Breathe: A Novel of Colorado (7 page)

He vacillated, now that he had a pretty good idea that Odessa
was safe. What was right, what was proper? She was no business of
his. They'd barely spoken. But Sam ... Sam had liked her from the
start. Said her eyes were like his daughter's, a daughter long gone.
And now Sam was dead. One day sitting next to him on the porch,
yammering on, teasing him, the next day in a pine box. His neighbor, the man responsible for getting Bryce himself to the sanatorium,
to help, on the road to health, now gone.

Bryce turned to head back downstairs and then paused and
headed upward again. He had to see her. Just a glimpse to know
she was all right. That something worse had not transpired. "Not
another one, Lord," he whispered, panting. "Keep the girl safe."

At long last, he made it up the stairs. He paused for several
breaths, swallowing against the sudden phlegm in his throat. The
maid left, bucket in hand, and passed him by with little more than a
curious glance. The room was still and quiet, morning sun streaming
across the floorboards and out into the hall.

Decided now, he stepped down the hall, felt the pull of leg
muscles he hadn't felt in weeks, more alert, awake than he had been
in months. His pulse raced; his temples pounded.

He passed by her room first, just glancing in. Sam's room was dark in
comparison, the shades pulled down, the bed remade and empty. Bryce frowned. The old man had seemed better lately, as if he were making a
recovery. But the White Death was like that ... nibbling up people bit
by bit, sometimes in hidden ways. Yes, sometimes it only took another
swipe, a compounding infection, sometimes even a mere cool north
wind, to carry off the barely standing wreckage of a consumptive.

But he had seen people leave this place, if not fully cured at least
whole again. On their feet. He wanted to be among their numbers.
Resolutely, he turned back toward Odessas room and, seeing no one
down the hall, peered in at her. He frowned. Her lovely face-a face
begging to be immortalized by a sculptor-was covered in bandages.
They had wrapped the cloth around her head, so that her dark hair
lay flat beneath but sprang to life in swirling curls below, at her neck
and around on the pillow.

Bryce realized his hand was over his heart. What was it about
this woman that moved him so? What right had he to feel his pulse
quicken in the face of her further injury? What had moved her to risk
herself, rising unaided? A man lumbered down the hall and Bryce
started, realizing now that he was within Odessas room. He cast
about his mind for a suitable explanation.

"McAllan?" Dominic said, brow furrowing.

"Forgive me, Dominic. I ... uh ... I know I have no business ...
Listen, I heard some commotion and after last night ..."

"You wanted to make sure she was all right." Dominic's eyes
moved from assessment to a softer understanding. He reached out
to touch his sister's arm, tucking it beneath a blanket. "Dess has that
effect on people. Always has."

"Yes, well. Now that I know you're here, I'll cease my meddling
and be about my own business."

Bryce moved to pass him in the doorway but Dominic reached
out to grab his arm. "They found her in Sam O'Toole's room," he
said. "Do you have any idea why she would have gone in there?"

"No." Bryce shook his head, glanced at Odessa again. "How'd
she get so cut up?"

"Swiped one of these glass bells off the stand as she was going
down," he said, picking Odessas up and stilling the ringer. "Just her
luck to fall down on it." He set it gently back in place. "Doctor
thinks she was confused, feverish. Wandering. Just happened to be
in O'Toole's room after he died."

"And you?"

"Seems plausible," Dominic said, moving closer to Odessa. He
looked up at Bryce. "I'm sorry for your loss. Your friend-the old
man was kind."

"Yes, he was," Bryce said.

"Mr. McAllan!" Nurse Packard said, pausing in the hallway.
"What are you doing up here? You get back down the stairs this
instant. You're in no condition to be climbing them unaided!"

"No, I suppose I am not. I only wished to see Sam's room,
wondered-"

"Ach, it's a pity the old man passed on. I understand you've lost
a friend. But the man would've wanted you to go on to find good
health and return home." She set down a tray on a hall table and then
ushered him down the hallway and stairs, not waiting for the men to
say good-bye. "The last thing we need is for you to take a fall down
the stairs. Miss St. Clair's fall was quite enough."

There Moira was. After his discussion with McAllan, and when Moira
failed to return, Nic had left Odessa's side to go after her, and had been
down one city block and up the other before he spied her, just ahead,
speaking to three men on the dusty Wahsatch Avenue. On either side,
fine homes were going up, spoils from the miners who labored in the
mountains to the west. But Dominic's eyes were only on Moira, who
was looking to the left and down-what she always did when she felt
ill at ease. She had a pasted-on smile and obviously tried to say "good
day" to the men, miners by the look of them, but when she moved to
go around the last one on the left, he stepped in front of her.

"Hey!" Nic shouted. "You leave that lady alone!"

The man looked up, sized him up, obviously found him wanting,
and said something out of the corner of his mouth to his comrades.
The other two laughed.

It was all Dominic needed. He tore across the remaining fifteen
paces and rammed into the miscreant who dared to waylay his sister.
The second man grabbed him by the arms and bodily lifted him
away, but Dominic tossed his head back and broke his nose, then
found his footing and came forward with a solid right for the third
man, who was descending upon him.

He could hear Moira screaming at him, then begging him to stop
through her tears, but it had been too long. Too long since he had felt
so strong, so alive. He wanted to stay here, among the living, feel vital,
for as long as he could. No St. Clair woman would ever feel the need to
fear for her well-being in this town as long as her brother was around.
This was why Father had sent him with them. To protect them. He had
said to use his brain as well as his brawn. Not his brain alone ...

Nic lifted the first man from the ground by the collar, backhanded him, then punched him. The second man surprised him, bringing a
mine-forged hand into Nic's back. He gasped as shooting pain emanated from his kidney; from far away he wondered if this was what
it felt like to be Odessa, always trying to steal a breath like a beggar
before. He rose, keeping watch, instinctively knowing the third man
was on his feet, when that man pounded a fist past his cheek and
almost into his eye.

Nic felt the flesh tear loose, and a warm gush of blood blinded
him. Moira screamed and Nic braced for the next punch, again to his
belly. He doubled over and the man rammed a knee up into his face.
Nic's head spun and he fell to the ground.

"Please! Please stop!" Moira begged, and suddenly all three did
as she asked, mumbling apologies, brushing off their clothes, moving
away.

Moira sank to her knees beside Dominic. "Nic? Nic, can you
hear me?"

He laughed, little more than a breath of folly. "How can I help
but hear you? You're screaming in my ear."

"Nic, you can't do this. Not here. We can ill afford enemies and
Papa isn't-" Her voice abruptly fell away.

He squinted upward when a new figure stepped between him
and the sun. "A mere five days in my town," the newcomer said, "and
you're already brawling, Mr. St. Clair? I thought we had words about
this already."

The sheriff.

Nic set his head back down and swallowed some blood. And
then he laughed, laughed as he had not for years.

Odessa awakened late again, nothing but black at her window and a
low-burning lamp in the corner.

"Oh, Odessa," came a voice beside her. "I'm so glad you are
awake. I had no idea a person could sleep so long."

Odessa turned and studied her sister beside her. "Why are you
here?" She moved again and for the first time recognized the pull
of the bandages. Wearily, she raised a hand to her face and touched
them. "What happened?"

"You fell-scared us all to death," Moira said, her tone moving
from care to complaint.

"Didn't intend to," she said. Every word scraped out of her throat
and out through parched lips as her memory of the event returned.
"May I have a sip of water?"

"Of course." Moira stepped toward the bedside table and poured
from a sweating pitcher into a pewter mug marked with the St. Clair
"S" on the side. "I wouldn't hear of them leaving any more glass
near you," she said with a smile, "and the tin mugs simply won't do.
I unpacked a few of our trunks. I knew you loved those mugs." She
wrapped an arm behind Odessas neck and helped her take a sip, then
another. Never had water tasted so good to her. It tasted of home.

"Ah. Bless you," Odessa said, leaning back into her pillow. "It's as
if I haven't had a drink in years."

"Air's so dry here, I can't get enough. I imagine it's even more
difficult on you."

Odessa glanced at her. Moira always preferred to steer clear of
Odessa when she was in her "weakened state."

"Where's Nic?"

"Nic?" Moira asked, covering her mouth as she yawned. "Aren't I
enough? I thought you'd be happy with your baby sister here."

Odessa sighed and closed her eyes. She struggled to make sense
of her memories, of what had transpired. She'd been on her feet,
intent on something ...

A low snore sounded from the corner of the room. Odessa lifted
her head from the pillow and gazed over at her sister. Moira was fast
asleep in the rocker.

"You have to let me out!" Dominic yelled.

Could no one hear him? He shouted until his throat was sore.

He pulled back and forth as if he could pry the bars from their
welded edge at top and bottom, then rested his forehead against the
cool bars of the jail cell. His captors refused to even respond anymore.
His fingers, stiff and sore from the fistfight, closed around the bars
and he squeezed as if he could pinch them apart and free himself.

He had to get out ... Odessa, alone in the sanatorium ... Moira,
all alone in the hotel ... What would Father say?

Dominic turned and sighed heavily, collapsing onto the stiff cot
mattress stuffed with old hay, and put his face in his hands. The
sheriff had refused to give him more than a clean bucket of water
and a rag to address his wounds. But Nic wasn't surprised. He'd been treated worse in Philadelphia. There, the law had come in and given
him a second beating, saying it was "for his own good," thinking they
could convince the dandy to stay on his side of the tracks.

But in Philadelphia, Father had always come and bailed him out.