CHAPTER

24

I left Rosemond watching over Zeke while I went to fetch the plaster from Hankins and to discuss Lily Diamond’s treatment. In the chaos of the last few hours I’d forgotten about Lily’s plight and felt guilty for it. So much had changed since I diagnosed her and told Hankins and Harry of her tumor. Kindle was free and I needed to go to him, and now there was the issue of my broken hand. How Hankins reacted to the latter would depend on whether he agreed with my diagnosis. I wouldn’t put it past him to agree with me and recommend surgery as soon as possible to soak Harry Diamond for the fee. I needed to coerce him into believing the break was but a blip and I would be cutting people open for profit in no time.

The town was waking up slowly, it being Sunday. A few men straggled down the street, no doubt from a whorehouse or saloon, and toward home or their room. Businesses would remain shuttered, and the pious and the guilty would make their way to church in a few hours. What would be the inspiration for Reverend Bright’s sermon? Sins of the flesh? Whose sin would receive the most indignation, I wondered. Bright’s meaningless encounter with a whore, or Portia’s with a woman she loved?

Hankins’s street was a quiet residential street much like Lily Diamond’s on a more modest scale. The houses were smaller, but neat for all that, with rows of new trees planted that would make a majestic tunnel when mature in fifty years. Nineteen twenty-two. We’d all be dead by then, most like. How different would Cheyenne look? Would it have left its rough-and-tumble past behind and moved fully into the world of respectability it clearly strove for? I was surprised to realize I wanted to be here to find out.

The sight of Hankins on his front porch with Portia Bright arrested my musings of the future. What was she doing there? And was that blood on her dress?

I stopped at the end of the sidewalk. “Portia?”

The two noticed me for the first time. “Mrs. Graham,” Hankins said, “I’m glad you’re here. Can you take Mrs. Bright home?”

I stepped through the gate and up the sidewalk. “Of course. But what’s going on? Why are you covered in blood, Portia?” She stared at me with an uncomprehending expression.

Hankins came to me and pulled me to the side. “Reverend Bright is dead.”

“What? But I just saw him. I sent him here to get plaster of Paris.”

“Why am I not surprised your fingers are all over this?” He noticed my bandaged hand. “What’s wrong with your hand?”

“I broke it. What do you mean, my fingers are all over this? What happened to Oliver Bright?”

“Drummond, your snake-oil salesman, showed up here with a knife in his back. Thanks to you, he said. Is that true?”

“He attacked me, tried to shoot me full of morphine. I defended myself. Oliver came to my rescue before Drummond could do more, thank heavens.”

“When the Reverend arrived and saw Drummond, he flew into a rage.”

“Over me?” I said, with disbelief.

“From what I could gather with all the yelling, yes.” He glanced at Portia and leaned forward to whisper, “And a whore named Clara. I’ve treated her before. She’s been a doper as long as I’ve known her. Bright realized, from rescuing you I guess, that Drummond was switching to morphine, more powerful, as you know, and went after him. Horribly outmatched. Drummond stabbed Bright in the scuffle. With your knife, as a matter of fact. Bled out on my floor. There was nothing I could do.” When Hankins saw my disbelieving expression, he said, his tone defensive, “Drummond knew what he was doing with a knife, no doubt about it.”

“Where is Drummond now?”

“In jail or soon to be. Sheriff is watching the trains. I imagine Drummond’ll hang. Can’t go around killing preachers.”

“But doping up whores and getting them hooked on morphine is perfectly fine.”

Hankins’s expression darkened. “Drug-addled whores should be the least of your worries. When will you be able to operate on Lily Diamond’s tumor?”

I kept one eye on Portia, who hadn’t moved. She stared into the middle distance as if it held the answers to the questions of the world. “You agree with my diagnosis?”

“No, but the only way I could keep Harry from asking questions about you and how you were possibly qualified to diagnose a tumor was to say it was obvious to an idiot. He doesn’t like you in the least, you know. I’m sure he’d love the reward.”

I couldn’t bring myself to thank Hankins for keeping Diamond in the dark by calling me an idiot. “I don’t think we should wait until my hand is healed,” I said. “There’s a surgeon in Denver?”

“Not him. You said the tumor is harmless. We’ll wait. Now, take Mrs. Bright home. I have to deal with the Reverend’s body.”

“I need plaster.”

“I’ll be right back.”

I stepped forward and touched Portia’s arm. “Portia?” Her red eyes accentuated her pale, tear-stained cheeks.

She looked at me with the same uncomprehending expression. Slowly, her eyes focused and recognition dawned. Her cheeks flamed and she turned her head away, wiping roughly at her cheeks. She stepped away from me, her body trembling from delayed shock at her husband’s death.

“Dr. Hankins has asked me to take you home,” I said, quietly.

“Thank you, but I can manage.” She walked down the porch steps.

“Portia, wait,” I said, following. I grasped her arm to arrest her progress. She kept her face averted from me. “You have no need to be embarrassed with me,” I said. Portia met my gaze—questioning, hopeful—before glancing over my shoulder and looking away again.

Hankins clomped across the porch and down the steps, a bag of plaster in his hand. “I assume you have strips of cloth.”

“I’ll manage, thank you.”

“Come back when you’ve delivered her home and seen to the cowboy. We have a lot to discuss.”

“Such as?”

“Your ability to keep our bargain with a deformed hand, for one.”

I smiled. “It will be no problem, I assure you. I’ll return at say, two o’clock?”

He shrugged. “The sooner the better. It will take you hours to clean all the blood off my exam room floor.”

I narrowed my eyes and he stared back at me, challenging. He was punishing me for Lily Diamond and lording his power over me. Why were some men so pathetically insecure and predictable?

I smiled sweetly. “Of course. I’ll get back as soon as I can. I need to check on Thomas over on Calico Row, and Lavina. She had her baby.”

Hankins turned and waved over his shoulder. “Don’t forget the money you owe me.”

My smile dropped like a bag of rocks and I turned to Portia, who’d been watching me. “Come,” I said. “Let’s get you home.”

I sent Portia into her bedroom to change out of her bloody clothes and went to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee.

Portia’s house was plain—as befitted a man of God and his wife—clean and completely without personality. The kitchen, which would have naturally been Portia’s domain, was simple to the point of sparse. I thought of my house in New York: Maureen’s kitchen, warm, inviting, always smelling of fresh-baked bread or Irish stew; the small pots of herbs on the windowsill; the scarred wooden table where I ate at one end while Maureen kneaded bread or diced vegetables at the other; the homemade curtains hanging on the windows; the brick oven blackened from years of fires and smoke. I loved my father’s library, spent countless hours there as a child, then later as a medical student, but more than any other room, the kitchen was home. Portia’s kitchen spoke of a woman who cooked because it was expected of her; she took no pleasure in it, nor did she want to linger there. I wondered how different a kitchen shared with Rosemond would feel to a visitor.

Portia returned, her full mourning dress and severe hairstyle shocking, though I should have expected it. Her expression spoke of a woman in torment, though I wasn’t sure what tormented her the most. I poured us a cup of coffee, set hers on the table, and sat down with my own, letting her know I had no intention of leaving without a conversation. Portia sat and we drank in silence.

“The grieving vultures will descend soon. Say your piece and leave,” she said.

“Do you think I’m here to judge you?”

Portia dug her fingernail into a scratch on the table and wouldn’t look at me. “I’m an abomination.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re nothing of the sort.”

Portia was quiet for a while. “It started as a game with her, you know. Rosemond. A challenge to deflower the pious missionary. I resisted her for months, ignored the flirting, the touches, while inside I was singing yes, yes.” Her voice was soft, melodic, a small smile playing on her lips at the memory. She swallowed, and her voice hardened. “I could have stopped visiting, but I told myself it was my mission to save as many women from the life as I could. When, of course, returning week after week only fed my desire.” Portia met my gaze for the first time since outside Hankins’s house. I was arrested by the fierceness, the fear, in her mesmerizing, uniquely colored eyes. “How am I to know this isn’t a game with her, still? I left her in Saint Louis, and Rosemond doesn’t like to lose.”

“No, she doesn’t. I—” Would Rosemond kidnap me, kill an innocent woman, and let Dunk hang in an elaborate scheme to win a seduction game? I could have easily believed it a week ago, but now? I knew too much about Rosemond, had heard the pain in her voice when she told of her family, her past, had seen the expression on her face when I told her Portia loved her. I had to believe Rosemond’s motives were true. Otherwise, she was a monster of unimaginable proportions. “If she merely wanted to win, having Oliver see you two together would have sufficed. She wouldn’t have tried to strangle me after you left.”

Portia closed her eyes and grimaced. I reached out and placed my hand over hers. “I am sorry. I didn’t know you were there. And I never would have imagined …”

“I was sure you knew.”

“It isn’t where the mind naturally goes.”

“I thought you were in on it with her.”

“I was an unwitting partner in winning you back, it would seem. She hoped my presence would make you jealous.”

Portia shook her head. “How can I trust someone who is that manipulative?”

“It’s a good question, and one you could easily answer if you were in love.”

Portia’s head jerked up. “I am.” Her eyes widened at the instinctual admission, and she started to cry. She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes. I stared at the royal blue monogram in the corner. Portia followed my gaze and gripped the cloth protectively. She stood and turned away. “I’m sitting at my kitchen table, talking of loving a woman, clinging to a small scrap of her, when my husband has been killed.” She sobbed. I went to her, pulled her into my arms, and let her cry. That was how Lily Diamond and Amalia Post found us.

“Oh, dear, you poor thing,” Lily said, placing a dish of food on the table. Amalia did the same. It was as if the floodgates opened. A steady stream of women came into the house and took over, talking in quiet voices and searching in vain for something to clean or organize. Portia accepted the condolences with brief words of thanks, her expression appropriately grief-stricken. I stood with her for a while, my arm around her waist, holding her up. I leaned in and told Portia I needed to leave. She nodded and smiled grimly. “Rosemond will want to come when she finds out. Should I tell her she’s welcome?”

Portia squeezed my hand. “Tell her to hurry. Please.”

I smiled, nodded, and squeezed her hand in good-bye. I was at the kitchen door when I realized this was a final good-bye. When I turned back, Portia had been waylaid by Amalia Post and I couldn’t catch her eye. Lily Diamond came to me instead. “Let me walk you out, dear.”

At the front door she said, “What is wrong with your hand?”

“I broke it last night.”

Lily began to shake. “What about my surgery?”

I took Lily’s hand in mine. “Lily, do you trust me?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“I want you to promise me, no matter what you hear, you believe I will take care of you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t explain right now. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Good. Now I have to get home and cast a cowboy’s broken arm and send Eliza over. I’ll be in touch soon.”

I hurried off before Lily could think too much on my choice of words and what they could possibly mean.

Finding my gun was next to impossible. Freight trains had arrived in the night, as well as east- and westbound passenger trains, clogging the rail yard and making the area where Drummond attacked me difficult to locate. I was on my hands and knees, searching beneath a freight car, when a train whistle blew and was followed by the church bell chiming the hour in the distance.

One o’clock.

When I’d returned to Rosemond’s and told her about Oliver Bright’s death and Portia’s plea to come to her, I had to physically restrain her from running out the door.

“You have to help me with Zeke and cast my hand.” Rosemond didn’t get the chance to argue. “You owe me at least thirty minutes.”

She pointed to her face. “You do remember you broke my nose. We’re even.”

“Not by a long shot.”

Rosemond acquiesced with as much bad humor as only a woman eager to be with her lover could. A combination of her ineptitude, my frustration with not being able to do it myself, dammit, Zeke’s writhing and begging for morphine, and my anxiety hearing the clock ticking away, telling me time was moving quickly toward missing my train, resulted in Zeke’s cast being the worst effort I’d ever been involved in, including during the war when cannons were booming in the distance and bloody and maimed soldiers continued to stream into the barn on Antietam Creek. Rosemond held her plaster-covered hands in the air and waited to do my cast, trembling with impatience.

“Go. I don’t need a cast,” I lied.

She rinsed her hands in the sink while I poured the last of my laudanum into a glass of whisky for Zeke. He drank it down in one gulp. “Better?” I asked.

He nodded, and I gave him instructions for what would happen next. An argument broke out when I told Zeke he needed to stay in Cheyenne for a few weeks so Hankins could check on his wound, now covered with plaster, to make sure it wasn’t infected. By the time it was over, Rosemond had left.

Without saying good-bye.

I sat back on my knees and sighed. Finding my gun had been a long shot, but I felt naked without it strapped to my waist. If I wanted to get the five dollars Salter had left at the Union Pacific Hotel and make my train, I had to give it up. I stood and dusted dirt off my skirt and made my way to the hotel. The lobby was full and the line to the front desk was ten people deep. I stepped in line and kept my eye on the clock on the wall. Five minutes and the line hadn’t moved, thanks to the couple at the front arguing with the clerk about a bigger room. I gritted my teeth, tapped my foot, watched the clock, and tried to ignore the pain in my hand. I hadn’t taken laudanum, knowing I needed to have my wits about me on the journey and not wanting to test my newfound opiate sobriety.

One ten. I needed Salter’s five dollars to buy my fare. I walked up to the front of the line and interrupted the argument. “Excuse me, Charlie,” I said to the clerk. “I’m trying to make the one-thirty train and I need to pick up something that was left for me.”

“You’ll have to wait in line, miss.”

“And I have been. Patiently. But I am going to miss my train. It won’t take but a second. Helen Graham.”

Charlie shrugged. “If I did it for you, everyone else would expect special treatment and the whole system would break down.”

“Yeah, why do you think you’re special?” the man behind the arguing couple said.

“I don’t. I only need my package. Please.” My eyes burned with impending tears as my opportunity to get to Kindle slipped away. “I’m trying to be reunited with my husband, you see. And I need this package to do so.”

Charlie the clerk was unmoved, but the woman standing next to me wasn’t. “Oh, give her the package, for heaven’s sakes.”

Charlie, though, wasn’t about to bend. He pointed to the back of the line. I returned and waited. It was one twenty-five when I got to the front of the line. Charlie wrote in his book for an interminable time. I gritted my teeth and said, “Hello. I’m here to pick up a package.”

The clerk looked up, feigning innocence. “Name?”

“Helen Graham.”

“One moment.”

He removed an envelope from the mail slots behind the desk and placed it on the counter. “Have a nice trip.”

I took it without a word of thanks.

I ran to the depot and pushed my way through the disembarking crowd to the ticket window that, shockingly, didn’t have a line. “One ticket for the one thirty.” I pushed the envelope through the window and was about to rifle in my bag for the rest of my money. Two short whistles and the hiss of brakes being released told me I was too late a split second before the ticket master did.

“Would you like a ticket for tomorrow’s train?”

My head fell forward onto the glass separating us. I nodded. “Thank you.”

I paid for the ticket and put it in my bag. I sat down on the nearest bench and plopped my bag on my lap. One more day. I’d survived this long. I could survive one more day. I had no intention of returning to Hankins’s house to clean up a floor covered with blood and hear his chastisement for my many transgressions. I couldn’t go back to Rosemond’s; Hankins would find me there. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the wall, wondering where I could hide safely for the next twenty-four hours. I rubbed my aching stomach. The morphine was wearing off, which meant the sharp pains would return soon. I considered breaking into Drummond’s caravan and hiding out there. If I knew Sheriff Hall, the purple wagon had already been looted by him and his men.

I’d gone through everyone I knew and dismissed each one again when someone sat down next to me. I would need to get up soon, but my two sleepless nights were catching up to me. Now that I was sitting quietly, I could feel the slight jangling of my nerves beneath my skin, a physical craving for laudanum or morphine. If I concentrated, maybe I could recapture the sensation of floating the morphine gave me. A few minutes more and maybe I could fool my body into believing I didn’t need it, and fool my mind into believing I didn’t want it.

The person next to me shifted on the bench.

“Waiting for someone?”

My heart stopped, but I kept my eyes closed. It wouldn’t have been the first time exhaustion played tricks on my mind. I’d fallen asleep on the bench. It was a dream.

The man placed his hand over mine, lightly, like the touch of a feather, before intertwining his fingers through mine like so many times before. I kept my eyes closed, determined to make the dream last.

“Laura.”

A sob broke through me and my head fell forward. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder. My body trembled from happiness and relief. He guided my head to his shoulder and the familiar scent of horse, leather, and sweat hit me. I inhaled deeply, imbued anew with a sense of safety and security missing since being separated from Kindle. I laughed between my sobs, lifted my head from his shoulder, opened my eyes, and found myself holding hands with a one-eyed priest.