Enchanted Heart (23 page)

As if reading her mind, Buck walked onto the porch of the cabin next to her and said, “Blizzard coming. We need to get down to town as soon as possible.”

“Can Greta be moved yet?” Marty asked.

“The boys can get her there without a mark on her,” he assured her before he said something in Comanche to Hunts-with-a-knife, who slipped between Buck and Marty to go and do the man’s bidding.

“How do you come by having two Indian’s at your beck and call?” Marty finally asked him while she watched the brave disappear into the woods beyond the cabin.

He watched the Indian as well before he answered, “Well, it was like this. The Comanche had a medicine man that used all his spiritual ceremonies to heal his people, but the sickness that the village where Rising Sun and Hunts-with-a-knife had lived was being wiped out with something they had never seen before. It was a white man’s disease, brought in by the Germans, pardon the accusations, but it is the truth. I’m German and will be the first to admit that we brought new diseases to them. These people had never experienced small pox and they had no idea how to treat it.”

Buck paused to let his words sink in before he continued, “Well, when Rising Sun was no more than twelve, he was sent to the city, Fredericksburg that is, because he was the only one who was well enough to make the journey. This scrawny boy came knocking at my door begging me to come back with him to save his people. I speak German and most Comanche people speak it, too, because of the treaty and the necessity to get along with their new neighbors. So, at the time, we could communicate without a problem. I later learned their language, but I’d rather talk in English. The boys learned that language so they could understand what I was barking at them.”

He took a breath and said, “Anyway, I went back with Sunny, as I call him, and performed my miracle on the villagers who had not yet died of the disease and was about to leave when their guardian took me aside and told me that they were indebted to me. His gift to me was the two brothers whose parents had died. Sunny and Hunts-with-a-knife have been with me ever since. But, as you may have noticed, they don’t live here in the cabin but their wigwam is off there in the woods. They travel with me wherever I go, protecting me, hunting with me and, well, being the children that I never had. I love those boys like they were my own sons and I think they feel the same way about me, else they’d have run off years ago.”

“How long have they been with you?” she asked, trying to discern the ages of the Indians.

“About six or seven years,” he mused, scratching the dark brown beard on his chin. “They go home occasionally, when I go to town. They don't like the town much although there are some Comanche who do trade there. But mostly the unmarried women live and work in town.”

“Yes, I’ve seen them,” Marty agreed. Some Comanche women had worked at the hotel where Marty and Greta and Elsa had stayed. “They dress like white people, but you can tell that they are Indians.”

“They do their best to blend in with our people, but sometimes, they are shunned,” Buck explained. “It’s a cruel thing, but they live with it, most of them, that is. There are the occasional renegade bands that raid unprotected farms, but for the most part, they leave Germans alone.”

“That is why they didn’t kill me when I spoke German to them in the cave,” Marty said to herself, but aloud.

“They wouldn’t have harmed you anyway,” he said in their defense.

“But they killed poor Daniel,” she reminded him.

“By all rights, he was going to kill them,” he told her.

“I suppose so,” Marty agreed. “Knowing that we had been told that the Indians around here were sometimes hostile and he had two women to protect, I guess he might have at that.”

“What’s done is done,” he said with much finality before he strode into the cabin. Over his shoulder, he told her, “We’ll send word to the boy’s parents about the accident.”

Then, he sat on the side of the bed where Greta lay and turned his head toward Marty, who pulled a chair up beside him and agreed with a whisper that Mr. and Mrs. Bader should be notified of their loss.

Marty watched Buck, marveling at the loving way that he seemed to touch her sister and she wondered how such a grizzly bear of a man could be so very gentle. When he noticed her watching him, Buck pulled his hand away from Greta’s cheek and cleared his throat.

“We’ll be leaving before nightfall,” he said, tucking the blankets under Greta’s chin before he turned to face Marty. “The closer we get to town, the better. If it is as bad as a blizzard that I think it will be, it will keep us here for weeks if we don’t get to lower ground.”

Remembering the almost three days that it had taken for the wagons to make it to the Enchanted Rock and knowing that the cabin was farther north, she wondered how long it would take to walk that many miles to Fredericksburg.

Stolen moments of memories of Caid upon the Enchanted Rock, declaring his love for her, crossed her mind. Oh, how she wanted to go back to that moment, back to bliss. But, Greta was foremost on her mind at that moment. Marty knew that her heart and her future would have to wait.

“I know a short cut,” Buck broke into her thoughts. “It’ll only take a day or two over the hills and through the valleys where wagons can’t go. We’ll ride horseback, you and me, and the boys will bring your sister on foot. Don’t you worry your pretty little head none, they will keep up and she won’t be hurt.”

“I trust you, Buck,” she said and she really believed her words. She smoothed her skirt with her palms and, for the first time in days, she realized that she had not changed her clothes since that morning when they left the Nimitz Hotel and Fredericksburg. This same skirt that she had made years ago, which used to be red but was bleached by the sun and worn to threads, was now a dull rusty orange and was stained with her sister’s blood. But she would not change it now, she told herself as she picked at one of the threads that jutted out from a hole. She would wear it back to Fredericksburg, fearing that she might tear or sully anything that she dared to change into on the trip back over the mountains.

Back to Fredericksburg. When she and Greta had left that city, they had hoped to go forward, to the San Saba River, to live Papa’s dream. True, the city did remind them of Germany, more so than New Braunfels had, but they had hoped to leave it behind as they had their first new hometown in Texas.

She remembered pushing Greta long ago to take another step forward, to keep walking toward their new home in New Braunfels, toward a place where they could settle down because Mama could not, would not, go any farther. Her daughters could live their Papa’s dream; she had told them when she had sat in her rocking chair next to her hearth in the house that Sven had built. She was staying, Mama had said. And that was that!

Marty rose from the rocking chair beside the fire in the little cabin in the mountains and prepared to make the journey back down to the valley where Fredericksburg lay. Their future was in limbo, it seemed, in God’s hands, as she had told Daniel. Poor Daniel, she whispered, but she shook that thought from her mind.

In a few hours, they were packed up and were on the trail to Fredericksburg with Buck and Marty riding the two paint ponies and pulling two pack horses, all of which had been safely stabled near the cabin while Buck and the boys had been hunting before they had met the women. The brothers carried a litter with Greta bundled up and strapped down.

Marty had left another note on the cabin door for Caid, telling him where they were going. Then she had mounted her horse to follow Buck down the path, so she was certain that her beloved would find them there.

They traveled for most of the night and then camped in another cave that Buck sometimes used.

This cave was smaller, but since the Indians did not sleep inside, it was just large enough for three pallets. A small fire kept Marty, Buck and Greta warm until two hours before sunup when the Indians came inside to lift Greta once again.

The next night, they made camp in a clearing just five miles from Fredericksburg, where they slept for only a few hours before moving on. Riding through town, Marty saw the same buildings that she had seen on her first visit. They welcomed her back like a long-lost friend and she was happy to return, to see the houses and buildings that reminded her of Germany. This felt like home to her, even though most of her life had been spent in New Braunfels. There was something about this town that seemed comforting, like snuggling into Mama’s arms after a bad dream.

She sighed with contentment, but wished that Caid was with her. By now, he was half-way to Fort Concho with the wagon train. Hopefully, in a few weeks, he will find her here, living in Buck’s house while Greta healed.

At mid-morning, they trudged down a quiet street to a house at the edge of town that stood in front of a small stream. The two-story house loomed above the smaller houses on either side of it and it seemed out of place on the street where it had been built. It was constructed in the Victorian design with a long, wide porch that stopped abruptly at a three-sided protrusion on the left end of the house and curled around the right side of the house to the back. Above the protrusion was a round turret that boasted rounded windows on all sides like a lighthouse. Beautiful scrolling decorations stretched across the expanse of the porch between heavy white columns. Its blue paint stood out against the white of the trim around long, paneled windows and slatted shutters that would keep out the wind, rain and sun. It was a magnificent house and Buck seemed as if he’d missed it, for his face beamed with pride when he’d pointed to the front door, showing a now-conscious Greta that this was his home.

“Welcome,” Buck said as if he was a gentleman in a grand mansion. He waved his hand around the large foyer and said, “My home is your home.”

He said something to the two Indians, who nodded and carried Greta upstairs and into a room just at the top of the landing and closed the door behind them. Then he turned to Marty to say, “The kitchen is in there. I have a woman who stays here while I’m gone and she takes care of the cooking and cleaning when I’m home. She’s Comanche also; I hope you don’t have a problem with that.”

Marty shook her head, wondering why all of a sudden that he would think that she would be concerned about having a female Comanche cooking and cleaning when it wasn’t even her home. But he interrupted her reverie with a booming announcement, “Most white women don’t feel comfortable around Comanche squaws. Some stupid rumor got planted in their heads about how a Comanche woman cursed the white woman that she worked for and made her barren, and then the story grew until it became known that all Comanche women cursed their white employer’s wives as if to make sure that no more white people would be brought into their world.”

“That is silly,” Marty said.

“Damn right it is,” he agreed. “There ain’t been a lost baby since I came to town. No curse is gonna change my mind about childbearing or life and death as long as I am a doctor.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

For some reason, a terrible sadness came over her and she touched a palm to her stomach, remembering those awful miscarriages and then seeing her last child’s purple face masked in the grips of death. She turned away from him, leaning on the post of the stair railing and lost all feeling in her legs. She slipped to the floor as darkness took over and only oblivion prevailed.

Buck scooped her into his arms and carried her upstairs to a room next to the one where Greta slept and placed her gently on the bed. He left her there to slowly find her way back to reality while he washed away the dust from the trail. Before he went to his room and then to the bathroom where running water had been installed only a few years ago, he took Linda Blue Sky aside and asked her to give Miss Marty some time to herself.

When she came to, Buck was leaning over her with his fingers pressed upon her wrist and a pair of spectacles perched on his nose. He had changed into a black woolen suit with a crisp white shirt that was buttoned at the neck, which was shaved clean. All that remained on his handsome face was a bushy brown mustache, a remnant of his mountain-man lifestyle. His long wavy brown hair was trimmed and slicked back with whatever concoction that men were compelled to use in order to tame their hair and his bristled brows had been waxed with the same stiff preparation that held his lip hairs in place.

Marty found herself staring at him as if he was a stranger and she shifted beneath his touch as if repelled by him. But when his eyes found hers, he smiled and patted her hand before he pursed his lips and guessed, “Bad subject, huh?”

Marty nodded and immediately felt at ease with him again. She cleared her parched throat before she answered, “I had two miscarriages and the son that did survive until birth was dead within minutes.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Marty,” he said with genuine remorse. “But, surely, you expect to try again with—what did you say his name was?”

“Caid,” she said, lowering her eyes. Then, she shrugged and told him, “He knows about the babies. But, I can’t help but fear for our future if I lose another child.”

She lowered her eyes and fumbled with the sheet while she mused, “It must have been something that I did.”

“Well, now, let’s just think about this for a minute,” he said, stroking his clean-shaven chin and contemplating a cause for her problems. Thinking that there was some cause that involved the town where she lived, he asked, “Were you the only one in New Braunfels who’d had a problem with child birthing?”

Marty thought for a moment and then said, “I think so.”

“What about your family,” Buck inquired. “Were there any problems with sickly children or adults?”

Then, she nodded slowly and said, “We had a brother who died at a very young age, back in Germany. And my grandfather died when my father was a boy. I heard Papa telling Mama once that his father had cut his leg somehow and had bled to death.”