These Healing Hills

by Ann H. Gabhart

  Fran wasn’t worried about that. She just wanted to find her way over the mountain to the Nolans’ house. She looked behind her. She supposed she could go back to the Locke house and get Woody to escort her along the right paths. She stared at the thickets she’d just fought through and had some doubts of being able to retrace her steps.

  Another rumble of thunder sounded closer than it had a moment ago. A breeze sprang up to ruffle the leaves. And cool her face. That felt good, but it might not be good if she got caught in a storm. Fran wasn’t afraid of storms. Not when she was watching them from inside a house. But out in the middle of the woods on the side of a mountain might be a different matter.

  She could almost hear Betty saying it would be good practice. A nurse-midwife couldn’t let anything stop her when she was called to deliver a baby. Storms. Floods. Snow. Sleet. Fran wiped her forehead again. No worry about snow on this day. But the trail might as well be under a couple of feet of snow. It was just as hidden from her.

  Young Mrs. Nolan would have her baby and Betty would be back at the center drinking tea before Fran found her way out of this overgrown wilderness. If only Jasmine hadn’t run away. The mare was going to be in trouble next time she wanted an extra carrot or apple.

  Fran tucked her handkerchief back in her pocket. While she couldn’t see any sign of the sun through the dark clouds, the storm had blown in from the west. Maybe if she kept the wind in her face, she would be going in the right direction.

  She picked out a tree a good way ahead. That’s what Betty told her to do to keep from walking in circles. Walk toward something and when she reached it, walk on toward something new in the right direction. West.

  She squared her shoulders and pushed through the undergrowth toward the tree. The wind stirred the leaves, then seemed to tease her by first blowing her hair back from her face and then whipping around to blow strands into her eyes. She hooked her hair behind her ears and kept walking toward the tree. She dared not take her focus off it, because one tree had a way of looking much like another.

  No birds sang or squirrels chattered. Even the wind suddenly deserted her as everything went still. She felt totally alone in the world.

  No, not alone. Never alone, her grandmother would tell her. Who was always there through every storm? Through every dark night? Fran whispered one of her grandmother’s favorite Scriptures. “The Lord is an ever present help in danger.”

  She might not have the words exactly as they were in the Bible, but the thought was there. The prayer was there. She pulled in her breath and thought only of those words, while the wind seemed to hold its breath too.

  What was that sound? Could she be so thirsty she was imagining the sound of water like a man in the desert seeing a mirage? Not a creek running over rocks, more like a trickle out of a pipe. She shut her eyes. Why closing her eyes helped, she didn’t know, but it did. The water was up the hill to her left. Not too far. She moistened her dry lips and hoped it wasn’t her imagination.

  Then a fresh wind gust ripped through the trees, bringing the scent of rain. She might not need a spring. Water might dash down on her at any minute, but she headed up the hill anyway.

  Lightning lit up the sky. Earlier in the summer before the dry days of August set in, she’d watched a storm from the door of a cabin high on the mountain. The storm clouds had settled down around the cabin and set it to shaking with thunder booms and lightning streaks. She didn’t want to think about the storm settling around her now in the same way.

  A few fat raindrops slipped down through the trees to plop on her head. She kept going toward where she’d heard water. Springs often bubbled out of a rocky place. There might be a ledge she could take shelter under, like an old bear. As long as the bear hadn’t beat her to it.

  And sometimes springs could mean people fetching water. Somebody who could get her back on a trail. She tried to remember the map that was in the saddlebag she fervently hoped was still on Jasmine. Seemed as though a spring was noted on the map not far from the trail she was supposed to take toward the Nolans’. So maybe all was not lost. Fran kept climbing. It was good to have a purpose. Then as quickly as she felt better, she remembered that moonshiners often located their stills near water. This overgrown hillside would be a perfect place to hide away from the law. Her steps lagged a bit.

  The moonshiners wouldn’t shoot her on purpose. Not while she was wearing the Frontier Nursing outfit, but it would be good to let them know who she was. If anybody was at the spring.

  “Hello,” she shouted. The wind whisked away the sound. So she shouted it again.

  No answer, or none she could hear over the noise of the storm. She called out her hello again. Some nurses sang when they were going over the mountain trails just to let the mountaineers know they were about, but singing would be useless in the storm. Nobody could hear her. But she shouted out another hello anyway.

  The mare jerked her head up.

  “What’s out there, girl?” Ben held the horse’s bridle to keep her still while he listened.

  A gust of wind swept through the trees. Ben raised his head up to get the full benefit of the cooler air. He’d been in storms overseas. Sandstorms in the desert. Rainstorms in France. Firestorms in battle that had nothing to do with nature and everything to do with man. But a lightning storm on a mountain was different. Sometimes the clouds would drop their fury right down on a person until his skin tingled.

  The lightning must have been what had the mare’s ears perked and her nostrils flared. She stamped her feet and tried to shake free of his hold, but he hung on. “Easy.”

  Then the wind took a pause and a shout came up from below them. A woman’s voice. The horse whinnied. Perhaps recognizing his thrown rider.

  “Hello,” Ben called back. “Do you need help?”

  “No.” A second later a different answer. “Yes. Please don’t shoot me.”

  Ben wasn’t sure he heard her right. The wind was picking back up. Maybe that had distorted the words. He wasn’t in a war zone now. No reason to shoot anybody.

  “Why would I shoot you?” Better not to think about the times he had shot to kill. Not now on his first day home. Not with the sudden crack of lightning. The woman’s startled shriek was drowned out by thunder that sounded too much like a bomb.

  He pulled in a breath and let it out slowly. He wasn’t on a battlefield and this woman wasn’t the enemy. The thunder subsided to a rumble. “Do I need to come help you?”

  “No, I’m coming toward you. If I can get through these blackberry bushes.”

  “Best go round,” Ben called back to her, but a new clap of thunder covered up his words. The mare whinnied again and danced to the side. That lightning strike was way too close. He searched his memory of the hillside for a place to wait out the storm. He seemed to remember a rock ledge with a hollowed-out cave not far from the spring, but he couldn’t desert the woman.

  He held the horse and waited. Rain came down in a hard dash, soaking the cast on his arm. There was no help for that. It was time the cumbersome thing came off anyway. He’d tried to get them to remove it before he got on the ship for home, but the doctors said another week or two would guarantee the bones had knitted as they should.

  “Come on, woman. Hurry up,” Ben muttered under his breath. She must be a city girl. Getting unseated from her horse and then unable to find a path up the hill. But he could hear her getting closer.

  Then she stepped out into the small opening around the spring. Wet locks of brown hair stuck to her cheeks and forehead. She shoved them back and picked a briar out of her hair. A few bloody scratches stood out on her face and arms. She had on the frontier nurse’s uniform of blue pants and vest over a white shirt. She stopped and stared at him with wary eyes, her face showing a mixture of relief and apprehension.

  She was surprisingly attractive. Ben didn’t know why he was surprised. Maybe because the frontier nurses had all been much older than him before he went to war. But that was years ago now. He w
as older. They could be younger than he remembered. At least this nurse surely was.

  She was very slim, but there was something enticingly feminine about her standing there in the rain watching him.

  “You must be Woody’s brother.” When she smiled, her face lit up.

  13

  Even without the cast on his arm to give her a clue to who the man in front of her was, Fran would have known. His eyes were that much like Woody’s except a darker blue. Eyes so blue she couldn’t help but note their color even in the darkening air of the storm.

  He had Jasmine. The horse tried to toss her head at the sight of Fran, but the man held her tight with his good arm.

  “My talkative brother. Seems he must have been talking to you.”

  “He simply said you were on the way home.” Fran kept smiling as relief washed through her that she wasn’t facing down a moonshiner. A returning soldier from the war was much less threatening, even if he wasn’t smiling. And no wonder. She had to look a mess, with hair plastered down on her head in the rain and bloody scratches decorating her face and arms from fighting through the brambles.

  He, on the other hand, looked very handsome in his uniform, standing there as though the rain was no bother at all. Some mountain girl would be eager to welcome him home. Woody hadn’t mentioned whether his brother was committed to a girl or single. It wasn’t information she needed to know, but looking at him, she couldn’t help but be curious. And a little envious of whatever girl might be waiting for him to make it home from the war.

  She pushed that thought away before Seth’s betrayal could stab her again. She had worries enough without that. Instead she looked at Jasmine and was very happy to peer past the soldier’s duffel bag on the saddle to see her saddlebag still there. She hadn’t lost her midwifery equipment.

  “Thank you for catching my horse. A rattler frightened her into making a sudden detour.” She stepped over to rub Jasmine’s nose. “Without me slowing her down. Bad girl.”

  “I doubt petting her nose will convince her you mean it.”

  “Probably not. But she’s a good horse most of the time. I like that she has spirit.”

  “A skittish horse can be dangerous on a mountain path.” The man frowned. “Especially to an inexperienced rider.”

  “I’m not inexperienced.” Fran gave the man a look. “Lots of horses don’t like snakes and even the best riders get thrown now and again.”

  “True enough.” He said the words, but he didn’t look as though he believed them.

  It didn’t make any difference what the man thought of her riding ability. She didn’t need to convince him of anything. She just needed her horse and the way to the Nolans’ cabin pointed out. But first she’d get a drink. She might be soaked on the outside, but her mouth was dry.

  She stepped past him to where a trickle of water tumbled out of a ledge of rocks and gathered in a pool. Fran cupped her hands to catch some water for a drink. After she had slaked her thirst, she splashed cold water on her face. That made her feel better and ready to move on.

  The man watched her without a word until she reached for Jasmine’s reins. “The storm’s not over.” As though to prove his words, lightning lit up the woods and thunder crashed down around them almost at the same time. “We best take shelter.”

  “I don’t think there’s anywhere to take shelter.”

  “There used to be a small cave not far from here.”

  “Big enough for Jasmine too?”

  “Jasmine?”

  “My horse.”

  “We’ll find out.” He looked back at her as he started away from the spring. “I’d let you ride, but it’s a steep climb. Best for you and the horse both if you walk.”

  Fran followed him. It wouldn’t do Lurene any good for Fran to get struck by lightning. As if she’d called it, the lightning cracked again, with thunder shaking the ground. A sheet of rain dashed down through the trees, mixed with hard pellets of hail that stung her arms. Jasmine whinnied, but the man kept going, forcing the horse to scramble along behind him. Fran trailed them, taking care to stay back from Jasmine’s hooves.

  Woody was right about his brother not being talkative. He hadn’t even asked Fran’s name, but then, she supposed she should have offered that. His name was Ben. No way she could not know that, with how Woody was always asking if she was still praying for him. She was or at least she had prayed for him and all the soldiers whenever she hadn’t been too tired to keep her eyes open at bedtime.

  She remembered asking Grandma Howard once the best time to pray. Her grandmother had said, “There’s no right or wrong time. Anytime can be the best time. Or all the time. Me, I’m partial to walking prayers.”

  “Walking prayers?” That had been a puzzle to Fran.

  “Those a person can say while she’s busy doing what has to be done. Like when I’m walking to the barn or the garden. Grabbing minutes with the Lord. His children don’t have to set up appointments for him to pay attention. He’s always ready to bend down his ear to us.”

  “Like you do for me?” Grandma Howard had smiled and laid her hand on Fran’s head. “Something like that, for sure. Only better.”

  Fran said one of those walking prayers as she followed Woody’s brother. For safety in the storm. To eventually find her way to the Nolans’ cabin. For Lurene Nolan to have an easy delivery whether Fran was there or not.

  Woody’s brother stopped and motioned her past him toward an overhang with a hollowed-out depression under it. She tried not to think about what else might be taking shelter under the ledge as she stepped into the small cave. Snakes. Bats. Spiders. All things she’d rather not face nose to nose. At the same time, the lightning flashed so brightly she saw spots. She shouldn’t look askance at the shelter the Lord was providing.

  The man stepped in behind her and pulled Jasmine partially under the overhang too. “We can wait out the storm here.”

  They stood shoulder to shoulder, so close Fran could hear him breathing. Jasmine snorted and then settled with her head turned toward the earthen wall behind them. The wet-horse smell mixed with the musty odor of the cave and that of their wet clothes. Fran shifted a bit to breathe the rain smell outside the cave.

  “It’s a little close in here, but the storm won’t last long,” Woody’s brother said. “By the way, my name is Ben in case Woody didn’t tell you that.”

  Fran looked around at him. He had to bend his head a little to fit under the overhang. “He did tell me, Mr. Locke, when he asked me to add my prayers to your mother’s for your safety.”

  “With a mother and a frontier nurse praying for me, no wonder I made it home.” Finally the man smiled. “And if it’s not against your rules, Ben will do.”

  Lightning flashed to let her see how the smile lit up his eyes as well. A friendly smile that showed he was trying to put Fran at ease, huddled there in the little cave with him.

  “I don’t suppose there are rules against using first names.” Fran wasn’t sure about that, but it sounded too unfriendly to claim such a rule. She turned to stare back out at the rain.

  He was silent a moment, as if waiting for her to say more. Maybe call him by his name, but she stayed quiet. If she was standing there with Woody, she could have been chatting along easily enough, but his brother was different. A man instead of a boy. She had to consider proprieties. The air under the ledge seemed to grow heavier and not merely because of the storm.

  Finally he spoke up. “All right then. So, are there rules against telling your own name, Nurse? It seems odd to know your horse’s name and not yours.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to be rude.” She hoped he wouldn’t notice the flush warming her cheeks. “I’m Francine Howard, but everybody calls me Fran.” Her cheeks got hotter as she imagined Betty’s disapproving glare for telling the man her first name. She tried to backtrack. “Or Nurse Howard.”

  “Glad to make your acquaintance, Nurse Howard.”

  She was relieved he chose the more
formal address, but the relief was short-lived. “Francine is a lovely name.”

  “Thank you.”

  What else could she say? She couldn’t take back her words now. She should have simply said Nurse Howard. Betty said the families they treated had no need to know their given names. She would probably tell Fran to step out into the storm instead of standing so close to this man that she could feel the cast on his arm against her back and feel his breath against her hair.

  Her heart rate accelerated, but it was only her concern about whether being scrunched into a hole in the hill with a man was improper. That and the lightning and the worry of spiders crawling on her. She should simply turn her face to the wall like Jasmine and ignore it all. Even the man beside her. Or perhaps think of him as a patient. She could ask him about his arm, how it was healing.

  He spoke before she could figure out something safe to say. Something that Betty might approve. “Why did you think I might shoot you?”

  “I’ve been told it’s best not to startle anyone out in the woods.” She tried to think of the most diplomatic way to explain. “We know the local people would never harm us nurses, but they are wary of strangers coming up on them unexpectedly. And with the storm and rain hiding the noise of my approach, I thought it sensible to shout out a warning.”

  “A warning?” He sounded puzzled.

  “Maybe warning isn’t the right word. I just wanted to let whoever might be there know they didn’t have anything to worry about from me.”

  “Why would they be worried about you? You nurses haven’t started carrying guns, have you?”

  “No.” Fran shook her head. “We don’t need guns.”

  “Might come in handy against a rattlesnake.”

  “We just take detours around them. Sometimes long detours.” Fran couldn’t keep from smiling at that. “Jasmine shies easily, but she seems calm enough now.”