by Jodi Thomas
In the silence of dying, he drifted back to the battlefield years ago when he’d fallen. The arms of the nurse who’d stopped to help him circled him and whispered, “You’re going to be all right, soldier. You’re not going to die.”
Only this time McCord knew she was wrong. He’d finally drawn the short card.
Chapter 9
Anna frantically bandaged the Ranger, trying to slow the bleeding as the others built a travois to pull him home.
“Don’t you die on me, Wynn. Don’t you dare die on me.”
He didn’t respond.
Angry, she continued. “I don’t care if my voice irritates you. You’re not going to die. Do you hear me? You’re not going to die.”
Blood soaked the strips of cotton that had once been her underskirt. She pulled the bandage tighter, hoping to keep the blood from flowing out the hole in his back. When the men came to lift him onto the travois, she followed a step behind, giving unneeded orders for them to be careful.
Once they were moving, Sergeant Cunningham ordered one of his men to ride ahead with her and Clark. With luck they could be back in camp by dawn.
She didn’t want to leave her Ranger, but Anna saw the logic. She hadn’t sat a horse since her days as an army nurse, but she hadn’t forgotten how to ride hard, and Clark, despite his wound, rode as easy as he walked. McCord’s wound was too deep to risk traveling fast, and Clark’s arm still needed proper care or the infection could kill him. The practical side of her she’d always depended on overruled her heart.
Clark signaled that he was ready and they were off. They rode fast across flat land, with only the moon for light, and reached the camp at first light. Anna swore half the garrison turned out to help.
While she cleaned up, three men washed a few layers of dirt off Clark. Another lit a fire in the examining room and spread out a buffalo hide on the table for the Ranger.
Anna doctored and bandaged Clark’s arm with the roomful of men watching. They groaned with the kid, like midwives at their first birthing. Anna grinned at Clark, guessing he was complaining more than necessary just to hear the echo.
As she wrapped the wound, one of the men who’d ridden with Cunningham asked Clark, “How’d you shoot that one hiding in the shadows without your firing arm?”
Clark thought for a moment, then started slowly into a story he knew he’d tell more than once. “When I heard the shot coming out of the night, I grabbed a rifle lying in the dust. The bandit, who’d been riding behind us all day yelling obscenities, must have dropped it when he was knocked out of the saddle. I raised it toward where I’d seen the flash of fire. It was so black I couldn’t see anything but his eyes. I just shot between them.”
“With your left hand?”
“My father always said, ‘You got two, might as well learn to shoot with them both.’” Clark smiled. “I didn’t want to mention that to the outlaws earlier. Thought they might decide to blast away at my left arm as well.”
Anna smiled, doubting any of the men would call Clark a boy again. He had a wound he’d heal from and a story he might live to tell his grandchildren. He’d not only killed an outlaw, he’d saved other lives. If he hadn’t fired when he did, the outlaw would have picked them off one by one.
Everyone fell silent as Sergeant Cunningham and one of his men arrived with the Ranger. There would be no laughter, no telling of stories now. A Texas Ranger was down.
They placed him on the buffalo hide, facedown. He didn’t make a sound. Then the men stepped back and watched as Anna cut off his shirt with shaking hands. Blood seemed to be everywhere.
Cunningham and one of the others she didn’t know stepped up to help. Both took orders from her as if she were a general. They could make him comfortable, clean him up a little, but then it would be up to her.
When the Ranger’s star hit the floor, everyone froze.
Anna took a step and picked it up. She shoved it into her apron pocket. “I’ll keep this safe for McCord until he needs it again.”
No one believed he ever would, but they all nodded as if agreeing that she should be the one to keep it safe.
When Anna had the wound cleaned, Cunningham seemed to think it was time for the audience to leave. He ordered everyone out except Clark, who’d fallen asleep in the corner.
Anna set to work, doing what she knew best. Years of working under all kinds of conditions kept her hands steady. She’d done her job when cannon fire still filled the air, when it was so cold that bloody bandages froze on the wounds, when sleep was a luxury she couldn’t afford. She could do what had to be done now.
“Listen to me,” she whispered to McCord as she worked. “You’re going to live. You’re going to come back. I don’t care if you like my accent or not, you’ve got to hear me. You’ve got to come back to me.”
Sergeant Cunningham returned with whiskey he claimed was for McCord when he woke up. Anna hardly noticed the sergeant moving around the room trying to find a comfortable spot. She talked only to Wynn as she worked, telling him everything she was doing and what kind of scar he’d have when she was finished. Over and over, she said, “You’re going to make it through this. Hang in there. You’re going to be good as new once you heal.”
Finally, when she leaned back to rest her back a moment, the sergeant placed his hand on her shoulder. “He’ll come back to you, Anna.” He barked out a laugh. “Hell, if a fine woman like you ordered me to, I’d come back from hell itself, and I reckon McCord feels the same way.”
An hour passed. Cunningham began sampling the whiskey. Clark slept on a cot in the corner, snoring away. Anna worked, with memories of a hundred hospital camps after a hundred battles floating in her mind. All of the horror she’d worked through, all the exhaustion, all of the skills she’d learned, all boiled down to this day, this time, this man.
If she could save him, all the years would be worth it.
“I’m never giving up on you, Wynn, so you might as well decide to live because I’m not letting you die,” she whispered. “I hear Rangers are made of iron. Well, you’d better be. You’re going to come out of this. Hear me good.”
Finally she finished and wrapped the wound where a bullet had dug its way across Wynn’s back. He’d lost so much blood she was surprised he was still breathing, but she could feel the slow rise and fall of his chest and the warmth of his skin against her touch.
Exhausted, she pulled a stool beside the table and leaned her face near his. “You’re going to be all right, soldier. Hang on. I’m not going to let you die.” Her fingers dug into his hair and made a fist. “I’m expecting you to come knocking on my door one day, and when you do you might as well plan on staying because I don’t think I can let you go.”
She fell asleep in the middle of a sentence, with McCord’s shallow breath brushing her cheek.
In what seemed like minutes, someone woke her to tell her breakfast was ready. It took her a minute to realize that twenty-four hours had passed since they’d brought McCord in.
Anna left her meal untouched as she walked around Wynn, checking the wound, feeling his skin for fever. Wishing he’d open his eyes.
Finally, at Cunningham’s insistence, she ate a few bites and drank a cup of tea. Clark ate everything in sight. Men took over the sergeant’s watch by the door so he could get some sleep, and the day passed in silence.
Lieutenant Dodson tapped on the open door to the office just before dark. He waited until she nodded for him to enter, then removed his hat. She had no doubt he’d heard about what had happened, probably including small details like how she’d stabbed one of the outlaws with her scissors when he’d tried to tie her hands after she’d pulled free. Hopefully Clark had left out the ways the outlaw called Luther had threatened to rape her before they killed her. The words he’d used still made her cheeks burn.
Pushing aside the memory, she stared at the pale officer her brother had said couldn’t afford to be too picky in finding a wife. That dinner her first night in camp seemed more
like a hundred years ago rather than just a week.
Lieutenant Dodson began talking as if giving a speech. Anna barely followed along. The man liked to hear his own voice.
Anna didn’t say much. Dodson had been politely cold to her both times they’d met and had obviously seen her only as a possible solution to his problem. Now he seemed to look at her quite differently. He even told her he had always admired tall women who could carry themselves well. It appeared, since she’d survived a kidnapping, her value had gone up in his eyes.
The change in the lieutenant bothered Anna far more than his flattery did. She was glad when the sergeant showed up for his nightly guard duty before Dodson lied and said that she was pretty. Anna had always known she was simply plain.
She didn’t want to hear words she knew weren’t sincere; she wanted to see the way a man felt in his face, and read the truth of his compliments in a touch.
All in all, she’d been lucky: two men in her life had been blind enough to see her as beautiful. One had been young and in love with love. The other lay on the table before her. She had no doubt, despite their shortsightedness, that both men had believed every word they said.
The lieutenant invited her to dine with him and Anna declined. She didn’t even give a reason. She just said, “No, thank you.”
The moment he’d gone, Cunningham closed the door. “Anna,” he began in his slow, polite way that hinted they’d been friends for years and not days. “You need to get some sleep. I’ll stay awake tonight and if McCord so much as twitches, I’ll yell out for you. With the tent so close you’ll probably hear him anyway.”
Anna shook her head. “I’d like to have a proper bath and a clean change of clothes, but after that, I’ll be back.”
Cunningham looked like he thought it would be a waste of time to argue.
Chapter 10
McCord felt his body moving through layers of muddy water, floating slowly to the surface. He forced himself to take a deep breath and swore he smelled buffalo. He hated buffalo. Orneriest creatures God ever made. The only thing worse than having them roam over the plains, eating every blade of grass for miles, was seeing the thousands of carcasses rotting after the hunters shot them.
He tried to swallow, but couldn’t. His mouth felt like it was packed with sand.
Opening one eye, he noticed he was lying on what looked like a buffalo hide, and just beyond that was a mass of midnight hair. “Anna,” he whispered.
She raised her head and looked at him with eyes heavy with sleep. Her mouth opened slightly in surprise. “Wynn,” she whispered, as if she’d just been dreaming of him.
She looked delicious. He moved to kiss her and felt the stab of a dozen knives in his back.
“Don’t move,” she ordered, her hand on his shoulder.
Memories came back with the pain. The feel of her beneath him a moment before fire crossed his back. Floating in darkness, unable to open his eyes. The sound of her voice constantly talking to him, pulling him closer to shore, not letting him sink away from the pain . . . away from life.
He closed his eyes and tried to think. Maybe he had died. It would be just his luck that hell would be full of Yankees and they’d all be talking.
He opened one eye again. No. He was alive and Anna was sitting beside him. He caught her fingers when she touched his hand, gripping tight, needing to know that she was real. Almost losing her had tortured his mind for days, and when he’d watched her fall off the horse he swore his heart stopped until he saw her rolling on the ground.
The fingers of her free hand brushed through his hair. “You’re going to be all right, Wynn. Just rest. You’ve lost a lot of blood. Sleep now.”
He smiled and closed his eyes, thinking of how he liked the way she said his first name. He hadn’t heard a woman say his name in years.
When he woke again, morning shone through the windows, but the face in front of him was Dirk Cunningham’s. The sergeant looked tired, but a smile spread from ear to ear.
“’Morning,” the sergeant said. “You look terrible.”
McCord groaned. “Where’s Anna?”
Cunningham laughed. “She’ll be back. I’m not surprised that my face wasn’t the one you wanted to wake up to, but you could at least act like you’re glad to see me. Anna said if you wake I’m to roll you over like you was a newborn and prop you up.”
McCord swore as Dirk lifted his shoulders off the buffalo hide.
“Stop your complaining. I ain’t never said I was a nurse.”
“That’s an understatement,” McCord managed as soon as the pain subsided enough for him to breathe. “Where is Anna?” Somewhere in his dreams he’d thought he heard someone ask her to dinner.
“She went to tell the cook how to make broth for you. He sent some over that Clark and me thought was fine, but she said it wasn’t near thick enough.” Cunningham shook his head. “That woman’s been giving more orders than the captain and, unlike the orders we usually get from him, every man on the place does what she asks.”
McCord wasn’t surprised. She’d ordered him to come back from the dead, and he’d done so for fear she’d follow him down and spend eternity complaining that he didn’t listen.
“I swear,” Cunningham mumbled. “I have a hard time believing that woman don’t fight for slavery. She’s a natural master.”
They both laughed. They’d never had slaves or believed in owning slaves. Like most Texans, they’d fought for Texas rights and it had cost both dearly. If either had anyone close to them they wouldn’t be doing such a dangerous job. McCord had been alone so long he barely remembered how it felt to have family. The war had left him with nothing but land that had gone wild in the years he’d been gone, and no one who cared.
McCord forced down the pain in his back and his heart. “How long have I been out?”
“Three days, and she’s barely left your side.”
“I know,” he answered. Every time he’d come close to waking, he’d known she was beside him.
Cunningham offered him whiskey, but he declined.
“Water,” he said.
The sergeant frowned. “I don’t know about that. With all the holes in you, you’re liable to spring a leak.” He poured a cup of water and held it while McCord drank.
When he finished he asked, “What happened after . . .”
Cunningham knew what he wanted to know. “A dozen of the boys went back for the bodies. Both the men who kidnapped Clark and Anna were dead. The gambler’s body and the man on watch, who Clark shot, were easy to recognize, but the man in black is a mystery. We brought the bodies back to the camp, but no one seems to be able to identify him. He could have been Thorn, who headed up the gang. From what I’ve heard about the man, he might have come alone, thinking he’d have time to torture Anna before the gambler killed her.”
Anna entered, ending the conversation. She smiled when she saw McCord propped up.
The sergeant stood away from the table and showed the patient off. “I did what you said. I turned him over. He may look like trampled death, but he’s well enough to complain about my nursing skills.”
“She can see that,” McCord grumbled. “Mind getting me a shirt from my pack in the barracks?”
Cunningham frowned. He didn’t seem to like the idea of leaving. “Oh, all right, but she’s been looking at that hairy chest of yours for days.”
“And take your time,” McCord said to Cunningham’s back.
The sergeant nodded as he moved to the door. “I should have known you’d wake up meaner than a wet snake. You got no gratitude in your bones, McCord. If it weren’t for knowing you’d do the same for me, I’d have left your bloody body out there in the middle of nowhere.” He closed the door, still complaining.
Anna’s eyebrows pushed together. “Aren’t you going to thank him?” She set the soup beside his bed.
“He knows I’m grateful and he’s right—I would do the same for him.”
“It never hurts to say the words
, Wynn.” She pulled a chair beside his bed and picked up the spoon as if she thought he’d let her feed him.
McCord watched her, thinking how proper she looked. “Is that why you kept talking to me when I was near death, Anna? You thought there were words that needed saying?”
“I guess.” She didn’t look up at him.
“I don’t know if I heard everything, but I remember you telling me over and over to stay.” He took a drink of water and waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, he added, “You commanded me to come back, not just from death, but to you.”
She set the spoon down and laced her fingers, but still did not look up.
He saw the red burning across her cheeks, but he didn’t stop. “You said when I came back to you it would be to stay. You told me I belonged with you.” He grinned. “I think I even remember you yelling at me one night about how I was your man and I couldn’t die unless you said it was all right.” He laughed.
His Anna was a strong woman who’d never hesitated to tell him what she thought, but she remained silent now. Maybe she’d never said those words before. Maybe she had thought he was too far gone to have heard. He didn’t care. She’d said them and that was all that mattered to him.
“Give me your hand, Anna.”
“Why?” She finally met his gaze.
“I want to touch you.” When she laid her hand in his, he tugged her toward him.
“You’re still very near death.” She tried to pull away.
He grinned. “I’m also very near heaven. If touching you kills me, I can think of no better way to die. Unbutton a few buttons on that very proper dress of yours, darlin’. I’ve been thinking of how soft you feel and how it might taste to kiss my way down your throat again.”
“I will not, Wynn McCord!” She twisted free and opened the pot of broth. “I can’t believe you’d even ask such a thing.”
