by Peggy Webb
“Do you want me to stay tonight?” Deborah asked.
“No. You go home and get some rest.” Kate surveyed the room. Eight little beds, all in a row. “I’ll stay.”
The bell over the front door tinkled when Deborah left. Kate made rounds, then ate a light snack and returned to Mary Doe’s bedside. A sliver of a moon was riding high in the sky, and its pale glow fell across the child’s face.
How still. Like death.
Shivers ran down Kate’s spine, and she knew she had to be watchful. Death had beat her once. She wouldn’t let it win again.
o0o
The moment Eagle had scrupulously avoided finally came. In seeing his beloved niece and nephew, he would at last see Kate Malone. Alone. Without the buffer of large crowds. Long after everyone had gone home, Eagle left his office in Ada and headed toward the clinic.
He found her sitting there, by the bedside, her hair aflame in the moonlight. As he stood in the doorway, the five years they’d been apart vanished, and he was borne away by memories as vivid as yesterday.
As if she sensed his presence, she turned her head slowly. At that moment he couldn’t have said whether the greater agony was in being with her or being apart. Her eyes held his, burning, until he had to look away.
“Hello, Eagle.” Her voice was neutral, as if they had never held each other while they soared toward a black and gold sky.
“Kate.” He moved silently to the opposite side of his niece’s bed. “I heard about the children. How are they?”
“It’s viral hepatitis.”
He reached for Mary Doe’s tiny hand. Wary, he and Kate watched each other, connected by the still form that lay between them. After five lonely years, finally connected.
“So many beds,” he said, mentally counting.
“It’s approaching the epidemic stage.” She talked to him calmly, as if she didn’t feel the heat, didn’t see the sparks. “Have you heard of any cases in Ada?”
“No. Apparently this disease is confined to Witch Dance.”
In the bed next to his sister, Bucky stirred.
“Uncle Eagle?”
“Yes, Bucky. It’s me.” He knelt beside his eight-year-old nephew’s bed and smoothed the dark hair back from the child’s flushed face. “How’re you doing, pal?”
“Not too good ...I’m scared.”
“It’s all right to be scared. Only the foolish are never scared.”
“I’m not foolish ...but I did lie.”
“About what?”
“’Bout swimming in the creek. Mama said not to.”
“When I was a little boy about your age, I told a few whoppers myself. And so did your daddy.”
“Sure ‘nuff?”
“Sure enough.” Eagle smoothed the child’s hair once more. “Now, you get some sleep. I’ll be right here.”
How natural he was with children, Kate thought. How wonderful. She hated him for taking that away from her, for denying her the joy of seeing his tender love for the children she would have borne.
Children she would never bear. And all because of him. Eagle Mingo had spoiled her for any other man.
And now, there he was, not six feet away from her, sexy and delicious, making her melt inside with the same quick, hot lust that overtook her the summer of ‘eighty-nine. That still overtook her.
She hated him for that too.
“You don’t have to stay,” she said. “I’ll be here.”
“All night?”
“All night.”
Memories of soft summer winds echoed through the clinic, and whispers of love words spoken in the ancient tongue. Kate’s heart kicked hard against her ribs, and she stilled it with her hand.
“I’m staying,” he said.
“As you wish.” She turned away quickly, before he could see the flush that crept over her neck.
But Eagle saw, and seeing, he broke his long silence with Loak-Ishtohoollo-Aba. Silently he swore before that accursed deity that while he had breath in his body he would never set eyes on Kate Malone again.
o0o
Fear swept across Witch Dance like a prairie fire. The Great One smelled it in the Wind and felt it in his bones. At night, when he covered himself with the buffalo robe that had belonged to his fathers for generations back, he dreamed of death riding on a white horse. But its face remained hidden to him. He fasted for days, and finally, stripped naked and cleansed by the sacred fires that burned around him, he saw the face of death.
When the morning sun broke the sky, he arose from his fast and painted his face with the colors of the mountain cougar, infusing himself with the great strength of the Ghost Cat. Then he assembled his medicine pouches, and descended the mountain.
He was the only one who could conquer death.
o0o
The windows in the governor’s office glowed pink with the setting sun, and soon a velvet darkness would descend on the land. In her clinic Kate would be bending over the tiny forms in their white beds.
Eagle gripped his pencil so hard, it snapped.
“That’s all, Linda,” he said, abruptly ending his dictation and throwing the broken pieces of the pencil into the garbage.
“Governor, I’m not leaving till we get this letter done. You said it had to go out today, and if I haven’t gone blind as well as senile, the day is almost over.” With her sensible shoes planted firmly together and her hands on her hips, Linda Running Deer faced him. “Besides that, I’m planning to leave early tomorrow so I can watch ‘Days of Our Lives.’ There’s going to be a murder, and I want to see who does it.”
Eagle suppressed his grin. Linda Running Deer had backed down drunks and drug addicts and thieves: She wasn’t about to quaver before the governor. That’s why he had hired her away from the chief of tribal police. Martin Black Elk had puffed and huffed about the best damned secretary in Ada being snatched from under his nose, but Eagle had known even then that Black Elk was secretly pleased. There was nothing Black Elk liked better than being considered a man of good taste, and he bragged far and wide that he had such good taste he had to select the governor’s secretary.
“Are you trying to tell me what to do, Linda?” He scowled, but only because he knew she’d be disappointed if he didn’t. This was a game they played ...and relished.
“Damned right, Governor. If I didn’t keep you straight, you’d be as bad as old Raymond Lightfoot, sitting in that general store, not knowing sunup from sundown.”
Linda plopped herself into her chair and whipped out her dictation pad. “What you need is a wife.”
“What I need is a new secretary.”
“I’m the only person in Ada who would put up with your dark moods, and don’t you forget that. Now, do you want this letter to go out today or next year?”
He always let her have the last word; that, too, was part of their game. While he dictated, the sun disappeared and the cool darkness came down over the land.
After Linda had gone home, Eagle drove from Ada to his ranch in Witch Dance. The quiet pastures and peaceful mountains transfused his soul. As long as he had the land, he could survive. He became one with the night as he stood on his front porch and stared up at the sky.
Suddenly the telephone jarred the silence. Though the last thing he wanted to do was deal with someone else’s problems, he couldn’t let it ring without answering: His sense of duty was too well honed. He went inside and picked it up on the fourth ring.
“Eagle Mingo,” he said.
“This is Deborah Lightfoot. Kate is going to kill me for calling you, but I think you should come to the clinic.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I know it’s ridiculous to bother the governor with a problem like this, but the last time Kate had problems with the medicine man, you solved them.”
“Can you be more specific, Deborah?” His muscles were bunched across his shoulders, and he felt as if a vise had suddenly squeezed his insides.
“He’s been coming in here every day for t
he last three days, shaking his nasty old feathers and sprinkling his filthy potions over our patients. He and Kate are out in the reception room now, about ready to kill each other.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Don’t tell her I called you.”
“I promise.”
He raced through the night on a black Chickasaw horse with a single white star on his forehead, firstborn of Kate’s Mahli and Eagle’s cherished black stallion, and as he rode he remembered the summer nights so long ago when he’d taken the same path. Desire curled through him like smoke, and with it the selfish pleasure of seeing Kate again, no matter what the reason.
When he arrived he could see her through the window, cool and professional-looking in her white lab coat. But there was nothing cool and professional about her eyes. As she faced off against the shaman, they smoldered with temper.
The bell over the door tinkled as Eagle entered the clinic. Kate whirled toward the sound.
“What is this?” she said. “An Indian powwow?”
It was only then that he saw her great fatigue. She had dark circles under her eyes, and her voice was ragged with exhaustion.
“I’ve come to help, Kate.”
“I didn’t ask for your help. I have a clinic full of sick children, and I don’t need the leaders of the Chickasaw Nation to tell me how to do my job.”
The old shaman faced Kate as erect as a war pole, and just as fierce. With his face painted the colors of the Ghost Cat, he looked like a man half his age. There was still power in his limbs and fire in his eyes. Whether Kate knew it or not, the Great One was not a man to alienate.
“Is Deborah inside with the children?” Eagle asked.
“Yes. Somebody has to be.” Kate looked pointedly at the shaman. The eyes that stared back at her were full of enmity
“Why don’t we all sit down and have a cap of coffee?”
“Coffee? I don’t want coffee. I want this man out of my clinic and away from my patients.”
“I have had a vision,” the shaman said. “The children of my people are dying. I have come to save them.”
“By rubbing them with mutton grease and ashes? How can I keep a sterile environment if you bring that filthy stuff into my clinic? I will not tolerate it.”
“Kate.” Eagle touched her elbow, but she stepped away and faced him with her back ramrod-straight and her face stiff. “I’d like to talk to the shaman. Alone.”
For a moment she looked as if she might protest; then she relented.
“Fine. But don’t make any compromises on my behalf. This clinic is under my jurisdiction. He is not to interfere with my patients again.”
Picking up her charts, Kate marched out of the reception room like a drum majorette in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. When she rounded the corner, her resolve failed, and she leaned against the wall with her hand against her throat.
Eagle was just on the other side of the door, formidable and delicious. Her pulse thrummed against her palm. Once he had touched her there, kissed her there. She could still feel his lips upon her skin.
Oh, God. How would she survive this second invasion of him?
She ran a hand over her tired face then went into the clinic, where all her little patients lay in a quiet row. “Any change?” she asked Deborah.
“None. You’ve been gone only thirty minutes, Kate.”
“It seems like hours. Damned that old medicine man. I hope he sets his tail feathers on fire in one of his sacred rituals.”
“Eagle will convince him to leave us alone.”
Kate’s eyes narrowed. “You called him, didn’t you?”
“Somebody had to keep you out of trouble.”
“Go home, Deborah, before I turn my Irish temper on you.”
“You’re exhausted, Kate. I can stay.”
“No. It’s my shift tonight.” Besides, Eagle Mingo was in the clinic. She couldn’t bear to see him, and she couldn’t bear to walk away.
She gazed across the room at the little beds. “When all this is over, I think I’ll ride through Witch Dance naked, screaming at the top of my lungs.”
“Me too. Both of us deserve it.” Deborah got her coat. “Good night, Kate.”
“ ‘Night.”
Kate was at the supply cabinet, doling out medicine, when Eagle entered the room. She didn’t hear him so much as feel him. He still moved like a shadow, dark and silent and beautiful. She gripped the edge of the table to stop her hands from trembling.
She was too old and too wise now to cite fatigue or nerves as the cause. There was only one cause, and its name was Eagle.
“Kate.” She turned to face him, holding the medicine tray between them. “The shaman will not be back. . .”
She didn’t give him the satisfaction of asking how he’d accomplished what she couldn’t in the last three days.
“Good,” she said.
“...unless the parents request him. The medicine man still carries great honor in our culture, Kate. I’m sure you can find a way to respect that and still care for your patients.”
“What I’ll find a way to do is make damned sure the parents don’t request him. Not in my clinic.”
“You haven’t lost your spirit.” His voice seduced her.
Damn you to hell, Eagle Mingo.
“Did you think I would?”
“No.” His fierce gaze pinned her to the spot, and he made love to her with his eyes. “I always loved that about you.”
“Don’t . . .” She wheeled away from him and started toward the beds, then, not wanting to appear cowardly, she turned back. “Bucky and Mary Doe will be glad to see you. There’s no change in them.”
“And the others?”
“I’m afraid for them.”
“Only the foolish are never afraid
“So you once said.” She tipped her chin back, daring him to try to resurrect old memories.
“I’ve brought them something, if you think that’s all right.”
“Anything to brighten their day.”
Moving quickly, she put distance between them. She could feel his movement across the room, as liquid as honey.
“Look, I brought you some magic,” he said as he knelt beside his nephew’s bed.
Kate’s hand tightened on the medicine tray. Always, Eagle brought magic.
“How is it magic, Uncle Eagle?” Bucky asked.
“Hold it up to the moonlight, like this.” He held the small round buckeye toward the light so its hard shiny surface glowed. “Then rub it and you’ll remember all the good times you’ve ever had.”
Her knuckles turned white. She didn’t want to remember. Forcing herself to move slowly, she set down the medicine tray and escaped into the bathroom. Leaning against the door, she could still hear his voice as he moved from bed to bed, explaining the magic of the buckeye.
She closed her eyes and whispered, “Damn you, Eagle Mingo. Damn you.”
Her face burned, and her body. Coward. Hiding in the bathroom. She couldn’t hide forever.
Kate dashed cool water over her face then hurried back to her duties. All her tiny patients were asleep except little Lolly Turner. She was clutching the buckeye in her frail fist when Kate approached her bed.
“I can’t remember, Dr. Kate.” Tears spilled from under her closed lids and rolled down her flushed cheeks. “I rubbed and rubbed ...but I ...can’t remember.”
“It’s all right, sweetheart. I’ll remember for you.” Kate felt the pulse, weak and thready. Alarmed, she strapped on the cuff. Blood pressure ninety-seven over fifty and falling.
Lolly had been failing for the past three days. Kate pushed down the panic that threatened to swamp her. In all her seven years at Witch Dance, she’d never lost a patient except old Mrs. Weems, and she’d been ninety-seven. She didn’t intend to start now.
“Remember the birthday party you had when you were five? Your daddy gave you a pony.” A weak smile played around the child’s pale blue lips.
Don’
t die, Lolly. Don’t die.
“And remember that time you fell out of your tree house and got a cast on your leg and you had so many friends you asked me to put on a larger one so they could all sign it?”
I brought you into the world, precious child. I won’t let you leave it.
Lolly’s only response was a flutter of her eyelids. Kate tried to find her pulse, tried to find her pressure. Her vital signs were off the chart.
“And remember when you started school? You asked me if I had any pills that would make you remember the ABCs?” Kate talked rapidly. If she talked fast enough, she could keep death at bay. If she talked long enough, she could bring Lolly back.
Come back, Lolly. Please come back.
The buckeye fell from Lolly’s lifeless hand and rolled across the floor. Swiftly and silently Eagle moved to her side.
Kate put the paddles to Lolly’s chest. “Remember how you wanted to be a doctor, Lolly?” Flat line. “Come on. Remember!” Kate applied the paddles once more. “You have to remember.”
Flat line.
Eagle put both hands on her shoulders.
“Kate ...come away.”
“I won’t let her die,” she said, applying the paddles once more.
“Kate ...she’s gone.”
Fierce and defiant, she turned to him. “How do you know? You’re not the doctor,”
“It’s no use, Kate. She’s been weighed in the path and found light.”
“She was just a child ...she was just a child.”
Wild with grief and defeat, Kate ran from the room. In her office she crumpled into her chair. Eagle came in behind her and switched on the lights.
“I want the lights off,” she said.
He flicked off the switch, and she huddled in her silent cocoon of blackness, feeling the electric presence of Eagle Mingo as he stood beside the door.
“Leave. I want to be alone.”
“You need me, Kate.”
“I stopped needing you a long time ago.”
Her heart beat so hard, she could almost hear it in the silence of the room. For a small eternity he stood beside the door, and then he moved on the wings of eagles. His large shadow fell over her, and even in the blackness she was comforted.
“At least take this for your tears.” He pulled a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and offered it without touching her.
