Sundancer (Cheyenne Series) (25 page)

      
“Let me have a look,” the doctor said to him. As soon as the patient raised his head, the physician swore, then looked apologetically at Roxanna, who only smiled dismissively. After the past month working around railroad laborers, she had heard far worse.

      
Fumes of “pop skull” whiskey rose off the man's sweaty body like swamp gas in a Louisiana bayou. “Danny Deeken again. I should've known. One of these days you're going to kill yourself, but it won't be on Union Pacific time. Cain told you if you ever sneaked a bottle to work again, you'd be fired,” he said as he examined a bump the size of a buzzard's egg forming around Deeken's left eye.

      
“Sure'n I know it,” the patient wheezed. “The trouble began when Zigler started throwin' punches. Got meself in the way of one.”

      
Milborne scowled. “Zigler’s a foot taller and weighs three stone more than you. You were drunk or crazy to provoke him.”

      
“Ah, but the whiskey was so good I fergot meself, I did. It was strong enough to make a hummingbird spit in a rattler's eye!”

      
Roxanna was appalled when the doctor pried open Deeken's injured eye, revealing the bloodshot damage. “Will I lose me eye?” he asked, still too drunk to be all that concerned.

      
Milborne shrugged. “No. You'll survive until your liver ossifies, which shouldn't be all that long. It ought to be the consistency of a mastodon tusk by now.” The dour little physician shook his balding head in frustration as he worked, carefully placing a pad on the injury, then wrapping Deeken's head to hold the linen in place.

      
“When you've had enough, why can't you simply ask for a sarsaparilla?” the physician asked in exasperation as he helped Deeken down from the table.

      
“Doc, when I've had enough I can't say sarsaparilla,” was the slurred reply.

      
Roxanna shared a laugh with the physician as they helped Deeken reach his friend's arms. “Haul him into the back and let him sleep it off,” he instructed them. “He's gonna wake up with an elephant-sized headache.”

      
Late that afternoon when things were quiet, Roxanna sat sponging off one of the dysentery patients, who moaned feverishly in his sleep.

      
“You have a healer's touch, Mrs. Cain,” the doctor said gently, pausing beside the foot of the cot.

      
“Another medicine man once told me that not too long ago. I would never have thought it before then.” She shrugged. “I like to be useful. My husband's away a great deal and this keeps me busy. I'm not exactly welcome in the small social circle here,” she said without rancor.

      
Milborne's kindly brown eyes studied her for a moment as he cleared his throat awkwardly. “I'll be honest, Mrs. Cain—when you first volunteered, I had my doubts. Gossip is an ugly thing. I shouldn't have believed a word of it, but I did and I owe you an apology for that. You're a fine woman and a real lady.”

      
“No matter that I lived with Indians and married a half-breed?” Her voice held no censure, just a gentle sadness more for Cain than for herself.

      
Milborne's sallow complexion reddened. “You do believe in calling a spade a spade, don't you, Mrs. Cain? I can see that you're Jubal MacKenzie's granddaughter.”

      
Roxanna smiled. “That's the best compliment you could give me. Thank you, Doctor.”

* * * *

      
“Yer missing him, are you not?” Jubal asked Roxanna that night at dinner.

      
The two of them dined alone in his car since Cain was in Salt Lake making arrangements for the Mormon grading crews to start work on the route the Union Pacific surveyors had set up. He had been gone for over a week and their big bed was cold and lonely without him. “Yes, I miss him terribly, Grandfather.” She shoved a forkful of creamed potatoes around on her plate. “Will he always have to travel this way—did you when you were young?”

      
“Aye, I did. And there are times, seeing you now, that I regret it, lass. Ambition's a fine thing in a man if it doesna' cost him his family.”

      
“I'd never blame Cain—or leave him because he works too hard,” she said quickly.

      
“But you do na' like being apart. And it isna' fair to you. My Abbie never complained either. Looking back, I wish she had. I took her for granted. Then when she was gone...” His voice faded and a misty look came into his eyes. He blinked and looked out the window at the distant mountains.

      
Roxanna reached out and placed her hand over his big gnarled paw. “You must've loved her very much.”

      
“Aye, but I wasted all those precious years we had together—years when Annabelle was growing up. Abbie raised yer mother almost single-handed. Perhaps if I'd taken a hand sooner after Abbie died, Annie wouldna' have married Terrence Hunt.”

      
“You never approved of my father, did you?” Roxanna asked intuitively. Alexa had never mentioned it, but she had spoken little of her father.

      
“He wasna' worthy of Annie. But he was there and I was off, studying steel processing in Manchester, buying timberlands in Canada or poring over account books in Pittsburgh. I suppose I buried myself in work to escape the grief of losing Abbie. I ended up losing them both—and you, when yer father took you off to St. Louis.”

      
His melancholy look touched still-raw memories of her beloved father, lynched by night riders, the numb grief of her mother, compounded when their only son Rexford was killed in the war. Roxanna blinked back her own tears. She had lost all her family the same as Jubal.
I'm all he has left and I'm a fraud. Please God, don't let Isobel Darby destroy Jubal too
. She had come to admire and respect this gruff old man. He would be devastated to learn that his last living descendant was dead and that he had been taken in by an impostor. “You mustn't blame yourself for what's in the past,” she reassured him. But she would always blame herself...for so many things.

      
“I'm sorry, lass. An old man's regrets about the past are poor dinner table conversation.”

      
“I love you, Jubal MacKenzie. You must always believe that,” she said solemnly.

      
“I will, lass, I will,” he replied gently.

      
They sat across from one another, his big freckled hands holding her small pale ones, both blinking back the betraying moisture in their eyes.

      
At length Jubal broke the silence. “I'm happy things are working out between you and Cain. He'll be back in a day or two. Best you get yer rest tonight while you still can sleep,” he teased.

      
She blushed. ‘‘Grandfather, you are an old rascal!”

      
“Aye, but I was a young rogue once. Enjoy yer time together, lass. I'll see what I can do to keep yer husband closer to camp for a while.”

      
“You depend on him and he loves the challenge of new responsibility.”

      
“He's the best operations chief I've ever had,” he agreed. “I canna' wait to present him to the Union Pacific directors and all the Washington muckety-mucks.” He chuckled.

      
“Will they mind his being part Indian?” A worried frown crossed her forehead.

      
“I dare any of them to say so to his face,” Jubal said with a sardonic chuckle.

      
“No, I don't imagine they would dare,” she replied thoughtfully.

      
“Aye. Cain isna' a man to cross,” Jubal agreed heartily, walking over to his liquor cabinet.

      
Roxanna could imagine his fury if he learned how she had deceived him, and suppressed a shudder.
Don't think about it.

      
Jubal waited while Li Chen removed the remains of their dinner, then poured some aged bourbon into two glasses and handed the smaller one to her.

      
She raised her glass to his. “To America, the land of opportunity—and damn good whiskey!”

      
He returned the salute. “That's my lassie!”

Chapter Twelve

      
“I don't see why you can't handle this. My job is moving the men out on the line.”

      
“Yer job is also learning to move among the muckety-mucks who control the Union Pacific purse strings. If I learned to dance their jigs, so can you. Besides,” Jubal said slyly, “maybe yer wife would enjoy a wee bit of socializing with the sort of nobs she knew back in St. Louis. She's worked hard with Doc Milborne. It would do her good to get away from the camp here, go back to Chicago, get dressed up in her finest and have some fun.”

      
“She says she enjoys tending the sick and injured. But I know she isn't accepted by the other respectable ladies. Working with doc has given her something to do, to feel useful while I'm away.”

      
“Aye, and yer away too much for being newly married.” Jubal threw up his hands before Cain could answer back. “I know, laddie, I know it's me who gave you the job that takes you away. But you see, that's why hosting this delegation of Union Pacific directors is so perfect. You can get to know Durant and his oily cronies from back East and at the same time give Alexa a week for socializing and female fripperies.”

      
Cain grunted in capitulation. “All right. I'll do it. Just as long as they don't expect me to put on a Wild West show with those damned Pawnee.”

      
“They wouldna' ask. When Durant arranged that exhibition last year it fair scared half the ladies into a swoon,” Jubal said, chuckling.

* * * *

      
Cain was surprised at Alexa's reaction when he gave her the news. Rather than bubbling female excitement over glittering social events in the big city, she seemed reticent, as if worried about something. “What's wrong, Alexa? Jubal thought you'd be excited at the chance for parties and shopping, the trip back East.”

      
“Oh, I am, but...you don't want to go, do you? I mean, your work is here.”

      
“As your grandfather reminded me, my new duties include learning my way around the 'muckety-mucks' who hold the purse strings for the Union Pacific.” He studied her, sensing there was more to her reluctance. “You're afraid of what they might think because you married an Indian.”

      
She gasped, hurt at first that he would think so poorly of her, but then she reminded herself of how painful his life had been growing up half red in a white world. She reached up to touch his face with her hand, willing him to look into her eyes, to see her heart. “I don't give a damn what Dr. Durant or the whole Union Pacific thinks,” she said fiercely. “I grew up in polite society, and believe me when I say I much prefer the friends I made in Leather Shirt's village to anyone I know in St. Louis—or might meet in Chicago.”

      
“I don't think a return trip to visit the Cheyenne is feasible right now,” he replied dryly. “You'll just have to settle for the snobby muckety-mucks. Besides,” he added, taking her hand and planting a moist kiss on the palm, “we'll have the car all to ourselves for three days before we reach Chicago.”

* * * *

      
The journey to Chicago was an idyll of lovemaking and an opportunity for them to spend uninterrupted time together, a luxury never afforded them in the big rail camp. As the private train made its way east to pick up its august passengers, Roxanna discovered that Cain's education was far more extensive than she had ever imagined.

      
“I knew you spoke Chinese, but you mean you've actually read these?” she asked, kneeling beside his old trunk, which had been delivered to their private car the day after their marriage. Until now it had remained unpacked, shoved hastily into a corner of the storage room. At her urging, he had dug out his small cache of personal possessions, adding them to the things she had brought from the Hunt household in St. Louis.

      
He picked up a slim volume of Greek, the pages well thumbed and yellowed with age.
The Plays of Aristophanes.
“Too bad you can't read Greek. You might enjoy
Lysistrata
. But then, come to think of it, it might give you some bad ideas,” he added as she took the book and gently opened it.

      
“You mean about withholding my favors from you until you did what I wanted?” she asked sweetly, “I can't read the original Greek, but I have read translations of Aristophanes.”

      
“Not exactly a conventional education. Does Jubal know what sort of teachers you had?” he asked, intrigued, trying to imagine Alexa as a girl.

      
“My father taught me to love literature,” she began, then stopped abruptly, realizing that she had no idea if Terrence Hunt had ever read a book in his life. Quickly she shifted the subject back to Cain. “Tell me about growing up at the mission.”

      
At first Cain was not certain he could talk about Enoch, but once he began, it was as if a whole floodgate of memories was opened. Rather than the unbearable pain he had always experienced before, now it felt right to speak of his mentor's life. “He was an amazing man. By turns stern, pious, yet gentle, humorous. Always endlessly patient. And I gave him ample reason to exercise that virtue.

      
“He was a missionary among the Cantonese for over a decade. Then when civil war in the Chinese provinces forced him to leave, the Methodist Missionary Society sent him to Colorado to bring the Gospel to the Indians.” He laughed bitterly. “Quite a change—from one of the most civilized people on earth to one of the most savage. A less adaptable man would have failed.”