Badlands by Melissa Lenhardt

Author:Melissa Lenhardt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Historical, Fiction / Romance / Western, Fiction / Romance / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Thrillers / Historical, Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Historical, Fiction / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Westerns, Fiction / War & Military
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2017-06-27T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

19

Biding time wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. If I could have paid to leave immediately, which I could not, being in Saint Louis wouldn’t help Kindle. I wouldn’t be able to see him and though I assumed I would be welcomed back to Mary’s orphanage, there was no guarantee it would be a safe place for me to hide. Now that Kindle was caught, and the world knew I was alive, the orphanage might be watched for my arrival. When I mulled the question “stay or go?” I discovered not only was the safest decision to stay, but that I wanted to stay. The draw of practicing medicine again, even in Hankins’s twisted version, was too strong.

May arrived on a wave of thunderstorms and train upon train of people seeking their fortune through legitimate and illegitimate means. Cheyenne’s population ebbed and flowed as passengers disembarked and moved on south to Boulder and Denver, and headed north and west to the mines. Enough were intrigued by Cheyenne’s potential that the town grew inexorably northward. Streets surveyed in March were dotted with tents in April and lined with wooden buildings in May. Fifteenth and Sixteenth Streets were slowly transforming from small false-fronted wooden buildings to more majestic brick and stone. Rosemond’s portrait business was growing, and her sign business was booming, as was Dr. Hankins’s practice, though Dr. Hankins’s workload was not.

Hankins’s plan for me to aid him and apprentice lasted a week, the amount of time for him to realize I could do all the work and he could get most of the remuneration. There was little objection to me taking over Hankins’s practice: the women in town preferred a female treating them, even if it was a nurse, and the men who urgently needed Hankins’s services were rarely in a condition to object, bloody and in pain as they were from knife attacks and gunshot wounds. When I tied the final suture off, they were impressed with my work and, feeling magnanimous and light-headed with loss of blood, most like, occasionally gave me extra coin on top of the standard fee. It was in this way I was able to slowly secret a personal stash of money unbeknownst to Hankins, who took his portion off the top, and Rosemond, whom I combined my earnings with for household expenses and was slowly paying back for the clothes she’d bought me. Though she insisted payment wasn’t necessary, I didn’t want to be beholden to her in any way.

With a few discreet inquiries on my and Rosemond’s parts, we discovered Salter was contracted with the railroad, investigating crimes that happened up and down the line or on the trains themselves. Salter disappeared from town without a word to me, and Rosemond convinced me I was seeing a threat where there wasn’t one. As the days wore on and Salter didn’t return, and Harry Diamond continued to pretend I’d never threatened to shoot his cock off, I began to feel safe again, if not entirely easy.

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