inside their back door. And if someone had, I would have said I was going out to ask Dr. Patterson a question about Molly’s care.”
Martha bent down and picked a few stems of striking smooth, blue asters. When she straightened up, she added, “Besides, it was apparent you weren’t going to take up Mr. Lincoln’s hint.”
“I plumb missed it at the time,” I admitted, “if he indeed meant it as a hint. Prussians travelling far for brandywine—what nonsense. Even now, I’m not completely sure he meant it as a suggestion rather than it being merely another of his absurd sayings.”
Martha laughed and skipped ahead, making a beeline for a spectacular stand of ox-eye sunflowers and compass plants, a riot of yellow, orange, and gold. “You can believe that if you want,” she called over her shoulder. “But I think I know your Mr. Lincoln better.”
I knelt and cut off several long stalks of Indian grass and little bluestem. The cold nights had already started to turn the bluestem a reddish bronze. I ran my fingers up its spine and the silvery-white seed heads scattered to the winds.
“What did you tell Patterson about Jane?” I asked.
“The truth. That Phillis had overheard their argument the prior afternoon, that Jane tried to have her stolen, to silence her, but that you’d tracked her down and learned what had happened. And that when Jane realized as much, she took her own life. I told him where we’d left her body, so he could recover the remains.”
“He must have been devastated.”
Martha nodded. “At first, he refused to leave the cell. But I convinced him that his senseless death wouldn’t do anything to reverse hers. And that he had a chance to do for others what he’d failed to do for Jane by covering for her madness for so long. In the end, he promised me he would.”
“I’m most surprised you were able to enlist Herr Gustorf in your scheme,” I said. “And to do so with such speed.”
“I wasn’t too sure I’d be able to,” Martha said, chewing on her lip seriously. “On my way over with his team and calèche carriage, I’d figured out all manner of ways of trying to wake him without disturbing the Pattersons’ hired girl. But when I got there, he was already on the porch, smoking his pipe in the murk.”
“But how did you get him to go along? It was quite a risk for him too.”
“A girl knows what a man wants,” said Martha, smiling at me slyly.
“Martha!” I exclaimed. “Don’t tell me that you—what did you do for him? Or promise to him?”
My sister bent over double, laughing so hard tears came to her eyes. “Not that,” she said when she finally recovered her breath. “He didn’t want that. Well, he probably did, but not as much as he wanted something else.”
She looked at me expectantly, but when I failed to supply the answer she continued, “His cast, Joshua. He wanted the doctor to be able to remove his cast, so he could go back to a normal existence. At first, he absolutely refused my suggestion he drive the doctor away in his carriage, but then I pointed out that if the doctor left without him, so too would the only medical man in the West with the knowledge of how to remove the cast without sawing off his leg. He tamped out his pipe at once and set off.”
I laughed and Martha smiled with satisfaction. We turned to head back to town, linked arm in arm. Martha carried a bouquet overflowing with the long stems of yellow and blue and purple wildflowers. She glowed vibrant and fresh against the slowly decaying prairie.
“I’ve decided to organize proper gravestones for Rebecca and the two children,” I said. “It isn’t much, but I think it’ll provide a final measure of honor to their lives. And deaths.” Martha squeezed my arm and I felt her warmth.
A little further along I added: “And you need never worry again that I won’t take you seriously. To have done everything you did—and before the sun even rose. No one else could have managed it.” I paused. “It was quite a risk you took, you know.”
“There was more peril in not acting,” she said. “That’s what I thought, anyway. You can’t go through life merely focusing on the risks of acting, Joshua. You might never get anything done.”
I looked at her with pride and wonder and thought how much more I had to learn