Texan's Touch

EIGHT

ADAM WATCHED NICHOLE and her brother ride away with the feel of her next to him still thick in his mind. Had he really kissed her so completely? He told himself he was an honorable man who was engaged to be married to another, but at this moment, he didn’t feel very honorable or very engaged. All he knew was that if they’d had more time, he would have made love to her with a passion he’d never felt toward another or even dreamed he might feel. The logic that had always ruled his mind had somehow been sidestepped this morning.

Wes broke the silence. “Want some coffee before I ride into town with you?”

Adam looked at his brother and raised an eyebrow. “How’d you know I was going to town this morning?”

Moving toward the kitchen, Wes winked. “After the way you looked at Nick, I figure you’ll be having a few words with Bergette.”

“I plan to, but not because of Nichole. Bergette and I have grown apart these past years. The woman I spent the war planning a future for wasn’t waiting for me as I thought. I think I knew it within minutes after I saw her, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. It’s obvious we could never marry, and the time to tell her is now. She needs a groom for her wedding, not a husband in her life.”

Wes opened the screen door. “Then you’ll find Nichole?” he asked.

“No.” Adam took a deep breath. “We’ll never see one another again. We’ve said our good-byes.” Neither of them had spoken of a future. They both knew it would be impossible. All he wanted was to be a doctor and adventure still ran thick in her blood.

Wes looked like he didn’t believe Adam’s words, but he didn’t question him. Adam considered himself a man who set his life by order and logic. Nichole and he were simply two people who met once and touched one another’s lives… he would be a fool to think it was more.

An hour later, Adam was wishing he’d let Wolf shoot him at dawn. At least then he would have silence. Bergette’s screams were starting to make his eyes cross.

To say the princess had taken the news of their broken engagement dramatically was an understatement. She’d cried, pouted, and finally attacked with a vengeance. When she ordered Charles to throw him out, Adam almost ran from the room. When he glanced back, he wondered how he could have thought her so beautiful.

Adam didn’t take a deep breath until he rode within sight of the farmhouse. The loss of the woman he’d thought Bergette was weighed on his heart. The woman he remembered had somehow died while he’d been away, and the replacement was a shallow second to the Bergette he’d kept in his dreams for years. He felt he’d lost someone dearly loved, not to death, but to change.

As he unsaddled his mount, Adam realized he didn’t want to stay here and face the rumors she’d start. In one of her ravings, she’d sworn that no person in town would ever seek his medical advice when they learned of how cruelly he’d broken her heart. He wasn’t sure he could bear to live here and see the shell of a woman he’d held so dearly in his dreams.

Adam moved toward the house. The sun was setting and he realized he hadn’t eaten today. This day had passed in emotions not in hours, leaving him spent and weary.

“’Evening.” Wes fell into step. “You still engaged, little brother?”

“Is the offer to travel to Texas still on?”

“I guess that answers my question.” Wes sighed. “But you’ll have to get in line. Danny boy told me a few minutes ago that he’s going also.”

“He found someone to take care of the twins for a while?”

Wes laughed. “Of course, little brother. He found Willow to be wet nurse and two fools named McLain to act as nursemaids. We’re all going to Texas.”

Three months later, just outside a little settlement known as Fort Worth, Adam looked at his older brother and wondered how they’d made it. He’d thought the war had been hard on them. Fighting the rebs was nothing compared to hauling newborns a thousand miles by train, boat, and wagon.

He’d spent many a night in the saddle with one of the tiny girls sleeping in the fold of his arm. Though Willow had done her best, the brothers all learned to do what was necessary. Daniel loved the caretaking, forgetting his grief only when the babies needed him. Adam also enjoyed the role, finding it fascinating to watch them grow. But Wes grumbled every mile. He’d announced more than once that he’d rather roll through a corral of manure than have another drop of baby spit-up soak through to his shoulder.

Finally, they left Daniel and the girls at a settlement called Parker’s Fort near Dallas. Wes lectured Daniel on caring for the twins, though there were several mothers in the small village willing to offer advice.

Adam had heard Daniel talk of the colony named after John Parker and dedicated to religion and Bible study. The folks might look meek, but their settlement had survived thirty years of hardship. With the agreement that Daniel would act as blacksmith, they provided him with a small house and supplies to last through the winter. The community seemed exactly what a young father with twin babies needed: an extended family.

This might be the very place Daniel could find peace, Adam thought. The girl, Willow, smiled more the farther they got from her home. They were a week out before she stopped asking if they were going to send her back to her pa.

The McLains had boarded up the farmhouse on the first of August along with all the memories and left for Texas. Deep within Adam he knew they would never be back. From this point on, like for many of the men from the North and South, Texas would be called home. For Wes and Daniel, it seemed a calling, but Adam was only drifting, more leaving one place than going somewhere else.

Now to the best of his calculation it was the first of November. Adam crossed his leg over the saddle horn and leaned back, looking at the dusty little huddle of shacks that had once been a fort. “What do you think of Fort Worth?”

Wes lit a thin cigar and took his time answering. “I heard this place was never more than a single company post.” He stood on his stirrups. The leather he wore creaked with his movements. “Lucky thing Texas wasn’t used much as a battlefield during the war. I’d hate to think of this state looking any sorrier. They should let the Indians have it.”

“I heard back at the stage station a band of fifteen warriors attacked two men not far from here a month ago. Maybe the Indians will have it yet. They killed one man named Wright. The other, Smith, made it back to a settlement north of here called Denton before he died.”

“Great, another thing to keep a lookout for. I might as well give up sleep while I’m here making my fortune and trying to keep my hair.”

Adam laughed. “It’s not all that bad as long as we’re moving fast and well armed. The Butterfield Stage makes it well past Fort Worth without being raided often. If the stage is running regular, how bad could the state be?”

“Are you joking? Besides the Indians, every other man in Texas looks like he’s practicing snarling for a picture on a wanted poster. The land, from treetop to soil, is a rainbow of dull brown. And the women, the women are so homely I’m surprised their offspring will take to the breast.”

Wes glanced from side to side and whispered as if someone might overhear them. “Hell, the friendliest thing I’ve seen is a rattler waving his tail at me. Everyone hates us. Some because we’re Yankees, some because it seems their natural disposition.”

“Still, there’s the cows,” Adam offered.

Wes moved his horse toward the sunset and the town he’d been trying to reach for months. “I’ll give you that. This place is longhorn-rich, but they’re wild. It won’t be like rounding up the milk cows back home. Going to take some work to be wealthy by summer.”

“It won’t be easy.”

Wes agreed. “Nope. If it was, too many fools besides me would be trying it. Come on along, little brother. I want to make town by sundown. I need a meal, a bottle, and a pretty woman.”

Kicking his horse ahead, Adam added, “I thought you said there were no pretty women in Texas.”

Wes joined in the race. “In that case,” he shouted, “I’ll need two bottles to drink her pretty.”

An hour later, Wes’s opinion of Texas had changed. He’d downed a pound of steak and half a bottle of whiskey and managed to rent a room with a real bed.

While Wes struck up a conversation about cattle with men wearing leather and spurs, Adam walked out to the street.

The lodging they’d found was on the edge of town, with mostly remains of what must have been fort building running behind it.

Wes had been right. Texas hadn’t been much of what they’d hoped for. It was wilder, more unsettled than they’d thought. But the people seemed friendly enough if given half a chance. They didn’t offer a quick smile, but they didn’t turn away from questions. The whole state seemed made up of loners. Adam figured none of the McLains were looking for what they left back home.

He walked along the planked boards of what passed as sidewalks in front of the stores. This little frontier post had become the county seat in its less than twenty years of existence. Wes would find his dream here in Texas. He’d organize men and had some already waiting for him further south near Austin, and by spring, they’d be ready to head cattle north to market. There was talk of a half-Scotsman, half-Cherokee scout named Jesse Chisholm being willing to cut a trace all the way to Kansas.

Smiling at himself, Adam realized he didn’t even know what “cut a trace” meant a month ago. But here in the West that was how men referred to marking a trail for someone else to follow.

Only Adam had no scout to mark his trail. He had no idea where he was heading. As he passed the stage office, he thought, come morning, he could step on a stage and head farther west. But to where, to what? Wes had his dream. Daniel had his duty. But Adam had nothing. When the war ended, he thought he had his life all planned out. Now six months later he was like so many others, drifting, belonging nowhere.

Since the night he’d told Nichole he wasn’t sure about being a doctor, he hadn’t allowed himself to think about quitting. She’d cut his doubts off at the knee. Something inside him made him want to be as good a doctor as she thought he already was.

There she was again, he thought. Drifting through his mind like she planned to homestead. Over the past months he’d caught himself talking things out with her in his imagination. Something about the way she’d demanded the best from him made him want to try harder.

“You got a twopenny, mister?” a tiny outline whispered from between two buildings. “It ain’t for me, it’s for my ma.”

Adam knelt down trying to see the child’s face. He was thin, deathly thin with hair and eyes the color of rust. His clothes were dirty and worn.

“Is something wrong with your mother, son?”

“She’s sick, but for a few pennies the cook will give a plate of leftovers from the kitchen. He’s real generous. Sometimes it’s enough to feed us all.”

Adam fished a twopenny coin from his pocket and handed it to the boy. Then, silently, he watched as the kid climbed the steps to the back door of the small restaurant and asked for a plate.

The cook, who looked like he could be wanted in several states, took the coin and disappeared. After a few minutes, he returned with a plate of mostly beans and potatoes. Atop it, he’d placed a large slice of cornbread.

“Thanks.” The boy smiled showing several gaps where baby teeth had been.

The cook grinned back with an equally toothless smile. “Don’t tell the boss about the cornbread. It was left over. Ain’t no use throwing it out.”

The cook touched the boy’s shoulder a moment while he stuffed a small package in his coat pocket. “That’s for old Terry. Mangy old good-for-nothing dog.”

“Much obliged,” the beggar whispered as the cook pushed him away in a great pretense of being bothered.

Adam followed as the boy ran into the blackened alley. He could hear the child’s footsteps, but had to guide himself by touch.

When Adam finally slowed, deciding to give up the chase, he turned a corner and saw a light. The air was so still in the alley, he could hear himself breathing and smell poverty thick as smoke around him.

Curiosity drew him toward the spot of light.

As his eyes adjusted, Adam found himself boxed in with the backs of two-story buildings on three sides of him. One, judging from the odor and muffled noises, was a saloon, only business didn’t seem very lively tonight. The second side of his man-made canyon was some kind of hotel or whorehouse. The third building looked abandoned except for a single candle blinking through a broken window. It was a wide old two-story that could have been officer’s quarters in its prime. It looked like it had been converted into a boardinghouse.

Adam moved carefully around abandoned crates as he neared the window. The scene that slowly came into distorted focus through the broken glass made him question his vision.

A woman, pale and fever wet, lay on a small bed. The beggar boy sat on the floor offering her the plate of food.

Taking a step closer, Adam stared at the third person in the room. A nun. Her spotless habit was snow white and raven black in sharp contrast to everything around her. She looked like an aging angel as she wiped the dying woman’s brow.

Adam couldn’t resist moving closer. As his foot took the first step, a dog the size of a colt jumped up from the shadows and barked an alarm. Adam froze.

After a long pause, the boy opened the door only enough to peer out. “Yes?” he whispered in a brave little voice that said he’d protect those within as best he could.

Adam didn’t waste words. “I’m a doctor,” he said. “I’ve come to help if I can.”

“I ain’t got no money.” The boy lifted his chin slightly.

“We’ll talk of payment later.” Adam smiled. He’d often heard of folks paying in services or chickens, but he’d never practiced medicine except during the war.

The boy hesitated, then opened the door.

When Adam’s gaze met the nun’s stare, he couldn’t move. She had the most knowing eyes he’d ever seen. The kind of eyes an artist would try to paint for a saint. Ageless eyes in a face that shattered into a thousand wrinkles when she smiled.

Without a word, she opened her aging hand and pointed to the woman on the bed. “Please,” she whispered. “Help this child of God if you can, Doctor.”

Leaning forward, Adam felt the patient’s forehead, the side of her throat, then her hand.

“Boy,” he snapped. “You know that café where you got the food?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go to the front door and look in. You should see a man about my size with a scar on his left cheek. Tell him Adam said to bring the medical bag.”

“But I can’t go into that place. Not the front.”

Adam smiled, wishing he could see Wes’s face when the boy ordered him. “Don’t worry. Just tell the man with the scar to hurry. He’ll see no harm comes to you.”

As soon as the boy left, Adam pulled the covers back. “We’ve got work to do.” He looked up at the elderly nun, knowing she would help. “This woman’s fever is dangerously high.”

Wes was somewhere into the fog that comes in the bottom of a whiskey bottle. The waitress was starting to look slimmer and less moley. The banging on the piano had almost evolved into a tune when a dirt-covered kid stepped out of nowhere and yelled at him.

Wes shook his head and tried to understand the words as a bartender grabbed the boy up and swung him toward the door.

“Wait! What did you say, boy?” Wes hated it when people seemed to talk in some kind of code leaving out every other word. They tended to do it when he’d had a few too many drinks, but he refused to allow them to get by with it.

“He told me to tell the man with a scar to bring Adam’s medical bag.” The boy tried to wiggle from the hairy hand that held him captive.

Wes looked around as if expecting to see others with scars. When he turned back, his eyes had sobered slightly. “Let go of the kid,” he ordered as he stood and paid his bill. “I’ll get the bag. Take me to Adam, son.”