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It isn't so bad, Margaret told herself as she walked down the dirt road in the dark. Think of what he's done for you. Rescued you from a hopeless situation. Took you away from Donald. Showed you the ropes. Gave you a good job, a fulfilling one. Bought you those beautiful twin pistols for your birthday… Cheated you out of your pay.
Made you sew up Marshal Potter because his hands were shaking. Wanted you to squeeze money out of patients who barely have enough to make it through the year so he could pay for his wife's vacations and his two purebred mares.
Let you keep your job when you ended the affair.
Told you that he missed you in that wheedling voice when you demanded a salary increase and your six months of back pay.
"Over my dead goddamn body," Helen had said last night. She had been like an avenging angel, eyes flashing and boots loud against the wood floor as she stormed into the kitchen, vowing to die before she would ever let a thing like that happen. Even the dogs had stepped out of her way, watching her warily from the bedroom. It had been terrifying to know that Helen contained that kind of rage, that there was someone who cared enough to put everything on the line for her.
Margaret hoped that Helen wouldn't want to talk about it today. There was no sense in dwelling on things that only hurt to think about.
Tomorrow you'll go back, she told herself as she shut the gate behind her. There's nothing else to do about it. You'll yell at Frank and he'll back down, and you'll keep your job because you have to. There's nothing else you're good for.
She waited nearly a minute after knocking. Helen flung the door open, wild-eyed, but relaxed when she saw who it was. "Come in." She set something down by the door; when Margaret stepped over the threshold she saw it was a rifle. No sooner had she entered than Helen crowded her back against the door and kissed her as though they hadn't seen each other for years.
"What the hell was that?" Margaret asked once they'd stopped to breathe.
"You never know who's out at this hour, honey. Could be bandits, scoundrels, men wanted from the law…" Helen kissed Margaret's jaw, the side of her neck, the base of her throat.
"You mean our friends?" Margaret laughed. She reached up to steady herself on Helen's shoulder and breathed in the overwhelming scent of soap; maybe she had made a fresh batch that afternoon.
"Them too. Or it could be the love of one's life, come for a brief social call."
As Helen reached around to undo the buttons on the back of Margaret's dress, Margaret caught sight of the hem of Helen's faded green dress, sticking out of the bucket in the corner where it had been left to soak.
"What happened to your dress?" she asked, more for something to say than out of any real curiosity.
"The one in the corner? Nothing, just dirt. But the one I'm wearing will be off in a second." Helen pulled back a little to grin at her.
"Smooth, Mrs. Whitfield," Margaret said as she began to step out of her dress, relishing the way Helen sucked in a breath at the sight of her bare shoulders.
"I try, kid," said Helen, and kissed her again.
The sky was just beginning to lighten through the slats of Helen's bedroom shutters when Margaret woke up the next morning. She threw on Helen's robe and crept into the kitchen, intending to snag some leftover bread, when she saw the green dress still sitting in the corner. She wrung it out over the bucket and snapped it open to see if it needed to soak longer. But instead of reddish dirt on the sleeves or skirt, there was a set of fine yellow-brown dots, stretching across the bottom half of the bodice in a thick stripe.
A blood spatter , Margaret's brain supplied, still functioning although her fingers had gone numb. She had seen hundreds of them in five years of stitching up bandits and ranch hands and sheriffs. A work injury? But why would Helen lie about being hurt? And she had no fresh scars, or Margaret would have seen them. Then from slaughtering something, a chicken or a pig. But there would have been meat for dinner the night before.
She stared at the blood spatter, traced the drops with her fingers. It reminded her of one of the earliest cases she'd done with Frank after moving out here, stitching up Ben Kilpatrick's gang after a run-in with the law. Frank had been unusually patient that day, explaining the different types of anesthetic and angles of an exit wound, and had even complimented her on her small, fine stitches as she helped him close up a rifle wound. This pattern of blood was from a gun, back splatter. She had seen it hundreds of times since that day she had glowed with pride under Frank's praise.
But Helen hadn't killed anything for dinner, and there was no meat drying outside or set out with salt, and there was no smell coming from the smokehouse.
There's nothing else it could be, whispered a little voice that sounded like Hawkeye. Margaret shook herself— too much time spent around criminals was doing a number on her. It was ridiculous. There was no reason to kill someone; even if there was, where would Helen have kept the body?
But even as she scolded herself, her legs carried her to the threshold and made her kneel before Helen's boots: there was the reddish dirt of the hills surrounding Hole-In-The-Wall, still stuck in the tread.
Margaret sat back on her heels. Outside, the wind rustled through the low grasses; the clouds began to turn orange and pink as the sun rose. From very far away, she heard Helen turn over in bed.
When she went in to work, she found the Rizzo boy sitting on the front step with his arm in a makeshift sling which looked to be made out of a pair of very small pants. "What are you doing out here, Bobby?" she asked.
"Had an accident this morning. Mule kicked when I was trying to shoe him. I been waiting here, but Doc Burns isn't in."
"You didn't try at the house?"
"I did, ma'am. Nobody there either. Mrs. Burns said he never came home last night."
She stood very still. She saw again the way Helen had jumped when Margaret had come up the path. The pattern of the blood spatter, like one from a rifle shot. The overwhelming scent of soap when she’d had her head on Helen’s chest, as though Helen had tried to scrub her whole body clean of something. The dirt under her boots— wasn't BJ always saying that the best place to hide a body was in their own backyard?
Bobby coughed politely. "This mean I gotta go into Kaycee?"
"No. No, I'll handle it."
It was a pretty clean break, all things considered. She had it set, plastered, and pain medication administered within the hour. Bobby went on his way with a promise to send his father with payment. Margaret barely paid attention; her mind was clogged with thoughts of balancing books and a failing practice and the image of Helen's rifle, propped in its corner by the door.
Margaret sat down at the table, watching Helen at the stove. "Doctor Burns was gone today."
Helen turned around with a frown. "Gone?"
"Yes, I said gone. Vanished into thin air. Disappeared. Not fucking there, Helen. He didn't come in to work, which sometimes happens when he's hungover but then usually one of the children comes to notify me and then I close for the day, but I went around to the house in the afternoon and Louise said he hadn't come home at all last night. It isn’t like him, you know. He wouldn’t give her a reason to suspect any funny business by staying out late."
"Was she alright? Louise?" Helen's concern sounded genuine.
"She seemed…" Well, yes. She had looked grim, but calm. Nothing to do for it but wait , Louise had said. He'll come back eventually. And if he don't, I'll think of a way to get by. "Not distraught," Margaret finished.
Helen clicked her tongue and turned back to stirring whatever was in the pot. "It's tough out here alone, you know. I ought to take her something tomorrow. Still, I doubt there's much to worry about. Probably Father Mulcahy gave him more gin than he should have and now Frank's drying out behind the saloon." She laughed at the image. "Maybe that ornery old horse Hawkeye's so attached to shit on his head."
"Don't laugh, Helen," Margaret snapped, hating the wobble in her voice. She stared at the table in front of her and willed her tear ducts to vanish, or explode so she wouldn't have to deal with anything anymore. "What am I going to do if he doesn't come back? I can't run his practice alone, and I don't know how to do anything else; being a doctor's assistant is all I've ever been and if I want another position I'll have to pack up and leave and—"
"Margaret. Look at me." Margaret looked up to find Helen standing right next to her.
"I'm looking."
Helen smiled faintly. "What makes you think you couldn't run Frank Burns' practice better than he could? Everyone knows he's a lousy doctor and an even worse human being. You, on the other hand…"
"No. I don't— I mean, I don't have the experience—"
"Four years of basically doing all the doctoring for him doesn't count as experience? Watching him like a hawk, following up on prescriptions, delivering babies…"
"But what about the patients? They won't stand for having a woman doctor, not in a million years."
"Why not? You're shrewd, competent, organized, and what's more, you'd be saving them a long ride out to Casper. Besides, anyone's better than Frank."
"He's not all bad," Margaret protested, but it was more a token than anything else and they both knew it.
Helen rolled her eyes. "Call it what you like. That man's dumber than dirt and you're smarter than the devil himself."
Margaret knew she was supposed to be mad, but she smiled in spite of herself. "Is that a real expression or just something you made up?"
Helen grinned back. "It's real in Virginia."
"For someone that everyone thinks is a virtuous young widow, you're a dirty liar, Whitfield."
She laughed and bent to kiss Margaret's head. "Nobody thinks that the person who sells them all their liquor is virtuous, dear. Now go wash up and I'll set the table."
Whatever snake that had been twisting up her stomach all day subsided the minute she crawled between the sheets on her side of Helen's bed, and somehow she slept through the night. But in the morning, the low-level panic returned as soon as her brain switched itself on with the first sip of coffee. As she slipped out the back door and walked into town, her stomach began to knot again. He'll be there, she reassured herself. It was just one day, there'll be an explanation.
And if he isn't? said the little voice that sounded like Hawkeye.
He will be. He has to. Anyway, why would he skip work a second day?
Let's think, said mental-Hawkeye, who was probably lounging insouciantly with his feet up on a table inside her brain. Run out of town. Fatally ill. Dead.
That's ridiculous, she snapped back, and instantly felt like an idiot for getting angry at someone who wasn't even there. And get out of my head.
At eight o’clock precisely, Margaret unlocked the room in back of the pharmacy. As she opened the door to stagnant air, her gut sank like it had seen what was coming, like she had already known Frank wouldn't be there. But her heart did a flip anyway, like it wasn't sure whether to be excited or terrified.
Around eleven in the morning, she made a house call to investigate a dry, hacking cough at the Bigelow ranch. When they asked where Doctor Burns was, she lied and said he had taken temporarily ill. It wasn't until she had received the payment and was halfway back to town that she wondered why she had covered for someone who didn't even have the decency to give her advance notice before disappearing.
At one o'clock, out of habit, Margaret turned the sign in the door to "OUT—BACK SOON" and had some bread and cheese, because that was when Frank always took his lunch, and she reasoned that the acting doctor was entitled to a short break. At one-fifteen, she turned the sign back to "PLEASE KNOCK," and began her inventory of the medicines they had in stock.
At four in the evening, she removed a bullet from Luther Cromwell's left foot where he had accidentally shot himself. Once she had finished and was bandaging his foot, he asked why a woman was doing a man's duties, and laughed at his own non-joke.
"Dr. Burns is out," she replied, and tore off a new piece of gauze.
"For how long?"
"He was unclear. Until then, you'll have to make do," she said shortly, and moved to the balance book in the back. "That'll be two pieces, and we don't take livestock as payment."
*******
Three days after Frank Burns disappeared, Hawkeye Pierce and BJ the Kid sauntered in.
"Hey, Doc," said a grinning BJ. Margaret sort of wanted to punch him, even though there was a little part of her that puffed up at the use of a title. "Love what you've done with the place. Almost looks like someone could be practicing medicine in here now. How's business?"
"Klinger says he'll paint you a new sign if you take a look at his toothache. He might even throw in some fancy curlicues just because he's so happy you're taking over," said Hawkeye with an equally obnoxious grin.
"I'm not taking over," she said automatically. "It's just until Doctor Burns comes back."
Hawkeye and BJ exchanged a look. "Yeah, well, don't light a candle for Ferret Face or anything," BJ said. "That's what we came to tell you."
Margaret felt her blood chill. "You mean he's dead?"
"What? No! But the word going around is that he got run out of town."
"Where'd you hear that?"
"At the bar," said BJ. "Also at the barber, from old Jack Rutledge, from Sam Featherstone at the trading post, and a couple of the girls at the brothel."
"Who saw him?"
BJ shrugged. "I've heard a few different stories." He held Margaret's eyes for a second longer than felt necessary. She suddenly felt the urge to run out the back and not stop until she got to Helen's front door.
Hawkeye clicked his tongue. "Who cares how he got run out? The point is that he's gone." He smacked himself in the forehead. "I can't believe I almost forgot! Do you think you could give Oliver Jones a discount on a house call? Ginger's expecting and it's their first, and he didn't say anything but I know he's worried about it."
"This isn't my practice! And I don't know anything about babies!" she shouted. "And even if it was, I can't just give out discounts willy-nilly to whoever asks for one!"
Hawkeye looked far too pleased with himself. "Okay, Margaret. Whatever you say. But I told Oliver you'd come by tomorrow afternoon."
"Wipe that stupid grin off your face. There's nothing to smile about," she grumbled, rearranging some things on the desk to avoid the way BJ looked like he was about to start laughing.
"Sure there is. You're a real doctor." Hawkeye sounded horribly sincere. Sure enough, when she looked up, his annoying smile had softened into the crooked little one he wore when he was actually happy. "Didn't I always tell you that you'd be great at this?"
"I guess," she said grudgingly. He beamed at her before hopping to his feet and slapping BJ's ass as he loped towards the door.
"Come on, Kid. We got bags to pack." BJ rolled his eyes but followed him dutifully to the door. But before Hawkeye could step out into the sunshine, he spun around to look at her. "Will you go see Ginger tomorrow?" He sounded almost like he didn't know that she was going to say yes.
Margaret tried not to smile. People rolled over for Hawkeye Pierce all the time; there was no reason she needed to be one of them. "If my schedule permits it."
He grinned. "Okay. Bye, Doc."
That night, she sat in the dark, on the floor of her bedroom next to the dogs’ beds; they had arranged themselves in a kind of protective circle around her, as though they had picked up on her agitation, or sensed that she needed to be guarded. At last she allowed herself to really think about the way BJ had looked at her, like he knew something, or had a thought which he hadn’t shared with Hawkeye yet. Either way, it bothered her.
Why had BJ held eye contact for so long? He had obviously reasoned that something was suspicious about Frank's disappearance. Did he think Frank was dead? But Hawkeye had said that he was run out of town, not killed.
That didn't mean BJ believed that story. Too many storytellers and not enough witnesses. So Frank was probably dead, by his measure… but then who killed him?
Louise Burns had seemed unbothered by her husband's disappearance. That could be the sign of a guilty person trying to appear innocent. But then again, it was well known that Frank had married her for her money, treated her like dirt, and had conducted several affairs behind her back. Not least with Margaret herself.
So who did that leave? Anyone who hated him, which was nearly everyone. But not everyone had stained their dress with blood the night before he was supposed to have disappeared.
"She wouldn't," Margaret said aloud to the ceiling. Socrates looked up from chewing his own tail and cocked his head.
Helen Whitfield had gone to plant Louise McIntyre's spinach when she was too pregnant to bend over, three years ago. She had taught Radar how to cheat at poker with infinite patience. Helen pressed Margaret's feet when they were swollen from walking alongside Frank's horse all day. Murderers didn't act like that.
But then again, BJ was great with kids, and she'd seen him pistol-whip someone who'd tried to stab Hawkeye without so much as frowning, so maybe it was possible. Aristotle sighed and slurped noisily in his sleep.
No. Helen wouldn't kill him. My Helen, the Helen I know, wouldn't do that, she thought firmly.
But why not? Helen hated him because he had been an ass to her, and insinuated that she had killed her husband, and told her that she couldn't survive as a woman alone, and probably also because Helen had a thing about hating people who were rude to Margaret. She had means, and a motive… that was all a person needed in detective stories.
And Helen was capable. Of that, Margaret had no doubt.
The day she and the Burns household arrived in Wyoming, they had gone past Helen's house into town. Margaret had been sitting on the back of the wagon, holding down a trunk of clothing, as Helen Whitfield leaned on the porch railing and watched them roll by with a half-smile on her face. There was something powerful in the way she rested her weight on her forearms, how she didn't look away from Margaret's eyes, the way she didn't acknowledge the presence of the straight-backed man besides her, who stood as still as a prison guard.
T here's a woman who's not afraid of anything, Margaret had thought.
When she told Helen this, two years after the fact, Helen had smiled and said, "Funny. That's just what I thought about you."
Socrates made a whurf sound in his sleep and shifted his head so that it was pressing against Margaret's knee. She scratched his throat and didn't feel better at all.
*******
In between the stress of managing the whole practice, the sudden medical field training, a small yet particularly lucrative heist by Hawkeye's gang, and wondering whether or not bad people really deserved to die, a week slipped by without a trace of Frank Burns. Margaret supposed that she ought to be glad— in some ways, she was. It had become tiresome to feel his hot breath on her neck all the time as he alternately whined, groveled, and threatened her with the loss of her job. And she liked being responsible, liked the satisfaction of work well-done, liked feeling her mind going into overdrive as she analyzed a bad break or a bullet wound and found the way to fix it.
Still. There was the stained green dress, and the rifle, and the boots with red dirt under their soles. She hadn't been to see Helen all week; she'd sent a message under Plato's collar explaining that she was too busy. Helen had returned one in her looping handwriting saying only: No trouble. I'll wait all my life if I have to, Doc.
Margaret Houlihan, daughter of Colonel Alvin Houlihan, could shoot a pistol and a rifle and a crossbow in a pinch. She could hunt, fish, and stitch both people and pants. Her best friend was a highly wanted outlaw, for Christ's sake— even if he did have the muscle mass of a scarecrow. And his boyfriend-lover-partner-hired-muscle was a sharpshooter. She slept easy nowadays. But a little part of her was scared.
*******
Another week came and went. She was in the middle of taking inventory when Father Mulcahy ambled down from his makeshift confession booth in the back of a bar with a message.
"Hello, Doctor," he said cheerfully. The title sounded almost natural, coming from him. "Beautiful weather we're having."
"Good afternoon to you too, Father."
"Excellent for the sinuses! And if I may say so, you've done a marvelous job with your new position— uh, not to speak ill of your predecessor. Though I wouldn't really know how else to speak of him…"
"Father Mulcahy, I really don't want to be rude, but what is this about?"
"Oh, right." He fumbled with the pockets of his cardigan and came up with a neatly folded note. It had her initials on it in familiar spiky handwriting. "This came by the bar for you. I was instructed to deliver it in person." Margaret did her best not to actually snatch it from his hands, and opened it so quickly it nearly ripped.
Thought you might like to know: Louise Alma Burns seen this morning by MQK around 9AM with children, cat, and baggage. Headed to Casper to catch the Flyer to Indiana. Said she was going home to her parents. Good luck, Doc.
P.S. BJ sends his love.
She looked up and found that Mulcahy was halfway out the door.
"Father," she says.
He turns and adjusts his hat. "Yes, my child?"
"Did Klinger— I mean, she really…"
"Yes, he did. I was the first one he told." He smiled. "But I wouldn't worry, Margaret. This house has not been left to you desolate." With that, he tipped his hat and stepped out onto the street.
"I don't even know what that means," she mumbled to the empty room.
In the end, it took another two days before the right time presented itself. She had gone to the Whitfield homestead after work, had been let in with no comment on her long absence, had eaten, been kissed, gone to bed. The clock hanging above the dressing table read 11:25, and Helen was pliant in the way she was after sex but before sleep. It was now or never.
"Helen," she whispered, curling a little closer. Helen's eyes stayed shut, but her hand came up reflexively and found its way to Margaret's hair.
"Yeah, baby."
"Where did you put the body?"
Helen opened her eyes. Margaret watched the little downturn on the left side of her mouth which meant she was thinking of a joke, then the tightening around her eyebrows as she considered a lie. She searched Margaret's face, and whatever she found there made her expression go blank in the way that it did when she was being honest but was scared to do it.
"Way out in the hills," Helen whispered. "Where even you couldn't find it. Not with all of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang helping."
"And if I wanted to find it?" Margaret was surprised at how steady her own voice sounded.
Something small and unsure flashed in Helen's face, but it was gone almost as soon as Margaret had seen it. "Do you?"
"No."
Helen relaxed. "You had me worried there for a second."
"Good. I have to keep you on your toes."
She frowned. "I worry about you every day, Houlihan. Why do you think I killed that son of a bitch in the first place?"
"If you worry about me, killing someone to protect me is a lousy way of showing it. All that does is make me scared that someone's going to find out and take you away."
"I wouldn't let them do that." Helen’s voice was firm, and her thumb stroked the hair behind Margaret’s ear. Maybe it was the normalcy of the gesture, or the fact of finally knowing the answer, but Margaret felt suddenly peaceful.
"Why'd you do it?”
She raised one eyebrow. "You telling me you don't know why?
Margaret sat up. "Maybe I want to hear you say it, Helen.”
Helen thought about her answer before speaking. "Because he was causing too many problems. For you, for me, for everyone in this town. And times are hard enough as is. Someone had to take care of it.”
Margaret looked back down, to where Helen was now watching her, a little regretful, but jaw set. "Helen."
"Yeah." It was almost a whisper.
"I love you. But you can't ever do something like that again."
The answer came without hesitation: "I promise."
"Because if you do, I will walk right out."
Helen smiled a little. "I would have kept my word without the threat hanging over my head, kid. You can watch me like a hawk."
"I need your answer," Margaret whispered, though she was already leaning in and something in her chest felt warm and satisfied, like a snake coiled in the sun.
"I promise you, Margaret Houlihan," Helen whispered back.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I’ll take it to my grave.” Helen’s answering smile glowed faintly in the light coming through the slats of the shades; whatever she said next was swallowed up by the kiss.