Marry Me (8 page)

“A lot of people know Judah has a temper, and they know Runt felt the hard edge of it most of the time.”

“My point is that no one intervened. Ever.”

“I can’t say that anyone exactly witnessed it. More like they saw the evidence. There were the older boys, don’t forget, and Runt, well, he wasn’t complainin’.”

“She
wasn’t complaining,” Cole reminded him. “Then, or now. You must have noticed that. When she asked about Judah, she was concerned for you. She still is.”

Will couldn’t argue with that. “So what are you suggesting?”

“Charge Judah with assaulting you. It’s not a lie. He poked you with his stick, remember?”

Will rubbed his chest. “I’m not likely to forget.” He didn’t mention that he would have a bruise later. It paled in comparison to what Rhyne had suffered. “He took a couple of swings at me when I hauled him out to the privy.”

“He also threatened you.”

“That’s true. I suppose what he did to Rhyne doesn’t need to come into it.”

Cole nodded. “Good.” He saw Will hesitate, obviously uncomfortable. “What is it?”

“What about the other? The actual fact that there was a baby.” “What about it?”

“Well, we don’t who the father was. If it wasn’t Judah, then it could be someone from town. It seems like I should be lookin’ into that, most particularly if Rhyne tells me it was rape.”

“She’s not going to tell you.”

Will thought Cole was probably right, but it was a disappointment that Runt wouldn’t trust him. “She might.”

Cole merely shrugged. He didn’t offer that in his experience it was more likely that she’d confide in a stranger rather than a friend. “Are you all right with this?”

Will nodded. “I’ve got no problem with it. What about you?”

“No problem.”

“Have you thought about what I should tell people when they realize you didn’t come back with me? People are bound to need a doctor while you’re gone. Seems like I should have something to explain it.”

“You can say that we found Rhyne with a fever and I stayed behind to treat her.”

“I suppose that’ll do,” Will said slowly.

“But you’re doubtful.”

“Folks expect to manage a fever on their own, not have the doc at their bedside for the duration. Maybe we should say she broke something … like an arm or a leg.” Before Cole could speak, Will dismissed his own suggestion. “No one would believe you’d be the one to stay behind and help her with the place. I’m going to have to send someone out here to do that anyway. How about we say she was shot?”

“Shot? Who shot her?”

“Miscreants, that’s who. People will believe anything about miscreants.”

“I suspect they will,” Cole said, his tone wry. “If you think that’s best, Deputy, I can support that story.”

“Good. I like it.”

“Now, you mentioned something about getting me some help.”

“You can’t look after Rhyne and do her chores, too.” “I’m not incapable, Will.”

“No, but you’re city. Big city. I bet you never fended for yourself. Fed the chickens. Butchered your own meat. Milk probably came up right to your door and had the good manners to knock.”

Cole could see that Will was enjoying himself. Folding his arms, he leaned against the stove and waited for the deputy to wind down. The mere suggestion of a smile lifted one corner of his mouth, and he found himself oddly entertained by the picture Will painted of his New York life. Much of what that no-account Beatty boy said was true, but it didn’t follow that the picture was complete. To do that Will would have had to understand something about the demands of a house doctor, know the hours could be as long as a farmer’s, the pay as poor as a ranch hand’s, and the rewards as unlikely to be realized as those offered by the wanted posters.

“So what I’m saying,” Will concluded after ticking off six additional points, “is that you’re goin’ to need an extra pair of hands. I figure the Longabachs can spare Johnny Winslow for a spell, and if they can’t, then Ned Beaumont would probably hire himself out.”

“Whatever you think is best,” Cole said.

Will nodded. “One of them will be here in the morning.” He picked up the Winchester. “I should take this in to Runt. She’ll want to know that it’s close by. I’ll slide it under the bed.”

“That’s fine. Will you need help with Judah?”

“You might want to keep a watch for me out the window, but I’m not expecting there’s much fight left in him. Lots of talk, mind you, but not much fight. I think we saw his final act when he drew that damn walking stick.”

“I trust you to know.” Cole pointed to the bedroom. “You go on. Say good-bye to her if she’s awake. If she asks, reassure her that she’s safe with me.”

“She won’t believe me.” Will’s quicksilver grin made his deep dimples appear. “I gotta tell you, Doc, Rhyne Abbot might just be the first female around here that doesn’t think much of your fine patrician looks.”

Rhyne felt as if she were being held underwater. Her lungs were near to bursting with the need to breathe. Panic made her want to flail and thrash; pressure from an unknown weight kept her in place. Sparks of pure white light appeared at the center of her vision, while at the periphery there was only unrelenting darkness. If she didn’t draw air, she would die. If she did, she would die. There was no real choice, only the inevitability of death.

She decided to embrace it.

Cole jerked awake. His feet slipped off the iron bed rail and thumped to the floor. He sat up straight, alert. Something had changed.

Rhyne lay exactly as she had when he fell asleep in the chair beside her. The sheet covered her to her throat; her hands remained at her side. Her stubby lashes cast no shadows to add to the violet smudges beneath her eyes. She was pale, ethereally so, her shape defined by softly draping cotton.

And she wasn’t breathing.

Jumping to his feet, Cole bent over her. He placed his cheek near her lips and laid his palm over her heart. “Rhyne!” He forced her jaw open and swept the inside of her mouth with his finger, searching for an obstruction. He could not feel anything, but his finger was wet and darkly stained when he withdrew it. Blood? The lantern light was inadequate to know with certainty, but no other cause came to mind. “Rhyne!” Turning her on her side, Cole gave her several hard blows between her shoulder blades with the heel of his hand.

She hunched her shoulders, gagged, and finally expelled the object caught in her throat.

Cole stared at the pillow. Not blood at all, he realized, but something deeply brown yet transparent, more like water in its consistency.

After a moment, it came to him. Tobacco spittle.

And lying just beyond the pillow where she had expelled it was the thing that had almost killed Runt Abbot: a black bolus of chaw.

Coleridge Braxton Monroe surrendered to both the consequences of adrenaline and the absurdity of his discovery. Slumping into his chair, he threw back his head and laughed until he was the one in danger of choking.

Chapter 3

It was a struggle to sit up. Rhyne supported herself on her elbows and stayed there while the first wave of pain ebbed. Grimacing, she inched backward until she felt the headboard pressing against her shoulders. With the iron rails behind her, she was able to rise to a full sitting position.

Her first coherent thought was that she was late beginning her chores. She’d seen the position of the sun from Judah’s window often enough to know she should be bringing him breakfast now, not merely waking herself. She hadn’t gathered eggs or fed the chickens. The horses needed her attention. There was no fresh water in the pitcher on the washstand and no kettle heating on the stove. Normally the aroma of brewing coffee would be filling the cabin, nudging Judah awake before she arrived at his door with his tray.

She’d tasted the coffee that the sheriff and Will brewed in their office, and it wasn’t an invitation to linger. She couldn’t imagine that the prisoners got a cup that was any better. That no-account Beatty boy didn’t know what he’d taken on when he’d taken Judah in. Her father often set his mood by that first cup: bitter, black, and blistering hot.

Rhyne glanced at the empty chair at her bedside. She remembered waking once in the middle of the night and seeing the doctor sitting there, his head bent forward, his breathing slow and steady. At first she thought he was sleeping, then realized he had positioned the lantern and turned it down so that the circle of pale yellow light fell on his lap, or more precisely, on the book he had open in it. Even as she watched him, he turned the page. She considered telling him to put the book back before Judah discovered it was missing, but the recollection that it was Judah that was missing came to her before she spoke.

She fell asleep again before he turned another page, yet the memory of his hands lingered. She could see one of them folded around the book, the other lying flat over the page he wasn’t reading. His hands were broad, the fingers long with nails that were trimmed short and scrubbed clean. The whole of his hands was clean, she recalled now: the tips, the palms, the creases of his knuckles. She imagined him rubbing them together over the basin, squeezing lather from between his fingers, reciting Lady Macbeth’s best-known line, “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” The vision of it made her lips twitch.

“Oh, you’re awake.” Cole stood in the open doorway, a tray in his hands. “May I?”

Surprised by his sudden appearance, Rhyne blinked. How had she not heard him? She couldn’t believe he’d been that quiet, so she had to suppose her reverie had been that deep. She jerked her chin at the tray and regarded him narrowly. “I don’t smell anything. What do you have there?”

“Broth and bread.” He watched her curl her lip in disapproval. “It’s what I believe you can tolerate.”

“My stomach knows better.”

Cole decided that conversation was an invitation and carried the tray in. He set it carefully on one corner of the washstand and then looked over his patient. The curl in her lip had disappeared, but her mouth was tight, suggesting she was in considerable pain. “I can give you some laudanum after you eat something.”

“I don’t want laudanum ladled down my throat. It muddies my mind.”

Cole didn’t ask about the circumstances that gave her familiarity with the opiate. Instead he said, “I’d like to examine you.”

“I’ll eat.” Rhyne held out her hands for the tray.

“I wasn’t trying to trick you into eating. I’ll still want to examine you.”

She said nothing and kept her arms extended.

Cole passed the tray and made sure she could balance it on her lap before he sat down. He propped his heels on the bed rail and folded his arms comfortably across his chest.

“You’re going to watch me eat?” she asked.

“I thought I would, yes.”

“If I had my rifle …”

“It’s under the bed on your right. Would you like me to hold the tray while you get it?”

“You’d do that?”

“If it would make you feel better.”

Rhyne wondered if she could believe him. His expression was grave, too grave perhaps to be strictly credited, and it occurred to her that he was secretly amused. It followed that she amused him, and while that didn’t agree with her, it was better than being the object of pity.

She tore off a corner of bread and pushed it into her mouth, aware that his eyes followed her movement. Wrapping two hands around the cup, she sipped the beef broth. The crust of day old bread softened in her mouth and she swallowed.

“I don’t remember your name,” she said.

“Cole Monroe.”

Rhyne tore off another piece of bread. This time she dipped it in the broth before she put it in her mouth. “What’s the point of watching me? Doc Diggins never did.”

“It’s already well established in town that I’m no Doc Diggins, but it’s possible that’s not always unflattering. I observe all my patients.”

“It’s peculiar,” she said flatly.

“You’re right-handed. You have no fixed contractures of your arms and legs, allowing you full extension of both. No curvature of your spine, and also no evidence of
rachitis.”
He responded to her raised eyebrow. “Rickets.”

“You might have said so at the outset.”

“Indeed, I might have.”

He was practically daring her to shoot him, she decided.

“That’s all?” she asked.

“Well, there’s no spasticity in your movements, no gross deformities of your hips or feet. Except for the fact that your nose has been broken, there are no apparent physical deviations of your face. Your respiration is normal, your fever appears to have passed, and you’re able to make good eye contact.”

“Maybe I’m just observing you.”

He gave her a faint, knowing smile. “You’ve just proven that your gross hearing is within normal limits, as is your gross vision. Your color is improved this morning. There is no blue tinge to your lips or fingertips that would suggest a lack of oxygen to your tissues. As evidenced by the look you’re giving me now, I would say that you have coherent expression of thought and feeling.”

“Are the hairs at the back of your neck standing up?”

“They are.”

“Huh. I guess I do have coherent expression.” She raised the cup of broth to her lips, watching him over the rim, and took another sip. When she set it down, she said, “So you’re done examining me.”

“Hardly.”

She nodded slowly, having expected that answer. “I don’t suppose I can talk you out of it.”

“No. And it would be better all the way around if you didn’t fight me, either.”

Rhyne couldn’t even pretend she had the strength for that. Feeling cowardly because she couldn’t quite meet his eyes, she said, “I wouldn’t mind some of that laudanum about now.”

Cole didn’t comment. He simply reached for his bag on the floor, opened it, and removed one of the cobalt blue bottles. Using the spoon he’d placed on Rhyne’s tray, he measured out a half dose. “You can take it yourself,” he said, “or I’ll give it to you.”

Rhyne looked down at her hands, saw the slight tremor, and knew she couldn’t get the spoon to her mouth without spilling some of the medicine. It pained her that he must have also seen it, because the spoon was suddenly poised at her narrowly parted lips. She opened her mouth and swallowed.