Chapter 5 - The Secret in the Well
The next day brought a sudden, violent thunderhead over the valley.
The sky turned the dark blue-black of a fresh bruise, and heavy grease-drops of rain began to hit the dry wooden roof of the ranch house.
Inside, the atmosphere was razor-sharp. The triplets had suffered a terrible night of violent cramps, their tiny bodies wracked with dry heaves that left them too weak to lift their heads from their pillows.
Doc Crow arrived early, his black buggy splashing through the gathering mud in the yard.
He sat at the kitchen table while Mrs. Baines poured him fresh black coffee.
"They are reaching the final stage, I fear, Mrs. Baines," Crow said, shaking his head with practiced, solemn sorrow. "The cancer has spread to their vital organs. It is a mercy now if the Lord takes them swiftly before the end of the week."
Mrs. Baines wiped a tear from her eye with the corner of her flour apron. "Poor little lambs. Poor Mr. Mercer. He won't survive losing all three, Doctor. It'll break his mind."
"A tragedy," Crow murmured, taking a slow sip of his hot coffee. "A profound tragedy. But we must be resigned to God's mysterious grand design."
Ruth was standing near the back pantry, carefully polishing a set of heavy silver spoons. She watched Doc Crow out of the corner of her eye.
She noticed that whenever the doctor finished his coffee, he pulled a small leather-bound pocket ledger from his coat, made a quick note with a pencil, and set it back inside his inner pocket.
When he stood up to walk down the west wing corridor, he left his heavy leather medical bag sitting on the edge of the kitchen bench.
Ruth waited until Mrs. Baines turned her back to stir the stew pot.
With lightning speed, Ruth stepped across the kitchen floor. She reached into Doc Crow’s medical bag, her fingers moving through glass vials, rolled bandages, and iron scalpels until she felt the hard shape of a spare green glass bottle.
She pulled it out, slipped it deep into the large front pocket of her heavy work apron, and stepped back into the pantry just as Mrs. Baines turned around.
Her heart was thumping like a drum, but her face remained entirely smooth and blank.
Ten minutes later, Ruth asked Mrs. Baines for permission to draw fresh water from the deep stone well behind the horse barn.
"In this rain?" Mrs. Baines grumbled. "What do you need well water for now?"
"The sheets in the sickroom need soaking, ma'am," Ruth said simply. "Nurse Lorna asked for a fresh tub."
Mrs. Baines waved a dismissive hand. "Go on then. Don't slip in the mud."
Ruth pulled her heavy wool shawl over her head and rushed out into the pouring rain.
She didn't go to the house well.
She ran around the side of the wooden barn, heading straight for the old disused sheep dip trough near the abandoned shearing sheds—a place where the ranch hands used to wash the herds fifteen years ago before Clay’s father died.
In the corner of the shed sat an old wooden crate filled with discarded farm supplies: rusty shears, iron hoes, and several dusty, forgotten tins of commercial sheep-dip powder.
Ruth dropped to her knees in the wet dirt. She picked up one of the old tin cans.
The printed paper label was half-rotted away by dampness, but the bold black lettering was still clearly readable:
COOPER’S ARSENICAL SHEEP DIP — CONCENTRATED POISON.
Ruth pulled the green glass bottle from her apron pocket. She unsealed the brown wax stopper with her fingernails and poured a few drops of the dark liquid onto a flat piece of rusty iron lying on the floor.
Then she took a pinch of the dry sheep-dip powder from the tin and mixed it with a drop of rainwater on the iron.
The smell was identical.
The color was identical.
The heavy, metallic, sulfur-and-copper stink rose from the rusty iron, burning her nose exactly as the green bottle’s contents had burned her throat on her first afternoon at Mercer Ranch.
Doc Crow wasn't buying special serum off the train from Saint Louis.
He was taking cheap, commercial sheep-dip poison from farm supply stores, mixing it with boiled water and brown sugar syrup, pouring it into green glass bottles, and selling it to a grieving father for twenty dollars a bottle while it slowly tore his daughters' stomachs to pieces.
Ruth sealed the green bottle tight, tucked it back into her apron, and stood up in the cold, pouring rain.
May you like
She had the poison. She had the proof.
Now she needed to force Clay Mercer to look.
