Ballad Beauty (11 page)

She leaned back against her saddle. “The stars are beautiful tonight. You can never see them this clearly in Boston.”

He looked up at the dark night sky. “I guess some people begin to take them for granted if they’ve been on the plains long enough.”

“Not me.” She stretched lazily. “I think I’ll write in my journal for a while.” She leaned over the saddle to reach inside the bag that contained her book as she continued to look at him.

“Noah, do you ever th—”

He sensed the snake right before it struck. Somehow the atmosphere changed, charged with evil. As he heard the familiar rattle sound, he dived to knock Jenny aside.

Noah felt sharp fangs sink into his calf.

CHAPTER 13

Jenny heard the rattler as Noah slammed into her. She knew immediately what the noise signaled. She landed face first on the dusty ground, her left cheek sliding across gravel in the hard soil. The pain stung instantly. Before she could react, a shot rang out in the desert quiet. She flipped over. Her eyes went to Noah.

He held a smoking pistol in his hand as he rolled away from the deadly snake. She stared at it in fascination. The light from the fire danced along its length. The patterns along the viper’s back almost hypnotized her with their beauty.

“It’s a Western diamondback,” she said in wonder. “I recognize it from Mr. Mulholland’s book. She gasped. “It’s poisonous!”

“Don’t touch it,” he warned. “It can jab by reflex action even after it’s dead.” He grimaced as he spoke.

“You’re hurt.” Her eyes flew to where he held his hand against his calf. “It bit you.”

“Bring me my saddlebag,” he ordered.

She retrieved it and brought it to where he sat. A fine sheen of sweat had broken out across his forehead.

“Tell me what to do.”

“Nothing. I—”

“Tell me.” She looked at him calmly. A peace descended upon her. She was now in her element. She had assisted Dr. Randolph in dozens of emergencies through years of working at his clinic. The physician teased her about how she grew old before her time. Still, he impressed upon her the need to refrain from panic in a time of crisis.

“You can fall apart all you want afterwards, Jenny girl,” he had said, “but your patient needs you placid as a pond on a summer’s afternoon if you’re to do any good.”

She took his words to heart. Sometimes after a particularly difficult experience, she found her hands trembled as she washed up—but she always remained unruffled during whatever procedure took place.

As she looked at Noah now, she remained composed. She recognized the moment when he decided to trust her. She went to the pack horse and lifted out a pot from a side bag. She filled it with water and put it on to boil.

“I have a razor that will need to be sterilized,” Noah told her. “We don’t have time to cleanse it in water.”

“I know. That’s for later.” She focused on him. “Mr. Mulholland said the diamondback’s venom is quick-acting. Walk me through what to do. If we act quickly, we’ll save you.”

He gave her an admiring glance as she found his razor. “Hold the blade in the fire. Ten seconds’ll do it.”

She did as told and came back to his side, handing him the razor. She then reached over and slipped his knife from his belt. She cut away the lower portion of his wool trousers and peeled the material away from the bite. She also pulled off his boot and tossed it aside before claiming the razor again.

“You’ll need to make a small cut through both fang marks. Go through both. It has to be lengthwise to my leg.” He stretched his legs out but leaned on his elbows so he could watch her work.

She knelt and made the slits. He flinched as the hot razor scorched his skin.

“Now press the blood from the cuts.”

She followed his directions and applied pressure to the wound. The blood spurted then oozed down his calf.

“Good. That’s good,” he praised her. “You didn’t go all woozy at the sight of blood. I guess my quick little prayer helped.” He tried to sit up.

“What are you doing?”

“I need to draw my leg close to suction out the venom. It’s the—”

“-only way to keep the poison from circulating. I know.” She bent to his calf.

“No!” He grabbed her chin and pushed her away. “I’ll do it.”

She shoved him back. He fell flat against the ground. She poked him the chest with her finger.

“I’m in charge here, Noah Daniel Webster. I know what I’m doing. I don’t have any cuts in my mouth, and I have a better angle at this than you do. Now behave.”

She leaned down and cupped her mouth around the bite marks, sucking hard to draw the venom from him.

“That’s good, honey. I can feel the pressure. You’re doing it.”

Periodically, she raised her head and spit to the side before she returned to the task at hand. After several minutes she stopped and examined his leg again.

“Do you have any whiskey?”

“Check the side flap of my . . . saddlebag.”

From his voice, she figured he was beginning to feel lightheaded. That meant the poison had begun to enter his bloodstream.

She poured whiskey over the wound and then pulled two clean handkerchiefs from her pocket. She tied them together before dipping them in hot water and making a compress from them.

“I wish I had some salt,” she muttered.

He grunted. Tried to speak. No words formed.

“I can’t move you, Noah. Any kind of movement or stimulant can speed up your heart and circulation. That would allow the poison to run through you—what’s left of it.” She brushed the hair from his forehead. “We’ll make you as comfortable as we can. Rest now.”

She watched him begin to drift in and out of consciousness. She wrapped him in blankets to help prevent shock from setting in. And began the long wait.

Jenny worried about more than shock. She was afraid Noah would die. She kept trying to second-guess herself. Had she acted quickly enough? Had she let out enough blood? Did she remove most of the venom?

She spent the night by his side. Every few minutes she awakened him and forced some water down his throat. She hoped that would dilute any remaining poison and keep a fever away.

It came anyway. She knew it would. He kept up a constant chatter the entire night. She had been around patients who, when in the grips of fever, carried on entire conversations with her that they never remembered afterward. She hoped Noah wouldn’t recall much about what he told her. He was a private man. She doubted he would be happy if he realized what he’d rambled about during the night.

“He is the sorriest excuse for a parent that God every put on this planet.”

“Who, Noah?” she asked, humoring him.

He snorted. “My daddy. That’s who. The most selfish, egocentric, narcissistic man who walked the earth. His dang partner’s even worse. The two of them together made Mama miserable.”

“Uh-huh.” She knew to indulge a patient on a tirade and continued to minister to him, bathing his face in cool water.

“He lied to her, you know. Thought he was getting a rich woman, but her daddy cut her off quicker’n a cat’s sneeze when they eloped. Never had a thing to do with her—or us kids. That broke her heart, for sure.”

He tossed about, and Jenny tightened the blankets around him. Since the sun set, the night grew cold. She didn’t want him taking a chill.

He raised his head, his blue eyes burning as he looked at her. “Moved us here. Moved us there. We never had a real place to call home. Hurt us all real bad. Wanted me to work with him. Hah! I left as soon as I could. Was fifteen when I hit the cattle drives. Sent money home to Mama.” He shook his head. “She was a pretty woman once. She’s a broken one now, in body and spirit.”

He fell into a fitful sleep then. She didn’t think his father physically hurt his wife and children, but his abuse ran along the same lines her own papa’s had. It was an emotional kind of ill-treatment. She experienced a kinship with Noah at that moment.

He awoke again shortly, thrashing and pitching from side to side, tangled up in the folds of the blankets.

“I’m worthless. A feckless, nugatory, undeserving vagabond. Not any better than my daddy. Pete’s a good-for-nothing, and so am I.”

She noticed how his vocabulary seemed to expand as the fever climbed. She wondered why he hid his book learning from others. With his guard down, though, his phraseology expanded considerably.

“You talking migratory? That’s me and Pete. Nomadic? Just show us a door, and we’re through it, lickety-split. Can’t trust us ‘cause we aren’t trustworthy. I’ve done all I can to put distance between him and me, and it’s to no avail. I’ll never be a better man. It’s all his fault.”

He continued to ramble through the night as she nursed him. At one point he went completely out of his head as he shivered and babbled. Most of that rant she couldn’t understand. She continued to bath his face and dribble water down his throat in her efforts to fight his fever.

It bothered her that he thought he was a worthless excuse for a man. Noah seemed to believe he was tainted with whatever wrongs his father had done, and he’d spent his whole life trying to be a better man than Pete Webster. She could have told him he was a good man, better than most, despite her limited contact with his gender. She prayed she would have that chance.

Toward dawn, the fever began to break. He mumbled a few more comments that indicated he was very down on the practice of marriage. Not that he hadn’t made that perfectly clear to her before, she thought wryly.

“Mama told me never get married. Said I wasn’t to be a disappointment to any woman. I’m not. I will not disillusion or disenchant any female. Ever. I promise you that.”

After that last diatribe, he fell into a restful sleep. No more blathering on. No writhing and twisting. His breathing became slow and deep. She touched her hand to his forehead and found it clammy but cool.

By the time the sun had been up for a few hours, he awakened. Shaky, but she knew he was out of the woods.

“Jenny?” he rasped.

“Yes, Noah?” She ran the wet cloth across his forehead tenderly. Her feelings for this man were so mixed. She tossed them into the back of her mind. She couldn’t think about them now.

Noah took in her exhaustion. Dark circles shadowed her eyes. Wisps of hair had come undone sometime during the night and fell in tendrils about her face, which had a tired, drawn look. “You really stay composed in a crisis, Miss McShanahan. I might have to take you along on all my cross-country trips.” He smiled weakly. “Now let me get unraveled from all these blankets. We need to get on the road.”

Jenny looked at him in amazement. “We aren’t going anywhere. You almost died last night, Noah! Besides, as much as you jabbered away, you need to rest your mouth as much as your body.” She shook her head. “Lord, I never heard someone talk as much nonsense as you did. Couldn’t understand a word you said—and you said a lot of them.”

She stood and grimaced, her hands going to her lower back. “I need to figure out how to rig some kind of covering for shade. It looks like today’s going to be unseasonably warm.” Her mouth set in her schoolmarm look. “We’re staying right here.”

He’d learned not to argue with her when that look occurred. Besides, he didn’t have the energy to do anything but breathe, and even that took more effort than he’d thought possible.

“How about you just drag my sorry carcass to that rock overhang?”

She looked to it and then him. She bent and grabbed an end of the blanket.

“I’m joshing you, Jenny,” he protested. “Just get me out of this cocoon. I’ll walk. It’s not that far.”

She helped unravel him. The cool air rushed against his sweat-soaked clothes, causing him to shiver. He was grateful it wasn’t as cold as it had been for the past week. He started to take a step and found he couldn’t, so he leaned on her the thirty paces to the overhang.

“I guess I’m punier than I thought,” he amended.

He dozed off and on for most of the day. Every time he opened his eyes, she was there, pouring more water down him. He knew she hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours and was dead on her feet.

“You can quit playing guard dog now,” he told her as the sun began to set. “I think I’m going to make it.”

She sighed. “I am pretty tired.”

“Then stretch on out and saw some logs.”

She scooted away from him and settled at the far edge of the open blanket. He suddenly seemed lonesome with her so far away.

“Jenny?”

“Hmmm?” She didn’t even open her eyes.

“Could you come back over here?”

She opened one eye and looked at him questioningly.

“I might need you,” he said weakly. It was all he could think of on short notice.

“All right,” she said testily and came closer to him.

“Come on, now.” He motioned her to draw nearer. When she crawled within his reach, he grabbed her and hoisted her up next to him. He slipped an arm around her shoulders.

“Noah, I—”

“It’s okay. Just stay by me. That’s all I ask.” He shut his eyes and held his breath. She was tense for a couple of minutes. Then her body began to relax. Her head dropped onto his chest. He heard her slow, even breathing.

He opened his eyes again. She was fast asleep. Despite the scrape on her cheek from when he’d pushed her from the snake’s path, she had to be the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. She was warm and soft against his side. Having her next to him felt right.

Jenny was different from any woman he’d ever known. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was falling in love with her.

He laughed quietly to himself. Besides his mama and Elizabeth, he didn’t even know any decent women. Mo and the sporting gals were all he had to compare Jenny to—and that wasn’t right.

Anyway, what would a man like him know about love?