An Agent for Josie

by P. Creeden

  An Agent for Josie

  The Pinkerton Matchmakers

  P. Creeden

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  About the Author

  Love Western Romance?

  An Agent for Opal

  A Bride for James

  A Bride for Henry

  A Pony for Christmas

  Brokken Rising

  Brokken Pursuit

  An Agent for Josie © 2019 P. Creeden

  Cover by Virginia McKevitt

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

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  Chapter 1

  March 1872

  Josie

  Josie wiped the sweat from her brow. “Please help me with him.” She peered into the conductor’s face.

  The burly man, who the conductor had called to help, lifted her father as though he weighed nothing at all. The conductor led the man, her father limp over his shoulder, toward the sleeper car that Josie had just acquired for the remainder of the trip, provided that the weather continued on well enough that the train could make it to Denver without another three-day stopover. It had been a bad idea to travel across the country at the end of winter, and she had said as much to her father when he’d decided to undertake the trip. They’d been snowed in when they reached Missouri and were stuck there for three days.

  The conductor opened the door to the car. Josie fished through her coin purse and gave the conductor two more quarters. “Thank you so much.”

  She crowded in the sleeper car and inhaled he faint smell of smoke that filled the air came off the jacket of the burly man who held her father.

  “Where should I put him?”

  The two beds faced each other on either side of the car. Josie shook her head. “Either one is fine. Thank you.”

  The man nodded and put her father down in the bed to the right. He slid his arms out from under her father and then pulled his hat from his head. He bowed slightly toward Josie. “My pleasure, Miss...”

  “Roth, Josie Roth,” she said absentmindedly as she pulled the blanket over her father’s sleeping form.

  “Miss Roth. I’m Billy Hogge. If you need anything at all, please do not hesitate to ask me.” He wrung his hat in his hands and then moved to smooth down his sandy blond hair when she looked up at him.

  She nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Hogge.”

  The conductor, who still stood just inside the car, peered past the large man. “Miss, are you sure I should not try to find a doctor aboard?”

  Josie sighed and shook her head, lifting her medical bag. “As I said, sir, I am a doctor. Trained and certified by the New England School of Medicine. My father is also a doctor. I will tend to his needs.”

  Blinking, the conductor barely nodded before ducking out the door. Mr. Hogge remained a moment longer. “Truly, Miss Roth. If you need anything at all...”

  “Yes, I’ll ask you. Thank you again, Mr. Hogge.”

  Then finally, the man replaced his hat and slid the door closed behind him. Josie swallowed hard and began fishing through her medical bag. Her father had a fever. When they’d stopped in Missouri, there had been a flu that had been going around several of the passengers. The women and children had been crammed together in the ballroom area of the hotel when there were no more rooms to let, and the men had a hospital tent. She and her father had spent the entire of the three days helping those they could in both locations. Out of forty passengers who’d contracted the sickness, they had lost eight. Half of the remaining thirty-two had stayed behind in Missouri to convalesce as they were still too weak to travel. For a long while, Josie and her father had considered staying behind as well, but her father had insisted that they continue their journey, once he was sure that the town’s doctor didn’t have his hands too full.

  She searched her bag until she finally found the vial she’d been searching for—Peruvian bark. She only had a scant amount left after treating the patients in Missouri. She gritted her teeth. Maybe her father’s bag would have more. Quickly, she stood and retrieved the kerchief from her father’s pocket. Then she left her father in search of water. It didn’t take her long before she found the conductor who helped her fill a basin with cool water.

  “Also, if you could bring me a cup and a tea pot of just hot water? I have to make a medicinal tea.” She kept her words clipped and curt, trying to put in more confidence than she felt. If she showed the conductor any weakness at all, she was certain he wouldn’t do as she asked.

  Josie wished she were a bigger, older woman. One of her instructors at school had been nearly as tall as a man and as wide in the shoulders as one. No one disrespected Professor Cleaver. Instead, Josie had been cursed with being barely five-feet tall and struggled to weigh over a hundred pounds. Her father was also a small man, one of the reasons she’d been made the way she was. Back in New England, she’d worked with their horses to keep up her strength, and did what she could, but men always towered over her, much like the conductor did.

  When she returned to the sleeper car with the wash basin, she wet the handkerchief and placed it on her father’s forehead. She needed to monitor his body heat to make sure that he stayed warm enough to stave off the chills, but cool enough not to let the fever affect his wellness. After several minutes, Mr. Hogge entered with a tea service. After blinking in surprise that it was the sandy-haired man instead of the conductor, she let out a breath. “Thank you. Please place it on the other bed.”

  He nodded and did as she asked. “Do you need anything else?”

  After shaking her head, she began to make the tea with the bark she had left. If she leveled off each little spoonful, she might be able to make what she had left equivalent to four cups of tea. Then she’d have to search for what her father might have in his bag.

  Mr. Hogge cleared his throat. “What’s that?”

  She blinked up at him, wondering why he hadn’t left yet. “It’s Peruvian bark. It will help with the fever.”

  “So, you really are a doctor?”

  With a lifted brow, she stood and met the man’s gaze. “I’m not a liar, Mr. Hogge. My father and I are on our way to the Wyoming Territory to start a practice in a small town near Cheyenne. Our hope is to get past the prejudices that many have against a female practitioner. I am not a nurse. I am not a midwife, but I am a doctor, fully-accredited.”

  He nodded slowly; his honest eyes wide. “I believe you, Miss Roth, but you don’t need me to believe you. Just by doing all you’re doi
ng is proof that what you say is true.”

  She let out a sigh of relief. Mr. Hogge didn’t seem to be patronizing her and that was enough for now. The tension in her shoulders relaxed a bit as she sat on the bed and finished making the tea.

  Her father began coughing and worked to sit up. She grabbed the pillow from the second bed and helped stuff it under her father’s shoulders when he lay back. Her father met eyes with the man standing in the car. He cleared his throat. “Who is this, Josie?”

  Josie nodded to the man who still wrung his hat in his hands. “This is Mr. Hogge, Papa. He helped carry you in here so you could lay flat instead of staying in the seated car. And he also got the tea set for you.”

  “Ah! I remember Mr. Hogge. Thank you for your help, sir.” Then he turned to Josie. “Tea?’ her father asked before he started coughing again.

  When things finally calmed a bit, Josie handed her father a cup of tea. “I made tea with the Peruvian bark, Papa. It will help stretch what we have to last until we make it to Denver.”

  He nodded and took the cup from her hands. He drank it slowly as though savoring it, but she knew it had to be a bit on the bitter side. Once he finished the tea down to the last dregs, he leaned back against the pillows. “I just need a bit of rest. I’m sure I’ll feel much better in the morning.”

  Mr. Hogge bowed slightly and took up the tea service. “It’s good to see you up and able to drink your tea, sir. Have a good rest. I’ll just leave the two of you alone, and I’ll come back in the morning with some more hot water for you.”

  Josie offered him a small smile of thanks. Mr. Hogge seemed like a kind man, willing to help when he didn’t have to. His overcoat had a slightly sour tang of smoke that reminded Josie of a campfire. The large man might have been a fireman or something for his size and the utilitarian coat that he wore. She wondered what he might be doing on this journey. She didn’t remember seeing him before they reached Missouri or even while they were there. But she couldn’t miss him on the train if she’d tried since they’d started on this last leg. He was much too big to avoid. She stood and walked the last step with him to the door of the sleeper car and nodded her goodbyes.

  As she slid the door closed, she thanked providence that the train had one of the private spaces in the sleeper car available for her and her father. The coach seating area had over twenty people sleeping in the space and made it much harder to quarantine her father or help him through his illness.

  He began softly snoring while lying on his back against the pillows. She washed the kerchief and cooled it a bit in the air before placing it back on her father’s forehead. It might be a long night of her having to get up several times to do so. She allowed herself this moment to lie upon the other bed in the car and rest her head upon her arm since she’d given up her pillow. Closing her eyes, she drifted off into a shallow sleep.

  Billy

  The next day, Billy woke with the dawn and headed back to the diner car to fetch a tea service for the lady doctor and her father. Something about the paleness and swelling of the man’s face when he spoke worried Billy. His mother had died of dropsy when he was only nine years old, and Billy remembered she didn’t look much different from the doctor. He hoped that he was wrong about the man’s condition, after all, the man was a doctor, as was his daughter. If they didn’t see the man’s condition as a point of worry, then why should Billy?

  Billy had met the elder doctor while at the camp in the hotel in Missouri. He’d helped the doctor with changing some of the patients’ bed linens that were soaked with sweat. As usual for Billy, he’d been the muscle while the doctor had been the brains. It was a position Billy didn’t mind taking, provided that the man who he worked with didn’t abuse that position. And the good doctor had been respectful and appreciative and said as much.

  When Billy reached the private sleeper car where the doctors stayed the night, he knocked lightly on the door. No answer. He knocked a little harder and called in, “Miss Roth, it’s Billy Hogge. I brought your tea service, as promised.”

  No answer.

  Billy frowned. Slowly, he slid open the compartment door, saying, “Miss Roth, I’m coming in. I hope that’s okay.”

  His heart drummed in his chest while he feared he might be overstepping his boundaries, but as Pinkerton detective, he couldn’t help but think about all the potential foul-play scenarios that might have occurred overnight when he’d not been immediately available to the two doctors. He swallowed hard as the bed where the elder Doctor Roth had been the last time Billy had seen him came into view. The doctor still lay there, looking as pale and bloated as the day before, but different somehow.

  Then he continued opening the door and found Miss Roth beside the bed with her head on her father’s arm, as if kneeling in prayer. He stepped inside. “Miss Roth, is everything all right?”

  She continued to sit very still in that way, worrying Billy, as he set the tea service down on the other bed just as he had the night before. He stood there for a long moment, taking everything in. Then it occurred to him that the gentleman in the bed had not moved a muscle and didn’t appear to be breathing. Had he died? Rushing forward, he checked the man’s breathing and touched his cheek. The body had already begun to cool.

  “Oh, no,” he said under his breath and turned toward the young woman who continued to kneel beside the bed. “Miss Roth? Miss Roth?” he asked, getting a little louder has he said her name again.

  Still she didn’t answer.

  He didn’t feel right about touching a young woman without her permission, but he began to worry for her. He took her by the shoulder, thankful that she still had heat in her body and hadn’t passed away in the night as well. He shook her gently. “Miss Roth?’

  With a sob, she finally lifted her head. Fly-away strands of hair framed her face which was streaked with tears and haggard-looking. Her red-rimmed eyes were swollen from crying herself to sleep. Billy’s heart broke looking into her deep blue eyes. She looked even smaller and more vulnerable than she’d been the day before. She sobbed again and shook her head. Her voice cracked as she said, “He’s gone.”

  And then she passed out, collapsing back toward the floor. Billy caught her just before she hit her head. And that’s when he noticed that the heat from her body was too high, and her face was flushed. Miss Roth had the fever as well.

  Chapter 2

  Josie

  Daylight and nights faded in and out for Josie, punctuating long moments of delirium. She had no idea how much time had passed. A man with a deep voice had taken care of her on the train, and when they had stopped, strong arms had carried her from it. Papa? she wondered. He hadn’t carried her like that since she was a wee lass. But something in her heart broke each time she thought about her father. She pushed that pain aside every time and tried not to think about it.

  She woke in a soft bed when she finally came to herself. The bright light outside made it difficult to tell what part of the day it was, but surely it was afternoon. As she sat up in the bed, a spell of dizziness overcame her. She closed her eyes and waited for the moment to pass before she opened them again and peered around her surroundings. The small room was well furnished with diminutive, feminine decor. Frowning, she pulled the quilt from her legs and stood. The long nightgown she wore was one of her own, and she found her steamer trunk sitting at the foot of the bed beside her father’s. When did she get here? How did she get here? She couldn’t recall.

  And where was her papa?

  Her knees wobbled a bit as she stepped toward the window and looked out upon the bustling city and the park at the center of it. She blinked, unable to recognize a single building. Where on earth was she? Her heart began to race in her chest. Why couldn’t she remember anything about her present situation?

  A soft knock sounded at the door a moment before the handle turned. Josie’s heart squeezed as she leaned against a nearby chair, her legs not feeling as though they had the strength to stand. Why was she so afraid? How d
id she know that it wouldn’t be her father?

  Humming entered the room first as the door cracked open. Not her father, but the soft melody gave her some measure of comfort. It was deep and manly, and somehow familiar, although she didn’t know why. Then he backed into the room, pulling a tray cart with him—the large burly man from the train. Josie grasped for the name.

  “Mr. Hogge?” The words barely pushed past her dry, unused throat. How long had she not used it?

  He stopped, eyes widening as he turned around and found her by the window. He dropped his gaze suddenly and bowed his head. “Oh! I’m so glad you’re up, Miss Roth.”

  He released the cart, keeping his gaze lowered, and started backing up toward the door again, wringing his hat in his hands.

  “Wait,” she croaked but was too late. The man had already left the room, the door clicking closed behind him.

  Suddenly tired, she came around to the front of the chair she’d been holding onto and sat slowly. She felt so weak and dizzy. The tray cart that the gentleman had brought in had a tea service upon it and next to it was a familiar bottle. She frowned. Peruvian bark. Slowly, she stood and made her way to the cart as the memories came back to her. She’d almost used all the bark she’d had. She’d been making tea of it to give to her father. And... her father...

  “No,” she cried as tears slipped from her eyes. Her eyes had already felt dry and stung; they worsened as she began to cry. She leaned against the wall next to the door for balance. Her father was gone. It hadn’t been the flu, but something else. Dropsy. She should have noticed the edema before it had reached his heart. The sickness only made things move faster. The Peruvian bark could do nothing for the real problem that took her father away. Had she been too close to him? Too blind to see what she should have as a doctor?