new leg the lady doctor ordered from Tarver.”
“Okay, then,” Lon capitulated. He rose, shortened his morning routine and was soon walking beside Athol and smoothing back his hair as he donned his hat.
Athol squinted up at him. “Heard you kissed the Quaker.”
Lon waited for a rush of irritation at this, but instead
found himself amused to be discussing such things with Athol. “You did?”
“Yeah, and you know she’s the kind of woman who gets under a man’s skin.”
This keen observation startled Lon. “What do you mean?”
Shading his eyes, Athol looked to the clear sky directly above. “I’m not too good with words. But here’s the thing. Most women’re interested in doo-dads and furbelows and such. But the lady doctor’s a woman who cares about what a woman ought to care about—bein’ kind and doin’ good. That’s what my ma said I should look for in a wife.”
“Is that why you’re a bachelor, too?” Lon asked, grinning.
“Ain’t a bachelor, I’m a widower.”
Lon instantly felt bad for making a joke. But Athol smiled in reverie. “I been married twice. First wife was Merrillee and the second was Violet. Both of ’em cared about bein’ good to others.” Athol slanted a look up at Lon. “And good to me. If I were younger, gambler, I’d set my cap for the Quaker.”
“I’ll take that under advisement, Athol,” Lon said lightly, as if the man’s words hadn’t been like an acid wash to the heart.
“You’d be smart to do so,” he replied.
Deep in the November twilight, Lon approached the snug little cabin on the edge of town. He’d spent a long day at the mine, and it had been a good one except for his regret over the harsh words he had tossed at Mercy the day before.
Snowflakes floated down around him. Winter was coming and this morning on the way to the mine he had bought himself a wool coat. The change in the weather mimicked the change in his life. He had come to town a cheerful gambler, living by his wits. Now, nothing much was fun.
He walked more slowly, trying not to reach her door before he could come up with what he wanted to say to Mercy, how to apologize to her for his hasty, rude words.
The door opened and Mercy stood in the doorway. For a moment, he was transfixed. The candlelight behind her formed a halo around her slender, petite figure. He often forgot how dainty she was in body. Her spirit towered over most other people he’d ever met.
