20

SARAH’S SUITORS

It made good medical sense for Rob J. to stop and see Sarah Bledsoe several times in the next week while returning from house calls, for each time he could do so by going out of his way only a little, and as her physician he had to make certain her recovery was smooth. Indeed, it was a wonderful recovery. There was little to discuss about her health, except to observe that her skin tone had changed from a deadly white to a pink-peach that was most becoming and that her eyes glowed with alertness and an interesting intelligence. One afternoon she gave him tea and cornbread. The following week he stopped by her cabin three times, and twice he accepted her invitation to stay for meals. She was a better cook than Moon; he couldn’t get enough of her cooking, which she said was Virginian. He was aware that her resources were meager, so he took to bringing a few things, a sack of potatoes, a small ham. One morning a settler who was short of cash gave him four fat, freshly shot grouse in partial payment, and he rode to the Bledsoe cabin with the birds hanging from his saddle.

When he got there he found Sarah and Alex seated on the ground near the garden, which was being double-dug by a perspiring shirtless hulk of a man with the bulging muscles and tanned skin of one who earns his living out-of-doors. Sarah introduced Samuel Merriam, a farmer from Hooppole. Merriam had come from Hooppole with a cartful of pig dung, half of which already had been dug into the garden. “Finest stuff in the world for growing things,” he told Rob J. cheerfully.

Next to the princely gift of a wagonload of pig shit, applied, Rob’s little birds were a meager present, but he gave them to her anyhow, and she seemed genuinely grateful. He made a polite refusal to her invitation that he might join Samuel Merriam as her dinner guest, and instead dropped in on Alma Schroeder, who waxed enthusiastic about what he had accomplished in curing Sarah. “Already it’s a suitor down there, isn’t it?” she said, beaming. Merriam had lost his wife the previous autumn to the fever and needed another woman without delay to take care of his five children and help with the pigs. “A good chance for Sarah,” she said sagely. “Although, women so scarce on the frontier, she’ll have lotsa chances.”

On Rob’s way home, he drifted by the Bledsoe cabin again. He rode up to her and sat in the saddle looking at her. This time her smile was puzzled, and he could see Merriam pause at his work in the garden and stare speculatively. Until Rob opened his mouth, he had no idea what he wanted to tell her.

“You yourself must do as much of the work as possible,” he said severely, “because the exercise is necessary to your full recovery.” Then he tipped his hat and rode crankily home.

Three days later, when next he stopped at the cabin, there was no sign of a suitor. Sarah was struggling to separate a big old rhubarb root into sections for replanting, and finally he solved her problem by chopping it apart with her ax. Together they dug the holes in the loam and planted the roots and covered them with the warm soil, a chore that pleased him and earned him a share of her dinner of red-flannel hash washed down with cool spring water.

Afterward, while Alex napped in the shade of a tree, they sat on the riverbank and tended her trotline, and he spoke to her of Scotland and she told him she wished there was a church nearby, so her son could be taught to have faith. “Often now I think of God,” she said. “When I believed I was dying and Alex would be left alone, I prayed, and He sent you.” Not without trepidation, he confessed to her that he didn’t believe in the existence of God. “I think gods are the inventions of men and that it has always been so,” he said. He could see the shock in her eyes and feared he had sent her into a life of piety on a piggery. But she abandoned talk of religion and spoke of her early life in Virginia, where her parents owned a farm. Her large eyes were such a dark blue as to be almost purple; they didn’t sentimentalize, but in them he saw the love for that easier, warmer time. “Horses!” she said, smiling. “I grew up loving horses.”

It allowed him to invite her to ride out with him next day to visit an old man who was dying of consumption, and she made no attempt to hide the eagerness with which she agreed. Next morning, on Margaret Holland and leading Monica Grenville, he called for her. They left Alex with Alma Schroeder, who fairly beamed with delight at the fact that Sarah was “riding out” with the doctor.

It was a good day for a ride, not too hot for a change, and they allowed the horses to walk, taking their time. She had packed bread and cheese in her saddlebag, and they had a picnic in the shade of a live oak. In the sick man’s house she stayed in the background, listening to the rattling breathing, watching Rob J. hold the patient’s hands. He waited until water warmed at the fireplace and then bathed the skinny limbs and administered a dulling draft, teaspoon by teaspoon, so sleep would make the waiting merciful. Sarah overheard him telling the stolid son and the daughter-in-law that the old man would die within hours. When they left she was moved and spoke little. To try to regain the easiness they had shared earlier, he suggested they switch horses on the way back, because she was a fine horsewoman and could handle Margaret Holland without trouble. She enjoyed riding the friskier mount. “Both the mares are named after women you have known?” she asked, and he acknowledged it was so.

She nodded thoughtfully. Despite his effort, they were quieter on the way home.

Two days later, when he went to her cabin, there was yet another man, a tall, cadaverously thin peddler named Timothy Mead, who regarded the world out of mournful brown eyes and spoke respectfully when introduced to the doctor. Mead left her a gift of four colors of thread.

Rob J. took a thorn out of Alex’s bare foot and noted that summer was coming to an end and the boy didn’t have proper shoes. He took a tracing of the feet and next time he was in Rock Island stopped at the shoemaker’s and ordered a pair of child’s boots, taking great pleasure in the errand. The following week, when he delivered the small footwear, he saw that the gesture flustered Sarah. Still, she was a puzzle to him; he couldn’t tell if she was gratified or annoyed.

The morning after Nick Holden was elected to the legislature he rode into the clearing by Rob’s cabin. In two days’ time he would travel to Springfield to make laws that would help the growth of Holden’s Crossing. Holden spat contemplatively and turned the conversation to the common knowledge that the doctor was riding out with the Widow Bledsoe. “Ah. There are things you should know, old buck.”

Rob looked at him.

“Well, the child, her son. You’re aware he’s a wood’s colt? Born almost two years after her husband’s death.”

Rob stood. “Good-bye, Nick. You have a good trip to Springfield.”

There was no mistaking his tone, and Holden clambered to his feet. “I’m just trying to say it’s not necessary for a man—” he began, but what he saw in Rob J.’s face made him swallow the words, and in a moment he swung into his saddle, said a discomfited farewell, and rode away.

Rob J. saw such a puzzling mixture of things in her face: pleasure at seeing him and being in his company, tenderness when she would allow it, but also at times a kind of terror. The evening came when he kissed her. At first her open mouth was soft and glad and she pressed against him, but then the moment went bad. She twisted away. To hell, he told himself, she didn’t care for him, and that was that. But he forced himself to ask her gently what was the matter.

“How can you be attracted to me? Haven’t you seen me wretched, in a beastly condition? You have … smelled my filth,” she said, her face aflame.

“Sarah,” he said. He looked into her eyes. “When you were ill, I was your doctor. Since then, I’ve come to see you as a woman of charm and intelligence, with whom it gives me great pleasure to exchange thoughts and share my dreams. I’ve come to desire you in every way. You’re all I think about. I love you.”

Their only physical contact was her hands in his. Her grip tightened, but she didn’t speak.

“Perhaps you could learn to love me?”

“Learn? However could I not love you?” she asked wildly. “You, who handed me back my life, as if you were God!”

“No, damn you, I’m an ordinary man! And that’s how I need to be—”

Now they were kissing. It went on and on, and it wasn’t enough. It was Sarah who prevented what might easily have followed, pushing him roughly, turning away and arranging her clothing.

“Marry me, Sarah.”

When she didn’t answer, he spoke again. “You weren’t meant to slop hogs all day on a pig farm or to stumble about the countryside with a peddler’s pack on your back.”

“What is it I was meant for, then?” she asked in a low, bitter voice.

“Why, to be a doctor’s wife. It’s very plain,” he said gravely.

She didn’t have to pretend to be serious. “There are those who will rush to tell you about Alex, about his lineage, so I want to tell you about him myself.”

“I want to be Alex’s father. I’m concerned about him today, and tomorrow. I don’t need to know about yesterday. I’ve had terrible yesterdays too. Marry me, Sarah.”

Her eyes filled, but she had yet another side to reveal to him. She faced him calmly. “They say the Indian woman lives with you. You must send her away.”

“ ‘They say.’ And ‘There are those who will tell you.’ Well, I will tell you something, Sarah Bledsoe. If you marry me, you must learn to tell them to go to hell.” He took a deep breath. “Makwa-ikwa is a good and hardworking woman. She lives in her own house on my land. To send her away would be an injustice to her and to me, and I won’t do it. It would be the worst way for you and me to begin a life together.

“You must take my word that there is no reason for jealousy,” he said. He held her hands tightly and wouldn’t let her go. “Any other conditions?”

“Yes,” she said hotly. “You must change the names of your mares. They’re named for women you have ridden, is that not so?”

He started to smile, but there was real anger in her eyes. “One of them. The other was an older beauty I knew as a boy, a friend of my mother’s. I ached for her, but she thought of me as a child.”

She didn’t ask which horse was named for which woman. “It’s a cruel and nasty male joke. You’re not a cruel and nasty man, and you must change the mares’ names.”

“You’ll rename them yourself,” he said at once.

“And you must promise, no matter what may happen between us in the future, never to name a horse for me.”

“I so vow. Of course,” he couldn’t resist noting, “I intend to order a pig from Samuel Merriam, and …”

Fortunately, he was still holding her hands, and he didn’t let go of them until she was returning his kiss in a very good way. When they stopped, he saw she was weeping.

“What?” he said, burdened by the uneasy intimation that being married to this woman would not be easy.

Her wet eyes glowed. “Letters posted by coach will be a terrible expense,” she said. “But finally I can send positive word to my brother and sister in Virginia.”