Lady Lavender

by Lynna Banning

  Wash reached for another napkin-wrapped pancake. “I started to say no, but I’ve watched you for the last seven days and I’d guess you can do pretty much anything you set your mind to.”

  The oddest look came over her face, half questioning, half challenging. Instantly her expression altered. He’d give two dollars just to know what she was thinking.

  “Alors,” she said thoughtfully. “I am glad you think so.”

  “What do you call these pancake-things?” he asked quickly. “Sure taste good.”

  “They are called fromagettes. Little cheeses. You make a thin pancake and roll—” She bit off the words. He was staring at her mouth with a strange expression, as if he wanted to—

  Jeanne’s throat closed. He wanted to kiss her! Oh, yes, please yes. She wanted him to. She rested her eating hand in her lap and leaned toward him.

  “Jeanne,” he said, his voice low.

  “Oui?” She held her breath, waiting.

  “All I’ve thought about the past two days is you. Making love to you. And I don’t think—”

  She released a sigh. “Rooney said something very wise last night. He said, ‘Don’t think.’”

  Wash stood up suddenly and turned his back. “Tell Rooney to mind his own business.”

  She thought for a long minute. In the quiet she could hear the cry of a hawk soaring overhead, mingled with the murmur of wind in the treetops. Finally she rose and moved toward him, so close his ragged breathing was audible.

  She raised her hand, rested her palm against his back. “Perhaps we should not talk. Perhaps between us silence is enough.”

  He turned and she stepped into his arms. He kissed her until she grew dizzy, until the rasp of his breath against her temple made her weak with wanting. And then he set her away from him.

  “I have to get back to work,” he said, his voice rough. He began to gather up the picnic remains and the tablecloth and stuff them into the hamper.

  “Mon Dieu,” she said to fill the awkward silence. “For a large man you have a very small appetite.”

  For the rest of the day Wash drove himself and his Chinese crew, without mercy. The tough, wiry Celestials easily weathered the grinding hours spent hacking the brush and trees away from the planned rail bed. They smoothed it level, or as level as it could get considering the required angle of descent into the valley.

  Wash himself took down the three remaining fir trees on the sloping hillside. He didn’t have to help out, he just needed to work off the steam he’d built up trying to keep his hands off Jeanne.

  He leaned on his ax handle and watched the last evergreen tilt, then crack and smash onto the ground with a whump that made the earth tremble. Before he could shoulder his ax, the little figures in floppy blue pajamas were crawling over the felled tree, limbing it up like energetic ants. They cut it into six-foot lengths, split them and laid them crosswise on the cleared roadbed, flat side up. Wash counted the number of ties as he worked his way down the incline, figuring out how many iron rails would be needed to lay track the next day.

  The Chinese worked without stopping. Amazing men. He understood now why Sykes had hired them; when this line was completed, Sam and his boys would be sent to the Sierras as graders and powder-monkeys to blast tunnels into the rock.

  Late in the day he watched the crew lay track right up to the valley rim, and it was a sight to see. A flat car behind the rolling bunkhouse carried rails to within a hundred yards of the site, then the rails were loaded onto an iron-wheeled cart which was pushed to the end of the tracks. It took eight of the wiry men to hoist one length of iron clear of the cart and drop it in place, right side up. A second team swarmed over it, pounding spikes which fastened the rail to the split-wood tie underneath.

  At that point another crew took over and in a matter of seconds, more rails were carted up and dropped into place. Wash calculated three rails went down about every minute, a feat of unbelievable coordination and teamwork.

  At six o’clock the Chinese scampered up the incline to the bunkhouse car where the cook had supper waiting. Wash was tired; the old war injury to his hip was throbbing, but he didn’t want to go back to town just yet. He’d wait until he was sure Jeanne and her daughter had gone back to MacAllister’s bunkhouse; then he’d ride into town and eat supper. Mrs. Rose served up dinner around sundown.

  He spent the hour walking the length of the valley, double-checking the spiked joint bars that held the individual rails together, recalculating the gradient and figuring what would be required to lay track over curves less than twenty-four degrees as the railroad climbed out of the opposite end of the valley.

  He felt good about the railroad. Thirty-five dollars a month per man was a small price to pay for schools and churches, a telegraph office, maybe even a hospital. It would improve life for the whole county. Trained schoolteachers could come from Portland; homesteaders could haul their belongings to a farm five times faster on a train than in a wagon. Oranges could be shipped in to Smoke River before they got moldy! The railroad meant civilization in this rough, raw land and Wash liked being a part of it. It was, he had reflected often enough, lots better than killing men and blowing up bridges.

  But, in spite of his feelings of pride and accomplishment, this stretch of railroad didn’t bring the euphoria he usually felt at seeing a line take shape. Something was missing.

  Maybe it was coming back to Smoke River and facing all those memories of Laura. Maybe it was because of what he’d been through in the War. He rolled around in his mind all the possible sources of his vague dissatisfaction, but he took care to put Jeanne in a separate niche. She had nothing to do with his work. “Nothing,” he snorted. She had something to do with a man’s physical need for a woman, with his hunger for connection.

  But that was all.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jeanne stripped the hard green peas out of their pods with short, jerky motions. “That man,” she grumbled to Rooney, who sat across from her with a kettle full of the shelled vegetables. “I wish I did not like him so much!”

  Manette, crouched in a corner of the bunkhouse, poked her head up. “Who? Maman?”

  “Monsieur Halliday.” She aimed a handful of peas into the kettle cradled between Rooney’s knees. “He is forward, and then backward, and then…” She pressed her lips into a tight line.

  “I think he is a nice man, Maman.” Her daughter bent once more to peek under the bunkhouse. “I like him.”

  Rooney chuckled from his perch on an old log he’d rolled up to use as a chair and tossed his own handful of peas into the kettle.

  “He is a nice man, chou-chou.”

  Too nice. She ached for him to be bolder. More forward. With Wash she approached the edge of impropriety and she had never felt that way before—not even with Henri. But it appeared Wash did not feel the same.

  “Little Miss is right,” Rooney offered. “Wash is a good man.” He eyed her with a sly smile. “You don’t agree on that, Jeanne?”

  Absently Jeanne nibbled the end of her empty pea pod. “Oui, he is…good.” She wrinkled her nose at the sour taste and sailed it onto the battered cookie sheet near Rooney’s boots where the garbage was collecting.

  Rooney’s eyebrows rose. “Well, now, there’s ‘good’ and then there’s ‘good.’” Good as in steady and responsible, and good as in too danged polite sometimes.

  A short laugh burst out of her mouth. “This afternoon on our picnic, he was so well-behaved it made me angry!”

  “Glad to hear it,” Rooney quipped.

  She pinned him with a hard look. “Which are you glad to hear—that he behaved or that I was angry?”

  Rooney slid the cookie sheet to one side, leaned over, and patted her arm. “Like I said, Jeanne, he’s got some knots inside he has to work out.”

  “Ah, I understand, of course. But could he not…I mean, he might…”

  “No, ma’am, he’s not gonna. Not till he’s ready. Wash never does anything without thinkin’ it t
hrough two or three times. And, Jeanne, I gotta tell ya, when it comes to you, he’s probably already thought it over a dozen times.”

  “He is afraid of me, no?”

  “Not ’xactly.”

  Jeanne gathered up another handful of pea pods. “Well, what, exact—”

  A sharp cry sliced through the late afternoon air. Jeanne sprang to her feet, scattering shelled peas onto the ground.

  “Manette? Manette!”

  Rooney was already on his knees reaching one arm under the corner of the bunkhouse where Manette had been. He grasped one ankle and dragged the girl out on her belly; Jeanne flew to lift her upright.

  Manette began to scream. Two small puncture wounds showed on the girl’s forearm, and Rooney groaned. He got to his feet and whistled for his roan.

  “Are you hurt?” Jeanne cried. “What is it, chou-chou?”

  Rooney plucked the girl up and set her on his horse. “Snakebite,” he said as he mounted behind her. “Get yer horse, Jeanne. I’m takin’ her to the doctor in town. Gotta move fast.”

  Jeanne stood frozen with disbelief. One minute she was shelling peas on a peaceful afternoon, and the next her daughter was in danger.

  “Jeanne!” Rooney shouted at her. “Move!”

  He tore the blue bandanna from around his neck, fashioned a tourniquet on Manette’s upper arm and twisted it tight using a short twig. “Lie quiet, Little Miss. You’ll be better off if you don’t move around much.” He leaned sideways and peered down at the girl’s white face. “You hear me?”

  “Yes,” she whimpered, her voice choked with tears. “I hear you. My arm hurts!”

  “It’s gonna hurt for a little while, Missy. You just sit quiet and hold on to the pommel here.” He positioned both her small hands on the hard leather knob, wrapped his left arm around her waist and spurred the horse toward town.

  Jeanne ran for her gray mare, stood on the stump to clamber up onto the horse’s back and dug her heels into its flanks. The horse bolted forward into a cloud of Rooney’s dust. She put her head down alongside the mare’s neck and began to pray.

  She caught up with Rooney at the edge of town and followed him to the boardinghouse where he was staying. Jeanne reined to a stop right behind him.

  “Doc Graham lives here, too,” Rooney panted.

  She slid off the mare and lifted her arms for Manette. Rooney handed her down, dismounted and pounded up the porch stairs.

  “Sarah!” he yelled.

  A woman’s figure appeared behind the screen door and took one look. “In here,” she cried. She swung the door open. “I’ll get the doctor.”

  Rooney lifted Manette from Jeanne’s arms into his own. “Gotta climb the stairs,” he explained. “Too heavy for you.”

  Manette’s eyes drooped shut, opened, then closed again and her head lolled against Rooney’s chest. Her daughter’s face was flushed scarlet, her breathing too fast. Jeanne covered her mouth with both hands

  The woman called Sarah stood next to an open doorway on the second floor. “In here.” With Jeanne at his heels, Rooney charged into the room where a tall silver-haired man pointed to the single bed.

  “Rattlesnake,” Rooney barked as he laid Manette on the quilted coverlet.

  “How long ago?” the doctor asked.

  “Maybe twenty minutes.”

  The tall man swore under his breath, loosened the tourniquet and retightened it. “Gonna be close.” He bent forward with his shiny metal stethoscope.

  “Doc, this here’s the girl’s mama, Jeanne Nicolet.”

  The doctor glanced up. “The Lavender Lady? Heard a good deal about you, ma’am, but don’t have time to be sociable just now.”

  Jeanne’s vision started to dim. She bent at the waist, sucked in air and began to sob.

  Rooney laid his arm across her shoulders. “Try not to waste yer strength cryin’, Jeanne. Doc Graham’s the best doctor in the county.”

  She nodded, swiping the tears off her cheeks with shaking fingers.

  Sarah, the landlady, beckoned. “Come on, Miz Nicolet. You sit down here and I’ll be right back with some coffee.”

  Rooney steered Jeanne to a wing chair near the curtained window. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t talk. And she must not cry. It always upset Manette to hear her cry. Suddenly she wanted Wash, wanted his arms around her.

  Rooney seemed to read her thoughts. He tiptoed forward, peeked at Manette’s still form on the bed, then tramped over to Jeanne.

  “I’ll ride out to Green Valley and get Wash.”

  She gazed up at his sun-weathered face and the long-ish graying hair. Without a word she rose and pressed her lips to his cheek. In the next moment she heard his heavy boots clomp down the stairs.

  Wash heard the oncoming horse and instinctively reined up. Whoever it was sure had a burr under his saddle. When he recognized Rooney’s roan gelding, a boulder thunked into his belly. Something was wrong. Through all the years Rooney had scouted for him, he’d rarely driven a horse that hard.

  The roan made a wide circle around Wash and his mount, then pulled up short. “Got trouble,” the older man yelled over the panting of his horse. “Little Miss got bit by a rattler.”

  Wash frowned. “Where is she?”

  “Boardinghouse. Doc Graham’s tendin’ her.”

  Wash sent silent thanks for the hardy physicians who practiced their profession on the frontier.

  He lifted his reins. “Jeanne?”

  “With Manette, at the boardinghouse.”

  Wash spurred General so hard the gelding jumped sideways. He waited a split second for Rooney to catch up, then the two men set off for town at a full gallop.

  Rattlesnake! How the hell—? But he knew the answer. Probably tried to catch the damn thing. He gulped back a snort. Lord almighty, Jeanne must be frantic.

  He could not think beyond getting to her. He sucked in a determined breath and concentrated on guiding his horse’s pounding hooves around rocks and prairie-dog holes. Rooney rode at his shoulder.

  At the boardinghouse a young boy—Sarah’s grandson, Rooney explained—led their mounts off down the street to the stable. Wash paused to brush the trail dust off his trousers and shirtfront while Rooney mounted the porch steps and burst through the screen door. Wash was on his heels.

  Sarah hurried to meet them, pointed up the staircase and signaled for quiet. “She’s sleeping now. Doc says she’ll probably be all right, but of course poor Miz Nicolet can’t believe him.”

  Wash removed his hat. “Can we go up?” He found himself convulsively mashing the brim until Rooney reached over and lifted it out of his hands.

  Wash turned toward the staircase. All he could think of was reaching Jeanne, shielding her from the anguish she must be feeling.

  Sarah laid a hand on Rooney’s arm. “Doc Graham’s back is bothering him. Could one of you carry the girl?”

  “Sure,” both men replied in unison.

  Upstairs, Rooney tapped once on the doctor’s door and quietly pushed it open. Manette lay asleep on the single bed, her breathing labored. The doctor held her wrist, counting her pulse. Jeanne stood by the window, watching the wind in the maple trees outside. Her arms were wrapped tight across her midriff.

  “Jeanne.” She turned at his voice and Wash strode across the room. She gave a small cry and stumbled into his arms, laying her swollen face on his shoulder. He held her until her body stopped trembling.

  “Doc says she’ll probably be okay,” he whispered. Jeanne nodded but did not raise her head.

  Rooney zigzagged around the doctor and bent over Manette. At Doc Graham’s nod, he lifted the girl and started for the hallway.

  Wash slipped his arm around Jeanne’s shoulders and pivoted her toward the door. “Come on. Mrs. Rose has made sleeping arrangements for you. There’s an extra bed in Rooney’s room for you and Manette. Rooney can bunk in with me.”

  Dr. Graham held the door open. “Keep sponging her off, Mrs. Nicolet. It will help to keep the fever down.”<
br />
  “Yes, I will do that,” Jeanne murmured.

  Outside in the hallway, Wash spoke aloud. “Have you eaten?”

  “No,” she croaked. “I…could not.” She stumbled against him, then righted herself and let him help her into Rooney’s room. The older man gently laid Manette’s still form on the bed and covered her with the quilt he kept folded up at the bottom.

  Wash steered a wobbly Jeanne toward the other small bed.

  “Hold on a minute,” Rooney said. “Let’s you ’n me move the beds close together so Jeanne can watch over Little Miss without gettin’ up and down.”

  The men butted the beds together. Wash led Jeanne over to the unoccupied one, sat her down on the edge, and knelt so he could look into her face. “Jeanne, you have to keep up your strength. You have to eat.”

  She moved her head up and down in agreement, but she didn’t take her eyes off her daughter.

  Rooney signaled to Wash and the two men tiptoed out into the hallway. “Breaks yer heart, don’t it?” the older man said on a sigh.

  Wash’s throat was so tight he couldn’t answer.

  “How ’bout some supper? Sarah saved us some chicken and potato salad.”

  In answer Wash gripped Rooney’s thick shoulder and squeezed hard.

  He and Rooney finished off the leftover fried chicken and most of the potato salad. Wash drew the line at the strawberry shortcake, poured himself another cup of coffee and stepped into the kitchen, where Mrs. Rose was washing the last of the supper dishes.

  The landlady glanced up in surprise.

  “I just wanted to thank you, ma’am. Jeanne and her daughter are…well, you know, they’re both important to me. And Rooney,” he added quickly.

  Chapter Eighteen

  At the knock on her door, Jeanne looked up to see Wash step quietly into the room and move toward her with a china bowl of something in one hand and a spoon in the other. He glanced at Manette. “Any change?”

  She shook her head. He settled himself beside her on the extra bed and presented the bowl. “I want you to eat this.”