Prairie Song (5 page)

Dawn sifted through the thin curtains and ribboned the bed where the stranger lay. Cherish’s hand trembled slightly as she dug once more for the bullet lodged in his chest. Tiny white lines formed around his mouth, but the man the priest had called Brant didn’t cry out. He was awake and with her each step, though he didn’t speak or open his eyes.

“There!” Cherish let out long-held breath. “It’s out.” Before, when she’d worked with a gunshot wound, she’d always tried to remove herself as much as possible from the person near death and think only of the bullet to be dislodged. But she found that difficult now. Even as she worked she thought of this stranger and how he’d touched her in the darkness of the train. His kiss had been unlike anything she’d ever dreamed a kiss could be. Just the memory warmed her blood as she watched his mouth tighten in pain.

His face was relaxed for the first time all night.
He’s finally passed out from the pain
, she thought. Even though he hadn’t said a word, she’d known he’d been with her, trusting her with his life. She felt him watching her work as he’d forced his body not to jerk when she cut into his infected flesh.

Quickly, she cleaned and closed the wound, marveling at his silence. When the wound was bandaged, Cherish wiped his pale face with a cool cloth. She had to admire this murderer for his courage. She’d seen men who endured a tenth of the pain she’d put him through scream for hours. Now, touching his face, she thought of how totally he’d placed himself in her hands. The sleeping priest beside the bed would have been no guard if she decided to run into the sitting room and tell Grayson a murderer lay near death in her room. The stranger had trusted her with his life.

She felt no fear of Brant now as she touched the dark brown whiskers along his jawline. His features were strong, but not hard. There was something boyish and reckless about him that made her want to know the person behind the tough man. She wanted to know what had molded a man so hard that no pain seemed to touch him.

“We’re very much alike, you and I,” she whispered. “We keep our pain within, never letting anyone see.” She thought of how the loneliness she felt was like an invisible open wound over her heart. She pushed back from people, never allowing herself to get too close. The very trait that had made her a good nurse had also cheated her out of knowing how it felt to be in a lover’s arms.

Closing her eyes, Cherish leaned against the headboard and tried not to think of anything but Brant surviving the next few hours. There was nothing to do but wait and see if infection set in. During the war, she’d had plenty of experience with gunshot wounds. More men died of the poisoning from the black powder than from the bullets. Brant might be one more notch on the black powder’s handle of death.

Bar slipped into the room, carrying another bucket of water. His thin, half-grown shadow moved over the wall as silently as he moved about the house. She’d enlisted his help when she’d found him sleeping on the stairs and he’d helped her all night without once complaining. “You think you’ll need any more water, Miss Cherish?”

“No, thanks,” she whispered as she straightened. “You’d better get some sleep, and remember, in the morning you never saw this stranger.”

Bar moved closer. “He ain’t no stranger, miss. I’ve known him and Father Daniel all my life. Though I haven’t seen Brant Coulter around here for a few years. Last time I saw him, he was downstairs arguin’ with Miss Hattie about somethin’.” Bar sat down by the fire as if thankful to have someone to talk to. “Miss Hattie told me later that Brant and Daniel was like me when they was kids, just kind of on their own. She said she didn’t remember either of them ever havin’ folks.”

Cherish pushed a strand of blond hair back from her face. “I think I understand. The outlaw and the priest were childhood friends. Then one turned out good and one bad.”

Bar looked confused. “What do you mean?”

Cherish smiled at the child. “I mean one does good things and the other bad things.”

Bar tilted his head as if letting this new thought wash around in his brain. “I don’t know. I can’t tell who’s good and who’s bad much any more. Like Miss Hattie. Folks say she ain’t no good. Some won’t even speak to her on the street. But she lets me live here when those folks that don’t speak to her ain’t offerin’ me a home. Even last winter when Azile tried to throw me out ‘cause she said feeding me was a waste of good food, Miss Hattie wouldn’t hear of it. Not that she can’t be meaner than the devil from time to time, but I owe her just as I guess Brant and Father Daniel do.”

Cherish saw his point, but tried to make him understand about the two sleeping men. “Yes, but Father Daniel is helping save a life and this man killed another man.”

Bar shrugged. “I’ve seen a few men that needed killing. I reckon if Brant Coulter kilt him, the guy musta provoked him mighty.”

Father Daniel shifted in the chair, startling Bar. The boy crawled into the shadows like a half-wild barn cat when the barn door is suddenly opened. Cherish was shocked at the fear that danced into the boy’s dark gypsy eyes.

“I gotta go,” he whispered and vanished.

Father Daniel stretched and smiled shyly. “I’m sorry about falling asleep like that. How is our patient?”

“I think he’ll live.” Cherish studied the priest, trying to find some clue as to what had frightened Bar. There was only kindness in the priest’s face. And mystery.

Father Daniel stood and faced the morning light. “I’ll come back for him as soon as I can.” He moved toward the door. “I thank you for your help. I’d best get to the mission before the whole town wakes up and knows I was here. There’s a back trail behind the barn that leads right into the grounds of the mission.”

Cherish watched him go, wondering why she hadn’t told him about Grayson, or Grayson about both men. Who would she have betrayed in the telling? A priest who had done her no harm, or a Union officer who slept in the sitting room? She knew the law would see her as having helped a criminal, but her hatred for any Union soldier made her hesitate. The war could end easier on paper than in the heart. Hadn’t the Union imprisoned a doctor only months ago for treating the man who had shot Lincoln? Grayson seemed a reasonable man, but the world was full of men who had been poisoned with four years of hatred.

A low moan from behind her drew Cherish back to the bedside. She knelt beside the bed, trying to hear what the wounded stranger was whispering.

Slowly he raised his hand and touched her cheek. “Be careful,” he whispered. His eyes were feverish, yet penetrating with intensity.

“I will.” Cherish leaned to within an inch of his face. “I know the truth about the man in the next room.”

Brant slowly moved his head from side to side as if she hadn’t heard him. “Be careful,” he whispered, “of the priest.”

Someone seemed to be calling Grayson Kirkland from far away. He could hear his name, but it was borne on the wind and he couldn’t find its direction. He reached for the answer and touched the face of someone too real to be in a dream.

“Grayson! Wake up!” Margaret’s no-nonsense voice brought him fully awake. “Grab your gun and follow me.”

She didn’t wait for him to answer, but disappeared into the hallway. Grayson’s survival instincts had taught him long ago that the time between sleep and full awakening must be kept to a minimum if a soldier planned to stay alive. He grabbed his gun belt, flung it over his shoulder, and followed as he stepped into his pants.

The hallway was still in darkness, but he could hear Margaret’s steps on the stairs. He soundlessly followed her as he slid one Colt from its holster.

She paused and waited for him at the bottom of the stairs. As he stood just behind her, she whispered, “I was dressing a few minutes ago and I swear I heard someone passing in the hall. When I glanced out to see if it was Bar, a tall shadow moved down the stairs.”

Grayson slowly moved around her and entered the hallway that ran from the kitchen door to the foyer. He held his gun ready, for there was no frightened alarmist in Margaret Alexander. If she saw a shadow, then there had been a shadow. He crossed the empty hallway to the large front room that ran half of the length of the house.

The room was empty except for a few old chairs that had been abandoned, too useless to be sold and too heavy to be carried away. Grayson circled the room that looked like it might once have been a library.

There was nothing: no window had been opened recently; no exit door; not even a fireplace that a man could have disappeared into.

Grayson lowered his Colt and looked at Margaret. She was such a vision in her robe and bare feet. Her indigo eyes were wide with questions and the night had tossed her ebony hair to a mass of velvet. For a moment Grayson wished time would stop and he could just stand and look at her for eternity.

“I saw a shadow,” she said resolutely as she crossed her arms in front of her. He could almost see the hardness entering her veins and flowing through her. With the light, the woman in the soft robe would disappear into the hard, straight widow with her hair hidden in a bun and her heart closed to all men.

“We all see shadows in this house.” A voice from the hall startled Grayson and Margaret.

The housekeeper, Azile, filled the doorway with her colorful dress. The scarves about her head and waist caught the morning sun with rainbow colors. “Evil walks in this place. Take care.”

Pulling her shoulders square, Margaret said, “The shadow I saw was not a ghost. I swear on the grave of my dear Westley that the shadow was that of a man.”

“Maybe,” Azile answered as she turned and disappeared as quickly as she had come.

Margaret tightened her robe belt. “I’ll not be frightened by some crazy housekeeper who dresses like a prizewinning sow at the county fair.”

Grayson laughed inwardly, wondering just what it would take to frighten this woman made of iron. He’d never encountered such a female. He wondered what kind of man this Westley Alexander must have been to win her and, once he’d won her, how he’d ever been able to leave her. She was not a woman to be bedded and left; she was the kind of woman a man could spend all his life loving and, when heaven called, regret that he didn’t have one more night by her side.

“Aunt Maggie!” Cherish yelled as she ran down the stairs and into the room. “Are you all right? …”

Cherish almost collided with her aunt as she slid to a stop. Grayson quickly moved his Colt behind him. He knew without asking that Margaret wouldn’t want Cherish frightened. He thought Margaret’s protectiveness of Cherish was overgrown, but he found himself falling into the same pattern.

“Of course I’m all right.” Maggie smiled as she patted Grayson’s arm, silently thanking him for hiding the gun. “Grayson and I were just looking around. How did you sleep?”

Cherish glanced from one to the other, knowing her aunt was lying as she always did to protect her from any unpleasantness. The silent giant stood shirtless and barefooted, and her aunt hadn’t taken the time to pull her hair up, something she always did before leaving her chambers.

Deciding not to argue, Cherish began her own lie. “I didn’t sleep very well. Would you mind if I spend the morning resting?”

“Certainly not.” Margaret patted Cherish’s arm. “Grayson and I will inventory the house and then go shopping for what we need. I’d also like to call on the bank and see about the account Tobin left. I can’t wait to get this house in order.” She moved toward the stairs with her niece in tow. “I’ll have Azile bring a lunch up to your room. You just rest and I’ll check in on you when we return.”

Grayson followed, wondering if Margaret realized Cherish was a woman in her twenties. She might be small in build, but he doubted she let anyone else treat her like a child. He’d been around Cherish long enough to know that she was bred of the same strong frontier stock as her aunt. There was a bond between these two women, if not of honesty, then of love. Somehow Margaret equated putting the house in order with putting their lives in order after living out of a suitcase for four years.

Margaret quickly finished dressing and began her inventory of the house while Grayson downed his breakfast. She wore a black dress with a thin line of lace at the collar and Westley’s broach pinned over her heart. A butterfly, he thought, that had gone back into her cocoon of mourning. She wore her widow’s weeds as proudly as a veteran does his medal of honor.

As Azile entered the kitchen, Margaret began her plan of attack for the day. “I will need your help today if you still wish to be employed here.”

“Ain’t got nowhere else I know of to go. If I had I would have quit six months ago.” She tied on her apron. “You tell me what needs doing and I’ll work till it starts getting dark. Then don’t be calling on me for I’m not likely to come out of my room unless you’re yellin’ fire.”

“First, I wish to meet Miss Hattie; then I plan to do some shopping, so you may wish to make a list of what you need.”

Azile nodded. “I’ll wake Bar and get him to write it all down after I take you to Miss Hattie.” She started moving into the hall, assuming Margaret would follow. “Miss Hattie got the curse from her younger days and don’t see too good. Her mind flickers on and off like a single firefly on a lonely night.”

Margaret, as a nurse, was schooled in the effects of syphilis, but still, as Azile opened the door, she was unprepared for the skeleton of a woman who lay in the middle of the huge bed. An ancient flint-lock rifle rested at her side, and her bony fingers patted the stock.