Waiting for Morning (The Brides Of Last Chance Ranch Series) (34 page)

Donny narrowed his eyes against the glaring sun. It looked like Orbit was trying to escape. But why? And where was Molly? He swung his gaze from one end of the corral to the other. The horse that moments earlier had carried Molly now galloped around without a rider.

Alarmed, he craned his neck and quickly scanned the ground. Something blue caught his eye. Molly! She was lying on the ground and didn’t move.

“Help,” Donny cried. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Orbit wasn’t trying to escape. Somehow he sensed that Molly was in trouble and was trying to get to her.

“Help, someone, help!” He yelled as loud as he could but no one was around to hear his frantic cries.

His chest squeezed tight and he could hardly breathe. He wiped his damp palms on his trousers and grabbed the chair wheels. Frantic, he forced his chair to the steps. Even in his panic, he knew he could never reach her. And even if he could reach her, he couldn’t help. Not in a million years. No matter how much he wanted to or how much he tried, he couldn’t help her. Never had he felt so helpless, so utterly, utterly helpless.

He whirled about, searching for something, anything. He pounded on the door with his fists. No one answered, which meant that Rosita was either upstairs or out back. He turned the knob and pushed the door open, yelling at the top of his lungs. Still no one.

The doorbell. It could be heard everywhere, even out back. He got as close as he could to the rope, but it was out of reach. Gasping,
he stretched his body as much as he could, his arm rigid. His fingers touched the rope, making it swing back and forth. Bracing himself, he tried again and again.

With a mighty lunge he stretched high enough to get a handhold on the rope. He tugged it and chimes sounded inside the house.

Nothing.

He fought against panic and gave the rope another brisk pull. This time the door sprang all the way open and Rosita stepped outside.

“Get help!” he gasped. “My sister is hurt.”

Rosita vanished inside, reappearing moments later with her brother.

“Molly!” Donny pointed to the corral, and Jose leaped off the verandah and took off at a run.

Donny watched, helpless in his chair, and he did something he didn’t normally do. He prayed.
God, don’t punish me for the awful things I said to her. Please, please, please don’t take my sister away. I’ll do better, I will, I promise.

Chapter 31

I
t was almost eleven p.m. when Caleb crossed the street to the hotel to check on Molly.

No one was at the desk as he strolled through the deserted
lobby. He took the stairs two at a time and hurried to the infirmary
at the end of the hall, floorboards creaking beneath his feet.

He opened the door. A kerosene lamp bathed the room in soft yellow light. Donny sat in his wheelchair snoring like a freight train.

The poor kid refused to leave his sister’s side. By the looks of things, he hadn’t even touched the bowl of stew and biscuits from Miss Lily’s Café.

Molly still drifted in and out of consciousness, but the swelling on her head had gone down and that was a good sign. For a while, it looked like he was going to have to bore a hole in her skull to relieve the pressure on her brain, but trepanning was no longer necessary, thank God. Now all he could do was wait and pray.

He sat on the chair by her side, found her wrist, and checked her pulse. It was still below normal. He held her hand in both of his and wished he could smooth away the calluses on her palm, smooth away everything that brought her heartache or pain.

She looked pale but no less beautiful to him. Silky soft hair spread in disarray across the pillow. Thick, long lashes brushed against gently rounded cheeks. The curve of her pretty pink mouth brought back the memory of her kisses. He felt a tug in his heart.
God, make her well again. Bring her back to me.

He often prayed by a patient’s side, part of his job as a doctor. This time he asked for more than just healing; he asked God to bring her back to
him
.

Shaken by how close he’d been to losing her, he covered her hand with his own and sat perfectly still. From the moment Ruckus had driven her helter-skelter to town and helped him carry her to the hotel, he had acted and thought like a physician. He had examined her, monitored her breathing, dribbled water down her throat, measured the swelling of her head, and prayed.

But now he didn’t talk to God as a doctor. Rather he prayed like a man in love.

He didn’t know how long he sat by her side, but the stiffness of his body told him it had been awhile. Low on fuel, the lamp sputtered and the light began to fade. Somewhere around midnight it went out altogether, casting the room in darkness.

At one a.m., a half-moon shone through the open window, bathing the room in blue light.

Rowdy laughter, shouts, and occasional gunshots rose from the street below. Caleb closed the window but it did little to mute the sounds.

It seemed that things had gotten worse, not better, since the saloons agreed to close on alternate Saturday nights. It was as if the town’s roughnecks decided to party harder on the nights the saloons remained open.

Earlier he spotted Harvey Trotter stumbling from the Golden
Eagle. Caleb was no closer to solving the mystery of Jimmy’s illness, and his heart ached anew for the man’s hurting family.

Someone fired a round of bullets and Donny stirred and called out in his sleep. “Fire! Fire!” The kid was having a nightmare.

Caleb stepped away from the window and went to him. He shook him gently and Donny stiffened beneath his touch and his eyes flew open.

“There’s no fire.” Caleb nodded toward the window. “Just some rowdies.”

Donny blinked and looked around as if trying to make sense of his surroundings. “Is my sister—?”

“She’ll be fine.” Caleb picked up a chair, carried it to Donny’s side, and sat.

Donny glanced at the bed. “She still won’t wake up.”

“She’s not asleep, Donny. She’s drifting in and out of unconsciousness. It’s the brain’s way of healing.”

“How long will she be like this?” Donny asked.

“There’s really no way of telling,” Caleb said. He didn’t want to worry Donny, but neither did he want to lie.

Donny sniffled and his tears looked like silver pearls in the dim, moonlit room. “I said some awful things to her. I told her I hated her and that’s not true. I could never hate her.”

Caleb handed him a clean handkerchief. “She knows that, Donny.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I know your sister. We all say hurtful things from time to time, things we don’t mean. Fortunately, love is forgiving and your sister loves you very much.”

Donny wiped his eyes and blew his nose. “I don’t blame her for my accident. I don’t.”

“You know about that?” Caleb asked.

Donny nodded. “She told me it was her fault and that’s when I said those awful things.”

Caleb rubbed his throbbing brow. Molly must have been upset after the argument. Perhaps that accounted for her accident.

Donny’s body shook with sobs. “I—I sh-should have told her not to w-work at the ranch. She was only doing it for me. She was tired and her hands were sore and she doesn’t even like cattle . . . and . . . I should have told her I loved her.”

Caleb groaned.
That makes two of us.
“You can still tell her that when she wakes up.”

“P-Promise?” Donny pleaded.

“Promise.
”
Caleb grimaced. He had no right to promise things he had no control over.

“I couldn’t even get to her. I couldn’t help her,” Donny murmured. “I couldn’t do anything. I’m as useless as a worm.”

“That’s not true, Donny. You got help for your sister.”

“But what would have happened had I not reached the doorbell? She could have been lying in the dirt for hours. What if Jose and Rosita were out back and didn’t hear me ring? What if I’m here in this room all alone and something happens to her?”

“It’s a waste of time to worry about what could have happened or might happen. You did what had to be done. That’s all any of us can do.” Donny looked so distressed Caleb felt sorry for him. “Come on, I’ll take you to Aunt Bessie’s house. She said you could stay with her while your sister is recuperating.”

Donny shook his head. “I want to stay here with Molly.”

Caleb started to argue but changed his mind. “All right. Just for tonight.”

He found an empty room across the hall. Without bothering to
remove the bedding, he grabbed the mattress and carried it back to Molly’s room and placed it on the floor. He straightened the sheets and blanket and lifted Donny from his chair to the bed.

“There you go,” Caleb said. “Get some sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

Donny settled for the night, Caleb sat by Molly’s side, waiting for morning.

Eleanor sat on the buggy seat by Robert’s side, staring at the horse pulling them. What a nuisance.

“Couldn’t you have just given Molly my regards?” she asked, not for the first time. Did Robert always have to be such a gentleman? He insisted she travel to Cactus Patch and see for herself how Molly was doing. Eleanor hadn’t been to town for some years, not since those busybody church women boycotted her beef following her divorce. From that time on she conducted her business in Tombstone.

“Miss Hatfield is under your employ.”

Eleanor rolled her eyes. “Don’t remind me.” Nothing had worked out as planned, certainly nothing involving the ranch. If only her one and only child hadn’t died. Thirty years—more than a quarter of a century—and still it hurt. Nothing that happened since—not the Indian trouble, not the divorce, not even the earthquake and fire that destroyed her ranch—had been as difficult as losing her only child.

She had no patience for sentimentality or weakness of character. For that reason she considered grief her greatest flaw.

“How long before Molly can return to the ranch?”

Robert took his eyes off the road just long enough to give her a puzzled glance. “A week or two.”

“Hmm.”

“I thought you said you didn’t think she’d work out.”

Eleanor sighed. “She’d work out just fine if she didn’t have to worry about her brother. That’s why I have a proposition for her.”

“You mean other than insisting she not marry?”

“Marriage complicates things, especially for a woman.” She knew from painful experience that no man was willing to play second fiddle to anything, let alone a ranch. “I’m going to propose that we hire a full-time caretaker for her brother.”

Robert pursed his lips. “I do believe that’s the wisest decision you’ve ever made,” he said, his voice warm with approval. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right? That doesn’t sound like something you’d think up.”

Eleanor kept her gaze focused ahead. “When you’re my age, you have to”—she couldn’t bring herself to use that dreadful word
compromise
—”meet people halfway.”

He tossed her a dubious look. “If you’re as poor at judging distances as you’ve been in the past, she’ll be lucky if you meet her a tenth of the way.” He clicked his tongue and the horse picked up speed.

The town had grown considerably since Eleanor was last there, though it was nowhere near as large as Tombstone. Robert pulled up in front of the hotel and set the brake.

“I need to pop into the bank, but I’ll go up with you first if you wish,” he said.

Eleanor waved away the offer. “Is that your way of saying you don’t trust me to be on my good behavior?”

His mouth quirked. “I know how impatient you are around human frailty.”

“You take care of the bank and I’ll take care of . . . human frailty.” She climbed out of the wagon and marched into the hotel. The sooner she got it over with, the sooner she could return to the ranch.

The desk clerk directed Eleanor to the infirmary upstairs. Eleanor gave the door a tap before entering. The room was dimly lit and a slight breeze wafted through the open window.

Molly’s brother was asleep but his eyes flew open the minute she stepped into the room. “Miss Walker.”

“Donald.” She glanced at Molly and lowered her voice. “I came to see your sister.”

“She keeps drifting in and out of sleep. Doc Fairbanks says that’s the way the brain heals.”