Winter Fire, Page 5

  “Still carrying lead?” Lola asked.

  “Yes,” Sarah said unhappily. “From the angle the bullet went in, it’s lodged in the back of his thigh, if it missed the bone…”

  Matter-of-factly Lola slid her hand beneath his thigh. She prodded intact skin and muscle with her fingertips, seeking the bullet. When Case groaned, she didn’t flinch.

  Sarah did.

  “Lucky,” the older woman said. “Just got the meat.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yep. Clean missed the bone. Ute, hand me over your knife. I’ll cut that there lead out quick as a snake licking its lips.”

  “Wait!” Sarah said.

  Lola gave her an odd look. “Heals better without lead.”

  “I know. It’s just…”

  Sarah’s voice dried up. She didn’t know how to tell Lola that the thought of cutting into Case’s smooth, muscular flesh made her feel anxious and sad and angry at the same time.

  “You all right, sis?” Conner asked. “You look kind of pale. Maybe you better leave this to us.”

  “I’m fine,” she said curtly. “Ute was shot up a lot worse than this when we found him. I cut and stitched him like a wedding quilt, remember?”

  “I remember that you threw up afterward,” her brother muttered.

  “So?” Lola retorted before Sarah could. “She got the job done first, and that’s all that counts. You done your share of puking, boy, and don’t you be forgetting it.”

  Conner narrowed his green eyes and swallowed a word that he knew would get him a lecture from his older sister.

  “Ute,” Sarah said quickly. “Roll Case onto his side. I’ll take the bullet out with a scalpel.”

  “I’ll turn him,” Conner said.

  She looked up, surprised. She kept thinking of him as a nine-year-old child sobbing at the graveside of his parents. But today her younger brother was a big, rawboned man-child, already taller than she was by a head and easily twice as strong.

  He’s growing up too fast, she realized with sudden fear.

  If I don’t find that Spanish treasure soon, it will be too late. Conner will ride out of here and vanish like any other drifter, wandering toward whatever dead end awaits him.

  He deserves better than that. He has a fine mind. He could be a doctor or a judge or a scholar like our father was.

  Case groaned again as Conner turned him.

  “Careful!” Sarah said instantly.

  “He’s out cold.”

  “Do you think he’s singing hymns to you?” she retorted. “Case is hurting, even if he isn’t wide awake.”

  “You bet,” Ute said. “If he was awake, he wouldn’t make nary a sound.”

  “How do you know?” Conner asked.

  “I seen him in Spanish Church. Calm and steady like. Hate to get on his bad side.”

  Conner finished turning Case. Gently.

  A bullet bulged just beneath the skin of his muscular thigh.

  “Told ya,” Lola said.

  Sarah didn’t say anything. She simply picked up the clean scalpel, took a hidden breath, and told herself that it was a haunch of venison she was slicing.

  One swift cut was all it took. The bullet popped free and rolled onto the hard-packed dirt that was the cabin’s only floor.

  Conner retrieved the lead with a casual motion that was both quick and oddly coltish. He was still getting used to his own rapidly changing body.

  “Here you go,” he said, tossing the bullet toward Ute. “One more round for the melting pot.”

  Ute caught the lead, grunted, and stuffed it into his pocket.

  “Too bad he didn’t pick up the brass, too,” Conner added. “We’re short on cases.”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Sarah said. “Only an idiot would bleed to death picking up brass.”

  “Only an idiot would get shot up in the first place,” her brother retorted.

  “Boy,” Ute said, “you ain’t no damned fool so don’t go to acting like one. This here hombre drew on two Culpeppers. He walked away. They didn’t.”

  Sarah’s hands stilled.

  “What?” she said.

  “Culpeppers,” Ute repeated. “Reginald and Quincy.”

  “Well, the devil will have two more souls for supper,” Lola said. “Can’t say as I’m sorry.”

  Ute grunted.

  “We better be ready for visitors,” the old outlaw said calmly. “Beaver won’t last two breaths once Ab starts questioning him.”

  Sarah turned quickly and stared at Ute.

  He shrugged. “I tried to brush out the tracks, but Case was bleeding real bad. I hear them Culpeppers are right fine sign cutters. They’ll know he’s here.”

  Lola muttered something under her breath that Sarah hoped her brother didn’t overhear.

  “Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof,” she said briskly. “Do we have bullets?”

  “Yes’m,” Ute said.

  “Enough?”

  “More than we have guns to shoot ’em.”

  “You take the first watch on the rim.”

  Ute was gone before the words left her mouth.

  “Conner,” Sarah said, “you take the next. I’ll—”

  “You’ll stay put and tend this here hombre,” Lola interrupted. “I don’t have your soft touch, and he needs it. I’ll do your turn up on the rim.”

  “But your hip—”

  “It’s just fine,” Lola interrupted again. “Start patching this boy up ’fore he bleeds to death.”

  Sarah didn’t argue any longer. She threaded a special needle with fine silk and went to work stitching up the cut she had made in Case’s skin.

  The hair on his thighs was as black and silky as the thread she used. His skin was warm, surprisingly smooth, supple as fine leather.

  “Turn him onto his back,” she said.

  Her voice was husky, almost breathless. Hastily she cleared her throat.

  Conner gave her an odd look before he bent and rolled Case over onto his back.

  “Your sheets are bloody now,” he said.

  “Ain’t the first time,” Lola muttered.

  “What?” he asked.

  “A woman’s monthlies, boy. Use your head for something more than a hatrack.”

  Spots of red burned on Conner’s cheeks but he bit his tongue. He had learned not to get into slanging matches with Big Lola. She knew the kind of words that could singe stone.

  And when provoked, she used them.

  Sarah ducked her head to hide her smile at her brother’s chagrin. Lola was as hard and blunt as a stone ax, but she wasn’t cruel. She simply had no patience for thick-skulled male foolishness.

  Nor did Sarah.

  Quickly she folded clean cloth into a pad and pressed it over the wound. When she applied more force, Case groaned. She bit her lower lip and kept on pressing down.

  After a time she cautiously lifted a corner of the cloth. Blood still flowed, but slowly.

  “More,” Lola said. “Ain’t stopped yet.”

  Sarah repeated the process with a new cloth. Her teeth sank into her lower lip when he twitched and moaned.

  “Don’t fret,” Lola said. “He ain’t really feeling it.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Hell, gal, he’s an outlaw, not some fine, fainting lady.”

  “That doesn’t mean he can’t feel pain.”

  “I’ll mix the poultice” was all Lola said.

  Finally the bleeding slowed enough for Sarah to finish dressing the wound. Lola handed her a jar of strong-smelling poultice.

  Holding her breath, Sarah smeared the blend of herbs, oils, and moldy bread onto a clean bandage, placed it over both wounds, and waited while Lola did the same to the wound on the back of Case’s thigh. Quickly Sarah wrapped his leg with clean ribbons of cloth that still smelled of the sunny winter day.

  “That’s it,” Lola said. “Cover him, put some warming bricks in the bed, and leave him be.”

  She
was still talking when Sarah started pulling the top layer of bricks from the fire ring. They were hot. Breath hissed between her teeth as she wrapped the bricks in old flour sacks. She tucked the bricks at Case’s feet and added a few more along his legs for good measure.

  “Feverish?” Lola asked.

  “Not yet.”

  She grunted. “It’ll come.”

  Sarah bit her lower lip, but didn’t argue. Lola’s experience with gunshot wounds was greater than her own.

  “Will he…make it?” Sarah asked.

  “Hope so. Shame to waste prime males. Ain’t enough of them as it is.”

  Sarah pulled up the covers and tucked them around Case’s shoulders. Like everything else in the cabin, the bedclothes were as clean as hard work, hot water, and soap could make them.

  Lola grunted, heaved herself to her feet, and walked to the door. With each step the folds of her flour-sack skirt swung briskly over her knee-high moccasins. Her homespun blouse was the color of unbleached muslin. The headband she wore to hold back her thick gray braids was finely woven, colorful, and spun from the hair of goats she kept for their milk, meat, and silky wool.

  “Check the rifles and shotguns,” Sarah said to her brother without looking away from Case. “Is there more fresh water?”

  “I’ll get it,” he said. Then, almost reluctantly, “What do you think? Will he be all right?”

  For an instant she closed her eyes. “I don’t know. If his wounds don’t infect…”

  “You pulled Ute through.”

  “I was lucky. So was he.”

  “Maybe this one will be lucky, too.”

  “I hope so.”

  She stood and looked around the cabin, listing things that had to be done.

  “More water from the creek,” she said, “more firewood, a place for me to sleep next to Case, Lola will probably need help with her medicinal herbs…”

  “I’m gone,” Conner said.

  Sarah smiled as her brother hurried out of the cabin. He was a good boy, despite a wide streak of wildness in him that kept her awake nights worrying.

  Conner needs something more to look up to than outlaws, she thought. I’ve got to find that treasure. I’ve simply got to.

  Case moaned softly and tried to sit up.

  Instantly she was on her knees beside him, holding his shoulders down.

  He swept her aside as though she was no more than straw floating on the wind. Sitting up, he shook his head, trying to clear it.

  She put her hand on his thick hair and soothed him like a wounded hawk.

  “Case,” she said distinctly. “Case, can you hear me?”

  Slowly his eyes opened and focused on her.

  An odd kind of gray-blue-green, she thought. Not really hazel. More a pale green.

  Clear as winter and twice as deep. Colder, too.

  “Sarah?” he asked hoarsely. “Sarah Kennedy?”

  “That’s me,” she agreed. “Lie down, Case.”

  She pressed on his shoulders again. This time she noticed the resilience of his muscles beneath her palms, the male power coiled under his naked skin.

  And the heat. Not fever. Just…life.

  “What happened?” he asked thickly.

  “You were shot. Ute found you and brought you here.”

  “Culpeppers?”

  “Reginald and Quincy.”

  “Got to get up,” he muttered. “Coming after me.”

  “I doubt it. From what Ute said, the only place those two are going is straight to hell.”

  Case blinked and rubbed one hand across his eyes.

  “Other Culpeppers,” he said.

  His left hand moved as though reaching for a gun. His fingers found nothing but bare skin.

  “Gun,” he said hoarsely. “Where?”

  “Lie down. You couldn’t fight a baby chick in your condition.”

  Case shook off Sarah and tried to stand. A wave of pain slammed through him. Stifling a groan, he sank back down onto the bed.

  “Got to—get up,” he said.

  “I’ll bring you a gun if you’ll just lie down,” she said quickly. “Please, Case. If you move around you’ll start bleeding again and then you’ll die!”

  The urgency of Sarah’s tone got through to him. He stopped struggling and allowed himself to be tucked in again. Then he watched with pain-hazed eyes while she stood and went to get his gun.

  As was her custom, Sarah was dressed in men’s clothes. Skirts and petticoats were worse than useless when she was climbing the stone canyons searching for treasure, or tending sick animals, or riding one of the skittish mustangs Conner and Ute had caught to provide mounts.

  “Men’s clothes,” Case said in a blurred voice.

  “What?”

  “Pants.”

  She flushed brightly. “I, er, that is…”

  Her voice faded as she remembered the picture Case had made when she undressed him. Even bloody and half-dead, he had been enough to make her heartbeat quicken.

  Ninny, she told herself. Just because he kissed you sweetly as a butterfly doesn’t mean he wouldn’t hurt you for his own pleasure.

  He is, after all, a man.

  A big one.

  “I’ll bring your shirt as soon as I get the blood off it,” she said. “But you shouldn’t wear it or pants for a time. All the rubbing would just make it harder for your wounds to heal.”

  He looked confused.

  “I was talking about your clothes, not mine,” he said carefully.

  “Good thing,” she retorted, “because you’re not wearing any to speak of at the moment.”

  He tried to answer, but dizziness was breaking over him like a long winter storm. He closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and fought to keep a clear head.

  But it was one battle Case knew he would lose.

  “Here,” she said. “I emptied the first chamber.”

  He felt the cold, familiar weight of his six-gun pressed into his left hand.

  “Now lie down again,” she ordered.

  He allowed himself to be pushed back onto the pallet. When she bent to tuck the bedcovers around his shoulders, one of her braids fell forward. It brushed across his cheek like a silken rope.

  “Roses,” he said.

  “What?”

  He opened his eyes. He found himself staring into eyes that were the color of mist and silver intermixed, compassionate and wary and admiring all at once.

  “Roses and sunshine,” he said thickly. “I kissed you.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “You kissed me.”

  “Dumbest thing…I ever did.”

  “What?”

  There was no answer. Case was unconscious.

  4

  Sarah sat cross-legged next to the pallet where Case slept restlessly, gripped by pain and fever. Except to care for the wounded hawk, she had barely moved from Case’s side for the past three days.

  “Em…” he said hoarsely. “Emily.”

  The agony in his voice made Sarah’s throat ache with tears she had forgotten how to shed.

  She didn’t know who Emily was. She knew only that Case loved her. He called out other names, too—Ted and Belinda, Hunter and Morgan—but it was Emily’s name that was torn from him in naked anguish.

  “Case,” she said, using the voice she reserved for frightened animals. “You’re safe, Case. Here, drink this. It will help the fever and pain.”

  As she spoke soothingly, she propped up his head and held a cup to his lips.

  He swallowed without a fight. He knew with a gut-deep certainty that the murmurous voice and cool hands would help rather than hurt him.

  “Roses,” he said hoarsely, sighing.

  Sarah’s smile was as sad as the mist-gray eyes that watched his flushed face. She had taken care of many hurt creatures in her life, but never had she shared their pain in quite this way.

  “Sleep,” she murmured. “Sleep. And don’t dream, Case. Your dreams…hurt too much.”

  Afte
r a few more minutes he sighed and slid back into the twilight world that was neither sleeping nor waking. But he was calmer now.

  She barely dared to breathe deeply for fear of disturbing him. His fever was less than yesterday or the day before, and the infection in his wounds was subsiding, but he was far from well.

  Moving slowly, noiselessly, she trimmed the wick of the lantern, lit it, and checked the hawk’s wing. The bird protested at being touched, but like Case, the hawk no longer fought her when she rubbed in salve. Her gentle hands and voice had calmed the wild bird to the point that she no longer had to hood it to keep it from panicking.

  “Healing nicely,” she murmured. “You’ll be soaring winter skies again, my fierce friend. Soon.”

  She set the lantern near the pallet where Case lay. Settling close by, she picked up a small bundle of wool and began twisting it onto a wooden spindle. Her fingers flew, spinning a shapeless mass of goat hair into soft yarn. As though by magic, yarn grew fat around the spindle as the pile of wool shrank.

  The cabin door opened and shut quickly. Without looking up, Sarah could tell from the footsteps that it was her brother.

  “How’s he doing?” Conner asked.

  “Better. Less fever.”

  “Told you he’d make it.”

  She smiled wanly.

  “You look tired,” he said. “Why don’t you sleep? I’ll watch him.”

  She shook her head.

  Her brother started to argue, then shrugged and held his tongue. Lola was right—no one had Sarah’s touch. Somehow she could reassure everything from hawks to mustangs that they were safe in her hands.

  “Anything happening up on the rim?” she asked.

  “No sign of Culpeppers, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Ute must have done a better job of wiping out Case’s trail than he thought.”

  “Maybe. And maybe they’re just waiting.”

  “For what?” she asked.

  “How should I know? I’m not a Culpepper. Any beans left?”

  “You just ate.”

  “That was hours ago,” he said.

  “One hour.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Finish the beans, wash the pot, and put more—”

  “—beans in to soak,” he interrupted, reciting the familiar instructions. “Shoot, you’d think I was still in diapers or something. I know how to make beans.”