Lynna Banning (10 page)

“Why? In God’s name, why?”

“Because,” she said, her voice almost a whisper, “is something beautiful, so beautiful that I must.”

“Even when I forbid it?” Jonathan tried not to raise his voice. With his temples pounding as they were, he couldn’t tell how loudly he was speaking.

“Yes, even then.”

The rustle of Mrs. Benbow’s skirt faded as she withdrew toward the kitchen, and in the next moment Erika heard the
whip-whap
of the Dutch doors.

Oh, God, what could she say to him?

The doctor’s gray eyes hardened into granite. Hands clenched at his sides, he waited for her to explain. Twice she prodded her paralyzed tongue, but nothing came out. There was nothing she could say to him except the truth, but she didn’t think she had the courage to utter it.

“I—I do not play harp to disobey,” she began. Her voice shook, and her hand went to her throat. “Music helps the baby sleep when she is hot and fussy, but.”

She felt his eyes bore into hers, but she stiffened her resolve and went on. “But I do not do it for that, either. Or because Mrs. Benbow said music playing would help me to become lady. I do it.”

Erika brought her chin up and straightened her
backbone. “I do it because it is a lovely, fine thing, a thing that I want. For
me.”

Jonathan stared at the German woman who sat before him, her face upturned, her slim, capablelooking hands resting on the curved walnut harp frame. A light shone in the depths of her eyes, as if a candle glowed within. The color, he noted for the first time, was not just an intense blue; a band of deep violet ringed the iris, making her eyes startlingly beautiful. Arresting.

He knew he was staring. He tried to pull his gaze away and found he could not. He had never really seen her before this moment.

Under his scrutiny, her cheeks flamed to a deep rose, and she caught her trembling lower lip in straight white teeth. But her eyes, purple-blue in the waning light, looked straight into his with a kind of desperate courage. Jonathan’s heart squeezed until he forgot to draw breath.

Without a word, he spun on his heel and walked out.

Across the veranda and down the front steps he strode, his head on fire, his body shaking. His entire life was turning upside down, somersaulting toward an unknown physical and spiritual place. He could feel it in the pit of his belly, in his bones.

Á flicker of joy nudged his heart, kindling a wild,
irrational hope for something he could not even name. It scared the living hell out of him.

It had nothing to do with Tess’s harp, or even with Tess herself. For the first time since her death he did not seek out the narrow, woodsy path to the fenced cemetery plot where she lay. He avoided it, walking until exhaustion threatened to cripple his breathing, and then he turned toward home.

She was still sitting in the front parlor, rocking the baby in her arms. No lamps had been lit. Soft, deep shadows enveloped her slim figure.

Jonathan moved forward. She did not move, but watched him with widening eyes.

Lifting her hand, he stared down at the small, clean fingers and then gently laid her palm against the strings of the harp.

“C
ures everything, folks! Rheumatica, worms, even female troubles.”

Erika craned her neck to see the owner of the melodic tenor voice, but the jostling crowd around her hid the raised speaker’s platform from view.

“Genuine Peruvian oil of coca,” the voice sang. “Eases pain, builds strong bones. No mother’s medicine cabinet should be without—”

A guttural voice broke in. “Will it help crippled leg?”

“Why, shore it will, mister! Just rub it in twice a day! Step right up now and purchase your bottle.”

She saw the hawker now, an animated, pudgy figure in a rumpled seersucker suit. A jaunty straw hat rode high on a thatch of red hair. He doffed it as he waited for his customer to make his way forward.

“Come on, son. Come on. Time’s a-wastin’.”

An Indian man pushed his way out of the crowd. Erika gasped as she recognized the face under the threadbare felt hat. It was the same man who had come for Samuel that night-the Indian boy’s older brother. What was his name? Micah, that was it. Micah Tallhorse.

“How much?” he grunted.

“That’ll be tw—three dollars, boy.”

Micah dug in his shirt pocket and came up with three silver dollars.

The crowd murmured. “Hey,” someone called out. “Where’d an Injun get that kinda money?”

“Stole it, most likely,” a man’s voice said.

“Stole it most certainly!” That from a woman Erika vaguely recognized. One of Tithonia Brumbaugh’s quilting circle ladies.

Micah turned to face the crowd. “Not steal. Sell horse.”

“Where’d ya get the horse in the first place?” This time the speaker was Nate Ellis. Erika knew he worked at the bank. What was he doing in the town park at ten in the morning?

She gazed about her. In fact, half the town had gathered around the public square. Rutherford Chilcoate’s speech and his elixir certainly drew a crowd! At the moment, however, she wished the people would thin out so Micah could purchase his medicine in peace.

It was for Micah’s younger brother, Samuel, she reasoned. She longed to ask about the boy’s broken leg.

Micah turned back to the medicine vendor, his face closed. “Money good,” he said.

Doc Chilcoate reached out his short arm to take the money when a woman’s shrill cry stopped him.

“Rutherford Chilcoate, don’t you dare accept that silver!” Tithonia Brumbaugh bustled to the front of the swelling knot of townspeople.

“The mayor’s wife is right, Doc!” Nate Ellis yelled.

Three coins clanked into Chilcoate’s palm, but before he could pocket the money, two men stepped up and pinned Micah’s arms behind him.

“Wait just a darn minute,” one of them growled. Erika recognized burly, red-faced Madison Lander, Mr. Valey’s part-time grocery helper. He tossed a coil of rope onto the ground. Erika noted it was tied with twine in two places and still bore a price tag.

“Grab it, boys!” Madison yelled. “Let’s get rid of that thievin’ Indian once and for all!”

Doc Chilcoate blanched. “Now, wait a minute, gentlemen.”

“Can’t see the need, Doc,” Madison retorted. Micah began to struggle, and Madison kicked the Indian’s legs out from under him. “Damned Indian
stole my horse last year. That’s a hangin’ offense in any book!”

Another man stepped forward and twisted Micah’s arm behind his back. Together they forced the Indian to kneel.

Erika dropped her market basket and fought her way through the seething mass of bodies to the raised square. Without thinking, she stepped up beside Doc Chilcoate, grabbed the brown glass bottle of Health Elixir out of his hand and smashed it onto the cement

The sound of shattering glass brought the crowd to attention. Talk died away, and suddenly she found herself confronting the angry faces of half the town. The worst was Tithonia Brumbaugh.

Surrounded by her quilting ladies, the mayor’s wife thinned her lips into a grim line. Her eyes snapped sparks at Erika.

Erika took a deep breath. “You must stop!” she cried. “Is not right.”

“Neither is horse thievin’, little lady,” a voice called from the thick press of bodies. Erika riveted her gaze on the crowd, hoping to locate the speaker.

“You must prove that man is thief before give punishment!” Her voice wavered.

Micah’s desperate black eyes met hers and it gave her courage. “In America.” Her voice cracked. “In America,” she repeated, willing her voice to
reach to the edge of the crowd, “rule is by law. This—” she pointed to the rope coiled at Madison’s feet “—this is not law, just men who are angry.”

Tithonia elbowed her way forward. “Erika Scharf, come down from there! You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”

Erika gritted her teeth. She didn’t want to offend the mayor’s wife, or any of the other ladies. She wanted to be accepted by them, longed to be part of Plum Creek society. If she spoke out, opposed Tithonia and the others, she knew she would set herself apart. She would always be on the outside.

Erika swallowed, and she made her decision. “I cannot help spectacle. Must not hang a man, any man, Swede or Indian or Jew, just because he is different.”

“What are you, sis?” a man shouted. “Some kinda lady lawyer?”

“Hell, no she ain’t,” Madison Lander yelled back. “She’s a German. She’s not even a citizen!”

“Erika!” Tithonia hissed at her. “Stop this at once!”

Erika ignored her. She seized on Madison’s remark to draw attention away from Micah and the rope.

“I will be citizen soon. I come from German village, yes. Where they beat men who go to other church and leave them to die. This I have seen.”

She paused to straighten her spine and draw a fortifying breath into her lungs. “All men free in America. Equal.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Madison’s gaze fall to the coiled rope at his feet. Erika raised her voice to keep the crowd’s attention on her. “German. Norski. Indian. All equal!”

Madison leaned over to grab up the rope, and in that instant Micah broke free. He tore across the square, heading for the alley between Valey’s Mercantile and the bank.

The crowd surged after him, but Micah had vanished. A puff of dust behind the bank told her he had already mounted and ridden off toward the hills. He was safe.

She turned to Rutherford Chilcoate, who stood speechless at her side. “Please forgive,” she stammered. “I spoil your selling.”

The vendor closed his gaping jaw. “You’re right about that, Miss Scharf. But you’re right about that other thing, too. Here, have a bottle of my elixir. It’s on me.”

“Erika, really!” The mayor’s wife propelled herself onto the platform and grasped Erika’s arm. “You simply must learn how to conduct yourself in public! If you do not heed my advice, you will be ostracized!”

Erika pulled her arm out of Tithonia’s grip. “Os-tra-cized? What is that, please?”

“Shunned,” the mayor’s wife said. “Left out of proper society,” she added, lowering her voice.

Erika’s spirits sank. It was too late. She had already spoken out and “made a spectacle,” as Tithonia put it.

But such a price to pay for acceptance,
an inner voice cried.
Compromising my deepest beliefs. To belong, must I step aside and be silent while a wrong thing is done?

Heartsick, she moved away from Tithonia, gathered up her wicker market basket and made her way toward Valey’s Mercantile. The mayor’s wife and the other ladies pointedly turned away as she passed.

The only person who spoke to her was Madison Lander, and what he said made her feel sick to her stomach.

“You ain’t never gonna be a lady,” he whispered as she passed. And then he added something else in his low, mocking voice.

“Indian lover.”

Jonathan shut the sound of the harp out of his consciousness and tried to concentrate on Rutherford Chilcoate’s words. The medicine vendor had sought him out at his office, an unprecedented event in the long, prickly relationship between the two men. Chilcoate
enjoyed mocking the “newfangled” ideas Jonathan had introduced from his rigorous medical training in Edinburgh, and Jonathan openly disdained the medicine vendor’s self-appointed role as a “doctor.”

The two hadn’t spoken a civil word in recent memory. So what, Jonathan wondered, was the man doing here in his office?

“Point is, Dr. Callender, it don’t matter what you think of me, or my Health Elixir. We both know it’s mostly spirits ‘n molasses, but it don’t do no harm that I can see.”

Jonathan marveled at the innocence in the man’s expression. Was he dissembling or merely unaware of the effect his concoction had on people? Old Mrs. Madsen, who lived alone at the edge of town, for instance. After three or four generous doses of Chilcoate’s brew, the widow imagined her dead husband had returned for supper. While chasing a stewing hen in her chicken yard, the poor woman had fallen and fractured her elbow.

“Allow me to reserve judgment on that issue for the moment,” Jonathan replied stiffly.
Good God, I sound pompous!
It was true Chilcoate nettled him with his fancy claims for his mixture and his spurious use of “doctor” in front of his name. But since the man had come to his office for a consultation of some sort, the least he could do was to be civil.

“What seems to be the problem, Chilcoate?” Jonathan
tapped his fingers and tried to keep his mind on his visitor instead of Erika’s harp exercises. Her playing, he noted, had progressed astonishingly considering how few lessons she’d had. Of course, every minute she wasn’t tending the baby or helping Mrs. Benbow in the kitchen she filled with practicing. Where, he wondered, did she find time for her English studies? He knew she was up before dawn each morning; when did she sleep?

He rested his chin against his linked thumbs and focused on Rutherford Chilcoate’s round, ruddy face.

“Oh, there’s nuthin’ wrong with me, Doc. Healthy as a horse.” He tapped his chest with his meaty fist. “It’s
your
problem I’ve come about.”

“My problem?” Jonathan jerked his chin off his thumbs. “And what problem is that?” Surely Chilcoate wouldn’t try to sell
him
a bottle of that mess he touted?

The older man tilted his head toward the sound of the harp.
“That
problem. Miss Erika.”

Jonathan eyed him. Just what was he hinting at? Surely she wouldn’t want any of Chilcoate’s elixir! If she was ailing, she would come to him.

Or would she? He hadn’t been exactly pleasant these past weeks, he acknowledged. Had he driven her into the clutches of this medical charlatan? By damn, if Chilcoate had laid a hand on her.

“What about Erika?” he snapped. “Out with it, Chilcoate!”

The portly man’s eyebrows shot upward. “Hold on a minute, Doc. There ain’t nuthin’ wrong with the girl. Fact is, I quite admire her. Why, she stood her ground like a soldier, talked that snake Madison Lander down to a nub.”

“She did, did she?” What the devil was the man talking about? Had Erika been involved in some sort of altercation in town?

Chilcoate cleared his throat. “But,” he continued, “there’s gonna be talk. A proper unmarried girl like her just can’t go traipsin’ around makin’ speeches and steppin’ on people’s toes, even if—”

Jonathan half rose from his desk. “Making speeches? Just what the hell are you referring to?”

The older man goggled at him. “Why, I thought sure you knew about it, Doc. Everyone in town saw her.”

“Saw her do what?” Jonathan almost shouted the words.

“Why, save that Indian fella’s neck, of course. Whole town’s buzzin’ about it. Thing is, it looks kinda funny to some of them, the mayor’s wife, in particular.”

“Tithonia Brumbaugh? What does she have to do with this?” In the next instant he deduced the answer.
Whatever gossip was being circulated about Erika, Tithonia was sure to have a hand in it.

Rutherford Chilcoate nervously recrossed his short, thick legs and tugged at his shirt collar. “Now, I don’t hold much with women talk, but it’s gone beyond that, Doc. I thought you oughta know. Some of the men—Mad Lander and the Ellis boy—well, they’re callin’ your baby’s nurse a…a…Indian lover.” He swallowed convulsively. “With emphasis on the ‘lover.’“

Jonathan stared at him, clenching his fists so hard the knuckles ached.

“Now, I hate to see a young lady get ruin’t by such talk, so I came to you private-like with a little suggestion.”

“Just what is your interest here, Chilcoate?”

The older man raised his hands, palms up. “Only interest I got is seein’ a fine young woman save her reputation. That’s why I’m speaking to you, man to man. See, if somebody was to marry her, she’d be safe, so to speak.”

Jonathan flinched. Tithonia Brumbaugh’s exact words. He’d thought the mayor’s wife was just overwrought that morning she and Plotinus had come to see him. Tithonia had no problem imagining the worst in any situation. Now he began to see the sense behind her suggestion.

“Just who did you have in mind for this act of
chivalry, yourself?” For some reason the thought of one of Rutherford Chilcoate’s fat fingers touching Erika’s skin made his blood boil.

“Oh, not me, Doc. I got a wife already, back in Missouri. I was thinkin’ it’d have to be someone the town respects. In fact, I was thinkin’ it’d have to be
you.”

“Me!” Jonathan sank into his chair and dropped his head into his hands.
Think,
he commanded himself.

“Rutherford,” Jonathan said in a dull voice. He’d never before addressed the man by his given name, but the nature of the two men’s conversation this afternoon seemed to warrant it. “Rutherford, why did you come today? Why do you care what happens to Erika Scharf?”

“Because of what she said in the square this morning,” the older man replied. “About this bein’ America, and men bein’ equal. It kinda touched me right here.” He laid his palm against his heart.

“You see, Doc,” the sober-faced medicine vendor continued. “My real name’s not Chilcoate. It’s Chilkowsky. Radzu Chilkowsky.”

Jonathan closed his eyelids. His senses reeled, and his temples pounded with the headache he’d felt building during Rutherford Chilcoate’s visit. He needed some coffee. If Mrs. Benbow was busy, he’d
grind the beans and boil the water himself—anything to help his mind clear.