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“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.
Ella locked the door to the alley, just in case the drifter woke up and tried to find his way back inside, then reached into the cigar box that held the pitifully paltry revenue from the day so far and emptied it into her reticule.
She went into the empty saloon and caught sight of Detwiler sitting on a chair at the piano, picking out a tune she didn’t know, though she did recognize the fact that the piano badly needed tuning. So George had been the one playing at the time the drifter had been attacking her.
He looked up as she approached. “Sorry about what happened, Miss Ella. Guess I shoulda known that fellow was too shifty-eyed to let him go back there, what with you bein’ alone.”
She forced a bright smile to her lips. “No harm done, George. Mr. Bohannan intervened.”
“Seemed like a nice fella, even if he is one a’ them snake-oil salesmen.” Now the saloonkeeper’s eyes turned apologetic as he cleared his throat. “I’m not sure our arrangement’s gonna work out, Miss Ella, from the number of times I’ve had to step in and keep some yahoo from botherin’ ya. I don’t want anything...bad t’ happen to ya, after all.”
Desperation gripped her with icy fingers. She could not lose the use of Detwiler’s back room, not when she had nowhere else to run her café. And there was very little in the way of other work for a decent woman if one was not a wife, like some of the ex-Spinsters, or a schoolteacher, like Spinsters’ Club member Louisa Wheeler.
“Please, George,” she said, clasping her hands together. “I’ll only need the space until I can get my own place,” she said, refusing to think about how long that would take. “I can’t go back to the hotel—Mrs. Powell’s already hired Daisy Henderson to wait tables in the restaurant.” Even if her job had not already been taken, it would be too galling to submit to the cook’s bullying again. Nor did she want to move on to yet another town.
Detwiler sighed. “All right. You kin stay for the time bein’. I know ya don’t have any other good options. I’ll try to keep a better eye on your customers. Maybe we could rig up some kinda bell rope that would ring behind the bar or somethin’ if you get another bad‘un.”
Ella smothered a snort. As noisy as it got at times in the saloon, she could probably fire a cannon back there and he wouldn’t be able to hear it. But it was nice knowing Detwiler cared about her safety, at least. She knew him to be a decent man. Even the women who served the whiskey in his saloon weren’t compelled to do anything more, and if they took customers upstairs, that was entirely up to them. Detwiler took no cut of it. And Detwiler had given her a chance to go into business for herself instead of remaining under Mrs. Powell’s bullying thumb at the hotel.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m just going to go down the street for a few minutes and see the Cherokee Medicine Show. I’ll be back before anyone’s likely to mosey in looking for supper.”
“Gonna buy ya some snake oil, eh?” Detwiler asked with a chuckle.
“Hardly,” she said, and pushed through the batwing doors to the outside.
Down the street she could see a buckboard with an extralong wagon bed pulled up in front of the mercantile. The wagon bed was gaily painted in emerald-green with navy trim and an inscription along the side in fancy script lettering. As she drew closer, she saw that the inscription read The Cherokee Marvelous Medicine Show. In the middle of the wagon bed stood a narrow podium, with a box on either side stacked full of amber bottles—no doubt the famous Cherokee elixir.
Then she saw Nate emerge from the other side of the wagon, holding a stool and a banjo he’d evidently brought out from storage beneath the wagon. She watched as he placed the stool to one side of the podium, laid the banjo on one of the boxes and, using the front wheel of the wagon, climbed gracefully aboard. He settled himself on the stool and picked up the banjo. For a moment, he tried each of the strings, adjusting one or two as needed at the end of the neck, then began strumming a few chords. Then his fingers began flying over the frets and strings as he played a rollicking tune that reminded her of a minstrel show she’d once seen in New Orleans.
Why, he’s really good, she marveled. She hadn’t expected him to have such musical talent.
She was distracted then by a flash of color down the street, and made out a swarthy, strangely dressed man in some sort of outlandish striped turban and matching waist sash, pacing up and down the street, holding a speaking trumpet to his lips. He cried, “Come one, come all, and learn of the marvelous, wondrous, extraordinary medicine first discovered by Cherokee healers. Hear about the amazing cures this medicine has brought about, from dreaded diseases like consumption, dropsy and apoplexy, to the everyday ills of catarrh, melancholia and piles!”
Everywhere up and down Main Street, people turned around and heads poked out of shops to see what was going on, including a fellow at the barbershop whose face was half shaved, half covered in thick white lather. Not much happened out of the ordinary in Simpson Creek, Texas, and its inhabitants didn’t want to miss it when it did.
So