I’ll have to set these before they puncture a lung.”
“Is she going to make it?” Letty asked.
“Maybe,” Dr. Angus said.
Letty glanced over to the tiny baby lying so still on the adjoining table.
“What about her?” Letty asked.
Dr. Angus just frowned and shook his head.
“Jesus,” Letty muttered.
At that point, Mildred came back into the room carrying the milk. She lifted the baby into her arms and sat down in a nearby rocking chair.
Just as she was about to put the nipple to the baby’s mouth, she froze. Letty heard her breath catch, and her voice began to shake.
“She’s gone, Angus.”
The doctor spun around.
“Let me see,” he said, and laid a finger against the baby’s neck, feeling for a pulse.
“Damn it,” he said softly. “Damn it to hell.”
“Cursing won’t help either one of them,” Mildred scolded.
“I wasn’t cursing for them. I was cursing for me,” he mumbled.
Letty felt as if she was smothering. Only minutes ago she’d held that tiny life and now it was gone. The pain in her chest was spreading up her throat. Her vision blurred.
“She’s dead?” Letty asked.
Mildred nodded, then set the bottle aside and clasped the tiny baby to her ample breasts and began to rock.
“Mildred, don’t,” Angus said. “I need you to help me. Maybe we can save the mother.”
Mildred’s chin was quivering as she got up from the chair. She carried the baby back to the table and then laid it down.
Letty felt as if she was caught in a nightmare, unable to wake up. On one table, the tiny body of one victim had already escaped the hell into which she’d been born, while the mother wasn’t far behind.
“I’ve got to go,” Letty muttered, and stumbled out the door.
She paused on the porch and took a deep breath, but it didn’t help.
Desperate to get away from the pain, she strode off the porch and headed back up the street. Her hands were doubled up into fists, and her head was down as if she would head-butt anyone who got in her way. When she stomped off the sidewalk and into the street, she was outrunning the dust stirred up by her feet. She didn’t know she was crying—huge, hiccupping sobs that shook her to the bone, or that people were whispering and staring as she moved through town. Everyone knew Letty Potter as a tough, no-nonsense woman. They couldn’t imagine what had happened to cause this kind of reaction.
Letty didn’t know she was gathering so much attention. All she wanted to do was get to her room. She was almost running when she entered the hotel, and was heading for the stairs when she heard what sounded like a roar of rage from the second floor. The sound startled her enough that she hesitated. As she did, a man came storming down the hallway above and took the stairs down to the lobby, two at a time, then headed for the clerk behind the desk.
“Where is she? Where’s my wife?” he yelled, and grabbed the young clerk around the neck.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just got back from eating my noon meal.”
Letty froze. She’d never met this man, but she had a sinking feeling that she knew who he was. And, there was only one way to find out.
“Hey,” she said.
The man turned the clerk loose so quickly that he staggered backward and fell.
“You talkin’ to me?” the man growled.
Letty stared at the man—all six plus feet of him—and could only imagine how Alice had felt.
“By any chance, is your name George?” she asked.
George Mellin looked taken aback, and then he recognized her as the woman who was in the room next door.
“You’re that Potter woman, ain’t you?”
“I asked you first,” Letty said.
George blinked. He wasn’t in the habit of being back-talked by anyone, especially some female, no matter how rich she was.
“You don’t talk to me like that,” George said softly.
Letty glared. “Or what? You gonna beat me, too?”
The clerk behind the counter had scrambled to his feet and made a run for the door. He wasn’t sure what was about to happen, but it didn’t look like any good was going to come from it. He headed for the sheriff’s office as hard as he could go.
“You think because you’re rich that you’re better than ever’body, don’t you, bitch?”
Letty shuddered. She’d been beaten up a few times in her early days as a prostitute, before she’d settled in at the White Dove Saloon. There, she’d at least had three meals a