“Are you joking? Besides the Indians, every other man in Texas looks like he’s practicing snarling for a picture on a wanted poster. The land, from treetop to soil, is a rainbow of dull brown. And the women, the women are so homely I’m surprised their offspring will take to the breast.”
Wes glanced from side to side and whispered as if someone might overhear them. “Hell, the friendliest thing I’ve seen is a rattler waving his tail at me. Everyone hates us. Some because we’re Yankees, some because it seems their natural disposition.”
“Still, there’s the cows,” Adam offered.
Wes moved his horse toward the sunset and the town he’d been trying to reach for months. “I’ll give you that. This place is longhorn-rich, but they’re wild. It won’t be like rounding up the milk cows back home. Going to take some work to be wealthy by summer.”
“It won’t be easy.”
Wes agreed. “Nope. If it was, too many fools besides me would be trying it. Come on along, little brother. I want to make town by sundown. I need a meal, a bottle, and a pretty woman.”
Kicking his horse ahead, Adam added, “I thought you said there were no pretty women in Texas.”
Wes joined in the race. “In that case,” he shouted, “I’ll need two bottles to drink her pretty.”
An hour later, Wes’s opinion of Texas had changed. He’d downed a pound of steak and half a bottle of whiskey and managed to rent a room with a real bed.
While Wes struck up a conversation about cattle with men wearing leather and spurs, Adam walked out to the street.
The lodging they’d found was on the edge of town, with mostly remains of what must have been fort building running behind it.
Wes had been right. Texas hadn’t been much of what they’d hoped for. It was wilder, more unsettled than they’d thought. But the people seemed friendly enough if given half a chance. They didn’t offer a quick smile, but they didn’t turn away from questions. The whole state seemed made up of loners. Adam figured none of the McLains were looking for what they left back home.
He walked along the planked boards of what passed as sidewalks in front of the stores. This little frontier post had become the county seat in its less than twenty years of existence. Wes would find his dream here in Texas. He’d organize men and had some already waiting for him further south near Austin, and by spring, they’d be ready to head cattle north to market. There was talk of a half-Scotsman, half-Cherokee scout named Jesse Chisholm being willing to cut a trace all the way to Kansas.
Smiling at himself, Adam realized he didn’t even know what “cut a trace” meant a month ago. But here in the West that was how men referred to marking a trail for someone else to follow.
Only Adam had no scout to mark his trail. He had no idea where he was heading. As he passed the stage office, he thought, come morning, he could step on a stage and head farther west. But to where, to what? Wes had his dream. Daniel had his duty. But Adam had nothing. When the war ended, he thought he had his life all planned out. Now six months later he was like so many others, drifting, belonging nowhere.
Since the night he’d told Nichole he wasn’t sure about being a doctor, he hadn’t allowed himself to think about quitting. She’d cut his doubts off at the knee. Something inside him made him want to be as good a doctor as she thought he already was.
There she was again, he thought. Drifting through his mind like she planned to homestead. Over the past months he’d caught himself talking things out with her in his imagination. Something about the way she’d demanded the best from him made him want to try harder.
“You got a twopenny, mister?” a tiny outline whispered from between two buildings. “It ain’t for me, it’s for my ma.”
Adam knelt down trying to see the child’s face. He was thin, deathly thin with hair and eyes the color of rust. His clothes were dirty and worn.
“Is something wrong with your mother, son?”
“She’s sick, but for a few pennies the cook will give a plate of leftovers from the kitchen. He’s real generous. Sometimes it’s enough to feed us all.”
Adam fished a twopenny coin from his pocket and handed it to the boy. Then, silently, he watched as the kid climbed the steps to the back door of the small restaurant and asked for a plate.
The cook, who looked like he could be wanted in several states, took the coin and disappeared. After a few minutes, he returned with a plate of mostly beans and potatoes. Atop it, he’d placed a large slice of cornbread.
“Thanks.” The boy smiled showing several gaps where baby teeth had been.
The cook grinned back with an equally toothless smile. “Don’t tell the boss about the cornbread. It was left over. Ain’t no use throwing it out.”
The cook touched the boy’s shoulder a moment while he stuffed a small package in his coat pocket. “That’s for old Terry. Mangy old good-for-nothing dog.”
“Much obliged,” the beggar whispered as the cook pushed him away in a great pretense of being bothered.
Adam followed as the boy ran into the blackened alley. He could hear the child’s footsteps, but had to guide himself by touch.
When Adam finally slowed, deciding to give up the chase, he turned a corner and saw a light. The air was so still in the alley, he could hear himself breathing and smell poverty thick as smoke around him.
Curiosity drew him toward the spot of light.
As his eyes adjusted, Adam found himself boxed in with the backs of two-story buildings on three sides of him. One, judging from the odor and muffled noises, was a saloon, only business didn’t seem very lively tonight. The second side of his man-made canyon was some kind of hotel or whorehouse. The third building looked abandoned except for a single candle blinking through a broken window. It was a wide old two-story that could have been officer’s quarters in its prime. It looked like it had been converted into a boardinghouse.
Adam moved carefully around abandoned crates as he neared the window. The scene that slowly came into distorted focus through the broken glass made him question his vision.
A woman, pale and fever wet, lay on a small bed. The beggar boy sat on the floor offering her the plate of food.
Taking a step closer, Adam stared at the third person in the room. A nun. Her spotless habit was snow white and raven black in sharp contrast to everything around her. She looked like an aging angel as she wiped the dying woman’s brow.
Adam couldn’t resist moving closer. As his foot took the first step, a dog the size of a colt jumped up from the shadows and barked an alarm. Adam froze.
After a long pause, the boy opened the door only enough to peer out. “Yes?” he whispered in a brave little voice that said he’d protect those within as best he could.
Adam didn’t waste words. “I’m a doctor,” he said. “I’ve come to help if I can.”
“I ain’t got no money.” The boy lifted his chin slightly.
“We’ll talk of payment later.” Adam smiled. He’d often heard of folks paying in services or chickens, but he’d never practiced medicine except during the war.
The boy hesitated, then opened the door.
When Adam’s gaze met the nun’s stare, he couldn’t move. She had the most knowing eyes he’d ever seen. The kind of eyes an artist would try to paint for a saint. Ageless eyes in a face that shattered into a thousand wrinkles when she smiled.
Without a word, she opened her aging hand and pointed to the woman on the bed. “Please,” she whispered. “Help this child of God if you can, Doctor.”
Leaning forward, Adam felt the patient’s forehead, the side of her throat, then her hand.
“Boy,” he snapped. “You know that cafe where you got the food?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go to the front door and look in. You should see a man about my size with a scar on his left cheek. Tell him Adam said to bring the medical bag.”
“But I can’t go into that place. Not the front.”
Adam smiled, wishing he could see Wes’s face when the boy ordered him. “Don’t worry. Just tell the man with
