Judith E French (30 page)

“Let’s hope he stays away from the house.” Shane
chuckled. “If Mary thinks he’s a danger to her precious duck, she’ll make a fox rug out of him.”

Caitlin couldn’t remember a more beautiful spring day. The air was full of birdsong, and green grass was springing up everywhere, growing—it seemed—almost before Caitlin’s eyes. So many shades of green, she thought, like home.

Shane located his oxen and circled around to drive the long-horned animals back toward the barn paddock. One ox went the way Shane wanted it to, but the second splashed into the main creek and stood there bawling.

Shane leaned from the saddle and plucked several purple-blue violets. He grinned. “Don’t ever say that I never brought you flowers.”

Caitlin heard what sounded like a dull
pop
. Startled, she glanced up and saw a flash of metal on the hillside across the stream. Before she could point it out to Shane, something whizzed past her ear.

“Caity!”

Why was his voice so odd? “Shane!”

The violets fell from his hand. Caitlin watched them drift—almost in slow motion—toward the ground. Shane jerked in the saddle, as though he’d been punched by an invisible fist.

“Shane!” she screamed again.

“Ride, Caity!” he yelled as he dragged his rifle from the saddle scabbard. “Get the hell out of here!”

Shane raised and cocked his weapon, but his movements were strangely wooden.

Caitlin slapped his horse across the rump with the trailing leather reins and headed toward him.

Shane fired his rifle. Dirt sprayed up on the hillside. Then Caitlin saw a man stand free of the trees. He was holding something in his arms.

“Get down!” Shane shouted. This time Caitlin heard a
faint
crack
on the wind as Shane’s body recoiled from the force of the bullet.

Instantly a crimson stain spread across the front of Shane’s vest. He slumped forward over his horse’s neck and tumbled forward to sprawl face first onto the ground.

Caitlin yanked hard on Red’s bridle. He skidded to a stop as she scrambled from the saddle and ran toward Shane.

He was on his hands and knees reaching for his fallen rifle. “My gun,” he rasped.

She snatched it up just as a third bullet smashed into Shane’s thigh. He groaned and went limp.

“Damn your black soul!” Caitlin screamed at the shooter and threw herself across Shane’s motionless body. “Damn you to hell, you coward! Damn you!”

Another bullet thudded into the grass beside Caitlin’s right knee. She closed her eyes and clung to Shane.

He was dead.

She knew he was dead. Frantically she held her fingers over his mouth, trying to feel some sign of breath. “Please, God,” she whispered.

There were no tears for her pain. The faceless scum who’d haunted Kilronan had come back to destroy their world. One second she and Shane had been laughing, and in the next heartbeat …

It was impossible. He couldn’t be dead. She wouldn’t let him be dead.

But without drawing breath …

Strangely, she was beyond fear. The worst had happened. Her own death could be no more bitter than the loss of this man whose flesh and blood had become dearer to her than her own.

Then the image of a fair-haired babe formed in her mind’s eye, and she heard the bubbling echo of an infant’s laughter.
Shane’s child
.

The words seared through her.

She carried Shane’s baby, and it was her duty to protect that innocent life—at any cost.

Caitlin opened her eyes as a slug tore through the toe of Shane’s boot. She ignored the danger and concentrated
on the one item that might save her unborn son or daughter—Shane’s rifle.

Where was it?

Once she located the weapon, she lay motionless, waiting for the killer to reload and fire again. She counted out the seconds. Any instant now …

Zing
.

The bullet dug a furrow along the surface of the ground just beyond them.

Now! She lunged toward the rifle, seized it, and rolled onto her stomach. She couldn’t feel her hands, but her fingers moved just the same. She eased the hammer back, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

She stared at the rifle in astonishment.

And then the air cracked with the sound of gunshots—not from the hill but behind her. She twisted around to see Gabriel riding toward her at a hard gallop. The cowboy clung low on the pinto’s left side, firing his rifle over his mount’s neck at the assassin.

Caitlin crawled back to Shane, fully expecting to feel the force of the killer’s bullets, but the hillside was quiet. “Coward!” she shouted. “You’ll run now, won’t you, you son of a bitch!”

Gabe flung himself off the piebald’s back and knelt beside Shane.

“He’s dead,” Caitlin said dully. Each breath she drew filled her head with the scent of Shane’s blood. There was so much of it, staining his clothes, running down to puddle on the flattened spring grass, soaking into the brown earth.

Gabe shook his head. “No, he’s not.”

“He isn’t breathing,” she argued.

Gabriel rolled Shane over onto his back, and Caitlin’s
stomach clenched as she saw the holes in her husband’s body.

“See,” she insisted. She was suddenly cold, her teeth chattering.

The wrangler pressed his ear against Shane’s gore-soaked chest. Then he leaped up and grabbed Caitlin around the waist. “Get Mary!” he shouted, swinging her up onto his saddleless horse.

“But there’s no use,” she protested, grabbing hold of the gelding’s mane. She felt numb, too shocked by what had happened to break free of the trance that held her. “No use,” she whispered.

“He’s still got a heartbeat,” Gabe said. “Do as I tell you!” He thrust the reins into her hands and slapped the pony’s rump. The animal leaped forward, and it was all Caitlin could do to hang on.

He’s alive, she thought as the horse galloped toward the house. Shane was alive. But how long could they keep him that way?

They carried Shane back to the house in a wagon and laid him on the plank table in the kitchen. Still dry-eyed, Caitlin washed his wounds with strong soap and water … while Mary stood at her back muttering in Osage.

Shane groaned, but his eyes remained shut. His breathing was so faint that Caitlin had to put a mirror over his mouth to be certain that he was still alive.

Mary’s lined face was grim as she waved a tiny clay bowl of burning herbs over him. “Lose much blood,” she said. “Bad.”

“We must send Gabe for the doctor,” Caitlin said.

Mary shrugged. “You learn slow, Missy-Wife. We fix, or McKenna die. White-man doctor fool.”

Caitlin nodded. “Do what you can, Mary.”

She grunted. “No whiskey left. Must …” The Indian
woman’s face twisted in an effort to come up with the right English words to convey her meaning. “Burn clean.” She put her bowl on the mantle over the hearth and donned a clean apron before washing her hands and arms thoroughly with the yellow lye soap.

Caitlin looked at the children. Derry’s face was tear streaked, and one braid had come undone. She was clutching her red-and-white cat so tightly that Caitlin wondered how the animal could breathe.

Justice showed no emotion at all. His handsome features were expressionless, his black eyes as flat as volcanic glass.

But Caitlin had seen the depths of joy in the boy’s gaze when Shane had rested a hand on his shoulder or ruffled his hair. And she knew that this child would suffer more than any of them if Shane died.

“Justice. Take Derry upstairs.”

For once, the boy didn’t argue. “Come on, little sister,” he said. “Mary will make McKenna better. Bring Mittens and …” He grimaced. “We’ll dress her in baby clothes.”

Derry glanced hesitantly at Caitlin.

“It’s all right, darling,” Caitlin soothed. “Go and play.”

“But … Da …”

“Your …” Caitlin’s voice cracked. “Your daddy is hurt very badly. We are going to try to make him better.”

Derry nodded vigorously. “I don’t want ’Kenna to go to heaven.”

Caitlin swallowed, unable to speak as Urika hustled Justice and Derry out of the room. Just as he rounded the corner, the boy glanced back and met Caitlin’s eyes, and she read the unspoken pleading there.

“He will be all right,” Caitlin insisted.

Gabe scoffed. “Easy to say, but McKenna is hurt bad. One bullet went completely through his upper thigh but missed the bone. It might give us trouble from infection.
Another passed through his side. That one bled plenty, but if we can clean it out good, it won’t kill him. It’s the bullet in the shoulder that’s bad.”

“It has to come out, doesn’t it?” Caitlin asked.

Mary muttered in Osage, and Gabe nodded. “We’ll need rope to bind him,” he said to Caitlin before he hurried out of the kitchen.

Mary lifted a kettle of boiling water away from the hearth and poured some into a basin. Urika slid two knives into the pan without looking into Caitlin’s face and began to chant softly in Osage under her breath.

Mary motioned for Caitlin to fill a tin mug with the boiling water. Then she stirred a handful of salt into the hot liquid. Using a clean cloth, she soaked up the brine and dripped it into the bullet hole in Shane’s thigh and side. As she tended the terrible wounds, she echoed the song that Urika sang.

Caitlin didn’t understand the words of the heathen prayers, but the cadence filled the air and helped to soothe the aching inside her.

Shane moaned and tossed his head from side to side as Mary worked over him, but he didn’t open his eyes. Using two more cups of salt water, the Indian woman repeated the process. Then she spoke to Urika in the Indian tongue, and the serving girl brought a pot of honey to the table.

“Honey?” Caitlin asked.

Mary nodded. “Today, honey. ’Nother day, McKenna live, use …” She sighed impatiently. “Web of spider. Make strong medicine.”

“Honey and spiderwebs,” Caitlin murmured. God help us, she thought, but she made no protest. Whatever Mary knew or didn’t know about nursing, it was more than her own knowledge.

Gabe came back with a length of rope and proceeded
to tie Shane to the table. Then Mary took the sharpest knife, held it over the glowing coals until the steel took on a rosy hue, and returned to stand by Shane.

“Mary open hole. Missy-Wife take out bullet,” she ordered.

“Me?” Caitlin felt light-headed.

“Small fingers,” Mary said. “You do.”

Somehow Caitlin managed to remain upright and keep her wits about her as they dug the lead from Shane’s shoulder and tried to staunch the fresh flow of blood. She flinched, but she didn’t faint when Gabe brought a red-hot poker from the fireplace and seared the open wound to keep Shane from bleeding to death.

And only after the gore was cleaned away and Shane’s wounds were bandaged did she walk calmly out of the house to the necessary in the garden and allow herself to be violently sick.

When she came back into the kitchen, Urika was waiting with a fresh washcloth and towel. Then Mary pushed a cup of strong tea into her hands. “Strong woman,” Mary said. “Make good Osage.”

Caitlin sipped the black tea and sank into the rocking chair next to Shane. Now there was nothing to do but wait and pray.

Caitlin couldn’t be sure how much time passed. Shadows danced around the circle of yellow light from the flickering lantern. The wood snapped and crackled on the hearth, and heavy odors of wild cherry and tobacco settled over the room.

Caitlin was terribly sleepy. She didn’t want to drift off; she knew she needed to stay awake for Shane. She wouldn’t give in to her own weakness. She’d be strong. She could do that, but she was so weary, and her eyelids were so very heavy.

Mary laid a strong hand on the nape of Caitlin’s neck.
“Sleep,” she said as she massaged Caitlin’s cramped muscles. “Mary watch.”

“No, I’ll watch him,” Caitlin replied, but even as she said the words, her eyes drifted shut. She forced them open, and then lost the battle.

It was daylight when Caitlin woke to find Shane running a fever but semiconscious. And it was another two days before he came to his senses, and Mary pronounced that he would live.

“Not ride soon,” the Indian woman said. “But McKenna live. Strong, like warrior.”

“I don’t … feel much like a warrior,” he whispered hoarsely as he clung to Caitlin’s hand. “I … feel … like a fool. I’ve let … let you down. I let myself get … get shot.”

“If you are, then I love a fool,” Caitlin said as she leaned close and murmured in his ear. “Do you have any idea how much you mean to me?”

“No.” He forced a painful grin. “But I’m willin’ to have you try to tell me.”

Caitlin promised that she would, but she knew that his recovery would be slow. Shane was still too weak to rise from his bed, and he didn’t have the strength to lift a spoon of broth into his mouth. He could barely sip the willow bark tea and the doses of painted trillium root that Mary poured down him every hour around the clock.

The ugly burn from the hot poker was slow to heal and would leave a scar that Shane would carry to his grave, but it did not fester. And Caitlin realized that no matter how horrible the cure, the fire had purified the bullet wound that otherwise would have mortified.

“Fetch Gabe for me,” Shane whispered.

And when she did as he bade her, Shane ordered the
wrangler to turn the livestock out of the paddocks to graze. “There won’t be a drive this year,” Shane said.

Caitlin looked away, unable to bear the anguish in Shane’s gaze. If they couldn’t sell the livestock in Independence, there would be no money to live on for the coming year and no money for taxes.

She slipped from the room and waited for Gabe in the kitchen. “Couldn’t you and Justice take some of the horses?” she asked him. “Just a few, so that—”

He shook his head. “We could drive them up to Fort Independence, but when we got there I couldn’t sell them.”

“Gabriel hang for steal horse,” Mary said.

“She’s right,” he agreed. “You know I’d cut off my right arm for McKenna or Justice, but my face is the wrong color. An Indian showin’ up with Kilronan stock wouldn’t last long.”

Mary spread her gnarled hands in a gesture of finality. “No horses go Independence,” she said. “My Gabriel, my Justice, not go to hang.”