Lee’s face turned so red she thought he might explode as he lifted his hands toward her throat, but caught himself and moved away. As he turned his back to her, she saw his upper body rise and fall with his deep breaths. When he turned back, he appeared to have controlled himself somewhat.
“Now, I want you to listen to me and listen very carefully. I know that what you did was for a very good cause, and I know that the miners need to be informed. I even appreciate the fact that you’re willing to risk your life to help others, but I cannot allow you to do this. Am I making myself clear?”
“If I don’t, who will?”
“What the hell do I care?” he yelled, then took another couple of deep breaths. “Blair, you are the person I care about. To me, you are more important than all the miners in the world. I want you to swear that you’ll not do anything like this again.”
Blair looked at her hands. She had been more afraid this morning than she’d ever been before in her life. Yet, some part of her felt that today she’d done the most important thing in her life. “Yesterday, a little boy died in my arms,” she whispered. “He’d been crushed in—.”
Lee grabbed her shoulders. “You don’t have to tell me a thing. Do you know how many children have died in my arms? How many arms and legs I’ve cut off men trapped under beams and rocks? You’ve never been inside a mine. If you had to go inside…It’s worse than you think it is.”
“Then, something has to be done,” she said stubbornly.
He dropped his hands, started to speak, but closed his mouth, then tried again. “All right, let me try another tactic. You’re not cut out for this. A few minutes ago, you were a mess. You don’t have the personality that it takes to do something like this. You’re very courageous when it comes to saving lives, but when you’re involved in something that could lead to a war and the loss of lives, you fall apart.”
“But it needs to be done,” she pleaded.
“Yes, maybe it does, but it has to be done by someone other than you. What you feel shows on your face too easily.”
“But how will the miners be told? Who else has access to the mines besides you and me?”
“Not us,” Lee exploded again. “Me! I have access to the mines, not you. I don’t know why you were allowed past the guards. I don’t want you up here. I don’t want you going down into the mines. Last year, I was trapped underground for six hours after a timber gave way. I can’t allow the possibility of something like that happening to you.”
“Allow?” she asked, and found her fear leaving her. “What else aren’t you going to ‘allow’?”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “You can take what I’ve said anyway you want, but the end result is the same: you cannot go into the mines again.”
“I guess it’s all right for you to sneak off to wherever you go in the middle of the night, but I’m to be the docile little wife and stay at home.”
“That’s absurd. I’ve never thwarted you in any way before. You wanted a women’s clinic, I gave it to you. And now you can stay there.”
“And let you go to the mines, is that it? I guess I’m too much of a coward to go into the mines. You think I’d be afraid of the dark?”
Lee didn’t say anything for a moment, and when he did speak, his voice was little more than a whisper. “You’re not a coward, Blair, I am. You’re not afraid to do something that terrifies you, but I’m too terrified of losing you to ever let you do it again. You may not like the way I say it, but in the end it’s all the same: you have to stay out of the mine camps.”
Blair seemed to feel every emotion she’d ever experienced go through her at once. She was angered at Lee’s highhandedness. Just as Nina had said, his forbidding her to do something infuriated her. But she also thought about what he’d said, that she just plain wasn’t any good at the job. Houston went into the camps, but even if her wagon were searched, the guards’d only find tea and children’s shoes. It wasn’t the same as what Blair had carried. And Lee had said he was worried about what damage the pamphlets
could cause. She’d read one of the things and it was full of vicious hatred, the kind of angry words that made men act first and consider what they’d done later.
She looked up at Lee as he watched her. “I…I didn’t mean to scare you so badly,” she stuttered. “I—.” She didn’t say any more, as Lee held out his arms to her and she ran to him.
“Do I have your promise?” he asked, burying his face in her hair.
Blair started to say that she couldn’t give it, but then she thought that maybe there was a different way to get the information into the mines, a more subtle way, one that wasn’t likely to get anyone shot.
“I promise that I will never again carry unionist papers into a mine camp.”
He pulled her head back to look at her. “And what if someone calls me to a mine disaster, and you answer the telephone?”
“Why, Lee, I’ll have to—.”
His hand tightened on the back of her head. “You know something, I really like this town, and I’d hate to have to move, but it may become imperative to leave and go to, say, some place in east Texas where there aren’t any people to speak of. Some place where my wife can’t get into trouble.” He narrowed his eyes. “And I’ll ask Mrs. Shainess and Mrs. Krebbs to live with us.”
“Cruel and inhuman punishment. All right, I’ll stay out of the mines unless you’re with me. But if you ever need me—.”
He kissed her to silence. “If I ever need you, I want to know where you are—always. Every minute of every day. Understand me?”
“There are many times I don’t know where you are. I think that in all fairness—.”