The Savage Heart
SUNDAY, MATT SAT with Tess and Mrs. Hayes for most of the day, not caring what the other tenants or Mrs. Mulhaney might think. Tess was much worse, and quite feverish, as the doctor had predicted. She was pale as death except for her flushed cheeks.
Mrs. Hayes spent a good deal of her time wetting cold cloths to put over Tess’s feverish forehead.
“My husband was shot once,” she confided, “in a riot. Acted just like this, he did, delirious and tossing and turning and saying all sorts of crazy things. Poor child. She keeps muttering about birds. Ravens.”
He was not going to tell her that he’d once been known as Raven Following, or about the superstitions of his people concerning that large black bird.
“Delirious, I suppose,” he said, his eyes on Tess’s drawn face.
“She’s been like this for most of the night and a good deal of the morning,” Mrs. Hayes said. She put another cloth in place. “I’ll keep this fever at bay, don’t you worry, Mr. Davis. This child will be fine.”
He didn’t answer. One lean hand reached down to touch Tess’s flushed cheek.
Her pale green eyes opened, and she looked up at him through a mist of fever and laudanum. “My arm…hurts. Where is my father?”
Matt hesitated. “He isn’t here,” he said finally. “You’re going to be fine. Try to sleep.”
“I can’t…sleep. The birds come. They tear at my flesh.” She shivered as she looked at him. “The bullets,” she whispered frantically. “They tore the flesh like giant talons, and the people lay there, in the snow…in the snow!”
Wounded Knee. The fever would accentuate the horrible memories.
“Crazed in the head.” Mrs. Hayes nodded. “Birds and bullets and snow. Poor thing. Where is her father?” she asked Matt when Tess had slipped back into oblivion.
“He died,” he replied bluntly, “just a couple of months ago. She came here because I’m the only family she has left.” It made him warm inside to say it that way. It felt so true. She was the only family he had, too. They weren’t related—well, not by blood, at least—a fact that he didn’t dare share with anyone.
“Well, it’s good that you have each other,” Mrs. Hayes said. She frowned as she studied Tess. “Odd that she hasn’t married, and her such a pretty girl.”
“Yes,” he said.
She glanced at him. “No beau at all?”
“No,” he replied, hating the thought of Tess with another man. He’d often worried about what he’d do if she ever decided to marry anyone else. The situation hadn’t arisen, though, thank God. “She’s never mentioned a special man.”
“Would she, to her own cousin?” Mrs. Hayes asked. “But, then, perhaps not. It is a shame, though.”
Matt changed the subject adroitly by asking what Mrs. Hayes thought of President Roosevelt. She was good for an hour on that topic, as it happened, and Matt was able to avoid any more discussion of Tess’s love life.
THE NEXT MORNING, after only a few hours of sleep, Matt shaved and dressed for work.
He went in to see Tess, who was sleeping and still looked feverish. “I have to go to my office,” Matt said reluctantly. “Take good care of her. She’s a fighter, but it won’t hurt to remind her that she is.”
“I’ll do that.” Mrs. Hayes frowned. “That arm’s bleeding,” she pointed out.
Matt felt his stomach do an uneasy flip. “I’ll call at Dr. Barrows’s office on my way,” Matt said with a grim sigh. “She’s probably tossed and turned enough to tear the stitches.”
“T’ain’t but three stitches,” Mrs. Hayes said curtly. “I had to retie the bandage early this morning. That’s why it’s opened again.”
“What?” Matt’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Good Lord, the cut’s almost four inches long! It needed more than three stitches! I’ll speak to him about that, as well,” he said. He nodded, took one last look at Tess, and went out the door. His stride was enough to make two gentlemen on the street step right back to give him room.
DR. BARROWS WAS ON HIS way out when Matt caught up with him at the office he maintained at the side of his elegant residence.
“Tess is restless and has torn the wound open,” he told the physician curtly. “And Mrs. Hayes says that there were only three stitches to keep it from reopening.”
Dr. Barrows fidgeted, his black bag right in his hand. “Yes, yes, I know, I had barely enough sutures for that many stitches. I was sleepy, and it was very late… I have plenty of sutures this morning, though, and I’ll attend to it. Is she feverish?”
“Very.” Matt’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll take it personally if she doesn’t improve,” he added, and with an almost imperceptible movement of his arm, his jacket drew back from the bright paisley vest to disclose a leather belt that held a long, broad knife with a carved bone handle.
The doctor was used to threats, and he didn’t take them seriously. But this man wasn’t like those he routinely dealt with. And he hadn’t seen a knife like that since a boyhood trip out to the Great Plains. One of the cavalry scouts, a half-breed, had carried something similar. It was a great wide gleaming blade of metal with which, a sergeant told him, that very scout had lifted a scalp right in front of his eyes.
His hand tightened on his bag. “Of course you will, Mr. Davis,” he said curtly. “But your cousin is going to improve. I’ll take excellent care of her!”
“I know you will,” Matt replied, and the very words carried a soft, dangerous threat that was only emphasized by the faint smile on his thin lips.
Dr. Barrows watched the tall man walk away, his eyes narrowed on that odd gait. Davis didn’t walk like a city man. Like many other Chicagoans, he wondered where the mysterious Mr. Davis came from. But it wasn’t a question he was keen to ask the man. No, not at all keen.
He pulled his pocket watch out by its long gold chain and flipped the case open with a practiced movement. He was already late starting his calls, but he was going to see Miss Meredith first thing. He should have gone home for the sutures Saturday night. He certainly would properly stitch that wound today!
Chapter Four
Sitting behind his huge oak desk in a swivel chair, Matt whirled toward the fair, younger man who had just entered at his call.
“Stanley, I want to find somebody,” he said curtly. “A well-dressed man with a cane who was at the women’s movement torchlight parade Saturday night. He’d probably be with the workers’ party people who muscled in on the women.”
“Yes, sir,” Stanley Lang said eagerly. Stanley was only twenty-two, a tall and gangly man who reacted with enthusiasm to any sort of job he was given. He was also the youngest of Matt’s six agents. “Do we have any identification for this man?”
“None,” was the deep reply. “He stabbed my cousin. I want his name.”
Stanley’s eyes opened wide. He’d worked for Matt Davis for two years, and he’d heard from the other agents that their boss never spoke of family. This was news indeed.
“Was he badly hurt?” Stanley asked.
“She,” Matt corrected. “She was stabbed in the arm. But I think the man meant to do her worse harm. I must know who he is.”
“Well, I’ll certainly do my best, sir,” Stanley returned. “And I hope your cousin will be all right.”
“So do I,” Matt murmured. He glanced up. “Get going, man.”
“Yes, sir, and thank you for the opportunity—”
“Out, Stanley.”
“Yes, sir, but I really do appreciate—”
“Out!”
Stanley withdrew at once with a wide grin and closed the door to discourage any flying objects that might come from that quarter. Matt Davis was known to throw things when he was in one of his black moods. Usually it was something soft. But one never knew.
MATT BROODED FOR HALF the day while he pursued his own pending cases, sending his agents out on various routine tasks. Most of his cases involved criminal activities of some sort. But one man had required an agent to follow a young woman—his wife, presumably—whom he suspected of infidelity. The Pinkerton Detective Agency, of which Matt had been an agent until two years before, had refused to accept cases that involved public or private morals. However, Matt had taken what business he could get when he started his own agency. He’d been amazed at how rapidly his clientele grew, and how wealthy he’d become in a relatively short time. Although he was able to be selective now, he also accepted cases on an individual basis, and his acceptance depended on his assessment of the client.
A rich widower wanted his daughter’s shady new boyfriend checked out because he suspected that the man was a gigolo. The girl was very young and innocent, and the man had a shady reputation. Matt had accepted the case because he felt sorry for the girl.
There were other assorted jobs on the books, none of the current ones very interesting. He leaned back in his swivel chair and remembered the exciting times he and the other Pinkertons had had chasing down yeggs, safecracking burglars who robbed banks across the country. They moved around like tramps, hiding by day and working at night. They used nitroglycerin to get into the safes and generally led the agency on a merry chase. One gang of yeggs was still operating and had achieved legendary status. Almost every Pinkerton man had some anecdote about the yeggs. One of the more ironic was that of a poor law enforcement officer whom a gang of safecrackers had taken with them at gunpoint when they went to blow up a safe at a post office somewhere out west. They’d tied him up in a canvas mailbag and stamped him for travel, leaving him otherwise unharmed.
Matt didn’t do much work on robberies anymore. He seemed to spend more and more of his time trapped in his second-floor office, dictating letters and talking to contacts and prospective clients. His men did most of the legwork now, and Matt missed the excitement of tracking down suspects, of extracting information. He must be getting old, he thought, to have allowed himself to get into such a rut.
He put the paperwork aside, still fuming about the attack on Tess. He didn’t like remembering how sick she looked when he left for work this morning, or how careless that doctor had been about her wound. Wounds brought on fever and infection and sometimes led to gangrene. He’d seen men die of it. He was worried and he was angry at himself for not checking the doctor’s work at the time. He could have punched that doctor for doing such a haphazard job. If Tess wasn’t better by morning, he was going to find another physician for her.
Why had Tess been attacked? He couldn’t answer that question. But he could make some reasonable assumptions. The assailant had to know her on sight. That narrowed down the possibilities. It could be someone from the hospital, which was highly unlikely, or someone connected with a woman who participated in the women’s rights rallies.
As he considered that last possibility, it began to make good sense. Tess had told him that she had a young friend who attended the meetings with her, whose husband disapproved of his wife’s involvement.
He shoved his chair back and stood up. Yes. That would be the most likely source.
He jerked open his office door in time to catch Stanley putting on his derby. “Stanley!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Hold on a minute. Before you go any further with your hunt for the man who attacked my cousin, I want to stop by my boardinghouse and check with her. I think I may have an easier way to find the culprit.”
“Yes, sir!”
Minutes later, Matt tapped briefly on Tess’s door and waited for Mrs. Hayes to admit him.
The older woman was chuckling as she shut him in the room with Tess and herself.
“Must have lit a fire under that pill pusher, Mr. Davis,” she mused, “because he treated herself here as if she were royalty. Looks better, don’t she?”
Indeed, Tess did look better. She was still feverish, but she was conscious and seemed aware of her surroundings.
“Matt,” she croaked, smiling through lips cracked with fever. “The doctor says my arm looks better. He put ten stitches in it this time.”
“Did he?” Matt asked with a faint smile. “Feeling up to a question?”
She nodded. Her lovely long blond hair was loose and hung over her shoulders like a cloud of gold. Matt stared at her appreciatively for a moment before he moved closer to the bed and looked down into her wan face.
“That young woman who goes to meetings with you, who is she?”
“You mean Nan?”
“Yes.”
“Her last name is Collier,” she said in a strained tone, wincing as she moved her sore arm. “Her husband, Dennis, is a telegraph clerk somewhere. Why do you ask?”
She didn’t know that she’d given him the information he wanted, without his having to pry it out of her.
“I wondered if you might like to have her visit you,” he said, lying through his teeth. “She’s the only real friend you’ve made since you came to Chicago.”
“That’s nice of you, Matt,” she said. Her tongue felt almost too thick for speech. “But I don’t think her husband would like it. He’s very angry that she comes to our meetings, and forbids her to attend more than one a week. She has to sneak out if she comes to more than that. I’m sure he wouldn’t approve of her coming here.”
Another wealth of information. He scowled as he saw her face contort.
“It must hurt a lot,” he said.
“My mouth is dry,” she replied. “Could I have some water, Mrs. Hayes?”
“Certainly, dear. Here you go.”
Matt took the cup from her with a smile. He lifted Tess’s head, his hand buried in that thick, silky blond hair, and he held the glass to her lips, watching them move weakly as she drank. Her hair felt soft, he thought, and her eyelashes were long and thick, too. Under them, her pale green eyes were the color of the leaves on the cottonwoods early in spring.
“Had enough?” he asked.
“Yes, thanks.” She smiled up at him, but the look in his eyes froze the smile. She couldn’t look away. Even in her weakened condition, Matt at close range was overwhelmingly attractive to her.
His face filling her eyes, his breath on her mouth, he eased her very slowly down onto the pillow. His eyes were black and unblinking. He hesitated there, the glass forgotten in his hand, as he searched Tess’s soft, shocked eyes.
“Mind that glass, Mr. Davis,” Mrs. Hayes murmured as she searched for her knitting needles. “I’ve already spilled one glass of water over her this morning and had to air the bedclothes.”
He stood up abruptly, putting the glass down on the bedside table with too much deliberation. “She does look better,” he said after a minute. His voice sounded hoarse. Tess’s heartbeat was visible at her throat.
“I told you so.” Mrs. Hayes chuckled. She took out her yarn and sat down in the rocking chair beside the bed. “Mrs. Mulhaney is fixing some nice chicken dumplings for supper this evening. Tess said she thinks she can eat something today.”
“Not too much,” Matt cautioned. “She’s still pretty frail.”
Tess smiled at him, all the fight gone out of her as the fever fluctuated. “Thanks for coming home to see about me,” she said. “When I get better, can I borrow your knife?”
The unexpected question threw him off balance. “Why?”
“I want to have a conversation with the man who cut me,” she murmured weakly. “You can hold him while I talk to him with your…your knife in my hand.”
“Tess, I’m shocked!” he lied.
She chuckled weakly and closed her eyes. “Isn’t he lucky…that I was on the ground and helpless?” she asked wearily. “I still remember how to throw people. You taught me, remember?” She murmured softly in Sioux and Matt smiled.
“There she goes, babbling again,” Mrs. Hayes said with a sigh, having failed to recognize that Tess was speaking another language.
Tess had reminded Matt that he’d once taught her how to throw him, unbeknownst to her father, who would have thought the close physical contact between them indecent.
“I never babble,” Tess denied with a sleepy chuckle. “Do I, Cousin Matt?”
“Only when you’re recovering from sword wounds,” he said dryly. He pulled out his watch, checked the time and slid it back into the watch pocket of his silk vest. “I’d better get back to work. I’ve used up my lunch break,” he added, leading the women away from the real reason for his presence. “I’ll check on you later, Tess. Take care.”
He smiled at Mrs. Hayes, put his hat back on and closed the door behind him.
“He’s a fine figure of a man,” Mrs. Hayes remarked as she began to cast on stitches for the woolly cap she was knitting. “Good to have around in an emergency, and that’s for sure.”
“Yes, he is, isn’t he?” Tess was still feeling the heat of that look he’d given her, and even in retrospect it was exciting. Matt was like a volcano. Only a very little fire escaped until an eruption was imminent. She wondered what violent passions he hid behind that calm face, and colored as she realized the track of her errant thoughts.
Mrs. Hayes glanced at her patient, put her wool aside, and stood up. “You’re flushed again. I’ll wet some more cloths. Poor child, you’ve had a terrible time of it.”
“I feel more fit, though,” Tess assured her companion. “Tomorrow, if the fever goes down, I’d like to get up a little, so that I won’t be so weak.” She smiled ruefully. “After all, I have to earn my living.”
Mrs. Hayes put another cool cloth on Tess’s forehead. “May I ask you something?”
“Of course,” Tess murmured.
“Why have you never married? Surely you’ve had many chances.”
“I’ve had one, but from a man for whom I had no respect, none at all,” she added, recalling the cavalryman in Montana with his studied arrogance and persistence. “I should have stayed single forever rather than marry such a bounder.”
“Wise girl. I married for love, but I was one of the lucky ones. My husband and I have three children living, out of the ten that I birthed.” She sat back down and concentrated on her knitting. “We’ve had hard times, but we always had each other when things got bad.” She smiled at Tess. “I don’t suppose you and Mr. Davis…?”
“Matt is my cousin,” Tess said evasively, and closed her eyes. She didn’t like remembering Matt’s views on marriage, as well as the mixing of races.
All the same, it was hard to put out of her mind the look in Matt’s black eyes when he came close to her. He was attracted to her; she knew that. But a man could be attracted and still not love. Physical attraction alone was never enough. She loved him. Nothing short of a love as powerful as her own being reciprocated would be enough. Tess closed her eyes. She might as well try to sleep. Lamenting the future was fruitless.
She concentrated on breathing slowly and evenly. Minutes later she drifted off into a restless sleep.
MATT VISITED FIVE TELEGRAPH offices before he found one with a clerk named Collier. He wrote a telegraph to one of his operatives whom he’d dispatched to an outlying town, mentioning that his cousin Tess Meredith had been wounded by an unknown assailant and that he wouldn’t be in the office for two days, and instructing the man to contact Senior Agent Riley Blair if he needed assistance before Thursday. Then he signed his name.
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