Chapter 3
Grunnersberg, Louisiana
Bed rest.
That was Mr. Appleby’s prescription for Kyle.
Boredom was more like it. There was nothing to do in his room in the Cloudy Lemon saloon.
After a day of it, Kyle had had enough. The sun was finally out, and he wasn’t going to miss out. He flung the bedclothes off and tried to get out of bed. It turned out that his ribs burned like they were on fire when he got about halfway upright, and the rest of the way left him seeing stars.
A knock came at the door and Kyle walked over carefully. He opened it and found the pretty girl named Alice there. She was holding a tray.
“Oh, Kyle, you shouldn’t be up,” she said, her voice thick with concern. “You need to lie back down.”
Kyle shook his head. “I can’t. I honestly can’t stay cooped up in here with that lovely sunshine out there.” He pointed to the window and winced at the stab of pain. “I’m heading out.”
Alice smiled and became even prettier. Her hair was a rich auburn, and her eyes were the same deep blue as the sky was at that moment. Her smile carried a hint of laughter in it, and she exuded warmth and kindness. For some reason, Kyle’s ribs began to feel a good deal better.
“Okay,” Alice said, entering the room as he stepped back, holding onto the door for support but trying not to make it obvious. “How about we make a deal?”
“I’m listening,” Kyle said.
“You get back in bed?—”
He shook his head. That wasn’t what he wanted. Not at all. He wanted to go outside, and he wasn’t asking for permission. “No. That won’t work at all.”
“Hold on, I’m not done,” she said and fixed him with a playful grin.
Kyle liked that better. He nodded and gestured for her to continue.
“You go back to bed and have your breakfast, and when you’re done and dressed, we’ll go for a walk,” she said. “It’s the best offer you’re likely to get. If you go downstairs right now, our apothecary is treating a few wounded and is likely to spot you and send you straight back to bed.”
Taking a walk with the lovely Alice did indeed seem like a fair trade for staying in bed just a little longer. He nodded. “Okay.”
She inclined her head toward the bed. “Well, go on!”
Kyle walked gingerly back, trying not to show how much everything hurt. He climbed in and felt the relief that only lying down could bring a damaged body. Alice took great care to prop him up on pillows and then laid the tray on his lap.
There was orange juice, coffee, bacon, eggs, and toast, all in very generous portions.
“Thank you,” he said, wondering if he had enough appetite for all this food.
“Mr. Appleby says that all of his patients have to eat three hearty meals a day. To Mrs. Benson, which means this,” Alice explained.
“And what did you have to eat?” Kyle asked.
“I’m not one of his patients, so I had an apple and some porridge.”
Kyle instantly offered her some toast and egg. “This could feed three of me!”
Alice shook her head, chuckling. “No, thanks. Now eat up, and I’ll see you soon.”
If Kyle ever needed an incentive to eat and get dressed, the idea of a walk with such a delightful partner was definitely it.
As he ate, he couldn’t get Alice out of his head.
Maybe it was just that he’d seen so many others in Unity go off and get hitched that strange thoughts were suddenly dancing in his head about a woman he’d only known a few hours.
But she really was beautiful. And he kept replaying how kind and efficient she’d been the previous night, helping all the wounded?—
There was another knock on the door, and Kyle jumped. He wasn’t even halfway through his food yet. She couldn’t be back so soon, could she?
“Kyle, are you awake?” Warren’s voice called through the door.
“Yes, come in!”
His two friends opened the door and came striding in.
They both looked a little beaten up. Michael had a split lip and a bandage on his arm where something had sliced into his flesh.
Warren had a bandage on his head. It seemed that while trying to save someone, he had misjudged the angle of a hanging bit of roof and collided with it, breaking his glasses and giving himself a minor head injury.
But they were luckier than many. They were up and about.
“And look at that,” Michael said, shaking his head. “Breakfast in bed. Can you believe it?” He smiled. “How are you feeling today?”
“Like I want to get up and go for a walk,” Kyle said.
“I told you he would say that,” Warren said, turning to Michael.
“Oh, you got new glasses,” Kyle observed.
“It turns out that they have a watchmaker in town who also dabbles in spectacles,” Warren said. “I’m quite grateful. I didn’t like the idea of being as blind as a bat while we were here.”
“What’s this about you going out?” Michael asked. “You’re supposed to stay in bed.”
“I can’t,” Kyle said. “It makes me jumpy and irritable.”
“I told you,” Warren said to Michael again. “You’d have more luck telling a duck not to fly south for the winter. We might as well let him go for a little walk, tire himself out, and then he’ll be happy to rest.”
“Not that I need your permission,” Kyle said, sopping up the last of his eggs with his toast. “But I have a walking companion, thank you.”
“You do?” Michael asked.
“Alice,” Kyle smiled.
Michael grinned. “Good. Well, we’ve sent telegrams off this morning.
One to New York to tell Mr. MacGregor about the delay and one to Unity.
So, hopefully things will be all right there until we can get back.
Andrew will be annoyed, but there’s nothing we can do about it.
We can only hope and pray that El Aguila doesn’t try anything until we can get help. ”
“Any idea how long we’re going to be stuck here?” asked Kyle.
“No one knows,” Warren said, taking a seat on the end of the bed. “They sent word to the railway company yesterday, but there’s been no reply as of yet. I suppose now we just hurry up and wait.”
In spite of his earlier protestations, there was nothing left on the plate, and Kyle lay back against the pillows, feeling full and happy.
Warren and Michael had rented rooms in the saloon.
“I pity anyone else who hoped to get accommodation,” Warren said. “It seems that we’ve taken up all the available rooms. Well, when I say we, I mean our fellow passengers.”
“Somehow, I don’t think this place is ever that full of people,” Michael said, looking out of the window at the street below. “This town feels like Unity when it was just a tent town.”
“Yes. I do wonder what would bring folks here,” Warren said. “We should find out what the local industry is.”
“Why?” Michael asked, frowning.
“I don’t know, to give us something to do?” Warren said with a sigh. “If you think Kyle is a handful when he’s got nothing to occupy him, he’s got nothing on me.”
“Great,” Michael groaned.
Kyle decided he wanted to go for that walk, so he got up with a grunt or two and slipped into trousers, a clean shirt, and his boots.
“I see the luggage made it,” he commented as he tried not to wince while dressing.
“Yes, they’re still pulling things from the wreckage,” Warren said. “We offered to help, but the locals are taking care of it. I think it’s a matter of pride or something.”
Kyle gritted his teeth to lace up his boots. Gosh, leaning over was sore, but as he started to move, he found it got a bit easier, as though his muscles began to loosen up.
A little while later, Alice came back.
“And there’s my guide for the day,” he said. “See you fellas later.”
“Take a jacket,” Alice insisted.
Kyle grabbed his jacket and pulled it on.
Satisfied, she offered him her arm, and Kyle took it as they headed out of the room and down the stairs.
The saloon’s interior was back to normal, with the tables and chairs set out.
There were no patrons so early in the day, and even Mr. Benson wasn’t behind the bar.
There was a stick-thin young man behind the bar, looking rather listless.
“I’m heading out, Lyle,” Alice said to him. “I’ve got a list of things to buy from Mrs. Benson. I’ll be back soon.”
Lyle turned bored eyes on her and nodded.
Kyle and Alice stopped in the entrance, and Alice tied a scarf over her hair and picked up a basket. Then they left the Cloudy Lemon and stepped out onto the street.
It was muddy, and the street was pocked with puddles. Carts drove by, sending up plumes of water as they did.
“Are you from here?” Kyle asked as they turned to walk up the street.
Alice shook her head. “No, I’m from a little town in Pennsylvania.”
“You’re a long way from home.”
“And you? Where are you from?” she asked.
“Massachusetts, originally, but lately, I’m from Texas,” Kyle said. “My friends and I started a town out there.”
She stopped walking and stared at him. “You did what?”
“We started a town,” Kyle said and rubbed his neck a little uncertainly. Was there another way to say it that didn’t make it sound so boastful? He couldn’t think of one.
“My goodness,” Alice said, and they began to walk again. “How does one start a town, exactly?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Kyle saw a cart coming up the street at a quick pace. They were just passing a large puddle. He deftly moved Alice out of the way and stepped to the side himself, stifling a groan at the pain in his ribs. The water from the puddle plumed up as the cart came by.
“Hey!” Alice yelled after the driver. “Honestly! You’d think they would look where they’re going, at least.”
The bottoms of Kyle’s trousers were speckled with mud flecks. Alice regarded them with dismay.
“It’s fine,” Kyle assured her. “They’ll dry. The sun is warm, so I’m sure it won’t take long. Alice, what brought you out here, if you don’t mind my asking?”
For a couple of moments, Alice was silent. Then she seemed to decide to trust him and said, “I followed my sister out this way. She found an advertisement in the Matrimonial News, and she answered it.”
“Oh,” Kyle said.
“How desperate must you be to place an advertisement for a wife in the paper?” Alice asked with a laugh.
“Yes, how desperate …” Kyle muttered weakly. He had placed a dozen advertisements in that very paper. Did that mean Alice’s sister had read his advertisement? Had Alice read one?
Alice stopped walking and leaned toward him, looking concerned. “Are you all right? Are we walking too fast for you?”
Kyle smiled. “I’m okay.” His ribs hurt a lot, but her company was definitely distracting him. “So, what happened to your sister? Did she arrive and meet her beau?”
“As far as I know, he picked her up from the station here, and that was the last I heard of her,” Alice sighed.
“What’s his name?”
“Jason Holt,” Alice said.
“Did you speak to the sheriff?” he asked. It was an obvious question, and Alice seemed an astute enough woman that he wasn’t surprised when she answered in the affirmative.
“Of course,” she said. “But he said that since my sister is a grown woman and answered an advertisement to be a mail order bride of her own volition, I should mind my own business—or something to that effect.” She looked really worried now.
“I’m so afraid that something horrible has happened to Chrissie.
She’s so sweet and trusting. We lost our folks when we were young.
A family friend raised us, and we were doing fine in our little town.
But Chrissie got this notion things would be more interesting and possibly better somewhere else. ”
“Doesn’t everyone think that at some time?” Kyle asked. “I wouldn’t be out here if I hadn’t thought things could be better somewhere else.” He smiled sheepishly.
She shrugged. “I suppose so.”
They had reached the steps that led up to the general store. There was a bench on the porch. It looked mighty good to Kyle, who found that breathing through the stabbing pain was getting increasingly tiring.
“Why don’t you sit out here? Enjoy the sunshine and the fresh air,” Alice suggested.
Kyle nodded. “You know, I think I will.”
She left him sitting on the bench with his feet in the sunshine and his head in the shade.
Kyle looked out over a landscape that was alien to him.
Everything here showed signs of how much rain this place got on average.
Even the weeds were robust and flowering.
There were pink, purple, white, and blue flowers growing in little clumps and even large bushes along the road.
Some snuggled up to the buildings, which had moss growing on them.
Even the trees had moss hanging from their branches.
It was clear from the way the people walked through the puddles that they were so used to having wet feet that it didn’t bother them either way. Kyle wondered what it would be like to live here.
Soggy, he thought.
For a while, Kyle watched the people go by. There were a lot of carts. They brought in everything from baskets of vegetables to bundles of something that looked like large reeds. He had seen vast fields of the stuff through the window of the train and wondered what it was.
As he was watching the traffic go by, Kyle’s eye was drawn to a group of three men who came riding into town on horseback. They were dressed in brown trousers and flannel shirts like all of the folks in town.
Outwardly, they looked the same as everyone else, but there was something about them. Something wasn’t right. Perhaps it was the way they kept glancing around, casually enough, as though they weren’t really looking at anything. But Kyle knew better.
He sat forward on the bench and eyed them keenly.
They had stopped outside the bank. Even now, they were tying up their horses at the post and heading inside.
He moved to the very edge of the bench and watched them go in. The bank was diagonally across from the general store, and Kyle had a pretty good view.
“Sorry that took so long,” Alice said as she stepped out of the general store, her basket full of things.
“It’s fine,” Kyle said, not taking his eyes off the bank.
“What’s wrong?”
Kyle looked at her briefly. “Nothing. Something. I’m not sure.”
“What are you looking at?” she asked with a chuckle.
“Some men went into the bank,” Kyle said. And as he said it, he realized how silly this was. The men most likely just reminded him of El Aguila’s men. That was why he had reacted the way he had. Still, he had a feeling.
“Could we just sit a while longer?” he asked.
Alice sat beside him and placed her basket on the floor next to her. “Sure,” she said. “Are your ribs hurting?”
“Yes, a bit, but … I can’t seem to shake the feeling that there’s something wrong with them,” Kyle said.
“With whom?” Alice asked.
“Those men,” Kyle said, gesturing to the bank. “We’d better go and see.” And he forced himself to stand up. A grunt of pain escaped him as he began to make his way down the porch steps and into the road.