Dorothy Garlock (24 page)

“I assure you that it was not meant as a joke,” Abe said matter-of-factly.

“Now, Fawn,” Hank started, “you gotta understand that—”

“I can’t believe this!” Fawn cried, cutting Hank off in mid-sentence. In her eyes, mischievousness danced. “This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen! Does Abe Morgan really think that he’s President Lincoln?”

“Just hold on now,” Hank soothed.

As she listened to Fawn’s incredulous words, Hallie realized that the strange calamity that had befallen Abe was one that the Morgan family had borne in silence. They’d kept their secret from friends, neighbors, and, apart from the doctor, all of the townsfolk of Bison City. While Abe’s belief that he was the former president was mostly harmless, it was not without its share of difficulties. Looking at the scene with Fawn’s eyes, Hallie could see just how ridiculous it all must seem.

“When did this happen?” she pressed.

“I assure you that nothing has occurred with which you need to concern yourself, miss,” Abe said, his feathers not the least bit ruffled by Fawn’s accusations that he was not who he claimed. “The only person that you need give your prayers is my beloved Mary, to whose side I must now return.” Before another word could be uttered, Abe left the room, Fawn slack jawed behind him.

“He’s just a bit confused,” Hallie tried to explain after he’d gone.

“Confused?” Fawn laughed. “He’s more crazy than confused!”

“Watch how you talk about him,” Pearl said sharply.

Fawn paid the warning little mind, as she tried to come to grips with all that she had witnessed. Suddenly, she seemed to remember her original reason for coming to the ranch.

“Mrs. Morgan!”

Without so much as a pause, she headed off in the direction in which Abe had gone as everyone scrambled to catch up.

Chapter Twenty-two

A
DELE
M
ORGAN LAY
in the center of her four-poster, her spindly body covered only by a sheet. The room was both small and meager, as if it had been added as an afterthought on the ranch house. Other than the bed, the only furniture was an old, worn dresser and a washstand, its white bowl nearly empty of water. The hot, sticky smell of sweat clung to the room like a cloud despite the open window.

“What in tarnation is the meaning of all this ruckus?” she demanded, her temper as hot as the room. Her gaunt face had become even thinner; her imposed bed rest combined with her refusal to eat was causing her to waste away. Her hair resembled a rat’s nest, tufts going this way and that. Still, she had the air of a lady about her. In a show of modest decorum, she brought the sheet quickly up to her neck and clutched it tightly in two bony hands. “Why are you barging into my room?”

Bounding into the room as if it contained her fondest desire, Fawn paid no heed to the older woman’s obvious discomfort at her intrusion. Her buoyant smile had faded into a more concerned expression of worry and sympathy so false that Hallie’s stomach roiled. Fawn perched herself on the corner of the bed where, to Hallie’s eyes, she resembled a vulture more than a bird of mercy. Fawn’s hands pried Adele’s from the sheet and held them tenderly.

“Oh, Mrs. Morgan,” she cooed, her voice as soft and tender as if she were a schoolmarm soothing a child who had fallen and skinned a knee. “I am so very sorry for all the pain and suffering that you’ve had to endure! If only I had known what had happened to you, I would have come much sooner. You must be in terrible agony.”

“Now, Fawn,” Adele began to protest. “It’s not—”

“Oh, you poor, poor thing!”

From where Hallie stood in the narrow doorway, with Pearl on one side and Hank on the other, she watched the drama before her unfold as if she were attending the theater, the story clearly make-believe. She wished that Eli would step forward and put a stop to Fawn’s show of concern, but he remained silently behind them in the hallway.

“Are they giving you enough to eat?” Fawn asked as she cast a baleful glance back over her shoulder at Hallie. “The way you’re shrinking away, you’ll be nothing more than skin and bones before too long.”

“I can hardly eat the slop they bring me,” Mrs. Morgan said in a self-pitying voice.

“Now it ain’t been that bad,” Hank argued.

“It’s not fit for a dog.”

“I guess that makes you the biggest mutt in these parts,” Pearl said to Hank under her breath, “what with the way you were gobblin’ it up.” Her words set the old cowboy to snickering, but he withered back to silence under the harsh gaze his sister flashed at him.

“We haven’t heard any complaints from anyone else,” Hallie offered in their defense, the ire rising in her chest at Fawn’s accusations that they weren’t properly caring for Mrs. Morgan, that they were somehow making her condition worse.

“Men will eat anything,” Fawn shot back.

“Now just you listen here, you little sawed-off, connivin’ runt! I ain’t takin’ none of your shit—” Pearl sputtered, pushing the long sleeves of her blouse back, but Fawn cut her off as effectively as if she had thrown a quick jab of her own.

“I’m not listening to your foul words when it’s clear as the nose on your face that Mrs. Morgan has been neglected. Just look at these dirty sheets and the way her hair hasn’t been tidied. I’m certain that you haven’t bothered to wash her even once,” she said in a voice far louder than was necessary, her eyes flashing toward Eli. “She needs to be in town where she can receive the care she needs.”

“Doc says she can’t be moved,” Hank objected.

“What right you got to walk in this here house and start makin’ demands on us?” Pearl barked, obviously upset at having her toes stepped upon, her eyes glaring holes in Fawn. “Last time I heard, Mrs. Morgan had a son and a brother here to look after her welfare.”

“I’ve more right than you to be here!” Fawn shot back.

Pearl snorted in response, which served only to agitate Fawn more.

“I’ve known the Morgan family for nearly as long as I have lived and they are from far finer stock than you,” Fawn declared, her words both slanderous and sharp. “To think that Mrs. Morgan has to depend on the likes of you makes me sick. Why, if things go on the way they have, she’s liable to end up as bad off as poor Abe!”

At Fawn’s words, Hallie saw Mrs. Morgan wince as if she had been poked in her bad hip with one of the ranch’s branding irons. The look lasted no more than a couple blinks of her eyes, but in that time Hallie could see a sadness far deeper than she would have expected, a regret that her eldest son could be held up as an example of poor living.

“Now, don’t you two get in a catfight,” Hank said, still hoping to make peace.

“She’s gettin’ as good of care as she would be gettin’ in town,” Pearl snarled as if the man she’d begun to have feelings for hadn’t uttered a word. “We’re followin’ doctor’s orders. He said that she was not to leave that bed.”

“I’ll not leave her here at your mercy,” Fawn retorted defiantly. “Before I’d do that, I’ll come here every day and take care of her myself!” Fawn’s face was that of a petulant child who always expected she would get just what she wanted. At her words, every face in the room showed disapproval, and for a moment, even Mrs. Morgan’s.

“Suit yourself!” Pearl’s voice was as strong and loud as Fawn’s.

“That ain’t the sort of journey a woman should make by herself day after day,” Hank explained, sweat suddenly beading his brow. “I don’t know if I’d be able to sleep at night knowin’ you was gonna come out here alone.”

“Then I’ll make Seth come along with me.”

“Seth?” Mrs. Morgan asked, a curiosity tingeing her voice. “Seth McCarty?”

Fawn nodded, her blond curls bouncing.

“Who in the hell is Seth McCarty?” Pearl asked.

For a brief moment, Fawn was silent, her eyes darting to the darkened space beyond Hallie’s shoulder, the place where she believed Eli to still be standing. In that longing look, Hallie saw as clearly as if she were being told that Fawn’s feelings for Eli had never waned, had never weakened with time, but had grown into something like an obsession. In those few seconds, she saw plainly that Fawn was determined to have Eli Morgan and was using his mother’s accident to wiggle her way into the house.

“Seth is my future husband,” she explained, but Hallie could hear the lack of conviction in her voice. “Since I will soon be his wife, he’ll be more than willing to do what I ask.”

“Will he now?” At the sound of Eli’s voice, Hallie turned as he took a step into the doorway. What she saw surprised her; where earlier his face had been a mask of grumpiness mixed with pain, it now was transformed into one of interest and determination. “Seems to me that Seth isn’t going to take too kindly to you coming to the ranch, what with the way he reacted in town.”

At that, all heads turned back to Fawn. She stammered for an answer, her eyes playing across the room, her jaw clenching and unclenching. All at once, it was as if she were both angry and hurt by Eli’s words. Hallie’s mind whirled.
What was Eli talking about? When had he run into Fawn in town without her?
Patiently, she waited to hear what Eli would have to say next.

But before she could turn to glance at him, there was an excited whoop that echoed all the way down the hallway. Mere seconds later, Abe shouldered past his brother to stand in the doorway, a smile across his face from one heavily bearded cheek to the other. He was so excited that he shook.

“She’s awake!” he exclaimed.

At last, Mary was awake!

The room in which Mary lay was, in nearly every respect, no different from the one that Hallie had just left: small and cramped, with sparse furnishings that offered little in the way of comfort and a heat that threatened to overpower. But even with these similarities, Hallie was struck by the differences: smiles instead of frowns, genuine warmth instead of bitterness, hope instead of resigned despair. When she and Pearl burst in, gladness beat on the doors of their hearts for the first time in what seemed like forever.

“Is she really awake?” Hallie asked.

“It sounds too good to be true, gosh darn it!” Pearl added.

Mary Sinclair lay in the same bed in which they had placed her a week earlier. On that day, they’d refused to give in to the fear that she would be forever taken from them, denied a chance, a true chance at life. Now, with one weary arm raised to her temple, Hallie found herself having trouble believing that all their prayers had been answered.

“Mary!” she exclaimed, kneeling down beside the small bed. “Oh, Mary! I can’t believe you’re finally awake! I just can’t believe you’ve come back to us!”

“Look at us, Mary girl!” Pearl prodded from her place at Hallie’s side.

Slowly, Mary’s head did as Pearl bade and turned to the side, her dark-circled eyes resting upon both their faces. She blinked once, twice, and finally a third time before they seemed to focus. What was written in her gaze sent a shiver racing headlong down Hallie’s spine; instead of the joy and relief that she had expected, there was only fear.

“No . . . no . . . no!” Mary screeched suddenly, her raw throat not allowing her to voice the true measure of her fright. “Stay—stay away from me! He’ll kill you.”

“Don’t fret, Mary,” Pearl tried to calm her.

“You don’t have to worry about all that,” Hallie added, but she could see that Mary was beyond where her words could reach her. Even as she extended a hand, hopeful that she could calm her with her touch, Mary skittered away, her pencil-thin arms pushing fretfully on the bed.

“What’s she talkin’ about?” Hank asked. “Who’s gonna kill you?”

“It ain’t nothin’,” Pearl offered hastily.

A sea of emotion rose and fell within Hallie’s breast. Instantly, she knew that while life had continued to go on for her and Pearl, poor Mary had remained trapped in that horrid moment in which she had entered the swollen river. While a week had passed for all of them, Mary had awakened to the same fears, the same worries that had left her mute and paralyzed in the back of their wagon.
For her, Chester was still only a step behind.

“It’s all right, Mary,” Pearl pressed. “You’re safe now!”

“We’re with people who’ll help us,” Hallie added.

“No . . . no!” Mary croaked, her voice harsh from disuse. Her eyes shot wildly about her, as if she were a small animal being stalked by a deadly predator. She shrank into the bed and pulled the scant coverings up to her chin, burrowing deeply into a nest of fear. “We’ll never be safe! Chester will never stop until he finds me! Never, never, never!”

“Who is she talking about? Who’s Chester?”

Hallie once again turned to the sound of Eli’s voice to find him standing inside the door, his face awash with puzzlement. A sickening feeling spread over her at the sight of him. After all that she had done to keep the sordid details of their encounter with Chester at Whiskey Bend a secret, it would all have to come out now.

“He’ll kill us!” Mary whispered. “He’ll kill us all!”

“What’s she going on about?” Eli demanded, his gaze shifting from Mary’s horrified face back to Hallie’s. “Who the hell is this Chester fella? Why does he want you? Why would he want to kill you?”

Each of Eli’s brusque questions struck Hallie with the same force that they would have had they been real physical blows, each one more powerful than the last. Under such a barrage she became mute, even though she knew that each passing second of silence made her seem all the more guilty, of hiding something ugly.

“He’s . . . just a man back in Whiskey Bend,” Hallie stammered, her voice sounding as unconvincing to her own ears as she was certain it sounded to his. “She’s—she’s just been ill . . . and is still confused, that’s all.”

“Seems more than that to me,” he said, his gaze narrowing on her face.

“No, Chester! No!” Mary shouted.

Suddenly, out from behind Eli stepped Abe, his face showing both worry and genuine concern. His eyes never left Mary as she writhed in her small bed. The tender way in which he looked at her mesmerized Hallie; at that moment, he had never seemed more presidential. When he stepped closer to where she lay, all eyes in the room were on him.