High Country Bride

by Linda Lael Miller

  Phoebe Anne nodded a little. “I’ll keep a plate warm for you, Doc.” She turned her steady if somewhat haunted gaze toward Emmeline. “What about you, Emmeline?” she asked.“You’d best have something.”

  “In a little while,” Emmeline agreed. She didn’t have the slightest appetite, but she knew she had to keep up her strength, if only to be ready for the next crisis. It seemed to her that life on the Triple M was one calamity after another.

  Up in the spare bedroom, a few minutes later, Doc Boylen began unpacking equipment from his bag. He brought out a bottle of ether, a mask of some sort, and a variety of surgical instruments.

  Emmeline swayed, just looking at them.

  “Buck up,” ordered the doctor; apparently, he’d seen her reaction out of the corner of his eye. “I’ll need your help. Concepcion is ready to collapse, and Angus oughtn’t to be under this kind of strain.” He paused to peer at both of them over the rims of his glasses. “Contrary to what he’d have the rest of us believe, Angus McKettrick is not made of steel.”

  Emmeline swallowed a throatful of protests that she couldn’t possibly assist in an operation, and stiffened her spine. Whether she liked it or not, this was the lot that had fallen to her. Concepcid Angus had been watching over Mr. Cavanagh for several hours; indeed, they might well have kept him alive thus far, but for the time being they’d given all they could. It was her turn.

  Reluctantly, they left the room, and Emmeline heard their quiet voices as they went downstairs.

  “Just tell me what you want me to do,” she said.

  The doctor looked up from the bandages he’d been peeling away.

  “Go and scrub your hands. We’re going to put this leg back together.”

  Knees trembling, Emmeline nodded and went to the kitchen, where she began washing up. Angus and Concepcion were there, drinking coffee Phoebe Anne had made for them, watching numbly as she set the table to serve a light supper.

  “You don’t have to do this, Emmeline,” Angus said.

  She turned from the sink, drying her hands on a clean towel. They looked as if they’d been through a war, the two of them, Concepcion dazed, her dress bloodied, Angus wan and pale.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, but she couldn’t help glancing toward the darkened windows when she heard horses passing by, moving in the direction of the barn and the bunkhouse. Rafe was back, then. How she yearned to see him, if only for a moment. A look, a word, would give her the strength she needed so badly to meet this new challenge.

  “Emmeline!” Dr. Boylen called, from upstairs. “What’s keeping you? We need to get started in here!”

  Emmeline drew a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and marched up the steps.

  Frank Boylen placed the masklike contraption over Mr. Cavanagh’s face. The patient happened to be semiconscious at the moment, and he was looking up at Emmeline with an unreadable expression in his eyes. Unreadable, that is, except for simple recognition. Holt Cavanagh definitely remembered her from Kansas City, and for whatever reason, he wanted her to know it.

  “This bottle contains ether,” the doctor went on, shoving it into Emmeline’s hand. “Drip it slowly onto the mask. Slowly. Give him too much, and it could be fatal.”

  Emmeline’s ears began to ring, and she had to stiffen her knees just to keep them from buckling, but she nodded. She did as Dr. Boylen showed her and, after a few minutes, Mr. Cavanagh closed his eyes.

  Dr. Boylen listened to the patient’s heart with his stethoscope, nodded to himself, and reached for his instruments, wiping each one with a cloth soaked in carbolic acid. Then he began to cut, mend and stitch. He pressed the bones back into place with his bare hands, and there was plenty of blood.

  Emmeline felt woozy several times during the long ordeal, but she concentrated on administering the ether. Drip, drip, drip.

  The doctor’s counsel echoed in her head: Slowly, slowly.

  Mr. Cavanagh must have been very tough indeed, because he lived through that operation. When it was over, Dr. Boylen had worked for more than four hours over the patient, pausing only to wipe sweat from his brow with a bunched table napkin, reassembling bone and sinew like the parts of a puzzle, disinfecting the wound, closing it with sutures, disinfecting it again. Toward the end, he’d shouted for someone to come and run an errand, and Rafe had stepped in, glancing at Emmeline, telling her with his eyes that he’d have taken her away from that awful scene if only he could.

  Frank Boylen sent him to cut the ends off a pair of shovel handles, and when he returned with them, the doctor cleansed them with carbolic acid, just as he had the scalpel and other instruments. He used the lengths of hardwood as splints, setting the leg, then binding them in place with long strips of cotton sheeting, the same material Concepcion had used to create bandages earlier.

  Emmeline was sitting in the kitchen, bloodstained and exhausted, when Rafe came to her, crouching beside her chair. She’d drawn it up close to the stove, cold to the marrow of her bones, sure that she would never feel warm again.

  Rafe took her hand, kissed it, even though it probably smelled of ether. “You did a fine job, Emmeline,” he said quietly.“Doc Boylen said so himself.”

  Emmeline turned her head, looked at her husband. She felt strangely dissociated from everything, as though she were wandering in a dream, unable to find her way out.“I was afraid it was you they were bringing back,” she said, almost whispering the words. “When I saw that wagon, I knew someone had been badly hurt, or even killed, and I was so afraid it was you.”

  He squeezed her hand.

  “When—when I saw him—I was glad,” she blurted, and clapped her hand to her mouth in a vain attempt to stifle a sob.“I was glad—”

  Rafe gathered her in his arms, buried his face in her hair. “Shhh,” he said. “You’re plumb worn out. Let’s get you upstairs to bed.”

  He stood then, and scooped her up in his arms like a child. He carried her to their room, where he helped her undress and get into her nightgown. Then he tucked her in and kissed her gently on the forehead. She was already drifting off to sleep when he put out the lamp and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Angus stood looking down at Cavanagh, asleep in the spare-room bed, his face awash in moonlight, and he knew what it was that had been nipping at the back of his brain ever since he’d first encountered the man, early that morning, out by the barn.

  “Holt,”he said, and dropped into the chair nearest to the bed, too overcome, for the moment, to stand. He buried his face in his hands for a long moment, remembering the little boy he’d left behind in Texas, his firstborn son. It had torn his heart out at the time, and he’d never gone so much as a day since without wishing there’d been another solution.

  Holt opened his eyes. “You,” he said. His voice was like a hasp striking rusty metal.

  Angus chuckled, even though he felt tears gathering in the back of his throat and behind his eyes, and had to squeeze the bridge of his nose hard, between thumb and forefinger, to keep them back. “Yup,” he said, when he could trust his voice.“You hurting?”

  “Everywhere,” Holt admitted. Then, in the grip of some sudden terror, he tried to sit up, groping wildly with one hand.

  Angus put his hands on the younger man’s shoulders and pressed him back onto the pillows. “Settle down, Son,” he said.“You’ve still got both your legs.”

  Holt let out a long breath. “For a moment there, I thought—”

  “You’ll have to take it easy for quite a while,” Angus told him. “In time, the doc figures you’ll be able to walk and ride, same as always. Might be a little hitch in your get-along, course.” He reached for the bottle Frank Boylen had given him, uncorked it, and poured a generous dose of the brown liquid inside into a serving spoon from Concepcion’s kitchen. “Here,” he said gruffly. “This’ll take the edge off, anyway.”

  Holt raised his head to take the laudanum and then lay still again, cursing under his breath.

  “
What brings you to Arizona Territory?” Angus asked, when a long time had passed, and he figured the dope was starting to work. Holt’s breathing had evened out a little; it seemed deeper, and less rapid.

  Holt turned his head to look at him. “I wanted to get a good look at you,” he said, straight out. But then, Angus would have figured any other answer for a bold-faced lie. “My old man. See if you were the polecat I always reckoned you to be.”

  Angus’s shoulders moved, and he laughed, but no sound came out.“Well,” he said, after quite a while,“what did you decide?”

  “I’m still considering the matter,” Holt said. His speech had slowed to a drawl, but he was making sense, anyway.

  Angus emitted a raw chuckle, close kin to a sob. He rested his elbows on his knees and steepled his fingers, waiting for Holt to go on, knowing what was coming, and dreading it, too, all of a piece.

  “I guess calling myself Cavanagh got to be a habit,” he said. He was drifting as the drug took hold, hardly able to keep his eyes open. Angus wished he had something to dull what he was feeling, but he reckoned it was his just deserts, this raw and ceaseless ache in the very center of his soul. “I left home when I was twenty-one,” he said, stumbling over a word or two in the process. “There was some trouble.”

  Angus gave him a sip of water from the glass on the bedside table. “Directly after you sent back that money I tried to give you, I reckon,” he said.

  “I didn’t want your damn money then,” Holt told him, “and I don’t want it now.”

  “Took you a long time to head this way,” Angus said gently.“What kept you?”

  “You left when I was a baby,” Holt reminded him, as if he needed reminding, his words thick and muddled. He struggled visibly to keep his eyes open and said his piece with slow and painful deliberation. “You ever look back, even once?”

  Angus’s voice was gruff. “Of course I did,” he said. “I was young, and when I lost your mother, I lost my mind, too. For a long time, I was just plain crazy.”

  “You’ve got three other sons,” Holt said. “You must have married again.”

  Angus nodded. He had a lot to apologize for where Holt was concerned, but he would not apologize for Georgia. Marrying her was the smartest thing he’d ever done.“She was a fine woman,” he said.

  Holt was rambling now, sort of groping his way from word to word. Angus figured listening was the least he could do, however painful it might turn out to be, so he leaned forwardsting his arms on his thighs, and took it all in.

  “I used to tell myself that one day, I’d find you, and cut your gizzard out. Time passed, though, and I had some luck. Wound up with land and a herd of my own. I decided to let you live.”

  Angus smiled a little, nodded.“Glad to hear it,” he said. “There’s been a time or two in my life when I would have welcomed being killed, though. Did they look after you, your mother’s people?”

  “They did the best they could,” Holt said, after a long time. “I learned to ride and shoot and work. God, yes, I learned to work.”

  Angus closed his eyes for a moment, overcome by sadness, by the loss of those years with his eldest son, years that could never be replaced or redeemed.

  It was the drug that made the boy say what he did next; Angus knew he’d deny it, once the stuff wore off. “I used to wonder what it would be like to have brothers,” he said. “To be part of a real family.”

  “I’m sorry,”Angus said. It was all he had to offer, under the circumstances.

  Holt didn’t answer, and for a few seconds, Angus was afraid he’d gone and died. He didn’t think he could have borne that. Then the young man mumbled something, and Angus knew he’d merely fallen asleep. Best thing for him.

  He sat back in the chair and kept his vigil, his hands folded in his lap, flipping through old memories grown musty in his mind, like daguerreotypes in a forgotten album. Georgia, delighting in their children, teaching them to walk and talk, read and write and figure. Sweet God, the two of them, he and Georgia, would have been glad to fetch Holt back home and raise him with his brothers; they’d talked about it a thousand times. There’d always been some reason to put off the trip—a hard winter, sick cattle, money running short.

  Angus sighed, thinking of his other three sons. He’d never gotten around to telling them about Holt when they were young, partly because he was ashamed of how he’d handled the whole matter and partly because he’d never wanted them to think he was going to ride out one day and leave them behind, too. It was enough that they’d lost their mother.

  Of course they were men now, and he could have told them, but somehow he’d never found the words. So he’d kept the secret, even though it nettled him like a burr. All this time, he’d kept it.

  He let out a long, despairing sigh, and started a little when he felt Concepcion’s hands come to rest on his shoulders. He hadn’t heard her come into the room.

  “You must sleep, Angus,” she said softly. “You’re exhausted.”

  “I reckon I’m afraid to close my eyes,” he replied. He glanced back at her, saw that she was wearing a nightgown and wrapper. Her lustrous black hair was plaited into a heavy, gleaming braid, resting over her shoulder and reaching nearly to her waist. Her eyes gleamed in the moonlight. “I’m afraid I’ll die if I do,” he said, “and go straight to hell for all my sins.”

  She squeezed his shoulder. “Nonsense,” she said, and though she was smiling, he could see tears in her eyes. “The devil wouldn’t have you. You’re too much trouble and far too cantankerous.”

  He chuckled, patted her hand. “I hope you’re right,” he said.

  “Come,” she said, urging him to stand. “I will sit with you until you sleep, and chase the devil away if he dares come near you.” There wasn’t much to Concepcion, she was such a little thing, but she could herd him around right well when she had a mind to, and that night was no exception. She led him out of the spare room and straight down the hall to his own.

  “What about the Doc? Did you find him a bed somewhere?” he asked.

  “He’s sleeping on the parlor sofa,” she replied.

  Fortunately, Jeb had turned in long ago, and so had Rafe and Emmeline. Angus didn’t want any scandals in his life at this late date, and it would have aroused comment, for sure, if anybody saw Concepcion go into his bedroom in the middle of the night. They were always careful when she came to his bed.

  She lit a lamp, after closing the door, and Angus sat on the edge of the mattress to yank off his boots. He felt as if he’d been dragged down the mountainside by those mules of his, and then stomped on for good measure.

  “Who is he, Angus? This Holt Cavanagh?” Concepcion asked, settling into the chair at his writing table. “There have been a lot of men hurt on this ranch, but you never sat with them half the night.”

  Angus tossed back the covers on his bed, stripped off his shirt, and shed his trousers. He never stood on ceremony with Concepcion—not when they were alone, anyway. They’d known each other too damn long for that.

  “I knew there was something familiar about that boy the moment I met him,” he said, stretching out. The older he got, the more his joints ached when he lay down at night; it was as if his damn bones spent the whole day rusting up, just to give him grief. “It was peculiar—I felt like I’d seen him someplace, but I couldn’t figure where. Just came to me a little while ago, while I was sitting there, watching over him.”

  A lot of women might have started in to prattling when he left off talking, but not Concepcion. She had the patience of a bird on a nest when it came to things that really mattered, and she waited.

  “I told you I was married once, and widowed, before I met Georgia,” he went on. “What I didn’t say was, we had a child together. A boy I called Holt, after her mother’s folks. I was young when my wife died, and sometimes the grief was so bad that I’d ride out into the countryside and just holler ’til I was too hoarse to keep it up. I commenced to drinkin’ more than I should have, too,
and I was itching to leave that place behind me. I guess I thought I could outrun the pain someway.

  “The boy’s aunt finally convinced me that I ought to leave the boy with her and her husband until I got myself straightened out. It didn’t have to be permanent, she told me. Just until I could give Holt a proper home and all.”

  Concepcion came to sit on the side of the bed when he stopped to recover for a moment. She took his big hand in her two small ones and kissed the knuckles.“But it was permanent,” she said softly.

  He nodded. “I was a long time getting myself headed in the right direction,” he said. “Holt’s aunt and uncle asked me to let them adopt him, and I agreed. It seemed like the best thing to do at the time, but I always regretted it. Georgia would have been glad to take my son in, and raise him like her own.”

  “Yes,” Concepcion said, smiling. “She would have. She s a wonderful woman, your Georgia.”

  “By the time we were married, and had the ranch turning a steady profit, it was too late. Holt was somebody else’s son by then.” He swallowed hard, searched Concepcion’s face for any trace of the condemnation he felt for himself, and saw only tenderness there, only warmth and compassion. “I don’t know much about what his life was like, but I believe it was a hard one.”

  “Oh, Angus,” Concepcion said softly, touching his face.

  “I should have gone back there, Concepcion. I should have made sure Holt was all right. Dammit, he’s my own flesh and blood.”

  She kissed his forehead, touched an index finger to his mouth. “You had every reason to believe he was safe,” she said, “and you were more than a thousand miles away, building a ranch, starting a new family. You couldn’t have traveled to Texas then without causing a lot of hardship for Mrs. McKettrick and the boys, as well as yourself.”

  He closed his eyes, sighed. She was balm to his spirit, this woman, simple and practical and sweet, and he began to let go, muscle by muscle, thought by thought, breath by breath, of all his burdens.