Searching his eyes now for signs of disgust, she saw nothing but compassion. A few bricks loosened in the wall she had built around her heart.
“What is it, child?” he asked softly, seemingly allowing her time to marshal her feelings and organize her thoughts. Worrying her bottom lip with her teeth for a moment, she suddenly felt an urgent need to make the benevolent physician understand.
“Folks will say they were right about me, Doc,” she began hesitantly. “They…they’d already pegged me as a girl of easy virtue when I came into town that night—dressed in my brother’s clothes—and let that…jackanapes knock me down, slice my leg with that hog sticker, and steal my money.”
She paused as tears came to her eyes and her lips trembled, “Oh Doc…I swear on my mama’s grave, no man had ever touched me…why, if any had tried, my papa and my brother would have lashed them to a paddlewheel and left them there ‘till they were one splash away from the pearly gates. So…after he’d lied to me and…did what he did, I was so ashamed. But I was mad, too. I was mad at him, mad at myself. Then he went and told those lies about me and that made me even madder. It’s just that…the ladies who came that next day to bring me clothes and such…they took one look at me and found me wanting…they didn’t seem to want to—”
“Mary,” he interrupted gently, “I think you’ll find that most folks in Brownville generally give others the benefit of the doubt and mind their own business—for the most part,” he added with a nod to the gossipers who only cared about the spreading of shocking tidbits, and not about helping the unfortunate in their time of need. “Now, as far as I know, only Pauline Keller and I know the truth about that Hobbs fellow. I know I won’t tell anyone what you’ve told me in confidence, and I don’t believe she will. As far as anyone else knows, you were just the unfortunate victim of attack and theft.”
Although she knew his words were well-intentioned, they didn’t make much difference.
It had been bad enough losing her wonderful father. Then not knowing where her brother, Hank, had run off to, nor how to get a message to him. She thought about it every day, and prayed for God to intervene, because if Hank had been back to their cabin after that awful night when their pa had been killed, he wouldn’t have been able to find out where she’d gone. He might have been caught. She might never see him again! And now, this. This latest burden could very well be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Oh, how had everything gone wrong so quickly? In the space of one day, her brother had been accused of a crime he hadn’t committed and he’d barely escaped a hang-him-first-and-ask-questions-later mob, then their father had been killed in a fight defending his son’s good name, and soon afterwards the ferry company’s man, Clive Tobin, had come to tell her she’d have to vacate their shack.
Had all that really only been three months ago? It seemed like a lifetime ago.
She’d lived all her life with no mother, just a father and brother—but they’d been family and fiercely loyal to one another. They had never been able to settle long in any place to make friends or feel like it was home, because their father, Big Dan Robinson, had made his living as a fireman tending the boilers on steamboats and ferries. They had moved from town to town all around the West, most recently in Lincoln, Nebraska, when Big Dan had been hired onto the ferry, City of Lincoln.
But, after that fiendish night, Mary had been forced to set off on her own, and she’d been doing pretty well until she’d been caught as a stowaway on a steamboat by none other than that snake in the grass, Washington Hobbs. Funny, she mused wryly, until now, I’d been thinking that was the silver lining to the dark cloud of my existence, because it had resulted in me settling here in Brownville, making friends, and starting to make a life for myself. But now…
Mary let out a soft snort. It figures. Now, when she’d just begun to feel as if she were sinking roots into a place where she could be happy—this happens.
Once again, the memory of the welcoming committee’s judgmental stares and intrusive questions came floating back, and letting out a pitiful sob, she squeaked, “What am I going to do? The church ladies will run me out of town!”
The gentlemanly doctor cleared his throat and recaptured her attention. She eyed him again, only to see him smiling as if he had a secret plan.
“Not if I have anything to say about it, my dear. Not if I have anything to say.”
He patted her shoulder and gave an exaggerated wink, succeeding in making her respond with a bit of a smile as he assured, “You just leave everything to me, child.”
She stared at him, wondering what the gentle physician had up his sleeve. Could she really let go and trust this kind man…and trust God to have her best interest at heart?
In the space of a heartbeat, she decided, Yes, I can. Pressing her lips together, she squared her shoulders, and gave him a firm nod.
After all…what else could she do?
Crossing her fingers, she hoped his plan would be her anchor in the storm…and not end
