Open Country (3 page)

Charlie continued to stare out the window, a wall of silence between them.

With a sense of defeat, Molly looked down to see that her hands had curled into tight fists. With effort, she opened them, forcing her fingers to straighten one by one until they lay flat against her thighs. At least she had control over her fingers, she thought wryly, even though everything else in her life seemed to be spinning into chaos.

A distant voice rose. More shouts, then footsteps pounded overhead as someone raced across the roof of the passenger car toward the rear. A moment later, metal squealed on metal so loudly the children covered their ears. The brakes abruptly took hold, throwing the car into such a violent lurch Charlie fell against the window frame and Penny almost tumbled off the seat before Molly caught her.

Suddenly the train began bucking like a wild thing. A woman screamed. Men’s voices rose in alarm. The screech of metal grew deafening, and acrid smoke seeped through the rear doors from beneath the back platform where the brakes were.

“What’s happening?” Charlie cried, clinging to the armrests as the car rocked and shuddered.

“I don’t know,” Molly shouted over Penny’s wails. “Hold on!”

Another lurch threw Penny out of her arms and onto the floor. Molly reached for her and was almost knocked to her knees when a falling passenger slammed into her shoulder.

“Penny!” Molly shouted, scrabbling for a handhold, terrified the child would be trampled or smothered. But before she could reach her, big hands scooped the shrieking child from the tangle of passengers and thrust her into Molly’s arms. A flash of dark brown eyes, then the bearded man stumbled over thrashing bodies and charged into the smoke billowing at the back landing. The car rocked so hard windows broke and valises flew from the overhead racks. The screams and shouts and noise of the squealing brakes was deafening. Then with a crack as loud as a gunshot, something tore loose from the undercarriage at the rear. Feet braced against the seat in front of her, her arms wrapped tightly around the wailing children, Molly looked back out the shattered rear window to see the last three cars of the train topple off the tracks in a thunderous roar of splintering wood. Immediately their car shot forward so violently her head cracked against the backrest, before their coach rammed into the car in front of it, and shuddered to a stop.

Dizzy from the blow to her head, Molly ran trembling hands over the terrified children. “Are you hurt? Are you all right?” Charlie nodded and swiped a sleeve at a small smear of blood on his chin. Penny tearfully held up her arm, showing a scrape on her elbow. “I’ll tend that as soon as we get off,” Molly assured her, so relieved her voice wobbled. “Hold tight onto my hands.” Working their way through the chaos of shaken passengers milling about in the smoke, Molly managed to keep a grip on the children and get them out of the car. By then, men had beaten back the flames where the brakes had caught fire beneath the rear platform, and other men were pawing through the wreckage of the baggage car, looking for survivors. Once she made certain the children were unharmed, Molly settled them at a safe distance from the wreckage, then went back to help where she could.

Most of the injuries were relatively minor—bruises, scrapes, a few broken bones and cuts from flying glass. But three people were missing, and it took an hour for the men digging through the rubble to find them. Both the conductor and a brakeman were dead. The third man was barely alive. The bearded man.

An hour later, after loading the dead, the injured, and the rest of the passengers into the less damaged of the two passengers cars, the train continued on, finally limping into El Paso several hours later.

Luckily, word of the catastrophe had already reached town, and a railroad representative named Harkness, the local physician—a gaunt man with a dark patch over one eye—and several townspeople led by a Reverend Beckworth and his wife, Effie, were waiting at the depot to meet them. While the Beckworths herded the battered passengers to their nearby church, and the undertaker carted off the dead men, the physician, Dr. Murray, had the injured man carried directly to his infirmary on Front Street.

“Not that I can do him any good,” Molly overheard him say to the nervous railroad representative. “Poor bastard will probably be dead by nightfall.”

“Christ.” Harkness wiped a handkerchief over his sweating brow as he studied a column of figures in a small tablet. “This will cost the railroad a goddamn fortune. Two already dead, and another on the way. That’s three hundred each in death payments to their families. And I haven’t even added up the cost of repairs or what we’ll have to settle on the injured. Christ.”

After assuring the Beckworths he would come to the church as soon as he had finished with the bearded man at the infirmary, Dr. Murray hurried down the street, leaving Harkness muttering and scratching numbers into his book.

Molly and the children followed the other passengers to the church. Again, she helped where she could. As she stitched and bandaged, Harkness’s words kept circling in her mind. Three hundred. Not much for a life, but enough for a new start. A widow could live a long time on three hundred dollars.

As soon as the doctor came into the church, Molly settled the children in the rectory under Effie Beckworth’s watchful eye, and ducked out the back door.

An idea had come to her—a despicable idea—but she was desperate. And if she had to do something despicable to keep the children safe, she gladly would.

Unless she was too late and the bearded man was already dead.

She found Dr. Murray’s infirmary easily enough. After slipping through the side door, she paused in the shadowed hallway, listening. Outside, the chaos continued—dogs barking, men shouting, the clang of the fire bell. But inside, all was quiet. She started down the hall, checking doors as she went.

The doctor’s living quarters were on one side of the house while the infirmary rooms opened along a long hall heading toward the back. Praying Dr. Murray would remain at the church awhile longer, Molly moved silently toward the medical rooms in the rear.

The familiar odors of unguents and balms and chemical solutions wafted over her, pulling her backward in time. For a moment she thought she heard Papa’s voice reassuring a patient then realized it was a groan coming from one of the two rooms at the end of the hall. The door on the right was closed. The one on the left stood open.

She peered inside.

It was deserted and dark, the single window shaded by a thin curtain. A desk faced the door. Two chairs stood before it, their slatted backs at rigid attention as if braced for bad news. Against one wall stood an examination table partially hidden by a privacy screen; against the other, an overflowing bookcase.

Not the room she sought.

She moved to the door across the hall. As she neared, she heard a rhythmic “shushing” sound, which she recognized as labored breathing.

She cracked open the door.

Afternoon sunshine reflected off the glass-fronted cabinet on the east wall, the shelves of which held medical paraphernalia and varying sizes of brown medicine bottles with glass stoppers and white labels. In the corner beside it stood a straight chair next to a spindly wooden stand with a chipped washbowl on top and a basket of soiled towels below. Perpendicular to the back wall and separated by a small cabinet with a lamp were two cots.

One was empty.

In the other lay the man the doctor said was dying—the man who could save her and the children. The bearded man. Her heart pounding so hard she could hear the rush of arterial blood past her ears, Molly approached his bed.

Dr. Murray had done a halfway job of tending the obvious injuries. Bandaged and wrapped, but no stitching, and the patient still wore his trousers and boots. Leaning over the bed, Molly quickly assessed his condition.

He appeared to be unconscious. Beneath the beard, his face was swollen and bruised. A bloody bandage, held in place by wide gauze strips, covered the left side of his head. A deep laceration, she guessed. Or possibly a concussion, if not a fracture of the skull. Gauze strips also swathed his bare chest, tufts of dark hair poking through the stretched cloth. His shallow breathing indicated a rib injury, but the absence of a pink froth on his lips told her his lungs hadn’t been punctured. More bandages covered his left forearm. Judging by the distorted shape and the amount of blood that had soaked through the wrappings, he probably had a compound fracture. The hand below it was swollen and discolored. She saw no wedding band or evidence he had worn one recently.

Good. It would only complicate matters if he had a wife somewhere.

The thought shamed her. She pushed it aside, and trying to ignore the smell of blood and sweat and chemical compounds, she bent over him, needing to look into the face of the man she was about to deceive in the vilest way.

Seeing him up close, she realized that without all the hair he might have been handsome, although it was difficult to be certain with all the swelling and bruising. Dark brows, a wide, stern mouth, a strong nose marred by a small lump of scar tissue along the bridge that indicated a long-healed break. His eyes were closed beneath dark lashes spiky with dried blood, but she remembered they were brown.

She felt a shiver of unease. She didn’t know if he was aware of her or not . . . if he was staring back at her through those slitted eyes or not. The thought made her heartbeat quicken.

Taking a step back, she let her gaze drift down the long length of his body.

He was bigger than she had thought—dwarfing the cot, his booted feet extending well beyond the low foot rail. The boots were well made, with rounded toes and sloped heels. A horseman’s boots. Over denim trousers, he wore a tooled leather belt with a silver buckle. On his right hip, facing forward, hung an empty holster with back-to-back R’s burned into it like a brand.

Right-handed. Also good. If he lost his left arm, he could still function.

The absurdity of that caught her unaware, and a sound escaped her throat. Almost a laugh, but not quite. The sound of hysteria. She pressed fingertips to her lips to stifle it. The doctor said he was dying. What would it matter if he left this world with one arm, or two?

The thought bounced through her mind, spinning out other thoughts like stones cast from beneath a racing wheel.

What if he woke up and realized what she’d done? He was a powerful man, strong enough to have lived this long despite his injuries. What if
—

Furious that she had let her emotions get away from her, Molly pressed a hand against her churning stomach and struggled to bring the panic under control. He was dying. He probably wouldn’t last the night. He would never know.

He. He who?

What had the conductor called him? Wilkes? Weller? She had to know. She couldn’t do this without at least knowing the poor man’s name—who he was, how he lived, where he was going.

With his heavy shoulders and muscular arms, he had the look of a man more accustomed to the plow than a horse. But those weren’t a farmer’s boots, and a farmer rarely wore a gun on his belt. Maybe he was just another anonymous cowboy. She hoped so. She hoped he was a loner with no home, no family, no one to come around asking questions.

Was he kind? Was he loved? Would he be mourned?

Sickened by the thought of what she was about to do to this innocent man—the same man who had saved Penny from being trampled on the train—Molly swallowed hard against the sudden thickness in her throat. Gently she brushed a lock of blood-crusted hair from his bandaged forehead. He didn’t appear much older than she. Early thirties. Too young to die.

Another absurd thought. She had seen enough death to know the young died as easily as the old, and fairness had nothing to do with it. Perhaps she’d lost the capacity for grief. She didn’t know. She didn’t care. All that was important was that she get enough money to keep her and the children moving west.

Money this man’s death would provide.

She rested her palm against his bare shoulder, needing to feel his skin against her own, as if that might ease the guilt that clawed like a beast in her stomach.

He fought hard. She felt it in the tremors of his sturdy body, saw it in the strain of muscles in his neck as he struggled to inhale against the restrictive bandages. His quick, gasping breaths seemed loud in the small room, and hearing them made her throat ache in sympathy. Feeling an unaccountable sadness at the waste of another life, she bent down to whisper into his ear. “Forgive me. There’s no other way.”

“What are you doing in here?” said a voice from the other side of the room.

Startled, she jerked upright.

Dr. Murray scowled at her from the doorway as he dried his hands on a piece of toweling. Gaunt and middle-aged, he wore a black leather patch over his right eye and had less hair on his head than on his chin, which was mostly gray stubble. He looked irritated. “What do you want?” he demanded, the words slightly slurred, as if he’d been drinking spirits or had just awakened from a deep sleep.

“Do you know . . .” She made a vague gesture toward the patient. “I couldn’t tell . . . he’s so . . . there’s so much swelling. Do you know his name?”

The doctor tossed the cloth into the basket of soiled towels beneath the washstand then with careful deliberation rolled down his sleeves as he walked toward her. His wrists were slim, his hands narrow and long-fingered with short, trimmed nails. An artist’s hands, but cleaner. “Harkness called him Wilkins,” he said, stopping beside her. “Hank. Or maybe Henry. I don’t remember.”

She was relieved Dr. Murray didn’t smell of whiskey, but was concerned about his slow movements and slurred speech. Was he ill?

“I remember you from the church,” he said, studying her. “You helped.”