As he approached the bunk with his bag in hand, the woman was forced to suspend the feeding by a coughing spasm that had a distinct, consumptive sound to it. It sharpened his gaze, sweeping the woman in a cursory examination. She was wasted and had thin, dark circles under her eyes. The hardship in her life had aged her until she looked old enough to be the grandmother of these children. Simon didn’t like the sound of that hacking cough. After he had checked the youngsters’ conditions, he intended to examine their mother.
He stopped beside her, conscious that Franz Kreuger was hovering close by. “How’s Gustav?” He smiled briefly at the wan and anxious face of Helga Kreuger before he turned his attention on the boy. A second later, he heard the rattle in the boy’s lungs. Everything inside him froze for a pulsebeat. Violence was alien to his nature, but it gripped him now. He turned savagely on Kreuger. “Damn you, Kreuger,” he swore, and curled his fingers into the man’s shirt front. “I told you to contact me immediately if they got worse!”
“They are no worse than when you saw them last,” Kreuger denied hotly, his dark eyes pinpoints of loathing and distrust.
Helga Kreuger was on her feet, alarm taking away what little color she had. “Gustav is not worse, is he?”
And Simon realized that she was so desperate for her son to get better that she had refused to acknowledge he had gotten worse. Sanity returned to him and he released his hold on Kreuger’s shirt to turn back to the child.
“His condition isn’t good,” he said gruffly, understating the situation.
“He’ll get better, though,” she murmured and looked at her child anxiously.
“I’ll do everything I can.” It was the most Simon dared promise. It would be tough pulling a healthy child through, and the Kreuger children were undernourished and weak. Miracles weren’t taught in his profession, and he had a feeling that’s what it was going to take.
It had happened other times. In the outbreaks of typhoid fever, Simon had seen all but one or two members of the family die, but it was never easy for him to accept, especially when the victims were children.
There was always the feeling that there should have been something else he could have done—that for all his knowledge, there was still something he didn’t know but should have.
That’s what Kreuger thought when all of his children save one were buried within a week. Simon had tried to shut his ears to the man’s accusations. Kreuger was convinced that it was because he was poor and couldn’t pay the doctor for his services that Simon hadn’t done all he could, sure that if his name had been Calder rather than Kreuger the result would have been different.
Tired and frustrated and plagued by the guilt that haunted him every time he lost a patient, Simon leaned on the table in the middle of his cabin’s small kitchen. Dirty dishes from two weeks ago sat in the sink, the last time he’d eaten a meal in his own home and office combined. He looked around at the mess.
“I hired a girl to clean the place for me, but her family pulled up stakes last fall. I haven’t gotten around to finding someone else.” He apologized to Doyle Pettit for the untidy state of his living quarters.
“If you want, I can find someone for you,” Doyle volunteered affably and sipped at the bitter black coffee Simon had poured for him. “You really should take a week off and rest. You look terrible.”
“Playing doctor, are you?” Simon smiled tiredly.
“What’s on your mind, Doc?” Doyle Pettit leaned back in the straight chair, loose and at ease. “I know you didn’t ask me to come by just to pass the time of day—not a man as busy as you are. So there must be something bothering you.”
“It’s Kreuger—or more specifically, Kreuger’s wife. She’s got tuberculosis, and this climate—the cold and the dust—are just aggravating her condition. He needs to get her out of here if he doesn’t want to end up burying her, too.” He ran a hand through his hair, rumpling the ends. “I’ve tried to explain it to him, but he thinks I’ve got some conspiracy going with Calder to drive him off the land. I can’t get through to him. He just won’t listen to me. But you—he’s more likely to believe it coming from you.”
Doyle frowned, concern etched in his features that were usually drawn in such carefree lines. He swirled the coffee in his cup, studying its black color. “I don’t know if anything could separate that man from his land. That place is almost an obsession with him. Out of all those that came that first year to stake a homestead claim, he’s one of the few left. I don’t know what keeps him going.”
“Hate.” Simon supplied his belief. “A hatred not necessarily of Webb Calder as much as a hatred of what he represents, a big landholder. There are times when I wonder if he didn’t choose his place simply because it butted up to Calder land.”
“Could be,” Doyle conceded and drank from his cup. “I’ll have a talk with him about his wife, but I don’t know if I’ll have any more success than you did.”
Simon hoped he did. Something told him that Kreuger was near the breaking point. Most men would have quit by now. All he had was a hardscrabble farm that was getting blown away. The drought and the dust were working on everyone, fraying nerves and shortening tempers. Add to that the grief Kreuger had to be suffering. Put those things with his intense resentment of Calder, and at some point, the lid was going to blow.
“Have you seen Webb lately? How’s that new baby of his doing?” Doyle shifted the subject to a lighter topic.
“I was out to The Homestead about three weeks ago, before all this started. Everyone was fine, including young Chase.” The thought of the healthy baby brought a hint of a smile to Simon’s face.
“You know what, Doc? You and I should take a trip back east and find ourselves a couple of wives. When I think about Webb having a son, I get downright envious,” Doyle declared without looking the slightest bit serious. “I probably should talk to him about making provisions for his son’s future. That’s something my father never did for me. He left me a ranch and a lot of debts, and that’s about all.”
“I guess none of us think we’re going to die.” Simon laughed without humor and lifted the coffee cup to his mouth.
27
Spring came and brought relief from the winter’s cold, but not the drought. Everyone said it couldn’t last another summer. Banks made loans to the drylanders so they could buy seed and plant their wheat. June was the rainy season. Everyone waited, watching the sky and holding their breath.
The clouds came, scented the air with the sweetness of rain, then vibrated the dry ground with the loudness of their thunder. Suddenly, they split open and rain fell in driving sheets. The jubilance was wiped from Franz Kreuger’s face as he stood outside his shack, drenched within minutes, and watched the torrential downpour carry away the top layer of soil and the young shoots of wheat.
The deluge didn’t last for more than half an hour, but the dry ground couldn’t absorb so much water in such a short period of time. What the wind hadn’t eroded, the rainwater did, carving away sides of hills and gouging out gullies where there had been none. The crop was lost again, this time to the rain.
By late afternoon of that same day, the ground already showed signs of being dried out. Only in the low spots did the gumbolike consistency remain for another day.