She appeared both anxious and thunderstruck. Morelli didn’t blame her, for he felt much the same way. “No, Rachael, I’m not fooling. I don’t understand why, but she seems much improved from yesterday. We’re not out of the woods yet, but I think we have a good chance of making it.”
Rachael scooped the squalling infant up from the table where Morelli had been examining her, and hugged her to her breast.
“Thank you, Doctor, and you should pardon me, but thanks should be to God as well!” She snuggled the child closer and Morelli could hear her whisper, “Sarah, oh, my little Sarah, praise Jehovah for your life! Praise Him for all good things!” Slowly, with a huge grin on her face, she sank down into the rocking chair while she murmured to the baby.
Solomon shook Morelli’s hand, and shook his hand until he thought it might drop off! “Easy there, Solomon,” he said at last, and Solomon let his hand go free.
“Sorry, Doctor,” he said, a little ashamedly.
Morelli clasped him by the shoulder. “Your wife’s right. You shouldn’t be thanking an old country doctor. You should be sending your thanks to God. He’s the only explanation for this.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Well,” he added, “I’ll stop by tomorrow to see how she’s coming along, all right?”
Solomon walked him down the stairs, asking only three more times about the baby. Yes, Morelli was sure, and yes, she was better, and no, it wasn’t his imagination.
Morelli finally left the mercantile, but he was walking a little taller.
He went not toward his home and his office, but out to the wagon train once more. And while he walked down the line of wagons, he said another little prayer, in his thoughts, for poor Frank Saulk, the man who had been hit by a saguaro arm before the wagons came to Fury. His wounds had been complicated by his wife’s failure to get out all the spines, although he couldn’t blame her. Most of what was left, peppering the back, was invisible to the eye and had to be felt for.
He didn’t suppose a screaming husband was the best patient, either.
He screeched when Morelli did it, too, but Morelli hoped to get the last of them out today.
If he didn’t, Frank Saulk would die.
When he got there, Frank was dozing fitfully in the back of the wagon, and his missus (who’d said, “Call me Eliza”) was off to the side, tending to a fire which looked like it had just been kindled. He greeted her, and proceeded to stick his head in the back of the wagon.
“Frank? Frank, are you awake?” he said, even though he knew Frank was conscious. He didn’t like surprising people, especially patients on their deathbeds.
Frank lifted his head and cranked it around. “Yeah,” he said, as if from another dimension. “Mornin’, Doc.”
Morelli climbed up into the wagon and squatted beside Frank. He hadn’t seen their children. Perhaps their mother had sent them off to play. He asked Frank how he was feeling, and Frank just made a face.
Morelli could see why. Frank’s back was an angry red and purple thing, almost a monster apart from the rest of him, and as septic as anything Morelli had ever seen, aside from some amputees during the War—some amputees who had later died. He smelled of death, too. Not a good sign.
“All right, Frank. I’m going to try to dig out the last few spines today, and then we’re going to see if we can’t clean up some of the pus. All right?”
“Whatever,” Frank muttered, and said no more.
Morelli began to go to work.
Meanwhile, Salmon Kendall was closing the meeting of the town elders, officially known as the Town Council. The men were on their feet and a few of them had already left when Salmon said, “Somebody should tell Solomon, up at the mercantile. You want me to do it?”
The other men (having heard and in some cases, whispered} about the Cohens’ sick newborn, were leery of setting foot in a house of sorrow, and all agreed. They would have Salmon do what they were afraid to.
When they had all filed out, he walked up the street and pushed open the jangling mercantile door. Surprisingly, he found Solomon in good spirits—very good, in fact.
“Solomon?” he said. “The baby’s better?”
“Oy, my friend Salmon!” Solomon effused, arms held wide as if to engulf the entire town—or possibly the entire world. Salmon couldn’t be sure, but he backed up a step. Solomon didn’t seem to notice.
“She is much improved!” he went on. “The doctor was here, and said she has a good chance now, but I know better. God will
Salmon hoisted his brows. “And you know this because . . . ?”
“Because I know, that is why,” Solomon said, and that was that. Or at least, Salmon took it that way. Sometimes, he had learned, Solomon was intractable once he got the bit in his teeth, which he seemed to have achieved now.
He moved on to more pressing things. He said, “The council just held a meeting. Sorry we didn’t call for you, but things have been pretty rough up here, and . . .”
“You didn’t wish to bother me?”
“Exactly. Anyway, we’re going ahead with the water tower. I’ve got volunteers to go up north into the Bradshaws to get the wood, and I’ll start making a list today of men to do the building and the tarring of it.”
Solomon considered this. “It will have to be very strong indeed if we have another storm like we had the other night. Can we make it that solid? And where did you decide to put it?”
“Yes, it’ll be strong, Solomon. We have plans to use reinforced crossbars on the legs and tie-downs. And I believe the weight of the water will hold it in place.”
