Lucky Bride. Ana Seymour
of white, dotted here and there by dark green firs. She usually found the first thick snow cover exhilarating, but today it just looked frozen and desolate. She didn’t know if her restlessness and her strange mood were due to the bleak financial picture or to the knowledge that a strange man was sleeping in her father’s bed.
After losing her place in a column of numbers for the fourth time, she slammed shut her father’s big leather account book and let loose with one of his favorite expletives. “Hell’s bells!”
“Are you all right, Miss Molly?” Smokey’s head peeked cautiously around the office door.
Molly ducked her chin in embarrassment. “Ah…of course. I’ve just finished up with the books.”
Smokey looked reproachful as he entered the room, but made no comment.
“Did you want something, Smokey?”
The old cook nodded. “It’s your friend upstairs.”
“He’s not my friend…” Molly began indignantly, but she stopped as she saw concern on Smokey’s face. “What’s the matter?”
“I reckon it’s the chilblains, settling into his ears. They’ve swelled up something fierce and turned a color I ain’t never seen before.”
Molly got up quickly. Frostbite was not a light matter on the prairie. Frozen areas could get putrid within hours. People died of it. Damnation. She’d checked the man’s hands. But she hadn’t thought about the ears, hadn’t noticed them under all that curly hair.
She followed Smokey up the stairs. There was no doctor in Canyon City, and even if there had been, it would have been hard work slogging through the drifts to get word to him. Most of the cowboys hereabouts did their own doctoring. They stitched their gashes with the same needles they used on their saddle leather. Molly had wanted to send for a doctor when her father had taken sick, but he’d refused. He’d lived fine without one, and he vowed he could die just as fine without one.
Susannah was sitting on the bed next to their visitor, her skirt fluffed up around her with at least a foot of petticoat showing plain as day. She held one of Parker Prescott’s hands in the two of hers, just as Molly had the previous evening.
“Susannah!” Molly admonished.
Her sister looked unconcerned at the tone of rebuff. Her eyes were worried. “He’s gone feverish, Molly. Smokey says it’s the chilblains.”
Molly finally looked at their guest’s face. He was awake and making an attempt to smile, but his eyes were red and his cheeks were flushed. Among the tendrils of hair she could see his swollen ears. They were a mottled dark purple.
“We’ll need some glycerine,” she said at once, forgetting about Susannah’s unseemly position on the bed. “And a feather to apply it.” She looked back at Smokey. “And we’ll need more blankets.”
At her commanding tone Susannah dropped Parker’s hand and slid off the side of the bed, Smokey disappeared down the hall and Parker himself sat up, weaving a little as he did so. “I’m sorry to be putting you all to such trouble,” he said.
Molly walked over to him and bent for a closer look. Both ears were monstrous, the right a little worse than the left. She should have checked them last night. Heat radiated from his skin. “It’ll be more trouble if you die on us, mister,” she told him. “So just lie back down there and let us try to get you better.”
He moved down under the covers once again and closed his eyes. “I don’t intend to die on you, Miss Hanks,” he said weakly.
“Now, that’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard you say, Mr. Prescott.” She turned to her sister. “Susannah, go make some hot plasters for his chest. We’ve got to sweat out this fever.”
They worked on him straight through the supper hour. His fever rose as they piled on the coverings and by eight o’clock he was out of his head and ranting. He seemed concerned about his horse’s leg and then asked for his sister. And finally, with anguish, he called for someone named Claire.
Molly had taken over the position next to him on the bed. She supposed she didn’t look any more decorous than Susannah had earlier, but it didn’t seem to make much difference now. She gnawed at her fingernails, trying to decide what to do. She’d known of cases where a finger or a toe had gone bad and had had to be cut off. But an ear? The mere thought made her shudder.
Neither Smokey nor her sisters were of much help. Smokey sat in a chair on the other side of the bed and looked mournful. “Nice-looking young feller,” he said with a shake of his head. “It’s a low-down shame.”
“He’s not going to die, is he, Molly?” Mary Beth asked for what must have been the twentieth time in two days.
Molly resisted making an angry comment. Mary Beth was the baby of the family and approached life with a bit more trepidation than her two sisters. “We won’t let him die, Mary Beth,” she answered her sister resignedly, hoping that she was telling the truth. They’d built the fire up to a blaze and shut the hall door, so it was steaming hot in the room. Their patient was drenched in sweat. Molly walked over and wiped his forehead. He snapped his head back and forth underneath the wet cloth.
“I’m not giving you up, Claire,” he said almost lucidly. Then he reached up, grasped Molly’s wrist with a surprisingly strong grip and moaned, “Noooo.”
Was Claire a former sweetheart? she wondered.. Or a current one who was awaiting him in California? He had said that he had no schedule, which didn’t sound like a man on his way to be reunited with a lover. Either way, it was of no concern to her, Molly told herself.
Smokey got up from his chair and walked over to the bed. “I hate to say this, Miss Molly, but I think we better cut the danged things off.”
“Cut what off?” Mary Beth asked, her eyes wide.
“Them ears.”
All three girls looked at the sick man with horror.
“Have you ever seen it done, Smokey?” Molly asked.
The cook shook his head. “Heard of it, though. And I’ve seen ‘em chop off plenty of fingers and toes. If we don’t do it, the pizen could go right to his head.”
“Blood poisoning, you mean.”
“Yup. Right to his brain.”
He waited, looking at Molly. Susannah and Mary Beth were looking at her, too. Why did it always have to be her decision? “Would you know how to do it, Smokey?” she asked.
“Cut ‘em off, stitch ‘em up, I reckon.”
Smokey’s surgical technique obviously left something to be desired. But what if they waited and the pizen, as Smokey had said, did travel into his brain? A man could live without ears, she supposed, but she was curiously reluctant to maim the handsome stranger.
“No. We’ll wait,” she said finally.
Smokey shook his head gravely but didn’t say anything. After a few moments he returned to his seat near the door. Another quarter of an hour passed. No one spoke, but Molly knew they all were thinking about her decision, wondering if it would cost Parker Prescott his life.
She wiped sweat from her forehead and felt it under her arms. “It’s so hot in here he’s like to suffocate,” she said irritably.
“But he’s got the fever. We’ve got to keep him warm,” Mary Beth protested.
Susannah was dozing in the rocking chair by the fire. She opened her eyes and said sleepily, “Just ‘cause he’s got himself frostbit doesn’t mean we should roast him to death, if you ask me.”
Molly straightened from the bed and made another decision. “Open the door, Smokey, and let’s get some of these blankets off him.”
Smokey looked doubtful. “He could take a fatal chill.”