Free Bandit's Hope by Marcia Gruver

my own." Longing softened Miss Vee’s features, subtracting years from her eager face. "I know your father might never want me, considering he’s so partial to slender women." She sighed. "After all, your mother was as thin as a twelve-year-old boy, and I’ve been plump all my life." She blushed slightly. "I’m a silly old woman. I shouldn’t be saying such things to you."
    Mariah squirmed inside but patted her hand. "It’s all right."
    "No, it’s not, but what I’m trying to say is this—if John Coffee ever did take a shine to me, if we were to actually get married, I’d be honored to call you my daughter." She ducked her head and drew in her shoulders. "That is, if you didn’t mind."
    Bile rose in Mariah’s throat. She swallowed and forced an answer. "You know I wouldn’t mind."
    "Really?" Miss Vee lit up, and a brilliant smile replaced the uncertain set of her lips. "Well, that means so much. God chose not to bless me with a child of my own, but I’ve always wanted a daughter. Of course, I’d never be able to take Minti’s place." She sighed so hard she shuddered. "Not for either of you." Her haunted gaze swept the room in a wide arc from floor to ceiling. "I still feel her presence in this place. In every board, every nail, the very air we breathe."
    "The inn was such a large part of who Mother was."
    She nodded, her voice barely a whisper. "And she’ll always be part of the inn."
    "Miss Vee? Miss Bell? Anybody?"
    With a shared look of surprise, they hurried from the room and rushed to the head of the stairs.
    Tiller stared up from the bottom step. A spate of freckles Mariah hadn’t noticed before stood out on his whitewashed face. "I think you ladies might want to come down here."
    Mariah took the stairs two at a time. Respectability be hanged. Tobias Jones was in her house.
    Behind her, Miss Vee moaned. "What is it, son?"
    Tiller shook his head. "I can’t rightly say. I’ve never seen anything like it before."
    It was all Mariah needed to hear. Clutching her skirts, she sprinted for the sickroom.

EIGHT
    M ariah spun out of the parlor and across the hall, lurching to a stop outside the guest room. She stared at the scene before her, dumbstruck.
    Their patient, as bare as the day his mother bore him except for a sheet draped over his middle, sprawled on the floor in front of a blazing hearth. His skinny arms were stretched out to the sides. His pasty legs and knobby knees were on display.
    The Choctaw healer knelt at his side with puckered lips pressed to his forehead like a child drawing juice from a lemon.
    Too shocked to look away, Mariah found her voice. "Stop it this instant."
    Ignoring her, Tobias lifted his mouth and spat in his cupped palm, then gracefully rose and shook an unseen substance off his hand into the fire. A bright red mark appeared on the old man’s brow.
    Mariah had heard of the Indian practice of dry cupping, but she’d never witnessed the procedure. Most felt it a silly superstition, with no real power to heal. After seeing it in action, she tended to agree.
    "We brought you here to care for his injury. To clean it and apply healing herbs." She waved her hand over the scene. "Not for all this nonsense."
    "Sucking near the wound draws out the poison."
    "So will a poultice of cotton-tree root."
    Tobias’s glare held scorn. "Old way better."
    Mariah cautiously approached the poor soul stretched out on the floor. Moisture beaded his top lip and pooled in the hollow of his chest. "Why is he sweating so?"
    "China root tea. To cleanse from
isht abeka
." Tobias nodded firmly. "Infection," he repeated as if she hadn’t understood him the first time.
    She frowned. "How’d you get it down him?"
    He crossed his arms, his scowl deepening.
    She’d questioned his skill, insulting him. Her shoulders drooped. "All right. Never mind."
    Movement from the corner startled her. Tobias’s sons, Justin and Christopher, stood in the shadows, trying in vain to hide their amusement.
    Recalling what