A Hero in the Making
Maybe he could arrange to borrow a horse and revenge himself against that thieving charlatan. Just how he’d pay Salali back when he caught up with him, he hadn’t yet decided, but he’d have plenty of time to cogitate on it while he pursued him.
Now that he’d made his decision, time was of the essence. He levered himself to his feet, swaying slightly, feeling the earth beneath his feet tilt as if he was on the deck of a storm-tossed ship. Nausea still churned his stomach, and he blinked to clear his vision. He turned toward the bridge that lay across the creek.
And saw four very angry-looking people heading straight for him.
He blinked again, sure his headache was making him hallucinate, for one of them was Miss Ella, the proprietress of that café. Why was she making a beeline for him, her hands doubled into fists and thunder in her dark eyes?
The other three were men, and the only one he recognized was the stocky saloonkeeper he’d met yesterday. Judging by the tin stars on their shirts, the remaining men were lawmen. Sweet mercy, what had Salali done?
“I’m Sheriff Bishop, and this is my deputy, Luis Menendez. You Nate Bohannan?” asked the older of the two lawmen, his tone hard as granite.
Nate nodded, the motion sending waves of vertigo surging over him again. “What’s this about, Sheriff?” he asked, keeping his gaze averted from Ella.
“Did you and that partner of yours willfully destroy the inside of the Simpson Creek Saloon, along with Miss Ella’s café in the back of it?”
Nate closed his eyes, feeling his desire for revenge against the medicine-show man multiply tenfold. Not only had Salali robbed him blind, but by the sound of things, he’d gone on a tear in town, too.
Bishop must have taken his closed eyes as an admission of guilt, for the next thing Nate knew, the deputy had taken advantage of it to swoop behind him, grab his forearms and clamp a set of come-alongs around his wrists. His eyes flew open. “No,” he breathed. “I didn’t... And he’s n-not my partner. We had a deal—”
“You’re under arrest,” Bishop said, his eyes as cold as if he’d just condemned Nate to hang. “Come with us peaceably now, or I’ll let Miss Ella slug you in the nose as she’s been threatening to do. Destroying the saloon’s bad enough, but what kind of man wrecks a lady’s business?”
Nate let himself look at Ella then—anything to escape the implacable, hawk-eyed stare of the sheriff, and the equally accusing gaze of his deputy. But looking into the wrath-mixed-with-hurt eyes of Ella Justiss was worse, for tears flooded down her cheeks. Even though he hadn’t done what he was charged with, he felt lower than a snake’s belly just for having been associated with the scoundrel that had done the damage.
“I didn’t do it, Sheriff,” he said. “I’ve been robbed, too. Salali laid me out with a frying pan last evening and took everything I had—the wagon, the horses, the profits—and skedaddled. I only just came to, as a matter of fact.” He felt guilty not mentioning the pocket watch, but if he was able to talk his way out of the charges, he was going to need it.
“You expect us to believe that?” Bishop demanded.
Dizzy again, Nate closed his eyes. “It’s the truth. The last thing I remember before being hit over the head was arguing with Salali about going into town. I wanted to go have some supper at Miss Ella’s café, since I’d had a sandwich there before the show and it was mighty tasty.” He darted a glance at Miss Ella then, hoping to find some softening in her eyes, but there was none. “Salali wanted to go drink and gamble at the saloon. I didn’t want him to because whiskey and my employer don’t mix well—”
Without warning, the deputy’s fingers roughly probed the back of Nate’s head, sending fresh waves of sickening pain piercing through his skull.
“There is a lump back here, Sheriff,” the deputy confirmed in a Spanish-accented voice.
“Let me see...”
That was the last thing Nate heard before he passed out again.
* * *
When Nate woke, he was lying on a straw-tick mattress facing the bars of a jail cell. From inside. He groaned. Surely locking up a man when he was insensible was against the law somehow.
“You gonna live?” a woman’s scorn-laced voice inquired.
A dark skirt and small, laced-up boots hovered into his line of sight. When his gaze traveled upward, he recognized Miss Ella staring down at him through the bars.
“I’m not sure,” he said honestly, still feeling the pounding in his head, but it had diminished, somehow, as if the hammer pounding the anvil was only hitting the end of the anvil, rather than right in the middle.
“Humph. Mighty convenient, I’d say, passing out like that.”
He stared at her, his headache and her disbelief making him even testier than he might otherwise be under the circumstances. “For the sheriff, maybe. Why would you care? I’m behind bars anyway, aren’t I?”
She ignored that. “Dr. Walker says as long as you woke up, you aren’t gonna die. Oh, yes, Sheriff Bishop had the doctor check your noggin all right and proper. You’re awake, so I guess you’ll survive.”
Having to put up with the lash of Ella Justiss’s tongue, along with the pain in his head, was surely more than any man ought to have to bear. “Where’s the sheriff? I want to talk to him,” he said.
“You’ll just have to wait. The sheriff and his deputy went to see if they could catch up with that snake-oil-selling fraud and I agreed to sit with you—since I don’t have a café to run, thanks to your friend.”
Nate doubted they’d catch Salali. If the scoundrel had taken to the road right after wrecking the saloon and café, he must have gotten a good head start. Salali wasn’t fool enough to dawdle after a spree like that, nor would he stick to the main roads.
“The sheriff’ll never catch him,” he muttered.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Ella argued. “And that tall tale your friend was spouting about saving the Indian chief from a bear—that was all made-up moondust, wasn’t it? And he was just spouting gibberish, not real Cherokee, wasn’t he?”
“Probably,” he admitted. “Woman, if you’re just going to torment me unmercifully till the sheriff gets back, get the rope and the lynch mob and put an end to my misery. I hurt too much to listen to you carp at me.”
That stopped her. She had the grace to look ashamed. “D-doctor said I was to give you this when you woke, if you were still in pain,” she said, reaching for a cup sitting on a nearby bench.
“What is it? Poison, to finish me off?” he said, eyeing it, and her, balefully.
“No, it’s not, and how dare you accuse the good doctor of such a thing? It’s willow-bark tea, and his wife brewed it herself. It’ll help your headache, though maybe you deserve to keep it.”
Despite what she’d said, she held it out to him. The bars were just wide enough to pass the cup through. He noticed she was careful not to let their fingers touch.
The remedy was bitter, but he drank it all.
“Well, since you’re awake and all, I’m going to go help Mr. Detwiler clear up the mess your friend made,” Ella said, turning to go.
“He’s not my friend,” he ground out. “I was tired of his drinking and his gambling and I was about to part company with him, though I hadn’t told him yet.” The truth was, he rued the day he’d met Salali and been in such a hurry to find a cheap way to get to the railroad, that he’d thrown in with the man. If he hadn’t taken the easy way out of his transportation problem, he would now not have to atone for what Salali had done. “Besides,” he added, standing and gripping the bars. “How can you just leave? You’re supposed to be guarding me, aren’t you?”
She shrugged. “Sheriff said I could, soon as you were awake. It’s not as if you could escape, anyway.”
He didn’t know why the idea of her leaving bothered him so. Hadn’t he just been complaining about the way she had plagued him?
“But I’m hungry,” he said, hoping he looked pitiful enough that she wouldn’t laugh at him. “I haven’t eaten anything since that sandwich you sold me for lunch yesterday, and—” he glanced out of the cell’s one high window “—it’s got to be at least noon, I reckon.”
“Then it’s a pity your friend destroyed my café, isn’t it?” she retorted sweetly. “It’s not as if the hotel cook’s going to feed you. Mrs. Powell doesn’t give anything away.”
He played his last card. “Doesn’t the Bible say you’re supposed to feed the hungry? Sure it does—remember the passage where it says ‘I was in prison, and you visited me’? You did the visiting part, Miss Ella. Don’t you reckon you could take pity on a poor hungry man and do the feeding part, too?”
She studied him, chewing on her lip. “Anyone can quote scripture, Mr. Bohannan,” she said. “I could quote ‘Man does not live by bread alone,’ but I’ll just give you part of the breakfast I had planned to serve at the café this morning. It’s a wonder some stray dog didn’t find it first, but my friend Maude rescued the makings from where I left them on the back step of the boardinghouse and went ahead and cooked them. I had some, and I’ll fetch you a portion. The rest is for the sheriff and his deputy when they get back.”
Ella went over to the desk that occupied the center of the sheriff’s office part of the jail, removed the cover from a dish and scooped up a hearty helping of bacon and eggs onto a tin plate she got off a shelf. She tossed a couple of biscuits onto it and passed it under the bottom bar, along with a cup of water from the pitcher on the desk. Then, as he murmured his thanks, she went out the door without another word.
The eggs and bacon were cold, but it was food, and soon the ache in his belly had subsided. The ache in his head had faded to a dull whisper, too.
Now all he could do was wait for Sheriff Bishop and his deputy to return. He doubted they’d have Salali with them when they did. And if he was being realistic, by the time he was freed, it was unlikely he’d able to catch up with Salali, either. The wily charlatan would be gone by the time he was able to make his way to the canyon hideout.
He wasn’t sleepy, even now that his belly was full, so it seemed he would have an indefinite amount of time to contemplate what he would do after he was freed—assuming they didn’t try to hold him responsible for what his erstwhile employer had done.
He wanted to stick to his original plan and to shake the dust of Simpson Creek off his boots as soon as possible. Somehow he’d get a horse, even if he had to stay here long enough to earn the price of it. He’d head for the railroad terminus at Council Bluffs, taking jobs along the way to earn the price of a ticket to San Francisco. He’d never work in a medicine show—he didn’t want to be someone’s shill ever again.
Fortunately he had more cards in his deck. His father had passed along a number of skills to his son before he’d died. Nate hadn’t valued them then—he’d been too full of big plans and as little common sense as most wet-behind-the-ears young’uns possessed.
Something about Miss Ella’s stricken face as she spoke about the wreck of her café nagged at him. He couldn’t leave until he assured himself she would be all right. Surely she had parents who would take her in, or relatives, or friends. Maybe even someone who could afford to help her rebuild. Perhaps she had a beau who’d been pressing her to marry him, yet some stubborn independent streak had driven her to prove she could take care of herself. Perhaps this incident would force her to be practical and marry the man. A young woman should be cooking in her own kitchen, with babies crawling at her feet, and a hungry husband on the way home for supper. Serving sandwiches to rowdy cowboys and saddle tramps was for some plain old maid or a widow, not for a pretty thing like Ella Justiss.
That was it. If Bishop let him go, he’d linger just long enough to ensure himself that Miss Ella had some reasonable options. Then he was San Francisco bound.
Chapter Four
Ella parted the batwing doors of the saloon and walked inside. She’d expected that Detwiler would have made some start at cleaning up the mess, but the ruined tables and chairs, the broken glass, were still strewn everywhere. George Detwiler, Dolly and Trudy were sitting on the floor along the wall, sniffling and swollen-eyed, staring dully ahead of them.
“What’re y’all doing?” Ella demanded. “Don’t you think you should at least sweep up the broken glass?”
Detwiler studied her with doleful eyes. “Won’t make no diff’rence, Miss Ella. How’m I gonna fix all this? Those medicine-show swindlers took what was in the till an’ every whiskey bottle they didn’t drink. I don’t have anything t’sell, even if customers were willing to stand while they drink.”
Ella looked around. “You still have the piano,” she said, spotting it against the far wall. Amazingly, it had escaped the destruction. Had Robert Salali possessed some innate respect for a musical instrument that had caused him to leave the piano alone during his destructive spree?
“Ain’t no one gonna pay to come hear me play,” he said.
It was true—Detwiler could only pick out a few tunes poorly.
“Well, you can’t leave the place like this,” she said, making a sweeping gesture at the piles of splintered wood and glass. “Unless you’re planning on tearing it down and selling your lot.”
At her words, the two saloon girls set up a keening wail. If there was no saloon, they had no livelihood, any more than Detwiler did.
“Come on,” she said. “Get the brooms out and let’s start cleaning up. We could at least separate the trash and firewood from what could be repaired. Some of those tables and chairs just need new legs, looks like.”
“An’ who’s gonna repair them?” he asked, though without heat. “I’m no carpenter.”
“Hank Dayton’s got a lathe at the mill,” Dolly mumbled. “I seen it once.”
“What does that matter?” Detwiler muttered. “Hank Dayton’s a skinflint who doesn’t give anything away. I don’t know how to operate a lathe.”
“So we need someone who does,” Ella said, going behind the bar and fetching the two brooms that were propped in the corner. She handed Detwiler one of them. “Let’s get started clearing this mess, and maybe one of us will think of something.”
“You girls kin go home,” Detwiler said to Dolly and Trudy. “I’ll let you know what I’m going to do—soon’s I figure it out.”
Ella didn’t try to stop them. There were only two brooms, and the women hadn’t seemed inclined to do more than sit and blubber. She started sweeping, intending to leave the café till last, for she was too afraid Detwiler would give way to despair again if she left him on his own.
Lord, if you’re up there, we could use some help. She’d never quite believed that the Deity was interested in aiding Ella Justiss, or He would have done so years ago at the asylum, but she figured she’d offer Him the opportunity, at least.
She left Detwiler to clean his saloon while she went to do the same with her café. She had soon swept the debris into the center of her area and came back to help Detwiler with his larger one. For a time both of them plied their brooms in silence, but as the afternoon went on, the interruptions began—the saloon’s faithful customers stopping in to see if the rumor was true that there was no whiskey or poker games to be had in Simpson Creek because of the vandalism in the saloon. Ella ignored them and kept sweeping, but Detwiler stopped to tell each of his customers what had happened. Ella rather thought he was enjoying the sympathy gained with each encounter, but as these patrons began to build up inside the saloon, chattering with each other over where they would have to go to get their whiskey and card games, and doing nothing to help, even Detwiler began to get testy. Ella was past exasperated at having to ask gents to move while she swept the areas they had been standing in.
Finally, to Ella’s relief, Detwiler roared an order for all of them to leave, saying he’d put up a sign when the saloon was open again. Then he took a piece of a broken table, and a brush and bootblacking he’d dug up from who knew where and handed them to Ella.
“Your book learnin’s probably better than mine, Miss Ella,” he said. “Write on the bottom a’ this tabletop Closed Till Further Notice, an’ I’ll prop it up outside.”
If George only knew how haphazard her “book learning” had been, Ella thought as she bent to her task. The asylum orphans’ schooling had been hit-or-miss, since they couldn’t attend if they were needed to work in the laundry or the kitchens or the superintendent’s wife’s garden. But when Ella was able to go to class, she’d paid attention with a desperate intensity, for she’d known even then it was her ticket to a better life.
Detwiler had returned after placing the sign outside and Ella was sweeping piles of broken glass into a dustpan when the sound of footsteps had them both looking up. Ella recognized Faith Chadwick, the preacher’s wife, and wondered what she was doing here.
“Mr. Detwiler, the sheriff told us what happened here. I’m so sorry,” Faith said.
He’d been stacking broken table and chair legs into a pile like firewood, but now he straightened. “Thank you, ma’am. Yes, it surely is going to be a trial to replace all this.”
Faith looked troubled, but shifted her gaze to Ella. “I wonder if I might speak to you privately, Ella.”
Ella wondered what she wanted but gestured for the preacher’s wife to follow her to the café. “I’d ask you to sit down, Faith,” she said, ruefully gesturing at the splintered tables and chairs that littered the tiny area, “but as you can see, that’s impossible just now.”
Faith nodded, surveying the wreckage. “That’s what I’ve come to speak to you about.”
Ella gazed at her curiously. She and the pastor’s wife had worked together on Spinsters’ Club projects back before Faith and Reverend Gil Chadwick had married, but Ella didn’t know her very well.
And that was her own fault, Ella realized. She’d kind of had a chip on her shoulder when she’d first joined the group because she was the only one who rarely made it to meetings and Spinsters’ Club events because of having to work so much—first in the hotel restaurant and lately, in her own establishment.
“I’d like to help you get started again,” Faith said. “I have a small table in the parlor that we don’t use often, Ella, which I can loan to you, and I happened to pass the mayor’s wife on the way here, and she said she also has a couple of small tables, as well as some dishes and silverware she wants to give you outright. She had her own household before marrying the mayor, of course, so she no longer needs them.”
Ella couldn’t believe her ears. It was a God-sent answer to her dilemma. “Thank you, Faith,” she breathed. “It’s an answer to a prayer!”
The preacher’s wife blinked as if the remark had really touched her. “We’re happy to be able to help, Ella dear. It’s what church members do for one another. Gil will be over with those things in a few minutes. He’s borrowing a horse and buckboard from the livery.”
“Can’t you read the sign? The saloon’s closed till further notice!” Detwiler’s voice boomed from the saloon.
Faith flinched and the two women exchanged a glance. Ella could guess the preacher’s wife was wishing she could help George somehow, too, but it wouldn’t be fitting for the church to help a saloon owner resume selling spirits and promoting card playing and other activities the church couldn’t approve of.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but I can’t help wishing you didn’t have to conduct your business in the back of the saloon, Ella dear,” Faith said.
Ella sighed. She knew the preacher’s wife meant well, and her arranging to get Ella the furniture, dishes and silverware to resume business was certainly a blessing. But what choice did she have? She was glad Faith didn’t know about the drifter who had manhandled her only yesterday.
“Yes, I know it’s far from ideal,” Ella admitted. “And believe me, I’m trying my best to earn enough to set up my café elsewhere.”
“I know,” Faith said, surprising her with a hug before she could back away. “I’m going to pray about it, and see if God will send you a solution.”
“Thanks—for the prayer and the things you and Mrs. Gilmore are giving me.” Praying won’t hurt, Ella thought, though it’s never seemed to help me very much.
Ella went back into the saloon, feeling guilty about her good fortune. She would be back in business by tomorrow, while Detwiler was still trying to figure out how to replace his whiskey and his furniture. But when she told the saloonkeeper about Faith Chadwick’s generous offer, the man showed no envy.
“She’s a good Christian woman,” he said. “Reckon there’s nothing more I can do here. I’ll see if I can help the preacher load up those things and drive ’em over here so he don’t have to come.”
Ella watched him go. She couldn’t help wishing someday her good works would be worthy of notice. It seemed as if she spent so much time working to survive that she had no energy left for higher goals.
Well, she wasn’t perfect, but at least she didn’t consort with thieves, like that slick fellow Nate Bohannan, she thought.
As if summoned by her thoughts, Bohannan walked through the batwing doors.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, glaring at him. “There’s nothing left to ruin!” she added, making a sweeping gesture that included the pile of damaged furniture. She thought she saw Bohannan flinch at the sight. Then she saw Sheriff Bishop behind him. “Did you catch that thieving medicine-show man, Sheriff?” she asked. “Is that why you’re back?”
“No, we didn’t see a trace of him, so I came back, but Menendez stayed out to keep trying to pick up his trail. He’s also going to let the sheriffs of the nearby towns know in case he shows up there,” Bishop said. “I just thought Mr. Bohannan might like to help you clean up, but I see you’ve mostly finished that. Sorry I didn’t get back in time so he could do more.”
“Thanks for the thought, Sheriff,” Ella said, “but what the saloon needs now is a carpenter.” She nodded toward the broken tables and chairs. “Mrs. Chadwick and Mrs. Gilmore are going to give me what I need to reopen my café, but that won’t help Mr. Detwiler. You don’t happen to have anyone with carpentry skills in your other jail cell, do you?” she added. It was an attempt at a joke, but she was surprised to see Bohannan’s gaze sharpen.
He strode over to survey the pile. “Miss Ella, it just so happens I’m kind of a jack-of-all-trades, and carpentry is one of my skills,” Bohannan told her over his shoulder. “I could fix everything in the saloon and your café for room and board. The only problem is, I don’t have any tools. I’d need a saw, a lathe, a hammer, nails...”
“Hank Dayton has a lathe at his mill,” Sheriff Bishop murmured.
“But he’d probably charge for the use of it,” Ella countered, remembering the conversation between Detwiler and Dolly.
“Maybe not,” Bishop mused, a half smile on his face. “As sheriff, I just happen to know Hank’s one of the saloon’s best customers. I could pay him a visit, persuade him it’s in his best interest to donate the use of his lathe so Nate, here, could make new table legs. And if I’m very persuasive, maybe he’ll even loan George some planking and sawhorses for temporary tables.”
“But Bohannan’s under arrest,” Ella reminded the sheriff. “Or are you letting him work off his sentence by fixing the damage he—that is, his employer—inflicted on this place?” she asked, allowing her voice to suggest that she still didn’t believe he was completely innocent.
“Sentence? He’s not under arrest anymore,” Bishop said blandly.
“He’s not?”
“I’m not?” Ella and Bohannan asked in unison. Ella’s voice was indignant, while Bohannan’s held notes of disbelief and gratitude.
Bishop nodded, and turned to Ella. “He’s convinced me he didn’t know anything about what Salali was planning to do, so I can’t hold him any longer. I would’ve advised him to ride on out of here and stay out of trouble, but that Salali scoundrel robbed him, too, Miss Ella. So what he’s offering is a favor to George Detwiler—and to you, since he’ll fix your café, too.”