Always You

by Jill Gregory

  Melora had little time, however, to drink in the splendor of towering deep green spruces or to study the craggy granite peaks that loomed up beyond the farmhouse, appearing almost to touch the glowing sky, for they reached the farmhouse in a whirlwind of dust, and before her feet even touched the ground, Cal was grabbing her arm and sprinting with her toward the door.

  Inside the small square house all was clean and tidy, if somewhat cramped. There were cheery blue curtains at the windows, and a Navajo rug brightened the floor. She had a quick glimpse of blue fringed pillows on an old horsehair sofa, some straight-backed wooden chairs, and a hand-carved bench in the kitchen, which also held a woodstove and shelves stacked with dishes and utensils. But what Melora saw first and foremost was the open doorway leading to a small bedroom in back, and through the door she could see a little girl lying in a bed, with a small, thin boy of about five standing at the foot, and another girl, with pigtails, hollow cheeks, and somber eyes, perhaps nine years of age, hovering over her.

  “Cal, is that you?” The hollow-cheeked girl turned her face anxiously, her skin pale as cream in the sunlight.

  “It’s me, Cassie.” His boots pounded across the parlor. Jesse was right behind him. “Everything’s going to be all right. How is she?”

  “Her fever’s worse. I don’t know what to do!”

  Cassie threw her arms around Cal’s legs and wept as he reached the bedside and stared down at the child lying on the sweat-soaked pillow.

  Melora had followed Cal and Jesse to the doorway. From where she stood near the small yellow-painted bureau she could see how flushed and restless Louisa looked, tossing and turning in the bed, her pink-sprigged nightgown twisting beneath her.

  “Hi there, Lou.” She’d never heard his voice so gentle. “It’s me, Chipmunk, Cal. I’m home. I’m going to take good care of you now. Can you hear me, Louisa?”

  The little girl focused her glittery eyes on him as he knelt and grasped her tiny hand in his large, callused one. “C-Cal?”

  “Yep. In the flesh. And Jesse’s here too. We’re all here, and we’re all going to take care of you.”

  “Joe too?” Louisa whispered, her eyes very big.

  The older girl, Cassie, let out a whimper. Melora saw Cal’s shoulders tense and noticed that the thin little boy ducked his head to stare down at his shoes.

  “No, Louisa, not Joe.” Cal smoothed a damp, stringy tendril of hair back from the child’s brow. “Cal and Jesse, and Cassie and Will—we’re all here to help you get better.”

  “My head hurts, Cal. I feel so s-sick. I want Ma.” The child moaned and began to toss more vehemently.

  “I’ll sing to you, Lou, just like Ma used to. But lie still,” Cassie begged. And as Cal stepped back, she came forward and clutched her young sister’s clammy hand.

  “ ‘Jimmy crack corn, but I don’t care, Jimmy crack corn, but I don’t care...’ “

  Little Will joined her, singing lustily, and Melora, staring around the group, swallowed back a swell of emotion. They all were clearly devoted to Louisa and to one another. She felt the palpable love and caring settle over the tiny farmhouse like a tightly woven quilt, and it reminded her of home.

  Cal was watching Louisa, his knuckles clenched white, his face so grim her heart went out to him. She knew exactly how he felt, the anxiety, the helplessness. Hadn’t she experienced the same thing watching Jinx recover from falling off her horse, watching day after day as her sister’s legs remained still and stiff and useless?

  She turned and headed for the kitchen. Soup was simmering in a pot on the stove; she quickly scooped a bowl from the cupboard and ladled in a small amount of the broth.

  “Cal, here, take this.” She spoke quietly as she entered the back bedroom, moving slowly so as not to spill the soup. “Try to get her to drink some soup. It’ll help her fight the fever. And we’ll need to give her a decoction of willow bark. Jesse, can you find some for me?”

  “Who’s she?” Will asked, gaping at her.

  Cassie too was staring in astonishment. Obviously both of them had been so immersed in Louisa’s illness that they hadn’t even noticed her presence.

  “She’s a friend,” Cal answered quickly. “Jesse.” He addressed his brother. “Go find what she needs.”

  He took the bowl of soup from her hands as Jesse hurried out the door. Strain showed in Cal’s eyes, but they met hers with swift, unspoken gratitude that filled Melora with a strange warmth. It radiated from her temples to the tips of her toes as she watched Cal, the kidnapper who had borne her off so ruthlessly from her home, turn back toward the small freckle-faced girl in the bed and begin coaxing her to try the soup.

  But a short time later, even after Louisa had swallowed down the decoction of willow bark that Melora had steeped in hot water, the child was no better. Actually she was worse; the fever burned through her with fierce intensity. Her skin was flushed and clammy, and her eyes were wild—huge, dark, darting eyes like those of a puppy in pain. She thrashed about on the bed until Jesse and Cal had to hold her down to keep her from throwing herself to the floor.

  When at last she dropped off into an exhausted, fever-racked sleep, Cal stepped back from the bed, his face drawn.

  “I’m going to Deadwood to get a doctor.”

  Jesse grasped his arm. “Let me go, Cal. It’s too dangerous for you to be seen there. Someone might recognize you—”

  “No. If there’s no doctor in Deadwood, I’ll have to ride to Cherryville, or on to Stockton, or someplace even farther, and you don’t know your way around well enough. Besides, Jesse, those towns are too rough for a boy alone. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to take a chance on losing you too!”

  Jesse fell miserably silent at these words. Melora stared from one to the other of them. What did Cal mean about losing Jesse? He seemed to be saying he had lost someone else. Their mother perhaps? Or another brother?

  Joe. She remembered how shaken they’d all looked when Louisa had asked for Joe. He was the one Cal had mentioned last night during the storm, the one who played the fiddle at family barbecues.

  Cal was gone before Melora had time to do more than glance at his set face. The farmhouse felt oddly bereft without him, Rascal’s flying hooves leaving behind only a veil of dust that whirled up through the leaves of the spruces.

  She glanced around at the sad, silent faces in the little bedroom where Louisa lay ill and found herself shepherding everyone out into the parlor, even Jesse, who shook off her hand but followed close behind.

  “Everything is going to be just fine,” she told Cassie and Will as they paused beside the sofa. She made sure that her reassuring smile included Jesse, but the boy didn’t smile back. He merely hitched his thumbs in his pockets and watched her suspiciously, obviously the only member of the family besides Cal who knew that she wasn’t really a “friend,” that she wasn’t present in their home by her own free will.

  “Cal will bring a doctor for Louisa, one way or another, and she’s going to get better in no time. Now, in the meantime, let’s fix some tea and toast in case she wakes up and wants something to eat.”

  Five-year-old Will lifted hopeful, trusting green eyes toward her, and a pang speared through her heart. This is how Cal must have looked once as a young boy; he and Will shared the same thick chestnut hair, the same alert, dark-lashed green eyes that missed nothing and that were set beneath slashing brows. They also had similarly firm, sturdy features, she noted, and she also saw that Will’s young jawline already hinted at the same strength and stubbornness his brother possessed. As a matter of fact, the resemblance among all three brothers was strong, yet each had a distinctive look about him that was all his own.

  Will, for one, had dimples, two of them, that puckered his little cheeks as he smiled up at her.

  “Will, Cassie, come along.” Melora held out a hand to each of them and started toward the kitchen. “It’ll be suppertime soon. Maybe you both will help me get it started.”

  “I know how to
cook,” Cassie offered shyly. “Mrs. O’Malley from the farm down the road comes now and then and helps me put up supper, and she taught me how to bake lots of things.”

  “Did she? Well, that was very kind of her. Then you and I will fix supper together—two pairs of hands work much quicker than one.” She smiled. “When Cal gets back, he’s bound to be hungry from all that riding.”

  “He likes fried chicken,” Will informed her.

  Melora beamed at him. “Well, wait until he tastes my fried chicken. Jinx claims it’s the best in the whole Wyoming territory.”

  “Who’s Jinx?”

  “My little sister. She’s a little bigger than you, Cassie. She’s eleven, and her favorite Sunday supper is fried chicken and mashed potatoes, with blueberry cream pie for dessert. I don’t suppose anyone here likes blueberry cream pie?” she inquired innocently.

  Her grin spread as Will and Cassie clamored out, “We do!” in unison. She saw Jesse watching her from the parlor, his eyes hard and wary.

  He looked so much like Cal that she almost laughed.

  “Come on, Jesse. Help us.” She went to his side and spoke in a low tone. “We’ll leave the door to Louisa’s room partially open, just like it is now, so that we can hear her if she calls out, but she needs to sleep, and the children need to get their minds off their troubles.”

  “All right. But don’t try to get away. Cal left me in charge, and I’ll have my eye on you.” He said it with all the arrogant, insecure swagger of a fourteen-year-old, but beneath it Melora saw a worried boy trying very hard to be a man.

  “I’m going to be right under your nose in the kitchen,” she assured him. “For right now no one in this house is going anywhere.”

  He nodded, watching her as she hurried back to the kitchen and proceeded to delight Will and Cassie with her plans for a supper that sounded as enticing as a May Day picnic.

  So while Cassie showed her the larder, and Will sliced bread for toast and brought out the teakettle, Jesse went out back to catch some chickens.

  What am I doing here? Melora wondered presently, surrounded by the plucked chickens, a bowl of flour, a sack of potatoes, some carrots, and two cans of white beans. Cal is away, and this is the best chance I’ve ever had to escape. If I can’t figure out a way to ride out of here while Jesse’s back is turned, then I’m no self-respecting daughter of Craig Deane.

  But she didn’t want to sneak out. Not right now. She kept thinking about the sick little girl in the next room, whose fever was raging dangerously, and about these hungry little children, with their worried faces and trusting eyes.

  After I get supper going for them and check on Louisa, I’ll make my move. There’s plenty of time before Cal gets back. In the meantime perhaps I can find out exactly how to get to Deadwood from here. Then all I’ll have to do is make sure I don’t run straight into Cal while I’m heading there.

  But somehow, when the chickens were sizzling in the skillet and biscuits were browning in the oven, and she was stirring beans in a pot while Cassie sliced potatoes and carrots, with Will telling her soberly all about his pet rabbit, Brownie, who sometimes slept in his and Jesse’s room instead of in the barn, and Cassie confiding in her ear that she hated carrots but always tried to eat them so as to set a good example for Will and Lou, the opportunity never arose.

  Oh, she did succeed in learning the general direction of Deadwood from the farm, and Jesse did disappear into the barn to see to his chores, and she had a plain view of Sunflower, who’d been fed and brushed and was now tethered outside (saddleless, but that wouldn’t stop her). Yet just as she was stepping toward the door, reminding herself of Jinx and of the danger Wyatt might find himself in, just then Louisa cried out, and Melora whirled and ran into the bedroom, with Will and Cassie at her heels.

  Louisa was worse. Much worse, Melora saw at once, and fear sliced through her like a cold knife as she lifted the girl in her arms and felt her hot, dry skin. She was listless now, and aside from that one cry, she didn’t make a sound. Her eyes were glazed with a dull misery.

  “Quick, Cassie, bring cool wet cloths. We have to sponge her body and cool it.”

  But even as they sponged her face and neck and chest with the cool cloths, Louisa’s skin grew hotter. The fever raged behind her eyes. She was so still and limp that Melora’s heart quaked for her.

  “We have to plunge her into a bathtub of cool water,” she decided just as Jesse entered the room. She spun toward him, her hand pointing toward the door. “Bring a tub and fill it quickly. There’s no time to lose!”

  Louisa sobbed as they placed her in the cool water. She thrashed about and only quieted when Cassie sang to her again, this time a lullaby. Cassie had a beautiful voice, a voice that could charm frogs off a lily pad. Somehow the pigtailed nine-year-old with the serious manner of a much older girl managed to keep Louisa sitting in that tub long enough for the chill water to steep into her pores and do battle with the fire raging within.

  And then, after they had managed to settle her in her own bed again, encased in clean white linens, she seemed better. Wonderfully, miraculously better.

  “Her fever’s broken,” Melora whispered, her fingers lightly caressing the little girl’s sweating forehead. She sent up a prayer of thankfulness.

  “Who are you?” For the first time Louisa seemed able to focus on what was happening around her. She looked exhausted, she was damp with perspiration from the fever’s breaking, but she was calmer, and the unnatural glitter was gone from her eyes.

  “She’s Cal’s friend.” Cassie grinned and squeezed her sister’s hand. “I guess Cal’s finally got himself a girl.”

  “You’re Cal’s girl?” Louisa asked in awe, her eyes flitting eagerly over Melora as if memorizing every detail of her appearance.

  “Well, not exactly—”

  “Sure you are.” Will nodded vehemently and whistled through his teeth. “Cal wouldn’t have brought you here if you weren’t his girl,” he stated with complete confidence. “He always said when he gets himself a girl he wants to marry, he’ll bring her home to meet all of us and see if she passes muster.”

  “I don’t want to know if I do or not,” Melora said hastily, holding up a hand as Cassie seemed about to give her judgment. “Because I’m not—”

  “Cal’s coming with the doctor!” Jesse announced suddenly from the doorway, and they all turned to stare.

  At once they became aware of the hoofbeats drumming toward the farmhouse, and as Melora turned to the window, she saw Cal leading the way for a rickety wagon that plummeted over the uneven land.

  “You—come with me,” Jesse told her roughly, grabbing her arm before Melora could even tell him how much better Louisa was feeling.

  He dragged her out of the room and into the second bedroom, then stood there with his back to the door. “Don’t make a sound. Don’t let that doctor know you’re here, or I’ll—”

  His voice trailed off. He obviously wasn’t sure what he would do to silence her. Melora almost pitied him.

  But then she remembered her own little sister. Now that Louisa appeared to be out of danger, she had to think of Jinx.

  “I won’t say a word,” she promised, but her fingers were crossed behind her back.

  She and Jesse stared at each other as they heard Cal and the doctor come in, heard the children explaining about the bathtub and about how the fever seemed to have broken.

  Suddenly Melora dashed toward the door, shouting, “Help! Doctor, help me. I’m being kept—”

  Jesse dived at her, trying to cover her mouth with his hands. She bit him and screamed “Help” again. But the boy was game, as game as Cal, she soon found out, for he suddenly pushed her into a closet and slammed the door.

  Her shouts were muffled.

  “Who’s that?” Dr. Wright’s beetle brows drew together as he straightened up from his patient.

  “Just my wife, Doctor.” Cal spoke calmly, ignoring the amazed stares of his younger siblings. “She’s upse
t because she wants permission to come in here and tend to Louisa herself. But I’m keeping her away. You see, we just found out she’s expecting a child, and she’s been feeling a bit under the weather. The last thing I need is for her to come down with this fever, so you go on and tend to Lou, and don’t pay my wife any heed.”

  As Dr. Wright bent over his patient again, Cal sent Cassie and Will a warning glance that kept them silent in the face of his bald-faced lies. He staunchly ignored the faint sounds of Melora’s fury as he watched the doctor examine Lou.

  In the other room Jesse would not budge from the door. Melora, seeing that her cries were being ignored and that she couldn’t push the door open, slumped down in the darkness and sat on the closet floor with gritted teeth, waiting.

  At last Dr. Wright left. He pronounced that the child’s fever had indeed broken, that she should get plenty of rest and take in as much soup as she could to keep her strength up.

  Only when his buggy had disappeared over a rise did Jesse let Melora out of her makeshift jail. Cal was there when she stepped out, her eyes blinking dazedly in the light.

  “Go away,” she said dully. “I don’t want to talk to you. Either of you.”

  “I had to do it,” Jesse muttered to Cal in explanation. “She was going to tell the doctor that you’ d—”

  “I know.” Cal cut him off as Cassie and Will appeared in the doorway, all ears. “Hey, you two, don’t you have chores to do around here?”

  “We want to know why your girl was yelling and why Jesse locked her up in the closet,” Will piped up. Cassie nodded agreement, her hands clenched on her brother’s shoulders. She looked worried.

  “Go ahead, Cal. You too, Jesse.” Melora’s bitter gaze shifted from one to the other of them. “Why don’t you explain?”

  “Reckon I will. When the time is right.” Cal went to Cassie and Will, hunkered down on one knee, and pulled them into the circle of his arms. They snuggled eagerly against him, lifting trusting faces.