Five Magic Spindles: A Collection of Sleeping Beauty Stories Page 3

  When I had the dressings ready, I said, “Victor, I need you to help me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Victor Owens, you come here right now!” I demanded. “I need you to hold Rosalind still while I pull her hand free. If I don’t do this just so, that spindle could rip right through her muscles. She’d never have good use of it again.” I paused before adding, “Or do you want Mr. Palmer to hold her?”

  The idea of a stranger’s arms around his daughter did the trick. Victor dragged Mrs. Mortimer to the front door and shoved her through it. “Get out,” he snarled. “Get off my land and never set foot on it again! If you ever do, I will shoot you for trespassing.” His dog bolted for the door, but Victor caught him.

  She laughed. “This gunman may have failed me, but I can hire another and another. I can lay siege to your house and starve you out. I—”

  Victor slammed the door shut in her face and barred it. He tucked the pistol into his belt, crossed the room, and took hold of Rosalind’s arm. I made my way around to the other side of them. “Hold it tight,” I instructed.

  “Wait,” Palmer said. I’d nearly forgotten he was still there. “This will help.” He picked up a wooden spoon and held it out to Rosalind. “Put this between your teeth,” he said quietly. “Bite down hard when you need to.”

  I thought that a right good idea, though I didn’t say so. It seemed this gunman had dealt with pain a time or two himself.

  Beside me, Victor winced as Rosalind clamped the spoon’s handle between her teeth. He knew how painful this was about to be for her.

  She looked up at me and nodded. I grasped her hand in both of mine and tugged it free of the spindle. Rosalind made small, helpless noises, but she did not try to pull away from me. More blood snaked down her arm, soaking into her blue-grey dress. I kept her hand up above her heart to slow the bleeding.

  “Victor, can you hold her arm up like this?” I asked. When he did so, I quickly pressed one of the folded wads of cloth against the back of her hand. With my other hand I picked off wool fibers from the yarn she’d spun. They had stuck to her palm while it was jammed against them over the spindle.

  Palmer hovered nearby, watching me. He cleared his throat and suggested, “Might not washing the wound help ensure you’ve removed everything that might infect it?”

  I pointed out, “The blood will wash it clean.” As if I wouldn’t know that any foreign matter in a wound could cause it to fester!

  “It will help,” he agreed. “But it’s not bleeding that much. If you will permit me . . .” While I finished removing pesky bits of wool, he used the scissors from my bag to cut off a section of bandage, then soaked that in the wash basin. “It can’t hurt and it might help,” he said, holding out the wet wad of cloth.

  I looked at Victor to see what he thought. He gave a small nod, his lips pressed too tightly together to speak.

  “Very well,” I conceded. I swabbed the wound in her palm with the sodden cloth then pressed the other dressing against it. “I suppose now you’ll tell me I should wash the back, too.”

  “I would advise it.”

  I frowned at him. “Next you’ll be wanting to bandage her up yourself.”

  Around the spoon handle still clenched in her teeth, Rosalind said what sounded like, “Clean it and be done. Please.”

  So I peeled off my original dressing and cleaned the back of her hand as well. Palmer gave me a fresh dressing when I’d finished. All the while, Victor had held onto her arm, keeping it still for me. I held the pads of white cloth in place while Palmer wrapped more bandages around them three times, then I pulled my fingers out so I could finish the job myself. No blood soaked through, and I offered up a silent prayer of thanks.

  Victor helped Rosalind to her little bed beside the fireplace. She curled up on her side like a weary kitten, her hands tucked close to her. Although she’d stayed remarkably composed throughout her ordeal, once she lay down she began shaking. Victor spread her yellow wool blanket over her, smearing her blood from his fingers all over it. The dog sat alertly on the floor beside her bed, clearly intending to guard his injured mistress against any further attacks.

  When he’d finished tucking Rosalind in, Victor turned to Palmer, who stood waiting near the door. “I intend to wire the sheriff down in Lincoln about this.” He sounded more weary than angry, and I realized I was nearly spent myself. A crisis sure saps a body’s strength.

  Palmer nodded. “I would if I were you.” He waited for Victor to unbar the door then walked out without another word, not even to ask for his pistol back. He even closed the door behind himself. One last point for Palmer, I thought.

  From the window over Rosalind’s bed, I watched the gunman ride off without waiting for Mrs. Mortimer. She sat there in her buggy for some minutes, staring at the cabin, though she avoided looking at me. Finally she drove away, sheep scattering to both sides of her buggy as she clattered off. Even a person as treacherous as Adelaide Mortimer can do only so much damage in one day, I expect.

  I brewed a soothing tea and gave it to Rosalind to help her stop shaking. Before long she fell asleep, and I reckoned there was little more I could do for her. I left Victor with instructions to give her water and food whenever he could. I told him to keep her hand outside her blankets where it would get fresh air to it, and to change the bandages every few hours. I promised to come back first thing in the morning, but I assured him that Rosalind was young and strong and healthy, and she should be well in no time at all.

  When I returned to the Owens place the next morning, I learned how wrong I had been.

  Chapter 4

  I’D EXPECTED ROSALIND WOULD still be recovering that next day, but I thought to find her winding yarn or reading by the window over her cot, maybe occupied with some small household task.

  Instead, she sat in her mother’s rocking chair by the fire, huddled beneath her yellow blanket.

  I saw that she kept her injured hand obediently out in the open, not tucked under her woolen wrapping, and I nodded with satisfaction. Victor had heeded my instructions. It’s not every man who’ll take advice from a woman, much less orders. But as I’ve said before, Victor Owens was a rarity.

  However, he was also nowhere to be seen. I figured he was likely out tending his sheep and horses. Blue sat beside Rosalind; the dog was watchful but permitted me to enter.

  “Good morning, Rosalind,” I said softly. “How are you feeling this morning?” The previous day, while busy binding her wound and so on, I had not had time to feel guilty about my part in her injury. But that night I had slept poorly, filled with remorse. Now I dreaded what I would find when I examined her wounds. Rosalind was not one to laze about without some dire reason.

  She looked up at me, her face pale and her eyes unnaturally bright. “Miss Emma?” she said softly. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to see how you’re getting on, that’s all. Is your father about?” I noted the remains of biscuits and salt pork on the table, no doubt their breakfast. I would clean the mess up later.

  “I don’t know.” She sounded guarded again, as if refusing to let life touch her. I had hoped that the glimmer of spirit I’d seen aroused in her the day before would continue to blaze bright and steady; instead, her injury seemed to have quenched it.

  “How do you feel?” I checked her forehead for a fever and found it. I made sure to keep my voice cheerful, a skill I’ve had all too much practice developing over the years.

  “This hurts. Like I burned it.” She held up her hand weakly.

  “Has your father given you anything to help with the pain? Whiskey or such?”

  “Last night, I think.”

  “I’ll fix you something in a minute that will help.” I chatted about the weather and suchlike while I inspected her hand. Victor had changed the bandages, I was pleased to see. But the fingers were red and swollen. Red streaks straggled up her arm above the white cloths, heading for the elbow, as though some beast had clawed her. I
knew only too well what that meant, and my insides churned with dismay. Infection.

  I set to work changing the dressings, keeping up my steady stream of inconsequential prattle to distract her. As soon as I unwrapped her hand, I saw that the wound in her palm was covered with a yellowish crust and oozing pus. The wound on the back had a similar scab, though much smaller.

  At that sight, the guilt I’d dammed up someplace deep inside broke through my bulwark of determined cheer. I don’t generally waste much time fretting over what goes right or wrong with my patients. I just take the cards I’m dealt and do the best I can with them. But I was partly to blame for Rosalind’s plight, though I had been attempting to save her from being shot.

  Before I could stop myself, I said, “Rosalind, I am real sorry I hurt you. I never for a minute thought you’d fall onto that spinning wheel.” I glared at the dog. “If that fool creature hadn’t been in the way, I would have been able to pull you to the floor instead of pushing you like that. But that’s my own fault for leaping when I ought to have been looking first, I expect.”

  Rosalind touched my arm with her good hand. “Miss Emma, I don’t blame you. You did what you thought was best, same as always.”

  I smiled. “Thank you, my dear.”

  “It’s Mrs. Mortimer who’s to blame. If only—”

  I took her good hand and patted it. “None of that,” I told her. “Don’t you go getting all worked up over her. For one thing, she’s not worth one worried thought from you. And for another, you can’t concentrate on healing if you’re spending all your energy hating her.”

  My words soothed her perhaps as much as hers did me, but I still felt guilt sloshing all around inside me. I figured I ought to be done letting it leak out. I had more important things to think about, like how to save this poor girl’s hand and maybe her life too. I mixed a good slug of the medicinal brandy I carry with brown sugar I found in their kitchen stores, knowing it would ease her pain some. Rosalind swallowed it with no complaints, though she twisted up her face like a small child taking medicine. I told myself to remember to use more sugar the next time. Then I took some dried willow bark from my black leather bag and steeped it in water. I used that to poultice her wounds, which I bound with fresh bandages.

  That done, I stirred up the fire and set water to boil. Many’s the time I’ve seen willow bark tea work wonders on a fever. I don’t own to this around some folks, but much of what I’ve learned about healing came from a Pawnee elder who used to trade me his knowledge for coffee beans. I don’t have fancy medicines like laudanum or carbolic acid the way a real doctor might, but the way I see it, poultices and teas are better than nothing.

  I prayed that they would be enough, that the Lord would spare her, for I knew suddenly that if she died from a wound of my own infliction, I would leave Mortimer Junction. There was no way I would be able to face Victor ever again if I cost his daughter her life.

  All the while, I kept talking to Rosalind. That’s one of the benefits of knowing all the news there is to know—you don’t run out of things to gab about. By the time I’d put the water on to boil, cleared away the breakfast remains from their table, and drawn up a chair to set myself down beside her, she knew all about the new Cummings baby, about a drifter who’d taken on work at the livery, and how something—or someone—had made off with three chickens from the back of the Petersons’ henhouse.

  The thud of hooves outside interrupted us. I looked out the small window over Rosalind’s cot, expecting to see Victor ride back in from some chore out in the pastures.

  To my shock, the rider was Palmer, the gunman. His big buckskin horse startled the sheep, which skittered off to one side or the other. He would be at the door in only a minute or two.

  Where, oh where, was that Victor Owens when I needed him?

  Chapter 5

  I LOOKED FOR VICTOR’S rifle above the fireplace, but it was gone. He may not have taken my warning about Mrs. Mortimer’s vengeful spirit seriously before, but clearly he did now.

  “Rosalind,” I asked again, forgetting to sound cheery, “where is your father?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Where’s the pistol he took from that man?”

  “I don’t know.” She tried to stand up and look out the window but dropped weakly back into her chair. “Who’s coming?”

  “Never you mind.” I looked all around the room but could see few places where a gun might be hidden. I poked around the bedclothes on Rosalind’s bed, thinking perhaps Victor had left it for her, but found nothing. Then I invaded Victor’s own room and rummaged through his dresser drawers. Nothing again. Neither was the gun inside the big basket of unspun wool beside the spinning wheel.

  That left me with no real means of protecting Rosalind or myself. I’m not generally in a position to require protecting, what with the Indians moved far off now and me past the age where I might expect an assault on my virtue. I briefly considered setting the dog on Palmer, but it had not moved from its post beside Rosalind, and I didn’t trust it to obey me if I ordered it to attack.

  I found a good-sized knife among the kitchen things. It would have to do.

  Taking my place in the doorway, I prepared to defend Rosalind against whatever new devilry might befall us. Palmer may have been helpful, even sympathetic, the previous day; but Mrs. Mortimer had money aplenty, and he had the look of a man who knew how to spend money. Who knew what sidewinding scheme Mrs. Mortimer might conjure up for getting at Victor?

  Palmer rode that handsome buckskin up to the fence, bold as a hydrophobic raccoon. He reined in next to my buggy and touched his hat brim. “Good morning.”

  I waved my knife in what I hoped was a threatening gesture. “I’ll not be taken in by good manners!” I told him. “Mr. Owens ran you off once. I expect he won’t hesitate to shoot you this time.”

  “Is he here?”

  “Yes.” It wasn’t a lie, since surely Victor would not have strayed far with Rosalind in such a state.

  “May I speak with him?”

  It struck me that Palmer used words like an educated man. Who had seen to his schooling but neglected to teach him right from wrong? No honest man would trade on his ability to kill, I was certain.

  “He is otherwise occupied,” I said.

  “And what of Miss Owens?” He kept his hands on his saddle horn, relaxed and nowhere near the gleaming pistol that had replaced its twin in his holster. He made no move to dismount.

  “She is none of your concern!”

  “That was a nasty wound.”

  “I said she is none of your concern!” I brandished my knife again. “If you have a message from Mrs. Mortimer, you can give it to me, and I will deliver it to Mr. Owens.”

  “I have no message.” He grimaced, a bitter but not unfriendly expression. “I am no longer in her employ.”

  “I see.” I felt my apprehension begin to fade, prey no doubt to his fine appearance and manners. Behind me, I heard a hissing noise that meant the water I’d set to boil was doing just that, now I was not there to watch it. Boiling over, in fact, and wasting the hot water I needed for willow bark tea. “Be off with you,” I ordered, waving my knife again to remind him that I was not defenseless. “I must tend to something.”

  I hurried inside and took the heavy pot from the fire. I set it on the table and dumped in handfuls of willow bark. The knife I kept close by on the table, just in case.

  Rosalind said, “It was that man again, wasn’t it.” She sat up straighter.

  “What man?” I tried to sound casual. I failed and I knew it, but I stirred the tea with vigor and pretended I had not a care in sight.

  “Mr. Palmer, the gunman. I . . . I recognized his voice.”

  I saw she looked a mite flushed, which I marked up to the fever’s account. “I sent him packing, as I gather you heard.”

  “Oh.”

  While I worked, I heard a noise at the open doorway. There stood Palmer, eyeing me curiously, hat in his han
d.

  I realized he might find my actions comical, a plump woman stirring a black pot like some storybook enchantress. “I am no witch,” I felt compelled to explain. “I am a midwife and the closest thing to a doctor folks around here can find. I’m making tea, that’s all.” I will admit his good looks flustered me, aimed in my direction as they were.

  “Tea?” he inquired.

  “From willow bark. A remedy for fevers.”

  He glanced at Rosalind, a pitiful little bundle under her perversely cheerful yellow blanket. “For Miss Owens?”

  His concerned tone and the worried way the inner edges of his eyebrows curved upward somehow convinced me he had not come to kill us. I told him, “Yes. Her wound has become infected. I’m trying to keep her from joining her poor mother.”

  He frowned but said nothing. Instead, he fidgeted, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and turning his hat around in his hands. Though I kept right on stirring my tea, I watched him closely. I gathered he was trying to make a decision of some sort. Finally, he said the last thing I could have imagined: “Can I help?”

  “No.” I busied myself with testing the tea. “Thank you,” I added, feeling he deserved another point just for offering.

  “May I come in?” he asked.

  “That is not up to me,” I said. “This is not my home.” Though I would not have minded calling a cozy cabin like it my home rather than my cramped room at the boarding house.

  “It is mine,” Rosalind said. She twisted around in her chair to face him, not without a deal of effort. “Mr. Palmer, will you give me your word you mean us no harm?”

  “I will. I do.” His fingers crumpled the brim of his hat.

  “You are nothing but a hired killer,” I pointed out. “Why should we trust you?”