Page 7 of Whispers of Fortune (Golden State Treasure Book #1)

S EVEN

“He really said all that, Harriet?” Ellie held her friend’s hands.

“Oh, yes. He was wonderful.” Harriet Sears was starting to be really round with her first baby. She was a bit older for a first pregnancy, at least mid-thirties. Right now she glowed with a different light than she had before. Her sister Nora had given birth to two little ones already, after three years of marriage. And Nora was younger than Harriet.

Harriet had begun to believe it would never happen for her and her husband, Bo. She’d been delighted to have a child on the way, but nervous. Women were much more likely to be done bearing children by her age than just starting.

Now Harriet’s time to be a mother was finally coming.

“He helped me talk through a few things that had worried me. I don’t expect trouble, but just knowing you’ve got a good doctor here now takes a weight off my shoulders. And Sally Jo had only good things to say about him.”

“I was there to help bring Sally Jo’s baby.” Ellie smiled and felt the joy of that experience.

Harriet seemed to glow, and Ellie suspected she had the exact same expression on her own face.

Harriet hugged Ellie tightly. “I was with Nora for both of her babies. And Michelle helped deliver them and did a fine job. And now she’s gone to her lumber dynasty far away when it’s my turn. Having Dr. MacKenzie working here takes such a load off my mind.”

“With Sally Jo, he was calm and wise. He’s had quite a bit of experience, though he’s just out of college. But I guess part of college is treating plenty of patients.”

Ellie glanced around, not wanting the whole ranch to know what she was worrying about. “I’m waiting for a telegraph from Michelle or Zane. I have no idea what to pay a doctor and whether my family should pay him or his patients or some combination of both. The more I wonder about details, the more I realize how much Michelle and Zane make the decisions around here.”

“Your family is providing him with a doctor’s office. It might be best to leave the details up to him. How much to charge his patients. I admit it never occurred to me to ask what I owed him, and I took at least an hour of his time. He never suggested I owed him a thing.” Harriet smiled and patted Ellie’s hand. “He’s just as new at this as you are. You’ve given him a home and office. Maybe you should pay him for any treatment he gives to our students since they’re not making any money. And let the folks who work for you pay. For now, make sure he doesn’t starve and let the rest work itself out.”

Ellie waved her hands in surrender. “Good advice.”

Harriet took her turn looking around. “Tell me this: Is he as much of a scalawag as those two brothers of his?”

Harriet’s eyes flashed with good-humored affection for Thayne and Lock. It was just the pure truth that the two were charmers. There was no malice in them, only high-spirited mischief—but there was an abundance of that.

Ellie snickered, then laughed. Harriet joined in. In the year since they’d built the school, as part of finding a way to share their wealth, they’d had several students who needed a lot of time, but none held a candle to the MacKenzie brothers. Those two had given the teachers all they could handle. At the same time, the boys were bright. In the midst of disrupting class with their pranks and their funny comments, they caught on to everything fast.

“So far, I think Dr. MacKenzie is very level-headed.” Ellie had told Harriet a bit about how the boys had come to be so far from home, though she didn’t exactly understand it herself. What child set out to run away from home and went from New York City all the way to San Francisco? “Maybe the boys will settle down now that he’s here.”

“Do you think he’d be willing to teach science classes and see if he can spark a child’s interest in doctoring?”

“I haven’t mentioned teaching to him yet, but oh, I hope so.” Ellie didn’t mention that Brody was bound and determined to go back east. Surely he’d be here long enough to deliver Harriet’s baby at least. “The school would be so well-rounded then, although our history teaching for the older children isn’t strong. Except...” Ellie hesitated and looked sheepishly at Harriet, who patted her on the arm.

“You’re going to be all right, Ellie. You’re handling the youngsters just fine.”

Ellie grimaced. “We both know that’s not true. You especially know that with your gift for bringing order to a classroom and finding a way to teach important lessons, even to unwilling students.”

Harriet had stepped back from teaching as the day neared for her baby to come. And Ellie had taken over.

With disastrous results. Harriet had taught the older students, boys and girls, in the morning. She ran an orderly class, the students behaved well, and they sped through their books. Harriet had a gift for finding what a child lacked and filling in the gaps.

Orphaned children were often slim on education. Despite their ages, the orphans might be well into their school years without knowing how to read yet. Harriet focused on those gaps and brought the children along swiftly. In the year since they’d opened the school, she’d done a fantastic job of finding the key to open a child’s mind to learning.

Annie was good at it, too. And Harriet’s sister, Nora, had a gift for working one on one with troubled children and showing them how education could open doors for them.

And then there was Ellie. She’d tried to take a class right at the beginning. The older boys ran roughshod over her. The older girls giggled and whispered. Finally, she’d been assigned to the younger children, who took merciless advantage of her mushy heart.

Ellie was a strong woman, or so she’d always believed, but her gift simply wasn’t in teaching. She’d backed away from teaching when she could, but with Nora busy with her little ones, and with Harriet soon to be busy, Ellie had needed to step into the job.

She was a failure. It was why she’d decided she had to go elsewhere and find a place where she was valuable. Their school focused on finding the gifts each child had and developing them. Ellie had yet to find her gift, but she’d certainly found what it was not . She was no teacher.

These thoughts rushed through her head as she plotted her time to leave the ranch. To stop being the useless maiden sister. The decoration that people moved aside to make their own progress.

She had to go sometime, but when and to where?

Her thoughts went to Loyal, her betraying fiancé, and she knew she didn’t want to marry, as most women her age did. She thought of Annie, her widowed sister, who still missed her husband every day. Ellie had decided she needed to take care of herself, and there was no way to do that here on the Two Harts.

Then she thought of how much she’d enjoyed delivering Sally Jo’s baby. She could help Brody for now, but he wasn’t staying.

Turning her thoughts from the inner turmoil, she told Harriet, “If Dr. MacKenzie stays, our people here at Two Harts would get excellent care. We’ve done so much changing and growing in the last few years. We’re always working on some project or another. I like to think with what we are doing here, we’re making the world a better place for everyone.”

For everyone but her.

“Oh, please, Mrs. Worthington, no. You can’t fire me.” Tilda Muirhead clutched her hands to her chest, half praying, half begging. All of it a waste of time.

Mrs. Worthington was her boss. She could fire her. And it’s not like this was her first time making a mistake.

“We can’t go around misplacing children, Tilda.”

Misplacing was a kind way of saying it, and honestly, Mrs. Worthington was a kind person. Tilda had just messed things up one too many times. It’s not like she hadn’t been warned.

“Mrs. Worthington, you know about my life. You know the calling I have from God to help orphans. Yes, those boys running away was a terrible thing, but there was no sign they’ve come to any harm.”

“By ‘no sign,’ do you mean their broken bodies discovered after they’d been run over by a train?”

Tilda flinched. As a rule, Mrs. Worthington wasn’t given to sarcasm, but she appeared to be making an exception in this case.

“I mean there was no bank robbery, no gunfire. We saw no stampeding cattle or buffalo. Wherever those boys went, they went by choice. Fully healthy and with plans of their own. I believe they hid somewhere in town, then jumped on the train when it headed west again, but in hiding. It was the last stop on the orphan train route, and we were going back. I’m still confused about why the boys weren’t adopted. There’s always an interest in strong, healthy boys for farm work and the like. But at stop after stop, they were passed over. And then they vanished. I’m telling you, those boys were up to something.”

Mrs. Worthington smiled, but it was a sad kind of smile.

Tilda went on, “Yes, the MacKenzie boys were definitely up to something. I suppose we knew that from the minute we included them in the orphan train. They were charming boys and a bit too eager to go west.”

Shaking her head, Mrs. Worthington said, “I should never have let you take this group. I knew what kind of scalawags those boys were. They’d have gotten the best of many a caretaker. And this trip, your very first solo trip, it was like everything aligned in their favor.”

Mrs. Worthington stared hard at Tilda, as if she could see right through her skull and read her mind. But why bother? She had always been an honest person, no secrets to ferret out.

At least none lately.

“The boys have been gone for a while, Mrs. Worthington.” It had been over two months. “What brought this on today?”

“We’re in a bit of a bad place right now, Tilda.”

“B-because of the boys?”

“Losing them certainly makes it worse, but not strictly because of them. There is some pressure to end the orphan trains.”

“End them?” Tilda rose from her chair. She’d been sitting like a docile sheep being scolded. Now she stood, angered at this nonsense. “But it’s been going on for years. It’s been incredibly successful at finding homes for abandoned children.”

“Yes, I agree, but not everyone does. There have been instances of children coming to harm, I’m afraid, or finding themselves in miserable circumstances. A few have caused trouble and ended up in jail. A few had parents living who expected the orphanage to care for them until times got better. They’ve come to fetch their children home and found them missing. There are organizations trying to put a stop to our mercy mission, and, well, what really brought this on is ... our biggest donor, just a few days ago, was threatened with a lawsuit. There is no good time to lose track of the children we are out-placing, but now it’s particularly dire. We have to take steps to prove we are good caretakers of these children.” Mrs. Worthington frowned in silent thought for a moment. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do.”

Tilda gasped, and her hands clutched tighter. Mrs. Worthington was giving her another chance.

“I’m going to buy you a train ticket that stretches all the way to the end of the line.”

“California?”

“Yes, and I’ll give you a bit of money—we don’t have a lot—for food along the way. You’ll retrace those boys’ steps. I suspect they went straight to California. They were always talking about their grandpa being part of the California gold rush. I think they had ambitions to find gold.”

“Isn’t the gold rush over?” Tilda knew her history well. She’d always had a special interest in frontier history, particularly California. She’d wondered at times why she found it so fascinating. It was as if something hovered just beyond her memory that had to do with old-time California. She’d read everything she could find on the topic.

“Yes, for about twenty years. But those boys, well, they were whip-smart, but sadly lacking in common sense. At any rate, you can’t just go straight to California. You’re going to have to get off in most every town along the way, beginning after that last stop you made on the trip where you lost them, and search for anyone who’s seen the boys, including asking around town to see if anyone had food stolen right around the time a train came through. Then just follow them on down the line.”

“Doesn’t the train go all the way to San Francisco? That’s a big city. How will I find them there?”

“You grew up in New York City. You’re used to such a bustling place.”

“But I’ve never done all that well here.”

“I’ve noticed. Nevertheless, we have to find those boys. If word gets out that orphans can wander off, and we just let them and make no attempt to find them, our reputation will be in tatters. It might be the last straw that brings on a lawsuit. And that might end the orphan trains. We have generous donors, although not that generous, who could stop supporting us.”

Tilda doubted that. Not if no one ever mentioned children had been “misplaced.” But it didn’t matter. Terrifying as it was to set out across the country alone, she was glad for this chance to go find the boys. And not just to save her job, but to save them. What might have become of them?

Yes, they were scalawags. Yes, they were sneaky and liars. But they were sweet, so sweet. She could only thank God for this chance to find them and she’d do it. She’d never give up.

Tilda lifted her chin and looked Mrs. Worthington in the eye. “I will go. I’ll leave on the next train out of town.”

“Thank you, Tilda.” Mrs. Worthington shook her head fretfully. “I wonder where in the world they could have gone?”