Home to Stavewood (Stavewood Saga Book 3) (6 page)

Chapter Fourteen

     
C
olleen tended to the man at every opportunity, but when evening approached on the third day her concern grew. He had barely moved any time she had cared for him and when she had checked him in the afternoon she feared he had developed a fever.

      She listened for the rhythmic snoring of her father and she slipped from the house with a pail of hot soup, having decided she was going to try to wake the man more aggressively. She feared he would die in the barn, another victim of the terrible vendetta.

      “Oh, little one,” Colleen scooped up the tiny kitten just inside the barn door. “Did you get closed in here earlier?” She set down her soup pail and crooned softly to the kitten as she crossed the dim interior of the barn. Colleen knelt beside the man, holding her lantern high in the darkness.

      Mark had heard her humming as she entered the barn. He tried to lift his head, but he could not move. His eyesight was blurred and then suddenly a light appeared before him. It was blindingly bright and he squinted into the brilliance. He thought he saw a person there, but this could not be a person, he thought. The face was pure white, soft and sweet and surrounded in a glowing halo. It was a soothing voice, but he could not make out what it was saying. He realized that it was a woman, but not a human woman, maybe an angel.

      Was he dead, or dying? He was seeing something that was not possible, or was his mind going as he died? He struggled to make out the angel again and he thought he had seen her face before. He must be dying, he decided, and his mind was making up a picture that he would find beautiful and soothing so he could die easy. He lay back and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to die. He could feel tears running from his eyes and down the sides of his face.

      “Don’t take me,” he murmured to the angel. “I’m not ready. I want to go home. I need to go home to Stavewood.”

      Colleen slipped her hand behind his head and tried to spoon some soup into him quickly while he seemed somewhat conscious. She saw that he swallowed several mouthfuls and then she poured tiny sips of water into his mouth. He would swallow a mouthful and lay muttering, but he made little sense. She had never heard of this place, Stavewood.

      When he had completely lost consciousness again she went back to the house and returned with several more blankets. She fashioned a bed in the straw, piling it together in a kind of a mattress and tucking a blanket in around it.

      She pulled off his heavy boots and wet socks, noticing that the stockings were finely handmade. Someone had taken their time with the exceptionally spun wool and fashioned them for him. Colleen rolled him from side to side, while he muttered and she removed his jacket and shirt. She had undressed her father many times when he took his winter chills after several wet days of delivering, but the young man’s body was not worn and wrinkled like that of her aged father.

      His chest was smooth and torso long, one side stained with blood. She washed him quickly and shoved his arms into a wool shirt she had taken from the house. When she had bathed and redressed most of him she got down on her knees and heaved him onto the makeshift mattress. She situated him as best she could and tucked more blankets in around him and arranged his head so she could look at him in the lamp light.

      His color had returned a little. She laid the back of her hand against his forehead. His fever was low, but she knew it threatened.

     Colleen studied his clothing. Every piece was finely made. These were not the worn rags of the people from up the mountain. Although they were muddy and torn in several places she could see they were expensive. She lifted one of the stockings and inspected it closely. The needle work was fine and the stitches even. Colleen could knit a simple garment, but had never worked with wool spun so fine and thin. She could handle a hook well to make a bit of Irish crochet, but these stockings were handmade by a talented knitter. Someone cared for him, perhaps a wife or maybe a sweetheart. She looked back at his face. He was handsome, she thought. Someone somewhere must love him.

Chapter Fifteen

     
B
enjamin Neilson checked the office again after lunch and shook his head when he saw that the young men had still not come in to work.

      He was not surprised. He had been more amazed that, although the Elgerson boy had his father and his father’s money behind him, he still chose to show up for work promptly every morning. His companion was a nice young man, but more likely to daydream a bit or want to finish the day a bit early. Mark Elgerson stayed for every minute, kept his lunches short and never missed a day, even, Neilson suspected, after a night of drinking. Lillian from the boarding house had mentioned that the boys would leave overnight often and return smelling of liquor.

      “Of course,” he had told her. “They’re young and away from home. Let them enjoy themselves. Soon enough there’ll be wives to spend their money for them and babies to feed. They’ll only be here for a few months. Let them enjoy themselves.”

      He knew that if they didn’t show up before too long he could head over to the boarding house and gather them up, but decided to let them sleep it off. They’d come around eventually, he figured.

Chapter Sixteen

     
C
olleen gathered up her patient’s soiled clothing, checked every pocket and tied it into a neat bundle. If she mixed it in with her father’s things he may not notice when she washed it, but she would have to hang it to dry inside the barn. Out on the line in the yard not only her Da would see it, but also anyone who may be looking for the man. Colleen sat beside him again and wondered what his name might be.

      There was very little money in his jacket, and she decided that he had likely been robbed after he was shot. He had no other papers, only several postcards neatly tied with a narrow ribbon and none of them were addressed. Every picture was dreary, greys and whites. The postcards she admired in the shops were pretty and lacy but these were rather depressing, she thought.

      The kitten climbed into her lap and she stroked it absently and began speaking her thoughts aloud.

      “Who are you?” she asked, expecting no response. “I wish I could help you more, but I don’t know what to do. If I tell my father he will not want you here and if I take you to town whoever shot you might try to kill you again.

      “If you would just get better maybe you can tell me who you are. Is someone looking for you?” she continued, speaking softly.

      Mark heard a voice far away, as if from across a field. He could not make out what the voice was saying and he wondered if it was the angel again. The voice was sweet and gentle, like Rebecca’s had been that day she found him in the chest, but he knew it was not Rebecca’s voice. This one had an accent, but not like hers. He tried to speak to the voice, but his words come out all garbled. He struggled to speak slowly and clearly but could not and he surrendered to the ache in his head and slipped away into deep slumber.

      Colleen could see that he moved his lips slowly, but issued no sound. She waited, holding her breath, and listening intently, but soon he was quiet again and he seemed to rest a bit easier. She didn’t want to leave him alone and decided that maybe her speaking to him would be soothing. She pulled her book from her apron pocket and began to read softly from her collection of Louisa May Alcot
t
.

    
 
After a time, she gathered his clothing and the pail and slipped out silently. In the morning the deliveries would have to be made and the cows milked. She would check on him first and then would be away most of the day. She was still not sure he would be alive any time that she came to see him.

     
He did not stir at dawn when she visited, though at some point he gained some level of consciousness briefly. He found the water beside him and drank deeply before slipping back into the darkness of sleep.

Chapter Seventeen

    
 
T
uesday morning arrived with yet another downpour. The dreariness that had begun at the week’s end showed promise only late on Friday night, but soon reverted again to dismal weather conditions. By late afternoon it was beginning to grow dark, the days short and damp.

     
Benjamin Neilson stood in the doorway of the office and scowled. One day off without a word might be tolerated, but another without so much as a poor excuse was more difficult to swallow.

      “Sons of the rich,” he muttered under his breath. He decided that it was time to find and reprimand the boys. They’d done a fine job for a while, he thought, but only so much could be excused.

      He locked the office door and strode over to the boarding house, contemplating exactly how he might lecture the young men.

      Lillian Griffin pulled a cigarette from her apron as she slowly opened the door.

      “Good morning, Lil,” Ben greeted her in a friendly manner.

      The woman lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. She coughed hard and spit across the porch.

      “I wonder if you might wake up those boys I put up here. It seems they’ve decided they don’t care to show up for work anymore.”

      “They aren’t showing up here neither,” she cleared her throat. “I haven’t seen ‘um myself since they got ready to go out on Friday night.”

      “Not at all?” Ben reached under his hat and scratched his head.

      “I told you they were goin’ off drinking somewhere. Probably passed out in some woman’s parlor someplace.”

      Ben scowled and sighed deeply. “I sure hope so. There’ll be hell to pay if those boys get into trouble.”

      “I can tell them to get right to work when they show up.”

      “That’ll do, Lil. Thanks.” Benjamin Neilson headed back to work.

Chapter Eighteen

    
 
M
ark Elgerson’s mouth tasted sour and metallic and he seemed not to have the strength to raise his head. He looked around and surmised that he was in some kind of an out building, large and gloomy, likely a barn. His head pounded and his stomach heaved. He swallowed hard and the pain in his neck and throat brought tears to his eyes.

      He was not dead. The intolerable pain must have meant that he was still alive. He tried to turn his head from side to side and recollections of the night came back to him. Running, darkness, moonlight, the girl’s body.

      “Sam,” he cried hoarsely.

      He lifted his right hand and felt his neck. There was a wide cloth wrapped around it and a lumpy mass beneath it up against the side of his neck. Apparently someone was trying to care for him. It must be some kind of a poultice or bandage. He attempted to lift his left hand but his arm would not move. He felt it with his right hand and he still had his arm, but no amount of effort helped him raise it and he had no feeling in it at all. He was quickly aware that it would be impossible for him to sit up or get to his feet. The clothing he was wearing was not his own, with the exception of his slacks. He was slightly propped up on a makeshift mattress in an area neatly covered in fresh straw. He rested, immobilized, listening and trying to recall any memories from the shooting. He could not remember anything after he and Sam had split up. He wondered about his companion. Was he nearby?

      “Sam,” he whispered hoarsely. “Sam, are you here?”

     
Once she had checked the man and given him all the water she could get into him, she slipped back into the house and dressed for the day. Her dress was fitted, once a deep shade of dusty blue, now faded to a soft indigo. She tied her white apron around her slender waist and frowned in the mirror. Her figure was not the long slender lines that the new catalogs advertised, nor that of the willowy mannequins in the dress shops. Colleen, at just over five feet, was voluptuous and curvaceous, her bust high, but ample, her hips full, her backside rounded. She scowled at her womanly figure and pulled back her hair, slipping it into a filigreed snood which confined the masses of tumbling curls in a satchel of lace.

     
She hitched up the horse to the milk wagon, soiling her fresh apron, and she sighed. She got a painful pinch while hooking up the hitch and Colleen looked down at her hands. They were chapped and red from washing, milking and hard labor. She rubbed in a glob of salve that she used to soothe and heal the cow’s teats, the same thing she had been applying regularly to the neck of the young man in the barn.

     
Colleen looked towards the barn thoughtfully. He was healing, but she was terribly concerned about what kind of damage had been done. Praying that he would remain undiscovered by anyone while she and her father made their rounds, she stroked the horse gently.

      “The milk is not goin’ to get itself delivered,” her father scolded, as he climbed into the rig. He pulled himself up wearily and coughed deeply.

     
At sixty-five Shane Muldoon had traveled far for one lifetime. He’d crossed the sea from Ireland as a young man, marched for miles with the Confederate army and rode for years on the old wagon bringing milk to families and businesses in Barite, Missouri. He and his daughter started their deliveries early, immediately following the first milking, and then again in the afternoon. The wagon rattled loudly, as it rolled along filled with large metal cans. On the back of the wagon, which laid low so that the milkman could more easily serve his customers, he had two large measures. One held a pint, the other a half-pint and these were used to scoop milk from his large cans into the customers’ vessels.

     
Shane wore his uniform proudly, his collar starched and washed by Colleen daily, his jacket and slacks dark and pressed. He also wore a dark apron. Colleen envied that he could wear the deep color. Her whites were often filthy at the day’s end.

      The big Irishman rarely stepped down from the wagon any longer. He handled the horse and wagon, but Colleen climbed down repeatedly through the day, greeting customers and restaurant workers, measuring milk and collecting money. In between deliveries her Da would try to distract her with stories of his homeland or occasionally tales of the War Between the States. His eyes would grow misty and he’d recall young men of whom he was fond and who had fought beside him. He would avoid the more grizzly details of their deaths, but described the battle scenes in graphic detail. Some hate was never forgotten, Colleen learned, as her father recounted his life on the miles they spent in the cart each day.

      
Sometimes the girl would nearly doze off from exhaustion and the repetitive nature of his stories. She’d sit upright suddenly as the milk wagon jolted to a stop and then step from the cart wearily. This day she struggled with even more difficulty to stay awake.

      “Stay away from that reading,” Shane scolded. “Books won’t get the milk out, girl. You’re spendin’ far too much time daydreaming over that poetry in that old barn.”

      Colleen nodded and worried over the young man.

     
“You must be tired this mornin’, girl. Not even an argument, eh?” Shane chuckled.

      She smiled at her father affectionately.