A Time to Bloom (Leah's Garden #2)(58)

Clenching his jaw, RJ twisted around and climbed down, calling himself all kinds of names for taking on a job where he didn’t know the men he’d be working over. But this needed tending to, and there was no one to do it but him.

By the time he reached the ground, Clive had wandered inside the would-be dining room and picked up a hammer, passing it from one hand to another as if meditating what to do with it. As RJ approached, he found a stray nail and then, still whistling, pounded it square in the middle of a window frame. He raised the hammer high, then brought it down smack on his thumb, based on the string of words that followed.

“Johnson!” RJ barked.

Clive jumped, lost his footing, and sprawled flat out on his back. Several other workmen guffawed.

“Get up, Clive.” RJ nudged him with his boot. “And get yourself back home, preferably not by way of the liquor tent.”

“Why would I go home, Boss?” Clive grinned up at him lazily, apparently already forgetting his thumb. “I come here ta work.”

“You’re under-the-table drunk, man.” Disgust twisted RJ’s middle, but he offered the man a hand. Clive ignored it. “And you’re fired.”

Clive blinked, the grin leaving his face. “You can’t do that to me.”

“I can and just did. It would be negligent to your safety and that of my other workmen to do otherwise.” RJ sharpened his tone still further. “Now get up, and get out of here.”

Hauling himself to a sitting position, Clive glared at RJ, lip curled. “You’ll regret this.”

“Not as much as I regret ever letting you on this site. Now go.”

Muttering threats and obscenities, Clive stumbled to his feet and went, the venom in his words somewhat belied by the weaving of his gait.

RJ shook his head and blew out a breath. It was hard to believe some people thought that liquor tent worth the trouble it caused.

“Mr. Easton, sir.”

“Yes, O’Rourke?” RJ turned to the burly man he had come to lean on as his foreman, at least during the hours O’Rourke could work away from his farm.

“One of the lads just realized he cut a passel of boards the wrong length. We’ll have to cut more lumber, I’m afraid, and start that wall over again.”

RJ sighed and glanced at the sun. “Do what you need to do.” And only half the morning gone already.

It would be a long day.



What was he doing with his life?

RJ dragged his feet up the steps of the Brownsvilles’ home that evening, bone-weary, as it seemed he ended every day. Light and voices from within spoke of company. Just what he did not need tonight. Perhaps he could slip past unnoticed and just head up to bed. The pain in his eye socket lanced something fierce.

He eased open the door and stepped inside.

“Oh, RJ, you’re here. Wonderful.” Eyes alight, Forsythia hurried to meet him.

He forced a smile to greet his hostess and the portly woman who followed from the sitting room. And Delphinium. Why in tarnation was she here? She must have stopped by for supper after school. “Evening, ladies. Doctor.”

Adam stood back a bit, hands in his pockets.

“You know Mrs. Jorgensen from the mercantile.” Forsythia drew the woman forward as the children crowded around. “She stopped by to share some good news with us.”

“Really, you needn’t make a fuss.” Her face reddening, Mrs. Jorgensen drew a shawl closer around her shoulders, though the evening was still warm.

“Oh, but Mr. Easton will want to hear this.” Forsythia turned back to RJ. “We haven’t had a chance to tell you yet, as you left so early this morning. But Del had the schoolchildren out at the salt flats yesterday, on the Caldwells’ land—Mrs. Caldwell was along, too, and Lilac and Jesse. They were drawing flora and fauna and I don’t know what all. But at any rate—tell him, Del.”

Del stepped forward, a small earthen jar in her hands. “We think we came upon that salt spring Adam told you about, that the Caldwells had heard stories about from the old Pawnee woman. So we brought back some mud.”

“And?” RJ resisted the urge to rub his throbbing temples. As it often did, the pain had spread from his eye into his very skull.

“Well, I brought it over today before school. And Adam tried it on Mrs. Jorgensen.”

Adam spoke from the shadows. “She’s been suffering from a cluster of carbuncles on her shoulder. She’d mentioned it to Forsythia when she was working at the mercantile.”

“So this morning I convinced her to let Adam make an application of the salt mud to her boils as a poultice.” Forsythia gently touched the older woman’s arm. “Our mother used all kinds of poultices for healing, sometimes even mud. And Lucretia—Mrs. Jorgensen—just came by to tell us that it helped as nothing else has.”

“I’d tried everything—bread poultice, onion poultice, castor oil.” Mrs. Jorgensen shook her head. “It was keeping me up at night. Never would have thought I’d stoop to trying mud, but . . .” She looked at Adam, something in her eyes that RJ didn’t understand. “I’m beholden to you, Doctor.”

Adam met her gaze. “Many of the Pawnees’ ways are older and wiser than ours, I think. And you’re most welcome.”

“RJ.” Del stepped nearer, her gray-blue eyes searching his face. “We want to try this on your eye, or rather on your scar. To see if it will help you too.”