Dr. Adam Birchfield’s first month in Antelope brought more and different kinds of cases than he had seen during his entire Concord practice. “Did they all save things up until I got here?” he demanded of Nat one evening after wearily finishing up with his last patient.
Nat lifted black eyebrows so like Adam’s. His younger brother noted with satisfaction that Nat looked years younger than the fateful night he burst into his cabin to discover it had been turned into a temporary surgery. “Now how could Mrs. Fenner have saved up falling out of a tree until you came?” he teased.
“With no doctor in town, she probably was scared to climb the tree until I got here.” Adam stretched his muscles and rejoiced in his newfound strength, the result of riding out to folks who couldn’t come in for his help. “And Mrs. Trevor obviously wasn’t due to have Junior earlier.” He yawned. “Seriously, Nat, what did people do here with no medical help? I know you did what you could….”
“But patching up heads after fights isn’t operating on Mrs. Hardwick and having her appendix burst just after you removed it.”
Adam shuddered. That particular situation had been a nightmare. Bound by friendship to the first person in Antelope who had welcomed him, it had taken intense prayer, a steady hand, and all his concentration and skill to save Mrs. Hardwick. “A few minutes more and it would have burst inside her and shot poison through her system. Little chance of saving her if that happened. Thank God it didn’t.”
Nat rose, ruffled his brother’s hair the way he did when they were small, and gruffly said, “Your being here means everything on earth to me.” He cleared his throat and Adam saw the convulsive motion when he swallowed. “I know it’s way too early for you to make any kind of permanent decision, but I’d be the happiest person alive if you decided to stay.”
Before Adam could answer he swung out the door of the extra room that willing hands had built for “the new Doc.” Long and low, partitions divided it into a small waiting area, a work area, and a tiny bedroom with a bunk for Adam. The smell of freshly peeled logs bore witness to the friendship and appreciation of the rugged families served by both Adam and Nat. Although the saloonkeepers and gamblers never came to the small church, they had been generous with money and labor in adding on to the preacher’s cabin.
“I wonder what Miss Ivy Ann Brown would think of my new home,” Adam said to himself as he headed for his bedroom to wash up before supper. “Or Laurel. They couldn’t fault the town’s friendliness. It matches what I received from them.”
The thought recurred an hour later. Nat sat preparing his next sermon, deep in thought and Scripture. Adam idly flipped through an old medical journal. Suddenly he said, “I’ll do it.”
“Do what?” Nat raised his dark head. A few silver threads glistened in the lamplight.
“Write to the Browns.” Adam searched out the necessary materials. Yet Nat had gone back to his sermon long before Adam collected his thoughts. He hesitated then plunged right into his adventures since leaving Shawnee. He neither overstated nor downplayed the lawless element and crudity but he also included the good done by such solid citizens as Nat, the Hardwicks, and others.
At first encounter I thought the sheriff worse than the so-called outlaws. However, after experiencing a few more Saturday nights in Antelope I understand a lot better. It takes strong persons to build this country. In the past month I have dealt with men who were thrown by horses, clawed by mountain lions, and gored by mean steers. One boy not yet in his teens suffered a broken leg from trying to tame a mustang, a wild horse.
He paused then mischievously added the next paragraph.
I attended a basket social in the brand-new schoolhouse a few nights ago. Imagine buying a basket and finding it stuffed with venison steak instead of fried chicken and containing dried apple tarts in place of apple pie or chocolate cake. The women out here make do with what they have and rely heavily on the country. They have cellars filled with hundreds of jars of home-canned fruit and vegetables. Bushel baskets of potatoes, squash, and other keeping vegetables line cellars dug into the earth. It reminds me of Mother and her pickling and preserving.
Once more he stopped before concluding his thoughts.
It is wild, raw, and uncivilized. Yet a spark of decency has been lit, a small flame ignited and the determination to make Antelope a good place to live burns high. I can’t even begin to describe the beauty of this changeable land that smiles with sunshine one day and blusters the next. Snow crowns the nearby mountains already and Nat tells me the old-timers say we are due for a hard winter. I suspect my skills will be tested to the utmost. Oh, the rebellious young cowboy is healed and back on the range a wiser person. It amazed me to discover that he holds no bitterness toward the sheriff but feels he got just what he deserved for getting drunk and going crazy, as he describes it. He’s so grateful to me that he even came to church the one weekend he could get in from his duties. Nat nearly forgot his sermon when he saw the boy come in.
I believe even more firmly than ever that if, no, when, Antelope gets enough godly people such incidents will dwindle and fade away. God grant that more pioneers and less of the lower element will choose to come West.
Respectfully yours,
Adam Birchfield, M.D.
Let Miss Ivy Ann and her family shiver and exclaim over this. Would his letter be a seed, planted and waiting for the right climate to make it grow? The Bible story of the sower came to mind as Nat had told it the week before. Adam adapted it to the Brown family, using what knowledge he had gained while there.
The seed that fell by the wayside to be eaten by fowl could represent Ivy Ann. He suspected she’d be easily distracted from serious things and let the most precious ones be taken away without ever realizing it.
Perhaps the seed would sprout with Laurel or Thomas, maybe even Sadie. But could it withstand stony places such as the Wyoming Territory must appear to them? Or scorching heat and thorns that represented leaving all they knew for the unknown?
Adam sighed. Not many places could offer the rich soil from which pioneers and explorers sprang a hundredfold as the seed in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew did. He stretched and stared at Nat’s bent head. A rush of love that had been planted in childhood and carefully nurtured through all the years now bloomed stronger than ever. Good old Nat, preaching and visiting, never too busy to lend a hand raising a cabin for a new family or too weary to answer a call in the middle of the night along with Adam when a crisis came! Heroes in history and storybooks dimmed alongside Nat, and Adam felt that every day in his company wound more invisible chains to keep the brothers together in Antelope for a lifetime. What would Father say? And Mother, whose aching heart longed for her sons? Yet in the past days a great tumult in his heart warned Adam such might well be his fate, his call, his service.
He bade Nat goodnight and sought sleep in his own room. The next day his letter began the journey east.
Never could Adam Birchfield have imagined the furor that accompanied the arrival of his letter in West Virginia. Life at Red Cedars had gone on undisturbed, like a quiet pool that stills once the waves from a rock thrown into it subside. Ivy Ann continued charming every male who chanced on her home. Laurel became quieter than ever, often wondering at herself and even more at Ivy Ann. She couldn’t believe how quickly even her fickle twin forgot Adam after going to so much effort to enslave him. “Ivy by name, Ivy by nature,” Laurel muttered to herself when the laughing girl clung to the arm of the handsomest man at different gatherings.
The family worked hard harvesting and storing up for winter. Yet Laurel knew restlessness as never before. More often than she cared to admit, she found that her gaze turned west. Once Ivy Ann petulantly demanded, “What’s out there?”
Laurel felt streaks of red stain her smooth skin. “A sunset worth watching,” she quietly answered, glad for the truth that covered a deeper yearning.
Then The Letter came, forever capitalized in Laurel’s mind.
As usual, Ivy Ann snatched it with a cry of joy. Her dark brown eyes sparkled. “Everyone, come! A letter from Adam Birchfield.” Her long pink skirts swayed as she childishly clutched the letter with both hands.
“Well, for land’s sake, open it,” Sadie commanded. A pleased look settled over her face. “How nice of the young man to write when he must be so busy out there in the West.”
Laurel ached to take the letter and read it privately. Above all she resented the way Ivy Ann acted as if it had been written just to her, especially when Laurel saw it had been addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Brown and family.
“He says things are going well and—” Ivy Ann maddeningly started to put the news in her own words.
“Just read what Dr. Birchfield wrote, daughter.” Thomas didn’t often issue commands but when he did he expected immediate obedience.
Ivy Ann looked injured but complied, except when she got to the most exciting parts. She then interjected little shivers of mock fright until Laurel wanted to shake her.
“The basket social sounds like fun,” Ivy dreamily said when she finished and let the pages drift to the floor.
“Is that all you got out of his letter?” Incredulous, Laurel stared at her sister.
“Why, you don’t really believe all that about people being clawed by wild animals, do you?” Ivy’s eyes opened wide in consternation. “Surely Adam just put that in to entertain us.”
Laurel glanced at her father. He looked skyward then back before sharing a secret grin with her. “Remember what he said before he ever went out there? I don’t doubt that every word is true.”
“Besides—” Laurel couldn’t keep a little malice from her voice. “Adam said he hated and despised deceitfulness above anything else. You must remember that, Ivy Ann.”
Her twin turned scarlet. “Oh, that’s right.” She bent to pick up the pages and looked innocent enough when she straightened. “Imagine him hinting for us to move West. Can you think of anything sillier?”
“I can,” Laurel told her, but Ivy Ann just sniffed. Laurel saw the unreadable look that passed between her parents and her heart skipped a beat. Of course they wouldn’t think of leaving Red Cedars but the flicker of longing in her father’s eyes matched what lay in Laurel’s heart. “I wish I were a man. I’d go out there and be part of creating a new land,” she burst out.
“You must have stayed out in the sun too long today,” Ivy Ann said sweetly and felt Laurel’s forehead. “Dear me, what a tempest Adam’s letter caused! But then, perhaps he intended it should.” She yawned and patted her mouth with her well-cared-for-hand. “Oh, I’ll answer his letter tomorrow. Poor dear, he’s probably starved for companionship with his own kind.” She clutched the letter and swept out.
“It would be nice if you also wrote to the young man,” Sadie told Laurel.
“Why? Ivy will tell him the news.” She tried to keep the bitterness from her voice and deliberately yawned as her twin had done. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, dear.” Their voices followed her up the stairs.
Why should Ivy Ann expect and take all the happiness out of everything, draining it to the last drop and leaving nothing for anyone else? Laurel’s love for her twin warred with the deepest indignation she had ever felt. Why do I care so much? I never did before, Laurel thought. Those few looks I shared with Dr. Birchfield are meaningless. She fell asleep troubled by strange dreams of a greatly changed Adam whose dark eyes glowed with welcome and whose lips whispered words of love Laurel had never heard before.
When she awakened, new resolve filled her. This time she would not allow Ivy Ann to take over. After her sister patted her light brown curls into place and hurried down to breakfast, Laurel made a hasty toilette and read Adam’s letter. That afternoon she stole time from other duties to dash off a quick message of thanks and an invitation for Adam to write “to the family” when he could. Her heart beating rapidly at her unaccustomed daring, Laurel held her tongue when Ivy Ann sat down to write her own letter. When she nonchalantly said she’d put it in an envelope if Ivy liked, she surreptitiously slipped in her own note. The heavens might fall when an answer came but until then Laurel clung to her first show of independence and rejoiced.
Several weeks later a second letter came. Again Adam had addressed it to the family; again Ivy Ann appropriated it as her own and doled out its contents. When she came to the statement, “Thank you so very much for your messages,” she frowned. “Messages? Why should he say that?”
“You shared more than one piece of news, didn’t you?” Laurel stayed cool outside and felt reprieved when the frown faded and Ivy read on. Adam closed with a challenge, evidently in response to something Ivy Ann had written.
Folks like you are still needed. The hunting here is wonderful. Fifty males to every female.
“Whatever is that s’posed to mean?” Ivy Ann peered at the cryptic message. “That there are more female deer?”
“Don’t you get it?” Laurel threw back her head and laughed. “With only a few married women and even fewer single young women, the odds are in the females’ favor.”
“Don’t be vulgar.” Ivy Ann’s face tightened and her eyes flashed. “As if decent young women like us would ever look at anyone in the Wyoming Territory!”
“You did enough looking at Dr. Birchfield when he visited here,” Laurel reminded. “And he’s in the Wyoming Territory.”
Ivy gasped but Thomas backed up Laurel.
“That’s right. From what I gather that brother of his is a cultured man as well.” His eyes twinkled. “If you run out of beaux here you can always go West, girls.”
“I doubt the westerners would have us,” Laurel teased, and she felt rewarded when Ivy sat bolt upright.
“I guess I could do anything any old girl in the West could do, if I made up my mind to do it.”
“But you never would,” Sadie put in, smiling at the flustered girl. “Admit it, Ivy. You like comfort too well.”
“You’re all picking on me!” Storm clouds gathered in the fair face. “If I didn’t love Red Cedars so much, I’d up and go West just to show you how wrong you are.”
Laurel buried her face in a small pillow and laughed herself sick. How clever of Adam to needle Ivy Ann so subtly. Now if she could again smuggle a message in her sister’s letter….
Christmas came in a round of festivities. Spicy evergreen branches turned Red Cedars into a bower. Fruitcake ripened in the pantry. A multitude of gifts arrived from Ivy Ann’s followers who vied to win her favor. Fewer came for Laurel but she honestly didn’t mind. What gift could compare with the beautiful Indian moccasins Adam had sent the twins? Handmade of soft deerskin, Laurel cherished both the gift and the thoughtfulness behind it.
Ivy Ann scoffed at such a present but her twin noticed how she made a point of displaying the moccasins when her beaux came. “Wasn’t it just sweet of Dr. Birchfield to send me such an unusual Christmas gift?”
A curiously carved necklace for Sadie accompanied the moccasins as well as a hand-tooled leather belt for Thomas, along with a crude but surprisingly attractive small painting of the area near Antelope. Adam explained in a note that Mrs. Hardwick had done a similar one for him while recuperating from her appendectomy. He’d begged her to paint another and insisted on paying for it so he could send it to the Browns.
Laurel gazed at the rolling, tree-dotted hills that swept upward to solid timber then white peaks and the bluest sky she’d ever seen. The longing within her that had gone dormant from all the hustle and bustle of Christmas came to glowing life. Someday, she vowed, I am going to see it for myself. How or when I don’t know. But I will go West—someday.
On Christmas Eve afternoon Laurel rode into Shawnee for a few last-minute items needed in the cooking of tomorrow’s big dinner that would be shared with many friends and neighbors. She got what she needed, kept a sharp lookout toward the cloud-clotted sky, and stumbled when she stepped down from the porch of the store.
“Careful, Miss Brown.” One of Ivy Ann’s suitors neatly caught Laurel’s arm and kept her from falling.
Laurel felt herself redden. “Thanks, James. You saved me from a nasty spill.”
“May I present my cousin, Beauregard Worthington?” James stepped aside to let a tall, fair man dressed in the latest fashion come forward. “Beau, this is Miss Laurel Brown. Beau’s here from Charleston for the holidays.”
“My pleasure, Miss Brown.” The strikingly handsome man bent over her hand as if she were the Queen of England.
“Beau will be coming to dinner with us tomorrow,” James rushed on. “When your mother heard he’d be here she graciously included him in the invitation.”
Laurel smiled up into the tall stranger’s deep blue eyes. She could see her reflection in them, rosy-cheeked from the late afternoon chill, with a few curls escaping from under her bonnet. “You will be more than welcome, Mr. Worthington.” She quickly mounted before either of the men could offer assistance. “I must hurry or darkness will overtake me.” She smiled again and felt her heart flutter at the unmistakable admiration in the visitor’s eyes.
“Until tomorrow, Miss Brown.”
“Until tomorrow, Mr. Worthington, James.” Her pony swung toward home. What a handsome man, Laurel thought. Ivy Ann will—no! she determined. Not this time. I met him first.