by Linda Jones
“It’s a good long ways to my place,” he warned. “The Kid may not make it.”
“He’ll make it,” Catalina said assuredly, feeling — for the first time — that it might be true.
The buckboard bounced, and Catalina leaned over Jackson to keep his body still. Doc Booker had tried to convince her to ride up front with him, and she could see in his face that he expected Jackson to be dead by the time they reached his ranch. But Catalina had insisted on riding with Jackson.
She continued to cut strips of fabric from her skirt and her petticoat, making fat packs and bandaging them tightly to stop the flow of blood. Fortunately, none of his wounds bled badly. No arteries nicked, no gushing wounds to drain Jackson too quickly. Just a slow and deadly seeping of his life’s blood.
Five shots had found their mark. The history book had said an even dozen. Had that information been incorrect, or had her presence ended the gunfire more quickly? She knew now exactly how Jackson had died — or how he was supposed to have died — and that knowledge chilled her. Abandoned on the street to bleed to death.
“Where are we?” Jackson’s eyes were narrow slits that opened and closed and opened again with obvious effort.
“You’re awake.” Catalina leaned over, blocking the sun from his face, and his eyes opened a little wider. “Don’t move,” she warned. “You’ve been … ” What would he remember? “ … hurt.”
“Shot five times,” he whispered. “I’d call that hurt.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Jackson. Not now.” Catalina bit her bottom lip as she studied his face. He was so pale, and there were dark circles under his eyes and hollows in his cheeks that hadn’t been there before.
“You’ll be all right,” she tried to reassure him.
“Where are we?” he repeated his earlier question.
“Doc Booker is taking us to his ranch. He used to be a doctor, so he’ll have no trouble patching you up.” She tried to sound confident, but there was doubt in her voice. What if Doc Booker was right? What if they couldn’t save Jackson?
Jackson laid a hand over hers, the hand that was resting lightly on his chest. “Don’t go back to Baxter. Get Doc Booker to take you to Tucson. My money’s back at Alberta’s, but these Colts will get you a little cash, if you sell them when you get to Tucson.”
He squeezed her hand weakly and took a shallow breath. “Change your name if you plan to stay in Arizona Territory. Better yet, head east. Texas is nice. If you go far enough east it’s green, and there are a couple of good-sized towns there. Maybe they need a librarian.”
“You can take me there,” Catalina whispered. “As soon as you’re recovered.”
“I’m not … ” Jackson began.
Catalina pressed two fingers over his lips. “Don’t say it. You’re going to be just fine.”
Her fingers slid away from his lips, over the soft black beard that covered the lower half of his face. No antibiotics. No blood transfusions. No intravenous tubes to feed him and keep his body nourished if he couldn’t eat. No anesthesia to knock him out so the bullet in his thigh could be removed.
“Promise me,” Catalina whispered urgently as Jackson began to close his eyes again.
“I don’t … ”
“Promise me that you won’t die.”
He opened his eyes fully and stared at her. “I can’t do that, darlin.”
“I won’t let you rest until you promise me. I want your word that you won’t give up and die.”
Jackson drew the hand he held to his lips and lightly kissed her palm. His lips were too cool. “You’ll do all right without me.”
“I won’t … ”
“It’s time,” Jackson said simply. “And it’s been a long time comin’. I’m glad I met you before I got shot, Catalina Lane. You know, when I first met you I thought you were loco.” His voice was fading.
“I know.”
Jackson’s eyes drifted shut, and Catalina placed her face close to his. “No. Don’t you pass out until you promise me. Jackson?”
“I can’t.”
Catalina was laying almost on top of him, covering his chest, trying to warm his chilled body. He shouldn’t be so cold.
“Jackson Cady,” she whispered, her mouth close to his. “You can’t leave me. I came all this way to find you, and I won’t allow you to die.”
His eyes remained closed, and he said nothing.
“I love you, Jackson,” she mumbled, almost afraid to say the words aloud. In the past few years — as she’d put aside her belief in magic — she had dismissed a thousand times the romantic love that made fools of perfectly intelligent women. She rested her lips on his, a brief brush of her mouth against his. “I love you,” she said more clearly.
Jackson said nothing, didn’t move, and Catalina began to believe that she had waited too long to tell him how she felt.
“All right,” Jackson breathed softly. “I promise.”
He could feel every rut in the road, every turn of the wheel. Each bullet had burned a path as it had entered his body, but now he could sense nothing where the wounds should be. That was more frightening than being shot … not being able to feel the pain.
Catalina’s hand lay on his chest, and his hand covered hers. He could feel that, at least. Her warm, soft skin over his heart.
She loved him. He hadn’t wanted that, at least he hadn’t thought he wanted it. But at the moment it was something to hold on to. She loved him. It was impossible; more than he had ever imagined for himself. Catalina Lane was pretty and smart and pure, and still she had given him her body and her heart. It was more than he deserved.
Why would she love him? It made no sense, but he decided to let the nagging question go and just believe.
For Catalina he could change his life. Everything she’d said to him … was it only yesterday? … was true. It was a big country. He could change his name, move far away, and live a normal life.
A normal life, he chided himself. He didn’t even know what a normal life was. What could he do? How would he support himself and Catalina? How could he forget what he was?
Catalina could help him … help him forget, teach him what a normal life was like. Show him what it was like to meet a person and not see fear in their eyes.
For years he’d dreamed of gold. Of striking it rich. Gus had started that … spending every waking minute talking about finding gold, and how great their lives would be once they had it. Even after Gus’s death, and after giving up mining for good, he’d continued to dream of gold. It haunted him, more nightmare than dream, and sometimes when he woke he could still see it, shining and yellow and bright.
He’d dreamed of gold again last night, when he’d fallen asleep with Catalina in his arms. This time it had been no nightmare, but a quiet dream that came with a feeling of peace and happiness he hadn’t known since Gus’s death sixteen years earlier.
The gold he had dreamed of last night was no hard ore men killed and died for. It wasn’t worth a lot of money … and still it was the most valuable treasure in the world.
It was the gold in Catalina’s eyes that had filled his dreams. Flecks of gold in amber more precious than any motherlode. Hard and flashing, soft and filled with tears. Condemning and forgiving. He’d seen it all there.
And love, too. He’d tried to deny it, but he’d seen love in those eyes. Catalina’s eyes. The most precious gold he’d ever seen, would ever see.
He saw them now, even with his eyes tightly closed. Her scent surrounded him; her breathing above him was fast and irregular, her hand beneath his trembled. If he’d had the strength he would have opened his eyes for another look at that gold, but he didn’t. He pictured those eyes in his mind, and tried to take in their strength.
He would need all that strength if he was to keep his promise.
There wasn’t much to Doc Booker’s ranch, and Catalina had a hard time imagining why Harold Goodman felt he had to have this place. The house was a small, crude building of adobe brick and w
ood, and a few plants in what appeared to be a garden struggled to survive. She saw less than a dozen head of cattle, and a handful of chickens. It looked more like a poor farm than a ranch.
In the distance, beyond the small house, was the towering red rock she’d been drawn to that day. It seemed so long ago, but it had just been a few days. Somewhere on the other side of that rock was a doorway that would take her back to 1996, and all that she had left behind.
Jackson roused himself just long enough to be of some help as she and Doc all but carried him inside. With one arm over her shoulder and one over Doc’s, Jackson was able to shuffle slowly into the house. There was a large room with a kitchen in one corner and a bed in the other. A fireplace, a table and a couple of chairs, and a couple of trunks finished out the room.
There was a closed door at the back of the room, and she thought it might be a bedroom. It made no difference. The bed in the corner of the main room was closer, and Jackson was getting heavy.
With Booker’s help she lowered Jackson to the bed, and then Jackson passed out again, crossways on the bed, his booted feet still on the floor.
Booker stepped away from the bed and pulled back the curtains from both windows to allow sunlight to brighten the room.
“Boiled water,” Catalina said, her eyes remaining on Jackson. “Clean bandages. Whiskey.” Her voice was low, as much for herself as for Booker. “Fluids. Water, tea, broth. Sugar water.”
She pulled off Jackson’s boots and slowly straightened his body, until he lay lengthways on the big bed. The thick bandages she’d applied in the buckboard were already stained with blood.
“Here,” Booker said brusquely, shoving a bundle at her.
Catalina took the folded soft material and drew Jackson’s knife to cut strips for new bandages.
“No!” Booker stopped her with his sharp command, his hand over hers. “I thought you might want to change. These belonged to my wife. She passed on five years ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of her things.”
“I’m fine, really.” She tried to hand the clothing back to the old man, but he refused to take them. Catalina looked down at what was left of her dress. The petticoat and the skirt were gone, and what was left ended in tatters well above her knees. Scandalous, to Doc Booker.
“All right.” Catalina gathered the skirt and blouse to her chest. “Will you start boiling the water and gather some clean bandages while I change?”
Booker shook his head, letting Catalina know that he thought her efforts were wasted. But she could be stubborn when she had to be.
“And then you’ll have to take that bullet out of his thigh.”
Booker was shaking his head again before she was finished delivering that order.
“I can’t do it!” Catalina insisted. “And it has to be done.”
“I told you,” Booker said darkly. “It’s been thirty years.”
It came to Catalina, what she should have realized the first time he’d told her how long it had been since he’d been a doctor.
“The Civil War,” she whispered.
“An unholy, uncivil war, the War Between the States,” he said in a low voice. “I removed more than my share of balls and bullets. Lost more than my share of young men. I have no wish to go through that again.”
“But you were a young man yourself.”
Booker shook his head. “I was in my thirties. Some of the soldiers I saw weren’t even young men; they were children, fifteen and sixteen years old. Shot, like your friend. Sometimes, when I thought all would be well, they’d take a turn for the worst in the night and be dead by morning. A few lived, but so many more didn’t.”
“But … we know more now,” Catalina insisted. “We’ll sterilize everything: the instruments you use on Jackson; the wounds themselves, your hands and mine.”
“I haven’t followed the medical profession in thirty years, young lady.”
“I have,” she said. “Sort of.” What did she really know? Nothing. But she and Booker together …
Booker turned his back on her. “Get into some decent clothes. You may be accustomed to gallivanting around that bawdy house half dressed, but this is a Christian household and you will not prance around here indecently exposed.” He stepped to the side and pointed to the closed door. “You can change in Victoria’s room.”
Catalina opened the door and stepped into a room that had the smell of disuse. It was clean but smelled a little musty, as if the single window hadn’t been opened in years. Five years, probably.
She removed the ruined dress quickly and threw the remnants on a narrow bed covered with lacy pillows. “If this is truly a Christian household, you’ll help me,” Catalina shouted.
“I am helping you!” the old man answered, raising his voice to be heard from beyond the heavy door.
“You’ll get that bullet out of Jackson’s leg!”
She heard a deep snort, of disgust or resignation or, perhaps, both.
“It’s not too terribly deep, I don’t think, and it appears that the other four bullets passed straight through. A couple are really no more than scratches.”
“I’ve seen men die from wounds that were no more than scratches.”
“Not this time,” Catalina shouted. “I’ll handle everything else, if you’ll just remove the bullet. Jackson won’t die of an infection, if we can just keep the wounds clean.” She hoped that was true.
Booker was silent for a long while as Catalina struggled into the high-necked blouse and calico skirt. Nothing about being a woman in the nineteenth century was easy! Tiny buttons, and too damn many of them, and she didn’t dare show herself until they were all fastened.
Catalina finally stepped from the small feminine bedroom to find Booker standing over the patient he didn’t want.
“Jackson,” he said softly. “Is that his real name?”
“Yes.” Catalina stepped to his side. “Jackson Cady. All you know of him is Kid Creede’s reputation, and that means you don’t know him at all. You know the myth, but you don’t know the man.”
Booker turned away from her and set water to boil on the stove. Catalina still didn’t know if she would have his assistance or not.
The bandages came off slowly, starting with the least-threatening scratch in his side. Catalina doused her hands in the whiskey Booker had placed on the bedside table, and cleaned the deep scratch with a rag dipped in boiled water. Jackson flinched but didn’t open his eyes. When she poured the whiskey over the furrow he flinched once and then was still. Through it all, he hadn’t made a sound.
If he could just stay unconscious until she was done … Each wound got the same treatment, and was rebandaged with the clean white cotton Booker handed her. Catalina kept her eyes on the patient, never looking up at the old man who provided her with all that she requested.
Finally she had to deal with the leg. She cut away the material surrounding the wound and cleaned it as thoroughly as the others. This would be the bullet that killed him, if she couldn’t handle the job. The bullet had to come out, and the wound had to be completely cleaned and sterilized.
There was so much blood, and his skin was so cold. When would the fever come, if she wasn’t successful? Tonight? Tomorrow? Next week? Her hands hovered over the wound, and she clenched them tightly to stop the shaking.
“Move aside, young lady,” Booker ordered gruffly, and Catalina looked up to see him standing over her with a battered and scarred black physician’s bag in his hands.
Thirteen
*
Doc Booker had lit two lamps and set them near the bed, one on a small table at the head and another on a chest near the foot. Their light cast strange shadows whenever Catalina leaned forward to check on Jackson, to see if there wasn’t some small movement she couldn’t detect from her station in a hard-backed chair at his bedside.
The surgery had gone fairly quickly, but it had taken all of Catalina’s courage to assist Doc Booker. She never could have done what needed to be done
alone. Never.
But that had been hours earlier, while there had still been light streaming through the windows. It had been dark for quite some time now, and the room was dim. But the light from the lamps revealed to her all too clearly how pale Jackson was and, in spite of her wishful thinking, each time she leaned forward she realized that he hadn’t moved at all.
“You’re going to be just fine,” she whispered, bending over him once again. “And I’ll be right here, for as long as it takes.”
Doc Booker’s shadow fell across Jackson’s face, and she moved back slightly as the old man slouched over the bed.
“Is he comin’ around?”
“No,” Catalina said softly.
Booker laid his palm on Jackson’s forehead, and then placed two fingers against the pulse at his throat. He frowned throughout the brief examination.
“He’s not going to make it,” Booker said gruffly.
“You can’t know that. Not yet.”
“He was shot five times, miss. There’s nothing anyone can do… .”
“Don’t listen to him, Jackson,” Catalina interrupted, leaning forward and easing Booker away from Jackson. “You’re going to wake up and everything’s going to be just fine.”
“He can’t hear you… .”
“Yes, he can,” Catalina insisted. “There have been studies done. People have remembered hearing loved ones’ voices while in a coma, or doctors while they were under anesthesia, when they should have been completely out of it. Some part of the brain, or the heart, or the soul, is listening, and I won’t have you telling Jackson any lies about dying.”
“Studies?” Doc backed away from her.
Catalina looked up at him briefly. “Aisle three, midsection, second shelf from the top.”
Doc Booker settled himself in a chair on the other side of the room, well away from her and her … their patient. He obviously didn’t believe her. What would he think if she told him about penicillin, heart transplants, working artificial limbs? Brain surgery, heart surgery, life support? If Jackson was lying in the Indian Springs Hospital there would be little doubt about his survival. But here …
