Crazy Woman Creek (10 page)

The mooing of a milk cow waiting to be relieved of its burden interrupted Lenora’s sad reverie and served as another reminder that James was not here. She must get up. Now.

Hellfire and damnation, she did not want to endure another day of this entombment!

Angrily Lenora yanked at the bedding. As she did, James’ rifle fell with a clatter to the bare wood floor, waking Ulysses, whose frenzied barking filled the little room before he was on all fours. She had forgotten her new nightly routine of moving the rifle from its place above the door to her bed, insurance against another visit from the faceless trespasser in heavy boots.

“Stop it, Ulysses!”
Dumb dog.
“Stop it!”

Reluctantly Ulysses stopped barking, but not before Lenora grabbed James’ leather belt from a drawer and whacked the panicked animal across his snout. Ulysses yelped in pain, which made Lenora wince. The bullmastiff look stricken, whimpering while settling himself at the foot of the bed—a safe distance from his mistress—where he cowered while eyeing Lenora, who had slumped down onto the edge of the bed, bare feet on the floor, the belt still in her hand, utterly dejected.

At first she had failed to tell Deputy Davies about the footsteps outside her bedroom wall because she didn’t want him snooping around her ranch more than necessary to conduct his investigation. But now she was resolute in her plan to keep silent about the incident and deal with it herself lest another encounter with the handsome deputy create needless temptation. As for the irksome sheriff, she would do everything in her power to avoid ever talking to him again.

Besides, the intruder had not returned. Perhaps there had never been an intruder. Perhaps, in her overly distraught, sleep deprived mind, she had imagined the entire scenario. Or, God forbid, perhaps she was haunted by an evil specter in her own particular valley of the shadow of death.

Lenora sat on the edge of the bed, breathing hard, appalled at her cussing and black thoughts and feeling profoundly guilty for her wicked treatment of her loyal pet. She was falling apart, and she did not want to go on. She must unburden her secret to someone, soon.

“I’m sorry, Ulysses,” she said, looking at the timid, soulful eyes of her dog. “Forgive me?”

Ulysses whimpered but stayed where he was. Finally Lenora got up from the bed and walked over to him, sat down on the floor and wrapped her arms around the trembling animal.

“I’m sorry, Ulysses,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” She held onto the dog for several minutes, until the animal stopped trembling and started licking her face. After she knew Ulysses was calm, she released her hold and leaned back against the cool, hard bedroom wall. For a long time she sat there staring at the ceiling, stroking Ulysses’ back and half listening to the animals in the barn hollering to be fed, unable to find it within herself to get up off the bedroom floor to face another meaningless day.

After a long while she pushed herself up and stood, but not before she promised herself that, James or no James, she would be in church next Sunday.

#

Luke tried to be discreet as he kept one eye on his hymnal and the other on the church’s narrow entryway, waiting for Mrs. Rose to appear. Service had begun, the pump organ was in motion, and though it was unseasonably warm, all voices were raised with fervor to sing “The All-Seeing God” from
Divine and Moral Songs.
Still there was no sign of Mrs. Rose.

Almighty God, thy piercing eye

Strikes through the shades of night,

And our most secret actions lie

All open to thy sight.

Luke swept his eyes around the whitewashed sanctuary again, convinced that he must have missed the thick bun of coffee-colored hair that so captivated him. Mrs. Rose did not strike him as the type who would stay home from service without good reason. As he turned his head slightly over one shoulder, his eyes locked with those of a girl about sixteen standing with her mother in the pew behind his, her face framed prettily by a beribboned rose bonnet. She blushed coquettishly, eyes smiling over the top of her hymnal. Luke snapped his head back to his own hymnal and returned to singing.

There’s not a sin that we commit,

Nor wicked word we say,

But in thy dreadful book ‘tis writ

Against the judgment day.

Then a flash through an open window, a woman on a buckboard pulled by a familiar brown Morgan. Above the singing Luke could not hear Mrs. Rose setting the brake or tethering Beast to graze during the two-hour service, but he imagined it clearly in his mind’s eye.

And must the crimes that I have done

Be read and publish’d there;

Be all exposed before the sun,

While men and angels hear?

After a few minutes every head in the room turned to watch Lenora walk down a side aisle, alone, on Luke’s side of the sanctuary as she searched for an empty seat. A married couple a few rows in front of him scooted down the pew to make room for her.

Mrs. Rose looked charming today, distinguishing herself from the somber flock of black crows on the front row by appearing in a modest, long-sleeve, pale yellow bustled dress with three layers of frills on the overskirt and a matching bonnet. But then, Mrs. Rose looked charming in everything she wore, though Luke wondered how a woman survived frivolous layers of heat-capturing petticoats in a stuffy building like this one. Although service had hardly started, already he’d been tempted more than once to loosen the collar of his stiff white Sunday shirt. The sanctuary was crowded, and the numerous warm bodies made the heat more oppressive. All the Gothic-style windows on both sides of the sanctuary were pushed open for ventilation, but no breeze cooperated to provide a respite from the heat.

They sang several hymns. Then Reverend Thomas took the pulpit, instructed everyone to open their
bibles, and began to preach about eternity. Luke tried and failed to follow the message, which became a low buzz in the back of his head. His mind was on Mrs. Rose. She was beautiful even from the back.

Not long into the Reverend’s message, women began pulling fans from their reticules, snapping them open and wagging them back and forth to create personal breezes in distinctly feminine style. Luke wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. Other men did the same. Somewhere in the rear of the sanctuary a small child fussed, whining on and off in an irritating way. Finally Luke heard the sound of someone carrying the child through the entryway. A door opened and closed but was stingy about leaving a breeze. The muffled whines of the child grew fainter then disappeared. Luke quit listening to the Reverend Thomas altogether. It was too hot to think about Hell.

Then he saw Lenora slump sideways, languidly fall forward, and with a soft thump and a swish of petticoats, hit the floor. Reverend Thomas’ extravagantly long beard stopped bobbing and the sanctuary suddenly hushed. Luke was on his feet in an instant, rushing to Lenora's pew, clearing the crowd around her. He crouched on the floor near her body and felt her wrist for a pulse.

“She's not breathing. She needs air,” he said, urging worshippers to step aside. “Mrs. Rose!” he said, softly fingering her cheek. “Mrs. Rose!” She didn’t respond. “We have to get her outside,” Luke said to the gawking crowd that surrounded them, "where it's cooler."

Luke quickly untied the bow under Lenora’s chin and pulled her bonnet away from her head. He put his right arm under her knees and with his left he cradled her head and shoulders. With the entire assembly looking on, he carried her through the entryway and out the front door of the little white church. He paused at the top of the steps, unwilling to lay her on the dirty ground. She was dressed too fine. The yard around the church was trampled, more dried mud than grass. Lenora remained unconscious in Luke’s arms while he cast about, trying to decide where to set her down.

"I'll get a blanket from my buggy," offered Dr. Biggerstaff, who had followed Luke through the door and recognized Luke’s dilemma at once. Buffalo's only physician, Dr. Cornelius Biggerstaff was an average-size, middle-aged man with a bald spot surrounded by salt-and-pepper hair. He pushed his wire spectacles up his nose as he spoke to Luke.

Luke nodded.

"And water," the doctor added, as he hurried down the wood steps and around the corner of the clapboard church building to the stables where worshippers parked their conveyances and provided shelter for their horses.

Luke gazed down at Lenora's face, which had turned an unworldly, bluish white like fine porcelain. Her lips were exquisitely fashioned, supple and kissable. Her bosoms strained against the form-fitting fabric of her bodice. Her body, limp as it was, felt sensual and soft against his. His thoughts wandered to places they ought never to go—on the church steps, no less. Luke groaned.

Lord, you promised not to give us more temptation than we can bear, but I got a bear of a temptation threatening my salvation right here.

Reverend Thomas ended service early due to the heat and the general disturbance, and now churchgoers were spilling out the door past Luke and Lenora. Most of the men used the opportunity to visit and smoke. But older female members of Johnson Ebenezer, motherly types, buzzed about Lenora like bees at a picnic. Two in particular, Eleanor Graves and Ada Mendelssohn, in their bombazine dresses and lamp-shade style hats reminiscent of earlier decades, tied in overly large bows beneath their wrinkled chins, joined Luke on the narrow threshold, fanning Lenora and tut-tutting over the poor girl and "wasn't it a pity" and "they still haven’t found his body" and "only twenty-two" and "all alone on that ranch so far from town."

Luke was still holding Lenora on the church steps and the two women were still fanning and waiting for Dr. Biggerstaff when Lenora’s eyes fluttered slightly. She began to loll her head slowly and make low moaning sounds.

"Mrs. Rose," said Luke quietly, bending his face down close to hers. The faint fragrance of flowers, redolent of magnolia, filled his nose. Everything about this woman was quintessentially feminine; that was her allure. Luke tried to memorize this moment and its gifts, her fragrance and the feel of her, to carry them back with him to his lonely room at the boarding house. 

Low moaning.

"Mrs. Rose."

At the sound of the steady, masculine voice, Lenora drew up her right arm around Luke's neck, nuzzled her face into his shoulder, and purred, eyes still closed.

"Hold me," she said, breathily.

Now it was Luke’s turn to stop breathing. "Mrs. Rose, I'm not—
”

"I’m so sorry, darling. Never again.”

Never again?

“Hold me. Please don't leave me.”

Mrs. Graves and Mrs. Mendelssohn stopped fanning and looked at each other, speechless, eyes wide with shock. Then they looked at Luke, who remained stoic, sobered by the knowledge that Mrs. Rose surely imagined she was in the arms of another, missing man, the one to whom she truly belonged. The one she waited for.

Luke’s ears burned with embarrassment, not because of Lenora’s murmurings but because he couldn’t remove her arm from around his neck. Both of his were occupied holding her. More churchgoers stepped through the doorway. Luke met their startled looks impassively. He had done nothing wrong.

Dr. Biggerstaff arrived with a lap blanket accompanied by a small boy toting a bucket of well water. Luke carried Lenora down the steps and laid her gently down, straightening her skirt for modesty. Lenora started to come around after the doctor dipped a borrowed hanky into the water and pressed it to her face, though she was still groggy from being out so long.

“Mrs. Rose. Mrs. Rose,” the doctor said urgently. Lenora had been unconscious for at least a minute and a half.

Luke withdrew from the scene on the ground to let others take over. He stood nearby, watching, sensing that he had been involved enough today with the lovely Mrs. Rose to set tongues wagging until long past harvest time. How could he possibly foresee that she would mistake him for her husband in her confused state of mind? He only meant to move her to the open air. And what did she mean by “never again?”

“What happened?” said Lenora, as she began to come around. She blinked her eyes repeatedly.

“You fainted,” said Dr. Biggerstaff. The doctor kneeled on the ground beside Lenora, holding her hand and pressing the damp cloth about her face.

Lenora said nothing, just stared, wide eyed, at the doctor and the halo of faces crowded around above her head. She seemed to have trouble comprehending.

“You think it was the heat, doctor?” asked a female onlooker.

Mrs. Marietta Nolan crouched next to Dr. Biggerstaff, using her cane to steady herself, ignoring the mess the dried mud made of the hem of her dress. She was that kind of woman. Good-hearted beneficence overflowing from zaftig dark blue georgette with a halo of parted angel hair pulled loosely into a small bun pinned at her nape.

“Probably, though she’s under a lot of strain right now.”

“Shame on me. I should have looked in on her before this.” Mrs. Nolan shook her head.

“You still can. They haven’t found the body,” said Dr. Biggerstaff. “Her hardest days are ahead.”