Silver Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #1) Page 5

  "And Jason Seth has," Matthew said angrily.

  "Peace, boy. He's already in custody and I'm here for you to swear out a complaint. Then it's up to the judge, when he comes through the circuit, t'marry your brother and his wife, and decide for or against you in this matter."

  I could only see Matthew's profile but he didn't look mollified. Still, what more did he want?

  "There are other Seths," Matthew said. "How do we know another won't – "

  "Because the others don't have a bone to pick with the Longrens, that's how," the Sheriff said. He was a big man, easily over six feet all, with a barrel chest, thick arms, and a hat he hadn't removed. His hands looked strong and capable and the gun on his belt, deadly.

  I remained where I was, out of sight.

  "I've talked with Jason's brothers. They want no part of this, nor his sons, neither. But there's a slight matter of breach of contract, and that I need to know about."

  Again, that pang of jealousy, misplaced and inappropriate. I bit the inside of my cheek.

  "There was no promise and therefore, no breach," Matthew said and he sounded weary, pained, and sulking. "Bess is a nice girl, we went once to the theater and another time to a picnic. Not alone," he added quickly. "There were other couples and if I saw her other than that, it was in the market or on the street. I went to school with her, Sheriff. She's a nice girl but I don't want to marry her."

  Or anyone else, just yet, the sentence seemed to finish itself.

  "She know that?" the Sheriff asked.

  "Damned if I know," Matthew said angrily and was shushed by Hutch. "Well, I don't. We never even talked about it to that extent."

  The Sheriff pounced. "To what extent?"

  Matthew, het up, waved his arms, then grabbed his leg. "To any extent."

  "All right, all right." Again, with the hands up, peacefully. "Look, he'll be out in a couple days. For all we say, once he calms down, it's probably going to be before that because being behind bars isn't doing much for his temper. Can you just steer clear until this blows over?"

  "Who says it's going to blow over?" Matthew said, as Hutch said, "Yes, he can. He can't even walk. Shouldn't be too hard to hobble him to the bedpost."

  What I could see of Matthew's face scowled.

  "Also," the Sheriff said, as if justice had been dispensed with the curtailing of the victim's freedom, "Heard your new wife came into town yesterday." This was to Hutch. "Patched up your brother here."

  "Bride-to-be," Hutch corrected. "She's a midwife."

  "Fine by me. Just don't let her get on the wrong side of Doc Horton, see? We need him here to patch up those not having babies."

  I let the kitchen door slide shut. I had no intention of going to the mines and advertising my services for every incident but when the doctor was unavailable, I needed to be able to help. Being a midwife meant I had medical training, nursing primarily, but I could still help when needed and what's more, midwifery paid.

  I'd come from a home without money into a home without money. If I didn't want to go away again, using my skills was a good start.

  If it didn't get me thrown in the jail next to Jason Seth.

  Hutch went up to the mine once the Sheriff had gone. It was barely seven, already hot, and people in the West kept early hours. I cleaned the breakfast dishes, finishing them as the doctor came along. I heard him calling from the porch, leaving his buckboard as before, letting himself in to check on Matthew. Their voices became background and I didn't pay attention to them. As I finished in the kitchen, the doctor let himself through the door from the sitting room.

  "Morning, Missus," he said, and I didn't correct him. Everyone was convinced Hutch and I were magically already married.

  "Doctor Horton. May I offer you coffee?"

  "Shouldn't think so," he said, but sat down at the table nonetheless. He looked ill at ease, but determined to have his say. Might as well let him, and figure out what I had to contend with. I took a chair across from him, drying my hands on a flour sack that doubled in Hutch's kitchen as a dish towel. I wondered what his wife's dish towels had looked like and what had happened to them then wondered, not for the first time, what his wife looked like and what had happened to her.

  "Young Mr. Longren's leg looks good, Miss Lucas. You did a good job, and I'm sorry if I came off hard yesterday."

  I nodded. "You had no way of knowing what I could do." Then, taking a chance, I added, "Neither did I."

  He laughed at that. "Not a lot of shootings in Boston? Too civilized?"

  I raised my brows. "Plenty of civilized shootings in Boston. They just don't need a midwife to interfere." And when he'd smiled at that, I went on. "How about in Gold Hill? Or Virginia City? Any room for midwifery?"

  He seemed to ponder the question longer than necessary, staring past me into the kitchen as if judging its potential as a surgery. At last, he looked me square in the eye and said, "Yes, miss, we could use a midwife here. There's a doc or two over in Virginia City, and we cross paths back and forth between here and there and Dayton and Lousetown but there's not always someone available when there's a child being born because the men have no more sense than to get into a fight or fall down a mine shaft."

  I didn't say anything. He was tacitly allowing me my trade, admitting I'd done a good job with my first gunshot wound, but what he was saying wasn't what he'd been preparing to say. My father sometimes did the same thing, talking around a subject to sore to press. I waited.

  "I suppose you know what happened to the former Mrs. Longren?" he asked at length.

  So close to my thoughts, I was surprised. "I don't, in fact," I said. Under the table, out of sight, my hands wrung together.

  "She was expecting," he said. "Their first, and probably a son, given the way she was carrying."

  I blinked and swallowed hard. "What happened?"

  His attention had wandered. He looked directly at me again with my question and said simply, "Baby came early. Midwife came late." He thought for a minute, then knocked one knuckle against the table. "Might be something you'd best keep in mind. I'll see myself out. Good day."

  I murmured something, my eyes glazed with thoughts and tears I wouldn't shed. No one had ever told me just what had happened to Ellie Longren. Had I hurt him? By talking about what I did? By not knowing? Should I have known? He'd asked if my mother had shared his letters, but surely he wouldn't have sent such information to her.

  The doctor hadn't left the room. He stood just inside the door that led to the sitting room and I blinked away the confusion and hurt, looked up at him, and tried to smile. "Was there – something else?"

  "Mrs. Barnett, she lives over other side of town, past the baker. Anyone can tell you the way?" It sounded like a question. I had no idea what he was getting at.

  "Yes?"

  "She's expecting her third. Any day now. She's had an easy time of it in the past, can't say as I'm expecting anything different this time around. She's still on her feet, strong and healthy, but wouldn't hurt if you were to drop round in the next day or two. Get your bearings but maybe make an introduction."

  My head spun, thoughts flew. Everything at once, the chance to help out, the fear of hurting Hutch, the challenge I'd thought I'd seen from the doctor coupled with the chance he was giving me.

  He was waiting for an answer. "Thank you," I stammered. "I'll go 'round today. Or, or tomorrow." I hadn't unpacked. I didn't know if Hutch would come back for midday meal. There was Matthew to see to.

  And I was petrified.

  He saw that and smiled but it wasn't cruel. Just knowing. "Good day," he said again and was gone before I managed a reply.

  Hutch did come home midday, to check in with me, to eat lightly and without interest and to refuse to reply to any conversational sally I made until I gave up and contented myself with making a tray for his brother and busying myself in the kitchen.

  When he got ready to go back to the mine, still silent and halfway out the door without comment, I hazarde
d a question. He wasn't used to having someone here. That I could understand. But had I done something –

  "No," he said, and his eyes cleared for an instant. "I don't want to trouble you. You've only just arrived." He looked back over his shoulder into the house. "Have you even unpacked yet?" As if, had I unpacked, the nature of the house would have changed completely.

  I smiled. "Not yet, but I brought little. Books, mostly."

  He nodded.

  "Hutch. Trouble me."

  That made him look at me again, with a faint smile. "Just a line of ore. I thought we had found a vein, something that might put the Silver Sky back on its feet. But it petered out in a very short distance. I'm going to be losing men, can't afford their pay, and that hurts them, hurts everybody. It might have been better." And he stopped and folded his lips over what he might have said, which I had no doubt was along the lines of, "Perhaps you should have stayed in Boston."

  I took a breath. He was already troubled. Could what I had to ask trouble him that much more? And he needed my help.

  "Doctor Horton said Matthew is doing well," I started. He knew this, having talked with his brother already. He simply nodded and waited. "He suggested." Deep breath. "He suggested I call on Mrs. Barnett," I said, and waited to see if he'd put the pieces of that together himself. He did, and in short order.

  "I see."

  I rushed in, anxious. "Do you mind, Mr. – Hutch? I'd like to help." That brought color to his face. Quickly, I said, "She may have easy births, but it never hurts to have the help of someone trained nearby."

  He relented, his lips losing the tight line of pride. "If you were a teacher, I wouldn't expect you not to teach," he said, which before Dr. Horton's visit, would have not made sense to me. He met my gaze. "You must do what you feel best. I will be home at sundown. Will you have supper waiting?"

  I would. And I'd unpack, in the hopes that would make him stop offering me the chance to escape.

  And I'd have gone into Gold Hill, and met with Mrs. Barnett.

  Kitchen first, then on to unpacking, because it made me nervous, having an escape so conveniently at hand. Being upstairs kept me distant from Matthew, who was growing bored and talkative. I'd left him whittling, a fine mess I'd need to clean later.

  Once the kitchen was put away, and supper decided – string beans, potatoes, a roast someone had brought after the word of Matthew's accident had gone 'round – I went out to the garden.

  It was well tended, offering up corn I could harvest for supper, or possibly cut down into a corn pudding or corn and buttermilk pie. There were apples that would be ready come fall, and peaches that needed picking now. I could can some of them, maybe give some away. I'd have to ask Hutch what he'd been doing. Perhaps he traded the garden bounty for cleaning services. Greens grew in profusion, onions, peppers, carrots. A few berry bushes looked unamused at the desert climate and I pumped extra water for them.

  Mid-afternoon, I quit the garden and took myself inside, avoiding the sitting room until I'd had a chance to check my appearance, and tame my hair and wash the dirt from my face. Then I gathered a few of the ripe peaches in a basket, found one of my hats that hadn't flown off in a wild wagon ride, and went in to tell Matthew where I was going.

  "How's your – " leg, I started to say, but it sounded forward and I changed it to wound.

  "Aches a bit," he said, but there was color in his cheeks again and his blue eyes were awake and clear. "My night wasn't so good, but doc – " he stumbled a little – "Drained it and pain's going."

  The pain would be going if he'd gotten a shot, as well, but I didn't think he had and couldn't think of any good reason to discourage him. I handed him two of the peaches, fetched some water, and announced my intentions.

  At that, Matthew's face clouded. "Maggie," he said, easily using my familiar name. "You know about Ellie, don't you?"

  I liked him for that. "I do. And Hutch knew what I am before I came out, and knows my intentions now."

  His expression didn't soften. I added, "I can help, Matthew. It will be all right."

  I hadn't even made it as far as the street, armed with a basket of peaches and directions from Matthew to head south, when I was hailed and turned to find a beautiful woman about Hutch's age bearing down on me, waving, her dark hair sleekly pulled back, her blue eyes bright.

  "Hello?" I asked.

  "Hello!" She came through the gate as if we'd been friends forever and as if she came and went through that gate on a daily basis. "Maggie?"

  "Annie?" Had to be. She had the same coloring as her brothers, and the same smile.

  "I'm so glad to finally meet you!" She took my hands, which were wrapped around the basket handle, and squeezed them warmly. "You're the talk of the town, everyone is interested in the bride coming all the way from Boston!"

  She meant nothing by it, but my cheeks flamed to be the center of gossip, and to feel like a mail order bride.

  But she was warm and welcoming and we'd exchanged a letter or two before I had left the East. I'd been anticipating meeting Annie and her daughters, Kitty and Sarah, both nearly grown, and her son, Jacob, off at the University of Nevada in Reno, studying mining engineering.

  She swept me along in her wake, apparently uninterested in her wounded brother back inside the house. Instead of going in, she guided me a mile to the north, talking along the way and offering me everything from pie to bread to cold chicken to tea. I was hungry enough just from the conversation to sit without question when we reached her snug house. Her kitchen was cleaner than Hutch's house even was, with shining wood and copper kettles and a huge wood stove that spoke of the days before her husband had been killed in a robbery.

  Annie and her husband had left Alturas after Hutch, made it big briefly in silver and hated mining enough to open a grocery store in Virginia City. But when times turned hard, a robbery had left Annie's Clifford mortally wounded and Annie, a widow, taking in sewing and raising their three children.

  The Longren family had endured their share of bad luck.

  It didn't show on Annie. She cheerfully made tea, talking nonstop about the families that made Virginia City and Gold Hill, the silver families of Mackay and Bowers and Bradleigh. She talked about the Sheriff, who she rather thought couldn't find his own nose if someone told him it had gone missing, and who, she intimated, might not be adverse to claiming he couldn't find such nose if he were paid enough. She talked about Dr. Horton, who she thought fairly skilled and Dr. Young, who had moved on a year early, which had benefited several of his patients but not the tills in the local saloons. She talked about Matthew and Hutch and her son and daughters, about her parents in Alturas and the two younger brothers still back home in California. She talked about their parents, who ran a cattle ranch, which I knew as Hutch's letters had been replete with the desire never to find himself on a ranch. Cows, he'd written, are the dumbest creatures in creation. They have even less sense than Matthew, which wasn't too cruel, given at the time Matthew was seeing something like half a dozen girls with his usual lack of subtlety.

  Listening to Annie talk about family, names slipped into place and the strange I'd been immersed in for the last day began to become familiar. When I asked her about Mrs. Barnett, she offered that the Barnetts had very little money but were kind, giving, and loving, and that Mrs. Barnett was, indeed, close to her time.

  "I'll give you a loaf to take with the peaches, and some eggs. Those children need eggs and it wouldn't hurt her any, either," she said, bustling up to do so right then. It didn't seem strange to her that I would offer my services as midwife, and so I didn't ask.

  I thought I should go then, the day was passing and I wanted to go to the Barnetts' and I shouldn't impose overly on my new sister, if only because her company was so comforting I already knew I would hate to lose it, but she started then to ask me about Boston, about street cars and theaters and fashion and news, and the more I talked, the smaller the lump in my throat became, the familiar embracing me even in this
strange place. And so I stayed, telling her about adventures there, about Harvard, which I'd visited once but which my father had attended.

  It was later in the day when I set off for the Barnetts and I had an additional mile to walk, but I went smiling and more at ease than I had been since I had come to Nevada and I owed that to Annie.

  Chapter 6

  Mrs. Barnett lived in a small house off the main street in Gold Hill, close enough I was able to walk to it, even after my visit with Annie. Suddenly feeling like a peddler, I hesitated on the front walk. What was I planning to do, walk in and announce my fees? Demand she place herself in my care, for her good and my own? Then tell everyone about the miraculous midwife come to town?

  I stood looking at the house, small and painted white, with neat blue shutters and hollyhocks growing up before the windows. There wasn't much money here. Times were growing hard throughout the silver region, but it was more evident in this house than in Mr. Longren's, which had been built when the mines were producing and was scrupulously kept up.

  Mr. Barnett worked in a bakery and from what Annie had told me, a great deal of his paycheck ended up in the saloons. But that was gossip, and I would learn for myself, and it was no reflection on Mrs. Barnett either way.

  I had peaches, which weren't charity but a gift, and eggs and a loaf from Annie she said to claim was being repaid. I also had skills Mrs. Barnett might need and I would offer them if it seemed appropriate. Surely it wasn't too unusual for a midwife new to town to seek out those who might need her services.

  Fortified, I let myself in through the gate, wound between the lavender and sweet pea that edged the walk, and went to the door.

  Mrs. Barnett was small, with skin like porcelain and eyes as blue as those of the Longren brothers. A tumble of small children billowed out the door when she opened it, and began chasing each other through the flowers.