Dorothy Garlock (23 page)

Jo Bell stared at him as if he had lost his mind. “It’s dirty. I can’t do that.” Her eyes began to fill with self-pitying tears.

“You can and you will. Goddammit, you will!”

“I won’t ’n’ ya can’t make me.” She sniffed prettily.

“I think I can.”

“Why’er ya bein’ m-mean to me?”

“You’ll not be petted here like you were a young virgin being groomed for a harem. You pull your weight or get out of the harness and go it alone.”

“What’s a . . . harem?”

“How are we going to get Mrs. Eastwood upstairs?” Willa asked quickly in order to prevent what was sure to be a nasty scene between Smith and Jo Bell. “I’ve made up a bed—”

“Billy and Charlie will be here in a minute.”

“Moving her will be terribly painful. Let’s lift her onto the door before she comes to.”

Smith’s eyes went from Willa to the woman on the floor and back again. He closed them for an instant and clenched his jaws. Willa saw pure agony on his face.

“Smith?” Willa went to him and placed her hand on his arm and looked up into his face. “What is it?”

“You can’t know how I hate to touch her.”

“Try not to think about anything that happened between you in the past. Think of her as someone you don’t know. She needs our help or she will die. She may die anyway,” she finished softly.

“She despises me.”

Willa’s heart contracted painfully at the sight of misery on his face. Her mind groped for something comforting to say. The man was a curious mixture of compassion and bitterness. As she looked into his eyes, she had the feeling that he was
allowing her to see a glimpse of the real man beneath the rough exterior.

“There are times when we have to do things that go against the grain. But if we don’t do them, we show ourselves to be small and petty. You’re strong, Smith. You’re strong and she’s weak.”

“What’er yawl whisperin’ about?” Jo Bell’s pouting voice broke the spell. “What’er yawl sayin’ that ya don’t want me to hear?”

Smith’s hand moved to cover Willa’s. Realization filtered through his mind slowly at first, and then burst upon his consciousness. This small lovely woman was completely without guile. She could become very important to him.
He
must not allow that to happen.
He sensed a mystery, a loneliness about her, but whatever it was, it inspired confidence. Even while thinking these thoughts, he bent his head until his lips were close to her ear.

“I . . . can’t overcome years of bitterness in five minutes. I’ll do this because you ask me. Let’s get it over with.”

It was one of the hardest things Smith had ever had to do. Until today he had not touched Maud Eastwood in all the fifteen years he had known her. Although she was as limp as a rag doll, when he scooped one arm beneath her buttocks and the other under her legs, she screamed as if he were torturing her. Willa took her shoulders and they eased her over onto the door.

In order to keep from thinking of how the bitter, contrary woman continued to make his life miserable, Smith kept his thoughts on Willa. In spite of all she had endured the last few weeks, she had kept her pride, her dignity.

What would he have done if she had not been here? Unable to summon help, Maud would have died. Not that he cared a wit for the old witch, but he had promised Oliver—

15

M
aud was carried up the broad stairway with Willa walking alongside to be sure she didn’t roll off the slab of wood. Still in a swoon, Maud screamed again when Smith and Billy lifted her onto the bed.

Billy and Charlie hurried back down the stairs as if they had stumbled into a private sanctuary. Smith paused in the hallway and drew in a deep quivering breath. In spite of his desire to get out of the house, his curiosity forced him to look around. He had never been in any room except the kitchen and yet the house seemed familiar to him.

Oliver had talked about it many times. The plan was the same as that of his home in West Virginia, which had been destroyed during the first few months of the War. When Oliver and his sister had inherited money from their grandparents in England, Oliver had invested his in a gold strike, taken his profits, bought land and built a replica of his old home. He would be sick to the depth of his soul, Smith thought now, if he could see the state it was in. Oliver had loved every stick and stone in the house and had taken great pride in maintaining it.

The door to the room across from Maud’s was open. Smith looked in. A pair of Oliver’s boots were sitting beside a wardrobe and his shaving tools were on a shelf beneath the hanging mirror. The big leather chair still had the shape of Oliver’s robust body imprinted in it. A pain so fierce that he almost reeled stabbed Smith’s heart. He leaned against the door frame for a long moment before he stomped down the stairs two at a time.

He needed a drink!

When he entered the kitchen, Jo Bell was sitting at the table, her face buried in her folded arms. From beneath a cascade of shiny dark curls came the sound of dainty, pitiful sobs. Smith had to suppress the desire to kick the chair out from under her. Instead he grasped her arm and yanked her to her feet.

“You worthless little . . . man-teaser!”

“I . . . I can’t get the door . . . o-open.” Her violet eyes sparkled with tears and her lips trembled. She tried to get close to Smith to lean against him, but his hands on her arms pushed her away from him.

Smith turned and kicked the handle on the cookstove with his booted foot. The door to the fire box swung open.

“It’s open. Have it cleaned out by the time I get back with wood to start a fire.” At the door he turned to glare at her. “I meant what I said. As long as you’re on this ranch, you’ll pull your weight.”

“It ain’t
yore
ranch,” she muttered under her breath.

Smith passed the woodshed without a word or a nod to Charlie and Billy, who had resumed the work they had been doing when they had been called to the house. He shoved open the door and went into the bunkhouse. On his way to the kitchen he pulled off his shirt. After washing himself with warm water and Billy’s strong lye soap, he rummaged in the cupboard beside the stove until he found a bottle of whiskey.
He uncorked it and took a long drink. When he thought of taking another, the image of a woman with big sad eyes made him change his mind and put the cork back in the bottle.

“Is she gonna die?” Billy asked when Smith came out again, allowing the screen door to slam shut behind him. He was stacking the wood he and Charlie had cut with a two-man saw.

“How’n hell do I know? I know it’ll about kill her to have someone in the house using what’s hers.” Smith shoved his arms into a clean shirt, buttoned it and stuffed the tail into his breeches.

“I guess Jo Bell and Willa can stay if they’re goin’ to take care of her,” Charlie said with relief.

“Willa is taking care of her. Your sister is a worthless little twit who thinks she’s something that should be set on a shelf and looked at. How did she get to be so spoiled?”

“Papa,” Charlie said with a shamed face. “He just always doted on her.”

“No one is going to wait on her here, Charlie, and that includes you.”

“She’s never had to do anythin’ and she don’t know how.”

Smith had to suppress the vile language that rushed to his lips. “Then it’s time she learned. Willa will have her hands full taking care of Maud. She lived in the kitchen, Billy. Slept there. It smells like a privy.”

“Now ain’t this a fine kettle a fish.” Billy snorted a word Charlie didn’t know the meaning of. “Pity she didn’t die right off. We’d a been shed of her.”

“Did you ever know Maud to do anything to accommodate anyone?”

“Well, now that I think on it—no.”

“There’s a couch in the kitchen that’s got to be hauled out and burned. It’s beyond cleaning up.” Smith loaded his arm
with kindling, then sat back on his heels and looked up at Billy. “I’ll need you and Charlie to help me carry it out.”

“Why shore.”

Smith stood. “Cook up enough grub for the women, Billy. It’ll be a while before they can cook a meal in the house.”

Billy and Charlie followed Smith into the kitchen. Jo Bell had half-filled the coal hod with ashes. She held her skirt back away from the stove with one hand and with the shovel at arm’s length was taking small amounts of ashes from the fire box and dumping them in the hod. She was still crying. Smith ignored her and gave Charlie a warning frown.

“Jehoshaphat! Ain’t she never cleaned in here? If Oliver knowed, he’d have him a pure-dee old—” The rest of his words were lost in the noise made by the kindling being dumped into the woodbox.

“Let’s get the couch out,” Smith said irritably.

Billy walked over and looked at it. “Phew! It’s e’nuff to gag a maggot. Turn it up on the side. We’ll slide it out.”

After grunting, pushing and swearing, the three men got the couch through the door. Charlie was the last to go out. Jo Bell tugged on his sleeve.

“C-Charlie, help me. Smith is so m-mean—”

“Leave him alone,” Smith snarled, coming to the door. “Go on, Charlie.”

“I . . . I hate you! I’m gettin’ all dirty—” she wailed.

“I’ll take this end,” Smith said, ignoring her. “Both of you take the other end.”

*  *  *

Upstairs Willa wished for a cloth to tie over her nose as she bent over the woman on the bed. While she lay on the floor, Mrs. Eastwood had lost control of her bowels. That combined with her sour stomach and the odor of her unwashed
body made Willa’s stomach turn. Her main concern was to get Maud clean and comfortable. She was forced to use the shears from the sewing basket and cut up the front of the heavy black dress before she could remove it. After covering Maud’s naked body with a sheet, she rolled the dress and the soiled undergarments in a tight roll and carried them downstairs.

She reached the kitchen as Smith was coming in the back door.

“I need a tub of water to soak her clothes.”

“We’re burning the couch. Throw them on the fire. You don’t have to wash that mess.”

“Oh, but—”

Smith snatched the bundle from her hand and threw it out onto the back porch.

“He thinks he . . . knows ever’thin’,” Jo Bell whined in a low tone. She wiped her tear-stained face with her hand and left dark smears on her cheeks. “I don’t like him, none a’tall.”

Willa worked the pump handle to fill the bucket she found beneath the counter.

“Didn’t you hear me, ma’am?” Jo Bell snapped.

“I heard you. Have you seen any soap?”

Smith answered. “Good God! There should be some here somewhere.” He yanked open a drawer and found a box containing bars of soap from Sears Roebuck. “What else do you need?”

“She hasn’t eaten in a while. She’ll need something. But first I’ve got to clean her up.”

“Do you need the girl to help you?”

Willa glanced at Jo Bell standing beside the coal hod full of ashes. Her face was mutinous.

“No. I can manage. Later . . . there will be piles of washing.”

“There’s a wash house, but Maud hasn’t used it for a long time.”

“She’s in terrible pain. Is there any laudanum?”

“Billy usually keeps some around. He’s making splints to go on her leg.”

“Is she goin’ to die?” Jo Bell asked belligerently.

“Not if I can help it.” Willa picked up the bucket of water and started for the door.

“Why do ya care, ma’am? She ain’t yore aunt. She don’t want ya here anymore’n she wants me ’n’ Charlie.” Jo Bell’s voice reached into the hall.

“She’s a human being. I’d even do the same for you, Jo Bell,” Willa said irritably over her shoulder.

Maud came to while Willa was washing her body.

“What . . . what’er ya doin’? Get away! Oh . . . my Gawd . . . Oh, Lordy—” She tried to push Willa’s hands away.

“Shhh— Be still, Mrs. Eastwood. I’m washing you. You had an accident and didn’t make it to the chamber pot,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Liar!” Maud shouted, her face twisted with pain. “Cover me up, damn you! Get out!”

“No,” Willa said firmly. “You can’t be alone, Mrs. Eastwood.”

“How’d I get up here?”

“Smith Bowman, Mr. Coe and your nephew, Charlie, carried you up here.”