The Outlaw and the Runaway

by Tatiana March

  Chapter Sixteen

  The smells of disinfectant and coffee stirred Celia into wakefulness. The young doctor, now wearing a pale blue shirt, which was clean but lacked the touch of an iron, was holding a steaming cup in front of her face. She uncurled her legs and rubbed her eyes.

  The doctor proffered the cup to her. “There’s breakfast, too.”

  Craning past him, Celia stared at the inert shape on the gurney, which now stood raised to examination height. “Is he...”

  The doctor lifted his brows. “Is he dead? You don’t show much confidence in my professional abilities.”

  Celia scrambled to her feet, almost knocking the cup out of the doctor’s hand. “He’s alive?”

  “His pulse is steady, his breathing even. You did a good job cleaning out the bullet wounds. I don’t expect those to fester. I’ve cauterized the flesh and sewn up the holes. The eye... I’m unable to save his sight. He’ll be permanently blinded in one eye, but with any luck, if infection doesn’t set in, I don’t have to take the eyeball out. It won’t look too bad.”

  “And if you have to...?” Celia hesitated. “Is it a difficult procedure?”

  “It’s supposed to be.”

  “Supposed to be.” She suppressed a shiver of alarm. “You never have...?”

  The doctor shook his head. “Never. And I hope that I never have to.”

  He had been standing in her way, blocking her access to the patient. Now he laid one hand on her shoulder. His tone became grave. “He is still unconscious. There is a lump on the back of his skull. I believe he must have received a severe blow to his head. I don’t feel a fracture, but his brain must be swollen inside his cranium. Unconsciousness is nature’s way of forcing his brain to rest while the swelling goes down.”

  “Will he recover?”

  “I’m not God. I can’t predict life and death, but according to my medical assessment he ought to recover. However, I can’t guarantee that his mental faculties will return to normal. He may have memory loss. His reasoning may be impaired. He might lack full control over his body. He could have lost the ability to speak.”

  Celia bit hard into her lower lip. She closed her eyes, but the tears spilled free anyway. Dear God, just let him live, she had prayed. Once again, her mother’s warning rang through her mind. Be careful what you wish for. She should have wished for more.

  * * *

  All through that day, Celia sat by Roy’s bedside and talked. The doctor—Dr. Millard, from Boston, via a short spell as a junior resident at a charity hospital in New York City—believed insensate patients might be able to hear and relate to their environment.

  Celia talked about her childhood, about the books she’d read. She described the ranch they would one day have. Picturing their future home in her mind, she furnished each room, down to the details of pictures on the walls, curtains in the windows, the rugs on the floor. And, when despair made one of its frequent inroads into her optimism, she pleaded with him.

  “Please get well, Roy. I need you. Even more, I deserve you. Remember? I deserve to be happy. I yelled it at the cliffs, and the echo called it back, proving my words to be true. I deserve to be happy, but I can’t be happy without you. So, you must get well. You hear me, Roy Hagan. You must get well.”

  The wrinkled face Celia had seen peering through a hatch when she first arrived in town belonged to a female in her sixties, the blacksmith’s spinster sister, Miss Pickering. Employed as the doctor’s housekeeper, Miss Pickering came in every day to clean and cook. Getting her meals served on a tray left Celia free to spend all her time talking to a man who never opened his eyes, never gave any sign that he could hear her, never showed any sign of life except the slight rising and falling of his chest.

  * * *

  There was only darkness. And then the pain came. It felt like a hot poker piercing his head. He tried to fall back into the darkness, tried to embrace it, but a voice called out to him, talking softly, like the sound of a cool stream rippling over stones in a creek.

  The voice curled around his mind, holding him captive. He longed for the darkness, longed to escape the pain, but somehow he knew that if he let himself sink too deep into those empty shadows the voice would go away, and he could not bear the thought of being alone again, without the comfort of that soft, gentle voice.

  So he fortified himself against the pain and listened. The voice grew clearer. He started to make out words. The voice talked about a home. One by one, the rooms opened up before him. His muscles twitched as he imagined taking a step, entering the house.

  “Dr. Millard! Dr. Millard!”

  The sudden sharp rise of the voice jarred his brain. Pain arrowed from his eye. Too much pain. Too much pain. The voice was gone now, replaced by hurried footsteps. With a sigh, Roy sank back into unconsciousness.

  Again and again, he emerged out of the shadows, drawn by the voice. Celia. Memories flooded through him, swept over him. The voice was Celia. She was his, but not truly his. Not his. Not by the laws of man.

  He fought the pain, broke through the barrier of it. Don’t move. Keep still. Absolutely still. That’s the way to do it. He slowed his breathing, put all his effort into opening his eyes.

  The room was bathed in soft light. Celia sat in a wooden chair by the bedside, her unbound hair tumbling past her shoulders. Startled, she jerked upright in the seat.

  “Roy? Roy? Can you hear me?”

  Don’t shout. It hurts. Don’t shout.

  Letting the air out of his lungs, he closed his eyes again.

  “Dr. Millard! Dr. Millard!”

  Footsteps. A man’s footsteps.

  Celia’s anxious voice. “Dr. Millard, he opened his eyes. I am certain of it.”

  “Mr. Hagan?” the doctor said.

  Roy didn’t care to talk to a medical man. There could be no good news except that he was alive, and the pain had already assured him of that. But he couldn’t bear that anxiety in Celia’s voice. With supreme effort, Roy forced his eyelids to lift once more. Celia was leaning over him, looking down at him, her expression tender. He’d forgotten how luminous her gray eyes were, how glowing her skin. How red and tempting her lips, how beautiful the curve of her breasts. His gaze drifted lower, to her belly. Maybe she carried his child...

  He swallowed. His tongue felt thick and clumsy, glued to the roof of his mouth. He made a small, rasping sound, managed a single word. “Water.”

  The doctor moved forward past Celia, filled Roy’s vision. Holding a cup in one hand, the medical man scooped water into a beaker and trickled it between Roy’s lips. Roy let the cool water slide down his throat and studied the doctor. Young, with neatly clipped sandy hair, regular features and an air of competence.

  “Welcome back to the land of living, Mr. Hagan,” the doctor said.

  He wasn’t quite back, Roy thought with a touch of wry humor. Not fully. Maybe he never would be. But he wasn’t ready to die just yet. Revived by the small sips of water, Roy moved his lips, spoke in a hoarse voice.

  “Preacher. Get a preacher.”

  The young medical man’s face clouded. He gave a terse nod, handed the cup and beaker to Celia. “Give him more water. I’ll fetch Reverend Brown. I thought...” He shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps I placed too much confidence in my medical abilities. If your husband wishes to unburden his conscience, he may feel the end is near.”

  When the doctor had walked out of the room, Roy sank deeper into the thin mattress. He wanted to explain to Celia, to wipe out the worry in her eyes, but he had to preserve his strength. The pain felt like a formidable enemy, and he was too weak to fight back. Celia kept trickling water between his lips. He longed to drink in deep, greedy gulps, but he knew that raising his head would bring too much pain.

  Talk. Let me hear your voice.

  It was as if Celia understood, for she spoke again. “I will n
ot let you die. Do you hear me, Roy Hagan? You are not going to die.”

  She looked so fierce, her brows furrowed, fire in her eyes. He wanted to smile, but his face felt too sore for it. He gathered his strength. His arm twitched, and then he lifted his hand, his fingers grazing the folds of Celia’s skirt at her waist.

  “Oh...I see,” she said, with a note of bittersweet understanding in her tone. “You want us to be married, in case I’m with child.”

  He made a sound, no more than groan, and closed his eyes.

  “I think there’ll be plenty of time later on,” Celia told him firmly. “Once you are up on your feet, we could get married in a church. I could wear a white dress and a veil. But if you really are that worried about appearances, we can do it right now, right here.”

  He knew she was smiling, and he wanted to see it, wanted to see her smile. He found the strength to open his eyes again. Celia was leaning over the bed, looking down into his face.

  “Your eye...” She hesitated. “Can you tell that something is different?”

  Baffled, he met her gaze. And figured out what she meant. He saw the world as he was used to seeing it, with only half of his vision. But he could not feel the soft piece of cotton over his left eye, or the rawhide string holding it in place.

  He was not wearing his eye patch.

  And yet he could not see the left side of the room.

  He swallowed hard, rasped out the word. “Blind?”

  “Yes.” Celia nodded, her expression grave. “You have lost the sight in your left eye. And it is no longer brown. It has a kind of milky film over it. The iris looks white, or very pale blue. It is fairly close in color to your blue eye, but opaque instead of clear.”

  Roy opened his eyes again. Snippets of conversation from their first meeting, from when he had bid for Celia’s lunch basket at the church social, drifted through his mind.

  God and the Devil are fighting over me. Which do you think will win?

  Why, Miss Courtwood, the Devil has already won.

  Despite the news of his physical infirmity, something made him renew his attempt at a smile. Perhaps the Devil hadn’t won, after all. The loss of his brown eye didn’t worry him. He was already used to a limited vision, and the injury disguised the unusual feature he’d been born with, reducing the chances that his outlaw past might catch up with him.

  He could hear the front door open and close, could hear footsteps outside. “You...you tell them what I want.”

  Celia took his hand, squeezed it. “All right. I will.”

  He let his eyelids flutter down. Footsteps made a trail into the room. He could smell something sweet, like hair pomade. A new voice—the booming voice of a man used to bellowing out sermons—drifted into his consciousness.

  “Is he the patient who needs to unburden his mind?”

  Roy felt that inner smile again. Too tired to move, too tired to speak, he listened while Celia explained. “Reverend, I’m afraid I haven’t been quite honest about our marital status. We’re married, but only in an Indian fashion. We would like you to marry us properly, in the eyes of the law as well as in the eyes of God.”

  Roy barely stayed awake long enough to say “I do.” And although he didn’t hear Celia say her vows, it didn’t matter. He’d make her repeat it later, just for him, without a preacher present to intrude on the occasion.

  * * *

  Roy lay in bed and watched Celia carry in a tray, preparing to feed him. He was conscious the whole time now, but his memory was hazy and he found it difficult to concentrate. The physical inactivity was making him edgy and restless.

  He spoke in a low voice. “I’m sorry. You nursed your parents. It’s not fair that you should have to nurse me, too.”

  “It’s good for a woman to feel needed.”

  Roy mulled over the comment. Celia could have no idea of how much he needed her. Not just to spoon food into his mouth or clean up after him. To fill his days with a reason for living. To offer him the love and acceptance he had lacked his entire life. But when he’d dreamed of a future with her, he’d seen himself as a protector, a provider. Not an invalid who sometimes forgot his own name. He’d been right to think she’d be better off without him, and having broken away from the outlaw life had not changed the truth of it.

  * * *

  Despite Roy’s initial pessimism, his recovery continued until he was able to stay on his feet all day. Before discharging him, Dr. Millard gave him one final examination.

  “You will suffer from headaches and dizziness for several weeks, but it will pass. I believe your brain injury was moderate and caused no permanent damage.”

  Roy waited for the doctor to leave the room. Sitting sideways on the gurney, he pulled on his clothes. Celia was moving about, packing away their belongings. She snapped the jaws of her carpetbag shut and walked over to him, holding out his gun belt.

  Roy hesitated. “A double rig is the mark of a gunfighter.”

  “Not all gunfighters are outlaws. It is better to be prepared.”

  He took the gun belt from her, strapped it around his hips and felt the familiar weight of the heavy Smith & Wesson revolvers. While he’d been convalescing, he’d had plenty of time to think, and despite the haziness of his mind, he had reached a decision.

  “I’ll escort you to Winslow and leave you there. Without knowing what happened to Mr. Smith, it will be too dangerous for us to remain together. I can’t risk someone coming after me and getting you involved in a gunfight.”

  Celia stood in front of him, shoulders squared, girded for battle. “You promised we’d go away together. Someplace where no one can find us. Someplace far away.”

  Roy had planned for the conversation, had his excuse ready. “I’m in no state to go rattling in a wagon to Montana or Oregon. It will be weeks, maybe months before my strength returns. And by then, you might be heavy with child.”

  “Women give birth on the trail.”

  “Not you. Not my child.” Roy dropped to his feet, stepped up to Celia and curled his hands around her upper arms. “If we did make a baby on that last night at the hideout, I don’t want our child to be shunned like I was. I want him to have a better start in life than I did. I want him to be loved and accepted. To have a home.”

  “We have a home. My father’s house in Rock Springs.” Celia looked up at him, a frown on her face. “I’ve been thinking...if we go to Montana or Oregon, we’ll live the rest of our lives wondering if someone will track us down. I believe that we should face the dangers now. Meet our fate and be done with it. We should go home.”

  “You should go home. I should disappear.”

  Celia shook her head, her mouth pressed into a stubborn line. When she spoke, her tone rang with mockery. “Roy Hagan, the fierce outlaw. What a coward you are. Don’t you remember anything? You promised to have courage. To have the courage to love me. Love me openly, whatever happens.”

  “That whatever could be someone coming after me.”

  “Then you’ll serve your time and I’ll be there when you get out of prison.”

  Roy hesitated. He’d known it was a futile argument. He didn’t really have the determination to ride out and leave Celia behind. Perhaps he had brought up the idea in order to satisfy his conscience, rather than from any real expectation that Celia would agree.

  He tightened his hold on her upper arms and studied her face. His chest constricted at what he saw there. Such courage. Such optimism. Such beauty. Such faith. Faith in him.

  “Celia...” He spoke haltingly. “When you said that a woman likes to feel needed...I may no longer need you to nurse me, or help me to remember things, but I still need you.” He withdrew one of his hands and laid it across his heart. “I need you here.”

  “I know,” Celia replied softly. “Perhaps I’ve known since the day you bid for my lunch basket at the church social.”r />
  Roy bundled her against his chest and held her in a fierce hug. But even as they embraced, worry threaded through his mind. Celia had been thinking like an honest citizen, assuming the only danger was from the law catching up with him. She was forgetting about Mr. Smith—that the greatest danger came not from the county sheriff but from the outlaw leader who had sworn never to let any of the men in the Red Bluff Gang break away.

  * * *

  To Celia’s amazement, everything in Rock Springs looked exactly the same. Of course, she’d barely been away for two months, although it felt like a lifetime. She craned her neck, looking left and right as Roy steered the wagon along Main Street, with the saddle horses trotting behind.

  They rounded the corner. Her heart was thudding, her hands clasped into fists as she searched ahead. The house seemed intact! The shutters were closed, the boards that secured the front door firmly in place. She waited impatiently while Roy turned the wagon into the narrow driveway by the house and brought it to a halt.

  He set the brake, climbed down and reached up to lift her to the ground. “I’ll put Dagur and Baldur in the stable first, before I unhitch the wagon team.”

  “Do you mind if I run up to the mercantile and check for any news?”

  “You go along. Is there a crowbar in the woodshed?”

  “There is, unless someone has stolen it.”

  Her feet tapping with eager steps against the dusty ground, Celia hurried back to Main Street. While Roy had been convalescing, she hadn’t dared to post a letter to her father, in case the address for Yuma prison started someone asking unwelcome questions.

  The mercantile door was closed to keep out the cool winter air. She pushed the door open, sent the bell jangling above. Two women were waiting at the counter. They turned around to see who had entered. Celia recognized Mrs. Haslet, a tall, thin woman of sour disposition, and Mrs. Shackleton, the rotund, good-humored widow who ran the boardinghouse.