Wil tugged on the sleeves of his undersized borrowed coat, then grabbed his crutches. Doc Carver didn’t seem any more eager for the short ride to town after dinner than he had before. More like he was trying to discourage someone from rolling through a cook fire.
He followed Carver down the steps and across to the buggy, figuring how he’d get up to the seat.
“Around back,” Carver said, leading the way. “You can sit on the box. I’ll take it slow so you don’t bounce out.”
He scraped mud off the edge of a shallow platform behind the buggy seat. It covered the rear axle and was nearly big enough to hold a picnic basket, but it’d have to do.
Back against it, Wil braced both hands on the edge and hopped up.
Carver handed him the wooden legs, dread pulling his face down like a shade on a window.
Sullen but good for his word, the doctor set the mare to a slow walk. Any slower and they’d be standin’ still.
Wil felt like he was headed to the hoosegow.
It was the first time he’d approached anything in reverse, and it made him feel as if life was sneaking up on him. He couldn’t see what was coming. People and store fronts just showed up. Ambushed was the word for it. Not a welcomed thought.
Piney Hill was pretty much as he’d imagined, except a lot smaller. A mercantile, bakery, and hardware store sprouted on one side, with a dry goods, bank, and jail on the other. He twisted around and saw the lumber mill tucked against the town’s namesake off to the west.
The sweet smell of sawn wood drifted down but was soon overridden by the more familiar fragrance of hay and horse manure. Bergman’s Livery was the last building on Main Street.
Carver pulled up parallel to the hitch rail and stopped with Wil right in front of the big double doors. The ping of hammer on steel rang from inside, and memories galloped out through the gaps between the barn boards. Wil was suddenly a kid again, watching his uncle shape red-hot steel on the anvil.
He paused before sliding off the box, waiting for the next inevitable sound, like the other shoe falling. Yet it wasn’t a fall when it came, but the snake-like hiss of hot metal in water. He could almost smell the heat sizzling out on a rising ribbon of steam.
The mare bogged forward, jiggling the rig and reminding him why he was there. Easing down on his right leg, he plied the crutches. Doc Carson sat ramrod straight on the buggy seat.
“I won’t be long.”
His host and healer raised a hand signaling that he’d heard, but he didn’t turn around, look back, or step down.
Completely out of character, based on what Wil had seen of the man, living in the same house with him and taking meals there.
But it wasn’t any of his business. Finding his uncle was. He made for the doors.
The one on the right slid easily, and daylight wedged in ahead of him, thinning out toward the back of the livery. The hammering stopped. Wil stepped in and off to the side, waiting for his eyes to adjust before he headed down the alleyway.
Heavy footsteps approached, then stopped as Wil stumped into the light.
“Wilhelm?” The big man came closer, his expression doubtful. “Wilhelm, is it you?”
“Hello, Otto. Yeah, it’s me.”
“Gott sei dank!”
Next thing Wil knew, he was circled in a double-armed embrace that cinched him and his walking sticks as well.
Otto drew back and looked him up and down. “What happened to you, Wilhelm? I got your letter, but you never came.” He tugged on Wil’s arm. “Come and sit.”
“I’m not stayin’ today, but I wanted to follow up on my letter and tell you that I’ll be back once I’m healed up, if you can use a hand.”
A grin lit his uncle’s broad face. “Ja. Is gut. I can use help from one I trust.”
Otto’s fire and a smoky lantern lit the back of the livery some and warmed things up enough that Wil wanted to take off his coat but didn’t.
His uncle rolled a stump from against the wall. “Here. Sit. I have something to show you.”
In a minute he returned carrying a saddle and saddlebags.
Wil jumped to his feet, forgetting about the crutches until a sharp pain in his lower leg jabbed his memory.
“So it is yours.” Otto hung the saddle on a low box-stall railing, the bags over the seat, then rubbed his finger across the underside of the cantle. “This brand is one I saw before.”
A simple design Wil had burned into the leather when he left home. The brand he hoped would mark his own herd someday—Circle B.
He choked up for a minute, out of shock more than anything else, then lifted the near stirrup leather. Scarred, twisted, and stretched more than a little. His ankle twanged.
“Didn’t happen to have chaps, a slicker, and bedroll tied on back did it?”
“Nein.”
“Where’d you find it?”
“On that fella out in the corral.”
Christmas had come early.
Wil shoved the crutches under his arms and made for the back doors. Otto headed him off, lifted the bar, and swung them wide.
Daylight pinched Wil’s eyes to a squint, but not so he couldn’t make out a half dozen horses of varying color and size snoozing in the sunshine. A tail swished now and again, nothing too vigorous since the flies had all froze off and died.
He whistled low, and a dark head raised. Ears swiveled his way. A deep-chested rumble rolled across the corral, followed by a bay gelding that eased out of the bunch and sauntered up to him. Whiffled against his jacket, muzzle warm and familiar.
He gave one crutch to his uncle, then encircled the bay’s neck, and ran his hand over its strong shoulders and down the front legs.
“You made it, Duster.”
“He’s sound,” Otto said. “I checked him over good before I bought him.”
“Bought off who?”
“A rangy pair in a hurry to sell.”
Wil could name one or three fellas that fit that description and wouldn’t mind gettin’ his hands on ’em.
Otto approached the horse, stroked its side and hip. “All these years shoeing and tacking have taught me what to look for. When I saw your brand on the saddle but not you, I was afraid you’d been hurt or left for dead.”
He came around the big bay and slapped a hand on Wil’s shoulder. “It’s good see you alive.”
“I’ll pay you back for him, I promise.”
“With what, Wilhelm? The saddlebags were dark and empty as stille nacht.”
Wil wasn’t certain of that yet, but for the time being, he staved off disappointment. His war bag, slicker, and Winchester were gone, but he had his horse and his saddle. Things could be worse. In fact, they’d been worse about ten minutes ago.
“I’ll work it off. After I heal up.”
“Ja.” His uncle chuckled. “And how long until then?”
“After Christmas, Doc says.”
Otto’s face went cold. Put him in mind of Doc’s when Wil told him his last name was Bergman.
“Carver?”
“He said he found me beside the road, propped against a ponderosa pine. He and his sister fixed me up with a cast and crutches. I’ve been stayin’ at their place the last couple of weeks.”
Otto went inside, taking the crutch with him.
Wil rubbed Duster behind the ears and earned a nuzzle. “I’ll be back, boy.”
Hobbling off, he realized he hadn’t tried getting around on one crutch yet. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the dang thing was longer.
At his anvil, Otto picked up a shoe that had grown cold on the horn and turned it in his big hands, reading it like other men read books.
Wil figured now was as good a time as any.
“What happened between you and the Carvers?”
Otto’s black eyes shuttered like a school house in June.
“I will keep your Duster. Come when you can sleep in the office and be my night man.” With a pair of long tongs, he pinched the horseshoe and shoved it in the fire.
End of conversation.
Again, Wil was left without answers. At least he had his horse, a welcome from the only family he had left, and a fairly good idea how he broke his leg.
It’d take a lifetime to earn back what he’d lost to the bushwhackers who ambushed him. A spread of his own now seemed as foolhardy a dream as ever.
He swung the saddlebags over his shoulder and headed for the big doors. It’d warmed up considerably outside.
~
As she had for several years, Lena found comfort in routine. The mundane. The doing of that which needed to be done. She pressed into such comfort again, rolling out pie crust for two pumpkin pies.
Wil Bergman ate as much as Winnie.
Though she had feigned reluctance at his conditional insistence, it had not been so hard to use his given name when addressing him, for she had begun to think of him in the intimate, informal way of close friends.
But the look on his face when he saw Bergman’s Livery had nearly been her undoing. How would she feel if she were in a strange place, injured, and penniless? Family was family, regardless of how cantankerous some relations were.
The sleigh bells sounded above the slushy plod of horse hooves as the buggy passed the kitchen window, Tay alone in the seat.
Lena paused in pinching the pie crust edges. Had Wil stayed at the livery? Then her pulse quickened. Had there been an altercation?
Rubbing her floured hands against her apron, she hurried out the kitchen door as Tay reined in by the yard. Wil perched behind the buggy seat, splattered from head to three-socked toes with mud. Saddlebags hung over one shoulder, also splattered.
Relief drew laughter up from her insides, but she squelched it behind her hand.
Leaning dangerously low to set his crutches in the muddy drive, Wil dropped to his right foot and made his way to the back porch.
Still clamping her mouth, she lost the battle as he drew nearer, and an unladylike snort escaped.
He scowled up at her, looking as if he’d wallowed his way home rather than ridden. “That’s a dangerous game you’re playing there, Lena Carver.”
His stern warning made her laugh harder, and she backed across the porch out of his reach.
“I’m so s-sor-ry,” she choked.
“No, you are not.”
“I’ll set more water to boil so you can have a hot bath.”
Halting on the bottom step, his scowl bore into her as if she’d been keeping an important secret from him. “You have a bath tub?”
“An entire bathing room. We’re not as backwoods as you might think.”
He looked around as if expecting to see it off by itself like the privy.
Understandable, she supposed. In his condition, he’d not seen the bathing room.
She opened a door and stepped aside for his inspection. “You have to come out here to get to it, but here it is, complete with hand pump. All that’s needed is hot water, soap, and a towel.”
He swung himself up the steps and across the porch, and took in the small room with its copper tub, her wash tub and ringer, and a hand pump. “You think Doc would let me use his razor?”
“I’m sure he would.”
She gave him a quick once-over. “And you can borrow a pair of his britches, though they will be short.”
The idea of those long, muscled legs in her brother’s trousers was almost laughable. “We have another night shirt as well. I’ll do up your clothes this evening and dry them in the kitchen overnight.”
After such personal talk and private considerations, she could dry them by the warmth of her own skin, if what she felt was any indication. Turning, she left with an order. “Go on in. Tay will bring what you need.”
Not waiting for his answer, she hurried through the kitchen door. Water was already warm in the stove’s reservoir for washing supper dishes, but she added another pail full, then set a kettle to boil. By the time Tay saw to the mare and buggy, the water would be ready.
She slid the pies into the oven, checked the simmering soup, then hurried upstairs. Tay’s razor and strap were where he always kept them at his washstand, and she found an extra pair of trousers in his chest of drawers. And more socks.
Downstairs, she chose a nightshirt from Tay’s collection in the surgery, gathered a fresh towel and a soap cake, and piled everything on the table as Tay stomped up the back steps.
“These are for—your patient. He’s in the bathing room waiting to wash away the other half of the road into town. Then come back for the kettle and a bucket of hot water.”
Tay lifted his trousers. “Really?”
She waved him off. “They’ll be short and narrow, but he can belt them on. We know the nightshirt will work.”
Wil would also need help getting himself in the tub without submerging the cast, but she couldn’t bring herself to mention it even to Tay. Surely he didn’t need her to paint a picture.