A Hero in the Making

The medicine-show man paused a moment, surveying the crowd before him with a lordly air, a king in front of his subjects, as if he wore ermine-trimmed robes instead of buckskin trousers and a navy blue tunic. Around his neck was a necklace strung with what looked like alternating bear and panther claws. An eagle feather stuck out of the back of his striped turban. Raven-black hair brushed his shoulders.

He certainly had a presence, Ella thought before he had spoken so much as a single word.

When he opened his mouth at last, a torrent of syllables poured out, all of them strange and foreign to her ears. “I am Robert Salali,” he proclaimed, switching to English. “What I said in the Cherokee tongue is this—I bring you greetings in the name of the Cherokee Nation.”

Ella could not place his accent. It was neither Yankee nor a Southern drawl nor quite foreign.

“How did I come by the knowledge of this astonishing medicine, you may be wondering?” Salali said. “It is quite a tale. I saved a Cherokee chief from an agonizing death at the claws of a fierce, enormous bear. In gratitude, the chief gave me this necklace, these articles of Cherokee clothing and the knowledge of the ingredients of the elixir. He said I could share the elixir with those I wished, or keep it to myself. ‘But how could I be so selfish?’ I asked him. ‘Ah, you have a great soul,’ the chief told me. ‘So I will give you a new surname, which means “Generous Heart” and you may share the elixir as you choose. It is a gesture of friendship to our white brothers.’”

“They must be more neighborly Injuns than the Comanches, then,” somebody muttered, and there were answering chuckles.

“That must mean this medicine’s free, I reckon!” hooted one of the town’s graybeards.

Salali smiled and raised his arm majestically to quiet his audience. “Not free, no, for what is free is often not valued, and the ingredients of our amazing Cherokee medicine do cost money to obtain. I must charge a pittance or I would not be able to produce it as a service to mankind.” He pulled out a rolled scroll of parchment from his pants pocket, and with a flourish, undid the red satin ribbon that bound it and handed it to Bohannan. “My assistant will read some testimonials from satisfied customers,” he said.

Ella listened as Bohannan read accounts of a woman cured of cataplectic hysteria—whatever that was—who had come back to her right mind and made her husband a hearty breakfast the very next day after starting to take Cherokee Marvelous Medicine, a boy cured of lameness, a man cured of heart seizures, a woman of insomnia. Nothing in his tone hinted at the cynicism he’d revealed earlier to her when he’d said the medicine man “put on a good show.”

Ella heard the townspeople around her speculating as to whether the medicine would heal this ailment or that. She looked around, and though several reached into pockets or reticules for money to buy, others looked as unconvinced as she was.

Then Robert Salali spoke again, his expression solemn. “Though I can see there are many doubters among you, I will still provide the medicine for the paltry sum of only fifty cents for a pint bottle. Fifty cents for the most amazing medicine of all time, folks! I would advise you to act quickly if you are interested. In other towns near here, the elixir has gone very fast, and we are only here for this one day.”

In no time the citizens of Simpson Creek surged forward, surrounding him and the makeshift stage upon which Salali stood, clamoring for the medicine and holding out coins. She watched as Salali took the money and Bohannan handed out the bottles. Ella turned away in disgust after seeing Delbert Perry buy a bottle and walk away with an expression of bliss on his simple features. Would he be back at the saloon tomorrow, buying whiskey with his hard-earned money?

How could Bohannan help Salali prey on innocent folks this way? Rescuing her earlier had been a gentlemanly thing to do, but his actions now proved Nate Bohannan and his employer were no better than thieves.

When she turned, she saw her friend Kate Patterson standing on the boardwalk beside the wagon. She must have come out from behind the counter of the mercantile where she worked with her aunt, its proprietress, to watch the show. There was probably no one in the mercantile while this unusual diversion took place outside.

“Kate, how are you?” Ella said, smiling at her friend. “You’re not going to buy that stuff, are you?”

Kate giggled. “Of course not! I don’t need it for anything, but my aunt’s buying a bottle,” she said, indicating Mrs. Patterson wading through the throng toward Bohannan. “She suffers from rheumatism, you know, and what Dr. Walker’s prescribed so far hasn’t helped much.”

“Well, you’ll have to let me know if it works for her,” Ella said.

“The man helping Salali certainly is a nice-looking fellow, isn’t he?” Kate said.

Even as Ella followed her friend’s gaze, she saw Bohannan raise one empty crate triumphantly. “One box gone, Mr. Salali!” he called.

But there were still pint amber bottles in the other crate, and now those who had not bought a bottle surged forward, panicked that they might have missed their chance. Ella saw the medicine-show man could hardly keep up with the flow of coins.

“He is handsome, even if he’s helping to peddle snake oil,” Ella said. “He came to the café to buy sandwiches a little while ago. Say, I need to get started on my supper menu—why don’t you come over to the café and we can have lemonade while I cook the chicken for supper? I’ll tell you all about how he rescued me,” she said with a tantalizing wink.

It had been too long since she and Kate had had a cozy chat, now that Kate had a beau. For once she would have something interesting to talk about—she would not just be listening to Kate tell about what her beau had said and done. Ella would enjoy telling the other girl about the stranger’s saving her from the drifter, even if she no longer believed in his sincerity.

Kate’s eyes widened. “He rescued you? From what? It sounds thrilling! Oh, but I can’t. I promised my aunt I’d help her tend the store the rest of the afternoon since Gabe and I are going for a ride tonight in his buggy.”

Ella took an involuntary step backward, keeping her smile pasted on her face, even if her friend’s words had caused pain and jealousy to ping through her. Ever since the barbecue and dance the Spinsters’ Club had held this summer at Gilmore House, the mayor’s palatial home, her friend Kate had been oh-so-busy with Gabe Bryant, a lawyer who practiced in Simpson Creek. She was always stepping out with him, getting ready to step out with him or thinking about the marriage proposal she hoped would come soon.

Ella sighed inwardly. She didn’t begrudge Kate her beau, and she was happy for her, Ella told herself. She’d had a good time at the barbecue herself, and had danced nearly every dance with the gents who had attended. But after that evening, her lackluster life went on as before.

“Can you spare a few minutes to come into the mercantile and tell me about it?” Kate asked. “I’ve got to admit, you’ve got me intrigued,” she said, her gaze darting between Ella and Bohannan. The other crate was now empty also and Bohannan appeared to be consoling disappointed townsfolk.

“No, I really have to start working on supper,” Ella said. “I’m sure I’ll see you sometime,” she said, keeping her tone carefree as she turned to go. “It really wasn’t that important.”

She crossed the street diagonally to the saloon, and back to the hardscrabble reality of her existence.

* * *

“You made a good haul today,” Nate said to Salali as he parked the medicine-show wagon under a tree in the meadow across from Simpson Creek’s white-clapboard church. “Sold every bottle. You’ll have to make some more before we go to any more towns.” He unhitched the horses, hobbling them before he let the geldings loose to graze, and saw that Robert had taken a cross-legged seat under one of the live oak trees, pulled off his striped turban and thrown it onto a nearby bush.

I’d faint dead away if he ever offered to help with the unhitching, or at least thank me, Nate thought. But he reminded himself that under the terms of their “deal,” he was responsible for the horses and wagon, and assisting Salali when the latter did shows, so he supposed his employer really didn’t owe him any help. Nate’s “pay,” in return, was his meals and, eventually, a ride as far as Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he planned to take the new Transcontinental Railroad to California.

In California he could finally be somebody. He’d loved his father, who’d raised him alone after his mother died when he was only a baby. But all his life he had wanted to become something more than his father had been, a jack-of-all-trades who’d taken Nate to a series of small towns to live. Cal Bohannan had been content with that. Nate wasn’t.

His cousin on his mother’s side, Russell Blake, had gone to San Francisco and had become the proprietor of a grand hotel, and moved in influential circles in that thriving town. He said he planned to run for mayor in the next election, and he’d offered Nate the chance to become his partner in the hotel, with a further promise to introduce him to the powerful men he counted as friends. Nate could become a powerful man, too.

But would he ever get to San Francisco? So far, Salali didn’t seem to be in any hurry to even get out of Texas.

The day after Nate met Salali, they’d put on a show in some small east Texas town, and he’d been impressed with the man’s effortless showmanship and his personal magnetism—and the way coins poured into his hands in exchange for pint bottles of the elixir. Salali seemed inexhaustible.

Nate wasn’t so impressed anymore. Now that he had someone else to do the hard work of taking care of the horse and the wagon, navigating their journey from town to town and obtaining their vittles, Salali became a different person between shows. He seemed to feel his sole contribution to the success of the medicine show should be mixing up the elixir—a combination of laudanum, sassafras and ginseng roots, actual snake oil, and at least half alcohol—when the supply ran low.

“Mmm,” Salali muttered, his mouth full of the sandwich he’d given Nate the money to buy before the show.

“Good sandwich? You should have seen the pretty girl who made it for you,” Nate said. “Did you see her in the crowd? Tiny and dark-haired, with big brown eyes?”

Salali shook his head and mumbled something through a last mouthful of sandwich that might have been a disinterested “no.”

“Why don’t we go back to her café for some supper tonight? The food’s cheaper than in the hotel, and you could meet Miss Ella. I’m sure she’d be right fascinated to make your acquaintance.” And I could see her again. He didn’t know why that was so important; after all, he wasn’t about to abandon his goal of reaching San Francisco to take root in Simpson Creek. But there was something so compelling about the plucky, hardworking Ella...

“She wasn’t fascinated enough to buy any,” his employer muttered.

Nate shrugged. “She’s had to mind her pennies. She wants to build her own restaurant so she doesn’t have to use the back room of the saloon anymore. What do you care that she didn’t buy any elixir? We sold ’em all.”

He wished he could take back the words after he saw Salali’s eyes light up when he said “saloon.” Within days of their meeting, Nate had discovered his employer had two vices, gambling and whiskey. But what other choice had Nate had, on foot in the middle of nowhere after his horse had broken a leg and he’d had to put him down? Hot and sweaty from carrying his banjo, saddlebags and saddle, he’d come across the medicine-show wagon, broken down about five miles from where Nate’s horse had put his leg in a hole. Nate had repaired the broken axle for the medicine-show man, and regretted the deal he’d made with him ever since.

After Salali’s last drunken binge, he’d begged Nate to keep him from succumbing to his vices again.

Evidently he’d forgotten that now, however, for he said, “That saloon got poker? Faro? Why don’t I go make us a stake gambling while you see your sweetheart? I won’t drink, I promise. Or maybe just one whiskey, just to wet my whistle. What d’ya say, Nate-boy?”

It was a familiar wheedle, and one Nate had resolved to ignore forever more. When Salali gambled, he drank then lost every penny in his pockets. Then he’d lie around in a drunken stupor for the next day, and wake up cranky as a wet rattlesnake.

Sorrowful and repentant after his last binge, he’d agreed to let Nate hold on to their money after a show, so Nate resolved to stick to his guns and do just that. The money was safe in its secret hiding place on the wagon. Even if it meant neither he nor his employer had anything more to eat today than the last of the buffalo jerky, he wasn’t going to let Salali get close to temptation. If they went to town, Salali would have to agree to go into the café via the back entrance, not through the saloon. He figured the medicine-show man wouldn’t agree, but Nate would have liked to see Ella Justiss again, even for a brief time.

“I can’t let you do that, compadre,” Nate said firmly. “You told me not to let you gamble away the profits, or drink liquor, and I’m sticking to that.” He tried to ignore the way Salali’s eyes glared at him in thwarted anger. “If you won’t agree to only visit the café, we’ll stay right here. I’m just doing what you asked me to do, remember?”

Salali yawned widely, as if he didn’t care one way or the other. “Think I’ll take me a siesta,” he muttered.

Maybe he’d change his mind about supper when he woke up, Nate thought. “Think I’ll take a nap, too,” he said, but he was talking to empty air. The medicine-show man was already snoring.

His employer had once admitted to him while drunk that his lately adopted surname, Salali, meant “Squirrel” in the Cherokee tongue, not “Generous Heart.” But there was nothing of the industrious planning-for-winter rodent or of generosity in Robert Salali, and Nate had to wonder why the chief had given it to him—and what he’d really done for the Indian. He didn’t believe for a minute that story of Salali killing a bear—the man was much too indolent. As Nate spread his blanket under the wagon to take advantage of the shade, he wondered what the Cherokee word for “lazy” was.

Someday soon, he and Salali would have to part ways, he thought, settling himself on his blanket and listening to his employer snore. Their arrangement wasn’t working. At the speed they were meandering through Texas, it would take years for Nate to reach Iowa, and the business opportunity in San Francisco that had been promised to him would have vanished.

* * *

It was evening when Nate awoke. He saw that Salali was already stirring around, his turban back in place, his clothes brushed. Hope rose in Nate that his employer had seen the sense of what he’d said, and decided to accompany him to supper—if it wasn’t already too late, he thought, wondering what time the petite pretty woman closed her establishment.

“You going to Ella’s café with me?” Nate asked. “I’ll bet it’ll be the best supper we’ve had in a long time.” He stepped up to the cabinet on the side of the wagon and used the comb and mirror that he kept there to spruce up a little. Maybe he ought to give himself a quick shave, he thought, after glancing at his beard-shadowed face, and pulled out his razor and a bowl, which he’d fill with water from the burbling creek just a few feet away.

“No,” Salali said, a challenging note in his voice. “I’m going to go play faro and drink as much whiskey as I please, and don’t think you’re going to tell me different.”

Nate shrugged, trying to tamp down the anger that boiled within him. There was no arguing with Salali when he got this way, but he didn’t have to make it easy. Surely if he remained firm, his employer would thank him one day. “I don’t know how you’re going to do that,” he said, taking the bowl and striding toward the creek. “You don’t know where the money we made today is, and I’m not about to tell you.”

He heard Salali following him, and figured he was going to try to wheedle him into changing his mind. He never saw the other man raise his arm, but a second later, he felt a crushing blow to the back of his head and felt himself falling. The fading light of dusk went black.

* * *

Ella had just dressed and was heading out the back steps of the boardinghouse the next morning with a basket full of eggs to scramble and a covered dish of bacon to fry for her café’s breakfast offering when she saw Detwiler trudging across the street toward her, looking as if he’d lost his last friend. His normally hound dog–droopy features were saggier than usual, and his eyes red-rimmed, as if he’d just been weeping.

Unease gripped her. While not of an overly cheerful nature, he was normally an even-tempered man. She hurried forward, alarm clenching her insides. “George, what’s wrong?”

“They wrecked the place, Miss Ella, that d— ’scuse me, Miss Ella, them awful snake-oil salesmen.”

Ella froze. “W-wrecked it? What are you saying?”

“Tore it up. Ever’thing inside is all smashed, ’cludin’ your café. Sheriff noticed a broken front window, and found it all smashed up inside. He came out to the house and notified me, and I just came from seein’ the damage. I’m ruined, Miss Ella. We’re both ruined.”

Ella felt a coldness wash over her despite the early warmth of the morning. She set the covered dish down on the doorstep, afraid her trembling hands would drop it in the next second. What Detwiler was saying didn’t make sense.

“You’re saying they wrecked it, but the sheriff didn’t find it till this morning? How do you know both of those men did it?” And why am I already trying to protect them? she wondered, even as she began to run down the alley past the hotel toward the saloon. No, this couldn’t have happened. Not my café!

Detwiler followed her. “That medicine-show man, the one in the outlandish clothes, came into the saloon last night, set down at the faro table and proceeded to get booze-blind drunk. He got mad when he lost his money an’ I told him he had to leave. He told me he was gonna lay a Cherokee curse on me, mumbled some a’ that foreign gibberish an’ left.”

“He left? So why do you think he and the other man did the damage? Was the other man with him when he was gambling?” She looked behind her, and saw Detwiler shake his head.

“Nope, I didn’t see that other fella, but it had to have been both of ’em. Wait’ll you see it, Miss Ella. That Salali character couldn’t’ve done that much by hisself.”

They’d emerged onto Main Street, and Ella picked up her skirt hem and ran the rest of the way.

From outside the batwing doors, nothing looked amiss, but inside it was another story.

Everything had been destroyed. Chairs and tables were splintered and lay on their sides at odd angles. The huge mirror behind the bar bore a crazy quilt of cracks radiating out from a hole in the middle. The painting of a scantily clad reclining woman that hung above it had been gashed so that the canvas now hung in pathetic strips from the gilt frame. The once-magnificent mahogany bar had deep scrapes furrowing it, as if someone had gouged it with a Bowie knife. The two girls who served whiskey in the saloon huddled along the side of the bar, their faces a study in misery, their garish-colored costumes pathetic in this scene of destruction. In the middle of the floor lay the feather of a golden eagle—just like the one that had been stuck in Robert Salali’s turban.

All this Ella took in at a horrified glance as she dashed to the back door of the saloon and into her café. She hoped desperately that George had been exaggerating about her café, at least. Maybe the drunken medicine-show man had only broken into the pie safe and found the half loaf of bread and the cookies she’d had left from yesterday.

But George hadn’t overstated the situation at all. The pecan countertop was cracked in half, and the three tables and half a dozen chairs lay in splintered pieces, as if a mad bull had been let loose in this small room. Her crockery lay in shards. The empty pie safe gaped open, its decorative tinwork door hanging by one hinge.

“Why?” It was a cry ripped from her heart. How could the Lord have allowed this to happen, knowing how hard she’d worked to achieve this much, all on her own, and how much more she wanted to accomplish? How could she go on now? Her pitiful savings couldn’t replace what she had lost.

“I’m sorry about this, Miss Ella,” Detwiler said behind her.

She whirled around, even as stinging tears began to cascade down her cheeks. “What about those women out there?” she demanded, pointing an accusatory arm at the saloon behind Detwiler. “Wouldn’t they have heard something going on from upstairs and gone to get the sheriff?”

“They weren’t here,” he told her. “They’ve got a room over on Lee Street,” he said. “They don’t always sleep here, unless...”

Ella knew what he wasn’t saying, and appreciated his discretion. But now she couldn’t think of what to do. She felt frozen in place.

“Sheriff Bishop’s gone to get his deputy,” he told her. “Somebody saw them two swindlers campin’ t’other side a’ the creek yesterday. Bishop’s going out there with the deputy to see if they’re still there.”

“Well, I’m going with them,” she said as fury swamped the grief and fear within her. “And when I see that—that scoundrel Bohannan, I’m gonna punch him right in the nose. The medicine man, too.”

Chapter Three

A horsefly buzzing around Nate Bohannan’s left ear woke him. Instantly he regretted returning to awareness, for it felt like an anvil had been dropped on his head and was still bouncing on it. Opening a cautious eye, he saw that it was early morning, and he was lying in the open meadow. Strange. He usually slept under the wagon. The ground at his fingertips dropped away, and he heard a gurgling splash below. Gingerly, he raised himself up on his elbows, and was rewarded with rocketing pain that left him retching onto the grass beside him.

Once the spasm passed, he felt a tad better and was able to cast a bleary look around him. Had Salali been attacked, too? Was his partner lying somewhere nearby, beaten insensible or worse?

He was alone in the meadow. The horses and the medicine wagon were gone. There was no sign of Salali. Where was he?

Then he caught sight of the tin bowl that he used for shaving, lying in the grass a few feet to his right, next to the skillet. It all came back to him then. He’d been about to fill the bowl with water and shave before walking into town to eat at the café, and the two of them had been arguing about Salali’s intention to drink and gamble. And then...blackness.

He felt a wave of dizziness as realization hit him. Salali had hit him over the head—probably with the skillet—and taken everything, including the contents of his back pockets, his banjo, the horses and the wagon. And the money concealed in the wagon. He had vanished, leaving Nate Bohannan with only the clothes on his back and a tin bowl.

He let a curse fly then. What in the name of blazes was he going to do now?

Had Salali fled in the direction of his hideout, where he kept the ingredients to make the elixir? If so, he must be counting on Nate not having the wherewithal to follow in time to catch up with him there, for Nate knew where it was—just two or three days’ ride to the southeast, a makeshift hut hidden atop a limestone hill. Nate guessed he’d probably left right after he’d knocked Nate unconscious, and if that was so, maybe someone in Simpson Creek had seen him, and the direction he was heading.

The one thing Salali hadn’t remembered to do was to relieve Nate of his gold pocket watch—probably because when he fell, he’d sprawled face-first on the ground, on top of it. The weight of it still rested reassuringly in his breast pocket. It was all he had to purchase a horse and saddle, but perhaps there was a way to avoid selling it. It was worth way more than the price of a horse and saddle, after all, and it was his only inheritance from his father. He might not want to be like him, but the old man had loved him.