My Heart Belongs in Ruby City, Idaho

by Susanne Dietze

  “I don’t want a—I need your help.”

  He took the razor to Jeroboam’s face. “I ain’t a doctor.”

  “Neither am I, but the two of us are the only people in town with a measure of experience with a needle, and Dottie Smalls has been shot clean through.”

  She expected him to argue, but with brisk clarity, he dropped the razor and grabbed a leather bag. “Dottie Smalls, you say?”

  “Tad and I found her on the road to Silver City.” She followed Mr. Wilkie outside.

  “On the way to your dee-vorce?” Jeroboam stood and toweled shaving cream from his half-shaved face.

  “It’s not a div—Jeroboam, help Mr. Wilkie carry Dottie inside, please.”

  Wilkie eyed her. “First we ought to know where we’re taking her.”

  “Not here?”

  “I sleep on a cot behind the shop. I don’t have room for patients.”

  Where did they take injured folks before she arrived? And why was everyone looking at her as if she held all the answers? She squared her shoulders. “The Idaho Hotel.”

  “Full up.” Ulysses inclined his head down the street. “I say the livery. Dottie can lie down in a clean stall, until you figure out what to do with her.”

  At least Uncle Giff would be a help and support. Rebecca nodded.

  Jeroboam leapt into the wagon and drove it the short distance to the livery. Uncle Giff stood outside with the animals in the paddock, as did Johnny, with Cornelia’s father, Eb Cook, on the other side of the fencing. “Becky? What’re you doing back? Where’s Tad?”

  “He ran on to Silver City to fetch the sheriff and a posse.” She pointed to the back of the wagon. “We found Dottie Smalls in the road. She’s been shot by the Gang of Four. We have nowhere else to take her, Uncle Giff.”

  “Say no more. Take her to my room.” He led the way while Johnny lifted Dottie from the wagon.

  Rebecca followed into the livery, through a door by the office into a small but tidy kitchen, past a parlor with two chairs and a short sofa, into the small bedchamber where she’d stitched up Tad three weeks ago. Johnny set Dottie on the bed, and Wilkie began to cut away the back of Dottie’s dress. Rebecca tugged the bloodstained fabric away and he probed the wound, front and back, with Dottie moaning on her side. “Yep, bullet went clean through.”

  He always seemed surprised when Rebecca was correct. She dunked a washrag in the basin and squeezed out the water with too much force.

  Suddenly, Uncle Giff’s room was crowded with men: Eb Cook, Jeroboam, and Ulysses. Eb thumped Rebecca’s shoulder. “I’ll tell Orr. He’ll want to grab a few men to meet up with the deputy.”

  Jeroboam lifted a finger. “I’ll go, too. I’ll make sure the deputy don’t get shot again, ma’am.”

  “Who’ll watch the jail if you and Mr. Orr are both on posse?” Rebecca looked up from washing the wound.

  “I will,” Ulysses volunteered. “How hard can it be, takin’ a nap and makin’ sure nobody escapes? They’re locked in. Say, there’s a free supper for me, when Mrs. Croft brings food to the felons, isn’t there? I sure hope it’s a meat loaf sandwich.”

  Johnny patted her back as he passed to the door. “I’ll go, too.”

  “No.” The word ripped from Rebecca’s throat. He knew what it was like when Pa—

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.” Johnny kissed her forehead and dashed off, leaving her with a bloody rag in one hand while the other reached for him.

  “Before I make myself comfortable at the jail, I’ll tell Theodore the news,” Ulysses said, raising his eyebrows. “This might not go over well, Dottie Smalls bein’ here and you returnin’ without the judge, and all.”

  Theodore was the least of Rebecca’s worries right now. Johnny, Tad—facing those armed villains…the thought made her skin go cold and her stomach go sour.

  “Everybody out, now,” Wilkie ordered, but someone else pushed inside. Cornelia panted from exertion, her hand on the too-large neck of her cast-off pink gingham dress.

  “I saw you at Wilkie’s from the window, and somebody said it’s Dottie and she’d been shot.” She waited for Rebecca’s nod, and her eyes went round. “What can I do to help?”

  “Do you faint at blood?” Mr. Wilkie’s brow rose.

  “Where do you think that chicken dinner my mother fed you last Sunday came from?” Cornelia’s arms folded. “If you don’t need help, just say so, but Rebecca’s taught me a few things, and I’m offering my hands to you.”

  Mr. Wilkie shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  Smiling, Rebecca handed her the washrag. Cornelia was not the same person she was a month ago when Rebecca arrived. Offering to help, putting others first, why, she’d grown up, indeed. “You can cleanse the area so I can help Mr. Wilkie. Gently, now.”

  Cornelia nodded and set to work.

  “It hurts,” Dottie wailed.

  “It should,” Mr. Wilkie agreed. “We’ll fix you up, though.”

  They’d give it a good try, at least. Rebecca had never sewed an artery or vein. Had Mr. Wilkie?

  While he washed his hands, she began unpacking his bag—bottles, bandages, and a complement of instruments. It appeared that he had a full medical kit, but the tools meant nothing if Mr. Wilkie didn’t know how to use them properly. This town needed a real doctor. Maybe she should have driven the wagon to Silver City, instead, in hopes that the doctor was back from the mines, but she’d have been afraid to take that chance. At least here, she had Mr. Wilkie, if he was as competent as folks said he was.

  “Hurry,” Dottie begged.

  Mr. Wilkie offered a bottle to Rebecca. “Ever use chloroform?”

  “I’ve seen it, but no, I never used it personally.”

  He formed a cone out of a square of cotton. “Hold it over her mouth and nose, like this, and add a drop when I say so, but don’t breathe it, you hear?”

  “I have no desire to swoon on you, Mr. Wilkie.”

  He smirked. “Then let’s begin. Go ahead. One drop.”

  Rebecca took a deep breath, held it, and willed her hands not to shake when she removed the stopper. Gently, she tipped the bottle over the cotton cone.

  Had it worked? Rebecca let out her breath, and then Dottie’s eyes fluttered closed. Mr. Wilkie nodded. “Miss Rice, stand ready with the sponge. Gifford, you out there?”

  Uncle Giff popped his head back in the door. “Right here.”

  “I need you and Corny to get lamps and stand here and here”—he indicated. Before they returned, he set to work on Dottie’s back. Rebecca watched his work and dropped the chloroform into the cotton cone at regular intervals, while Uncle Giff and Corny held still, keeping the lamps steady. In their illumination, she could watch his precise motions, his nimble hands, his tidy stitches.

  Rebecca glanced up at him. “You’ve handled gunshot wounds before. The war?”

  He tied off a stitch. “Hundreds of boys in a field hospital in Virginia. Not what I’d expected when I went into medical school, of course.”

  Medical school? “If you’re a doctor, why do you keep telling folks you’re not?”

  “I’m a barber, but I can’t ignore folks who need a tooth pulled now and again, can I?”

  “You ignored Mrs. Horner’s cough,” she said before she could stop herself.

  “I kept an eye out, even if she never knew it.” He looked up to wink at her. “Don’t let Dottie wake up, now.”

  “Of course.” She added another drop of the chloroform.

  They all fell silent while Mr. Wilkie—Doctor Wilkie—worked. Rebecca used the time between drops of chloroform to pray for Dottie, Johnny, and for Tad, too—oh, that their last conversation hadn’t been an argument. Lord, keep them safe. Guide them, so this ordeal would end.

  She couldn’t lose her brother out on a posse. Nor could she bear losing Tad, even if she was supposed to marry Theodore.

  Her hands fisted, and the opal ring bit into her palm like a bite.

  She flinched. She’d forgo
tten she was still wearing Tad’s ring.

  The other members of the posse kept watch while Tad dismounted and splayed his fingers beside the horseshoe tracks. Most of the men the sheriff recruited from Silver City were strangers to him, but his friends from Ruby City like Orr and Jeroboam had met them at the spot of the accident and joined the search, making their numbers a full dozen men ready to bring the Gang of Four to justice.

  He hadn’t been happy to see Johnny and his eager grin, though. The fellow had a good seat and sharp eye, but Rebecca must be beside herself with her brother out on a posse like the one that claimed their pa.

  God help her, and help me find what we need.

  They’d followed the Gang’s tracks off the road from the site of Dottie’s shooting, but the Gang had gotten smart and ridden through brush, hiding most of their tracks. Tad had managed to find enough to follow, however, leading them on a crazy, twisted path.

  One of the Silver City men shifted in his saddle. “You sure he’s the best tracker you got?”

  “He’s the best in Owyhee County, unless you’re making that claim.” Sheriff Adkins, a man of middle years with a sun-weathered face and a black mustache, dismounted and crouched beside Tad.

  “I am not a gifted tracker, and you know it.” Tad kept his voice down.

  “You’re better than him, or he wouldn’t still be on his horse.” The sheriff gestured with his thumb. “Single file riders always got something to hide.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking, too. The tracks are fresh, and it’s impossible to guess their number, although one shoe is broken, and then there are these prints, drifting off to the side now and again.” Tad gestured at a stray track of a horseshoe. “It could be Dottie’s horse, tethered on a lead.”

  “That’s why you’re my deputy.” Sheriff Adkins clapped Tad’s shoulder and rose. “Fellas, I’m confident we’re on their heels.”

  Someone cheered, but Tad wouldn’t rejoice until the Gang was behind bars in the Ruby City jail. Tad mounted the horse he’d borrowed from the Silver City livery, a fine gelding, but not as responsive as Solomon.

  Jeroboam rode up beside him. “You think they’ve got a hideout in an abandoned mine?”

  Tad nodded. “It’d be a good, quiet spot where most folks wouldn’t look.”

  “They’re in for a surprise when we catch up to them.” One of the Silver City fellows trotted ahead of Tad, almost obscuring the Gang’s tracks. “Armed robbery, shootin’ an officer of the law, and now horse thievin’ and attempted murder of an innocent gal? Plenty of folks wouldn’t hesitate to shoot first, ask questions later.”

  “That won’t be us.” Tad lifted his voice. “We’ll bring them in for trial so they can account for all of the hurts they’ve caused.”

  Rebecca’s face loomed in the forefront of his thoughts. She deserved justice for what the Gang had done to her. Taking her things. Trying to touch her. Tad’s molars ground together. If she hadn’t had that paper knife handy—

  “Get a gander at that cloud.” Johnny’s voice made Tad twist in the saddle.

  It was a dark beast of a thing, threatening a storm. If it came this way, they might have to turn back. He kept his gaze on the tracks, harder to make out now that the soil turned rockier. While he focused, his brain turned over the day’s events. Finding Dottie was a shock, but the greater jolt to his system came when he stood close enough to kiss Rebecca, wanting to, seeing in her eyes that she wasn’t indifferent to him in the least.

  And then she’d gone and chosen Theodore.

  Not that she’d had a reason not to. To her the only other alternative to marrying his cousin was starvation and banishment from Ruby City. Didn’t she understand how many people cared for her?

  Tad certainly did, although his feelings were complicated by an attraction that wouldn’t go anywhere. There were too many problems between them, aside from Theodore. She didn’t want a man like him, for one. Not only was he a deputy, but he was also taking a risk and starting a ranch, and Rebecca wasn’t much on anything that wasn’t guaranteed. Like Theodore.

  Johnny trotted up alongside, careful not to ride ahead of Tad. His sheriff father had taught him well. “I’ve been thinking, Deputy.”

  About Rebecca and what she must be enduring right now with them out on a posse? Or was he concerned with his sister’s honor? Tad had married her less than an hour after seeing her face, after all. It seemed like the sort of thing a brother might take umbrage with.

  He was ready. “It’s Tad.”

  Johnny nodded. “She had baggage with her, right?”

  Tad blinked before he realized this wasn’t about Rebecca at all. “Dottie? Yes, a valise.”

  “What was she doing out here by herself on a horse? A gal with luggage like that should’ve taken the stage.”

  Or caught a ride on a cargo wagon. “I’ve been thinking about that, too.”

  “Another thing doesn’t make sense.” Johnny’s tone drew Tad’s gaze around. “Why’d the Gang shoot Dottie in the back? You think they wanted the horse that badly?”

  “Seems we’re thinking the same thoughts today.” Shooting a woman in the back while she fled was extreme, even for the Gang. Something wasn’t right here.

  The hairs on his arms rose. Then thunder rolled across the sky, east to west, reverberating through his bones. Beneath him, the blood gelding shifted, uncomfortable.

  “Storm’s comin’ this way,” Jeroboam hollered. Surely even the Gang could hear him.

  The first drops pelted his Stetson Boss in soft pats, but then the skies parted and a torrent of rain doused the land and turned the earth to muck.

  “Time to turn back,” Sheriff Adkins urged.

  Tad waved them off. His eye fixed on one of the broken horseshoe tracks in the dirt. They were so close—

  “Come on, Deputy.” Jeroboam trotted up, splattering mud. “Them womenfolk o’ yours will be worrying even more about you now that we’ve got ourselves a gully washer.”

  “I don’t have womenfolk,” Tad protested. Not Rebecca and certainly not Dottie. What he did have was a heap of trouble. Tad didn’t look up from the broken horseshoe print. It filled with water and then disappeared as a rivulet of rainwater washed it away.

  Reluctantly, Tad turned the horse around. It was time to go home, empty-handed, empty-hearted.

  After a long afternoon watching a sleeping Dottie, Rebecca returned to the boardinghouse to change clothes and to return Tad’s opal ring to the dresser, where it winked at her alongside Ulysses’s jasper. She scooped up spools of patriotic ribbon, needle and thread, so she could work on rosettes for Theodore to sell on Independence Day, packing them alongside a few toiletries in the wrapping paper she’d saved from her first night in Ruby City, when Theodore gave her the hairbrush and tooth powder to replace what had been stolen from her.

  Mrs. Horner waited at the foot of the stairs. “I’ll be along after supper to spend the night with you. Don’t protest, dearie. It’s not proper for you to sleep at a man’s house, no matter that he’s your father-in-law and he’ll be bunking in the hayloft.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’m tending a patient.”

  “People will judge and talk, though. They always do.” Mrs. Horner glanced at Rebecca’s tiny bundle. “Can I bring anything else for you?”

  Rebecca’s shoulders slumped in fatigue. “Just pray for the posse. The last time Tad went out, he got himself shot.”

  “First of all, Tad didn’t get himself shot. The Gang did that. Second, seeking justice is his job, and he did what he had to do. Third, he’s healed. Why are you so angry with him?”

  “I’m not.” But she was upset, and there was no use denying it. “I’m worried, is all. My pa was a sheriff. It’s not a safe life, and there’s nothing more important than safety.”

  “Isn’t there?” Mrs. Horner led Rebecca to the door. “Well, if bein’ safe is what you want, you did right choosing Theodore.”

  Rebecca’s jaw dropped. “There’s nothing wrong
with security.”

  “O’ course not, and you owe people like Tad your gratitude for keeping you that way.”

  As if her own pa hadn’t given his life for the cause of justice? The hair on Rebecca’s nape rose like hackles. “I am thankful. I know what sorts of sacrifices folks like him make.”

  Mrs. Horner’s eyes were frustratingly kind. “But you’re forgetting that there’s feeling protected behind a bolted door, and then there’s the peace that doesn’t depend on locks or the law. It comes from love and trust.” She patted Rebecca’s shoulder. “See you in a few hours.” Rebecca probably looked like Longbeard, mumbling to herself all the way to the livery, but she was too angry to care. She understood the difference between security and peace. It was none of Mrs. Horner’s business what she valued or whether or not she loved Theodore. It wasn’t Tad’s concern either, though he questioned her today and sent her thoughts jumbling and her pulse out of rhythm.

  She’d chosen Theodore before she met him. Obstacle after obstacle prevented them from marrying, but soon those would be gone and she’d have the life she needed.

  After a brief word with Uncle Giff, she returned to his bedroom, where he’d moved one of the comfortable parlor chairs in for Mrs. Horner. Rebecca resumed her place in the hard-back chair at the still-sleeping Dottie’s side, determined to recover from Mrs. Horner’s words before her landlady arrived to keep her company. She prayed and took up a length of ribbon to stitch one of Theodore’s rosettes.

  She had finished two when a shadow fell over the bed. Mrs. Horner had come much earlier than she’d said. Rebecca looked up, but it was Theodore who lingered in the threshold.

  His hands stuffed into his pockets, making him look younger and more vulnerable than she’d ever seen him. Had he looked more like that when Dottie broke his heart?

  Rebecca rose and offered him the chair. “Come in.”

  “It really is her.” Theodore lowered himself into the chair, staring at Dottie without revealing any of the emotions that must be churning beneath. “How is she?”

  “She should recover well. Wilkie said—did you know he’s a certified medical doctor?” When Theodore didn’t respond, Rebecca gestured at Dottie’s bandaged hands and wrists. “Well, aside from the gunshot wound, she has some scrapes. Cornelia did a fine job tending them.”