Hummingbird (11 page)

"It's healing, no matter what it might feel like."

But she was still upset about his earlier comments. She was briskly working her way toward his foot with fresh lather when he looked down his chest at her and asked quietly, "Are you to old Melcher?"

Her head snapped up. "What?"

"A woman. Are you a woman to old Melcher?"

But his timing was ill chosen. She had him by the bad leg and was none too gentle about slamming it back down, suds and all. He gritted his teeth and gasped, but she stood there with an outraged expression on her face, hands jammed on the hips of her wet-spotted apron, eyes glaring.

"Haven't you done enough damage where Mr. Melcher is concerned without pushing my nose in it? He's a gentleman… but then you wouldn't know anything about gentlemen, would you? Does it satisfy your ego to know you've managed to lose him for me, too?"

His leg hurt like hell now and a white line appeared around his lips, but she had little sympathy. How much more could she take from him?

"If he's such a gentleman, why did you throw him out?" Jesse retorted.

Her mouth puckered and she flung the cloth into the bowl, sending water splattering onto his face, the floor, and pillow. He recoiled, hollering after her retreating figure, "Hey, where are you going? You haven't finished yet!"

"You have one good hand, sit Use it!" And her skirts disappeared around the door. He looked down at his soapy foot.

"But what'll I do with the soap?"

"Why don't you try washing your mouth out with it, which your mother should have done years ago!"

The soap was beginning to itch. "Don't you leave this soap on me!"

"Feel lucky I've conceded to wash as much of you as I have!"

He drove his good fist into the mattress and shouted at the top of his lungs, "Get back here, you viper!"

But she didn't return, and the soap stayed until the itching became unbearable and he was forced to lean painfully to remove most of it, then dry his foot and calf with the sheets.

As Miss Abigail left the house, she whacked the screen door shut harder than she'd ever done in her life.

She pounded down the back steps like a Hessian soldier, thinking,
I have to get out of the same house
with that monster
! Nobody she'd ever known had managed to anger her like he had. Standing in
the
shade of the linden tree, gazing at the garden, she longed for a return of tranquility to her life. But not even the peaceful, nodding heads of her flax flowers could calm her today. She wondered how she would ever endure that odious man until he was well enough to walk out of here on his own. He was the crudest creature she'd ever encountered. She almost had to laugh now at the memory of Doc worrying about her

"tender sensibilities." If only he knew how those sensibilities had been outraged by the man she'd freely allowed into her house.

Miss Abigail's mother and father had been people with faultless manners. Cursing and raging had been foreign to her life. She had always been taught to hide anger because it was not a genteel emotion. But Mr. Cameron had managed to elicit more than just her anger. She was smitten by guilt at all she'd done

—withheld a bedpan from an invalid, then thrown it at him, then abused his leg, causing him intentional pain, and slamming out of the house like a petulant child. Why, she'd even made one unforgivable ribald comment! The memory of it scalded her cheeks even now.

But the one who had precipitated it all would not allow her escape, not even out here in her garden. His voice riveted through the still summer air, abrading her once more.

"Miss Abigail, what's the railroad paying you for, half a job? Where's my breakfast?" he needled.

Oh, the gall of that man to make demands on her! She wanted nothing so badly as to starve him out of here. Loathsome creature! But she was caught in a trap of her own making. All she could do was gather her ladyhood around her like a mantle while she returned to the kitchen to prepare his meal.

When she came in with the tray, the first thing he noticed was that there was no linen napkin lining it like before.

"What? Don't I get flowers like old Melcher did?"

"How did you know…" she said before she could think; He laughed.

"Sounds carry in your house. Is that a real blush I see on the woman's cheek? My, my, I wonder if old Melcher knew he had what it takes to put it there. He certainly didn't look as if he did." The way he said

"old Melcher" made her want to smack him!

"Remember our truce,
sir
?" she said stiffly.

"I only wondered why I don't get equal consideration around here," he complained in mock dismay.

"You wanted food, sir. I've brought you food. Do you wish to lie there and blather all morning or to eat it?"

"That depends on what you've chosen to poison me with this time."

It didn't help her temper any to recall all the warm, appreciative comments Mr. Melcher had made about her cooking. She brought a pillow to boost up that black devil's head, wishing she could use it instead to smother him. The thought must have been reflected in her face, for he eyed her warily as she spread a cloth on his chest and picked up the spoon. The glimmer in his eye warned her she'd better look out for those precious, sparkling teeth of his!

"Would you rather do it yourself?" she asked brittlely.

"No, it doesn't work when I have to lie so flat. Besides, I know how you enjoy doing it for me,
Miss
Abigail." A slow grin began at the corner of his mouth. "What is this stuff?"

"This…
stuff
… is beef broth."

"Are you determined to starve me?" he asked in that horrible, teasing tone she found more offensive than his belligerent one.

"At dinner time tonight you may have something heavier, but for now, it's only broth and a coddled egg."

"Terrific." He grimaced.

"You may consider it terrific when you taste what will follow your breakfast."

"And what's that?"

"I'll prepare a decoction of balm of Gilead, and while you may find it quite bitter, rest assured it's very fortifying for one of your debility." He considered this while she poked a few more spoons of broth into him, carefully avoiding his teeth.

"Do you ever talk like other people, Miss Abigail?" he asked then.

Immediately she knew he was trying to rile her again. "Is there something wrong with the way I speak?"

"There's nothing wrong with it. That's what's wrong with it. Don't you ever talk plain, like—'I mixed up some medicine and it'll make you stronger'?"

She could not help remembering how David Melcher had likened her speech to a sonnet. A light flush came to her face at this newest unfair criticism. She had always prided herself on her literacy and began to turn away to cover the hurt at being criticized for it now. But he grabbed her wrist.

"Hey, Miss Abigail, why don't you just bend a little sometime?" he asked, and for once the teasing seemed absent from his voice.

"You've seen me as… as…
bent
as you ever shall, Mr Cameron. You have managed to anger me, make me lose my patience, shout like a fishwife, and more. I assure you it is not my way at all. I am a civilized person and my manner of speech reflects it, I hope. You have goaded me in countless ways, but I find no reason for this newest assault. Do you intend to wring that spoon from my wrist again?"

"No… no, I don't," he answered quietly, but neither did he release it. Instead, he held it loosely, very narrow and fine within the circle of his wide, dark fingers while his hazel-flecked eyes looked from her hand to her eyes and back again. He shook it gently; the hand flopped, telling him that she was not about to try to resist his superior strength. "But you're more believable when you're angry and impatient and shouting. Why don't you get that way more often? I won't mind."

Surprised, she slipped easily from his grasp.

"Eat your eggs." He opened his mouth and she put a spoonful in.

"These things are slimy."

"Yes, aren't they?" she agreed, as if overjoyed. "But they'll build your strength, and the faster you get strong, the sooner I shall be rid of you, so I intend to take excellent care of you from now on. When you've finished your breakfast, I shall walk over town to Mr. Field's feedstore to buy flax seed for a poultice. Flax seed will heal that wound as fast as anything can, but never too fast to suit me."

"How about something for this sore hand, too? Must be something broken in there because it hurts like hell." She gave him a sharp look. "Well, it does. Don't get me wrong, Miss Abigail. I positively glow at your doting, but with two good hands I might have one free for you to hold."

"Save your ill-advised wit for someone who'll appreciate it."

Jesse was beginning to appreciate her more and more. She had a caustic tongue, which he liked, and whether she knew it or not, she didn't have such a bad sense of humor. If he could just get her to bend that ramrod back and those ramrod ideals just a little she might be almost human, he thought. Breakfast really hadn't been so bad after all.

"Oh," he said. "One more thing before you leave. How about a shave?"

She looked like she'd just swallowed a junebug.

"There's no… no hurry, is there?" She acted suddenly fidgety. "I mean, it's been growing ever since you've been unconscious. What will a few more hours matter?" He rubbed his chin and she held her breath, feeling suddenly nauseous. But she was given a temporary reprieve, for his hand stopped its investigation before getting to his upper lip. Suddenly she seemed eager to leave the house. "I'll make you the decoction of balm of Gilead, then go up to the feedstore, and you can… well, you can rest while I'm gone… and…"

"Go… go, if you want." He motioned her toward the door, puzzled by her sudden nervousness, which was so unlike her. When she returned a minute later with the balm of Gilead, he opened wide and gulped it down. It was vile.

"Bluhhh…" he grunted, closing his eyes, shivering once, sticking out his tongue. Normally his grimace of displeasure would have been all it took to make Miss Abigail happy, but she was too worried about his missing moustache to gloat.

She worried about it all the way over town.

The bay window faced south, with east and west facets. He saw her as she passed along the road, straight and proper, and he couldn't believe she'd donned a hat and gloves on a hot June day like this.

She was something, Miss Abigail was. The woman had starch in everything from her bloomers to her backbone, and it was amusing trying to make it crackle. She passed out of his limited range of vision and he thought of other things.

He wondered if they'd found his camera and gear down in Rockwell, at the end of the line. If it had stayed on the train, the crew in Rockwell more than likely had it by now and had let Jim Hudson know it had arrived without Jesse. Jim would get word to him sooner or later.

A knock on the door disturbed Jesse from his thoughts. "Come in!" he called. The man who came was stubby, short of hair and of breath, but long on smiles. He raised his bag by way of introduction.

"Cleveland Dougherty's the name, better known as just plain Doc around here. How you doing, boy?

You look more alive than I ever thought to see you again."

Jesse liked him instantly. "That woman's too stubborn to let me die."

Doc howled in laughter, already sensing that the man had sized up Miss Abigail quite accurately.

"Abigail? Aw, Abigail's all right. You were damn lucky she took you in. Nobody else in town would, you know."

"So I gathered."

"You were in some shape when we got you off that train. All that's left of your stuff is this shirt and boots.

We had to cut the pants off you, o' course. And I guess this belongs to you, too." Doc lifted a pistol, weighing it in his hand while he peered over lowered brows at the man on the bed. " 'Course it's empty,"

Doc said pointedly. Then, as if that subject were totally cut and dried, Doc tossed the gun onto the bed.

"I guess you can put my boots and shirt under the bed," Jesse said. "That way we won't clutter up Miss Abigail's house."

"Sounds like you already know her ways, eh? Where is she anyway?"

"She went '
over town'
to the feedstore." He managed to say it just like she would have.

"I see you've had the full lash of Miss Abigail's tongue," Doc said, chuckling again. "What in thunderation is she doing there?"

"She said she was going to get flax seed for a poultice."

"That sounds like Miss Abigail all right. Got more cures up her sleeve than a chicken's got lice. Let's see here what she's done to you." He lifted the sheet and found the wound looking surprisingly healthy. "I'd have sworn the best you'd come out of this was losing the leg to gangrene, the way it looked. But she made up a mixture of charcoal and yeast that purified it and kept working the matter to the surface. It seems to have saved your life, boy, or the very least your leg."

"But I hear you did surgery first. I guess I owe you for taking me on when they dragged me off that train.

They said I was robbing it and that might've made some men hesitate to patch me up."

"Some men, maybe. Even some men around here. But we're not all that way. Ah… what the hell's your name anyway?" Jesse liked the man's down-to-earth language and the fact that he seemed not to care whether it was a train robber or someone else whom he saved.

"Just call me Jesse."

"Well, Jesse, I figure a man's got a right to medical treatment first and a trial second."

"A trial?"

"Well, there's talk around. 'Course, there's bound to be, the way you came in."

"Raised an uproar, did I?"

"Uproar isn't the word for it. Whole damn town congregated on my lawn to raise objections to me taking you on as a patient. Riled me up something fierce, let me tell you! Still, it's natural folks were a mite jumpy about having you under their roofs, considering the circumstances. You can hardly blame them in some ways."

"Still, Miss Abigail braved it?"

"She sure did. Marched right down there in the middle of that crowd, cool as a cucumber salad, and told the whole damn town she was willing to take you in—the pair of you yet! Left everybody feeling a little sheepish, being what she is and all."