Hummingbird (2 page)

Why, one would have thought Louis to be better organized than this!

"Hello?" she called, cocking her head, listening.

From somewhere in the rear came a tiny, tinny sound. She walked toward the kitchen to find the alley door open and a hot breeze buffeting the saucepans that hung above the wood range. The place
was
abandoned.

"Well, I declare!" Miss Abigail exclaimed to no one at all. Then, glancing in a circle, repeated, "Well, I
do
declare!"

It had taken her some weeks to finally decide she must speak to Louis. To find his restaurant empty was most disconcerting. Wiping an errant bead of perspiration from her forehead with a single finger of her pristine glove, Miss Abigail chafed at this unexpected turn of events. Inspecting the fingertip, she found it dampened by her own sweat and knew she could not put herself through this a second time. She must find Louis now, today!

Adjusting her already well placed hat, she again took to Main Street, then over one block to Front, on which both she and Doc lived, some two blocks apart. Rounding the corner, she found herself part of the throng that filled Doc Dougherty's yard and the surrounding area. Doc himself was standing under his beech trees, sleeves rolled up, speaking loudly so everyone could hear.

"… lost a lot of blood and I had to operate to clean up the hole and shut it up. It's too early to tell if he'll make it yet. But you all know it's my duty to do whatever I can to keep him alive, no matter what he's done."

A distracted murmur passed among the townspeople while Miss Abigail glanced around hopefully, looking for Louis Culpepper. Spying a towheaded youth who lived next door to her, she whispered,

"Good day, Robert."

"Howdy, Miss Abigail."

"Have you seen Mr. Culpepper, Robert?"

But the boy's neck was stretched and his ears tuned to Doc again as he grunted, "Un-uh."

"Who is Doctor Dougherty talking about?"

"Don't rightly know. Some strangers got themselves shot on the train."

Relieved that it was none of the town's own, Miss Abigail was nonetheless forced to give up her cause as fruitless until the crowd dispersed, so turned her attention to the doctor.

"The other one's not in as bad of a shape, but he'll be out of commission for a few days. Between the two of 'em, I'll have my hands full. You know Gertie's gone off to her cousin's wedding in Fairplay and I'm caught shorthanded here. There's plenty of you'll be hollering for me, and I just plain can't be in more than one place at a time. So if there's anybody that'd volunteer to give me a hand looking after these two, well, I'd be obliged."

From somewhere in the crowd a woman's voice spoke what many were thinking. "I'd like to know why we should feel obliged to take care of some outlaw tried his hardest to do us dirt! Robbing our train that way and shooting that innocent young man in there. Why, what if it'd been Tuck he shot?"

Doc raised his hands to quiet the swell of agreement.

"Now, hold on! I got two men in here, and granted, the one done wrong and the other done right, but they're both in need of help. Would you people have me tend the one that's hurt less and turn out the one that's nearly dead?"

Some of them had the grace to drop their eyes, but still they demurred.

Doc continued while he had 'em feeling guilty. "Well, a man can do just so much alone, and that's all he can do. I need help and I'm leaving it up to you to find it for me. The problem isn't just mine—it's all of ours. Now, we all wanted the Rocky Mountain Railroad to put their spur line through here, didn't we?

And sure enough we got it! 'Course, we only banked on it hauling our quartz and copper and silver out of here and bringing our conveniences in from the East. But now that we get a little trouble hauled in too, we're not so all-fired anxious to stand up and pay the price, are we?"

Still nobody volunteered.

What Doc said was undeniably true. The railroad was an asset from which they all benefited. Having a spur line run into a hidden mountain town like Stuart's Junction opened it up to both East and West, bringing the town commerce, transportation, and a stable future that it had lacked before the R.M.R. laid tracks up here.

The citizens chose to forget all that now, though, leaving Doc Dougherty to plead his case, and leaving Miss Abigail somehow inexplicably angry at their heartlessness.

"I could pay anyone that took on to help me—the same as I pay Gertie when she's here," Doc offered hopefully.

Miss Abigail glanced around. Her mouth puckered.

"Hell, Doc," someone hollered, "Gertie's the only nurse this town's ever saw or prob'ly ever will. You ain't gonna find nobody to take her place nohow."

"Well, maybe not anybody as qualified as Gertie, but anybody that's willing is qualified enough to suit me.

Now what do you say?"

The sweat broke out upon Miss Abigail's upper lip. What she was considering was too sudden, too unprecedented, yet she had no time for rumination. And the smug attitudes surrounding her made her unutterably angry! The thought of tending two injured men in the privacy of her own home seemed far, far preferable to carrying stew and soup to the lot of them. Furthermore, she was almost as skilled as Gertie Burtson. Her pulse thrummed a little behind her proper, tight collar, but her chin was high as ever as she stepped forward, squelching her misgivings, putting those around her in their proper place.

"I believe, Doctor Dougherty, that I would qualify," Miss Abigail stated in her ladylike way. But since a lady does not shout, Doc didn't quite hear her. Nobody believed what they were seeing as Miss Abigail raised a meticulous white glove.

"Miss Abigail, is that you?" he called; somehow the crowd had silenced.

"Yes, Doctor Dougherty, it is. I should like very much to volunteer."

Before he could check his reaction, Doc Dougherty raised his brows, ran a grizzled hand over his balding head, and blurted out, "Well, I'll be damned!"

Excusing herself, Miss Abigail made her way to Doc's side. She parted the crowd almost as Moses parted the Red Sea, still with that level chin and that all-fired dignity she always maintained. As she passed, men actually reached as if to doff hats they weren't wearing.

"G'day, Miss Abigail."

"How do, Miss Abigail."

"Howdy, Miss Abigail."

The ladies greeted her with silent, smiling nods, most of them awed by her cool, flowing presence as she glided toward Doc in her customary, pure-bred way while they fanned themselves and raised their arms to let the breeze at their wet armpits. Moving through their midst, Miss Abigail somehow managed to make them all feel gross and lardy and—worse—small, for the help they'd stubbornly refused.

"Come inside, Miss Abigail," Doc said, then raised his voice to the crowd. "You might as well go home now. I'll leave word up at the station with Max if there's any change." Then, solicitously taking Miss Abigail's elbow, he led her inside.

His widower's house was a mishmash of flotsam, collected and never discarded. The big front room looked like a willful child had messed it up in retaliation for being spanked, except that the strewn articles obviously were an adult's. Doc Dougherty removed a stack of journals and newspapers from an armchair, kicked aside a pair of forlorn house slippers, and said, "Sit down, Miss Abigail, sit down."

"Thank you," she replied, sitting in the cleared spot as if it were the dais in a throneroom.

While she gave the impression that none of the debris around her infiltrated her superb hauteur, Miss Abigail noticed all right. Old Doc Dougherty meant well enough, but since his Emma died the place had become slovenly. Doc kept absurd hours, running to anyone who needed him at any hour of the day or night, but leaving himself little time for such refinements as housecleaning. Gertie Burtson was hired as his nurse, not as his housekeeper. That was all too evident by the looks of the room.

Doc Dougherty sat down on the arm of an old lumpy horsehair sofa, spread his old lumpy knees, and covered them with his old lumpy hands. As his rump came into contact with the overstuffed arm, Miss Abigail saw a puff of dust emanate from the horsehair and overcast the air around him. He studied the floor a minute before speaking.

"Miss Abigail, I appreciate your offer." He didn't know exactly how to say this. "But you know, Miss Abigail, I hardly thought you'd be the one to step forward and volunteer This is probably a job somebody else is better suited for."

Irritation pricked her. Crisply, she asked, "Are you refusing my help, Doctor Dougherty?"

"I… I'd hate to say I'm refusing. I'm asking you to consider what you're getting into."

"I believe I have considered it. As a result, I've offered my services. If there is some inexplicable reason why I shan't do, then we are both wasting our time." When Miss Abigail was piqued, her voice became curt and she tended to get eloquently wordy. She rose, looking down her nose as she tugged her gloves more securely on her hands.

He moved quickly to press her back into her chair, his dust cloud swirling with him. She looked up at him from under her hat brim, inwardly gratified that he'd seen her pique. Fine time for him to get choosy!

"Hold on now, don't get yourself all in a huff."

"In a huff, Doctor Dougherty? I hardly would describe myself as being in a huff." She arched one brow and tipped her head.

Doc Dougherty stood above her, smiling, peering at her upturned face under its crisp bonnet of daisies.

"No, Miss Abigail, I doubt you've ever been in a huff in your life. What I'm trying to make you see is that you might be if I agree to let you nurse those two."

"Pray tell why, Doctor?"

"Well, the truth is… because you're a… a maiden lady."

The phrase echoed cruelly through Miss Abigail McKenzie's thirty-three-year-old head, and within her fast-tripping, lonely heart.

"A maiden lady?" she repeated, mouth puckered a little tighter.

"Yes, Miss Abigail."

"And what possible bearing does my being a… a maiden lady—as you so kindly put it—have upon my being capable of helping you?"

"You must understand that I hoped for a married woman to volunteer."

"Why?" she asked.

Doc Dougherty turned his back and walked away, searching for a delicate way to phrase it. He cleared his throat. "You'd be exposed to parts of these men that you'd probably rather not be and asked to perform duties that would be—to say the least—unpalatable to a lady of your—" But his words faltered.

He found himself unwilling to embarrass her further.

Miss Abigail finished for him. "Tender sensibilities, Doctor?" Then with a little false laugh asked, "Were you about to expound upon my being a lady of tender sensibilities?"

"Yes, you might put it that way." He turned once again to face her.

"Are you forgetting, Doctor, about the years I cared for my father while he was ill?"

"No, Miss Abigail, I'm not. But he was your father, not some gunshot stranger."

"Posh, Mister Dougherty," she said, giving the impression she'd spit out the words when they'd come out with calculated control, along with the word
Mister
instead of
Doctor
. "Give me one good reason why I should not care for these two gentlemen."

He flung his hands out in frustration. "Gentlemen! How do you know they're gentlemen? And what if they're not? What'll you do when I'm fourteen miles out in the country and you're wishing I weren't? One of those
gentlemen
just tried to rob a train and I'm willing to treat him, but that doesn't mean I'll trust him.

Suppose he tries to overpower you and escape?"

"A moment ago you advised me not to get into a huff. May I now advise you the same, Doctor? You've been shouting."

"I'm sorry, Miss Abigail. I guess I was. But it's my responsibility to make you see the risk involved."

"You've done your duty then, Doctor Dougherty. But since I see your plea for help did not raise a plethora of willing volunteers, I hardly see that you have a choice but to accept my offer."

Doc shook his head at the threadbare carpet, wondering what her father would have said. Abbie had always been the apple of the old man's eye.

Miss Abigail looked up at him, so prim and erect from her spot on the forlorn old armchair, her mind made up.

"I have a strong stomach, a hand full of common sense, and a nearly empty bank account, Doctor," she stated. "And you have two wounded men who need looking after I suspect that neither of them is healthy enough right now to either harm me or escape from me, so shall we get on with it?"

She knew she had him with that reference to her bank account.

"You're sure one smooth talker, Miss Abigail, and I'm up a crick, I'll grant you that. But I can't pay you much, you know. Thirty dollars for the week is about it. It's as much as I pay Gertie."

"Thirty dollars will do nicely… oh, and one thing more," she added, easing to the edge of her chair.

"Yes?"

"What do you propose to do with them when your patients arrive tomorrow morning?"

Miss Abigail's eyes had not scanned the room; they didn't have to for Doc to know that his place wasn't exactly her idea of a suitable hospital. He had no delusions regarding the condition of his house. What could be seen from their present vantage point was a sorry mess at best. They both knew what she'd find if she were to peruse the upstairs or—worse—the kitchen. They both knew, too, that she had a penchant for cleanliness. And so when Doc finally finished eyeballing the room, he was totally aware of the place's shortcomings.

"I don't suppose we could put 'em upstairs?" he asked fruitlessly.

"I don't suppose that would be the most convenient place. I propose that we remove them to my house as soon as you think that would be possible. It would be infinitely easier for me to care for them were I to have my own kitchen at my disposal."

"You're right," Doc agreed, and abruptly Miss Abigail got to her feet.

"Now, may I see our patients?"

"Of course. One's on the surgery table and the other on the sofa in the waiting room, but they're both out cold for the time being. Tomorrow'll be time enough for you to take charge of them."