Hummingbird (29 page)

"What I need, James-Smart-Boy-Hudson, is a train out of here, and the sooner the better. I'll be at that meeting tomorrow whether Doc turns me loose or not. I thought you were Doc when you came in. He's supposed to give me my walking papers, so to speak. I'm already pretty handy on those crutches, though."

"Well, don't rush it, Jess. I'll have to look up this man Dougherty, too, while I'm in town. I expect you ran up a bill with him too, huh?"

"I'm still running it, but I knew you'd come along after me and pick up the bill."

Hudson laughed. "Say, the boys up in Rockwell want to know what to do with your gear."

"Is it okay, Jim?"

"Intact, I assure you. Everything. They stored it all in the line shack up there."

"In the line shack! Hell, those galoots will have every one of my plates shattered. I want them out of there. Are you going up that way?"

"No, I'm headed back to Denver again after the meeting tomorrow. You know we're listening to every mayor of every mining town in this state beg for a spur line to get their ore out. We can't build 'em fast enough, so hurry and get well."

"I'll trust your judgment on that, Jim. Just let me know what's up because I'm already tired of this leisure life. As soon as Doc even relaxes his grizzled old eyebrows my way, I'll be up and gone from here back to the railhead. I just want to make damn sure my gear is safe in the meantime."

"I could have Stoker bring it down on the supply train," Hudson suggested with a knowing grin.

"God, no! Save me from Stoker!" They both laughed. "He does all right with steel and wood, but I'd just as soon have my gear rolled down the side of the mountain as brought down in Stoker's engine. Just leave it there for the time being. Maybe I'll think of something. I might even make it out of here with you tomorrow. Who knows?"

"Well, rest up, boy. I have this Doc Dougherty to see yet, and as long as I'm up here, I may as well see if the depot agent has any complaints on this new spur. I guess I'd better be going, Jess. One way or another, I'll see you before I leave town."

As Hudson prepared to take his leave, Miss Abigail appeared in the doorway with a tray. "May I offer you a glass of lemonade before you leave, Mr. Hudson?"

"I think we've been enough trouble to you already, Miss McKenzie. I'm the one who must offer you something before I leave. How much do I owe you for your care of the two men?"

Regardless of how many times she had reminded Jesse that she'd taken him in only for the money, when offered payment now she became disconcerted.

Jesse could read her discomfiture over Jim's question, saw her reluctance to put a dollar value on what she'd done. Like many other subjects, money was an indelicate subject for a lady to discuss. "Give the lady a fair price, Jim."

"Just what do you think your hide is worth, DuFrayne?"

The two of them exchanged a look of amused conspiracy before Jess answered, "I don't know what my hide is worth, but a glass of Abbie's lemonade is worth a thousand bucks any day."

"In that case, I'll have to try a glass before I leave," Jim Hudson said, smiling now at Abbie.

"I shall pour one for you then," Abbie offered, uncomfortable before their obvious teasing.

"Where will you take it, Mr Hudson?" she asked.

"How about on your front porch, Miss McKenzie? Will you join me?"

Why did she glance at Jesse first before answering, as if she needed his permission to sit on the porch with another man?

"Go ahead, Abbie, you deserve a rest," he said, noting the pink in her cheeks. "Jim, you big galoot, thanks a hulluva lot for coming."

Hudson approached the bed and the two shook hands again, Hudson squeezing the back of Jess's as he said, "Get your bones out of here and back on those tracks, do you hear? And don't give the lady any fuss while you're doing it. That's an order!"

"Get the hell out of here before that lemonade evaporates in this heat." Then as the two left the room, he called after them, "See that you use your best manners out on the front porch, Jim. Miss Abigail is a lady of utmost propriety."

The north end of Miss Abigail's porch was in cool shadow now in midafternoon. Hudson saw the slatted wooden swing there but gestured Abbie instead to the opposite end, where the wicker chairs were. His manners showed in everything he did, she thought, even in his choosing separate chairs in the beating sun rather than the more intimate double swing in the inviting shade. He remained on his feet until she was seated. She noted how he pulled his sharply creased trousers up at the knees as he took the opposite chair.

"I take it Jesse has been less than a model patient," he opened.

"He was gravely wounded, Mr. Hudson, hardly expected to live. It would be difficult for anyone to be a model patient under those circumstances." Once said, she didn't know why she had defended Jesse that way, just as he had her.

"I think you're tiptoeing around the mulberry bush, Miss McKenzie, but I know Jess better than that.

You've earned every penny you get. I fear he's not one who takes to coddling and being cooped up too gracefully. In his own element he's a damn fine man, the best there is."

"Just what is his element, Mr. Hudson?"

"The railroad, of course."

"So he does work for the railroad?"

"Yes, and a damn fine job he does."

Hearing it, Abbie's senses whirled. So it was true after all. With an effort she kept her hand from fluttering to her throat.

"Your loyalty does him credit, Mr. Hudson, since you yourself seem to be a respectable sort." Taking in his flawless elegance, his politeness, his obvious admiration of Jesse DuFrayne, she felt overcome by the swift shift of her patient's status.

"Men earn respect in different ways, Miss McKenzie. If I'm respected, it's for different reasons than he is. Take my word for it, Jess DuFrayne is a gem in the rough, and there's not a man on the R.M.R. line that'll say different."

"Just what has he done to earn that respect?" She wondered if he could see the glass trembling in her hand.

"I hear rebuttal in your tone, Miss McKenzie, and I'm thinking he's given you little reason to see good in him. I'd do him an injustice to list his merits. You'll only believe them if you discover them yourself. If you ever get a chance to see his photographs, study them well. You'll see more than sepia images… you'll see where his heart lies."

Funny, she had never thought of Jesse as having a heart before.

"Yes, I shall, Mr. Hudson, if I ever see them." He
is
a photographer, she was thinking as wings seemed to beat about her temples, he really is!

"Jess was right," Jim Hudson said, placing his empty glass on the wicker table between them. "This lemonade is worth a thousand dollars a glass on a day like today."

"I'm glad you enjoyed it."

"If there's anything you need while he's here, you have only to say the word and it's yours."

"How very gracious of you, sir."

"I'm sure if our graces were held up for comparison, mine should be found sadly lacking beside yours.

Good day, Miss McKenzie. Take care of him for me." Jim Hudson looked at the front door as he said it.

That curiously heartfelt remark put the final touch of confusion upon Miss Abigail's already confounded emotions. She had thought Jim Hudson had come to her door to mete out justice, but instead he had vindicated the man she had repeatedly called "robber." Watching Hudson's trouser legs as he walked off down the dusty road, she was shaken anew by the revelations regarding Jesse Cameron-DuFrayne.

Once again, the ironic rhyme came to her out of nowhere:

Jesse DuFrayne

Rode in on a train…

She could not stand out here on the porch indefinitely. She had to go in and face him. But what could she say? She seemed to be having great difficulty breathing and could feel the blood welled up to her hairline, her pulse clicking off the passing seconds as memories came hurtling back, memories of the countless times she'd taunted him because he was a train robber. She tried to compose herself but found that she was feeling inexplicably feminine, and somehow very vulnerable. How he must have laughed to himself all these days, she thought. And what is he thinking now?

She opened the door silently, stepped before the umbrella stand to check her reflection, but her hand paused before it reached her hair. There on the seat lay a rectangular piece of paper. Something seemed to warn her, for her hand hesitated, then finally picked it up.

There followed an audible gasp.

It was a check boasting the payer's name across the top in block letters: ROCKY MOUNTAIN

RAILROAD, DENVER, COLORADO. It was made out to Abigail McKenzie in the amount of one thousand dollars!

Her stomach began to tremble and the paper quivered in her fingers. She looked up at the bedroom doorway, suddenly more afraid than ever to face him again.

One thousand dollars! Why, it would take her two years or more of waiting tables at Louis Culpepper's to earn such a sum. Just what was this Jesse DuFrayne that the railroad would put out money like this for his safekeeping? Utterly befuddled, she gaped at the check, knowing she'd earned not even a quarter of this amount. She remembered the knowing looks exchanged by Jesse and Jim Hudson and the words, "A glass of Abbie's lemonade is worth a thousand bucks any day." More confused than ever, she swallowed back the lump in her throat.

"Abbie, is Jim gone?" he called.

"Yes, he is, Mr.—" But what should she call him now? She could still not connect him with his new name, or with his old.

Everything had suddenly changed. She looked at herself in the mirror, saw her flushed face, the paper in her hand, the confusion in her eyes, and stood rooted, not knowing, suddenly, how to act before the man on the other side of the wall. He had a real name and a very respectable job and a very impressive friend, plus a whole railroad full of cohorts who apparently respected him immensely. But all that seemed secondary to the fact that his being shot had had enough impact to cause the railroad to pay her grandly for his care.

How should she act?

She had called him Mr. Cameron, train robber for so long that it was perplexing to suddenly have to change her opinion, which—she admitted now—had been largely based upon the supposition that he was guilty as accused. But then, how many times had he himself implied he was an outlaw? Why, just yesterday he'd said he wouldn't be around long enough for it to matter what she told him about herself and… and Richard. She understood now that he'd been toying with her, implying that it was justice which would come to take him, when he'd known all along it was Jim Hudson.

With a sinking feeling, she recalled all those other things—the fighting and kissing and pulling the gun on each other and the terrible ways they'd goaded and hazed. Was he right about all that? Had she lost her sense of decency thinking he, the train robber, was the indecent one responsible?

Only he was no robber.

But she suddenly came to her senses, realizing she could treat him no differently than she had before James Hudson's visit. He was not instantly exonerated of all he'd put her through! But she held a thousand dollars in her unsteady hand, and deny it though she might, it
did
exonerate him in some way.

Her heart thumped crazily as she approached his room and found Jesse sitting on the floral cushions of the window seat, looking so black and brown against all those yellows and greens, so masculinely out of place in his dungarees and unbuttoned shirt. He was watching Jim Hudson walk back uptown and didn't know she stood there observing him. She swallowed thickly, for he looked too handsome and excusable and she wanted him to look neither. He dropped the curtain, absently scratched his bare chest, and her eyes followed the lean fingers that tracked across his skin. At last she cleared her throat.

He looked up, surprised. "Oh, I probably shouldn't sit here, huh?" He moved as if to rise.

"No, you're fine. It's cool there between the windows, stay where you are."

He settled back down. "Well, come on in. Maybe you're not afraid to now." But all traces of teasing were gone from his voice and eyes, and she suddenly wished they would return and ease this dread fascination she felt for him.

"I… I still am," she admitted. But neither of them smiled. "I want to say 'Why didn't you tell me,' only—

silly as it seems—you did."

He was gracious enough not to rub it in, and now all she wished was that he would. It would be far preferable to this strained seriousness. All he said was, "I could use a glass of lemonade too, Abbie.

Would you mind getting me one, please?"

"How can I mind? After all, it
is
paid for now." She felt his eyes upon her, and her hands shook as she poured the drink. Who are you? her mind cried out. And why? She was totally disturbed by the change she sensed in him since Jim Hudson left. He accepted the glass, thanked her, took a swallow, and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, staring at her in silence.

"Before I say anything else," she began nervously, "I want to make it explicitly clear that I did not hurt you intentionally in the kitchen before, and… and the reason I say so now has nothing whatever to do with whether or not you hold up trains for a living."

"That's nice to know. And of course I believe you. You're a most honorable person, Abbie." His eyes seemed to delve into her very depths.

"And how about yourself?"

"Sit down, Abbie, for God's sake… there in your little rocker, where I can talk to you." She hesitated, then sat, but hardly relaxed. "Every damn thing I ever told you about myself is true. I never lied to you."

"Jim Hudson is the friend of whom you spoke? The one who left New Orleans with you when you were twenty?"

He nodded, then stared out the window, disturbed anew by this woman and wishing he were not.

"He's very personable," she admitted, looking down into her glass, then added in the quietest of tones,

"and very rich."

He turned his hazel-flecked eyes on her again but said nothing.

"I simply cannot accept a thousand dollars. It's far too much."