The Listening Sky Page 13

  “He’s a teamster. Wagons come in here every day. I hope he’s not on one of them. I think Polly would go all to pieces if she saw him again.”

  “Herb’s taken a shine to her. I’ve not seen him stuck on a girl before. If he knows what happened and that teamster shows his face around here, he won’t stand a chance.”

  “He’d kill him?”

  “He’d not be singing ‘Rock of Ages’ after Herb got through with him,”

  “Is Herb a gunman?”

  “He is if pushed, but he’s not a hired gun. Herb’s not a bad kid. Fact is, I’m surprised he’s as decent as he is. He’s been footloose since he knew hockey from cornbread. When I came on to him, he was a skinny, scared kid in a man’s body and had already killed two men. He couldn’t be blamed for that. They were trying to kill him. He got handy with a gun to protect himself, and hard life put a chip on his shoulder. We kind of took to each other. He saved my bacon more than once.”

  “I expect you did the same for him.”

  “He’s smart and could’ve made something of himself if he’d had the chance.”

  “How did you happen to come here?”

  “Herb and I met Garrick Rowe up at Trinity. He owns the sawmill there and the one here and wanted to get this town going again so the mill workers would bring in their families and stay. A town needs a doctor, and Trinity already had one.”

  “The surgery is as up to date as the one or two that I saw in Denver.”

  “That’s all mine down there. T.C. just furnished me a place to put it.”

  “They got a bargain.”

  “I know now that I shouldn’t have taken the job. I knew even then I wasn’t going to last long, but I figured I had time to get things started and someone else could take over. A man can’t just sit around and wait to die. This thing just came on faster than I thought it would. Maybe the whiskey helped after all. Should’a drunk more of it.”

  “Do you want the laudanum now?” She had been watching his fingers pluck at the covers.

  “Yeah, give it to me. You need some rest, girl. Your eyes look like two burnt holes in a blanket”

  “If you want me in the night, call out. I’m a light sleeper.”

  With her palms together, her hands beneath her cheek, Jane lay listening to the sounds and recalling the conversation. She heard a chair scrape downstairs, and then low masculine voices. Without being quite aware of it, she felt safer here than she’d felt since leaving her tiny room at the Methodist Home. She drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

  Jane rolled over on the bed and sat up. She had been deeply asleep and the next instant, she was wide awake. A sound had awakened her, and she hurried across the hall to the doctor’s mom, her feet bare, her nightdress swirling about her calves. Doc was leaning over the side of the bed gagging and spitting in the chamber pot. What had awakened her was the clatter of the lid dropping to the floor.

  She wet a cloth in the tin basin and waited for him to finish. Finally, exhausted, he lay back on the pillow.

  “You didn’t need to get up, girl.”

  “I told you I was a light sleeper.” She bent over him and gently wiped his face. When her hair fell down over his hand, he combed his fingers through the silky strands.

  “Been a long time since I touched hair like this.”

  When Jane saw Doc’s eyes go to the doorway, she turned. T.C. was standing there, shirtless and barefoot.

  “I heard something—” The sight of Jane in the modest white gown buttoned to the neck and cuffed at the wrists, her ankles and feet bare, and that magnificent dark-red hair flowing over her shoulders and down her back, sent a rush of blood into his groin.

  “What… what…” she sputtered and backed away from the bed, her arms crossed over her breasts. “I’m… not dressed!”

  “Hellfire!” he snorted “Doesn’t seem to bother you that Doc’s seeing you in your nightclothes. Besides, nothing’s showing but your bare feet. I’ve seen plenty of them.” Despite the suffocating heat that flashed through him, depriving him of breath, T.C. managed to speak normally.

  “I had to puke and dropped the damn pot lid.” Doc’s voice broke the embarrassed silence.

  T.C. pulled his eyes from a vision that would haunt his nights for weeks to come, walked into the room and looked down at the man on the bed.

  “You all right, Doc?”

  “That’s a hell of a question to ask a dying man.” Doc scowled up at T.C. “Just my luck to have the prettiest woman in the territory come to my room in her nightdress and I be on my last legs.”

  Flushing to the roots of her hair, Jane stared first at one man and then the other, knowing there was no way to get out of the mortifying situation except to flee, and she’d not give Kilkenny the satisfaction of that.

  T.C. went back to the door, passing near enough to Jane to reach out and touch her—near enough to take in the faint, definable woman smell of her. The emotion rioting through him was wholly concealed behind the noncommittal expression that settled over his face when he spoke.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Yeah,” Doc said. “Bring up the bottle of laudanum—and leave it.”

  T.C. looked at Jane. Her eyes met his, then moved down across his chest and fell to the floor between his bare feet She stepped back and came up against the chair.

  “Anything else, Jane?” he asked.

  Jane forced herself to look into his dark face. “Water.” She took the pitcher from the washstand, handed it to him and was relieved when he was gone. She moved back to the bed and found Doc smiling.

  “What’s tickled your funny-bone all of a sudden?”

  “Nothing,” he lied. “Put on that shirt over there if you think T.C. is seeing something he shouldn’t. Lord knows that thing you’ve got on would hide a bucket a spuds if you had one under there.”

  “It’s the… idea that he just pops in when and where he wants to,” she fumed, and snatched the shirt from the peg and quickly put it on.

  “It’s his house. I think you threw old T.C. a side loop.” Doc chuckled. “His eyes almost popped out of his head when he saw you in that gown and your hair hanging down. T.C. don’t get bumfuzzled very often.”

  “He should have knocked—” Jane said, refusing to acknowledge that the door was already open.

  “Doggit!” Doc made an attempt to look disappointed. “I’m going to miss the excitement.”

  “What excitement?”

  “You and T.C.” His sunken eyes appeared brighter.

  “What are you talking about?” Jane asked impatiently.

  “I’ll be six feet under by the time he gets down to doin’ some serious courting.”

  “That is the stupidest thing you’ve said yet,” Jane sputtered. She stood with her hands on her hips, her bare feet spread, her body stiff with indignation. “I swear to goodness, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you didn’t have an ounce of brains in your head.”

  “On the other hand, I think I’ll hold on so I can see the fireworks.”

  “Nathan, you’re the limit. For a doctor you’re certainly lacking in gumption.”

  “Horse-hockey,” he snorted. “I got gumption I’ve not used yet. And you ought to have more respect than to insult a man who’s flat on his back breathing his last.”

  “That’s another thing. Stop playing on my sympathy.”

  “It’s working, isn’t it? All I got to do is puke and you come running.”

  “Well, I won’t the next time. You can puke your fool head off for all I care.”

  Jane backed away from the bed and the washstand when T.C. came in. Thank heavens he had put on a shirt and she no longer had to look at his wide naked shoulders and furry chest.

  “Fresh water. Herb got it just before he went to bed.” T.C. put the pitcher on the washstand and handed Jane the bottle of laudanum.

  “Been wanting a word with you, T.C., if you’ve got the time.” T.C. nodded, and Doc continued. “I’d be obliged if you’
d get a leather packet out of the top drawer in my desk, a paper and pen and something to write on.”

  T.C. went back out into the darkened hallway.

  He roamed around in the dark as silent and as sneaky as a cat, Jane observed to herself. She looked down at Doc and found him watching her as she measured drops of the drug into a glass of water.

  “T.C. can give me that later. I don’t want to sleep before I’ve said what I got to say.”

  “I’ll go back to bed and leave you to it.” She picked up the bottle of laudanum and headed for the door, anxious to leave before T.C. returned.

  “Leave that.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “If you want it, call me.”

  “Dammit, Jane. I said leave it. I’m the doctor!”

  “Dammit, Nathan. You’re the patient. I’m the doctor.”

  “Hell and damnation! You’re a know-it-all, irritating, bossy—”

  “—Pig-ugly old maid?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You were thinking it.”

  “Good gawdamighty! How in tarnation do you know what I’m thinking?”

  “You shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain. You’ll be meeting him soon, and he won’t like it.”

  “Chrissake! Where did you come from? A convent?”

  “An orphanage. And it wouldn’t matter if I came from a manger in Bethlehem, I’m not leaving this bottle, and that’s that!”

  “You’d not be so smart-alecky if I was on my feet.”

  “If you were on your feet you’d not want it.”

  “I paid good money for that damn bottle of laudanum. I’ll drink every drop if I want to.”

  “Not as long as I’m here, you won’t.”

  “Well, I can fix that!”

  “Go ahead. It would suit me just fine. Find me a way back to the station, and I’ll leave at dawn.”

  “You think you know every damn thing to be known!”

  “I may not be the smartest person in the world, but I know enough not to leave this bottle of laudanum here with a crazy old man who might take too much of it. Not that I care! But I won’t have your death on my conscience.”

  “You don’t have one!”

  From the doorway, Jane looked back over her shoulder ready to fire another angry retort. She came up against a hard, warm body and backed away from it as if it were a hot stove. T.C. had come silently to the doorway. To cover her confusion she directed her anger at him.

  “Don’t you ever make any noise?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Ha!”

  “What are you two fussin’ about? I could hear you all the way downstairs.”

  “There are three drops of laudanum in that glass of water,” she said, ignoring his question and nodding toward the washstand. “Give it to the old coot when he’s ready for it. I’m going to bed.”

  With her arms crossed tightly over the bottle, she brushed past T.C. and hurried to the room across the hall. She didn’t see the puzzled look that followed her, or the grin on Doc’s face, or the wink he gave T.C.

  Four men sat around a small fire swapping yarns—or lies, depending on who was talking.

  “She was the fattest woman I ever did see. Bouncin’ on her was like bouncin’ on a featherbed. Never did know if I got it in the right place. Haw! Haw! Haw! Didn’t matter none. I went off good anyhow.”

  “Are women all ya ever talk about?” Bob Fresno asked the question in an offhand way, but inwardly he was disgusted. He was tired of listening to Milo bragging about the women he’d had and about the lumber company he’d owned with his brother. It was lies, all lies, or he’d not be here working his butt off for two bits a day and board.

  “Ain’t nothin’ better to talk about. Ain’t that right?” Milo grinned, and looked at the other men for confirmation. “I a’ready got me one picked out here. Young and juicy. Ain’t nothin’ better.”

  Bob had been watching the faintly lighted window in the upstairs room at Kilkenny’s house. Jane had gone there early in the morning with Kilkenny, and Bob had not seen her again all day. He’d heard talk that the doctor was sick and that she was tending him. After that someone said she had sewn up a cut on a man’s leg. He wanted to know what the hell was going on. He didn’t like it one bit that she was over there with Kilkenny and the scout who had come in last night.

  Bob listened with half an ear to Milo’s going on about the young girl.

  “I like ‘em untried and scared. ‘Course it’s all a put-on. Oncet they get a taste fer it, they like it. Everybody knows that. Gives a man a mighty powerful feelin’.”

  “Are ya talkin’ ‘bout the little ‘un ya was pesterin’ when that big kid come over and knocked ya on yore arse?” The man who spoke leaned over to expel a played-out chaw of tobacco from his jaw.

  “I wasn’t pesterin’ her. We was jist talkin’,” Milo flared. “And that kid won’t stand in my way. I’ll tell ya that right off. He caught me off guard, is what he done.”

  “That kid ain’t no slouch with a gun.”

  “That ass-hole kid’s goin’ to be took for a elk or a deer one of these days and get his stupid head blowed off.”

  “Is that how ya do yore fightin’? Shoot a man in the back?”

  “Why not, if he’s needin’ killin’? You one a them honorable fellers that give a bastard a go at ya?” Milo was completely unaware of the dangerous ground he was on.

  “I face a man if I plan to kill him.”

  “With that pig-sticker?”

  “Don’t have to worry ‘bout running outta bullets.” The soft slurry voice had an edge to it.

  “Haw! Haw! Haw! One chance is all ya got. Shi… it. I ain’t dumb enough ta go huntin’ with one bullet in my gun.”

  “It’s been enough so far.”

  Bob suddenly took notice of the quiet voice and was instantly on guard. Forest Tennihill was whiplash thin. He had a long, narrow, weathered face, a mustache that drooped down on each side of his mouth, and a slow way of speaking. He also had a long thin knife in a sheath on his thigh. Bob suspected that he had another one in his boot. Tennihill was a man of a few words and obviously was not to be fooled with.

  “You turnin’ in, Milo?” Bob stood and stretched.

  “Ain’t ya goin’ back to the saloon? That red-headed woman’s kinda pretty. She’s old and ain’t very friendly, but she’s got big tits.”

  “No. I’m hittin’ the hay,” Bob replied, his eyes on the upstairs window again. I wonder if Jane’s in there.

  “Guess I’ll go along with ya. Sonofabitchin’ breed says no credit at the saloon,” Milo said.

  “What you need credit for?” Bob asked as they left the campfire. “Thought ya owned a company over in the Bitterroot.”

  “I do, gawddammit. I own half a it. Get my money anytime I go back fer it.”

  “Hell. If I had money someplace I’d have my butt in the saddle and be headin’ for it.”

  “I got my reasons.”

  I bet you have, you lying son of a bitch.

  They walked down the street toward a shack where they were bunking with several other men.

  “I ain’t stayin’ here if the breed don’t give me a decent job. Hell, I know everythin’ there is to know ‘bout a donkey engine, and I’m as good a sawyer as ever sawed a plank. I can do it all.”

  “I’d not be so free with callin’ Kilkenny a breed, if I was you. He ain’t the one hirin’ mill hands anyway. And I’d not be messin’ with Tennihill unless yo’re anxious to see what yore gizzard looks like. That sucker’ll cut ya up bad.”

  Milo immediately went on the defensive. “Wal, ya ain’t me, and I ain’t backin’ up fer nobody, breed or pig-sticker.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Ya think he’s got his eye on my gal?”

  “Who? Kilkenny?”

  “Shit no! Tennihill.”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “I picked her right off. I jist missed gettin’ me one last year. I ain
’t missin’ out on this’n.”

  They kept walking and Milo kept mumbling his threats against Tennihill, against Kilkenny. Bob didn’t give a damn if Milo got his throat cut or his head blown off as long as he didn’t set his sights on Jane Love.

  She was his.

  Chapter 11

  EARLY morning light filtered into the room as Jane made ready to face the new day. She shook the wrinkles out of her serviceable brown dress, put it on, and tied a blue and white print apron about her waist. With the three threatening notes safe in her apron pocket, she did up her hair, then sat down on the edge of the bed to put on her shoes and stockings.

  Polly awoke and sat up knuckling her eyes with her fists.

  “Is it time to get up already?’

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “It’s so good to be sleepin’ in a real honest-to-goodness bed. Did you have to get up with the doctor?”

  “A couple of times.”

  “A herd of buffalo could’ve passed and I’d not a heard. I was awful tired.”

  “You’ve cooked and scrubbed here for three straight days. It’s no wonder you’re tired.”

  “I’m tickled to be here with ya. I got to earn my keep.”

  “I don’t want to see you lifting anymore big buckets of scrub water.” Jane went to the door. “I looked in on Doc a little while ago too. He’s still sleeping. I’m going to speak to Mr. Kilkenny today about washing his towels and sheets and bringing someone else in to care for him.”

  “Yo’re still goin’?”

  “I’ve not changed my mind. Get dressed. I’ll go ahead and fire the cookstove.”

  “Will ya wait and go to the privy with me?”

  “If you hurry.”

  When Jane reached the kitchen, a lighted lamp sat on the table and the coffeepot was sending up the aroma of freshly ground beans. There was no sign that a meal had been prepared. Down the hallway a light shone from the doorway of Kilkenny’s office. While she was pondering whether or not to start breakfast, Polly arrived; and the two women went out onto the back porch and down the path to the outhouse.

  The air was cool. The slight breeze was fresh with the clean, sweet smell of pine. The mill crews had left the day before, but a sizeable number of men remained to finish the hotel. It was unbelievable that so much had been accomplished in three days. Even now men were lined up at the cookfires for coffee and waiting to get into the cookhouse. Another busy day was about to begin.