Read It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own (Code of the West) for Free Online

nurse. Anyway, tell me, what is Mr. Hatcher like?”
    “I can tell you this. I’ve been in this country for four years, and I ain’t never heard one mean word about Zachariah Hatcher.”
    “He seems to be a kind, sensitive man.”
    “You took the words right out of my mouth.”
    “So heavy . . . on my chest. Are you pushing me? And it’s so cold. Is a window open? I feel  . . . Is that snow?”
    Pepper Paige moved closer. Suzanne Cedar’s eyes stared blankly toward the ceiling. Her color was nearly the same as the gray fla nnel sheets. Pepper pulled the blankets up around Suzanne’s neck, took hold of her hand, and rested the other one on her forehead.
    “Pepper?”
    “I’m here.”
    “I’m not going .  . . to live . . . to see Mr. Hatcher . . . am I?”
    “No, ma’am. I don’t believe so.”
    “My heart breaks.”
    “I know you’re hurtin’ real bad. I wish I could do som ethin’.”
    “I’m ready for my Jesus." She gasped at some surge of  pain. “I should not have come. I didn’t even . . . last three days.”
    “I guess the good Lord has our days numbered.”
    “Yes. That's right.” After a pause, “Pepper? Are you still there?” she whi spered.
    “I’m here, darlin’.”
    “You’ll tell him, won’t you?”
    “Mr. Hatcher?”
    “Yes. Tell him I loved him . . . with . . . all my heart."
    Pepper Paige took a deep breath. “I’ll tell him. You can count on it.”
    “You know what? I think you might be an angel.”
    “A what?”
    “From the Lord. An angel.”
    “Nobody ever called me an angel unless he was tryin’ to get me to give him somethin’.”
    “What do you . . . look like?”
    “A lot like you. About your age. Blonde hair. Green eyes. ’ Course, you look like a beautiful porcelain doll that’s been kept on the shelf. I look like an old gunny sack doll that’s been tied to a rope and drug behind a wagon.”
    The woman groaned at every breath. “I can’t take this pain anymore,” she gasped.
    “Miss Cedar, I’m terrible sorry, but we don’t have any laudanum. I can get you some whiskey if you’d like.”
    “Hurts so much.”
    “Maybe it’s time to let go. I can guarantee that Heaven’s got to be a better place than this.”
    “Pray for me.”
    “But . . . I don’t know how.”
    “Lord,” Suzanne Cedar rasped, “take good care of my Zach ariah. Secial blessings to my angel, Pepper. I don’t know what I would . . . Oh!”
    It was over. No more pain. No struggle for breath. No more pressure on the chest. No more cold wind. No more anxiety over a lover she never met.
    Pepper folded Suzanne Cedar’s arms on her chest and pulled the flannel sheet over her head. “Good-bye, darlin’. It would have been nice to have more time to visit. But we didn’t exactly travel in the same circles.”
    Pepper dabbed at her dry, dry eyes.
    At daylight Pepper, draped in her robe, shuffled down the wooden stairs barefoot and across the sticky floor of the main room. Within minutes she had the wood stove in the kitchen stoked and water beginning to warm. The coffee was ready by the time Danni Mae Walters came in wearing a long flannel gown and red satin lace-up boots.
    “You gettin’ up or goin’ to bed?” Pepper asked her.
    “Oh? I just was too tired to pull my boots off. How’s your patient? Still hurtin’?”
    “No pain this mornin’.”
    “She goin’ to pull through?”
    “She’s dead.”
    Danni Mae poured herself a cup of coffee, pulled up a wooden chair next to Pepper’s, and plopped down.
    “It don’t figure, does it?” she finally mu ttered.
    “Nope. She was a proper lady from back East. Been out here three days, and she’s dead. How many gunfights you figure there’ve been in this dance hall since we came here, Danni Mae?”
    “Gunfights? About fifty, I suppose.”
    “And how many knifings?”
    “Twice that amount.”
    “And how many head-bustin’ fist fights?”
    “Are you kidding? Who in the world could count those?”
    “We