At last the doctor came out, wiping his clean hands on one of Elizabeth's best linen towels. He was a young, strong man, big in the shoulders and small in the hips, like a bull buffalo. Without looking at Owen, the doctor went straight to the kitchen and poured himself some black coffee from an iron pot, then returned to the parlor and dropped into a bulky hair-padded chair.
“How was she shot?” he asked bluntly.
Owen shrugged and smiled. “Accident, I suppose.”
“I suppose so,” Linnwood said dryly. “Anyway, I'll have to make a report to the sheriff's office when I get back, but I guess that can wait.”
“How is she?” Owen asked.
“We'll know better tomorrow. If she gets through the next twelve hours she'll be all right. You'd better get some sleep; that's what I'm going to do.”
Owen got necessary bedding from the other room and made a sleeping place for the doctor on the couch.
“Who's the young man?” Linnwood asked, pulling off his heavy shoes.
Owen shrugged. “A hill boy called Lester.”
“The girl's husband?”
“I don't know. I don't think so.”
Scowling, the young doctor unbuttoned his collar and cuffs and stretched out on the couch. He was asleep almost instantly, but before he dropped off he shook his head and said, “Owen, you and Elizabeth sure do take in some strange boarders!”
Owen went to the sickroom and looked in before going to bed. The girl lay pale and motionless beneath the small mountain of quilts. The boy sat slumped in a straight chair near the head of the bed, his eyes closed, his face sagging with fatigue.
Within Owen's mind a well-developed professional curiosity clamored for attention. The girl had mentioned “Cal.” Had she meant the younger Brunner brother? Was
At last he shook his head. What did it matter who they were? The Brunners were none of his business; he'd made that clear to McKeever and Judge Lochland and the whole county. He didn't want to get mixed up with them now.
However, Owen Toller did not sleep too well that night. Several times he heard the doctor get up and go to the sickroom, and once he heard Dunc Lester and Linnwood talking quietly. He was on edge and restless, and his tossings and turnings disturbed his wife.
“Owen, is anything the matter?” she asked sleepily.
“No. Everything is all right.”
“No, it isn't.” And now she turned to face him, awake. “It's that girl, isn't it?” she said. “It's an awful thing. What kind of person would want to kill a young girl?”
Owen thought for a moment. “The same kind of person that shot Edith Ransom,” he said flatly.
The next morning Owen was working the creek bottom when Doc Linnwood rode past on his way back to Reunion.
“Your patient's all right,” the doctor said. “Those hill girls are as tough as boot leather.”
“That's good,” Owen said gratefully. “Thanks for coming out, Doc.”
Owen rested for a moment on his hoe, glad that the girl was going to get well; glad that she and Dunc Lester would soon be leaving and he and Elizabeth could let their lives settle again into the warm, comfortable rut that he had come to cherish. I must be getting old, he thought. Strange trails and excitement no longer please me.
Deliberately he cleared his mind of curiosity. There must be at least a dozen boys named Cal in those hills, he told himself. And words spoken in delirium meant little.
At dinnertime he tramped back up the long grassy slope to the farmhouse, stopping to play with Giles and Lonnie in the back yard. He was smiling as he entered the kitchen, vaguely pleased with himself and at peace in his mind. “I hear our patient's better,” he said to his wife.
Elizabeth smiled, but with little humor. “That might be a matter of opinion.”
They went together to the sickroom, where the girl glared at them with hot, angry eyes.
“Well,” Owen said heartily, “the doctor says you're going to get well.”
She snarled like a cat and turned her face to the wall.
“That's what I mean,” Elizabeth said, looking at her husband. “Her name is Leah Stringer, but she didn't tell me that. The boy did, just before he left.” When she saw the surprised look on her husband's face, she said, “He rode off right after the doctor left this morning.”
Owen took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It looked like Dunc Lester had left them with the responsibility of looking after the hostile girl. Elizabeth went back to the kitchen to feed the children, but Owen rubbed his face thoughtfully, and did not move. Stringer... The name was beginning to mean something to him.
He went to the other side of the bed and took a chair where the girl would have to look at him. “Several years ago,” he said, “I used to know a Cherokee missionary named Mort Stringer. He had a little girl, and, if I remember right, her name was Leah. You're Mort Stringer's daughter, aren't you?”
The girl glared and said nothing.
“Now why,” Owen mused aloud, “would a person want to shoot a preacher's daughter? Would you tell me
