Colleen’s father did not care for her reading. He wanted her to be like the women from home. The Old Country he called it. He wanted her to learn to be a good wife and a hard worker. Reading was for the rich and idle and he did not want his daughter growing up with dreams of a life she would never have, embittered by the reality he was sure she would always face.
“You’re a milkman’s daughter,” he’d remind her, “not a princess. Put down that book and I’ll tell you a tale.”
“Da,” she would say to him. “At least come up with a new tale. I’m tired of your stories about home. Tell me a tale about America, and anything except the war!”
“America,” he would sigh. In America he had been defeated in a great war of secession. America had taken his wife and left him with this girl to raise alone. He had even considered letting her go for adoption once, but did all he could to bring her up himself. He’d done his best, but his daughter was feisty and outspoken and not the well behaved young woman his wife would have wanted. She rarely kept her opinion to herself the way he believed a well-behaved child should. She was a hard worker and without her he could not have delivered the milk as long as he had, but he worried. The girl had no interest in any of the young men that had come calling for her. He thought she was certainly pretty enough, but too independent. Even a particularly nice Irish lad he had met at the pub didn’t catch her eye.
He often asked himself what would become of her if he weren’t around. Regardless of her bullheaded opinion he could not imagine that she could run the milk business alone. Although she did nearly all of the work now, he worried who would do business with the girl. It just wasn’t right, he thought.
Colleen tucked her skirt up into her apron band at her hip and climbed the old ladder. On the third rung she looked down into the hay and stopped suddenly.
A heavy leather boot protruded from the straw. The girl backed down the ladder quickly.
“Get up!” she hollered. “I’ll not have you sleeping off your stupor in my barn.” It was not the first time that one of the mountain people had found the farm while intoxicated in the night. She wanted nothing to do with that worthless, drunken clan up the hill, not them or their feuding neighbors.
Colleen pulled a pitchfork from the wall and poked the boot hard.
“Wake up!” she yelled, leaning over the straw.
The boot did not move. She cautiously pulled away a handful of straw and jumped back.
He was completely passed out, but she knew he was not just drunk like the others. This man was dirty, yes, but his hair was long and shone clean in the sunlight that streamed through the crevices in the barn walls. He was pale and barely breathing, but he was not one of the hill men.
Colleen ventured closer and when she saw the deep gash in his neck she knew he was severely injured. She turned to run towards the house and stopped. If her father thought he was another drunkard from the hills he would throw him out. The wound was certainly a gunshot. If he returned to the hills whoever had shot him might still be out there looking to finish the job. And if he had gotten mixed up in the McHerlong-Catslip feud the culprit would not give up the hunt easily. That was how the vendetta worked. For generations, her father had said, even when they couldn’t remember why they fought, they would kill one another again and again. Sent stumbling out into the woods he could end up dead before the day was out.
She ran back across the field to the house and opened the door silently. Her father sat, propped in the chair, his stocking feet propped before the fire, snoring loudly.
She pulled a wool blanket from the wooden chest, filled a cask with fresh water and gathered several tins from the shelves along the wall. She mixed a few herbs in a mash with hot water and slipped back outside.
Colleen washed the wound thoroughly and packed the poultice against the young man’s neck. She lifted his head gently and poured a little of the water into his mouth, but he did not stir. She ran her finger curiously along his jawline. He was young, she thought, and his features were fine. She suspected that he might be tall, but it was hard to tell. His clothing was odd, not like that of the hill people, and not like the people in town either. She lifted his hand and examined it. It had been calloused once, but now it looked as if he had not done heavy work in some time.
He looked thin and helpless to her and she shuddered at the thought that someone wanted to kill him. Although he did not move, somehow he looked friendly and kind to her. She tucked the blanket around him and left the water where he might find it if he woke. Colleen ran back to the house and slipped inside as her father began to stir.
Chapter Fourteen
Colleen tended to the man at every opportunity, but when evening approached on the third day her concern grew. He had barely moved any time she had cared for him and when she had checked him in the afternoon she feared he had developed a fever.
She listened for the rhythmic snoring of her father and she slipped from the house with a pail of hot soup, having decided she was going to try to wake the man more aggressively. She feared he would die in the barn, another victim of the terrible vendetta.
“Oh, little one,” Colleen scooped up the tiny kitten just inside the barn door. “Did you get closed in here earlier?” She set down her soup pail and crooned softly to the kitten as she crossed the dim interior of the barn. Colleen knelt beside the man, holding her lantern high in the darkness.
Mark had heard her humming as she entered the barn. He tried to lift his head, but he could not move. His eyesight was blurred and then suddenly a light appeared before him. It was blindingly bright and he squinted into the brilliance. He thought he saw a person there, but this could not be a person, he thought. The face was pure white, soft and sweet and surrounded in a glowing halo. It was a soothing voice, but he could not make out what it was saying. He realized that it was a woman, but not a human woman, maybe an angel.
Was he dead, or dying? He was seeing something that was not possible, or was his mind going as he died? He struggled to make out the angel again and he thought he had seen her face before. He must be dying, he decided, and his mind was making up a picture that he would find beautiful and soothing so he could die easy. He lay back and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to die. He could feel tears running from his eyes and down the sides of his face.
“Don’t take me,” he murmured to the angel. “I’m not ready. I want to go home. I need to go home to Stavewood.”
Colleen slipped her hand behind his head and tried to spoon some soup into him quickly while he seemed somewhat conscious. She saw that he swallowed several mouthfuls and then she poured tiny sips of water into his mouth. He would swallow a mouthful and lay muttering, but he made little sense. She had never heard of this place, Stavewood.
When he had completely lost consciousness again she went back to the house and returned with several more blankets. She fashioned a bed in the straw, piling it together in a kind of a mattress and tucking a blanket in around it.
She pulled off his heavy boots and wet socks, noticing that the stockings were finely handmade. Someone had taken their time with the exceptionally spun wool and fashioned them for him. Colleen rolled him from side to side, while he muttered and she removed his jacket and shirt. She had undressed her father many times when he took his winter chills after several wet days of delivering, but the young man’s body was not worn and wrinkled like that of her aged father.
His chest was smooth and torso long, one side stained with blood. She washed him quickly and shoved his arms into a wool shirt she had taken from the house. When she had bathed and redressed most of him she got down on her knees and heaved him onto the makeshift mattress. She situated him as best she could and tucked more blankets in around him and arranged his head so she could look at him in the lamp light.
His color had returned a little. She laid the back of her hand against his forehead. His fever was low, but she knew it threatened.
Colleen studied his clothing. Every piece was finely made. Th
ese were not the worn rags of the people from up the mountain. Although they were muddy and torn in several places she could see they were expensive. She lifted one of the stockings and inspected it closely. The needle work was fine and the stitches even. Colleen could knit a simple garment, but had never worked with wool spun so fine and thin. She could handle a hook well to make a bit of Irish crochet, but these stockings were handmade by a talented knitter. Someone cared for him, perhaps a wife or maybe a sweetheart. She looked back at his face. He was handsome, she thought. Someone somewhere must love him.
Chapter Fifteen
Benjamin Neilson checked the office again after lunch and shook his head when he saw that the young men had still not come in to work.
He was not surprised. He had been more amazed that, although the Elgerson boy had his father and his father’s money behind him, he still chose to show up for work promptly every morning. His companion was a nice young man, but more likely to daydream a bit or want to finish the day a bit early. Mark Elgerson stayed for every minute, kept his lunches short and never missed a day, even, Neilson suspected, after a night of drinking. Lillian from the boarding house had mentioned that the boys would leave overnight often and return smelling of liquor.
“Of course,” he had told her. “They’re young and away from home. Let them enjoy themselves. Soon enough there’ll be wives to spend their money for them and babies to feed. They’ll only be here for a few months. Let them enjoy themselves.”
He knew that if they didn’t show up before too long he could head over to the boarding house and gather them up, but decided to let them sleep it off. They’d come around eventually, he figured.
Chapter Sixteen
Colleen gathered up her patient’s soiled clothing, checked every pocket and tied it into a neat bundle. If she mixed it in with her father’s things he may not notice when she washed it, but she would have to hang it to dry inside the barn. Out on the line in the yard not only her Da would see it, but also anyone who may be looking for the man. Colleen sat beside him again and wondered what his name might be.
There was very little money in his jacket, and she decided that he had likely been robbed after he was shot. He had no other papers, only several postcards neatly tied with a narrow ribbon and none of them were addressed. Every picture was dreary, greys and whites. The postcards she admired in the shops were pretty and lacy but these were rather depressing, she thought.
The kitten climbed into her lap and she stroked it absently and began speaking her thoughts aloud.
“Who are you?” she asked, expecting no response. “I wish I could help you more, but I don’t know what to do. If I tell my father he will not want you here and if I take you to town whoever shot you might try to kill you again.
“If you would just get better maybe you can tell me who you are. Is someone looking for you?” she continued, speaking softly.
Mark heard a voice far away, as if from across a field. He could not make out what the voice was saying and he wondered if it was the angel again. The voice was sweet and gentle, like Rebecca’s had been that day she found him in the chest, but he knew it was not Rebecca’s voice. This one had an accent, but not like hers. He tried to speak to the voice, but his words come out all garbled. He struggled to speak slowly and clearly but could not and he surrendered to the ache in his head and slipped away into deep slumber.
Colleen could see that he moved his lips slowly, but issued no sound. She waited, holding her breath, and listening intently, but soon he was quiet again and he seemed to rest a bit easier. She didn’t want to leave him alone and decided that maybe her speaking to him would be soothing. She pulled her book from her apron pocket and began to read softly from her collection of Louisa May Alcott.
After a time, she gathered his clothing and the pail and slipped out silently. In the morning the deliveries would have to be made and the cows milked. She would check on him first and then would be away most of the day. She was still not sure he would be alive any time that she came to see him.
He did not stir at dawn when she visited, though at some point he gained some level of consciousness briefly. He found the water beside him and drank deeply before slipping back into the darkness of sleep.
Chapter Seventeen
Tuesday morning arrived with yet another downpour. The dreariness that had begun at the week’s end showed promise only late on Friday night, but soon reverted again to dismal weather conditions. By late afternoon it was beginning to grow dark, the days short and damp.
Benjamin Neilson stood in the doorway of the office and scowled. One day off without a word might be tolerated, but another without so much as a poor excuse was more difficult to swallow.
“Sons of the rich,” he muttered under his breath. He decided that it was time to find and reprimand the boys. They’d done a fine job for a while, he thought, but only so much could be excused.
He locked the office door and strode over to the boarding house, contemplating exactly how he might lecture the young men.
Lillian Griffin pulled a cigarette from her apron as she slowly opened the door.
“Good morning, Lil,” Ben greeted her in a friendly manner.
The woman lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. She coughed hard and spit across the porch.
“I wonder if you might wake up those boys I put up here. It seems they’ve decided they don’t care to show up for work anymore.”
“They aren’t showing up here neither,” she cleared her throat. “I haven’t seen ‘um myself since they got ready to go out on Friday night.”
“Not at all?” Ben reached under his hat and scratched his head.
“I told you they were goin’ off drinking somewhere. Probably passed out in some woman’s parlor someplace.”
Ben scowled and sighed deeply. “I sure hope so. There’ll be hell to pay if those boys get into trouble.”
“I can tell them to get right to work when they show up.”
“That’ll do, Lil. Thanks.” Benjamin Neilson headed back to work.
Chapter Eighteen
Mark Elgerson’s mouth tasted sour and metallic and he seemed not to have the strength to raise his head. He looked around and surmised that he was in some kind of an out building, large and gloomy, likely a barn. His head pounded and his stomach heaved. He swallowed hard and the pain in his neck and throat brought tears to his eyes.
He was not dead. The intolerable pain must have meant that he was still alive. He tried to turn his head from side to side and recollections of the night came back to him. Running, darkness, moonlight, the girl’s body.
“Sam,” he cried hoarsely.
He lifted his right hand and felt his neck. There was a wide cloth wrapped around it and a lumpy mass beneath it up against the side of his neck. Apparently someone was trying to care for him. It must be some kind of a poultice or bandage. He attempted to lift his left hand but his arm would not move. He felt it with his right hand and he still had his arm, but no amount of effort helped him raise it and he had no feeling in it at all. He was quickly aware that it would be impossible for him to sit up or get to his feet. The clothing he was wearing was not his own, with the exception of his slacks. He was slightly propped up on a makeshift mattress in an area neatly covered in fresh straw. He rested, immobilized, listening and trying to recall any memories from the shooting. He could not remember anything after he and Sam had split up. He wondered about his companion. Was he nearby?
“Sam,” he whispered hoarsely. “Sam, are you here?”
Once she had checked the man and given him all the water she could get into him, she slipped back into the house and dressed for the day. Her dress was fitted, once a deep shade of dusty blue, now faded to a soft indigo. She tied her white apron around her slender waist and frowned in the mirror. Her figure was not the long slender lines that the new catalogs advertised, nor that of the willowy mannequins in the dress shops. Colleen, at just over five feet, was voluptuous and curvaceous, her bust high, but
ample, her hips full, her backside rounded. She scowled at her womanly figure and pulled back her hair, slipping it into a filigreed snood which confined the masses of tumbling curls in a satchel of lace.
She hitched up the horse to the milk wagon, soiling her fresh apron, and she sighed. She got a painful pinch while hooking up the hitch and Colleen looked down at her hands. They were chapped and red from washing, milking and hard labor. She rubbed in a glob of salve that she used to soothe and heal the cow’s teats, the same thing she had been applying regularly to the neck of the young man in the barn.
Colleen looked towards the barn thoughtfully. He was healing, but she was terribly concerned about what kind of damage had been done. Praying that he would remain undiscovered by anyone while she and her father made their rounds, she stroked the horse gently.
“The milk is not goin’ to get itself delivered,” her father scolded, as he climbed into the rig. He pulled himself up wearily and coughed deeply.
At sixty-five Shane Muldoon had traveled far for one lifetime. He’d crossed the sea from Ireland as a young man, marched for miles with the Confederate army and rode for years on the old wagon bringing milk to families and businesses in Barite, Missouri. He and his daughter started their deliveries early, immediately following the first milking, and then again in the afternoon. The wagon rattled loudly, as it rolled along filled with large metal cans. On the back of the wagon, which laid low so that the milkman could more easily serve his customers, he had two large measures. One held a pint, the other a half-pint and these were used to scoop milk from his large cans into the customers’ vessels.
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