Waiting for Morning (The Brides Of Last Chance Ranch Series) (8 page)

Robert Stackman rode his gelding beside her roan. He was both her banker and friend, but he would be more if she would let him. Each year on her birthday he proposed marriage; each year she turned him down.

The ranch couldn’t survive such a partnership. Robert was too practical, too money-oriented. He understood finances, not cattle. To him, profits were much more important than legacies. He never sat up all night nursing a horse or delivering a calf. He knew nothing about the soul of a ranch or its heart.

She knew from painful experience that such differences would ruin a marriage and for this reason she chose to settle for friendship— nothing more. But it was a friendship she deeply valued.

“What did I tell you?” she said.

The grazing cattle by her windmill were not her own. She dug the wells and other cattlemen reaped the benefits. The sheer number of beeves from neighboring ranches worried her. An even greater concern was the eastern investor who wanted to finance a cattle company in the area. The man knew nothing about cattle and even less about conserving land.

Robert’s horse whickered and pawed the ground. “Whoa, boy.” A firm square jaw, crinkly blue eyes, and proud turn of head hinted at the good-looking man he must have been in his youth. At age sixty-two he was now more distinguished than handsome and his lush black hair had long since turned silver.

“I agree, it’s a problem,” he said.

“And it’s about to get worse.”

She thought she’d seen and done it all, but this latest onslaught of ranch companies and overgrazed ranges was something new. Three and four times the number of cattle than an acre could sustain had flooded the area in recent months. So far there had been no problems because of the record amount of rain in the past year, but sure as the day was long, another drought was around the corner. Less rain meant less vegetation, resulting in thinner cattle and lower market prices.

She narrowed her eyes. “If Mr. Hamshank has his way, the land
won’t be good for anything.” For two cents she would gladly tell the man what he could do with his cattle company.

“I believe his name is Mr. Hampshire,” Robert said.

“Hamshank, Hampshire, what difference does it make? The man’s an idiot.” Eleanor tried not to let her anger get the best of her, but how could she not?

It wasn’t just a ranch, it was her life—had been for more than forty years ever since her family’s wagon broke down on this very spot on the way to the California gold mines.

“Did I ever tell you about the Englishman?” she asked.

“The one your mother nursed back to health and who returned the favor with a heifer?”

She nodded. Her mother had considered that young cow her
last chance
to save her family from poverty’s door. From those humble beginnings grew one of the largest and most successful cattle ranches in all of Arizona Territory.

“That same Englishman also gave us a book of Shakespeare. I never met an Englishman who didn’t carry the bard with him, did you?”

Robert shrugged. “What a pity your mother didn’t start a library rather than a cattle ranch. It would have saved you a lot of heartache.”

She laughed. Only Robert would think books preferable to cattle. She grew serious again. “Something has to be done to stop Hampshire,” she said. The question was what?

“You can’t stop progress, Eleanor.”

“Progress? You call this progress? The railroad was progress.” Before the rails arrived, she had been forced to drive her cattle all the way to Kansas. “The telegram was progress. This . . . this is madness.”

“I told you what I think, Eleanor. I think you should sell.”

“You know I can’t do that, Robert.” If only her daughter had lived. It had been more than thirty years since little Rebecca died at the age of five, but the least memory of her still hurt. If anything, it hurt even more with each passing year. Not only had she buried a daughter but very possibly the future of her ranch and certainly her family’s legacy.

“I could get you a fair price. That is, if we act now,” Robert said. “I know someone who might be interested in the ranch house.”

“And for good reason,” she snapped. The ranch house was fairly new, built after the, ’87 earthquake and subsequent fire destroyed the old ranch house and most of the outbuildings.

“We can subdivide the rest of the land,” he added.

“I’m not selling and I’m certainly not dividing the land.”

Robert was too much of a gentleman to show impatience or exasperation, but she sensed his disapproval. “You said it yourself,” he reminded her. “Something must be done. I’m offering you the most practical solutions.”

“You’re offering no solutions at all.” What she needed was fresh blood and new ideas to meet the challenges the ranch now faced. She had good men working for her, but day-to-day chores consumed their time and energy. What she lacked was someone with vision and foresight, someone who could help her take the ranch into the twentieth century. So far none of the women who’d answered her advertisement had worked out and it was too soon to know if Molly would.

“So what do you plan to do?” he asked.

“Fight them,” she said. “I asked my lawyer to arrange a meeting with Mr. Hampshire. I hope you’ll be there.”

He arched an eyebrow. “What do you expect to accomplish? To talk him out of it, just like that?”

“I know it won’t be easy.”

“An understatement if I ever heard one.” He stroked his goatee. “You can’t keep running this ranch forever,” he said. “Even Doc Masterson had the good sense to retire.”

Eleanor gripped the bridle reins tighter. Nothing irritated her more than a reminder of her advancing years. “You know I’m trying to find someone to take over.”

No doubt this latest woman, Molly, would soon go the way of the others. Eleanor sighed. She had to be out of her mind to let a dance hall girl and her brother hang around even for a short while. She should have sent them back to town the day they arrived. If only the boy didn’t have so much trouble breathing.

“Each one who has applied has been progressively worse,” he said.

“I had high hopes for Kate Tenney.” Had indeed been ready to sign papers making her the official heiress. If only the girl hadn’t fallen for the town smithy. Eleanor shook her head just thinking about it. Hard to believe that a woman as smart as Kate would settle for something as dull as marriage.

Eleanor shifted in her saddle. It would take years to train her replacement. As Robert liked to remind her, at age sixty-six she no longer had time on her side.

Could this latest girl with her ill-conceived clothing, brassy demeanor, and sickly brother be her last chance to save the ranch? The very thought made her head spin.

As if to concur with her doubts, a steer let out a bellow followed by a loud mournful moo that sounded like an emphatic
no.

My thoughts exactly.

Chapter 8

M
olly was breathless with excitement and even finding Donny half off the bed earlier had failed to quell her enthusiasm.

Now he sat wolfing down his midday meal, his plate piled high with meat, potatoes, and gravy. It wasn’t a meal—it was a feast.

He preferred to take his meals in his room rather than the formal dining room. Molly suspected he felt intimidated by Miss Walker, but learning to live with the brusque ranch owner was a small price to pay for a chance to live in such a wondrous place.

“Oh, Donny, I just know this is going to work out.” She loved working with the horses and couldn’t believe how quickly the morning had flown by. “Did you ever imagine a finer home?”

Donny’s fork stilled. “Does this mean I’ll never have to go to an insane asylum?” Such institutions housed not only mental patients but the crippled and deformed.

Molly sat on the bed and stared him straight in the eye. “We’ve already discussed this.”

“But Dr. Weinberg said—”

“I don’t care what that bag of wind said. As long as I have a
breath left in me, you will never have to live in that horrid place.” She squeezed his hand. “I mean that, Donny.”

He studied her with eyes far too old for his years. “What if you get married and your husband hates me and—”

“Donny, if I stay here I can’t get married.”

He frowned. “Why not?”

“I’ll have to sign a document forbidding it. It’s one of Miss Walker’s stipulations. So you see? You have nothing to worry about. It’s you and me together, forever. Now eat up.” She glanced at the mechanical clock. “Oh no!” She was already ten minutes late getting back to work. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be back in two hours. I promise!”

With that she dashed from the room, hoping Brodie hadn’t noticed the time.

Whenever Caleb drove through town, curious bystanders gawked at him. Today was no different. The moment he rumbled down Main Street in his horseless buggy, men, women, and children poured out of stores and businesses to get a better look at his amazing gasoline machine. Indeed, they almost seemed to crawl out from under the boardwalk.

As if enjoying the attention, Bertha backfired—not once but twice. The loud booms echoed through the town like cannon fire.

The doctor’s office was situated on Main between the Silver Moon Saloon and the Cactus Patch Gazette, directly across from the hotel. The only sign left of its former tenant was the neatly printed wording on the door that read
Dr. Masterson
.

The patient room was furnished with a leather examination table, sink, water pump, and a cabinet filled with carefully marked
vials. Saws, knives, scalpels, scissors, clamps, and other surgical tools were arranged neatly on a tray. The W. Watson and Sons compound microscope occupied a metal table.

The room had two doors, one leading to the waiting room and one leading to a small office in back. The office had a desk and two chairs and an impressive library filled with medical books and periodicals.

Caleb sat at the desk, the swivel chair squeaking under his weight, and glanced at his newly hung diploma on the wall. He couldn’t remember when he didn’t want to be a doctor, and what better time than now? The medical profession was just beginning to emerge from the dark ages.

Most people called the West the new frontier, but medicine was the
true
frontier. With the discovery that germs caused disease, and the subsequent development of vaccinations for cholera and diphtheria, Caleb envisioned the day that disease would be a thing of the past.

But that wasn’t all. Recently he’d read an article about a new form of photography that could penetrate flesh and expose bones to the human eye. It was hard to imagine anything so amazing.

It wasn’t that long ago that a medical diploma could be obtained with only three months’ schooling and no clinical experience. It was only six years ago that the National Association of Medical Colleges officially established a three-year curriculum and clinical training requirements. Unfortunately, poor schools still existed and it was almost impossible for a patient to know if a doctor had received proper training. The field was still filled with quacks and charlatans who continued to spread their ignorance and harm people’s lives.

Caleb had attended Harvard Medical School, one of the best schools of medicine in the country. Even so, he felt ill-equipped to
take on the responsibility of providing medical care for an entire town. Medical knowledge had doubled since the War Between the States, but the human body, for the most part, remained a mystery. Some things, like blood transfusions, were still hit and miss. Caleb was convinced there were more elements in blood not yet discovered or understood.

The bells on the front door jingled, disturbing his reverie. Magic woke from his nap and looked up as if to say
, Well, what are you waiting for?

Caleb rose, smoothed his hair down, and stepped into the waiting room. A woman and a boy of about five or six sat waiting for him.

“Good morning,” he said. “I’m Dr. Fairbanks.”

“I’m Mrs. Trotter and this is my son Jimmy. You must be the new doctor.”

“Yes, I am.”

She was a thin, bird-like woman with work-hardened hands. The bags under her hazel eyes made her look older than her years, which he guessed was somewhere in the mid- to late thirties.