Laurie Kingery - A Hero in the Making

This one was as well favored as the drifter had been ugly, with a lock of curly light brown hair falling over his forehead.

“You all right, ma’am?” he asked, his Southern drawl like a caress.

“Yes, I think so... Thank you,” she said fervently. “You came along at just the right time. I knew the saloonkeeper wouldn’t hear me over his piano...” Ella glanced uneasily at her unconscious attacker lying just a few feet from her, wondering if he would come around and launch himself at her again.

“Don’t worry about him,” the newcomer said, following her gaze. “He’ll be out for a while, and when he wakes up, his head will ache too much to think of bothering you. I’ll get the saloonkeeper and we’ll drag him out of here.” He left for a moment, and when he returned, he had Detwiler in tow.

“Again, Miss Ella?” Detwiler said, glancing from her unconscious attacker to Ella and back again.

She nodded. “I’m afraid so, George.”

Detwiler said nothing more to her, just grunted as he reached under the man’s shoulders, and with the newcomer hoisting the attacker’s booted feet, and Ella holding the back door open, the two men hauled the drifter into the alley. She knew they would leave him in front of the saloon, and hopefully, he wouldn’t find his way back.

When they returned, Detwiler trudged back into the saloon, leaving Ella once more alone with her rescuer. As much as Ella had wanted to scuttle back behind the counter, she had been too shaky to move, and she still stood clutching the doorknob.

“You get a lot of that sort of thing, men bothering you like that?”

Her rescuer look concerned, but what was he going to do about it? She nodded and tried to look unperturbed, despite the fact that she was still shaking inside. If this man hadn’t come along... And being alone with this man now, without the counter between them, made her nearly as uneasy as the drifter had.

“Not usually as bad as that,” she said, hoping she sounded calm. “Guess it was too much to hope that some fellows wouldn’t get the wrong idea from my little café being in the back of the saloon.” It couldn’t be helped—it wasn’t as if she had the funds to buy a lot and erect a building on it. Using the back room of George Detwiler’s saloon for her little eatery and paying him a small sum that covered rent and provisions was supposed to be a temporary measure until the profits would enable her to have her own café, but it seemed she’d be old and gray by the time that happened.

She could think of that later. Meanwhile, she owed this stranger some sort of thanks for his timely intervention.

“Can I offer you a cup of coffee, mister? And a sandwich?” Ella asked, though she couldn’t help wincing inwardly at the loss of the three bits it would cost her to give away what she was supposed to be selling.

“Thank you, but I’ll pay for two sandwiches, since I came in with money to buy food anyway,” he told her. “I’ll eat one now, but would you wrap up the other sandwich for a friend, please?” Suiting his action to his words, he sprinkled some coins onto the countertop. “You could tell me your name.”

“Ella,” she said. “Ella Justiss.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Ella. I’m Nate Bohannan.”

After making the first beef sandwich and pouring his coffee, she studied the man from under her lashes as he ate. He wasn’t one of the local ranch hands, and he wasn’t dressed like a cowboy. He wore black trousers, a clean white shirt and a silver brocade vest with a gold watch fob. All of his clothes were clean and well cared for, if a little well-worn. If it weren’t for the fancy vest, she might have thought him a doctor, or maybe a preacher. He was well-spoken and polite, but the vest revealed a showier side to his character than a man of one of those professions.

“What brings you to Simpson Creek, Mr. Bohannan, if I may ask?” she said as she fashioned the second sandwich for his unseen friend. “Are you a gambler, by any chance?” Detwiler operated a faro table at night, so maybe the man had come to try his luck.

Bohannan threw back his head and laughed. It was a hearty laugh, as if he enjoyed a good sense of humor. “No, I’m not a gambler, though you might say our business is a kind of gamble. I’m the assistant to Mr. Robert Salali. He runs the Cherokee Medicine Show, and we’re visiting your fair town to sell his amazing product.”

“‘Salali?’ Is he Indian? Or is that some kind of foreign name?” she asked.

Bohannan smiled as he answered. “As American as you and I, though he was given the Cherokee name Salali by a Cherokee chief. He considers it an honor and uses it for his medicine business. Say, Miss Ella, why don’t you come see the medicine show. The bottled medicine he sells is a wondrous potion. It’ll cure whatever ails a body—though looking at you, I’d say you’re not troubled by lumbago, catarrh or rheumatism,” he said with a wink of a twinkling blue eye.

What was it about this man that made her want to laugh and smile at everything he said, despite her unease with his charm? It was more than the gratitude inspired by his rescue.

“No, I’m not subject to those complaints,” she said, trying to sound tart but failing miserably.

“It’s good for lots of other things,” he assured her. “Things that might not be apparent on the surface. Melancholy, dyspepsia...”

“Fortunately, I’m in good health, but I have to watch my pennies too carefully to spend money on such things,” she told him. “I want to open my own restaurant someday, one not attached to a saloon.” She had no idea why she was sharing her dream with a man who was next to a stranger to her, a man who sent disquieting emotions zinging through her.

“A completely worthy ambition,” he agreed. “But come see the presentation, won’t you? It’s entertaining, if nothing else. Salali puts on a good show.” He’d finished his sandwich—wolfed it down, more like. “Our wagon’s pulled up in front of the mercantile. And you just might think of a need for our wonderful Cherokee medicine.”

Entertaining? Ella couldn’t remember when she’d last been entertained. Life was hard for an honest woman on her own. “What’s in this amazing medicine of yours?” she asked, letting her skepticism reveal itself.

“Ah, but that’d be telling,” he said with a wink. “Suffice it to say, a little of this, a little of that, and all good for what ails a person.”

“You’d better be glad our Dr. Walker and his wife are off in Austin this week,” she told him. “He doesn’t hold with quackery. Says calomel is poison, and most of the other things in patent medicines are, too.”

Bohannon regarded her seriously, though amusement danced in those blue eyes. He held up a hand and looked straight at her. “On my mother’s grave, I swear that there’s no calomel or any other harmful thing in Salali’s Cherokee Marvelous Medicine.”

“When does the show start?”

He smiled, a smile that wrapped itself around her soul, a smile that made her regret her long-held beliefs about men, and think that this man just might be the exception. Reaching inside his vest pocket, he brought out a gold pocket watch.

“In fifteen minutes,” he said. “Thanks for the sandwiches and that fine coffee, Miss Ella Justiss.”

“You’re welcome. Come back for supper, if you like. My fried chicken is the best in San Saba County.”

“I just might do that,” he said. He picked up the wrapped sandwich and exited through the saloon.

If she wanted to take a few minutes out to watch a medicine show, she could, Ella told herself. She’d been her own boss since leaving her job at the hotel restaurant and Mrs. Powell, the tyrannical cook who’d made her life miserable. She didn’t do business in midafternoon, anyway—those looking for a bite to eat at noon had already found it, either at her café or the hotel restaurant, and no one was seeking supper yet.