by Janet Dailey
“No, Webb—”
He brutally cut across her protest. “Ask Virg Haskell to supper. He’ll appreciate the invitation more than I do.”
There was a kind of finality in the silence that followed. It was several more seconds before he heard her slow footsteps carrying her out of the room. He drank the rest of the whiskey in his glass in one burning swallow, but it deadened nothing.
As she dipped the damp cloth into the basin of water, Lilli cast a worried glance at the unconscious man in the bed. His face was unnaturally flushed and his skin was afire to the touch. Stefan mumbled in his native German tongue, fever carrying him to the point of delirium. She wrung out the cloth and pressed its wetness over his face, trying to cool him.
It had begun so innocently yesterday morning with a throbbing in his head, a stomachache, and diarrhea. Stefan had insisted on going out to the fields, overriding Lilli’s suggestion that perhaps he should rest. That night, he was so weak Lilli had had to help him into bed. In the night, this raging fever had claimed him.
Her hearing strained to catch sounds outside the shack. She thought she heard something, but it was so faint she wasn’t sure whether she had imagined it or not. She turned her head, glancing at the blond-haired woman by the stove, heating some broth so they could force some nourishment into Stefan.
“I think I can hear a buggy. Check and see if it’s the doctor, Helga,” Lilli urged the pregnant wife of Franz Kreuger.
“Of course.” Helga Kreuger left the stove and walked to the door to look outside.
Frightened by how rapidly Stefan’s condition had deteriorated overnight, Lilli had gone to their neighbor for help that morning. She hadn’t wanted to leave Stefan alone for even that short period of time, but she had to send someone for the doctor. Franz had ridden into town to fetch him, and Helga had left her children in the care of her oldest daughter and returned with Lilli to help however she could.
“It is Franz,” she confirmed. “The doctor is with him.”
“Thank God,” Lilli murmured and blinked at the tears to keep them at bay. This fever seemed to be shrinking Stefan right before her eyes, sinking in his cheeks and shriveling his gaunt body.
When the young doctor entered, he didn’t waste time with preliminaries and went straight to the bed. His eyes were already making their examination of the stricken man as he opened his black bag. He didn’t appear surprised by what he saw; rather, the straight line of his mouth seemed to indicate it was what he had expected.
Lilli was reluctant to leave the bedside, but Helga Kreuger took her by the shoulders and led her to the other side of the single room. She pushed a cup of broth into Lilli’s hands.
“You need your strength, too,” she insisted.
It was easier to accept it than make the effort to argue. Her hands encircled it as Lilli moved to the window. There were glass panes in it, virtually the only improvement they had made in the shanty. A film of dust coated the glass and blurred her view of the fallow field outside. A swirling wind ran across the dry ground, kicking up dust devils to spin and swoop in wild abandon. The air was so dry it sucked up any moisture it found.
Off to the side, Lilli could hear Franz Kreuger and his wife speaking to each other in low, unintelligible voices. Her mother had been this sick before she died—different symptoms, but there was still the smell of death. It was something Lilli couldn’t forget. Until this moment she had been too busy caring for Stefan to let her mind dwell on the possibility he could die. All her attention had been devoted to making him better; now her thoughts were turning to what would happen if he didn’t recover.
Her mind flashed to memories of her parents’ deaths, the grief and the anguish, the endless number of things that had to be done. If Stefan died, she’d have it all to do again—finding the money to pay for the coffin, arranging for his burial, and going through all his personal belongings. If he died—she’d be free to go to Webb.
The instant the thought leaped into her mind, Lilli was sickened by it. It was a terrible thing to be thinking at a time like this. She despised herself for it and stamped out the seed before it could grow by brutally reminding herself of her face in the mirror and the sobering fact that years had passed without Webb’s making a single attempt to see her. He was bound to have forgotten her long ago.
She lifted her gaze to the dust-laden sky. Her lips formed the silent words, “Stefan, forgive me.” There was a sound from the corner of the room where her husband lay, and Lilli turned to look at the erect figure tending him. She walked to the foot of the bed and searched the expressionless face of the physician.
“What is it, Doctor?” She asked for an answer that would rid her of these gnawing fears.
He seemed not to want to meet her probing eyes. “Where do you get your drinking water, Mrs. Reisner?” He swung a raking look over her, catching the signs of youth the sun hadn’t burned out. “You are his wife?” His patient was considerably older, although he’d learned that was hardly uncommon among some of these immigrant marriages.
Lilli nodded affirmatively to that question and answered the first. “We have a cistern outside.”
“Your husband has typhoid fever,” he announced grimly. “Which means your water supply has been contaminated. With the lack of rain we’ve had this year, it’s a situation that’s going to become more prevalent, I’m afraid. This isn’t the first case I’ve diagnosed.”
Typhoid fever. The words numbed her with their ominous portent. Vaguely she was aware of Franz Kreuger intervening and demanding that the doctor give Stefan something to make him better. Most of his reply was lost as she tried to come to grips with the news.
“... keep bathing him to bring the fever down and make sure he gets plenty of liquid,” the doctor instructed. “I have a couple other calls to make, but I’ll stop back here toward evening. We’ll see how he’s doing then.”
Lilli went through the motions of seeing the doctor to the door and thanking him for coming, but she seemed to be existing in a vacuum, devoid of any feelings or sensations. Nothing made any impression on her, not even the abrasive Franz Kreuger.
The Montana weather had been up to its old, cruel tricks. A big bruise had shown up in the sky and sent the smell of rain over the country. Rain fell in sheeting buckets for forty minutes and no more, but not everywhere, just in one small area where the headquarters of the Triple C Ranch were located. It turned the parched ground into a quagmire, which made it impossible for Webb to use the automobile to drive into town and shorten the trip.
Instead, he saddled an Appaloosa-marked bay to make the long ride. Not three miles from The Homestead, the grass was tinder-dry. The black clouds were already chasing across the sky, leaving as quickly as they had come, tormenting the dry earth with their fragrance of rain.
A dry wind was blasting the weathering buildings of Blue Moon with its burden of dust. There was a fine coating of it on everything. Few people were on the street, walking with their heads down and faces turned away from the wind. With his eyes slitted against the stinging dust, Webb noticed the motley funeral procession slowly making its way to the new cemetery on the grassy knoll just outside of town.
The long, dusty ride had left him with a dry mouth and throat. He turned his horse into the hitching rail in front of Sonny’s place and swung down, looping the reins around the post. When he went inside, he found the restaurant by day, bar by night nearly as deserted as the street. He took note of the occupants, recognizing Hobie Evans lounging against the bar. Pushing his hat to the back of his head, Webb sat down at one of the tables.
“Just coffee,” he told the dried-out girl who had made a move to come out from behind the bar to take his order. She looked to be from one of the homesteading families, working in town to supplement her family’s meager income. With this summer’s drought, more of the older children had been forced to seek jobs to help support their family. There had been a deluge of them at the ranch, willing to turn their hand to anything to make a few
pennies.
Hobie sauntered over to the table and pulled out a chair, turning it around to straddle it, not waiting for Webb to invite him to sit. He sipped the coffee cup in his hand and eyed Webb with a complacent look. “It’s been a long, dry summer,” he remarked.
Webb nodded and glanced briefly at the girl when she brought his coffee and set it on the table in front of him. She paused, her features drained of any expression “Want anything else?”
“What she means is”—Hobie leaned closer to murmur his explanation so it would go no farther than the table—“for two bits and the price of a shot, she’ll make that coffee stronger.”
The hypocrisy of the situation wasn’t lost on Webb. When the drylanders had come, they had been righteously opposed to the serving of alcoholic beverages in their midst, yet one of their daughters was willing to break the rules for a quarter.
“I’ll drink it as it is.” He refused the offer to have it laced with whiskey. The girl shrugged indifferently and wandered back to the bar.
“I’ll bet for a little more money a fella could buy more than a drink from her,” Hobie watched her leave. “If he didn’t mind gettin’ hung up on those skinny ribs. ‘Course, honyockers aren’t my cup of tea, but I didn’t know but what you might still have a taste for them.”
With a man like Hobie Evans, it was better to ignore his coarse and snide remarks. Any comment would wind up encouraging more of the same. Webb drank his coffee, hot and thickly black.
“I noticed a bunch of wagons leading toward the cemetery when I rode into town. Who’s getting buried?” He changed the subject.
Hobie shrugged. “Some honyocker. Some fever bug is laying ’em down right and left. More power to the fever, I say. Maybe we’ll finally get rid of some of those bastards. It should’ve happened a long time ago.”
“A fever?” An eyebrow lifted in a silent demand for a more specific answer.
“Yeah. The sawbones was in here earlier, trying to get a bite to eat, but some scrawny drylander dragged him away on a sick call.” A kind of grin lifted a comer of Hobie’s mouth. “The doc looked worn to a frazzle, said something about their water being contaminated. He’s wastin’ his time with the likes of them. If a hundred more of ’em died, it wouldn’t be too many to suit me.”
Webb lost his taste for the coffee and the company. He scraped the chair backward to stand and tossed a coin on the table to pay for the barely touched coffee. “Hobie, when you die, you’re going to be all alone. The sad part is—you won’t know it.”
Leaving the restaurant, he untied the reins and started to mount his horse; then he caught the sound of voices raised in song being carried by the wind, and paused. Snatches of the melody came to him, enough to recognize the mournful hymn “Rock of Ages.”
He wondered about the Reisner well, whether its water was contaminated, but it did no good to wonder. There was nothing he could do about it. He had no right to do anything about it. His boot went into the stirrup as he swung onto his horse and reined it away from the hitching rail to head for the depot.
The black shawl covering Lilli’s head was whipped by the gritty wind, but she didn’t bow her head as shovels of dirt began falling on Stefan’s coffin. People filed past her: friends, neighbors, all offering her their sympathy.
They seemed to expect her silence and the dullness of her eyes.
No one asked what she planned to do, but she had made her decisions. She was putting the farm up for sale. Franz Kreuger was going to harvest what wheat was in the fields on a share basis. After that, she was leaving. There was no more reason to stay, with Stefan gone. She didn’t even let herself think about Webb Calder, because that had been too long ago. It was dead, too, like Stefan.
22
When the doctor climbed out of his buggy, Webb noted the changes from an eager young doctor assuming his first practice to this overworked physician not getting to eat regularly or enough sleep. He was the only doctor for a hundred miles in any direction and the demands on him were constant. It showed in his prematurely grayed hair and eyes reddened from the lack of sleep.
“I’m sorry I had to call you out, Simon.” Webb prefaced his greeting with regret and led Dr. Simon Bardolph toward the bunkhouse. “I hope you aren’t as tired as you look.”
“Hell, I’m past the point of being tired.” Simon had ceased to be awed by the Calder name. “What happened?”
“Abe Garvey was stomped pretty bad by a rank horse in his roundup string. We brought him back here and did what we could for him, then sent for you,” Webb explained as he opened the bunkhouse door. “He appears to be bleeding inside.”
“I’ll take a look at him.” He entered the bunkhouse, his mind already running through the possibilities. A tired smile broke over his weary features when he recognized the blond-haired woman by the injured man’s bunk. “Ah, my favorite nurse. How are you, Ruth?”
“Fine.” Her glance skipped past him to Webb, then fell quickly away.
“You really should give up schoolteaching and come to work for me, Ruth.” Simon began his examination of the patient immediately, talking while he did so. “Lord knows, I could use the help.” He sensed her stiffness and the high tension that hovered just below her placid surface. The cause was easy to diagnose. Webb Calder. It had been obvious to Simon when she nursed Webb after that gunshot wound that she was hopelessly in love with him. Evidently the situation hadn’t changed. One look at the injured cowboy advised him that he would require her help—and her undivided attention.
“Webb, why don’t you clear out and leave us professionals to take care of him?” Simon suggested bluntly while the other half of his mind was practicing his profession on the patient. “And make sure there’s plenty of hot coffee. I’m going to need a gallon when I’m through here.”
There was a degree of hesitation before Webb conceded his presence wasn’t necessary. “I’ll be over in the cookshack.”
It was better than two hours later when Simon Bardolph entered the cookshack. Webb poured him a cup of coffee and had it sitting on the long table when he sat down. The doctor rubbed his face, as if trying to push out the tiredness.
“I’d say he has better than a good chance of pulling through” was his verdict. “Whoever set that broken leg did a good job.”
“Slim and Nate did that before they loaded him in the chuckwagon to bring him back to the ranch,” Webb said. “Grizzly has a steak burned for you.”
There was a pause, followed by a short, tired laugh. “I can’t remember when I ate last,” Simon declared.
“That’s what I thought.” Webb motioned to the bad-tempered cook to serve up the meal. “I heard there’s been a fever hitting the drylanders.” He was fishing for information about Lilli, whether he was willing to admit it or not.
“Typhoid.” When the plate was set before him, Simon picked up his knife and fork and began cutting into the meat with little surgical precision. “It’s been keeping me running from one end of the country to the other. I’ve tried to spread the word that everyone should boil their water before drinking it, but—” He shrugged to indicate the foolish lack of cooperation and simple laziness of some. “It’s the very young and the old I’m losing.” He chewed on a bite of steak. “I’d forgotten how good food tastes,” he said thickly, not waiting until he swallowed.
“We’ve got plenty of food, so don’t be shy about asking for seconds,” Webb offered.
“Don’t have the time.” Simon talked between mouthfuls. “I’ve got a maternity case waiting.”
“Oh?” The sound was a question.
“Your neighbor Franz Kreuger’s wife. She went into labor. If this baby follows the pattern of her others, I should arrive just in time to usher it into the world.” He sliced off another chunk of the charred meat. “To tell you the truth, I’m surprised Kreuger even sent for me.”
“Why’s that?”
“He thinks there was more I could have done to save his neighbor.” He shook his head. “The man
is irrational at times.”
“His neighbor. Which one was it?” Webb frowned.
“An old guy . . .” Simon wagged his fork in the air, searching for the name. “Richter . . . Richner . . . something like that.”
“Reisner. Stefan Reisner.” Webb supplied the name, surprised at how flat his voice sounded.
“That’s it.” Simon nodded and stabbed another piece of meat to pop into his mouth, eating with a haste he would have warned his patients against.
“What about his wife?” Everything inside him was still, waiting.
“What about her?” The doctor didn’t understand the question. “As far as I know, she’s fine, if that’s what you mean. But she was young and healthy, too.”
“When did this happen?” It had to have been recent, or Webb was sure he would have heard about it.
“Let’s see ... he must have died two, no—three weeks ago,” the doctor decided, then sent a curious look at Webb. “Why?”
Three weeks! Everything seemed to break loose inside him. Frustration mixed with anger that Lilli hadn’t attempted to let him know. It confused him, raked him with uncertainties. He pushed off the bench that paralleled the long table, unaware that he hadn’t answered the doctor’s question.
“Webb?” Simon sat up straighter, thoroughly confused by his behavior.
“I’ll see you later, Simon.” Webb threw the remark over his shoulder, not slackening his stride as he left the cookshack and brushing past Ruth as she was coming in.
Simon Bardolph continued to stare at the door long after it had closed, trying to puzzle it out. Ruth noticed his confusion. “Is something wrong?”
His glance flicked to her blankly; then he shook his head and turned back to his food. “I guess Webb just remembered he had to be someplace.”
“Why do you say that?” She glanced toward the door, remembering that Webb had been rather brisk, but she had thought it might be left over from their last meeting.
