Chapter 3
Ellie had fallen plenty of times, from fences, while jumping from rock to rock across a stream, and while chasing chickens, but those had been in her younger years when she wasn't as tall or curvy as she was now.
The arms around her were pressing too hard on her bruises. Someone was breathing on her in ragged gasps. She felt unbalanced by uneven steps. There was a bad smell, too. This wasn’t right. Another set of arms should be around her, a firmer chest that rumbled when the sweet, deep voice said her name. Who was that? Was he from a dream? She didn’t know. She only knew that the person jostling her was not him.
She opened her eyes to see David’s face above her, the trees bordering the path jostling in her vision with his stumbling progress. “Put me down,” she said, squirming in an attempt to get away.
David stopped, his chest heaving, his arms still tight around her. “But you fell...and that man, he… he…”
Ellie stilled. “What man?”
David looked confused. “The one at the station. He, he carried you away, and tore…” David stopped, his mouth settling in a disapproving line.
“I can walk now,” Ellie said, pushing against David’s chest.
The man was a vague memory, but a pleasant one. She recalled that he’d grabbed her roughly enough to leave bruises on her arms while his muscles strained to pull her from the path of a moving train. She recalled an angular jaw beneath deep blue eyes, and a gray hat covering all but the curling dark blond ends of her not-too-gentle rescuer’s hair.
She wasn’t too clear on their conversation. Her head and back hurt. She had the vague feeling that she had reason to be embarrassed if she ever saw him again. What had occurred, exactly? Something inappropriate? Was it her dress? It seemed even more ill-fitting now than before, although it was hard to tell while clutched in David’s arms. Was it something she’d said? Could it have been something he said? For all she knew, he was a scoundrel of the worst kind. Nevertheless, she recalled that his voice was like drifting on a slow river crowded by honeysuckle hanging over both banks.
David finally dropped Ellie onto her feet so abruptly that she staggered. Reaching out to slide his arms around her again, he said, “You see? You can’t stand up straight. You need me to carry you.”
“No!” Ellie willed her legs to straighten enough to keep her balance. It felt as if her back was one big bruise, and her head pounded like a horse was running circles inside her skull. “I can walk.” She glanced up through her wind-tossed hair at David’s sweaty face. ”You’re all worn out. Why don’t you go home and get some rest?”
“I’ll see you home first.” Then he gave his armpit a vigorous scratching while his gaze skimmed her head. “Is your mama goin’ to be upset over your missing bonnet?”
That was the last thing Ellie was worried about. She concentrated on putting one foot before the other, feeling even more sore than the time she’d stepped on a loose rock and tumbled down a hill. She found that it helped to grip the lapels of the jacket she was wearing. Where had it come from? Oh, yes. The man with the sweetly rumbling voice.
David followed her the rest of the way to her house, asking her every ten steps if she was feeling all right. “Yes,” she answered wearily each time, even though her inclination was to tell him she’d feel better if he would leave her alone.
When Ellie limped up the walk to her house, David tried pushing past to reach the latch ahead of her, but he never made it to the door. He only managed to jostle her so that she was turned sideways when the door suddenly sprung open, showing her brother, Jack’s surprised face just before the door smacked into Ellie’s fresh bruises. She cried out and lost her balance, the frock coat tails flying outward in a heart-stopping moment that felt eerily like falling off the train platform.
A mighty yank on her skirt abruptly cut off her air as it tore the oversized stitches loose from the back of her bodice. Dizzy, her headache thumping harder than before, Ellie glanced up to thank Jack for pulling her back from the edge of the porch. He blinked in surprise at the damage he’d done. Letting go of her skirt, Jack watched the back of it sag into folds onto the porch floorboards, where the wind batted the loose fabric like a kitten with a ball of yarn.
“Sorry El,” Jack mumbled somberly, looking from David to Ellie and back again. Although Ellie looked the most like their father, Jack was close to the image of Papa with his slender build and dark hair. “I was just trying to keep you from falling.”
Jack's shorter twin, Jesse, would have had a good laugh about the situation, like Papa. His light hair hung over eyes took in everything, hoping to find adventure.
“Thank you anyway,” Ellie said, giving him a wry smile. “At least the front of my skirt is still attached.”
“She fell off the train platform,” David blurted. “Before I could save her, a stranger grabbed her and dragged her off to the side just as the train came in so no one could see what he was doing.”
Jack’s eyes widened.
“It wasn’t like that,” Ellie said, hoping that her fuzzy memories served her well. “I am safe and sound, as you can see.”
“Only because I carried her home,” David said, “Well, until she made me put her down.” He placed a hand on her shoulder.
Ellie gathered what was left of her ruined skirt in her hands, stepped out from beneath David’s touch, and slid past Jack into the house. That’s when she noticed Jack’s slicked down hair beneath his hat. He wore a clean shirt, and smelled good, like soap. She stopped to ask, “Where are you going?”
“Bremmer’s.” Jack wrinkled his nose and asked, “What’s that smell?”
Ellie sniffed the air. There was that foul odor again, as if someone had walked through the pasture without looking. She glanced at David. That was just what he would do.
As she limped into the house, Linnea looked up from stirring a pot on the stove and asked, “What’s all that commotion?” Catching sight of her daughter, Linnea quickly set the pot aside and hurried toward Ellie. “What happened?”
Having to tell it all seemed like too much work. All Ellie wanted to do was lie down. “Jack hit me with the door.”
“Jack?”
“He didn't know I was there.”
“How can he not know you're there?” Linnea moved closer, her head reaching the level of her daughter's nose. “Everyone knows when you're there.”
Ellie did not take offense. She was well aware what her mother thought of her. Linnea made no secret that she despaired of teaching her taller-than-averaged daughter any ladylike ways that might help get her married.
“What are you wearing? A man’s jacket?”
Ellie sighed. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“I just took a tumble, Mama, and I may have torn something.”
“How can you be unsure? Your skirt is nearly ripped off your body.” Linnea reached up and touched her daughter’s neck. “You’ve got a line across your throat. Tell me everything that happened.”
“My memory is not working exactly right,” Ellie admitted.
“Come and sit down.” Linnea moved toward her daughter, then stopped and turned her head to one side. “What is that odor? You didn’t… “ her voice lowered to a whisper, “...didn’t soil yourself?”
“No!”
“Turn around.”
Ellie obeyed. As her mother helped her get the frock coat off, Ellie sucked in her breath from the fresh pain radiating from her back and head. Linnea gasped. “You’ve got manure on your back, and your chemise... and your skirt...oh, my.”
Ellie suddenly felt too warm. David must have seen the manure, and, oh, no, her chemise! Curtis Locken must have, too, and who knew how many townspeople?
A vague recollection of a warm, masculine touch on the sensitive flesh beneath her arm sent a tremor through her. Had someone actually touched her there? Was it David? She shuddered, but could only recall him carrying her with the coat on. That could only mean... Curtis Locken.
“Get out of that dre
ss,” Linnea ordered. “I’ll heat some water and help you clean up.”
Ellie went to her room and struggled to remove her dress, tearing it even more in the process. It seemed as if each new movement created a fresh ache. Was there any part of her that didn’t hurt?
Finally free of the stinking pink calico, Ellie folded it so that the manure was in the center. Then she gave the soiled jacket a forlorn glance. What must Curtis Locken think of her? He had saved her from being run over by a train, and she had stolen his jacket and smeared it with manure. She could never look at him again.
When her mother came in with a kettle of water and a cloth, Ellie said, “Can we get that jacket cleaned?”
Linnea looked at it with a critical eye. “Whose jacket is it? It’s too fancy to be David’s.”
“Curtis Locken’s.” In spite of her determination to never see him again, a thrill of anticipation ran through Ellie as she spoke his name.
“I don’t believe I know him.”
“He hasn’t been here long,” Ellie said as her mother poured water into her washing bowl and moistened the cloth. “And he has the nicest voice I ever heard.”
“A man’s worth isn’t in his voice,” Linnea said. “It’s in his heart.”
“I know,” Ellie sighed, “but if he has a good heart and a nice voice besides, then it’s all for the good.”
Once Ellie was cleaned up, Linnea applied liniment to her shoulder. When she pressed on Ellie’s back, Ellie gasped and twisted away.
“Did Jack hit your back, too?”
“No, that was from the fall.” Ellie didn't want to admit falling because of her own poor sewing job. She already knew she was a disappointment, and didn't want to hear any more lectures about it. She already hurt enough.
“Where did you fall?”
Ellie braced herself. “On the train track, Mama, but you can see that I’m just fine.”
The shock on Linnea’s face seemed to keep her from speaking.
“It was no further than that time I fell off the chicken fence.”
“A train track is far different from a chicken fence,” Linnea said tightly. “It could have been so much worse.”
“But it wasn’t, Mama.”
Linnea gingerly picked up the pink pile of fabric.
“Just throw that away,” Ellie said, glad that her mother was focused on something else.
“I can wash it,” Linnea said. “If we can save the jacket, we can save the dress.” Linnea examined the surviving stitches more closely. Then she raised her head with a knowing look. “I see. Shall I throw this out, too?” She pushed her hand into the pocket and pulled out Ellie’s whittling knife and whetstone.
“No, not that!” Ellie jumped so fast that her head felt like it wobbled on her shoulders, and she felt every bruise. “Please.”
Linnea held the knife and stone out. “I don’t understand you, Ellie, but you’re my daughter, and I strive to do right by you, I really do.”
Ellie held the familiar knife in her hands like an old friend. The blade was becoming so worn with repeated sharpening that she’d soon have to replace the knife itself, but she was putting it off as long as possible. “Thank you, Mama.”
“Perhaps you’d better lie down for awhile.”
Gratefully, Ellie slipped on her gray dress and laid down to rest while her mother went out of the room and closed the door behind her. Every position Ellie tried seemed to cause too much pain. Finally, she sat up with a feather pillow stuffed behind her back. She thought about finishing the rabbit carving she had hidden beside her bed. It was the closest of the carvings she’d hidden around the room, none bigger than her hand, all tucked out of her mother’s sight.
Instead, she pulled out one of her last pieces of carving wood. Idly slicing through the bark, she found it shaping itself into the figure of a man with proportions very similar to Papa’s. While she was pleased with the design, it was too close to her heart. Blinking back tears, Ellie tucked the figure of the man out of sight and pulled out the rabbit.
The ache of her body was lessened by the pleasure of carving the rabbit. Watching the rest of it emerge from the wood with its comical ears folded over, a little like the low top hat Curtis Locken wore, made Ellie catch herself thinking of how she might carve Mr. Locken’s likeness into a piece of wood. It was a pleasant thought. She leaned her head back on her pillow, closing her eyes to better recall his features. She lamented their unfortunate introduction. Why did he wait for every train? Was it to welcome a lovely, soft spoken fiancee? What would the girl Curtis Locken loved look like anyway? Would she have light hair or dark? Perhaps she would be one of those rare red-headed women. There was one at the saloon, a dance hall girl. Is that the type Curtis Locken would like? How could she find out why he waited at the station?
The next thing she knew, her father was in the room, looking sideways at her as he shuffled his feet back and forth, back and forth, in strange little steps as rhythmic as a drum beat. She’d never seen him move like that, as if it doing the steps to some kind of strange, primitive dance.
“Papa?” Ellie sat up, feeling no pain from her bruises, but when she tried to swing her legs over the edge of the bed, her quilt trapped her feet. She’d always loved this quilt, a joint effort of her mother and grandmother when Ellie was a little girl. They’d created a log cabin pattern pieced together with sunny yellow and vibrant orange fabric, with some cool pine green worked in for balance. Although faded a bit, it remained Ellie’s favorite blanket. Until now.
As she kicked against its bonds, Wilburn gave his daughter a sad little smile. Behind him were the ruined supply wagons he’d accompanied toward Bent’s Fort, where he’d been commissioned to join the military band to play music for visiting dignitaries, but he’d never made it. The broken arrows stuck into the wood, the missing supplies, and the hardly recognizable bodies of old Dan Gregory and simple-minded Reg Owens suggested an Indian attack from Indians rebelling at the order to move onto a reservation.
Where Papa had ended up was anyone’s guess. After three months with no sign of him, none of the guesses ended with the hope that he was still alive.
Now he was back, and all Ellie wanted to do was run to him, grab him in a hug, and feel him pick her up off the floor and spin her around like he had when she was little. Fighting the quilt wrapped around her legs with fresh energy, she called, “Papa!”
Keeping his eyes on his daughter, Wilburn pulled out his harmonica and raised it to his mouth, but instead of the lively tunes she was used to, he blew somber notes in a steady rhythm. They slid up the scale and back down again, like chanting, that matched the deliberate beats of his shoes stomping and shuffling, stomping and shuffling, stomping and shuffling, as he moved further and further away from her.
“Don’t go!” Ellie cried. At last she forced her feet free of the quilt and stood, ready to run to him. But then the quilt rose up and clamped her shoulders tightly as her father passed through the far wall like mist, his somber music fading away.
“No!” Ellie cried, reaching out toward the place where her father had been.
When the quilt gave her a firm shake, Ellie blinked in surprise. The grip on her wasn’t from the quilt sagging halfway to the board floor from her mattress. It was her brother, Jesse, with both hands firmly on her shoulders.
Grabbing at him, she caught one of his suspender straps and cried, “I saw Papa!”
Linnea appeared in the doorway, her face white, a hand pressed to the high collar of her dress, eyes wide with worry as she stared at her daughter.
“It was a dream.” Jesse’s voice was uncharacteristically rough. He pulled her hand off his suspender. “You were thrashing around and calling for Papa.”
Ellie’s eyes blazed. “It was not like a dream,” she said. “He was looking at me, really looking at me. And he was playing his harmonica. Jesse, he’s alive!”
Jesse cast a glance at their mother, who looked as if she might be sick as she pressed her hand agains
t the doorjamb. Jesse turned to glare at Ellie. “Stop it.”
“Mama, you believe me, don’t you?”
Linnea straightened. “You must have hit your head when you fell.”
“I did, but that’s not what made me see Papa.”
“Head injuries can be serious,” Linnea said. “I may need to send for the doctor.”
“No.” Ellie shook her head, and immediately regretted the fresh stab of pain it brought her. There was no extra money for a doctor. Mama’s sewing, Jack’s work at the printer’s, and Jesse’s odd jobs around town brought in enough money to just get by. Ellie bit her lip against a wave of dizziness until it ebbed. Why wouldn’t they listen to her? Seeing Papa again had changed her whole world. She knew his body hadn’t actually been in her room, but some part of him had come to her, a living part that could reach her through dreams.
Jesse’s voice softened. “It was just a dream.” He helped Ellie sit down on her straw mattress where she balanced on the edge, since the mattress had a clear indentation in the center from a winter’s worth of sleeping on it. She idly wondered if Jesse might help her turn it over. That might help her bruises feel better. She couldn’t wait until fall when fresh straw would be ready to restuff her mattress.
Linnea looked back over her shoulder. “What shall…?” she began. She stopped, looked at Jesse, then finished in a rush, “What shall I tell the sheriff?”
Jesse put a protective hand on Ellie’s shoulder. “Well, he’s here for Ellie, so you should tell him to come in and get it over with.”