Open Country (6 page)

Lovely. Just what I need.
“Thank you, Effie. I’ll be there in a moment.” As Effie disappeared down the hall, Molly turned back to Murray, who was carefully arranging the implements in perfectly aligned rows on the tray. In a calm, firm voice, she said, “As Henry’s wife, Doctor, I have a say in whether you remove his arm or not. And I’m asking you to wait until I come back.”

Murray didn’t look up. His fingers continued to play across the medical instruments like those of a pianist at his piano. Sweat sheened his brow. His body gave off a sour smell. When he spoke, his voice sounded distant and weary, as if every utterance was an effort. “I’ll do what I have to do.”

 

 

COLD. DARK. THEN LATER—HOURS? DAYS?—A GRAY PLACE OF nightmare dreams and distorted echoes that sounded like the distant pounding of an ax against a hollow tree. Slowly pinpricks of light pierced the grayness, growing brighter with each beat of his heart.

Then pain.

It crouched on his chest like a demon with a hammer, driving hot spikes into his brain, his arm, between his ribs, until the unending agony sent terror roaring through his mind. Teeth clenched, eyes clamped tight against the burning brightness, he lay in shivering misery and tried to endure.

Dimly, he heard a voice. He couldn’t hear the words but recognized it as a woman’s voice . . . soft, soothing . . . with the sound of the South in the rolling cadence. He focused on it with all his mind, knowing as long as he could hear her voice, it meant he was still alive and not alone. Time ebbed and flowed, but the pain stayed constant. Only her voice kept him from drifting into the abyss.

After a while, the voice became two voices. A man and the woman. Arguing. It made his head hurt.
Damn them.
He turned toward them to tell them to stop.

And everything spun out of control.

Dizziness swamped him. His stomach heaved. Bile burned in his throat. Swallowing convulsively, he fought back wave after wave of churning nausea and waited for the spinning to stop.

Finally, it did. And then all that was left was the pain.

Blackness pressed like hands against his chest, forcing him down into the smothering emptiness that was more terrible than pain. He fought it, but his strength was gone and the hands were too strong.

But already he was sinking down, down in a slow, spinning fall.

EFFIE AND THE REVEREND MET MOLLY AS SHE CAME UP THE steps of their small clapboard house beside the church. It was a welcoming house, boasting fresh white paint on the rails of the porch and an abundance of ruffled curtains at the windows. The kind of house Molly would have liked had she and Papa ever stayed in one place long enough to make a home.

“He’s talking to Mr. Harkness then he’ll see his brother,” Reverend Beckworth told Molly as he held open the door. “I said you’d wait for him in the study.”

“You’re not leaving her alone with him?” Effie asked in surprise.

“He might hurt her. Did you see how angry he was?”

With a quelling look at his wife, the reverend turned to Molly. “His name is Brady Wilkins. Of Wilkins Cattle and Mining in New Mexico.”

“Oh, my,” Effie murmured. “I didn’t realize.”

Molly felt as if the floor had shifted beneath her feet.

Effie rallied first. “Well, I don’t care who he is. He is a most unpleasant person, and I don’t think you should leave her alone with him, not at all.”

Molly tried to steady her breathing. It had never occurred to her that her husband might be one of those Wilkinses. Even though she was new to the Southwest, she’d heard enough to know they were not a family to cross.

Steering his wife toward the kitchen, the reverend gave Molly an encouraging smile. “Call if you need us.”

With a feeling of dread, Molly went to the study. Standing at the window, she watched the children play in the side yard and wondered what she would say to Brady Wilkins. Should she tell the truth? Try to gain his sympathy? Lie? She was a poor liar. Over the years, to ease a patient’s anxiety she had learned to shade the truth a bit, but she had never outright lied. Until now.

She had no choice. She needed that money. The children had no one to protect them but her. That justification sounded a lot better than it felt.

Suddenly the door flew open. Molly whirled.

He loomed in the doorway, nearly as tall as his brother but leaner. Dressed for travel, he wore a dusty black Stetson, a sheepskin jacket over faded Levi Strauss trousers, and a large revolver in a holster on his right hip. His eyes had all the warmth of a cloudless winter sky and contrasted starkly against his weathered skin and dark stubble. She couldn’t see his mouth beneath the black mustache, but judging by the furrow between his dark brows, she guessed he wasn’t smiling.

“You must be Henry’s brother,” she said, striving for a friendly tone.

Those icy blue eyes flicked over her, a purely masculine assessment that hit all the pertinent places but showed little interest. Automatic and uninvolved. She wondered if he was even aware of doing it.

Stepping into the room, he slammed the door shut behind him then stood braced in front of it, feet apart, jacket hooked behind big hands planted just above his low-slung belt. “You married my brother.”

“Yes. I’m Molly McFarlane . . . Wilkins.” She held out her hand, hoping he didn’t notice the slight tremor in her fingers. When he ignored the gesture, she moved to one of the two worn leather chairs in front of the desk and sank down before her knees gave out. Folding her hands tightly in her lap, she put on a smile. “Please sit, Mr. Wilkins. I’m sure you have many questions.”

He didn’t move. “When?”

She looked at him, confused by the question.

“When did you marry him?”

No use lying about that. There were too many witnesses. “Yesterday.”

“How convenient.” He said it with a sneer. Spinning, he stomped to the window, then back, then to the window again. His ferocious energy seemed to charge the very air with menace.

Molly watched his big hands open and close, open and close, and considered bolting from the room but doubted her legs would hold her up. Instead, she sat absolutely still, hands clasped, feet flat on the floor, trying to make herself as unnoticeable as possible.

Use a calm voice, show concern, not fear.
Papa’s words, drilled into her over and over in those terrible months at Andersonville Prison, where violence and despair and rage had been a way of life. And death.

“You heard he was rich, is that it?” he accused, still pacing. “And now that he’s hurt, you’re just biding your time until he dies so you can get your hands on his money. Jesus, what kind of woman are you?”

“If.”

He stopped and scowled at her. “What?”

“
If
he dies.” A small, but important distinction . . . at least to her. “And I didn’t realize who he was until an hour ago.”

“You married a man without even knowing his name?”

“I knew his name. I just didn’t associate it with Wilkins Cattle and Mining.”

“Hank didn’t tell you?”

Realizing her slip, Molly dumped another lie onto the growing pile. “We were, ah, busy. It didn’t come up—the cattle and mining thing, that is.” Heat rushed into her face. “So no, Henry didn’t mention it,” she added lamely.

For some unfathomable reason, he seemed to accept that. “Typical,” he muttered. “Why?”

“Why didn’t he mention it?”

Stopping before her, he folded his arms across his chest and glared down at her. “Why did you marry him?”

Molly hesitated, wondering how to answer. She sensed truth was not an option. This man would be a formidable enemy if he found out she had forced marriage onto his unconscious brother. But the lies were piling up fast, and shame was urging her to blurt out everything. Then she thought of the children and realized for their sakes she had to play out this wretched charade.

“He asked,” she said weakly.

His eyes narrowed in suspicion. Beautiful eyes. Too beautiful for such a hard face. “Hank proposed marriage?”

“You sound surprised.”

“I am.” He continued to stare at her, a muscle jumping in his bristly jaw. “Considering.”

In the yard, the children’s voices rose in laughter. On the street, a wagon rattled by. But inside Reverend Beckworth’s study, the silence was so oppressive it felt like a weight against her chest.

Abruptly he turned and went to stare out the window, absently twisting a ring on his left hand. A wedding band by the look of it, which surprised Molly. He didn’t seem like a man who would favor jewelry.

“That doctor, Murray, says he may never wake up,” he said after a moment. “Says he’s dying.” When she didn’t respond, he swung toward her. His face showed both hope and dread, an expression Molly had seen too often.

She resented the burden it put on her . . . to soothe, to take the pain away, to make the unthinkable acceptable. She was weary of it. Even so, it was against her nature to withhold comfort when it was needed. “Don’t lose hope, Mr. Wilkins. Henry is strong. I don’t think he’s given up. Nor should you.”

With a curse, he turned back to the window. “He just went to get a part for the concentrator. He was only supposed to be gone three weeks. What the hell happened?”

“Perhaps if you sat down, I could explain.”

He whipped around, fury radiating from every line of his long form. “Explain what? How in less than three weeks my brother’s train crashes, he gets himself married to a goddamned vulture, and now he’s dying? How do you explain that?”

She didn’t respond, afraid her voice would wobble.
A goddamned vulture.
How hurtful to hear oneself described in such terms. And how sadly true.

“None of this makes sense.” Those cold eyes studied her thoughtfully. “Something’s not right.”

Molly sat frozen, the truth stuck like cotton batting in her throat.

“Where did you meet him?”

“In Sierra Blanca.” Since that was where he had boarded, she thought that answer might suffice.

“When?”

“Over two weeks ago.” Another safe answer. She hoped.

“Christ.” With a weary sigh, he slumped into the chair across from hers. “Tell me about the derailment.”

Relieved to be able to tell the truth about this, at least, Molly smoothed a pleat on her skirt and tried to gather her thoughts, “After the wreck,” she finally began, “things were a mess. The caboose was on fire, mail and baggage scattered everywhere, passengers milling about like sheep. Luckily, only two men died and—”

“I don’t care about them. What about Hank?”

Hank?
“Do you mean Henry?”

“No, I mean Hank. Jesus, will you just get on with it?”

Pausing long enough to let him see how little she appreciated his surly behavior and foul language, she continued in as calm a voice as she could muster. “Other than the brakeman and conductor, both of whom died, and various scrapes and bruises among the passengers, your brother was the sole injury. Only three cars actually left the tracks, you see, and when the—”

“Christ! Do I have to beat it out of you? Tell me what happened to Hank!”

Molly refrained from shouting back at him. “He was thrown off the rear platform and under the baggage car,” she said bluntly.

His rugged face seemed to lose color. “Then what happened?”

“It took a while to dig him out. Then he was loaded into one of the passenger cars and we continued on to El Paso. When we arrived, Harkness had him taken to Dr. Murray’s infirmary.”

“Where you forced the marriage yesterday.”

“I didn’t force it. Exactly. I just moved up the date.”

“So you could marry a dying man you barely knew. A man you
say
you didn’t know was rich. A man who was unconscious.” His voice dropped to an ominous tone that was even more threatening than his bluster. “Again, I have to ask . . . if not for his money, then why?”

Sensing a trap, Molly gave a partial version of the truth. “Not
his
money, exactly. The railroad’s.” When she saw he was about to start shouting again, she raised her voice to cut him off. “The railroad seemed intent on cleaning everything up as quickly as possible, no doubt hoping to forestall an outcry like the one after that head-on in Utah last month—and within hours, their representative, Harkness, was offering cash for signed releases. Twenty dollars for an injury, a hundred for a lost limb, three hundred for a life.”

“Three hundred,” he said in mingled fury and disbelief.

“To some people,” she added hastily, “three hundred dollars is a lot of money.”

“Jesus Christ almighty.”

Having said too much to stop now, Molly forged ahead. “When I heard your brother was not expected to survive the night, I told Harkness who I was and that I was Henry’s intended, hoping to get the death settlement should Henry . . . well.” She cleared a sudden dryness from her throat, then continued. “Henry cared about the children. He would have wanted me to get the money. For them. But Harkness balked. He said the money was for widows, not fiancées. With the Beckworths’ help, I convinced him to allow for the circumstances, and by evening Henry and I were married.”