Painted by the Sun Page 5

  While he was gone Emmet and Lily had undressed their patient and tucked her beneath a sheet. She lay as if she were made of melting wax, the skin of her neck and shoulders all but translucent.

  Fear gripped Cam when he looked at her. "What didn't I see?" he asked in a whisper.

  Emmet looked up from the basin of carbolic acid where he was washing his hands. "You bandaged her arm competently enough, but the bullet passed right through it and lodged in her side."

  Going to where Shea Waterston lay, Emmet peeled back the sheet.

  At first all Cam could seem to see was an expanse of that fragile, blue-white flesh. The cup and rise of her collar and breastbone, the mounds of her breasts crowned by nipples the pale pink of cherry blossoms. With an effort, Cameron tore his eyes away from all that lush femininity and adjusted his focus to where a seeping, rough-edged hole defiled the soft, faintly pleated arc of her ribs.

  "Trussed up the way she was, that wound was almost impossible to find." Emmet shot Cam a meaningful glance. "Anyone could have missed it."

  Still, Cam blamed himself. He should have looked for other wounds; he should have been more careful. "Are you going to be able to get the bullet out?"

  Emmet's expression tightened as he lowered the sheet and turned away. "That slug was probably deflected by a rib and could have gone almost anywhere. With as much blood as she's lost already, I'm not going to be able to do much probing."

  Cameron stared down at the woman on the table. She'd been wounded because of him, because he'd been in trouble and she'd tried to help. Responsibility congealed in his chest like bubbling tar, the heat of it all but choking him.

  "What can I do?" he managed to ask.

  Emmet immediately put him to work. He helped turn Shea Waterston onto her side and agreed to administer chloroform if she began to come around. He'd done it a time or two during the war when there hadn't been anyone else to help the surgeons.

  But mostly Cam held her arm up and out of the way as Emmet worked. As he did, her hand lay cupped and lax in his. It was a small hand with an oddly crooked little finger, a hand that hardly seemed strong enough to heft a gun, much less fire it.

  Shifting his gaze from the patient, Cam saw that Lily had taken up duties as Emmet's nurse. She was handing him instruments, vials of carbolic acid and powdered opium, pads of lint and rolls of bandages.

  Emmet worked with wordless concentration. His long, skilled fingers moved gracefully on the scalpel and probes. At last he removed a misshapen piece of lead and dropped it with an ominous clang into the basin Lily held out to him. As he cleaned the wound, Shea Waterston's blood stained the sheets beneath her, pooled at the edge of the table, and dripped onto the floor.

  Cam wondered how anyone could lose so much blood and live.

  Out on the porch he could hear Owen Brandt's boot soles scuffling over the planks, could sense the little man's fear hovering like a miasma just over their heads. What was going to happen to this odd little man if Shea Waterston died?

  After Emmet had bandaged his patient's side and arm, and stitched the gash at her hairline, he stepped back and swiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist.

  "Will she live?" Cameron asked him.

  Emmet shrugged, the gesture eloquent, chilling. "We'll keep her quiet and make sure she doesn't open those wounds again. But even if no infection develops, it doesn't look good for her."

  "We'll pull her through," Lily said with quiet determination as she went about gathering up the blood-soaked bandages and Emmet's instruments.

  The doctor's gaunt face softened and his eyes warmed as he turned to her. "I don't want you getting your heart set on that, Lily. Too much could go wrong."

  "Well, we'll just have to see that it doesn't."

  Cam glanced at his sister, seeing something in the set of that softly rounded chin that reminded him of the girl she'd been years before.

  "If Lily says she'll pull Shea through, she will," he told Emmet, wanting to reassure his sister.

  Wanting to reassure himself.

  As if his words had settled everything, Lily gestured toward the front of the house. "I thought we'd put Mrs. Waterston in your room, Cammie. The sheets on the bed are clean, and with me sleeping right next door, I'll hear her if she needs something in the night." She glanced at her brother for approval.

  "I'll bunk in the attic with Rand," he offered.

  "I just hope all this optimism is justified," Emmet observed with a doctor's practiced scowl.

  Bending, Cameron carefully lifted Shea Waterston and followed his sister through the well-appointed dining room and parlor. He waited while she turned back the covers on his bed, then settled Shea on sheets that smelled of lye soap and sunshine. The woman seemed even paler against the soft, sun-bleached linen, more fragile than the tatted lace Lily had sewn in rows along the hems of the pillowcases.

  Lily must have sensed his thoughts, and she laid her fingers on his arm. "Mrs. Waterston will be all right," she whispered. "We'll pull her through this—the two of us together. If she came to your aid, we owe her that."

  Cameron nodded, and with a reassuring squeeze, Lily brushed past him toward the kitchen.

  He stood looking down at the small woman who seemed all but lost in his big bed. He could barely believe she'd been the one who'd tried to photograph Joe Calvert's hanging, the one he'd tossed in jail for defying him. She looked like bisque china now, yet she'd brandished her rifle at those miners this afternoon like a warrior queen. She'd even shot one of them to protect him. What kind of a woman did that? What manner of woman was Shea Waterston?

  He bent and smoothed back the strands of her gingery hair. The curls that had been lush and tousled the other afternoon lay slack as seaweed across the placid surface of fresh-pressed bedding. He brushed her black-stained fingertips with his, and all but shivered at the chill. He tucked her hand beneath the covers and just stood staring.

  He needed to know where she'd come from and what she'd been doing in the mountains. He needed to know why she'd saved his life and what he owed her for the service.

  Cameron Gallimore paid his debts and honored his commitments. He might not like what some things cost, but he lived up to his responsibilities. He'd make this up to Shea Waterston, he told himself—if she lived.

  Turning from the woman on the bed, he saw that Lily had laid Shea Waterston's clothes across the chair. He picked up the skirt and rubbed the fabric between his fingertips. It was good, heavy twill. The serviceable petticoats she'd worn beneath it were stained with red, and her stockings, collapsed into loose rosettes of knitted cloth, were thin and often mended.

  He reached for the bloodstained remnants of her close-fitting jacket. A tag sewn into the seam proclaimed the name of a clothier in New York. He'd surmised she was from somewhere back east. The lilt in her voice and her unconventional occupation bespoke someplace a good deal more cosmopolitan than Colorado.

  Then, amid the untidy tumble of books and papers on his desk, he noticed three pieces of jewelry that must belong to Mrs. Waterston, too. There was a narrow wedding band, a pair of filigree earbobs, and a good-sized silver locket. He opened the piece expecting to see a likeness of Mr. Waterston. Instead a yellowing square of newsprint fell into his hand.

  It was dog-eared and creased in a dozen places. Cam unfolded it carefully and tipped it toward the light. "CHILDREN TO GOOD HOMES," the headline read. The story beneath gave the particulars of the arrival of an orphan train and enumerated the qualifications for prospective parents.

  A trickle of recognition ran through him.

  He looked toward the bed, wondering why, of all things, Shea Waterston should have this article tucked away. Why would this newspaper story mean so much to her? Had she adopted a child from one of the orphan trains, or did she want to? And if she'd taken one of those children, where was that child?

  He turned to where she lay inert, unnaturally still. She hardly seemed to be breathing.

  "Who are you?" Cameron whi
spered. "And why did you risk your life to help me?"

  Chapter 4

  Sometimes Cameron forgot what had happened to Lily during the war. Sometimes when he was away from the house for days at a time, he was able to divorce himself from what the fighting back in Missouri had done to her. But it always came back—came back to surprise him, to catch him unaware. To remind him of a part of his life he could never live down.

  As he approached the doorway into the kitchen from the front of the house, Lily stood lighting the lamp that hung suspended over the table. With the globe raised and the kerosene flame flaring bright, the shiny skin and pale striations that puckered the right side of her face and neck were sharply illuminated. They crimped the corner of her eye and tugged at her mouth; they ran down her jaw and throat like melting wax. They turned her from a lovely woman into an outcast, someone who would be stared at and pitied—if she ever left the farm.

  Cam paused in the shadowy dining room just out of her sight waiting for the shock of being reminded to dim and the hot flush of self-loathing to seep away.

  "Are you going to stay to supper, Emmet?" he heard Lily ask as she turned to where the doctor was putting instruments into his satchel.

  "I can't tonight. I need to get back to the office. I've got two patients whose babies are due any day, and I have to be where their husbands can find me."

  "Oh, who?" Lily asked. "Who's having a baby?"

  Emmet glanced toward her and then away, as if he heard the wistfulness in her voice as clearly as Cameron did. "Mrs. Phillips, the wife of the man who runs the feed store."

  "How many children do they have now?" Lily asked, crossing her arms against her waist.

  Cameron realized Lily spoke of the Phillipses as if they were people she nodded at in church or passed on the street. Of course she did quiz Emmet and him about the families in and around Denver. She heard from Rand about the boys who attended his school, and she read the newspapers every day. Cam knew Lily kept track of the births and deaths and marriages because she often asked him to deliver notes of congratulation or condolences, flowers from the garden, or a crock of soup to someone who'd fallen ill. He'd just never really considered the degree to which these phantom neighbors, this phantom community had become real to her. Nor had he noticed the resonance in her tone when she spoke of them.

  He stood listening as Emmet answered. "This will be the Phillips's eighth child. And the Halversons, out east of town, are having their first." The doctor gave a rueful smile. "Matt Halverson was chewing nails and spitting rust the last time his wife came into the office. I'm more concerned about him making it through the delivery than I am her."

  Cameron recognized the sadness in his sister's smile. "They will be all right, Emmet, won't they?"

  Farley reached across to squeeze her hand. "I'll take good care of them."

  Lily's expression softened. "Of course you will. With two new babies coming, I suppose I'll have to get busy knitting booties."

  Cameron cleared his throat to announce his arrival and crossed the threshold into the kitchen. "Shouldn't Rand be home?" he asked. "It's getting on toward dark."

  "Rand has begun taking violin lessons on Wednesdays after school," his sister reminded him. "He should be along any time now."

  "Right," Cam acknowledged. Then he noticed that Owen Brandt was still hovering outside the kitchen door. "I guess I need to have a word with Mrs. Waterston's companion," he went on, "then see to their wagon and the horses."

  "I'll head out with you," Emmet offered, hefting his bag. "I thank you, Lily, for the cake and tea. If Mrs. Waterston takes a turn, you send for me. Otherwise I'll be along tomorrow to look in on her."

  The moment Cam stepped outside, Owen Brandt sprang at him. He seemed smaller than he had earlier this afternoon, wizened and brittle, as if the waiting had scorched the life from him.

  "S-S-Shea?" he whispered fearfully.

  Cam laid his hand on Owen Brandt's shoulder. "The doctor's done his best for her."

  It wasn't much reassurance and both of them knew it.

  Emmet Farley paused to add a few words of encouragement. "You listen here, Mr. Brandt. Lily Gallimore's a damn fine nurse, and she's determined that your Mrs. Waterston will recover. I'd pin my hopes on Lily's nursing if I were you."

  Brandt bobbed his head, his eyes welling. "Th-thank you."

  Emmet patted his arm, then turned toward his buggy. Cameron and Owen followed him out to the drive where they'd abandoned the photography wagon this afternoon. The horses, still in their traces, glanced up from where they'd been nibbling the thick, sweet grass that grew along the edges of the lane.

  Cam went around back to see about the prisoner he'd taken this afternoon and found the man was gone. He shook his head in exasperation and figured it served him right. He'd left the man unattended for hours, forgotten about him completely until just now. Well, at least he'd had sense enough not to steal Cam's horse.

  Just then Cam's son turned up the lane, his violin case tied to the back of his saddle.

  "Pa!" Rand cried when he saw his father and dismounted on the fly. He flung his arms around Cam's middle and held on tight. "I'm so glad you're back. What's going on? Whose rig is this? Is that blood on you?"

  No matter how good it was to get back to the house, Cam never truly felt at home until he saw his son. It seemed as if the boy had grown these last few weeks. He looked taller and seemed more sure of himself. The changes unsettled Cam a little, so he took a moment to rumple his son's thick, reddish hair, to trail his palm along the curve of that broad-jawed face. He hugged the lanky ten-year-old again before he explained.

  "The rig is Mr. Brandt's," Cam said and hastily made introductions. "Mr. Brandt's companion, Mrs. Waterston, got hurt this afternoon. They're going to be staying with us while she's convalescing."

  Rand's eyes went wide. No one but Emmet ever came to the farm. "What happened?" he wanted to know.

  Though he didn't want Rand worrying about him when he was away, Cameron explained as much as he could. "Emmet's done his best," he finished, "and now your aunt Lily's looking after her.

  "Mr. Brandt and I were just about to take the horses down to the barn," Cam went on as he turned to catch the near-side harness. "Are you willing to help us get them settled?"

  "Sure, Pa!" the boy answered eagerly.

  Once Emmet took his leave, Cameron, Rand, and Owen Brandt led the horses to the big log barn that sat a hundred yards down the lane and off to the left of the house. They parked the photography wagon beside it and unhitched the team.

  Feeding and tending both Shea Waterston's horses and his own animals took Cam some time. If it hadn't been for Brandt, Cam would have lost himself in the work. He liked the rich, fecund smell of the stable. Pitching hay and milking the cow and the goats helped clear his head, especially after the demands of holding court. But tonight Owen Brandt was here, and the puzzle that was Shea Waterston preyed on Cam's mind.

  In truth, he wasn't sure how much he could learn from Brandt. He'd seen men like him before, men whose minds were shattered by what they'd seen or done during the struggle with the South. But then, the war had marked everyone who fought in it. It ruined people's lives—people who were innocent, people whose lives had no cause to be ruined. It's how war was.

  Sensing the little man's agitation at being away from Shea, Cam spoke as quietly, as soothingly as he could.

  "So what are you and Mrs. Waterston doing out here in the West?"

  Brandt looked up as if he was startled to be addressed directly. "Taking pictures," he finally answered.

  "You were up in the mountains taking pictures?" Cam looked up from where he was pouring oats into the horses's troughs just in time to see Owen nod. "How long were you up there?"

  "Since June."

  "It's beautiful country," he observed.

  Brandt inclined his head.

  "But a damned rugged place," Cam continued. "How did you and Mrs. Waterston manage?"

  "Had a guide."r />
  Some of the old trappers did that, took hunting parties or mapping expeditions up into the Rockies. Cam should have been surprised that Shea Waterston was so intrepid, but after what he'd seen this afternoon, not much she did would surprise him.

  "Photography seems to be an unusual profession for a woman," he observed. "How did Mrs. Waterston start taking pictures?"

  Owen slid him a sidelong glance. "Husband taught her."

  Shea Waterston was married, of course. She wore a wedding band and used her husband's name. But there was also something unfettered about her, something that spoke of self-determination and self-reliance. It made him wonder what her husband was like.

  "And Mr. Waterston, where is he?"

  "Dead." Owen bit the word off short, as if it scared him. As if he wanted to say it, then run away.

  Cam refused to let him do that. "What happened?"

  "Consumption."

  The little man seemed unaccountably rattled by the exchange, and Cameron paused to rub his horse's muzzle so Brandt had a chance to settle again. It gave Cam time to think through what he'd learned already.

  Shea Waterston wouldn't have been traveling with a man who'd been dying by inches. She couldn't have cared for him in a photography wagon, couldn't have kept him clean and warm and dry. So when had Mr. Waterston died? How long had she been wandering, stopping to sell her wares, then moving on?

  In Cam's experience, women wanted security, a home, a settled life. "What's she doing out here?" Cam wondered, half to himself.

  Owen Brandt must have heard him. "Looking," he muttered.

  Cam turned and stared at him. "Looking for what?"

  Owen's mouth went tight, as if he thought he'd said too much, as if he were trying to swallow his secrets. Shea Waterston's secrets.

  "Owen? What is it she's looking for?"

  Brandt didn't seem capable of lies or evasions. Instead he simply let his attention drift. Without a word, Owen turned and wandered toward the small, dim tack room and the cot Cam and Rand had made up for Brandt to use. He closed the door behind him, shutting himself off, going to ground like a fox seeking the safety of its den.