A Cowboy at Heart

by Lori Copeland

  “You idiot!” The muted shout seemed to come from far away. “You shot him in the back.”

  “Come on, let’s git out of here!”

  A roar formed in Jesse’s ears, and the volume increased until he was aware of nothing else. A violent thunderstorm raged inside. He had one coherent thought before he lost consciousness.

  Maummi Switzer is going to be mad as a wet barn cat that I missed her fine supper.

  When he came to the pain was no longer confined to his back but burned in his chest and radiated throughout his whole body. Grass ground into his left cheek and the side of his head felt as though he’d been hit with a two-by-four. He took a cautious breath, but pain blazed through his lungs and he quickly let it out. Breathe shallow.

  He cracked open an eye. It was hard to tell how long he’d lain there on the ground. The sun was still a ways above the horizon, but the rays had darkened toward orange. Littlefield’s bandits were nowhere around. They’d left him for dead, the lily-livered skunks.

  He hurt so bad they might be right. He might be dying.

  Well, Lord. Right about now’s when I’m grateful for all those sermons I’ve heard Colin preach over the past year. I never did get around to being baptized, but You remember that night out in the corn field, don’t You? I prayed the prayer Colin talked about, and he said You never let that prayer go unanswered. So if it’s time to leave this world behind, You’re saving a place for me up there, right?

  Jesse’s question was answered with a deepening of the quiet that surrounded him. No voice, no singing angels or heavenly music, but somehow the silence contained a measure of comfort, as if a cool, gentle hand had reached past the burning in his chest. The next breath came a bit easier, and he closed his eyes.

  Then a shadow came over him, and he was aware of movement near his head, the rustling sound of something moving in the grass nearby. A whicker sounded in his left ear, and then a silken nose nudged his cheek. Jesse found himself looking into Rex’s liquid brown eye.

  “Hey, pal.” The words sounded weak and pitiful in his ears, but they were the best he could manage, seeing how he couldn’t get a decent breath. “You’re watching over me, aren’t you? Good boy. That’s another one I owe you.”

  His eyelids felt heavy, so heavy. What he needed was sleep. He let them close.

  Rex nudged him again, this time more firmly.

  “Sorry, boy. I can’t climb up on your back. This isn’t like the other times. I’m shot, not drunk.”

  Another nudge, this time accompanied by the stamp of an iron-shod equine hoof dangerously near his head. Jesse pried his eyes open, irritated. Stubborn horse. Why couldn’t he let a man die in peace? Rex’s huge head hovered over him. He whickered again and bathed Jesse’s face in a spray of horse spit.

  “Hey!” Jesse tried to move his head away, but it weighed a ton and the burning in his chest threatened to snatch the breath out of his lungs. “I can’t get up, I tell you.”

  More rustling and the sun suddenly shone more brightly on his face. Rex had been blocking the sun’s rays, but he had moved. Instead of standing over him, the horse was easing himself down onto the ground.

  “What are you doing, you crazy horse? You pick now to take a nap?”

  Once down on the ground, Rex rolled onto his side, his back toward Jesse, legs spread out in the opposite direction. He lifted his head as far as he could and looked over his shoulder, as though to say What are you waiting for?

  “Well, I’ll be…” Jesse would have shaken his head in amazement if it hadn’t hurt so badly. The horse had actually laid down to make it easy on him to climb into the saddle. Instinct told him his master was hurt, and he wasn’t going to stand around and watch him die.

  Jesse had slowly become aware of a large sticky puddle beneath him that didn’t come from water. The roar in his ears was getting louder by the second, and every time he opened his eye the world careened crazily around him. If he was any judge, he wouldn’t make it more than an hour or two. The exertion of getting himself into the saddle, even with Rex lying beside him, might pump more blood out of him than he could live without.

  But he owed a lot to that horse. He hated to let him down now.

  Rex snorted impatiently, and tossed his head upward.

  “All right, all right. But this might take a minute. Hold your horses.”

  He chuckled at the joke and then drew in a ragged breath. With considerable effort, he lifted his head off the grass. Pain exploded inside, from where he couldn’t tell. Everything hurt. Setting his teeth together against a wave of nausea, he edged his body forward, shifting his weight onto his left arm. Agony ripped through his torso, and he couldn’t muffle a yell. He intended it to be a bellow, but with no more breath than he had, the sound came out more like a kitten’s mewl.

  Rex whickered encouragement.

  “Okay, okay, okay. We can do this.”

  Inch by agonizing inch, Jesse edged himself toward his horse. It seemed to take hours to drag his body across the two-foot distance separating them, but at last he found himself nearly flush against the saddle. He rested his head on Rex’s neck a moment, his shallow breath coming far too fast.

  “Give me a minute.” His words rasped, but somehow the horse seemed to know what he said. Rex lay quietly on his side, his only movement a twitching muscle in his shoulder.

  Finally, Jesse managed to lift his leg and ease it over the horse’s barrel. Somewhere over there was a stirrup, and he needed to find it to help keep himself in place. The only problem was that numbness seemed to be creeping down his right arm toward his hand. He had no idea what that meant, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t a good sign. Hurry…had to hurry…Feeling around the horse’s side with his leg, he found the flank cinch. Snug, but not too tight. By wiggling his foot he managed to wedge his boot toe inside the strap. Good. With his left hand he grasped the saddle horn, and buried his fingers in Rex’s mane with the right. He hugged his body close to the saddle and steeled his jaw.

  “Okay, boy. Let’s give it a go.”

  Equine muscles tensed beneath him, and then the world shifted. Agony erupted in his body and a thick fog descended on his brain. In some distant part of his mind he was aware that Rex lurched to his feet quickly and somehow, miraculously, he managed to keep his grip. The horse danced sideways a few steps, giving a couple of torturous twists that resulted in Jesse’s weight being more evenly distributed. Then he started to walk.

  “Good boy,” Jesse managed to whisper. “If I make it, I owe you a great big bag of oats and honey.”

  Rex answered with a soft whinny.

  “Best poker game I ever played.” The words left his lips in the moment before the world faded around him.

  FOUR

  Jonas stood at the back corner of his barn, scanning the wire that sliced his land in two. He searched the length of the hateful boundary, looking for a sign of movement. Where was Jesse? He’d been gone more than an hour, and there was no sign of his return. Beside him, Mader’s breath snorted through her nose like an irritated bull.

  “My good meal, growing cold on the table. And where is he? Found himself a saloon, no doubt, and joined in the wild ufrooish of the Englisch.” Her mouth formed a tight, crooked line. Like all good Amish women, Mader did not approve of the rowdy, riotous behavior of Englisch cowboys.

  Though his insides had begun to tighten into worried knots, Jonas answered in a calm, even mildly reproving tone. “A saloon in Apple Grove?”

  “Long gone from Apple Grove is he.” Mader jerked her head in a nod, as if the statement was an accepted fact. “Mark my words. We won’t see him again for days.” If he didn’t know his mother so well, Jonas might have missed the hint of worry in the gaze that scoured the fence line. “Come, Jonas, before the meal is unfit to eat.”

  She turned away, wiping her hands on her apron in a gesture of dismissal. He allowed a quiet sigh. Perhaps she was right. Jesse had ever been an unpredictable man, impulsive and given to capricious behav
ior. The past year he’d seemed to settle down under the steady guidance of Emma’s Luke, but Luke wasn’t here, was he?

  He started to turn away when he spied movement at the crest of a gentle hill. A horse, not running but walking slowly toward him. Was that Rex?

  “Mader, look.”

  She turned, and followed his gaze.

  Yes, that horse looked like Rex, but where was Jesse? No rider sat in the saddle. Unless…Jonas shielded his eyes against the setting sun. Was that a man slumped on the horse’s back?

  Mader threw her hand up to cover her mouth. Without a word, they took off across the field. Jonas held his hat on his head and broke into a run, leaving his mother to hurry after him. The horse seemed to sense that help was near, and picked up its pace a small measure. They met halfway around the fence, and the horse came to a halt.

  Yes, it was Jesse, and Jonas spied the evidence that he’d been hurt. Dark, sticky blood matted the left side of his head and covered his back, saturating his shirt and dripping down his side to stain Rex’s mane. The source was immediately apparent, a bullet hole in his back. Alarm blossomed in Jonas. Was he alive? Could a man live after losing that much blood?

  Mader arrived at his side, her breath coming in heaves. She took in the scene in an instant, her expression grave. With one gnarled hand she reached for the side of Jesse’s neck.

  “Warm,” she told Jonas without taking her gaze off of the wounded man. “He lives.”

  As if to prove her words, Jesse gave a low, incoherent moan.

  Mader rose on her toes in an attempt to inspect his back, but she was not tall enough. “We must get him home. Quickly, before he…”

  Her lips clamped shut, but the unspoken words rang in Jonas’s mind. Before he dies.

  Gott help him! It is on my account he is shot.

  Guilt nearly dissolved his knees beneath him. Why had Jesse gone alone to speak to Mr. Littlefield tonight? He was impulsive, as Jonas had just been thinking. If only he’d known, Jonas would never have allowed another man to walk into danger because of him. On him lay as much guilt as the one who had held the gun.

  But he had not pulled a trigger.

  The anger that Jonas nearly buried while feeding his livestock resurfaced with full force. He turned a glare toward the horizon, to whatever lay at the end of the awful fence. What sort of man would shoot another, and in the back? Fury churned in his stomach. The curse of Abel’s brother Cain lay on mankind, and even today resurfaced in the actions of evil men. If he could but find this Littlefield man—

  No! I must not forget the words of the Confession. I may not return evil for evil.

  His hands tightened into fists. Gott, help me. I am not able to keep this command alone.

  Mader could not guess the struggle that raged within him as she moved to take the horse’s reins and tugged toward the house. Rex obeyed, following behind the elderly woman like an obedient puppy.

  “Home we will take him,” she said without turning her head. “Together we will get him inside, and then you must go for help.”

  “I will fetch the Englisch doctor in Hays City, ja?”

  “Ja.” She nodded, a curt downward jerk of her head. “But first you will fetch Katie Miller. The girl has the healing touch, and our Jesse needs her.”

  Our Jesse. If he hadn’t been so conflicted and worried, Jonas would have smiled. Jesse had long been a favorite with Mader, even though he was everything she disapproved of in the Englisch. A ray of hope lit the tumultuous darkness that raged in Jonas’s mind. Perhaps with the attention of Mader and Katie Miller, his friend Jesse would live.

  “The bleeding has stopped,” Katie said as she gingerly dabbed at the open wound on Jesse’s back. Was it good or bad that the bullet hole no longer seeped the sticky red fluid of life? She didn’t know. Perhaps he had lost so much he had no more blood to shed. He’d certainly lost a lot, judging by the shirt that lay in shreds on the floor where Maummi Switzer had put it after she cut it off of him. And the amount she’d rinsed from his hair. She shook her head. They’d had to empty the wash basin three times while cleaning his head and back.

  Jesse lay on the narrow bed in Maummi Switzer’s bedroom just off the family common room, where Jonas had put him before riding across the fields to fetch Katie. A startling sight he’d made galloping up to the house astride Jesse’s horse like an Englischer. Papa had looked askance until Jonas blurted out his errand, that his friend lay dying from a gunshot wound acquired while helping him. No more had the words left his lips than he whirled the horse and headed away, Jonas calling over his shoulder that he rode to fetch the doctor in Hays City. Katie had wasted no time in gathering her nursing bag while Papa and her brother Levi hitched their horse to the buggy she used.

  Maummi Switzer pressed two fingers against Jesse’s neck, and her unsmiling face became even grimmer. “His heart beats too slowly, but at least it still beats.”

  “Perhaps a tea of red clover tops and goldenseal root?” When Maggie Cramer lost so much blood after the birth of her baby last winter, the midwife had told Katie to give her plenty of tea made from red clover and goldenseal to help rebuild her strength.

  But Maummi Switzer shook her head. “If the stomach has taken any of the bullet, filling it will do more harm than good.”

  Katie nodded. She should have remembered that. It was just that she felt so helpless merely sitting here doing nothing while a man clung to life before her eyes. She rinsed her cloth in the basin of fresh water and wrung it out before gently wiping away a spot of blood she’d missed before. The muscles across one shoulder blade contracted when her cloth touched his ribs, and she almost laid a comforting hand across his bare skin. Aware of Maummi Switzer’s presence on the other side of the bed, she stopped herself. She’d learned that the comfort of a gentle touch did much to calm the sick or injured, but she was an unmarried woman and this man lying before her was only half clothed. And Englisch besides.

  He was shapely built. Solid and sleek, without a hint of fat in the broad expanse of his back or at his trim waist. Tanned, too, as though he spent much time shirtless in the sun. She’d heard that was sometimes the way of Englisch men, to work in the open without proper clothing. Shameless, of course, but only for an Amish man. The Englisch had no such prohibition against exposing their flesh to the view of others. Her gaze lingered on his muscled shoulders and then strayed to the row of soft curls that rested against the nape of his neck. Her Samuel had been lean and wiry, his spine in much more evidence than Jesse’s. Absently, she pulled a piece of dried grass from one golden brown lock, her fingers lingering perhaps a moment too long on the soft hair.

  The sound of a door opening interrupted her thoughts. Guiltily, she dropped the cloth into the water basin and glanced sideways to see if Maummi Switzer had observed her study of her patient’s form. Fortunately, the older woman seemed not to have noticed. She leaped from the chair she had pulled close to the bedside.

  “Finally!”

  Katie rose while Maummi Switzer hurried toward the doorway, but before she got there a stranger appeared with Jonas close on his heels. Dressed in clean but wrinkled trousers and shirt, the doctor carried a leather satchel at his side. Disheveled gray hair spoke to the haste of his departure from Hays City. A pair of spectacles rested on his nose. With a quick nod of greeting to Maummi Switzer and Katie, he hurried to the bedside, where he bent over to examine his patient.

  “Lost a lot of blood, has he?” He addressed the question to no one in particular, but Maummi Switzer answered.

  “Ja. The bleeding stopped not long ago.”

  “Hmm.” He glanced at Jonas as he unstrapped the closure on his satchel. “You say this is the same man I worked on some years ago, the one with the broken leg?”

  Jonas nodded, his gaze fixed on the bullet wound in Jesse’s back.

  “Well, it would be a shame to let him die now after I’ve already patched him up once. Let’s see what we have here.” From his satchel he extracted a polished woo
den tube. The fluted end he pressed against Jesse’s skin, and then he turned his head to place the other end, which was rimmed in black rubber, in his ear. His worried expression grew grave.

  “He will be all right, ja?” Jonas hovered in the doorway and fiddled with the strap of one of his braces just below his shoulder.

  The doctor remained silent. He lowered the listening device and with gentle fingers pressed at the skin around the bullet hole. Though it didn’t look to Katie as though he’d applied pressure, Jesse moaned, and the arm closest to her moved. His control of the limb was feeble, and it fell off the bed to dangle toward the floor. Katie picked it up and returned it to the mattress. His skin felt warm and dry to the touch. Too warm? The development of a fever this soon after his injury was a bad sign.

  The doctor finished his examination of the bullet wound and turned to Jesse’s scalp. A gash topped a knot the size of Katie’s fist. That wound had stopped bleeding before the one on his back, though it had oozed more deep red liquid while she’d gently sponged the blood from his matted hair.

  The doctor replaced the device in his satchel and then turned toward Jonas, his expression grave. “I can suture the head wound, and as long as he hasn’t cracked his skull he’ll recover from that. He’ll probably have a pounding headache for a few weeks. As for the other wound…” He turned back to his patient. “That bullet needs to come out. If he’s lucky it didn’t puncture the right lung, but what I hear gives me cause for concern. He’s fortunate that shot wasn’t an inch or so to the left, or it would have hit his spine. How did you say this happened?”

  “He rode out to investigate the fence my neighbor has built. When he came back…” Jonas gestured toward Jesse to indicate that this was the shape in which he’d returned.