So Wide the Sky

by Elizabeth Grayson

  Then Drew swung his arm in a wide, encompassing stroke and shouted something Hunter couldn't hear.

  But Cass had heard. She pulled Meggie up onto her hip and darted toward the edge of the compound. Hunter caught up and took the lead. Now more than half of the tepees were ablaze. The air was thick with smoke, alive with cries of challenge and fury and pain. Bursts of gunfire rattled around them.

  Cass stayed at his heels, holding Meggie against her with one hand and carrying a cavalry pistol she'd picked up somewhere.

  The horses danced and fought the reins, growing ever more restive with the constant firing and the smell of smoke and blood. If they could get beyond the outer ring of tents, Hunter thought, if they could get into that little dry gully to the west of the camp, they could mount up and get out of here.

  Just then a pair of cavalrymen rode in from their right. Their bullets kicked up dirt just ahead of Cass and Meggie. Hunter wheeled on the troopers and fired.

  One of the men slumped over and fell from his saddle. The other turned and aimed. Hunter dodged to the left, but he wasn't quick enough.

  The bullet slammed into his thigh. Hunter went down hard, pain tearing the length of his leg and up into his groin. Cass suddenly stood over him, still holding Meggie. She raised her pistol and fired. When he looked, the second cavalryman's saddle was empty.

  "You shot him!" he said.

  "Yes," she answered, and bent beside him to probe the wound.

  The pain flared up like grease on a fire. Hunter went clammy and sick.

  "It hit muscle, not bone," she told him.

  "That's good," he panted. "Now help me up."

  "I need to clean this, tie it up, stop the bleeding."

  "There isn't time."

  He could see she knew that, too. With Cassie's help Hunter fought his way to his feet. She wrapped the horses' reins in one hand and slid her other arm around Hunter's waist.

  "Meggie, stay close," she ordered.

  Together they stumbled forward. Hunter went sweaty and cold. His stomach lurched. He could hear that Cass's breathing was nearly as ragged as his. He wondered just how much farther that gully was. He couldn't seem to judge distances in the swirl of dust and fog and smoke. But all at once they were at the edge of it.

  The three of them plunged over the rim and stumbled down the shallow slope. Pain swept over Hunter as his legs worked. Blood soaked down his pants. The sick, clammy feeling swept over him again.

  He grabbed for the skirt of one of the saddles and held on hard. His heartbeat reverberated inside his ribs. There was a roaring in his ears. The world went white around him.

  "Hunter?" Cass's voice reached him from far away.

  "This always happens when I get shot," he told her, and then wasn't sure he'd said the words aloud.

  "How many times have you been shot?" It was Meggie's voice, Meggie's insatiable curiosity. He tried to answer, but his thoughts seemed so disjointed and slow.

  All he knew was that Cass was kneeling beside him, touching him, wrapping something around his leg. He was shaking, tingling all over, cold down to his bones. He longed to lie down somewhere, but was afraid he'd never get back on his feet.

  "This makes four," he said when his head began to clear.

  "Can you ride?" Cass was standing beside him, half holding him up.

  Hunter could hear the battle going on, could see that there were others who had taken refuge in the gully. It wouldn't be long before the army found them. He just couldn't think where to go from here.

  "Can you ride?" Cass asked again, more than a little impatient.

  He smiled at her, or tried to. "I can ride."

  "Good," Cass said. "And I know where we'll be safe."

  It took three tries for Hunter to get onto his horse, and once he was in the saddle, the whiteness came again. He heard Cass cut the extra horses loose, toss Meggie into the saddle, and climb up behind her. He felt the jerk as they started off and hung on to the saddle horn with all the strength he had.

  Cass was taking them someplace safe. He closed his eyes and trusted her.

  Chapter 22

  The cave was exactly where Cass remembered it, tucked halfway up a ragged hillside amidst a cluster of cedars and scrub pine. She dismounted at the foot of the trail that led to the cave and swung Meggie down. Hunter had clambered out of the saddle before she got back to help him. He seemed steady on his feet and more clearheaded than he'd been since morning.

  "The cave's up there?" he asked, eyeing the climb.

  "I discovered it a year or two ago when some of us came here to dig roots. There's grazing and a creek just off to the north. We can hole up here while I tend that wound."

  She'd wanted to get at it for hours. The longer the bullet stayed in his leg, the greater the danger of fever and putrefaction. The high color in Hunter's face worried her. She stifled an urge to lay her palm across his forehead, sure he wouldn't let her near him until they got settled.

  Doing that took the best part of an hour. By the time Hunter was stretched out on the bed of blankets Cass had made, she could smell the flat, hot scent of fever on him. As desperate as she was to tend his wound, she had to see to Meggie first.

  "I need you to do a very important job for me, Meggie," Cass began, easing the child toward the mouth of the cave. "While I'm busy bandaging Hunter's leg, I want you to keep watch outside. Do you think you can do that?"

  Meggie nodded, solemn and resolute.

  "Then sit right here at the top of the path and let me know if anyone comes," Cass instructed carefully. "You can do that, can't you?"

  "You're going to be able to fix Hunter, aren't you?"

  "Of course I can fix him," Cass assured her, and hoped it was true.

  "Hunter's nice. I like him. I don't want him going away like Mama did."

  Cass's fears fluttered at the base of her throat. "I don't want him going away, either. Once I fix him, Hunter will be fine."

  Meggie hesitated and then whispered, "I wish Hunter was with us all the time."

  All the time. Cass couldn't think about "all the time." About what that meant. About what it might be like. She couldn't think about anything but how she must see to Hunter's hurts before her gumption deserted her.

  "Are you going to be all right here, Meggie-girl?"

  Meggie nodded, and Cass left her at the head of the trail.

  Hunter was propped up on his elbows when she entered the cave.

  "I've posted Meggie as a lookout while we do this," Cass told him as calmly as she could. Though her hands were slick and the blood was drumming in her ears, she took out her knife and sliced away both the blood-soaked bandages and the leg of Hunter's trousers. Beneath them the wound looked ragged and dark, the blood still oozing. She tried not to notice how Hunter sucked in his breath as she probed around the edges.

  "That ball's deep and barely missed the bone," she told him.

  "Then once you get the bullet out, you're going to have to cauterize the hole."

  Cass squirmed at the prospect, but when she looked up into his face, she took care to meet his gaze head-on. "I know that," she said. "I can boil up some herbs that will help the pain."

  She'd never seen such resolution in any man's face. "I want to keep my wits about me as long as I can."

  Cass fanned the little fire she'd made and nestled the blade of Hunter's bowie knife into the bed of glowing coals. She put her own more delicate knife in a basin of water steaming over the fire. Crumbling white pine bark into a cup, she mixed up a gray, lumpy paste to use as a poultice, and boiled up catnip tea to fight his fever.

  Cass had treated gunshot wounds before and loathed what she must do to him. She gritted her teeth and gently wiped away the steady seep of blood on Hunter's thigh.

  "Just get on with it," he whispered.

  Though her hands were steady, Cass's heart beat thick inside her as she took up her blade and began to explore the wound.

  Hunter sucked in his breath and stiffened.

&n
bsp; Trying to block out the signs of his pain, she followed the furrow downward with the point of the knife. She felt his muscles quiver as he tried to hold himself still, saw how the sweat beaded up on his face and rolled in rivulets down his throat. She hated that she was hurting him.

  The ball was buried deep in the long, hard muscle of his thigh. As she worked it toward the surface, she fought to ignore the way Hunter's jaw hardened, how the air hissed in and out between his teeth. She tried to ignore the burn of sickness rising at the back of her throat.

  At last she plucked the misshapen bit of lead from the open wound. She sat back on her heels, breathless and dizzy with relief. She sucked in huge, shaky lungsful of air as if she'd been running for her life.

  Hunter's hair hung wet and lank along his jaw. A rim of white outlined his mouth.

  Only when she bent to wipe his face with a damp cloth did Cass realize how badly her hands were trembling. "Are you all right?" she asked him.

  His eyes met hers, hot as hell and twice as dark. "I want to get this over with."

  With a shudder, Cass nodded.

  Her already-tattered resolve frayed a little more as she plucked Hunter's knife from the fluttering flames. The blade glowed as if it were alive, pulsing and shimmering in the half-light. Before either of them could lose their courage, Cass pressed the tip of the red-hot blade into the heart of Hunter's open wound.

  His body jerked taut beneath her hands. The acrid stench of charring flesh spiraled up to singe her nostrils. He ground out a curse between his teeth, collapsed back against the blankets, and lay still.

  While Hunter was lost in oblivion, Cass finished her work. She spread the wound with the poultice she'd made and covered the paste with moistened strips of willow bark. She tied everything in place with the bandages, then washed and stowed away her herbs and tools.

  When she was done, she sought the dark at the back of the cave, curled in upon herself, and wept silently into her hands.

  * * *

  "You said he was going to be all right," Meggie chided Cassie in a small, fretful voice. "You promised."

  Cass turned from placing a dampened cloth on Hunter's brow. "Of course he'll be all right," she insisted. "He's only got a little fever."

  In spite of the words of reassurance, Cass was worried. Hunter had been drifting in and out of a restless sleep for the best part of two days. She'd been changing the poultice of powdered pine bark every two hours. She'd been dosing him with fever tea, and his skin was still like fire beneath her hands.

  Bending above him, she stroked his hair.

  He tossed, muttered something under his breath, then opened his eyes. They were hazy and dark with confusion. "Cass?" he murmured. "Is this the cave?"

  She dampened the cloth again and wiped his face. "Yes, Hunter, we're safe in the cave. Are you feeling any better?"

  He pushed up on his elbows and blinked, as if he were trying to bring the world into focus around him. "I'm so thirsty—"

  Gesturing for Meggie to fill the dipper with the fresh water they'd brought from the stream, Cass put the cup to Hunter's mouth. He drank deeply and dropped back onto the bed as if that simple effort had exhausted him.

  "I've made some soup. You'll feel stronger if you eat a little."

  She turned toward the pot she'd kept simmering all afternoon, but Hunter reached out and caught her wrist.

  "Promise you won't leave here until I can go with you," he insisted, his big hand clamped tight around her arm. "Promise you won't go back to Fort Carr without me."

  It was a conversation they'd been having by fits and starts for the last two days, and Cass had run out of ways to reassure him.

  "Of course I'll wait," she answered him. "Of course I won't head out alone."

  She made the promise knowing that if she went back, she couldn't let Hunter accompany her. If the army found him anywhere near Fort Carr, he would be arrested, tried, and hanged for Jessup's death. Cass simply couldn't risk that. But then, neither could she leave him here until she was sure he was out of danger.

  She spooned thick buffalo broth into a tin cup for him to drink and dosed him with more fever tea when he was done. She sat beside him until he slept.

  "Hunter is going to be all right, isn't he?" Meggie asked a few minutes later as Cass tucked her into the nook she'd chosen for her bed.

  "Why don't you mention him in your prayers tonight," Cass suggested.

  "Do you think God will listen if I pray for Hunter?"

  "God hears everyone's prayers, Meggie," Cass assured her. Which God heard what prayers was something Cass had never been able to reconcile. Whether God chose to answer was something else entirely. He had never seen fit to answer hers. But if God answered anyone's prayers, Cass supposed it would be someone like Meggie, someone who deserved to have them answered.

  Cass listened through Meggie's usual recitation. "And please make Hunter all better again," she added at the end.

  Cassie smiled and kissed the child good night when she was done. "I love you, Meggie," she said. I love you every bit as much as if you were my own little girl.

  Meggie snuggled with the battered doll Cass had given back to her. "I love you, too, Cassie," she whispered, and drifted off to sleep.

  Cass sat staring down at Meggie, thinking how bleak life would be without her. She took such delight in her giggles, in the wide-eyed joy of her discoveries, in her sticky hands and spontaneous kisses. In parts of his daughter Drew could never see or appreciate or understand. He could never love Meggie the way Cassie loved her.

  Yet how could she take Meggie from her father? As long as he lived, Drew would search for her.

  Where would she go if she took Meggie and ran away? She'd have to find someplace where the war between the Indians and the whites couldn't reach, where Meggie could grow up untouched by the prejudices that had eaten away at her father. Where could the two of them live together, anonymous and safe?

  Cass couldn't turn to Hunter, couldn't ask him to take the risks the two of them would face. Her vision blurred with tears at the thought of leaving him behind—Hunter who had known who she was the moment they looked into each other's eyes, Hunter who had come to feel like the other half of herself.

  She looked across the fire to where he lay, tossing and mumbling in his sleep. The question of Meggie's future would wait. Hunter was the one who needed her now. She blinked back hot, useless tears and went to him.

  Cass worked over him most of the night, bathing his burning body with water from the stream, wiping his face and corded throat, drizzling cool water across his collarbones and down his chest. She slid a wet cloth down his arms and moistened the pulse that beat in the hollow of his wrists. She bathed his belly and his legs. He was a strong man, brown and sculptured and beautiful, so beautiful that just touching him made her feel hollow and weak inside.

  He was a man who defined himself in a way she had never experienced before. He was a warrior with a generous heart, a soldier with vast reserves of compassion and humanity. He was a friend who gave his friendship and his tenderness and his compassion with selfless ease. What they'd shared in these past months, in these past days, made her think of him as hers, even when such fancies were impossible. It made her wish for so much more than she could ever ask of him.

  Hunter mumbled and tossed as she worked over him. Sometimes he slept. Sometimes he stared up at her with fever-bright eyes, seeing someone or something else. Sometimes he talked in French and Sioux and Arikara. Often he relived the moments they'd shared together, asking about the herbs she'd gathered, repeating advice about living among the whites, telling her she was beautiful.

  Cass clutched those words against her heart. No man had spoken to her with such tenderness. No man had told her that she was beautiful, for all that she had longed to hear the words. No man had whispered how much he needed her...

  Sometimes he mumbled, "Don't leave me." But the request came hard, as if the syllables had been torn from his throat, as if he hated needing
to ask her to stay.

  As if he knew she could not.

  And though she soothed him with her assurances, quieted him with the brush of her hands, she feared leaving him was becoming inevitable.

  His fever spiraled higher in the dark hours before dawn. Cass worked over him, cursing and praying and cajoling. She whispered his name, as if she could keep him with her by the sound of her voice. She battled for his life, as if she could hold him with the skill in her touch and the force of her will.

  And then all at once he was better, cooler. Hunter's skin went damp, and his breathing came easier. He slept peacefully, dreamlessly, exhausted from having passed through the fire.

  Wearily Cass pushed to her feet and gathered up the buffalo bladder they had been using to carry water. She paused as she stepped beyond the mouth of the cave. The moon was down, but a handful of stars were sprinkled across the wide expanse of graying sky. The breeze blew cool against her throat, ruffling the skirt of her buckskin dress and lifting the strands of her tumbled hair.

  Cass raised her head and spoke to the world beyond her own. "Thank you," she whispered, and from around her in the rolling hills the wind hummed in answer.

  * * *

  Cass toiled up the path toward the cave, the buckskin sling across her shoulder heavy with firewood. Meggie ran on ahead, leaping from stone to stone, shouting with the pure exhilaration of the bright, crisp day. Cass laughed a little breathlessly, wanting to set aside her burden and follow Meggie, wanting to lie back in the grass and fill her eyes with the color of the sky. She needed the scope of it to nourish her, to help her dream her secret dreams, to fill her mind with possibilities.

  Especially now when the threat to everything she loved was so tangible and real.

  Meggie reached the head of the trail a dozen steps ahead of Cass. "Hunter," she crowed. "You're all well!"

  He was settled on a rock at the mouth of the cave, pale and shaking and breathing heavily.

  Cass brushed past him without saying a word. She clattered her load of branches onto the pile beside the fire, and stood there fighting down the urge to weep. How could she be anything but pleased that Hunter was better?