by Merry Farmer
“My duty is to the sick people in this town,” she said. “Once the epidemic has passed, we’ll talk about it.”
“I—” Trey stopped himself, clenching his jaw and running a hand over his face. He growled. “Fine,” he said at last. “We’ll talk about this later.”
Without another word, he turned and marched off, kicking at a stray stone in the road as he went.
“My, my,” Dr. Abernathy chuckled. “You two are off to a rocky start in your marriage, aren’t you?”
Talia glanced at him, disgusted by the calculating look in the man’s eyes. She let out a breath, weariness and frustration replacing her anger over Trey being unwilling to see things her way.
“We have patients to treat,” she said, starting up the hotel’s front steps.
Nursing was the only thing she could do for the time being, but she would have to figure out how to balance that with being a good wife before long.
Chapter 7
Trey tried to get a grip on his frustration as he walked away from Talia and Dr. Abernathy. He didn’t know what bothered him more, that lecherous, incompetent old sham ogling his wife or his wife’s stubbornness and determination to put herself in danger.
No, he knew the answer to that. Lechery was something he could wrap his brain around, even if he hated it and wanted to punch the smirk off of Dr. Abernathy’s face. But Talia’s willfulness struck something so deep and so terrified in Trey’s soul that he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
He couldn’t stop thinking about it when he met the afternoon train with Athos to make sure everything was in order and all deliveries were made without anyone slipping off with someone else’s crate. He couldn’t stop thinking about it when he checked in with Gunn closer to supper after two guests had gotten into an altercation over who should get the best table in the restaurant, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it when he ate his supper alone in the jail, wondering where Talia was.
“I swear, if that woman has come down with the influenza and is languishing on some ranch family’s sofa, I’ll—” He didn’t know what he’d do, so he took another swig of the whiskey Sam had just poured for him at the Silver Dollar’s long, polished bar.
It was a slow night at the saloon, something Trey was both glad for and suspicious of. If so few men were out playing cards or swigging whiskey or being entertained by Bonnie’s girls, did that mean the influenza had spread?
“I appreciate that Talia feels she has a responsibility to nurse sick people, but does she have to be so stubborn about it?” Trey went on, plunking his glass on the bar a little too hard. The whiskey he hadn’t gotten around to drinking yet sloshed over the edges of the glass and onto Sam’s clean bar top.
Sam leaned back against the counter behind the bar, arms crossed. He looked weary and put out, and not at all interested in listening to Trey’s complaint. That didn’t stop Trey from making it, though.
“Doesn’t she realize how much more likely she is to get sick if she’s running around with sick people all the time?” he went on.
“She’s a nurse,” Sam said.
“But does that mean she has to chase after every incident of influenza in town and sit by the bedside of every man, woman, and child with a fever, touching them?”
“Might.” Sam shrugged.
Trey let out a breath. He rubbed a hand over his face and thought about picking up his whiskey to down the last of it. Instead, he studied where it had splashed on the bar. Sam was usually much quicker to grab a towel and clean up any spills.
That led him to imagining Talia by the bedside of the sick people in down, cleaning up after them. He didn’t know why, but the folks who cleaned up after the sick and dying always seemed to get it worse than the ones who started out sick.
“I told myself I wasn’t going to get too attached,” he started up again, shaking his head. “But that woman has a way of getting to me. Maybe I’m just looking at her pretty face.” He rolled his shoulders, knowing that wasn’t it. “Or maybe it’s that she looks so exotic. You know, she told me that people back East thought she was a witch.”
“That so?” Sam mumbled. If his attention was drifting, Trey probably deserved it.
“They sure did. Apparently it had something to do with an old woman who didn’t like the fact that Talia made her better at one of the hospitals or something. Called her a witch using magic on her all because she got better. It sounded ridiculous to me, but now I’m not so sure.”
He waited for Sam to tell him he was crazy, or to at least ask why he thought that. But Sam just stood where he was, arms still crossed, shoulders drooped, glancing down at something on the floor. So Trey went on.
“Maybe she’s bewitched me, you know? Here I was, all determined not to have any sort of exceptional feelings for her, to just treat her like any fine woman, like a sister, even. And it’s only been two days, but I’m concerned for her. How can I be so concerned for a woman after knowing her for only two days?”
Still, Sam didn’t answer.
Trey blew out a breath. “You’re right. Thinking it’s witchcraft is just silly. Maybe I’m more of a decent person than I’ve always given myself credit for. Mama got that much right, at least.” A pang hit his heart at the memory of his mother. It fanned the fire of his anxiety over Talia back to towering levels. “But she shouldn’t be running around spending so much time around sick people.” He looped back around to his original argument. “It’s like jumping out in front of a train when it’s—”
Sam slipped sideways, only barely catching himself in time to stop from falling over. He glanced up with a sharp intake of breath that turned into a deep cough.
Every nerve in Trey’s body bristled. He leapt up from his bar stool so fast that it knocked over backwards. “Sam?”
“What?” Sam looked around as his coughing subsided. His face had taken on a feverish gleam.
“Shoot, Sam.” Trey pushed away from the bar, ignoring the stool he’d knocked over, and marched to the end so that he could walk behind the bar and up to his friend. “You’re sick too, aren’t you?” He placed his hand on Sam’s forehead the way he’d seen Talia do with other sick people. He wasn’t sure how hot a person was supposed to feel, but Sam seemed to feel hotter.
“My throat’s been bothering me,” Sam said. It sounded more like a croak. How had Trey missed that before?
“You need to go up to bed.” Trey shifted his friend around so that he could wedge his shoulder under Sam’s arm to walk him down the length of the bar.
“I don’t need you to walk me up to my room like an invalid,” Sam groused, then broke into a coughing fit.
The few other patrons of the saloon glanced up from their drinks and cards, eyes wide with alarm. Word about the epidemic must already have gotten around, because all of the men stood from their tables and bolted for the door.
Sam muttered an oath. “I can’t afford to get no business while this plays itself out.”
“And you can’t afford to get yourself any sicker than you already are,” Trey argued with him. The deep-seated fear that he’d been directing toward Talia suddenly flared up for Sam. The thought of losing a good friend was just as terrifying as losing a wife.
Trey walked Sam as far as the doorway that led from the main part of the saloon to the back rooms and the stairs up to Sam’s apartment before Sam brushed off his helping hands. “I can make it up to my bed by myself.”
“Are you sure? I’m not gonna come back here and find you passed out on the stairs?”
Sam frowned, but there was no energy behind the expression. “No. But if you don’t go get that nurse of yours, I might pass out on the stairs just to spite you.”
A tiny pinprick of light tickled its way through the darkness spreading through Trey. If Sam could joke, then he wasn’t on the verge of death. But that didn’t mean the two of them could kick back and swap yarns. He left Sam to head upstairs on his own and dashed out through the saloon and into the street. The sun had a late spri
ng evening warmth to it, but where Trey usually would have enjoyed it, now he hardly noticed. He had one thought and one thought only. He had to find Talia.
Lucky for him, Elspeth Strong was crossing the top of Main Street as he came out of the saloon.
“Hey, Elspeth,” he called, jogging to catch up with her. “Have you seen Talia?”
“She’s down at the Murphys’,” Elspeth answered right away.
Trey could have kissed her for knowing where his wife was and telling him without a bunch of chatter. “Thanks,” he said, then rushed ahead of her and on his way to Aiden Murphy’s house.
Sure enough, Talia was upstairs tending all the sick Murphys when Trey got there.
“She’s been a godsend,” Aiden said, escorting Trey upstairs. “I was out at the reservation this morning when everyone got sick, and though I got home as soon as I could, everyone was already tucked away, sleeping through the worst of their fevers, and sipping on the tea your new wife brewed.”
Trey acknowledged Aiden’s praise with a nod, then marched right into the bedroom at the top of the stairs, where he saw Talia sitting on the bed.
“Sam’s sick,” he blurted, then winced. He probably should have said something about the red-headed girl with fever-pink cheeks who Talia was reading a book to. The panic he’d been trying to tame all day was trying to stage a jail-break, though, and because of it politeness had turned tail and run.
“Sam?” Talia rose from the bed, closing the book and handing it to the girl. “Your friend from the saloon?”
Trey nodded. He supposed it should make him feel more at ease that the girl in bed took the book from Talia with a smile, even if she did look sick. Sick, but not dying. That didn’t mean that others weren’t in danger, though. If he lost Sam, if he lost Talia…
“It’s the influenza, I assume.” Talia fetched Dr. Abernathy’s medical bag—which Trey was surprised to see she still had—from a bedside table and marched toward him, as calm as a summer’s day. As soon as she touched his arm, that calm started to spread through him. “Where is he?”
“At the saloon,” Trey managed to get out somehow. “He lives above the place.”
Talia nodded. “Then we’d better go.” She turned to Aiden. “Do you have everything you need, Mr. Murphy? Enough tincture of meadowsweet?”
“We do.” Aiden nodded, his smile wide. “You’ve got a corker of a wife here, Trey. She’s got all my kin tucked away and as comfortable as they can be.”
“You’ve got a fine, strong family, Mr. Murphy,” Talia told him with a smile as she and Trey left the bedroom and headed down the stairs.
“Call me Aiden, please,” Aiden said.
On any other day, Trey would have been proud of how quickly Talia had found acceptance from some of Haskell’s most prominent citizens, but he couldn’t shake the worry that something dire could happen to them all if he didn’t move heaven and earth to keep Talia safe.
“How did your friend seem when you left him?” Talia asked as they strode through town on their way back to the saloon. Trey was sure he was walking too fast, but Talia kept up with him, even holding Dr. Abernathy’s medical bag.
He reached over and took the bag from her, figuring he could do that much to make things easier for her. “Sick,” he answered. “Feverish. Ornery.”
Talia’s shoulders softened and she sent him a reassuring smile. “If he’s ornery, then he can’t be as sick as all that. This may be an epidemic, but it’s not nearly as bad as some I’ve seen.”
Try as he did to let them, her words didn’t reassure him. Neither did the way Talia felt Sam’s forehead and throat once they made it to the saloon and up to Sam’s small apartment. Sam seemed worse to him. Or maybe just sleepier than he was when Trey had left. Talia brewed some tea using a powder from a bottle she took out of the medical bag and forced Sam to drink it, along with as much water as possible. Once Sam did that, she told him to get some rest.
Only once Sam was asleep and Talia was fussing around his room, cleaning things up, did Trey bother to take a breath.
“So you think he’s going to be all right?” he asked.
Talia glanced over her shoulder at him from where she was washing her hands in a bowl on Sam’s bureau. “Mmm hmm. He just needs rest and willow bark tea, along with some tincture of meadowsweet. I’m glad that Dr. Abernathy had some in his medical stores.”
“How’d you end up with his bag anyhow?” Trey shifted his weight from foot to foot, not sure what to do with his hands, not sure what to do about anything.
Talia frowned. “After we visited the Albees’, a few more cowhands from one of the nearby ranches showed up in town, begging for him to go out there to treat a group of them. Dr. Abernathy felt that cowhands weren’t worth his time. I insisted on going, though. He handed me his bag and said ‘If you want to go dirty your hands with a bunch of hired men, be my guest, but I’m going home for my afternoon tea.’”
Trey gaped. “You went all the way out to someone’s ranch to treat a bunch of sick men by yourself?”
Talia finished drying her hands, glanced past Trey’s shoulder to where Sam was now snoring, and gestured for Trey to follow her out of the room.
“They were in no condition to molest me, I can assure you,” she told him as they started down the stairs to the main part of the saloon.
“How’d you even get out there?” Trey demanded, more upset than ever.
“Luke Chance was in town, and he offered to give me a ride. And before you ask, the ranch owner, a Mr. Conway, was so grateful that I’d come all the way out to treat his men that he gave me a ride back.”
His panic smashed into him full-force, breaking like a storm in the middle of summer heat. “Women on their own shouldn’t be running around the countryside, let alone doing it to treat sick people. You could have been hurt. You could have got the influenza yourself.”
She stopped halfway across the saloon and turned to him, her expression harder than he’d yet seen it. “Trey, I’m fine. This epidemic isn’t a dire one. I’ve traversed city streets unaccompanied before, and yes, there are men out there who have very little respect for a woman with a purpose, but I know how to take care of myself.”
“But what if something were to happen to you?” he insisted. “What if you wake up tomorrow with a fever? What am I supposed to do then?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but stopped. Instead she took a breath, her whole countenance changing to concern, even pity. “Trey, who did you lose to disease?”
Trey was so taken by surprise that he stepped back. All of the old fear, the memories he’d never been able to bury, crept up on him. “My whole family,” he said, barely recognizing his voice, it was so brittle. “All of them. Mom, Pop, Edward, Eliza, Zeke, and the baby. All of them.” His eyes stung as he named all his dead brothers and sisters for the first time in years.
“Oh, Trey. I’m so sorry.” Talia took a step toward him, hand outstretched, but Trey flinched away from her. He wasn’t even sure why.
“It was cholera,” he said, the need to explain pushing up through his gut. “We lived along the river, near St. Louis. We didn’t have a lot, but we thought we were at least better off than the dirt-poor folk who lived a few blocks from us. The cholera started there, but it spread to our neighborhood.”
He paused, reliving the memory, even though it was the last thing he wanted to do. Those feelings made him feel like the boy he’d been then.
“Eliza got it first, but by the end of the day, the baby was sick too,” he went on, pacing away from her. “I came down with it after that. I don’t really remember what happened, all I knew was that when I woke up, only Mrs. Thomas from next door was there. She had tears in her eyes and said it was a miracle that I was saved.” He glanced back to Talia. “Some miracle that my entire family died and I was left all alone.”
“But…but that is a miracle, isn’t it?” She crossed to where his pacing had taken him and rested a hand on his arm. “You lived. You’ve
had a wonderful life and touched so many people.”
Trey snorted, turning his face away from her. “I’ve hurt as many people as I’ve helped.”
He expected her to pull away, to recoil in shock that he’d hurt people. She didn’t. When he risked a glance back at her, she was staring at him in curiosity. Nothing more and nothing less.
“I ended up in an orphanage.” He went on with his story. He didn’t know what else to do. “In St. Louis. It was a god-awful place too. Never enough to eat, being sent out to work when it would make a few extra dollars for the couple who owned the place, dealing with beatings and worse.”
He ran a hand through his hair. It was easier to push aside those dark memories than it was to forget the pain of losing his family. “I ran away from that place when I was fifteen. There were no railroads out West yet in those days, so I begged, borrowed, and yeah, stole to get myself a place in a wagon train for a few miles, on a stagecoach for a bit. I ended up in the Arizona Territory.”
“So far?” Talia blinked at him, her eyes full of compassion. “And all on your own?”
Trey let out a wry laugh. “Not on my own. I joined up with a bunch of other men, some young like me, some older. We called ourselves the Skunk Boys of Missouri, seeing as how half of us had come from there. Or so most of them said. I think half made their backgrounds up because Silas Oberhauser, our gang leader, was from Sullivan, Missouri and treated the rest of us from ‘back home,’ as he used to call it, better than the others.”
“That doesn’t sound particularly reassuring,” Talia said.
“It wasn’t. Half the time that just meant we got to be the ones holding the guns when we pulled heists.”
Now Talia blinked. “You robbed people?”
Trey nodded, old guilt taking the place of the old fear in his gut. “People, stagecoaches, banks. I never shot anyone, though,” he quickly told her. “In fact, the only reason I hung around with Silas and the Skunks so long was because they put food in my belly. I never developed the thrill of getting away with something or getting caught in a shoot-out the way some of the others did.”
