Don’t be silly, she told herself sternly. Why should she give two hoots about what a charming stranger working for a medicine-show man thought of her? He’d be gone tomorrow and she’d never see him again. And she had a goal to accomplish that didn’t include falling for the wiles of a smooth talker like Bohannan, even if he had saved her from that drifter. She should be using this time to bread chicken for her supper customers, and not be out here on the street lollygagging when she had no intention of wasting her pennies on this quackery. She hoped Perry wouldn’t buy any, either; these nostrums were usually half alcohol and it might cost him his hard-won sobriety.
Despite her reservations, though, Ella joined the crowd gathering in front of the medicine wagon. She might as well see the show, since that was what she’d come out for.
Bohannan strummed faster, escalating the music to a frenzied pace. Then just as suddenly, he stopped and laid the banjo aside, then stood and faced the crowd.
The only noise was the buzzing of horseflies plaguing the rumps of the horses tied up to a nearby hitching rail.
He leaned forward, making eye contact with everyone in the crowd in turn, until Ella found herself holding her breath. Even the flies seemed to cease buzzing.
“I’m Nathan Bohannan, and it is my honor and privilege to be the one to introduce you to the purveyor of the amazing elixir of health, Cherokee Marvelous Medicine. And now, direct from a secret Cherokee fortress in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, I give you Robert Salali! Let’s have a round of applause to welcome him, shall we, folks?”
Chapter Two
Now the medicine-show man ascended to the wagon bed via a set of steps that Bohannan had apparently placed there for him. He carried himself like royalty ascending to the throne instead of a gaudily painted wagon.
The medicine-show man paused a moment, surveying the crowd before him with a lordly air, a king in front of his subjects, as if he wore ermine-trimmed robes instead of buckskin trousers and a navy blue tunic. Around his neck was a necklace strung with what looked like alternating bear and panther claws. An eagle feather stuck out of the back of his striped turban. Raven-black hair brushed his shoulders.
He certainly had a presence, Ella thought before he had spoken so much as a single word.
When he opened his mouth at last, a torrent of syllables poured out, all of them strange and foreign to her ears. “I am Robert Salali,” he proclaimed, switching to English. “What I said in the Cherokee tongue is this—I bring you greetings in the name of the Cherokee Nation.”
Ella could not place his accent. It was neither Yankee nor a Southern drawl nor quite foreign.
“How did I come by the knowledge of this astonishing medicine, you may be wondering?” Salali said. “It is quite a tale. I saved a Cherokee chief from an agonizing death at the claws of a fierce, enormous bear. In gratitude, the chief gave me this necklace, these articles of Cherokee clothing and the knowledge of the ingredients of the elixir. He said I could share the elixir with those I wished, or keep it to myself. ‘But how could I be so selfish?’ I asked him. ‘Ah, you have a great soul,’ the chief told me. ‘So I will give you a new surname, which means “Generous Heart” and you may share the elixir as you choose. It is a gesture of friendship to our white brothers.’”
“They must be more neighborly Injuns than the Comanches, then,” somebody muttered, and there were answering chuckles.
“That must mean this medicine’s free, I reckon!” hooted one of the town’s graybeards.
Salali smiled and raised his arm majestically to quiet his audience. “Not free, no, for what is free is often not valued, and the ingredients of our amazing Cherokee medicine do cost money to obtain. I must charge a pittance or I would not be able to produce it as a service to mankind.” He pulled out a rolled scroll of parchment from his pants pocket, and with a flourish, undid the red satin ribbon that bound it and handed it to Bohannan. “My assistant will read some testimonials from satisfied customers,” he said.
Ella listened as Bohannan read accounts of a woman cured of cataplectic hysteria—whatever that was—who had come back to her right mind and made her husband a hearty breakfast the very next day after starting to take Cherokee Marvelous Medicine, a boy cured of lameness, a man cured of heart seizures, a woman of insomnia. Nothing in his tone hinted at the cynicism he’d revealed earlier to her when he’d said the medicine man “put on a good show.”
Ella heard the townspeople around her speculating as to whether the medicine would heal this ailment or that. She looked around, and though several reached into pockets or reticules for money to buy, others looked as unconvinced as she was.
Then Robert Salali spoke again, his expression solemn. “Though I can see there are many doubters among you, I will still provide the medicine for the paltry sum of only fifty cents for a pint bottle. Fifty cents for the most amazing medicine of all time, folks! I would advise you to act quickly if you are interested. In other towns near here, the elixir has gone very fast, and we are only here for this one day.”
In no time the citizens of Simpson Creek surged forward, surrounding him and the makeshift stage upon which Salali stood, clamoring for the medicine and holding out coins. She watched as Salali took the money and Bohannan handed out the bottles. Ella turned away in disgust after seeing Delbert Perry buy a bottle and walk away with an expression of bliss on his simple features. Would he be back at the saloon tomorrow, buying whiskey with his hard-earned money?
How could Bohannan help Salali prey on innocent folks this way? Rescuing her earlier had been a gentlemanly thing to do, but his actions now proved Nate Bohannan and his employer were no better than thieves.
When she turned, she saw her friend Kate Patterson standing on the boardwalk beside the wagon. She must have come out from behind the counter of the mercantile where she worked with her aunt, its proprietress, to watch the show. There was probably no one in the mercantile while this unusual diversion took place outside.
“Kate, how are you?” Ella said, smiling at her friend. “You’re not going to buy that stuff, are you?”
Kate giggled. “Of course not! I don’t need it for anything, but my aunt’s buying a bottle,” she said, indicating Mrs. Patterson wading through the throng toward Bohannan. “She suffers from rheumatism, you know, and what Dr. Walker’s prescribed so far hasn’t helped much.”
“Well, you’ll have to let me know if it works for her,” Ella said.
“The man helping Salali certainly is a nice-looking fellow, isn’t he?” Kate said.
Even as Ella followed her friend’s gaze, she saw Bohannan raise one empty crate triumphantly. “One box gone, Mr. Salali!” he called.
But there were still pint amber bottles in the other crate, and now those who had not bought a bottle surged forward, panicked that they might have missed their chance. Ella saw the medicine-show man could hardly keep up with the flow of coins.
“He is handsome, even if he’s helping to peddle snake oil,” Ella said. “He came to the café to buy sandwiches a little while ago. Say, I need to get started on my supper menu—why don’t you come over to the café and we can have lemonade while I cook the chicken for supper? I’ll tell you all about how he rescued me,” she said with a tantalizing wink.
It had been too long since she and Kate had had a cozy chat, now that Kate had a beau. For once she would have something interesting to talk about—she would not just be listening to Kate tell about what her beau had said and done. Ella would enjoy telling the other girl about the stranger’s saving her from the drifter, even if she no longer believed in his sincerity.
Kate’s eyes widened. “He rescued you? From what? It sounds thrilling! Oh, but I can’t. I promised my aunt I’d help her tend the store the rest of the afternoon since Gabe and I are going for a ride