Texan's Touch

THIRTEEN

NICHOLE FOLLOWED NANCE Edward through a tiny crawl space and into the attic. The musty air danced in the light from dirty windows. Spiderwebs hung as thick as drapes between rafters. Voices drifted from below in muffled rumblings of conversation.

During the week Nichole had been hiding in the study, Nance decided she was his playmate. He sneaked into her room every afternoon when his chores were done and told her of all the happenings in the house. He seemed to hear every conversation, though many he was too little to understand. Nichole had nicknamed him General Ears.

With his help as lookout, Nichole had found ways to move around the house, otherwise she would have gone crazy in the little study. Most of her time was spent taking care of Dancing. No one came for the young prostitute, so Dancing took up residence in Adam’s examining room. Fever kept her in its grip. Each day she seemed weaker, not better, though Adam did all he could.

“You sure you can make it, miss?” Nance pulled Nichole from her worries as he slowed his climb into the attic and looked over his shoulder.

“I can make it,” Nichole answered. “Lead the way, General Ears.”

The little boy moved into a dusty space between the rafters. “It ain’t really an attic.” He straddled one of the beams. “There’s not enough room to store much up here. Mom says it wouldn’t be worth the trouble to try to shove it through the opening, so she just uses the room below for storage.”

Nichole found a level spot that looked sturdy enough to hold her weight. She sat, crossing her legs underneath her. This wasn’t much of an adventure, but at least it was a change. Plus Nance was showing her one of his secrets, and that was important to him. He was a boy who loved secrets as other boys love fishing.

“My dad told me,” Ears whispered, “that if I was ever real afraid I was to come up here and hide. He said not even the devil could find me here. When my dad and his partner rebuilt the house, they put these and other spaces in the walls like they weren’t there at all. My dad used to say you can never have too many places to tuck things away for safekeeping.”

“It would make a good hiding place.” Nichole looked around. The area was the width between two windows with only a little square tall enough for an adult to stand between the beams.

“But I’ve checked all the openings and passages except the cellar and my dad didn’t leave nothing for me to find.”

“But you found something to hide away yourself,” she whispered. “That’s much more special than something left behind by someone else.”

Nance agreed and leaned closer, loving having someone who would talk to him. “I never showed this to anyone because nobody has the time to listen. Mighta been a waste of time for me to learn to talk.” He smiled. “But you listen, Nick. So I want to show you something.”

He pulled a box from between the boards. “When my dad died, my mother threw his things in the trash to burn. I dug ’em out and brought ’em up here.” He handed the box to her. “I figured I’d hide ’em just in case anyone ever wanted to look.”

Nichole opened the box slowly. A black silk shirt with pearl buttons lay on top, the kind a gambler or dandy would wear. “These were your father’s?”

“Yeah.” Nance smiled. “I don’t know what to do with ’em. My mama says they’re trouble clothes. She said once that my dad thought he was bulletproof in ’em.”

Black trousers unfolded across Nichole’s legs. A belt with a thin silver buckle was laced between the folds.

“Do you think these clothes are magic?” His eyes danced as he rocked on the beam. “Maybe my dad couldn’t be seen in the dark in them. Maybe that’s why he never got caught until the day he didn’t have time to change into them. Maybe they are magic.”

“I don’t know.” Nichole didn’t want to destroy the boy’s daydreams.

“I heard some men talking one night outside the bar, and they said my dad wasn’t no bum of an outlaw. He had class, they said. Dad and his partner never killed nobody.”

He fought back the tears. “When they went to prison, the sheriff came by and told Mama my dad got sick and died. But the men in front of the bar said someone tried to beat where my dad hid his money outa him. He wouldn’t tell and they finally beat him all the way to death. When his partner heard the jailers killed my dad, he went crazy and started fightin’ like a wild man. He broke out of that jail killing maybe six, maybe twenty, men on his way out.”

“Nance, are you sure?”

“Heard ’em talking, I swear. They had no reason to lie. They didn’t know I was listenin’. My dad didn’t die of any fever in a prison… he was killed.”

Nichole wanted to pat his hand, but she knew he didn’t want sympathy. Not this little boy. He needed to believe in his father even if no one else in the world did.

“I think this is a fine outfit.” She moved her hand over the silk. “I bet I could put this on and move through the night like a whisper.”

Nance picked up the idea. “Sure you could. I got a black hat and gloves too. You could go anywhere and no one would see you.”

Nichole laughed at the fun it would be to move about the town. She had all the skill she needed and with these clothes it would be easy. “But where would I go? It wouldn’t be any fun unless I had a mission.”

“We’ll wait for a mission,” Nance whispered. “Maybe we’ll find out who killed my dad and you can go round them all up.” He laughed. “Or maybe you could just walk around making sure nobody’s doing nothing wrong.”

“And we’ll never tell anyone,” Nichole could see the excitement in his eyes. She laughed just thinking of how Adam would react if he knew of such a plan. “We’ll keep it a secret, acting all surprised when we hear about it the next morning.”

Somewhere, far below, they heard Nance’s mother calling his name.

“I got to go,” he whispered. “You wait by the opening and when the coast is clear I’ll signal. I’ll help you make it all the way back to the study.”

“I’ll wait.” Nichole watched him slide through the opening as she folded the clothes and put them back in the box. For years she’d been free, always on the move, living on the land. Now the confines of the house were like bars. Logic told her to stay with Adam and be safe, but she was restless. She liked Adam, he felt right beside her, but she could never live his way of life. Maybe marrying Tyler wasn’t such a bad idea. At least with Tyler she’d be free as a bird.

She waited almost an hour before Nance reappeared. “Everyone’s eating lunch.” He made a swipe across his chest as their secret signal. “All clear.”

Nichole climbed out of the space and moved silently, first down the hall and then the stairs to the first floor. She could hear Bergette in Mrs. Jamison’s room sharing lunch and gossip. The doctor had told her that Mrs. Jamison seemed to thrive on Bergette’s small talk, growing healthier every day since she arrived. Nichole couldn’t understand why. The times she’d eavesdropped, she found Bergette’s conversation reminded her of a colorful bird constantly chirping the same boring tune.

She might not be able to see herself in Adam’s world, but he didn’t belong in Bergette’s.

Turning the corner, she slipped into the back entrance to Adam’s examining room. Dancing was sleeping on a bed by the windows, and Adam stood next to her.

“How is she?” Nichole knew this was a safe room for her because no one except Adam and Sister Cel came in. The only danger lay in crossing the open hallway to his bedroom and study. She’d discovered that with patients in the hall, if she lowered her gaze and walked straight across, no one paid any notice. “Any improvement in her condition?”

Adam shook his head. “Yesterday I thought she was better. But today, I don’t know. The leg is healing and the cuts are all clear of infection, but she’s not fighting. Twice this morning I thought I saw her open her eyes and close them again as if life was too much bother.”

“You want me to sit with her?” Nichole asked.

Adam nodded. He, the nun, and Nichole had been taking shifts for days waiting for Dancing to improve enough to answer them. Adam believed she’d be frightened and would need someone with her. He’d seen men in war wake up screaming, still believing they were in battle. Dancing might react the same.

“You might try talking to her. It couldn’t hurt.” He shrugged.

Nichole touched Adam’s arm as she passed him. The touch was light, but she felt him tense.

Since the night they’d kissed, he had avoided touching her again, but she could see the longing in his glances. She wasn’t sure if the lie about her being engaged to Tyler, or his engagement to Bergette, was stopping him.

“How are your hands?” He lifted her fingers from his arm.

She looked down at the strip of cotton around each of her palms. “Much better.”

He cupped his other hand beneath hers. For a long moment, he held them protectively in his grasp. Since childhood, she’d always thought of herself as big. There were few men she had to look up at, and Wolf said once she was as strong as a man. Yet her hands felt small in Adam’s grasp.

“Do you think you could manage with Dancing this afternoon?” He slowly stepped away from Nichole, looking slightly embarrassed that he’d caressed her hands for so long. “I’ve got a woman just outside of town who is due any time. I need to check on her.”

“Of course,” Nichole answered, knowing that watching Dancing would be no problem. Every few hours they forced a couple of swallows down her. The rest of the time, they mostly just observed.

“Thank you,” he said almost formally as though they were no more than strangers.

“You’re welcome,” she answered, wishing she could talk to him… really talk. Why couldn’t she tell him how she watched him sleep, the few hours he allowed himself to rest each day? How did she ask this polite, kind man to hold her? Why did all her bravery vanish when she thought of making the first move?

He slipped on his jacket and moved through the door leading to his office. Since Dancing had nowhere else to go, Adam’s office now also served as his examining room.

Nichole heard Bergette calling him just before Adam closed the door between the two rooms. Instinctively, she pressed against the wall, out of sight. Moving closer to the door, Nichole listened.

Bergette’s whine was growing very familiar. Like a fire wagon rushing through the night, they usually heard her clanging before they saw her coming into view.

“Adam, aren’t you coming up to lunch? How can it be possible you never have time to sit down to a meal?”

Nichole covered her mouth to keep from giggling. Adam had developed a habit of avoiding Bergette. A few times Nichole had shared her supper with him in the study, because he would rather miss dinner than have to eat with his fiancée. Sister Cel must have anticipated his actions, because Nichole’s tray became fuller.

“I have to go,” Adam answered. “I have a patient to see just out of town.”

“Can’t you let them wait for a few minutes?” Bergette’s song of sorrow drifted through the office door. “Honestly, Adam, don’t I count? Maybe I’m getting sick of your excuses and this town that civilization hasn’t seemed to touch yet. All day you have your work, and at night you have to read. It’s like living upstairs from a ghost.”

“We’ll talk of it later,” Adam said.

Nichole fought down a full laugh. This appeared to be the only conversation Bergette and he ever had. For a man planning to marry, he acted like he feared the pox every time he got near his beloved. She hated his town, his work, and didn’t seem all that fond of him either. And Bergette would probably die of shock if she knew just how many “ghosts” lived below her.

Nichole heard Bergette storm up the stairs in a most unladylike stomp. The front door closed, telling her Adam had gone. Dancing mumbled in her sleep. Nichole turned her attention to helping.

It was twilight when Sister Cel relieved Nichole and still no word from Adam. Both women talked of all the reasons he could be delayed, as they worried.

Dancing drank most of the glass of milk Sister brought her but still didn’t speak to them. She curled up and went back to sleep, crying softly with pain each time she moved.

Sister Cel picked up her mending. Nichole tried to get interested in a book as they waited for Adam’s return. A half hour later, a tapping on the side door made them both jump with alarm.

“Don’t answer it,” Nichole whispered.

“It might be someone needing help,” the nun suggested.

“It might be someone bringing trouble.” Nichole moved into the shadows. “Let them come back when the doc is home. We can’t help them.”

“No.” Sister Cel hurried to the door. “I won’t turn away someone in need.” As she turned the handle, a tiny woman resembling a red ball of yarn almost fell into the room.

“Help me,” she whispered with hands reaching toward the nun as though she were drowning. “All I said was I was going to see Dancing, and he started hitting me.”

The visitor kicked the door closed with her foot and hurried to Sister Cel.

“I’m bleeding, but it ain’t nothing.” She patted her face with a square of lace. “Please, can I see Dancing?”

Nichole moved from the dark corner and pointed toward their patient as the nun collected supplies to bandage the cut at the woman’s forehead.

The visitor had wild, long red hair, a color nature never produced. Her clothes were layers of undergarments and frills tied together with faded silk ribbons. Wide red lips spread into a smile as she saw Dancing sleeping. She hurried to her side and closed her hand over the sleeping woman’s as she looked back at Nichole.

“I had to see Dancing, no matter what he tried to do to stop me. We came out here together four years ago from Arkansas. We figured to find ourselves real western men.”

She laughed as the nun tried to doctor the cuts and bruises on her face. “And we did. We found plenty of them, but most was as wild as the land. If they wanted a wife, it was to slave out on some farm all alone. Dancing and me like town life, so we kept working our way west hoping to find a town wild enough to let us stay. Finally, we stumbled on Fort Worth and Mole. He’s the bottom of a barrel full of scum, so rotten the rats won’t nibble his body when he’s dead.”

She smiled, her red lips spreading from ear to ear. “By the way, my name’s Rose. You got any whiskey, dear? For medicinal purposes, mind you.”

“No,” Nichole answered. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, well, hard times all around. Like I was saying, Mole ain’t worth nothing, but he pays better than most. He treats us worse than my pa used to treat his lame hunting dogs. He expects his girls to do everything he says, like he’s our master and we’re mindless slaves. But it’s about time somebody told him slavery’s over.”

Before anyone could say more, the door opened with a pop as loud as gunfire.

“Where is she?” a man in his mid forties yelled as he stormed in the room at full charge. He wasn’t tall, not much over five foot, but he was made of hate from his dirty straight hair that hung halfway down his back to his scarred hands that opened and closed in a hunger to hurt someone. “I’ll kill Dancing for sure this time and that no good bedbug she calls a friend.”

The woman with the bruises across her cheek screamed and ran behind the nun. Nichole moved in front of the table where Dancing lay mumbling.

Glancing at Sister Cel, Nichole watched the nun fold her arms and widen her stance like she was the wall of Jericho and it would take a thousand trumpets to blow her down.

“Get out of my way!” the man shouted as he headed straight to Nichole. “Both these girls have been nothing but trouble since the day I took them in. First Dancing tried to drink all my whiskey. Now she’s got the others thinking they need to leave work and come visit. Well, they can visit her at the funeral. It’s no crime to stomp out trash, and I aim to finish the job this time.”

Nichole glanced around for a weapon. This madman wasn’t going to touch Dancing without a fight. She grabbed a pitcher and hurled it at him. As he dodged, her hand slid down her leg and pulled the knife from her boot. Seven inches of thin, shiny steel reflected the lamplight.

He growled like an animal and jerked a thick-bladed hunting knife from a sheath at his side. “I’ll cut you deep for interfering with my business.”

She knew she could take him in a fair fight, but he didn’t look like the kind of man who fought fair. She took a step backward.

His growl fouled the air as he moved toward her. His free hand caught Dancing’s arm as he passed her. He jerked her from the bed, sending her tumbling to the floor between Nichole and him. Dancing screamed with pain and fright.

In the second Nichole glanced down at her, the madman slashed forward.

The first swing missed by an inch, the second lunge brushed across her shirt.

“Run!” Nichole yelled to the others. “Get out!”

Sister Cel lifted the screaming redhead and moved toward the door as Mole kicked Dancing out of his way and closed in on Nichole.

She swung once, twice, missing him by a hair.

He was huffing now, snorting like a bull. “I’m going to slice you up good,” he growled. “No one interferes with me.”

Nichole dodged another lunge and countered with a cut across Mole’s forearm. He swore and swung wildly, slinging blood through the air. Nichole ducked and darted a few steps away, but the windows pinned her.

He took a great breath and began closing in, leaning his entire body from side to side as he walked. Teasing her to try and get past him.

Suddenly a shot blasted through the room, shattering a window above Mole’s head. “Hold it right there!” Adam’s clear voice shouted.

Mole and Nichole both turned toward the door as Adam took a step closer. “What’s going on?” he demanded without lowering the rifle from his shoulder. “Nick, are you all right?”

“This ain’t none of your business, Doc. Stay out of it.” Mole lowered his knife an inch. “I got a right to deal with my girls the way I see fit, and I don’t like the idea of Dancing coming over here whining to you about her sorry life.”

“She’s very ill. You almost beat her to death.” Adam moved closer, the rifle still pointed at Mole’s chest.

“I didn’t give her any more than she deserved,” Mole reasoned. “And I don’t take kindly to your butting in where you ain’t wanted. You don’t know how these women are in my place. I got to keep them in line or they’d steal me blind. They’re all lazy, or they wouldn’t be making a living on their backs.”

Adam didn’t lower his gun. “Get out,” he said. “Get out and don’t come back.”

Mole glanced around the room. “I ain’t no fool,” he said as he took a step toward the side door. “But no man treats me wrong and gets away with it, not even a doc. You’ll get yours sometime when you ain’t got a gun pointed at me. And you can tell Dancing, she’s as good as dead. I’m through with her and that mouthy friend of hers. They can starve, for all I care. When I toss them out there ain’t a person in town who’ll give them a bread crumb.” He turned and was gone as quickly as he’d appeared.

“He means it.” Nichole moved to Adam’s side.

“So did I.” Adam put the rifle down. “Are you all right?” He glanced first at Nichole, then at Sister Cel.

“We’re fine, but Dancing-”

Before she could finish, Adam knelt beside Dancing. The patient looked like a rag doll someone had kicked into a corner and forgotten. She wasn’t even crying anymore.

Adam’s hands moved carefully down her body, feeling for more breaks in her bones. After a moment, he ordered, “I’ll need more bandages, hot water, and all the light we can set up about the table.”

Nichole hurried to the cabinet just as she heard footsteps rushing down the stairs. In a blink, she had vanished into the corner by the cabinet.

“What is going on, Adam?” Bergette screamed as she rounded the corner and rushed past the nun and into the office. “Did I hear a shot?”

Adam carefully lifted Dancing to the table. Blood was spilling onto her bandages in several places and his shirt-front was stained with crimson rain. “We have an injured woman,” he said calmly. “Would you like to help?”

Bergette looked first at Dancing, then at the redhead standing next to the nun. “Does Mrs. Jamison know about the kind of people you see?” Her voice held a hint of a threat.

“She knows I’m a doctor.” Adam was far more interested in Dancing than in Bergette. “I see people who need help. I suggest you either help or get out.”

“You can’t talk to me like that!”

“I don’t have time to talk to you any other way.”

Bergette opened her mouth then snapped it closed. She ran from the room yelling for Charles to bring her pills. Everyone knew the argument wasn’t over, she’d just run out of ammunition. She was the kind of woman who would make him pay dearly for his harshness.

“Sister, lock the door,” he ordered. “And you,” he looked at the redhead.

“Ro-Rose,” the frightened woman hiccuped her name. “Just Rose.”

“Do you think you can hold your friend? Cradle her in your arms and try to keep her still. We’ve got to reset her leg, and she’s got a bad gash on her head from the fall. We’ll have to work fast, she’s losing a great deal of blood.”

The prostitute joined him. “I can do whatever I have to do. My ma was a midwife back in the hills. Blood don’t frighten me none.” She seemed happy to be asked to help and she hugged Dancing. “And Doc, no matter what happens, thank you.”

When Nichole heard Sister Cel lock the door, she joined Adam. They worked for hours trying to repair the leg and cool Dancing’s raging fever. While Nichole and Sister Cel followed Adam’s orders, Rose seemed to know what to do. She’d been honest about having no fear of blood for by the time Dancing’s head was stitched Rose’s top was wet with her friend’s blood.

She pushed away the nun’s efforts to clean her up and continued to cradle Dancing.

Finally, long after midnight, Dancing slipped away. They’d all tried but couldn’t hold her to this earth. She died without a whimper, without a fight.

Adam pulled away in defeat, Rose cried softly as she held her friend’s cooling hand to her cheek. Sister Cel prayed in a soft voice that was almost a song. The smell of blood and death hung in the air, weighing on everyone.

Adam heard Nichole follow him as he walked into the darkness of the porch. Without a word, he opened his arms and they held one another tightly. He could feel his heart pounding against hers, her breath brushing the side of his throat, the warmth of her body pressing against him.

This was part of it, he wanted to scream. Part of the magic she thought he had. Part of being the doctor she wanted him to be. Not the wonder of saving a life, anyone could handle that, but the ability to keep going when death wins.

He didn’t kiss her. He only held her. There were no words for him to tell her why, or how dearly, he needed her close. There were no words needed for her to understand.

When the nun called him, Adam slowly pulled away. He touched her hair, silently saying thank you as he returned to the house.

Without a word, Nichole slipped into the foyer. Moving up the stairs, she climbed into the attic. She retrieved a box of clothes that would make her invisible and maybe even bulletproof. She now had a mission.