Lynna Banning (8 page)

“What you want?” Erika said as calmly as she could.

“We want that renegade Injun,” someone yelled.

Erika squared her shoulders and stepped to the edge of the veranda. In the dusky half-light the upturned
faces looked like pale round apples of giant proportions.

“The boy is hurt,” she said.

“He’s a damn horse thief! Send him out.”

Erika searched the gathering for the man who had spoken. “Ah, Mr. Valey. How do you know this?”

The mercantile owner shuffled his feet. “I just know. Whole town seen him ride in right down Main Street, bold as you please. But that horse wasn’t his. No Indian coulda owned an animal like that.”

“That does not mean he stole it,” Erika responded. She had to raise her voice over the angry grumbling.

“I say it does,” a woman called out.

“Me, too,” another voice chimed.

Erika fisted her hands and deliberately propped them on her hips. “Wait one minute. If you have proof, then get sheriff. Otherwise—”

“Don’t need no proof with an Injun, little lady. Don’t need the sheriff, neither.” The man cleared his throat and spat into her flower bed. “Just give us that thievin’ kid and we’ll clear out”

Erika stared at the tall, lanky figure. “No. I will not give him.”

The man, one of the clerks at Mr. Brumbaugh’s bank, jammed his hands into his jacket pockets. It occurred to her he might be carrying a pistol, and her heart rocked into a crazy rhythm.

“Is wrong what you do. This is America. You accuse boy because he is different. Indian. But have no proof. In America, must have proof. Must have justice.”

“The hell we must! The kid’s seen ridin’ a horse too big for his britches. That’s enough for me, right, mayor?”

Plotinus Brumbaugh hesitated until his wife jabbed an elbow into his ribs. “Why, uh, yeah. I guess so.”

Erika’s stomach lurched. She had seen such things in the old country. Men chased, beaten for no reason other than that their heritage or their religion was different. It made her feel sick.

She steeled herself to speak. “You are little men,” she said. Her voice rang out in the silence. “Bullies who chase an injured boy. Is wrong.
You
are wrong.” She pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling.

“Who’s gonna stop us?” a raucous voice shouted.

She gazed at the crowd, and her heart quailed. She waited a long minute until she could speak, and in that moment a commotion at the back of the crowd riveted her attention.

Jonathan reached the edge of the gathering and shouldered his way forward through the mass of sweaty humanity that spread over his front yard. Erika stood on the porch, her face tight, eyes snapping.
Behind her, the front door stood open. What the hell was going on?

She looked out over the crowd but did not see him. “I will stop you,” she said.

“Sure ya will, honey,” someone called.

“The boy came to doctor for help. If he has done wrong, sheriff will come to take him. Not you. I will not let you.”

Jonathan groaned inwardly at the resolve in her voice, the stubborn set of her chin. Still, he had to admire her for standing up to them—a mere young woman facing a mob of angry townspeople. He moved forward.

“Now, we want that Injun boy, miss, so you just stand aside and let us—”

Jonathan grabbed the speaker by his shirtfront. “You set one foot on my porch, and I’ll beat the living hell out of you.”

“Now, wait a minute, Doc. All we want—”

“I don’t care what you want. Get off my property.” He flung the man toward the gate. “All of you,” he said. “Go home.”

Plotinus Brumbaugh laid a restraining hand on Jonathan’s arm. “Hold on, there, Jon. I’m not at all sure you want to harbor a criminal in your—”

Jonathan shook free. “Don’t think for me, Plotinus. Just take this rabble and leave.”

“Well, sure, Doc, if you say so.”

Jonathan caught and held the mayor’s gaze until the older man dropped his eyes and stepped back.

“Okay, Jonathan. If that’s the way you want it. Come on, folks, let’s go.”

Jonathan took the porch steps two at a time. “Where is he?” he said to Erika as he strode past her.

“Inside house.”

“Bring a lamp.” He disappeared into the darkened front hall.

E
rika held the kerosene lamp above her head and watched the doctor run his hands along the Indian boy’s leg. “How did this happen, Samuel?”

The boy stiffened on the examining table as the doctor reached his thigh. “I walk across bridge. Buggy wheel ran over my leg.”

“Hmm. Broke the femur. Erika, get some soap and hot water.”

Erika set the lamp down and started toward the door of the tiny room.

“And bring a flatiron,” he called after her.

Her skirt swished against his calf as she spun away. The instant she was gone, he slit Samuel’s trouser leg and pulled off the blood-soaked denim. The lower half of the boy’s leg jutted at an odd angle. He’d have to use Buck’s extension to set it.

“Your brother know where you are?”

“Yes,” the boy answered. “He will come for his horse tomorrow.”

“Where’d you hide it?”

“In your barn.”

Jonathan nodded. “I need three days to fix your leg, Sam. You can stay in the barn.”

“One day.”

“Three. I’ve got to put it in traction using a heavy weight. You won’t be able to ride.”

“I will ride.”

“No, you won’t. When Micah comes for you, we’ll rig up a travois. Should hold till you get to the reservation.”

Erika returned with the water. The boy closed his eyes and Jonathan worked quickly, sponging off the blood and dirt, then running adhesive tape down both sides of the leg and under the foot. He attached the flatiron to a strip of clean linen fashioned into a bandage. “The weight will straighten out your leg muscles, Sam. Then I can plaster it so it’ll heal evenly.”

“I make trouble for you. For her.”

Jonathan caught Erika’s startled gaze. “I’m getting used to it.” He looked steadily into Erika’s eyes for a long moment, then pulled his gaze back to Samuel. “Seems to me I end up setting one of your bones about every two years.”

He taped the bandage firmly in place. “And Miss
Scharf here seems to attract trouble like honey draws bees. We will both survive.”

He chuckled at the expression on Erika’s face. Her eyes flashed fire, but her lips curved into an embarrassed half smile. She was proud and stubborn as well as courageous and dangerously outspoken. He’d heard enough of the shouted comments in his front yard to know that she wouldn’t have backed down without a fight.

“Just what would you have done if one of them had tried to force his way into the house?” he inquired.

Erika studied the tops of her shoes. “First I kick hard in shins,” she said in a low voice. “Then I get broom and.” She pantomimed whacking the weapon at an imaginary enemy.

Jonathan laughed out loud.

“Is not for laughing,” she snapped. “In old country, have much need for strong brooms!”

At the look in her eyes, he sobered. “And, it would seem, here in Plum Creek, as well. I’d guess you made a few enemies today.”

The light in her eyes dimmed, but she raised her chin. “Does not matter. They were wrong. Not American way.”

Jonathan nodded. “You’ll see a lot of things done in America that are not the ‘American way,’ Erika. One example of that is lying here with a broken leg.
I’m not sure how far you’ll get trying to fight injustice with a broom.”

But he understood her dilemma. He fought exactly the same battle with farm owners in the county who pigheadedly refused to move their privies and stock pens away from the town water supply. He wished he could take a broom to that problem.

“Sam, we’ll get you up on some crutches and I’ll help you out to the barn. Erika, bring some blankets, would you? And some oats and an apple from the kitchen for the horse.”

He’d go out later and take the boy some supper and sit with him. Guard him, in case any of those ruffians returned.

But instead of a broom, he’d take his revolver.

Erika stared out her bedroom window at the round, gold moon hanging like a lantern in the inky sky. Unable to sleep, she mentally reviewed the day’s list of new English words. Plaster of Paris. Arpeggio. Succotash. Bigotry. She spelled each one and tried to remember what it meant.

Succotash was easy. Mrs. Benbow had served it at supper, along with cornbread, which she called johnnycake, and lamb stew. But after helping the doctor set the Indian boy’s leg, she’d been too exhausted to eat. The housekeeper had excused her from kitchen duty and sent her up to bed.

The baby had nodded her tiny head almost immediately after her evening feeding and now slumbered peacefully in the nursery next to Erika’s room.

Marian Elizabeth was such an exquisite creature, with her feathery fringe of dark hair and deep bluegreen eyes, like a fairy child left by the elves. Erika could not imagine life without her soft, contented cooing sounds, the clear, round eyes gazing up at her with such trust. Whenever she entered the room, the baby looked up and actually smiled at her! It was a miracle—this house and the sweet baby girl who smelled of laundry soap and milk and the lavender sprigs Erika used to scent her garments. She wanted never to leave.

But in protecting that injured boy today, she knew she had made an enemy, and a formidable one at that. Tithonia Brumbaugh was the mayor’s wife. Erika hadn’t wasted time thinking about the issues. She had acted automatically because she felt inside it was the right thing to do. She’d been shocked at the surprise and hostility in Tithonia’s sharp black eyes.

And, as president of the Presbyterian Ladies Quilting Circle, Tithonia was sure to influence the others. Just this evening, Mr. Zabersky’s young daughter, Mary, had hastened past Dr. Callender’s gate with barely a nod.

Marian Elizabeth gave a tentative cry, and Erika came instantly alert. But in the next few moments,
the baby settled and Erika closed her eyes. She tried to chase away the image of Mrs. Brumbaugh’s flushed, set face, but her thoughts wheeled about her brain like chaff tossed in a wind. An inner instinct told her she should not have challenged Tithonia face-to-face, and in public.

Dr. Callender said it was a thing called bigotry that made the mayor’s wife and her ladies act the way they did toward the Indians and the two Chinese families who lived in a crude shack behind the livery stable. It was like the prejudice she remembered from the old country. She was sickened to find it here in America as well. She would never accept it, would speak against it every chance she got—no matter if it did make enemies.

She wanted nothing more than to be part of this wonderful land, to be an American, to
belong.
But she would not trade acceptance for discrimination against others.

It would be harder the next time, Dr. Callender had said at supper.
“Each time your integrity will be put to the test. Each time your soul will be pulled in two directions
—
to fit in or stand outside. Alone.”

She wondered how he knew these things. He was a man of high standing in the community, a physician who was looked up to, respected. But there was no mistaking the authority with which he spoke.

And, she recalled with a queer flip of her heart,
she would never forget the flicker of admiration in the doctor’s ordinarily expressionless gray eyes. With a start she realized she valued that look more than any word or gesture of welcome from Tithonia Brumbaugh, or even the mayor! She longed to see that warmth, that approval, in Dr. Callender’s gaze. In fact, she thought as a guilty wave of heat washed over her, each time his eyes met hers, whether over a vegetable dish passed at dinner or a basin of plaster mix in the surgery, a voice seemed to speak to her from far off, and she stopped breathing to listen.

Perhaps Mrs. Brumbaugh was right—not about the Indian boy, but about being alone in a house with a man who had lost his wife, a man who made her heart jump whenever he looked at her.

Erika sat bolt upright in bed. She must not allow this! If she was.what was the word, compromised? If she was compromised, she would have to leave.

And if she left, it would mean she would no longer have Marian Elizabeth to love and care for, could not play beautiful music on the harp downstairs in the front parlor, would not sleep in privacy in her very own bedchamber.

“Well, so be it,” she breathed into the hot, still night. I
will not let my heart spin this way and that when the doctor speaks or glances at me.
She would be—she searched her brain—impervious.

At the soft chiming of the clock at the foot of the
staircase, Erika settled back and purposefully closed her eyelids.
Just one thing, Lord,
she prayed.
Please, please do not let him send the baby away to Scotland. I will do anything to stay by her side. Anything.

In the morning Jonathan returned to the barn and found it empty. The boy was gone, and the big roan as well. He swore out loud.

Damn fool kid. How far could he get with a fractured thigh? He’d half a mind to saddle Scout and go after him.

On the other hand, he reasoned, considering how town sentiment ran these days, an injured Indian boy was probably safer on his own ground. At least he’d be protected among his own people.

Jonathan wondered who had run him down. A buggy, Samuel had said. Ever since Tithonia Brumbaugh had badgered her husband into purchasing a runabout when he was elected mayor, every businessman in town drove some kind of buggy.

Anger boiled hot inside him. When he found who it had been, he’d give him a good thrashing.

He shut the barn door with a decisive thunk and stomped up the back stairs, through the already stifling screened laundry porch and into the kitchen. Erika looked up from the stove where she stood heating a nursery bottle of milk in a saucepan of water.

“He’s gone,” he announced.

“I know. I hear the horse before sun rises.”

“You heard him?” Jonathan exploded. “Why the hell didn’t you stop him? Great Scott, that boy can’t ride with his leg in plaster!”

Erika slid the pan onto the warming shelf. “I call out from window upstairs, but another man, an Indian, is with him. He makes a sign like so—” she slashed her hand in the air “—and I am quiet.”

Jonathan expelled a swift breath. “That’s Micah, Sam’s older brother. He hates the white man. He’ll rip that cast off Sam’s leg and cripple him for life.” He paced around the kitchen table as Erika watched.

“I’ll have to go after him,” he muttered. “Talk to Micah.”

Frustration twisted his stomach. “Nothing, nothing has gone right!” he burst out. “Not since—” His voice broke off.

“Is not true,” Erika remarked, keeping her back to him. “You have health. Life. You have beautiful baby daughter. A home. Many people have not so much.”

Jonathan stared at her slim, straight back, the floppy bow of the white apron tied about her waist. What an exasperating young woman! She was right, of course. But the knowledge only fueled his fury.

“I no longer care about my life.” He barely restrained himself from shouting the words. “Or my health. Or even my daughter!”

Very slowly Erika turned to face him. “Then you are very foolish man. Selfish man.”

“So I am,” Jonathan acknowledged, his voice shaking. “A crazed idiot on one fool’s errand after another—arguing about creek drainage so a bunch of hotheaded, ignorant bigots can avoid an epidemic, setting Samuel’s leg so he can walk into town for another bushel of corn to feed his hungry family and get run over. Or maybe next time they’ll lynch him! You are right, I am a fool.”

“No,” she countered in her quiet voice. “You are not. But stubborn, yes. And hurt.”

Stung, Jonathan wanted to shake her until that maddeningly steady look in her blue eyes turned to terror. He clenched his fists. “And opinionated, I suppose,” he growled.

“Yes,” she echoed. “Opin-ion-ated.” She pronounced the word with care.

That did it! “Miss Scharf, you are improving your vocabulary at my expense!”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, no, Dr. Callender. I look up all these words before.”

And then, unbelievably, she laughed. The low, musical sound increased his anger. She was laughing at
him. By God, he wouldn’t allow.

But, he admitted deep down inside, she was right. Again. He
was
hurt. And stubborn and selfish and, well, even opinionated. His anger, his dissatisfaction
with his life, his unease, were misplaced. The insidious feeling of having somehow lost his center was because of Tess. The seething fury was his reaction to loss.

A wave of desolation overwhelmed him. He’d struck out against fate the only way he knew how, but his efforts had accomplished nothing. A black pit yawned inside his soul. The anger merely kept him feeling alive, and he clung to it for that reason.

He had to give it up. It was destroying him.

She
was destroying him. She forced him to look at himself, and he didn’t like what he saw.

Erika spun toward the stove. Lifting the bottle of warm milk from the stove, she wiped it dry with a tea towel and moved past him.

“I am apologizing for my words,” she said as she brushed through the hinged Dutch doors.

Jonathan opened his mouth, then snapped his jaws shut. He’d be damned if he’d forgive her. She had an uncanny ability to strike home with a remark and then drive the blade in deeper.

“But.” Her voice floated to him over the sound of her footsteps ascending the stairs. “You are most wrong not to care about daughter.”

“And you, Miss Scharf,” he called after her, “are wrong to speak out to your employer about such matters!”

She was out of hearing. He muttered the words
over again to himself and then slumped into a hard-backed wicker chair, propped both elbows on the kitchen table and bowed his head onto his folded hands. No, she wasn’t wrong. Indiscreet, perhaps. Unwise. But not wrong.

He wasn’t such a fool that he couldn’t see her intent. She was trying to help, trying to get him to come to terms with the fact that he had responsibilities. To the townspeople. To his daughter. To himself. The audacity, the sheer courage it took for her, a penniless, uneducated immigrant woman, to speak out to him as one human being to another made him shake his head. He wondered about her—not as a female, though she was certainly attractive in that way, but as a person.