“Because you were looking at him,” Anna howled.
Judging from Laurel’s comical eye-rolling, the girls had made quite the scene. Yet poor Scott hadn’t even noticed. Yes, she reckoned that the Hopkins girls would be making a call soon.
“Betsy,” Laurel said, “I hear the new deputy has finally arrived. Have you met him?”
Both girls stopped their fluttering and leaned to the edge of the wagon. “Is he young? What’s he look like?”
Immediately the descriptions Betsy had scribbled down came to mind. Noble brow, intense eyes, dark—nope. Wasn’t gonna say that. “He’s fairly passable, for a Texan.”
Phoebe squeezed her hands into fists and squealed while Anna’s eyes lit up.
“For crying aloud, girls,” their mother said. “You must control yourselves.” But Laurel looked as pleased as her daughters.
They tried to pry more information from her, but Betsy found that she much preferred writing about her hero than discussing him in person with other girls.
“Have you’uns been to the store?” Betsy asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Phoebe said.
Laurel squirmed in the wagon seat, as impatient as her daughters. “We brought the wagon to town to get supplies, but Mayor Walters had a matter over which he wished to consult Newton. Now we have to wait, and the good doctor probably won’t even get a discount on our purchase.”
Poor Doctor Hopkins. He was forever at the mercy of people seeking free medical advice. Even worse, when he was kind enough to offer it, they often contradicted him with their own preferences for the simples and charms that had already failed them.
“If Mayor Walters is keeping Doctor Hopkins, I’ll put in a word for payment,” she promised. “If he has enough money to buy that fine black horse, he can certainly afford to pay your husband for his time.”
Waving her good-bye, Betsy dashed to the store. Inside she saw Mrs. Helspeth shopping, but no Mayor Walters. Betsy shrugged at the old mountain woman.
“He’s in the back room,” Mrs. Helspeth said as she continued to palm a bag of cornmeal as if estimating its weight by the ounce.
The back room. According to Sissy, that was where Betsy needed to be.
Betsy slipped behind the counter and pushed through the swinging door in the storage room. Barrels were stacked up the wall, lying on their sides, their lids forming a honeycomb pattern. Where the barrels ended, the crates started up, and after that, heavy bags of ground meal, sugar, and various beans piled up, forming a wall of burlap behind which she could just make out the top of a man’s head.
“I don’t know why I would be getting a bundle of switches.” The words made her heart skip a beat even before she recognized Doctor Hopkins’s voice. “Laurel and the girls think it’s a prank, but I’m not so sure. That’s why I came to town today. I told Sheriff Taney to meet me here.”
The Bald Knobbers were going after Doctor Hopkins? Had the world turned upside down? Something was terribly amiss. Doctor Hopkins stayed on the right side of the law. And you didn’t do yourself any favors threatening the man who might save your life someday.
“Who’d you cross?” Mayor Walters asked.
“You’d better believe I questioned the girls. They are high-spirited, but they don’t mean any harm. But no one can think of any reason we’d need a warning like that. I’d think if Fowler had a bone to pick, he’d come speak to me, man-to-man.”
The voices of shoppers wafted through the wall. Betsy’s scalp began to itch beneath Scott’s old knit cap. She should let them know she was there, but she would undoubtedly learn more if she didn’t. From long practice and without conscious planning, her knees bent and she found a safer place against the crates that afforded her more protection should Doctor Hopkins glance around the sacks.
“Are those things hot yet?” Walters couldn’t be seen over the mound of bags, which wasn’t surprising. He was half a dollar short of fifty cents when it came to height.
“Just about,” Doctor Hopkins said as he rattled something on the wood stove.
“Betsy Huckabee?” This voice came from behind her and caused her to bolt upright to her full height. “What are you up to?”
Sheriff Taney. She didn’t have to turn around to know who’d caught her crouched in Walters’s storeroom. Doctor Hopkins peeked his head around the bags. A grin twitched at his face. If only she’d been a more compliant child, she wouldn’t incite such suspicion now. Any other lady found crouching in a storeroom wouldn’t have to defend . . . well, to be honest, Betsy couldn’t think of any other woman who’d be caught snooping in the storeroom.
“Don’t know what you’re hiding for. Might as well come on over and listen,” Doctor Hopkins said. “That is, if the mayor doesn’t mind.”
Walters groaned. “I don’t care as long as you get me out of my misery.”