Fern

by Greenwood, Leigh

  Fern slipped her hand inside her slick and let her fingers close around the stock of her rifle. Just knowing she could protect herself made her feel better.

  She peered into the night, straining to see and hear, but she couldn't have heard a stampede above the roar of the wind. Her body remained tense, her muscles taut. She fingered the rifle stock nervously.

  She tried to think of what she could do to help Madison find who killed Troy. She tried to decide what she was going to do when she went back to the farm. She even tried to think about going to the party with Madison, but she couldn't think of anything except that someone was out here with her.

  The feeling was so strong she drew her rifle half way out of the scabbard

  As the empty minutes rolled by, nothing happened. The lightning became less frequent; the rain eased off, but the wind whipped about her with such ferocity she was conscious of little more than a nearly deafening roar in her ears. Even her horse wanted to find shelter in one of many dips in the prairie. Tomorrow morning Fern expected to see virtually every tree had been torn up by the roots and blown away.

  A bolt of lightning came to earth so close by she could feel the searing heat; a deafening crash of thunder frightened a scream out of her; a rider appeared in silhouette less than thirty yards ahead.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Fern immediately thought of the man who had tried to rape her. She told herself not even he would be out in this storm, but panic wrapped its tentacles securely around her.

  Instinctively, Fern pulled her horse to a halt and drew her rifle. A second bolt of lightning threw the figure into silhouette once more, and she fired. Then turning her horse, and started back across the prairie at a gallop.

  Common sense reasserted itself almost immediately. No one in his right mind raced through a storm like this. She couldn't see. Her horse would almost certainly fall. Even if she didn't kill herself, the animal would probably have to be destroyed.

  But as soon as her horse slowed to a trot, Fern's thoughts reverted to the man behind her.

  That could have been her father or any one of a dozen men who had a perfect right to be on this trail. Whoever it was, she had shot him. She must have. She never missed. She couldn't just leave him. She had been brought up to help people in trouble no matter who they might be.

  She turned back but left the trail for a path on lower ground. The runoff from the storm would soon make it a dangerous route, but she should have time to reach the rider unseen.

  The roar of the wind was so loud Fern couldn't hear if the man had fired his rifle to call for help. A flash of lightning illuminated the landscape.

  Nothing.

  The water rushing along the streambed was rapidly becoming a torrent. Even now it swirled around her horse's legs. Soon it would become treacherous. Trees, branches, and other debris would make it lethal.

  Another flash of lightning revealed a horse nearly a hundred yards away, the rider slumped in the saddle.

  The man she had shot!

  Feeling terribly guilty, Fern drove her horse up the sloping ground until she reached the trail. Yet as she drew near the man, her fear returned. He could be anyone. She wasn't safe just because he was wounded.

  Fern shook off her misgivings. She had shot him without provocation. He could be dying. She must help him. If there was danger, she had to risk it. She had never before let herself be ruled by fear. She didn't know what had happened to her tonight.

  She approached warily. Between the dark and her horse's skittishness, she couldn't make out the rider's features.

  "Are you hurt?" she called out as she drew close.

  "Of course I'm hurt, dammit," the man answered. "You put a bullet in my arm."

  It was Madison, and he was furious.

  Fern's heart beat wildly. The full impact of what she could have done made her so weak she feared she might faint. She gripped the pommel to steady herself, but it was several moments before the blurred scene stopped swimming before her eyes.

  She could have killed the man she loved. And she probably would have if she hadn't fired so quickly. And all because of blind, stupid fear.

  "You did say you were going to have my blood."

  "Are you bleeding a lot?" she asked.

  "I don't know. How much did you want, a cup? A pint?"

  "I'll take you to the house." They had to shout to be heard even though their faces were only inches apart.

  "I'm certain your father will be delighted to give me a matching bullet hole in my heart."

  She'd worry about her father later. Madison was hurt, and right now that was all that mattered.

  "I'll lead your horse."

  "No, you won't," Madison yelled back. "If I can't make it on my own, I'll stay here until I can."

  His anger and sarcasm made her feel better. Maybe she had hurt his pride more than she had hurt his arm.

  The roar of the wind hurt her ears. Both the horses were becoming difficult to control. She almost reached out for Buster's bridle when he tried to veer from the trail. Only knowing Madison would never forgive her enabled her to draw her hand back.

  "Is the wind always this loud?" Madison asked. "It sounds like a giant train coming up behind us."

  Fern hadn't been paying much attention to the wind. But now that she did, she heard the ominous timbre. Normal storms didn't sound like that. She had heard that sound before, but she couldn't remember when.

  "It's a tornado," Fern exclaimed, suddenly remembering the terrible sound from the summer she was eleven.

  "What?" Madison shouted.

  "A tornado," Fern screamed into the wind. "We've got to find a place to hide."

  They were too far away to reach the Connor place before the tornado struck.

  She wished she could see. The horses plunged almost out of control. She took hold of Buster's bridle and pulled as hard as she could to get him to follow her off the trail onto the lower ground that led to the stream.

  "We've got to find shelter," she shouted. The wind tore her words from her mouth, taking them past Madison and into the back void of the night.

  She could see nothing, but she could tell from the horses that what her ears were telling her was correct. The tornado was coming toward them. She just hoped they weren't in its path.

  If they were, nothing could save them.

  The rain was to her back. She peered into the night, trying to find a small gully she remembered playing in as a child. It lay between two trees near the stream, but she didn't know if she could find them in the dark.

  The barely perceptible shadows of the trees loomed against the black sky. Digging her heels into her mount's side, Fern drove the frightened horses forward.

  When they reached the trees, Fern dismounted and tugged and pulled the horses into the lee of the first tree. "Can you get down by yourself?" she shouted at Madison, but he slid from the saddle before the words left her mouth.

  She struggled against the wind and the horses to tie them securely to the tree.

  "Follow me," Fern shouted, as she took Madison's hand and started to lead him toward a gully which appeared as a dark shadow on the ground.

  Without warning, the roar approached a shriek and she heard a tree limb overhead crack. Before she could react, Madison threw his good arm around her, lifted her off her feet, and started running.

  They stumbled in the gully with Madison on top.

  Immediately Fern forgot the tornado, the splintering tree, the torrents of rain, the screaming horses. She couldn't think of anything except that night eight years ago when a man lay atop her, ripping off her clothes, clawing at her body.

  She fought Madison with all her strength. He was much bigger than she was; his weight nearly crushed her, but she fought to bunch her knees and push him away. All the while she screamed and clawed at him, hitting him with all her might. She was only dimly aware of the gut-wrenching cracking sound, the tree limb that fell over the gully and pinned them in place.

  "What's wrong w
ith you?" Madison shouted. "You trying to tear my arm off?"

  "Get off me!" she screamed.

  "I can't!" he shouted back, his mouth close to her ear. "My arm's caught under you."

  He couldn't get off her until he could get his arm free. He couldn't get his arm free until he moved the limb. He couldn't move the limb until he could move off Fern. They were trapped.

  Fighting against the suffocating wall of terror, Fern tried to tell herself she was with Madison, that he wasn't going to rape her. But nothing could loosen the grip of the unreasoning panic that held her firmly in its grasp.

  They heard the horses scream, then the world seemed to be obliterated by a whirling, twisting, screaming wind storm which all but sucked the breath out of her lungs.

  Seconds later it was gone. Even the rain seemed to be slacking off.

  "Are you all right?" Madison shouted.

  The weight of the limb had pushed his face into her left shoulder. She could hardly understand his words.

  "Can you get off me?" she shouted back. She felt dangerously close to the edge of madness. Anything could cause her to slip over. She clutched her hands at her side, trying to keep from screaming the screams inside her head, trying to drive away the memory of another man.

  "You're going to have to lift up so I can free my arm," Madison said.

  Exerting all her strength, Fern managed to lift her body enough for Madison to pull his good arm from under her. He rolled off to one side, and some semblance of sanity returned. Taking several deep breaths, she tried to calm her racing heart.

  Madison tried to lift the limb, but failed.

  "I can't lift it with just one arm," he said.

  They moved the limb together. The effort left her weak and panting, but the desperate need to be free of the gully, of being so closely confined with Madison, drove her to her feet. The rush of air as she stood up helped restore her sense of reality.

  She was stunned to see that a twisted stump was all that remained of one tree. Everything else had been torn away and hurled though the sky. Turning to look behind her, Fern could hardly believe her eyes. The second tree stood as it always had, its limbs in tact, their horses still tethered to its trunk.

  "Good God!" Madison exclaimed, gaping at the mangled stump. "I'd heard about tornados, but I didn't believed half of it until now." He climbed from the gully and walked over to inspect the torn and twisted stump. "Do you get these often?"

  "No. It's been so long I'd forgotten the sound. I don't think I ever will again."

  She looked at him standing there, so big, so strong, so protective even with his injured arm. How could she possibly think he would hurt her? He had ridden into the teeth of a storm to find her.

  But when she remembered the weight of his body on top of her, the panic threatened to overwhelm her once again. She would never be free of it.

  "Let's get you to the house and see about your arm," she called to Madison and started toward her horse.

  The rain slacked off and the sky started to clear, but they didn't talk much. She didn't have the energy. The events of the evening had left her feeling weak and drained.

  * * * * *

  A sense of foreboding filled Fern before she noticed anything wrong. They should be approaching the house, but the prairie lay still and empty. Only when they came closer did she realize the posts she saw were not fence posts. They were all that remained of the barn. With a strangled cry she dug her heels into her horse's flanks.

  Madison galloped after her.

  The house had vanished, too. Even the floor boards. It was almost as though the farm had never existed. The pig pen, the chicken coop, everything. One chicken staggered about, dazed. The tornado had chewed a clean path through the sparse growth of trees and bushes. Pieces of dismembered vegetation lay everywhere.

  Madison could only guess at the sense of desolation she must feel at seeing everything she and her father had worked for, everything she associated with her home, simply vanish as if it had never existed. He could understand the feeling of being cast adrift in a world that suddenly seemed cruel, strange, and very frightening.

  He could understand because it had happened to him.

  He put his arm around her. Her body remained stiff, immobile. He didn't know what to say. There was nothing he could say that would make any difference. He wondered where her father had taken shelter. As far as he could see, the ground was flat, without dips or folds.

  There was no place to hide.

  "I've got to find Papa."

  "I'm sure he left long before the tornado reached here," Madison said. "Maybe he's with the animals."

  But he didn't believe it. He remembered how hard it had been to control their horses. He didn't see how Sproull could have driven his livestock to safety alone. He'd have had enough trouble taking care of himself.

  "Let's go back to town," Madison said. "There's nothing you can do here."

  "I've got to find Papa," Fern repeated

  "He must be miles away by now," Madison said. "We'll never find him in the dark."

  When he tried to pull her away, she shrugged his arm off her shoulder.

  "He's not here," Madison said fifteen minutes later when they still had found no sign of Baker Sproull.

  "He wouldn't leave," Fern insisted, looking at Madison for the first time since they had reached what was left of the farm. "This farm was the most important thing in his life."

  Madison realized Fern was in shock. She had lost her hat, and her hair hung down in a wet tangle over her shoulders. She hardly knew what she was doing. But it was her eyes that unnerved him. They were wide open, staring, as though she had lost touch with the world.

  "Your arm," she said, some semblance of life returning to her eyes. "I'd forgotten about it."

  "I hadn't," Madison said with a trace of a smile.

  "I promised to bandage it when . . . " Her voice trailed off.

  "It can wait," Madison said. "We ought to be going. You're drenched to the skin. You'll be lucky if you haven't cracked some more ribs."

  "It's gone. Everything. Just like that."

  Madison wanted to say something, but what do you say to a woman who has lost her home, who may have lost her father? He had lost both, but Fern hadn't hated her father or longed to escape her home. For him, relief had blunted the pain.

  She only had the pain.

  "Your father can rebuild."

  "It makes everything seem so temporary," Fern said, "so futile."

  "Let's go. You need to get into bed."

  Fern made a brave effort to smile. Her failure tore at his heart.

  "Here you are trying to get me to take care of myself, and you're the one who's wounded. You must think I'm an awful fool. I didn't mean to shoot you, but you frightened me coming out of the dark like that."

  "You've got to get some street lights out here," Madison said. "A couple of good gas lanterns would work wonders. You could use a couple of street signs as well. I'm surprised people ever manage to find their way around this prairie."

  He was talking nonsense, but it made him feel better to see a weak smile. When he brought her horse, she mounted up. They rode out of the yard without looking back.

  "I've got to find somewhere to stay," she said, half to herself.

  "I'm sure Mrs. Abbott will let you stay on until your father decides what to do."

  "But your family has hired the house. I feel like I'm intruding."

  "Rose enjoys your company. George has been gone an awful lot. I know she'll be glad when Jeff gets back from Denver."

  "I really think I ought to stay somewhere else."

  Madison listened as she cataloged the houses where she might board and then enumerate the reasons why each would be unsatisfactory. Certain she would soon talk herself into remaining with Mrs. Abbott, he turned his thoughts to her dilemma.

  He had no idea what they would do about the farm -- her father would make that decision -- but he wasn't going to wait on Baker Sproull. The ma
n had never concerned himself with Fern, and Madison didn't expect him to start now.

  But he couldn't interfere without a good reason.

  And he wasn't sure he had one, at least not a sufficient one. Interfering in peoples lives implied a willingness, no, a desire, to assume responsibility for them. He felt quite strongly about Fern now. He liked her, a lot, but he didn't know exactly what he wanted to do about it.

  He was definitely angry at the way everybody treated her. She deserved more, and he was going to see that--

  A gasp and a strangled cry brought him plummeting back into the present.

  Fern slid from her horse and ran a short way into a cornfield flattened by the winds. When Madison reached her side, he found her kneeling over her father's body. He could see no wounds, but Sproull's body lay at such odd angles with itself Madison was certain most of his bones were broken. He must have been sucked up by the wind and flung a long distance.

  "I knew he wouldn't leave the farm. It was all he ever cared about."

  Fern touched him in little ways, brushing wet hair out of his eyes, buttoning his shirt, wiping mud off his cheek, but she didn't straighten his limbs. It was as though she couldn't face the final proof he was dead.

  "He made Mama leave her family to come out here. He made her have another baby so he would have a son to leave this place to. Everything had to be sacrificed for this place. Even me."

  Madison couldn't think of anything that would ease the hurt she must be feeling, the pain of losing her father, the feeling of being lost, homeless, and alone. He had endured the same things, so why didn't he know what to say?

  Because his own wounds weren't healed.

  George was right. He wasn't ready to live life, to build, to sow and reap.

  He couldn't name his son after his father.

  Madison took Fern by the shoulders and tried to lift her, but she wouldn't stand, just continued bending over her father's body. He would have felt better if she'd broken into hysterical weeping, but she remained dry-eyed.

  Taking her hand with his good arm, Madison pulled her to her feet. Ignoring the pain of his wound, he drew her closer. She came to him, her back to him, her eyes never leaving her father's body, letting him put his arm around her, accepting his warmth and comfort.