A Cowboy at Heart (11 page)

Maummi
Switzer stopped her by holding up a hand. “Sleep has overtaken him again, but he spoke with me for several minutes.”

Disappointment halted Katie’s step. She’d hoped to be there for his first conversation. “Did he drink?”

“
Ja
. The full mug of tea, and more if I had allowed.”

“Is he…” She let the question hang. They had discussed the possible outcome of a cracked skull, and
Maummi
Switzer shared her concern.

A smile deepened the creases in the elderly woman’s face. “His words are not garbled, and his mind is clear.”

Katie breathed a relieved sigh. “
Gott
be praised.”

Butch returned at that moment, the empty bucket dangling from his hand. Katie watched his rounded shoulders and steady gait, her heart twisting at his solemn expression. How unfair for
a child to have his laughter stolen by sorrow. If only he would run and laugh and play, instead of this somber attention to the chores assigned him. Perhaps if there were other boys his age nearby? But no, three others lived with Rebecca and Colin in the big house beside their
Englisch
church building, and Emma said Butch was ever on the sidelines, watching the others at play but rarely joining in.

“Butch, a task I have for you.” She spoke in a kindly voice as he approached the pump. “Please to take a message to Mr. Switzer. Tell him Jesse has awakened.”

Interest sparked in the eyes that flicked toward the house. “He’s okay, then?”

The child had expressed concern for Jesse since Luke delivered him yesterday, even going so far as to offer to help with nursing tasks. That Butch thought highly of Jesse was obvious. In a hushed voice, Luke had told her and the Switzers that the boy had practically insisted on being allowed to come and help as soon as he heard of Jesse’s injuries. Because this was the first time he’d displayed emotion for a task since being delivered into the Maddoxs’ care by a preacher in Hays City, they had not the heart to deny him.

“Apparently he looks to Jesse as some sort of hero or something,” Luke had told them, shaking his head. “No accounting for why. It’s not like Jesse has spent much time with him, or any of those boys for that matter.”

Katie had considered the matter last night, and she thought she understood why. Though Jesse could be engaging and jovial, he was primarily a solitary man, often wrapped up in his own thoughts. The few times she’d seen him while visiting with Emma,
she’d noticed a pensive, almost tortured expression on his face when he thought no one was looking. She’d seen a similar expression on Butch’s face last evening while he emptied the slops into the hog trough after supper. No doubt the child sensed a common bond in their troubled pasts.

Butch was waiting for her reply.

“Weak, but well.” She smiled at the child’s obvious relief. “He is sleeping again, as he will do often until he regains his strength, but he spoke with
Maummi
Switzer.”

Butch silently set the bucket down beside Katie’s half-filled one and headed toward the empty field east of the barn, where Jonas’s black-and-white-clad figure could be seen walking in the distance. Katie was happy to note that the child’s step had a slight bounce that had been absent before now.

“A good boy is that one,” commented
Maummi
Switzer. “Our Rebecca says his grief for his
mader
and
fader
keeps him apart from the others, but she is determined to love him as her own.”

With a final glance toward the child, she disappeared into the house. Katie returned to the pump, a familiar ache pulsing deep inside her chest. How well she understood the loneliness of grief. In the months after Samuel’s death, she thought she would drown in it, and she would have welcomed death as a way to join her beloved. But even before then she had become acquainted with grief. In all the years of their marriage, the joy of motherhood had been denied her. At first, when her womb did not quicken, there had been little concern. Many waited months before becoming pregnant, her mother assured her. Her body needed more time to prepare for motherhood. Katie consoled herself with the knowledge that the Lord would bless her and Samuel with a child in
His perfect timing. But when month after month passed, and the women at church services began watching her waist for signs of thickening, she grew concerned.

A full year after her wedding day, she quietly inquired of Martha Hostetler, who had birthed every baby in Apple Grove since the first families settled here. Martha had instructed her to drink a tea of oat straw and nettle leaves nightly. Though she’d faithfully obeyed, the first year stretched into a second. Samuel finally suggested that she see an
Englisch
doctor, where she had undergone the most humiliating examination of her life, and for nothing. The doctor had pronounced her healthy with no apparent cause for her barrenness.

Barren
. Even now the word brought a bitter taste to her mouth. She pumped with a vigor born of misery, and water sloshed over the rim of the bucket. Five years of marriage, and not a single sign of pregnancy. There had been a few instances when her hopes had risen, only to be dashed when the inevitable proof of her barrenness arrived. At last the curious glances of the women had stopped, and their absence was even more devastating. The pitying looks awarded to Samuel were the hardest of all to endure, but eventually even those ceased. Everyone had accepted the fact that Katie Miller would never bear a child.

Water sloshed into the second bucket, and Katie pushed the pump handle one last time. She picked up both buckets, one in each hand, and made her way to the watering trough, around which a double handful of cattle had gathered for their afternoon drink.

SIX

T
he next time Jesse woke the pounding in his head had lessened perceptibly. Every muscle of his body ached, but he was able to draw in a cautious breath without feeling as though he’d been stabbed through the chest with a bayonet. He cracked open an eye experimentally, and a flicker of panic threatened when he could see nothing. Had he gone blind? A moment later he spied the faint outline of curtains drawn over the window and breathed a relieved sigh. Night had fallen while he slept.

His mouth again felt like a dust storm had blown through it, and his lips were dry and chapped. Moving cautiously, he turned his head toward the small table and squinted at the contents on its surface. Had
Maummi
Switzer left him a mug of that whatever-it-was she’d given him earlier? Darkness obscured his view, and he couldn’t make out details. He lifted his arm in an attempt to feel for the mug.

Owwwwwweeee!
The movement sent agony ripping through his back, and he sucked in an involuntary breath that resulted in a torturous paroxysm in his lungs. A groan escaped his lips as he dropped his arm. In a distant part of his mind he took satisfaction from the fact that he’d produced more volume than previous efforts to moan.

The rustling of fabric preceded someone’s appearance in the doorway beyond his feet.

“You are awake?” asked a soft voice. Not
Maummi
. Must be Katie.

“Y-yeah.” He snapped his mouth shut, embarrassed at his wavering tone.

“Wait. I will fetch a light.”

Everyone else must be asleep, for a deep quiet permeated the house. He traced her progress by the faint sound of her footsteps in the room beyond the one in which he lay. A brief scratching noise, and then a yellow gleam illuminated the darkness through the doorway. It grew brighter as she returned and then Katie stepped into his room, her face aglow with candlelight.

She drew near, holding the candle aloft while she inspected him. Whatever she saw must have satisfied her, because she gave a brief nod. “Are you thirsty?”

“Am I ever. I feel like I could drain the Rio Grande.” He matched her whispered tone, mindful that
Maummi
Switzer probably slept lightly, and he wanted a chance to talk to Katie without
Maummi
’s watchful gaze. His stomach threatened a rumble. “And my stomach is so empty it feels like the front is touching the back.”

A smile curved her soft lips. “I will be back.”

She took the candle with her, and he strained to hear signs
of her movements. It seemed hours before a warm halo of light heralded her return. In her hands she carried a tray, and he was relieved to see not only a mug but an earthenware bowl as well.

She seated herself in the chair by his bed and set the tray on the floor. “First, drink.”

When she lifted the mug to his lips he started to protest that he could certainly feed himself, but he remembered the agony moving his arm a few minutes before had caused. He drank, cautiously at first and then greedily, downing the contents as quickly as she would allow. She rewarded his efforts with a smile and returned the mug to the tray.

When she lifted the bowl and spoon, he caught a delicious whiff of something. His poor empty stomach gave an eager rumble.

“I’ve never been so hungry in all my born days.” He tilted his head to see over the rim of the bowl.

“’Tis only broth.” She held it close for his inspection. “You must go easy at first.”

“Broth.” His enthusiasm gave way to a scowl. “I could eat a whole side of beef on my own. But at least I can feed myself.”

Moving cautiously, he lifted his left arm and made as if to take the spoon from the bowl. But no sooner had he grasped it than his fingers began a mighty trembling. Disgusted, he released the utensil and it splashed back into the broth.

Her chuckle wasn’t without sympathy as she picked up the spoon. “Your strength will return in a few days.”

“Not if all I’m fed is broth,” he grumbled, but he allowed her to place a spoonful inside his mouth. Oh, how delicious. Surely this was the best broth in all of Kansas, rich and savory with just the
right amount of spice to satisfy a starving belly. Eagerly, he opened his mouth for a second taste.

“Your head still hurts?” Her glance flickered upward toward his scalp.

“I’ll say.” He lifted his left hand and pressed gingerly at the sorest place. His fingers found a lump, and a prickly line along a scab. “Whew. I don’t think my hat will fit over that hen’s egg for a while.”

“It is much reduced. Jonas found the rock you fell on, and one side was jagged and sharp. If your head had hit that side…” Her brows rose meaningfully.

What was it
Maummi
Switzer had said about Katie? “Thank you for sewing my scalp back together. And for everything else too.”

She rewarded him with a smile as she lifted another spoonful of broth to his lips.

“Any word of those low down, no-goods who shot me?”

“
Neh
.” Despite her denial, she looked troubled and did not meet his eye.

“What?” he prodded. “Something else has happened. I see it in your face.”

She shook her head. “Truly, nothing has happened. Only, every day two men ride their horses along the fence and
look
at us.”

“They do, do they?” He had no trouble imagining Woodard and Sawyer directing a menacing glare across the wheat field. Pathetic, trying to intimidate an Amish man and a couple of women. Just wait until he was up and around. He glanced toward the place where his holster hung from the wall peg. He’d teach
them a thing or two about intimidation. But next time he might need a partner alongside him.

“Any word from Luke and Colin?”

“
Ja
. Jonas sent word of your injuries, and Luke came two days ago. You were not yet awake.”

“Yeah? So he got a good look at that fence?”

She nodded.

“Did he happen to say anything about it?”

“He and Jonas talked.”

He waited, but she didn’t elaborate. That’s the way it was going to be, huh? She was going to make him pull every piece of information out of her like pulling rusty nails from an old board.

“And what did they decide to do?” he asked, more or less patiently.

“Nothing.” She concentrated on stirring the broth in the bowl. “Jonas has decided to let the
Englisch
cow man have the land.”