Stands a Calder Man (Calder Saga 2)

“Your husband has typhoid fever,” he announced grimly. “Which means your water supply has been contaminated. With the lack of rain we’ve had this year, it’s a situation that’s going to become more prevalent, I’m afraid. This isn’t the first case I’ve diagnosed.”

Typhoid fever. The words numbed her with their ominous portent. Vaguely she was aware of Franz Kreuger intervening and demanding that the doctor give Stefan something to make him better. Most of his reply was lost as she tried to come to grips with the news.

“... keep bathing him to bring the fever down and make sure he gets plenty of liquid,” the doctor instructed. “I have a couple other calls to make, but I’ll stop back here toward evening. We’ll see how he’s doing then.”

Lilli went through the motions of seeing the doctor to the door and thanking him for coming, but she seemed to be existing in a vacuum, devoid of any feelings or sensations. Nothing made any impression on her, not even the abrasive Franz Kreuger.

The Montana weather had been up to its old, cruel tricks. A big bruise had shown up in the sky and sent the smell of rain over the country. Rain fell in sheeting buckets for forty minutes and no more, but not everywhere, just in one small area where the headquarters of the Triple C Ranch were located. It turned the parched ground into a quagmire, which made it impossible for Webb to use the automobile to drive into town and shorten the trip.

Instead, he saddled an Appaloosa-marked bay to make the long ride. Not three miles from The Homestead, the grass was tinder-dry. The black clouds were already chasing across the sky, leaving as quickly as they had come, tormenting the dry earth with their fragrance of rain.

A dry wind was blasting the weathering buildings of Blue Moon with its burden of dust. There was a fine coating of it on everything. Few people were on the street, walking with their heads down and faces turned away from the wind. With his eyes slitted against the stinging dust, Webb noticed the motley funeral procession slowly making its way to the new cemetery on the grassy knoll just outside of town.

The long, dusty ride had left him with a dry mouth and throat. He turned his horse into the hitching rail in front of Sonny’s place and swung down, looping the reins around the post. When he went inside, he found the restaurant by day, bar by night nearly as deserted as the street. He took note of the occupants, recognizing Hobie Evans lounging against the bar. Pushing his hat to the back of his head, Webb sat down at one of the tables.

“Just coffee,” he told the dried-out girl who had made a move to come out from behind the bar to take his order. She looked to be from one of the homesteading families, working in town to supplement her family’s meager income. With this summer’s drought, more of the older children had been forced to seek jobs to help support their family. There had been a deluge of them at the ranch, willing to turn their hand to anything to make a few

pennies.

Hobie sauntered over to the table and pulled out a chair, turning it around to straddle it, not waiting for Webb to invite him to sit. He sipped the coffee cup in his hand and eyed Webb with a complacent look. “It’s been a long, dry summer,” he remarked.

Webb nodded and glanced briefly at the girl when she brought his coffee and set it on the table in front of him. She paused, her features drained of any expression “Want anything else?”

“What she means is”—Hobie leaned closer to murmur his explanation so it would go no farther than the table—“for two bits and the price of a shot, she’ll make that coffee stronger.”

The hypocrisy of the situation wasn’t lost on Webb. When the drylanders had come, they had been righteously opposed to the serving of alcoholic beverages in their midst, yet one of their daughters was willing to break the rules for a quarter.

“I’ll drink it as it is.” He refused the offer to have it laced with whiskey. The girl shrugged indifferently and wandered back to the bar.

“I’ll bet for a little more money a fella could buy more than a drink from her,” Hobie watched her leave. “If he didn’t mind gettin’ hung up on those skinny ribs. ‘Course, honyockers aren’t my cup of tea, but I didn’t know but what you might still have a taste for them.”

With a man like Hobie Evans, it was better to ignore his coarse and snide remarks. Any comment would wind up encouraging more of the same. Webb drank his coffee, hot and thickly black.

“I noticed a bunch of wagons leading toward the cemetery when I rode into town. Who’s getting buried?” He changed the subject.

Hobie shrugged. “Some honyocker. Some fever bug is laying ’em down right and left. More power to the fever, I say. Maybe we’ll finally get rid of some of those bastards. It should’ve happened a long time ago.”

“A fever?” An eyebrow lifted in a silent demand for a more specific answer.

“Yeah. The sawbones was in here earlier, trying to get a bite to eat, but some scrawny drylander dragged him away on a sick call.” A kind of grin lifted a comer of Hobie’s mouth. “The doc looked worn to a frazzle, said something about their water being contaminated. He’s wastin’ his time with the likes of them. If a hundred more of ’em died, it wouldn’t be too many to suit me.”

Webb lost his taste for the coffee and the company. He scraped the chair backward to stand and tossed a coin on the table to pay for the barely touched coffee. “Hobie, when you die, you’re going to be all alone. The sad part is—you won’t know it.”

Leaving the restaurant, he untied the reins and started to mount his horse; then he caught the sound of voices raised in song being carried by the wind, and paused. Snatches of the melody came to him, enough to recognize the mournful hymn “Rock of Ages.”

He wondered about the Reisner well, whether its water was contaminated, but it did no good to wonder. There was nothing he could do about it. He had no right to do anything about it. His boot went into the stirrup as he swung onto his horse and reined it away from the hitching rail to head for the depot.

The black shawl covering Lilli’s head was whipped by the gritty wind, but she didn’t bow her head as shovels of dirt began falling on Stefan’s coffin. People filed past her: friends, neighbors, all offering her their sympathy.

They seemed to expect her silence and the dullness of her eyes.

No one asked what she planned to do, but she had made her decisions. She was putting the farm up for sale. Franz Kreuger was going to harvest what wheat was in the fields on a share basis. After that, she was leaving. There was no more reason to stay, with Stefan gone. She didn’t even let herself think about Webb Calder, because that had been too long ago. It was dead, too, like Stefan.

22

When the doctor climbed out of his buggy, Webb noted the changes from an eager young doctor assuming his first practice to this overworked physician not getting to eat regularly or enough sleep. He was the only doctor for a hundred miles in any direction and the demands on him were constant. It showed in his prematurely grayed hair and eyes reddened from the lack of sleep.

“I’m sorry I had to call you out, Simon.” Webb prefaced his greeting with regret and led Dr. Simon Bardolph toward the bunkhouse. “I hope you aren’t as tired as you look.”