Page 2 of Follow the Lonesome Trail

“I’m sure you can, but I’d be glad to carry your load wherever you need it carried.” Hansen wasn’t sure why he suddenly hoped so much that she’d accept his help. Something about her voice. He told himself he’d like to hear her speak again, that was all.

She pressed her lips together, about to refuse him.

Behind the bar, Carter coughed. It wasn’t a real cough, but more a dry laugh disguised as one.

The woman locked eyes with Hansen and smiled. “Thank you, kind sir.”

Hansen scooped up the old man in his arms. “After you, ma’am.”

She opened the door for him, then shut it behind them harder than necessary. “This way.” She hurried back toward the graveyard.

For a small woman, she was a fast walker.

Hansen didn’t have to shorten his stride so she could keep pace.

The man in his arms made a light enough burden, no heavier than a pronghorn doe, but hard and sinewy.

Probably light and active by nature, not an old man wasting away.

Occasionally, he would open his eyes and look blearily up at Hansen or their surroundings.

The woman led him straight to a building at the end of town, across the street from where Hansen had seen a curtain move when he arrived. Beside the front door hung a sign that read “Doctor T. J. Masterson.”

“Ma’am, wait a moment.” Hansen shifted his burden a little. “He don’t need a doctor. He’s only…” He tried hard to think of a more genteel word for ‘drunk.’

“You’re right, he doesn’t need a doctor.” She opened the door wide. “He is the doctor.”

“Oh.” Hansen sidled through the doorway, trying not to bump the doctor on the frame or his own hat on the top of the doorway.

It felt wrong, entering a building with a woman and not removing his hat, but his hands were too full.

Odd how it hadn’t struck him as necessary to take his hat off when she showed up in the saloon.

He must have been too surprised by seeing a woman there.

“This way.” She led him past a desk and a bookcase to a small room with its door open. “He’ll be all right in here.”

Once he’d laid the doctor down on the cot in the room, he swept his hat off and stepped backward to let the woman tend the nearly-unconscious man.

She drew a blue woolen blanket over him, set a bucket nearby, and then led the way back out of the room, not shutting the door.

“He’ll be all right,” she repeated. “Life just hits too hard some days for him to stand up on his own.” Holding out her hand, she added, “Thank you. You’ve saved me a weary ten or fifteen minutes dragging him back here.

” Her voice rose and fell with a pleasing rhythm you could almost dance to.

“You’re welcome.” He took her hand, pleased by how firmly she gripped. “My name’s Saul Hansen.”

“Yes, I thought it would be.”

He squinted at her, curious. “You sound as if you’re expecting me.”

“I am.” She withdrew her fingers from his. “I’m Julia Masterson.”

He remembered the sign outside. “The doctor’s your father, then?”

“Father-in-law.”

Hansen was surprised by the disappointment pooling inside him. “Well, you’re welcome, Mrs. Masterson. I’m glad I could help.” He stepped toward the door.

“You told Joe Teague you’re looking for Seamus O’Rourke.”

He stopped and faced her. “That’s right. He’s here, then?”

“Come, have some coffee, and we’ll talk.”

“Has he left town? Do you know where he’s gone?” Hansen pressed.

“No, he hasn’t left.” She led him down a short hallway to a warm kitchen filled with a cookstove, a table and six chairs, and two boys doing the dishes while a toddler played with wooden blocks in a little fenced-in corner by the door.

“Ma! We’re almost done!” The younger dishwasher held up a tin cup and a flour-sacking towel as proof.

“Good timing.” She took the cup from him and ruffled his hair. “I promised Mr. Hansen some coffee.”

“Oh, that’s all right, ma’am.” Hansen shifted uneasily, doubly aware of his own bigness in the crowded room.

“It’s getting late, and you’ve got things to do.

If you could tell me where I can find O’Rourke, I’ll be going.

” Much as he admired the way she spoke, and as refreshing as her lack of staring at him had been, he still wasn’t through being annoyed with O’Rourke.

The sooner he found him, the sooner he could tell his friend just what he thought of his cryptic letter and all this trouble, and the sooner he could be free of this too-quiet town.

“Nonsense. I made this coffee in case Pop was in a condition for it when he got back here. Someone ought to drink it. Wouldn’t do to let it go to waste.” Julia Masterson gestured at the table. “Sit down, won’t you?”

There didn’t seem to be any polite way to decline. “Thank you, then.” Hansen edged around the table and took the chair in the corner. To his relief, it was solid and didn’t so much as creak when he settled onto it.

“Have you eaten?” She set the coffee cup in front of him and filled it.

The smell of that fresh coffee would have made him hungry even if he’d had a full meal a few minutes earlier.

“No, but that’s all right, ma’am. You’ve got no call to feed me.

Coffee and whatever you can tell me about where O’Rourke is will be thanks enough.

” Hansen resisted the urge to drum his fingers on the table in impatience.

“Bread and a little butter isn’t much, but that’s what we’ve got left from supper.” She looked over at the boys. “And I don’t suppose anyone would object to my opening a tin of peaches before bedtime.”

Both little dishwashers whirled about, their cheeks dimpling around matching grins.

Julia placed a plate with two thick slices of buttered bread in front of Hansen.

She sat down across from him with coffee for herself and a tin of peaches, which she worked at opening with a clasp knife.

Hansen had the feeling she was stalling.

Why? He didn’t sense she hid any guilty secrets.

It was more like she couldn’t make up her mind how to say something. He sipped his coffee and waited.

To his surprise, he found his irritation fading.

In fact, he enjoyed the warmth of the kitchen and the sudden friendliness of the little family.

He still worried about taking up more than his fair share of space, but sitting behind the table eased that somewhat. “You make good coffee, Mrs. Masterson.”

“Thank you.” She used a fork to pull halves of peaches from the can, giving one to each of her dishwashers, putting two on Hansen’s plate, and then scooping up the toddler from his pen so she could share the rest with him.

Once the older boys had finished licking peach stickiness from their fingers, she told them, “Boys, go play out back until it gets dark.”

“What about his plate and your cups?” the oldest objected dutifully.

“I’ll wash those. Go on now.”

The two boys wasted no time running out through a room beyond and slamming a distant screen door behind them.

Julia kept her eyes on her littlest boy, feeding him a chunk of peach with her fingers. “You say you’re Saul Hansen. You look how I was told you would. But have you got any proof of who you are?”

“Well, I got a letter with my name on it. From O’Rourke.”

“Anyone can steal a letter.”

“Would just anyone match my description?”

She smiled. “Not many. But a few.”

“Look, Mrs. Masterson, I don’t know what this is about.

Seamus O’Rourke sent me a letter saying I was to meet him in Carter’s Run, that he wanted to give something to me.

That’s all I aim to do: meet him. If he’s playing some kind of game, trying to make me guess his whereabouts, well, you tell him I’ll be camped just inside the tree line. He won’t have trouble finding me.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” A swirl of unease joined his lingering annoyance. “You said he’s still here. Where? And why? It’s not like him to stay in a town for long. Is he hurt?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hansen. It’s… he’s… you passed him on your way in. He’s dead.”

Once Julia Masterson had put her boys in their beds, she rejoined Hansen at the table.

He’d eaten the bread and butter, not tasting it, only mechanically biting and chewing and swallowing.

It was something to do, so he did it. He was numb and hollow.

Thinking about much of anything, even the taste of food, was too hard for the moment.

Julia laid a pair of leather saddlebags on the table and took a seat by him.

“It was smallpox,” she explained softly.

“It struck months ago, before Seamus arrived. A third of the folks around here lay abed with it at any given time. No sooner would one get better than another would fall ill. We all… every family lost someone. Pop and I, and a few others who’d had it before and couldn’t catch it a second time—we just went from house to house, day after day.

Making sure folks had water and food and a blanket.

Taking out and burying those who’d died. ”

“And O’Rourke?”

“He wandered into town at the tail end of it. We couldn’t let him leave again, not with the risk of him carrying it around to other places.

We thought if he stayed in the livery stable, away from folks, he’d escape it, but…

he didn’t. When he realized he’d gotten sick, he sent you that letter.

He figured if he lived, he’d stay here getting strong again until you came down out of the mountains in the spring.

And if he didn’t, well, you’d know from the letter where to come. ”

“He wrote he had something for me.”

“Yes.”

“Is that it?” Hansen gestured at the saddlebags.

“No, only his possibles, as he called them. A deck of cards, his handgun, a Bible, things like that. He asked that I keep them for you, in case you wanted them. I suppose he wanted to surprise you with the rest. He seemed fond of surprises.”

“He was. What’s the rest? Did he tell you?”

“It’s a poke of gold dust.”