Hope, page 17
part #3 of Brides of the Rio Grande Series
Charlotte rolled her eyes heavenward. “For a man, that means havin’ a built-in maid. Someone who cooks and cleans and has supper on the stove and the floors clean and all that other stuff that gets shoved off on a woman once she takes a husband. But what about a woman? What does that mean for her? What does she have to look forward to but years and years of hard, back-breaking work?”
“It means she has a roof over her head and food for preparing and clothes, and someone to protect her. It is my job to protect her.”
“Then protect her, damn it. You’ll be with her. You can’t protect any more than being by her side, now can you? And all of this noise about you providing for her and feeding and clothing her, unless you picked Hope up off the street, she already had all of that. Now, you want to give it to her with strings attached? No wonder the woman turned you down. That ain’t a right smart proposal, Billy. Not smart at all.”
Billy didn’t want to hear this kind of talk. He pushed his glass back across the bar to Charlotte. This time, she complied with his non-verbal request. He wasn’t sure he wanted any more conversation from Charlotte. He might think twice about coming in here again if he couldn’t depend on the woman to take his side. Wasn’t that what friends did?
“Look, Billy. Hope is a beautiful, intelligent, hard-working woman. You are lucky she is still talking to you, and you know it.”
He knew he was lucky, but he wasn’t in the mood to admit it.
“She has her heart set on being a healer. Everyone in town knows she’s good at it too. Just ask anybody. So, if you want to have a chance at her saying yes, you need to give her space to decide for herself if she wants to be a healer and a wife, because having to pick one or the other won’t make for a happy life for you, my confused friend.
“Now, I gotta get busy. Looks like the miners have quit for the day and they are gonna be wantin’ company. Think about what I said. You have a beautiful woman who everyone in this town knows is in love with you despite what you may think at the moment. Is it really so bad she wants to help relieve other people’s pain and misery? Look around you. The men in here are so lonely, they are willing to pay good money for female companionship. Now tell me if that ain’t the saddest thing you ever did see.”
Charlotte didn’t wait for him to answer. She left him at the bar and called out to one of the miners coming in the front door. “Hey, Charlie. Hard day at the mine?”
“Sure was, Charlotte darlin’, but everything’s okay now that I got a chance to set these tired old eyes on you.”
“Ah, you sweet talkin’ fool. What can I getcha to drink?” Charlotte flirted with the minor but Billy knew it was all an act. She was workin’ to save money so she could leave this place and go somewhere where nobody knew about her past. And Charlotte had once told him she was savin’ her innocence for the right man because she wanted him to think her special enough to take his name and have his children.
He nursed his glass of whiskey between two palms and thought about Charlotte’s words. He wanted to do whatever he could to make Hope happy. He thought if he gave her enough time, she would get all this medical nonsense out of her head and come to her senses, but it was harder to turn her head around than he thought. She was holdin’ on a lot tighter to this idea than he first imagined she would.
He needed a distraction from his problems. What he needed was a good game of poker and maybe a punch or two into some drifter’s gut.
He tossed down his whiskey and redirected his attention to the empty chair at the poker table across the room. “Hey, Charlotte. Give me a bottle of whiskey, will ya? I’m going to be occupied for a while.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? You know crazy things happen when you drink too much, Billy.” Charlotte handed him the bottle across the bar. Her eyebrows raised in question.
“I’ll be alright. Just in the mood for a little fun, that’s all it is.” Billy took the bottle and made his way through the crowded room to the table. “Hello, gentlemen. Room for one more?” Billy sat down in the empty chair.
“Ante up, gentlemen. A dollar to get in the game,” the dealer announced as he shuffled the deck of cards in his hand.
“Deal those cards because I’m feelin’ lucky tonight.”
14
Hope hadn’t expected Bobby to walk right into the doctor’s office, especially not on the day the doc was gone, leaving her alone with the man.
“Bobby, I—wasn’t expecting you. Uuummmm, you aren’t on my list of patients this afternoon. Is there an emergency?” She made a show of checking the appointment book.
“You sayin’ Doc Howard ain’t here?” Bobby looked around for signs of the doctor she supposed.
“Um, no. Doc Howard isn’t here—at least not at the moment. He should be back in a little while, since we have patients coming in at any moment.” She hoped he got the hint that the doctor couldn’t see him this afternoon. “Maybe you could come back tomorrow morning—”
“Nah, I don’t need the doc if you’re here, little lady, I don’t mind if you wanna take a look, you being a medical person and all. I sure don’t mind at all if you want to give me an examination.”
Hope was not at all comfortable with this conversation. “I think since you’ve already been speaking with Doctor Howard about your issue, you should probably stay under his medical care. I deal more with women’s ailments. You understand,” she lied.
“I reckon I can see the practical purpose of that arrangement.” He leaned closer, causing Hope to take a step back. “Hey, you and ole’ doc ever work late hours? You know, when Billy Boy is away, the kitty cat will play sort of thing?” He winked and Hope thought she was going to be ill.
“Look, Mr. Buchanan—”
“Nah, ain’t no need to call me that. My name’s Bobby and I’d be pleased if you called me by my first name.”
“As I said, Mr. Buchanan, this conversation is highly inappropriate. I’d appreciate if you’d keep your crude comments to yourself. I’ll tell Doctor Howard you were in and you can stop by to see him one day next week. We are going out of town to see a patient and we won’t be back for a day or two.”
The man leered at her. “Ah, I see. You don’t work late, but you don’t mind hitting the trail together. I’ll bet my piss ant little brother is gonna be real unhappy to hear about this. He’s as stupid as John Malone about his woman. Maybe I’ll go find the little brat and see if I can ruin his day.”
“I can see it gives you great pleasure to antagonize your brother, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather tell him myself. Now if you will excuse me, I have a patient due any minute.”
Hope watched the man’s face. His eyes watched her like a hawk waiting for a mouse to slip up and make a mistake so he could swoop in, but Hope had streets smarts even if she was an innocent. “Mr. Buchanan, I hope you don’t intend to make a nuisance of yourself and make me call Sheriff Grayson. It would be embarrassing for the both of us.”
The man still hadn’t moved to leave when her patient, Mrs. Wilson, arrived for her appointment right on time, allowing her to send Bobby off with the promise of letting Doc Howard he had stopped by.
After Bobby left, she ushered her patient behind the privacy curtain and into the examination room. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Wilson. How can I help you this afternoon? What seems to be ailing you?” Hope took up the stethoscope and listened to the woman’s heart. Then she checked her pulse. She took the light and checked the woman’s eyes. Felt her throat for anything abnormal that would indicate a serious problem. Everything seemed normal.
“I was needing something for my headaches. Are you sure you’re qualified to give me medicine? I was expecting Doc Howard. Where is he?” the woman demanded to know.
Hope lay her medical equipment down on the desk and turned to the woman. “To answer your first question, yes, I have been training under Doctor Howard’s careful stewardship and he has complete confidence in my abilities as a medical person. Why else would he leave me here alone to care for his patients, Mrs. Wilson?” She offered the worried woman a smile hoping to quell her doubts. “And to answer your second question, he has gone off into the mountains in search of a plant that has the potential to help stop excessive bleeding, and it could be quite useful for”
The woman stuck up her hand. “Please stop. I can’t hear about blood and all that stuff. It’s too disturbing, besides, I’m not like you, Miss Anderson.”
Hope was taken back by the woman’s comment. “What do you mean, not like me?” Hope’s heart stuttered and anxiety pooled in her gut. She knew what people thought about her and her sisters. It was just—no one had ever had the nerve to say it to their faces. Was that what this woman meant?
“Please don’t take offense. It is just that everyone knows about you and your sisters. I mean we wouldn’t care that you were raised in an orphanage, but working in that saloon for that woman, Rosie whatever-her-name-was—well that’s not the type of work a young woman with a good reputation would accept.”
Hope took a deep breath as she prepared the woman’s headache powder, grateful to have something to do with her hands besides scratching the woman’s eyes out. “Mrs. Wilson, while it is true that my sisters and I worked in a saloon after we were no longer able to live in the orphanage, Rosie took us in, gave us a place to stay and saw to it we had respectable jobs. She was like a mother to us girls. She is the reason we were not forced to work at a job that would have compromised us. We owe everything to her and Aggie and Hiram Hanover. Everything.”
Hope emphasized the word, but she could tell the woman wasn’t satisfied until she had her say. So be it. Hope had probably heard worse.
“I understand your loyalty, dear. It is an admirable quality, although misguided.”
Hope handed the small glass bottle with the headache powder to the woman. “Well, you are entitled to your opinion, Mrs. Wilson. Now, take one teaspoon of this power and place it in a glass of water or tea. You should see relief from your pain within the hour.”
“Thank you, Miss Anderson. And as a respected member of this town, I would advise you to stay clear of those Buchanan men. The one that was just here is a murderer. How he’s back in town so soon after going to prison is a mystery to me. And the younger one, Billy, he’s a known flirt. I saw how he proposed to you at the dance and you were wise to turn him down. He has a woman around every corner. I know you heard about him trying to steal his best friend’s wife and then causing her to fall to her death killing her and her baby. I can’t imagine why John Malone didn’t kill the man on the spot that day he confessed. Why just a little while ago, my husband and I were passing by the Nelsons’ house, you know the one Billy is renting while they are out of town? We saw him standing in the doorway half naked with that low morals alley cat, Cora Ludlow. The nerve of that man. Proposing to you one night and bedding her the next. It’s disgusting and you are well rid of them both.”
Hope’s ears buzzed as her patient rattled on and on about someone else’s daughter and her misdeeds. She knew the woman was a gossip, but she rarely repeated things that had no basis. Was Billy now with Cora because she turned down his proposal? She was going to be sick.
The woman stood and handed her two bits for the office visit. “Thank you, Miss Anderson. I’m still not convinced you have the same medical expertise as the good doctor, but I am open to giving you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Wilson.” It was all Hope dared to say for fear of showing her crumbling emotions. Hope followed the woman up front and closed the door behind the her when she left. Her next patient would be arriving in thirty minutes and she wanted time to process what the woman had just told her and collect herself.
“Cora? And Billy?” She couldn’t believe he would turn to Cora so soon after—after what? After she had turned his marriage proposal down in front of the whole town? After she told him he was embarrassing her? Why would he not turn to someone else? Billy had a lot of problems from his past and Hope, of all people, understood about problems, but she knew Billy had a hard time dealing with his problems and he usually ended up in big trouble.
Hope moved about the office waiting for her next patient and tried to push thoughts of Billy and Cora together out of her mind, but her jealousy reared its ugly head at the possibility. She worried that if Billy was drinking, he might do something they would both regret. If only she had more faith in Billy’s word. Her self-esteem had taken a lot of hits over her lifetime. It would take time and lots of positive reinforcement to make her one hundred percent certain of his commitment to her. Maybe she should go talk to him after work and explain the reasons behind her refusal of his marriage proposal. To be honest, she hadn’t said no. She just hadn’t said yes.
The office door opened cutting off her thoughts and signaling her next patient had arrived. Her last patient was a five-year-old boy who had shoved a potato eye up his nose. It had taken her, his mother, and his older brother to hold the strapping young lad down long enough for Hope to pull it out of his nose. She tried every medical device the doctor owned when she finally decided the best tool for the job was her crochet hook she brought to work in her knitting basket.
His relieved mother hugged Hope in gratitude. That had felt good after the day she had. She gave the woman a salve to doctor the boy’s raw nose and admonished him to not put anything up his nose but his finger, and he was only allowed to do that twice a day.
An exhausted Hope straightened up the office and returned the instruments to their places. The clock on the office wall chimed six o’clock. It was too late to find Billy tonight. She would seek him out tomorrow before he had a chance to leave town and she would talk to him—explain to him how she felt. If he could accept her as she was, then she would keep the ring. If he wasn’t willing to see her side, then she would hand him his ring back and they would be done once and for all.
She gave the beautiful piece of jewelry on her right hand a loving glance. She loved Billy so much, but it seemed they were growing farther and farther apart.
She locked up the doctor’s office and headed home. Doctor Howard hadn’t returned from his hike but she knew better than to worry about him. He was very comfortable in the outdoors. She never asked him how a learned man such as himself had learned to survive in the wild, but she intended to someday. He was a curious man of sorts. No one even knew his first name that she knew of. Where had he come from? Who were his family? What brought him to this little remote mining town?
The Hanovers were just finishing supper when she arrived home. “There you are. We were starting to wonder about you. Are you hungry? There’s still plenty of food on the table,” Aggie offered.
“No, I think I’ll just clean up and head for my cozy bed. It’s been a long couple of days and I’m exhausted. Maybe I’ll try to study some of my medical notes tonight. That always makes me sleepy.” Hope smiled and hugged the woman before she headed up the stairs.
“Well, goodnight then, my dear.” Aggie’s voice followed her. The woman’s kindness never failed to touch Hope. Tears burned in her eyes. She couldn’t be certain if they were because of Aggie’s kindness or her rift with Billy.
She reached the sanctuary of her bedroom and locked the world outside. After a quick wash with this morning’s water still in the basin, she donned her soft nightgown, pulled the hair pins from her thick brown hair, and ran her fingers through the mass untangling it as best she could.
Satisfied with the results, she picked up the brush from her dressing table and began to pull the boar bristles through the silky strands.
It was something she had done for herself every night since she was old enough to remember. It soothed her anxiety about going to bed in the dark without a mother there to calm her and put her fears at ease.
Tonight was no exception, although she was no longer afraid of the dark. She couldn’t help the gnawing in her stomach at this new life she had chosen for herself. Would everything turn out as she hoped? Only time would tell.
It had been a long and emotionally exhausting day and she needed rest for her trip with Doc Howard to the Randolph ranch tomorrow. She climbed into her soft bed and pulled out her notes from the leather satchel sitting next to her bed. She flipped the pages over and over again soon realizing she wasn’t reading one word. So, she finally lay her notes on the bed table and turned out the lantern to lay in the darkness and listen to the night sounds of late travelers on the streets below her window. She felt a sense of unease she couldn’t explain. Was Billy one of those late-night wanderers? Was he wandering into Cora’s bed as she lay here thinking about him and wishing things could be different?
Perhaps things would look a little brighter tomorrow. She had no idea how long she lay in the darkness until she heard the clock downstairs chime the hour. Ten o’clock. She punched her pillow into a more comfortable shape and forced herself to close her eyes. She needed to get some sleep.
Tossing and turning, Hope settled into the warm blankets and waited for sleep to come. Sometime after the clock struck eleven, she drifted into a fitful sleep where images of Billy tasting the charms of a nameless woman taunted her.
Billy heard the milk cart rattle down Main Street, the glass bottles banging against their wire cages. His head roared in protest with each clang.
“How are you feeling this morning, Billy?” Charlotte’s voice called out to him through the painful fog.
“Ugh. What the hell happened? Where am I? What time is it?”
“That’s an awful lot of questions for a man who looks like he’s been run over by a heard of buffalo. Here, drink this.”
Billy squinted out of one eye. The sunlight streaming into the window and shining in his face felt like an ice pick in his brain. “Ugh.”
He heard Charlotte laugh. “Yeah, you said that before. Now sit up and drink this. You’ll feel better somewhere between noon and supper. It’ll be sometime tomorrow if you don’t.”
