Wanton Angel (30 page)

Webb groaned and stirred a little on the ink-sopped floor, but he did not open his eyes.

Just then, the men from the party burst into the small office, swearing in raucous undertones and crowding around. One of them was Doc Cowan, and Eli rose and moved aside to give the physician room.

Bonnie remained where she was, only half conscious of the townsmen, the doctor and even Eli. Webb and his dreams and hopes were all that mattered to her then—her grief was awesome—and she wondered distractedly if she did not love this man after all.

An elderly fellow, somewhat testy but very competent, Doc Cowan crouched to examine Webb, running his hands along his rib cage, checking his arms and legs for fractures.

“How bad is it?” one of the crowd of men wanted to know.

“Bad enough that we’ll lose him if we aren’t careful,” the doctor answered. His eyes were not on his patient, but on Bonnie’s face. “Webb’s going to need a lot of care.”

“Bring him to my place,” she said, her voice little more than a whispery croak.

“It was my understanding,” the doctor replied kindly, “that Webb lived over at Earline’s.”

“I don’t want him there,” Bonnie argued, rising awkwardly to her feet. She’d spoiled her last New York dress—splotched now with Webb’s blood and ink and torn as well—and maybe that was fitting. That part of her life was over and done with, wasn’t it? She’d tried to hold onto it, by dallying with Eli McKutchen, but the truth was that she
didn’t belong in that world anymore. Maybe she never had. “Bring Webb to the store.”

She turned to leave, pressing her way through the throng of muttering men, gasping river-scented air when she reached the sidewalk. For a moment, she clung to a hitching rail with both hands, fearing that she would faint.

“Bonnie.”

She knew the voice belonged to Eli, that he was standing beside her, but she could not look at him. It took all the strength she could muster just to keep from swooning dead away. “It’s because of you,” she said. “It’s because you neglected the situation here for so long. If Webb hadn’t taken your part—”

Eli’s words were ragged, defeated ones. “Bonnie, don’t.”

At last Bonnie felt strong enough to let go of the hitching rail and stand unaided. Behind her, inside the ransacked office, she heard voices. “Easy there—that’s it—”

“Help them, Eli,” she said, without looking at the man beside her. “Help them bring Webb home.”

Eli lingered for a moment, then turned away and walked back inside the newspaper office. Bonnie set her course toward the store and somehow she reached it before Doc Cowan and the other men did. She was waiting, dry-eyed, when they brought Webb to her door in the bed of a wagon, his long frame carefully balanced on an enormous slab of wood.

Eli and several other men carried the unconscious editor and publisher of the
Northridge News
through the quiet store, up the stairs and into Bonnie’s apartment. She led them into her bedroom, her eyes daring any one of them, including Eli McKutchen, to comment. No one took the challenge.

At Doc Cowan’s order, they placed Webb, slab and all, on Bonnie’s bed. He moaned softly and then quieted as Bonnie covered him with a warm blanket.

“Tell me how to take care of him,” she said, addressing the doctor.

“First thing you can do, missy,” the physician immediately responded, “is get yourself out of here so I can bind Webb’s rib cage and tend to some of these cuts of his. Eli, you stay right here and help me.”

“I want to help!” Bonnie protested.

Doc Cowan’s look was a quelling one. “I don’t care what you want, young woman. Mind what I said and take yourself out of here.”

“But—”

“Now!” barked the doctor.

Flushed, but still buoyed by her dignity, Bonnie went out. The men who had helped bring Webb upstairs were gone.

Making a great clatter to show her indignation at being ordered out of her own bedroom, Bonnie pumped water into a kettle and set it on the stove to boil. She rattled the stove lids as she replaced them after starting a fire inside, and she muttered words that wouldn’t have been acceptable even in Patch Town.

She reached for the fat yellow teapot and, when she took it in her hands, she remembered how near she’d come to clouting Webb over the head with it. A new crop of tears spilled down her face but she set the teapot down with a thump and dried her eyes with a dish towel snatched from its peg.

Eli’s voice made her backbone grow rigid, and she pulled in a deep, sniffly breath. “The doctor needs cloth for the bindings. A sheet or something.”

Bonnie kept her back to Eli. “There are linens in the bottom drawer of my bureau,” she said.

Eli didn’t answer, merely went back to the bedroom, leaving Bonnie to stand helpless in the middle of her kitchen, wishing sorely that she’d married Webb when she had the chance. Things might have been different if only she hadn’t wasted so much time fretting about love.

She thought of the pleasures she’d taken in Eli McKutchen’s bed and winced. Perhaps the wages of her sin would be death. Webb’s death.

T
HE RAIN BEGAN
sometime during the night, arriving too late to spoil Genoa’s party. It hammered at the rooftops and windows of Northridge and crackled like fire upon the angry, swirling surface of the river.

Sitting beside the bed where Webb lay, still unconscious, Bonnie paid no mind to the torrential storm. The cup of tea Katie had brought to her earlier was still in her hands, cold and untouched.

She started a little as Katie pried the cup from her grip and confided, “Lord, ma’am, do you hear that rain? I declare, it’s coming down hard enough to frighten Noah himself.”

Bonnie looked up questioningly. “Katie?”

The young woman touched Bonnie’s forehead with a cool hand. “And who else would it be?” she countered, in a voice that was, for all its brightness, full of concern.

Katie, wearing a rumpled flannel wrapper of light blue, left the room with Bonnie’s cup. After a long time, she returned with fresh tea.

Thrusting the cup into Bonnie’s hands, she ordered, “This time, drink up.”

Bonnie took a cautious sip, her eyes fastened on Webb’s
waxy, misshapen face. “Look what we’ve done to him,” she said.

“What ‘we’ve done,’ ma’am?” Katie challenged in a quiet voice, as she sat down on the floor beside Bonnie’s chair. “It was those union men that did this, if you ask me. The whole town thinks so.”

Bonnie couldn’t bear to explain, couldn’t bear to think. “Go back to bed, Katie. It must be late.”

“It is late,” Katie responded but she didn’t move. “Have another sip of that tea.”

Obediently Bonnie lifted the cup to her lips and drank. “It’s raining,” she remarked.

Katie made a wry sound. “Indeed it is. Every able-bodied man in Northridge is down at the river, stacking sandbags.”

At last, Bonnie came out of her stuporous reverie. Her eyes flew to Katie’s pale face. “What?”

“Patch Town’s going to go if they can’t hold back the water, along with the railroad depot and the Brass Eagle and”—she paused, nodding toward Webb—”Mr. Hutcheson’s newspaper office, too.”

Bonnie’s heart hammered and the teacup rattled dangerously in her hands. Quickly she set it aside on the nightstand. She rose from her chair and rushed to the window, but she could see nothing, for it was dark out and the glass was sheeted with rain.

The sound of the storm was awful: It roared like some great beast, it battered the walls and the roof and the windows of the mercantile like a barrage of bullets.

Bonnie paused to lodge a formal protest with God before turning back toward Katie. “Sandbags won’t hold back that river,” she said.

Katie gave her a patient look. “The men have got to try, don’t they? Why, even those union devils are helping!”

“How do you know so much?” Bonnie asked suspiciously. She wasn’t looking at Katie as she spoke, she was bending over the bed, smoothing back Webb’s sweat-dampened hair and pulling the covers up to his chin. “You haven’t been to the river, have you?”

“Mr. Seth Callahan was here a while ago, and he told me.”

“Seth? What did he want?”

Katie shrugged. “I guess Mr. McKutchen sent him to make sure that we were all right, though it was Rose he asked after.”

Bonnie straightened. She could see Eli stacking sandbags in the driving rain as clearly as if she’d been standing on the banks of the Columbia herself, hear him shouting at Seth to make sure that his daughter was safe.

The crib was gone, and Bonnie looked wildly about her. “Rose—”

Katie stemmed Bonnie’s rising panic. “She’s in my room, ma’am, sleeping like a little lamb. Don’t you remember me moving her bed, after Miss Genoa brought us home?”

Bonnie did not remember, and that was unsettling. She put both her hands to her face for a moment, overwhelmed by the horrors of the day.

“Let me look after Mr. Hutcheson for a while, ma’am,” Katie said quietly. “You go and crawl into my bed.”

“I would like to look in on Rose,” Bonnie said, sounding witless even to herself. She wandered into the tiny room next to hers and lingered long at the side of her daughter’s crib. A string of thoughts and pictures moved, ragtag, through her head, but she couldn’t catch hold of even one. Katie’s narrow bed looked warm, and she slid beneath the covers, intending to rest for just a few minutes.

When she awakened, it was morning. The dark of night had gone, but the rain remained, lashing viciously at the sturdy buildings of Northridge.

Bonnie made sure that Rose was covered and then crawled to the end of Katie’s bed to look out the small window. The world was gray, barely visible for the downpour, and there was a good six inches of standing water in the street, lapping in muddy waves at the steps of the Pompeii Playhouse.

With a guilty start, Bonnie remembered Webb and bounded off the bed, still wearing yesterday’s dress. She hurried across the narrow hall to her own room, one hand to her throat.

Webb appeared to be sleeping normally, and Katie was curled up in the chair Bonnie had occupied during the night, her dark hair a tumble of ebony over the blue flannel of her wrapper.

Bonnie didn’t waken her. She found fresh clothes for herself and went back to Katie’s room to change. Returning to her bedroom, she unpinned her hopelessly mussed hair and gave it a quick brushing before pinning it up again in a loose arrangement that fluffed around her face.

“Katie,” she whispered, taking her friend by the shoulder and shaking her gently. “Katie!”

Katie opened sleepy eyes and focused them on Bonnie’s face with comical effort. “Yes, ma’am?”

“I want you to look after Rose and Mr. Hutcheson while I go out. I’ll not be away long.”

“Out?” Katie’s blue eyes rounded. “But, ma’am, you can’t go out in this weather—”

“What I can’t bear to do is sit here waiting for news,” Bonnie answered briskly. “Just do as I say, Katie.”

The girl looked at Webb as though he might turn into a beast before her very eyes. “Suppose Mr. Hutcheson has a fit or something?”

“Webb won’t have a fit, Katie. But he’ll probably be in severe pain.” She lifted the brown bottle of medicine Dr. Cowan had left behind and then set it down again on the bedside table. “Give him some of this if he wakes up before I get back.”

Katie cast one frantic glance toward the window, where the rain pounded as if to break through the glass. “Please, don’t go!” she whispered, drawing up her knees and wrapping both arms around them. “A body could drown in a storm like this!”

“You’re safe here, Katie.”

“It isn’t me I’m worried about!”

Bonnie ignored the girl and went downstairs, helping herself to a pair of galoshes from one of the shelves. There was half an inch of water on the floorboards, and the rain was still seeping in through the space under the doors.

Shivering a little, Bonnie wondered if she’d spoken too soon. Perhaps Rose and Katie and Webb weren’t safe after all, even though the store was on high ground.

She found her heaviest cloak, a plaid woolen with a hood, and put it on. Then, after drawing one deep breath in order to boost her courage, Bonnie opened the door and dashed out into the onslaught.

The rain battered Bonnie, blinding her so that she navigated the sidewalk almost by memory alone. She ran one hand along the front wall of the Union Hotel as she passed it, the wind buffeting away her breath and flinging water into her eyes.

She rounded the corner and gave a cry of horror, clutching a street lamp for support. The Columbia had swallowed Patch Town entirely, and only the upper story of the Brass Eagle Saloon and Ballroom was visible. In the gloom Bonnie saw that there were people marooned atop Forbes’s roof. Webb’s newspaper office and the railroad depot were under water. In fact, the muddy green river had climbed so high that men were launching rowboats from the porch of Earline Kalb’s rooming house.

Still clinging to the cold iron pole of the street lamp, Bonnie squinted against the rain, watching as the rowboats moved toward the Brass Eagle. The people on the roof of the saloon waved and shouted.

By that time Bonnie was wet to the skin, but she made her way down the hill anyway, because something within her had to know who was lost and who was accounted for. Though she didn’t acknowledge the fact, she needed to know that Eli McKutchen fell into the latter group and not the former.

The violent wind fought her every step of the way, making it as difficult to descend the hill as it would have been to climb the mountain looming above the town. Still Bonnie pressed on until she reached Earline’s porch.

Earline was there, but she spared barely a glance for Bonnie. She was watching the people stranded on the roof of the saloon and the boats that carried their rescuers. Bonnie strained to see through the torrent of rain and spotted Eli in one of the boats, his arms and shoulders moving in a powerful rhythm as he wielded the oars.

One of Bonnie’s worst fears, one she hadn’t consciously acknowledged, was put to rest, and the relief was so great that she sagged against the wall of Earline’s building, her hand to her heart.

“How many have been lost?” she asked, shouting to be heard over the storm. Here, near the river, the din was greater.