A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1

by Linda Lael Miller

  “That’s why you were traveling to Flagstaff in this terrible weather,” Lark observed. “Gideon, I can’t tell you how foolish I think that is. What if you got lost along the way, or your horse went lame? You would die of exposure, that’s what.”

  “Tell me what I ought to do,” he said, visibly shouldering her gentle rebuke. He was Rowdy’s brother. Likely he was stubborn. He was also brave, and he’d stopped by the schoolhouse to look in on her when he might have gone on. “Snow’s deep. I could get a wagon down the hill all right, but back up, that would be another matter.”

  Lark was trying hard not to imagine the very same perils she’d described to Gideon happening to Rowdy—perhaps at that moment he was lost, or simply so paralyzed by the cold that he couldn’t sit his horse any longer. “Go to Mrs. Porter’s, Gideon. Tell her what the situation is, and bring back as many blankets as she has to spare. We’ll wrap Lydia up warm and you can take her back to the rooming house on your horse.”

  “What about you, Miss Morgan? You can’t stay here by yourself.”

  “I’ll be perfectly fine until you’ve gotten Lydia safely to Mrs. Porter’s. You can come back for me then, if you’re not too cold to ride.” She paused, looking up at this sturdy young man, little more than a boy, really.

  “You can find your way to the rooming house, can’t you, Gideon?”

  He pushed back his shoulders. “Of course I can,” he said.

  “Go, then. And Gideon—be careful.”

  Gideon hesitated, touched Lydia’s fevered head with a curiously gentle gesture. “Don’t you die, little girl,” he murmured, his eyes haunted. “Don’t you die.”

  And then he was gone.

  He returned twenty long minutes later, his arms full of folded quilts.

  Lydia had taken more water during his absence, but she was half-delirious and followed his movements with large, frightened eyes. Lark stripped the child to the skin while Gideon stood with his back turned, then wrapped Lydia in several of Mrs. Porter’s quilts, swaddling her like an infant.

  “Gideon is Marshal Rhodes’s brother,” Lark explained, when Lydia shrank from him. “He’s going to take you to Mrs. Porter’s house.”

  “I’m Pardner’s friend, too,” Gideon said, taking Lydia from Lark’s arms. “You know Pardner, don’t you?”

  CHAPTER 9

  ROWDY COULDN’T FEEL his feet—took it on trust that they were still at the end of his legs and in the stirrups where they belonged—and it was a fortunate thing he’d borrowed an old dray horse at the livery, instead of riding Paint. The nag was slower than cold honey in the bottom of a flat pan, but it plodded stolidly through the ever-deepening snow and seemed to know where the trail was, which was more than Rowdy could claim.

  He kept his hat brim pulled down low over his face and wore a bandanna to keep from getting frostbite, but the truth was, his clothes were suited more to Haven’s temperate climate than the high country.

  And he kept riding.

  Rounding a bend, he came on the buggy, little more than a distinctive shape in the stinging gloom, though the odd stray moonbeam got through somehow. The horse was still upright, and so was the rig, but that was about all Rowdy could discern, until he got closer.

  The doctor sat upright in the buggy seat, the reins still in his hands.

  And he was dead.

  Rowdy’s first thought was of the little girl back at the schoolhouse, though by now she was surely at Mrs. Porter’s with Lark, trying to worry her papa home safe. His second was that he was likely to end up in the same fix as the doctor if he didn’t find a way to keep warm till morning.

  He swore, got stiffly down from the livery-stable horse, and stomped his feet in the vain hope of getting his circulation going again. Just to be sure his original assessment was correct, and the doc was indeed dead, he tugged off one glove, using his teeth because his other hand was too stiff, and pressed his fingers to a pulse point in the man’s neck.

  Cold as a graveyard statue.

  Yep. Fairmont had gone to his Maker way too soon, and left his frozen carcass behind for good.

  Rowdy swore again. There was a lantern fixed to the front of the buggy, though it had long since gone out. Praying it had guttered when the wind picked up, instead of burning the kerosene down to fumes, he fumbled to examine it, got a match from his coat pocket and struck it, shielding it with an unsteady hand as he held the flame to the wick. The mingled scents of oil and sulfur stung the insides of his nostrils.

  The fire caught, and Rowdy was careful to shut the lantern again before letting out his breath in relief.

  In the light of that lantern, the doctor looked even more bizarre than he had in the relative gloom. He’d turned blue-gray, and icicles dangled from the brim of his eastern hat, and from his chin and ears and eyebrows, too.

  For the time being, Rowdy had no choice but to leave the man right where he was. There was no saving the doc. Rowdy had his own survival to manage, and that of the two horses.

  Recalling his pa’s taunts that he’d had a talent for starting fires on the railroad tracks, Rowdy pulled his glove back on, took the lantern by its handle, and examined the horse hitched to the front of the rig.

  It nickered at him, ice clinging to its shaggy hide.

  Rowdy freed it from the harness and waded into the snow, now nearly to his knees, looking for dead branches. The work warmed him a little, and he was encouraged by the fierce ache in his feet. His blood was moving again, anyhow.

  He laid the blaze right there in the road, and stood by it a while. The horses drew up close to each other, sharing their body heat.

  When he’d thawed out a little, Rowdy gathered more deadwood and fed it to the fire, but he knew it wouldn’t last. He’d been lucky up to now, but a good blast of wind would put out the flames, and he couldn’t search for more wood without going too far off the trail.

  He hadn’t even considered bringing Pardner along on this jaunt, but he surely wouldn’t have minded his company now—a good dog had kept more than one man alive in a blizzard.

  He paced, clapping his gloved hands. Wished he could lie down and sleep, right there in the middle of that old trail. The temptation wooed him, sweet and warm as a willing woman, but he knew if he gave in to it, he’d never get up off the ground again.

  So he kept pacing.

  Kept the fire going as long as he could.

  When it was finally quelled, there was no getting it going again.

  Rowdy wedged himself between the two horses, leaning against one or the other of them when his legs needed a rest, and waited for morning.

  * * *

  GIDEON WAS GONE for such a long time that Lark began to despair of him. Mrs. Porter’s house wasn’t far away, maybe three-quarters of a mile, but in this storm, it might as well have been in Kansas.

  Was he lost, with Lydia, blinded by the vicious fury of the snow?

  And what was happening to Rowdy? Had he found Dr. Fairmont?

  Or had they both perished?

  Lark paced, sat down, got up again and paced some more.

  And then Gideon returned, with a man’s coat for Lark to wear in lieu of her cloak, which was still damp with Lydia’s perspiration.

  “Mrs. Porter and that Chinese woman are in a fair tizzy,” Gideon reported, handing Lark the coat and opening the stove door to bank the fire. “Fixing to make soup from a bunch of dried weeds.” He paused, watching as Lark buttoned up the coat. “I’ll ride my horse up close to the steps, if you’re ready to go, and you can get on behind me.”

  Just as Lark had never drawn water from a well, she had never ridden a horse, either. She felt suddenly and woefully inadequate for life in Stone Creek, or anywhere beyond her parlor in Autry’s mansion, and even indulged in a brief, distracted regret that she’d ever left Denver.

  She’d had plenty of comforts there, and people to do for her.

  Water from a tap. Gas lights. A coal furnace. Hot drinks served to her by a maid whose name she couldn’t re
member.

  And she’d taken it all for granted.

  “Very well,” she told Gideon staunchly. “I’ll ride behind you.”

  The leap from the top of the steps onto the back of Gideon’s horse proved awkward, because of her long skirts. The cold stung her legs, even through her thick woolen stockings, and she covered them as best she could, clutching at Gideon’s coat with both hands when the horse moved forward with a sudden, slogging jolt.

  Lark buried her face between Gideon’s shoulder blades and prayed the ride to Mrs. Porter’s could be accomplished quickly.

  It wasn’t.

  The snow was so deep that the horse could only move through it by bunching its haunches and springing ahead in a crow-hopping motion that sent Lark’s stomach surging up her windpipe. Once, she nearly bit off her tongue.

  What seemed like an hour passed in this jostling fashion, before the lights of Mrs. Porter’s house came into view, faintly golden and snow-muted, like the flames flickering in the streetlamps.

  As he had done at the schoolhouse, Gideon rode up beside the back porch and waited while Lark dismounted. Her legs almost crumbled beneath her, and pain shot through the balls of her feet, but she managed to land without falling.

  “Best rest this horse awhile,” Gideon said, raising his voice to be heard over the low howl of the wind. Then he swung a leg over the animal’s neck and joined Lark on the little porch.

  The door opened behind Lark, and Mrs. Porter grabbed her by a handful of coat and hauled her over the threshold with surprising strength, considering her diminutive size.

  Gideon followed, after politely stomping the snow off his boots first. “I need one of those quilts for the horse,” he said. “A length of twine, too, if you have it.”

  Mrs. Porter gave him several quilts, plucked from the pile Lydia had been wrapped in, and Mai Lee provided the string. After adjusting his coat collar and pulling his hat down a little, he went out again, ostensibly to blanket the horse and secure the covering with twine.

  Lark’s attention was all for Lydia.

  The child lay on a cot set up in the middle of the kitchen, within the radius of blessed warmth from the cookstove, but not too close. Hon Sing, Mai Lee’s husband, sat beside her, straight-shouldered, unrolling a small length of embroidered silk on his lap.

  Lark drew closer, divesting herself of the borrowed coat, which Mrs. Porter hastened to take from her.

  “How is Lydia?” Lark asked, terrified of the answer.

  Needles, long and very fine, glimmered in the piece of silk Hon Sing was holding. His hands were poised gracefully over the sewing kit, if that was what it was, fingers spread, like those of a pianist preparing to play a concerto.

  “Bad sick,” Hon Sing said.

  Lark touched Lydia’s forehead and found it only slightly cooler than when they’d parted at the schoolhouse. The child’s skin felt dry now, but it was still very warm, and her eyes, though open, seemed glazed, even sightless.

  Lark glanced curiously at the needles.

  Hon Sing and Mai Lee exchanged a few quiet words in their own language. Then Mai Lee brought a chair from the table and urged Lark to sit in it.

  “Hon Sing doctor in China,” she said. “Give girl medicine. She not better.”

  Gideon returned and noticed the needles immediately.

  “What’s he mean to do with those?” he asked.

  “Some heathen thing,” Mrs. Porter fretted, pressing a cup of hot tea into Lark’s unfeeling hands and then hovering at a little distance, wringing her own.

  If Hon Sing had heard Mrs. Porter’s remark, he gave no sign of it. He took one of the needles carefully from the cloth case, examined it, looking pleased at the way it winked in the lamplight, and poked the sharp end into the top of his own wrist.

  Lark flinched, and felt Gideon, now standing near her chair, do the same.

  “Not hurt,” Hon Sing assured them.

  “Like hell,” Gideon argued.

  Hon Sing plucked the needle from his flesh and put it in another part of the case. Then he took Lydia’s hand and inserted the needle with a deft, skilled motion of his fingers.

  Lark gasped.

  Gideon yelped in protest.

  But Lydia didn’t make a sound.

  “Take that needle out of her right now,” Gideon commanded, and moved to intercede.

  Lark stopped him with a motion of her arm.

  Hon Sing gave Gideon a placid, measuring look, then proceeded to place another needle in Lydia’s opposite wrist. Soon, she was bristling with little silvery spines. After a few tense minutes had passed, she suddenly sighed, as though relieved of some burden that had been crushing her, and then her breathing, ragged and shallow before, began to deepen and slow.

  “Yes,” Hon Sing said quietly. “Breathe now.”

  Behind Lark, a little thump sounded. Mai Lee gasped, and Lark spun backward off her chair.

  Mrs. Porter lay in a heap on the floor.

  Before either Mai Lee or Lark could reach the poor woman, Gideon had hooked his hands under her arms from behind and hoisted her onto her feet.

  Dazed, Mrs. Porter blinked and sagged into the chair Lark placed behind her.

  “Needles,” the landlady explained, fluttery.

  No one spoke in response.

  Hon Sing remained where he was, watching over Lydia, occasionally moving a needle from one part of her anatomy to another.

  Lark was at once horrified and fascinated. She’d heard of strange Chinese healing practices, but she’d never actually witnessed anything like this.

  When Hon Sing ceased rearranging the needles and simply sat silently, with his hands resting on his thighs, Lark approached him. Tentatively extended her hand.

  Hon Sing looked at her face, smiled the barest semblance of a smile, and took another needle from the case.

  Lark stiffened, biting her lower lip, but when the tip of the needle penetrated the skin on top of her wrist, there was no painful prick. She stared, amazed, and slowly became aware of a pooling sensation surrounding the needle, rapidly coalescing into a heavy ache.

  Watching, Hon Sing nodded sagely, as though in response to some private question he’d seen no reason to voice aloud.

  Lark’s eyes widened with chagrin. To her, Hon Sing had always been Mai Lee’s husband, an odd, foreign little man who swept and fetched and carried for Jolene Bell at her saloon and slept in the bed under the main staircase in Mrs. Porter’s house.

  She would never have credited him with the wisdom he exuded now. In fact, she hadn’t seen him as anything more than a peripheral figure, moving like a shadow at the perimeters of her awareness.

  Shame burned in her cheeks, and she swallowed hard. What an ignorant, complacent dolt she’d been.

  Without speaking, Hon Sing removed the needle from Lark’s hand, and instantly the ache began to fade.

  And so did a lot of Lark’s assumptions about what was true.

  * * *

  THE SNOW HAD STOPPED a little before dawn, and the sky was clear, though it was still cold enough to turn a man’s breath solid in midair.

  The doc looked worse in the daylight than he had in the spooky glow of his road-lantern the night before—and that, Rowdy thought, was saying something. There was no hope of moving the buggy, even with two horses to draw, since it was mired above the wheel hubs in ice-crusted snow. Anyhow, what passed as a road was under at least eighteen hard-crusted inches of yesterday’s weather.

  Rowdy pried the corpse out of the buggy seat and carried it, bent double over his right shoulder like a rolled rug. He laid Dr. Fairmont’s remains over the back of his own borrowed horse, since he knew the animal to be of patient temperament, and secured the rigid body with rope.

  That done, he mounted the doc’s buggy horse and waited to see if the critter would buck. When it didn’t, Rowdy urged it in the direction of Stone Creek.

  With the snow so deep, it was slow traveling.

  He had to stop and rest the horses
every fifteen or twenty minutes, and he wished he had a blanket or something to cover the doc. It wasn’t that he minded looking at him, but it was an undignified way for a man to make his last ride, and Rowdy would have spared him that, spared the little girl, too, but there was no means of doing so.

  Having plenty of time to think, if not much else, Rowdy considered Mabel, the doctor’s wife. He’d met her the night before, when he stopped by to ask if her husband had returned from the Bennington place and pass on Lark’s message that she’d look after the child until morning. She was a piece of work, Mabel Fairmont was. She’d come to the door half-dressed and sloe-eyed and smelling of medicine—probably laudanum.

  The doctor wasn’t back, she’d said, with a whining note in her voice, and Lark could keep Lydia forever, as far as she was concerned. The kid was pesky, anyway. She’d asked if Rowdy wanted to come in and visit for a spell.

  He’d refused politely, said he had a long ride to make. Tipped his hat to her out of habit, not respect. It galled him to remember it, and he spat.

  What would become of Lydia, with her pa gone, and only that woman to offer solace?

  Rowdy’s throat ached at the prospect. The child would probably wind up in an orphanage, if she was that lucky. From what he’d seen of her stepmama, it was more likely she’d simply be left behind.

  He glanced back at the corpse, bouncing behind him on the second horse, for all that he’d tied the ropes down tight. “Not to speak ill of the dead,” he said aloud, “but you ought to have looked after your daughter a little better than you did.”

  That said, Rowdy turned his attention to the hard trail ahead, and his thoughts strayed, as they liked to do, to Lark Morgan.

  She would want to take the child in, he knew she would.

  But she was a schoolmarm, and on the run from somebody mean enough to spark fear in her eyes whenever her past was mentioned. She wasn’t in a position to raise a little girl, any more than he was.

  Rowdy frowned and pulled his hat down lower over his eyes.