Winter's Touch

by Hudson, Janis Reams

  What he wouldn’t give to hear his father say those words to him again.

  But it wasn’t going to happen. Edmond Dulaney was dead and buried, and his son had a woman’s tender flesh to sew. And he’d better be getting it done before his beautiful, courageous patient froze to death. It was getting damn cold, and the fire was too small to offer much more than the thought of warmth.

  He eased her down onto her side, with her back to the fire. After pulling the edge of the blanket over her, he dug into the packs. It took him several minutes to locate the small pouch he’d seen Innes use before. In it he found the needle and thread he needed.

  “Do you want the leather strap to bite on again?”

  “Nae.”

  The way she said it, with dread covering her attempt at bravery, made him curse under his breath. He shouldn’t have asked. Pride made her refuse.

  He thrust the strip into her hands. “Take it anyway. It might not help you, but I’ll feel a damn sight better.”

  Damn, he didn’t want to do this. But he knew he had no choice. He had to lean so close to the fire to see to thread the needle that he nearly singed his hair. Then he pulled the blanket aside and bared the back of her waist. “Ready?”

  “Aye.”

  He waited one heartbeat, two, but instead of putting the strap between her teeth, she gripped it tight in one fist.

  He touched her back. Her skin was hot. Too hot. Swearing under his breath, he caught the edge of her torn flesh with the needle.

  She jerked and sucked in a sharp breath.

  “I’m sorry. You can swear if you want.” After pulling the thread through, he caught the flesh on the other side of the hole and pushed the needle through.

  She let out a small yelp. “Does swearing help?”

  “Does for me, when I’m under the needle. One more.” He poked the needle through again and pulled slightly to bring the ragged edges of flesh together before tying off the thread.

  “Are you under the needle often?” she asked, her voice breathless with pain.

  With a small pocket knife from the leather pouch, he cut the thread. “More often than I’d like. There. That’s done.”

  She let out a long, slow breath. “Thank you.”

  Before bandaging the wound, Carson took another willow twig and peeled down to the soft inner bark. He cut off a slice no longer than the end joint of his little finger and chewed it to a soft pulp. This he pressed over the wound in her back before covering it with a fresh pad from the remnants of Bess’s petticoat.

  The wound where the arrow had come out was holding its own, so he decided to leave it alone.

  “I’m going to sit you up so I can wrap the bandage around you, but you let me do the work. I don’t want you pulling out my fancy stitching.”

  “All right.” Winter Fawn held her breath against the pain to come, but he was true to his word about doing all the work himself. He slid his arm around her shoulders and lifted her.

  Winter Fawn was not used to being taken care of. It did not sit comfortably with her to have someone take care of her. Yet if she had to get herself shot and tended to, she couldn’t have chosen a better man to do the tending. He was even more gentle with her than her father had been. Wondering where he had learned to chew the willow bark that way, she held her tunic up out of the way while he wrapped the long strip of bandage around her waist three times to hold the pads in place over her wounds.

  The tea he gave her was bitter, but hot. She insisted that he drink some, too.

  Kneeling between her and the fire, he took the slab of bacon from one of the packs, then pulled her belt knife from his boot.

  “Don’t fix any for me,” she told him as she finished the last of her tea. She reached around him to set the cup next to the fire, then eased down on the bedding, too weak and miserable to sit up any longer. “I’m not hungry.”

  He turned his head to look at her, but at that angle, his face was in shadow and she could not read his expression. “I don’t imagine you are, but you’ll eat.”

  “No, really, I’m not—”

  “Yes, really. You haven’t eaten anything all day. If you don’t eat now, you’ll be half dead tomorrow.”

  Winter Fawn wanted to argue, but she didn’t have the strength, and she knew he was right. She must eat. “You are right. I’m sorry. I do not mean to be so much trouble.”

  “Humph.” He turned back and took another slice of the bacon slab. “Go ahead and get some sleep if you want. I’ll wake you when the food’s ready. Girls who save my life are rarely any trouble at all.”

  “I wish you would stop saying that. You make it sound so…noble. It was nothing like that.”

  “Seemed like it to me.” His voice was sharper than he intended, but he still couldn’t get past what she’d done. “Noble, brave. Foolish.”

  “Oh, aye, now you’ve got the right of it.”

  Her words were slightly slurred with exhaustion or fever, maybe both. Yet there was humor in her voice. Humor, in the shape she was in. Carson shook his head, amazed.

  “Might I be askin’ you a question, Carson Dulaney?”

  He tossed the bacon into the skillet and set it over the fire. There was no wind yet tonight, so the smell shouldn’t carry far. “Sure. What do you want to know?”

  “Where is your ranch?”

  “Down along the Huerfano. It’s got water year-round. Good grass.”

  “Megan’s mother. She must be missing her daughter something fierce. Be she waiting for ye there?”

  Her Scottish burr, he noticed, grew thicker with exhaustion, as it did when her emotions ran high. “Megan’s mother died three years ago.”

  “Oh, I am sorry. I didna know.”

  Carson didn’t say anything. He figured that was best. He didn’t want to talk about Julia. Didn’t want to think about her.

  Behind him, Winter Fawn fell silent. He glanced over his shoulder and found her fast asleep. When the bacon was done and the biscuits after them, he hated to wake her. But he’d meant it when he’d told her she had to eat. She would be as weak as a newborn kitten by morning if she didn’t.

  Looking at her while she slept made him want to touch her. Stroke that soft, soft cheek. Trace the curve of her lips with a fingertip.

  Damn fool thoughts.

  He woke her and helped her sit up.

  “I’m really not hungry,” she mumbled.

  “I know, but eat anyway.” He passed her a tin plate with a pan biscuit and a slice of bacon, and poured her the last of the tea. She managed, with a great deal of prompting, to eat what he’d given her, but no sooner had he taken the plate from her fingers than she eased back down onto the bedroll. She fell asleep instantly. On top of the buffalo robe.

  It took some doing, but he finally got her tucked beneath the warmth of the cover. He figured he’d jostled her pretty good, but she hadn’t wakened. Poor girl. Poor foolishly brave girl.

  It was too dark to make it safely down the hill to the stream again, so he turned one tin plate face down over the other to keep the bugs out, what few bugs there might be on a night that gave every indication of getting downright cold. He’d wash the plates in the morning.

  He checked on the horse and mule, shivering in his undershirt before he made it back to the meager fire. Then he pulled the sticks from the fire until the flames died completely, leaving nothing but glowing coals.

  It was a good thing Winter Fawn was fast asleep, he thought as he crawled beneath the buffalo robe, tucking the canteen in with them to keep the water from freezing during the night. He’d heard the Arapaho placed a high value on chastity among their girls and women. She probably wouldn’t appreciate sharing her bed with a strange man. Not that he had in mind anything other than sleeping warm. But a man would have to be dead not to have wants around a woman like her. Carson Dulaney might have a few more holes in his hide than usual, but he damn sure wasn’t dead.

  Around him the mountain was quiet save for an occasional skittering in
the underbrush, the far off call of a wolf, the hoot of an owl. There were so many stars overhead it was dizzying to lay there and look at them. They looked different from here than they had back home. That was one of the first things he’d noticed last year when he’d come west. Maybe it had something to do with the altitude.

  Beside him Winter Fawn shivered in her sleep. Without thought, he rolled to his side. Slipping one arm beneath her head and the other over her hips, he pulled her close against him and closed his eyes against the exquisite pleasure of holding her.

  This was even better than holding her in the saddle. No need to worry here about keeping her from falling. Here he only needed to keep her warm.

  Had a woman ever felt this good pressed up against him? He couldn’t remember, but he didn’t think so. Maybe she felt so good because it had been so damn long since he’d been with a woman.

  It didn’t matter, of course. Neither of them was in any shape for him to take advantage of the situation. Even if he had been, he wouldn’t. She was Innes’s daughter. Innes trusted him, as he trusted Innes with Megan and Bess.

  More important than those reasons, Winter Fawn trusted him.

  So he held her close against the cold that crept in from the night, and prayed that Megan and Bess were safe and warm.

  Three miles down the mountain, Crooked Oak prayed, too. For patience, for victory. For an early sunrise in the morning with good, clear light.

  It was not the danger of the mountains at night that had finally halted their pursuit. It was the simple lack of light by which to track their prey. Light had still teased the tops of the taller trees, but deep shadows across the ground had forced them to stop for the night. If they could not see the white man’s trail, they could not know if they were still following him, or if he had circled and headed back down the mountain.

  Crooked Oak gnashed his teeth in frustration. Like the men with him, he sat huddled around the fire. None of them had come prepared for a cold mountain night. They had ridden out of camp in the heat of the moment, anticipating catching the escapees in a matter of hours. Instead, they’d been on the trail for two days, and still the white man eluded them.

  “I am troubled,” said Long Chin.

  Crooked Oak barely managed to bite back a snarl. Long Chin was always troubled about something.

  Two Feathers nodded as though in agreement with Long Chin. “About what are you troubled, cousin?”

  Frowning, Long Chin looked across the fire at Two Feathers. “You saw the white man carry Winter Fawn from camp, and from that we assumed he took her against her will.”

  Again Two Feathers nodded.

  Crooked Oak did not like the direction of their thoughts. “Of course she was taken against her will,” he asserted. “She was bloody and unconscious, was she not?”

  “She was,” Two Feathers confirmed.

  “Yes,” Crooked Oak said. “About this we are all troubled, as we should be. That is why we are here. To find her and bring her back. And to kill the white man. But now his death will not be only to avenge our fallen comrades. Now he must die for daring to take one of our own away from us.”

  “But today, when we saw them,” Long Chin said, “she did not look as though she was being forced. She rode behind him. When she saw us, she did not jump down and run to us for help. She clung to the white man and rode off with him.”

  A murmur rose around the fire as the others agreed with him.

  “You are mistaken,” Crooked Oak said heatedly.

  Red Bull, who, along with Spotted Calf, could always be counted on to side with Crooked Oak, waved his hand in dismissal of the others. “The white man is no fool. He knows we would not chance hurting her. He surely had tied her hands around him so she could not get down. Would not any of us have done that very thing with a captive?”

  “This is true.” Spotted Calf nodded slowly. “This is surely what has happened.”

  Talks Loud grunted. “She did not look tied to me. I say we would have been better off to go back for the white man’s wagon instead of chasing him. The goods in the wagon would mean more to Our People than the fate of one girl.”

  “No!” In a surge of rage, Crooked Oak jumped to his feet. “Winter Fawn is not just any girl. She is mine!”

  Talks Loud chuckled. “So you wish, my friend, but her father has not agreed, and is not likely to now.”

  Crooked Oak ground his teeth and stared up at the stars to keep from shouting that he had no intention of worrying about Red Beard’s agreement, for he intended to kill the man. But he swallowed the words. It would not do to speak them in front of Two Feathers. Two Feathers held no true affection for Red Beard, but because of Winter Fawn and Hunter, the white man was considered family. To Two Feathers, family was sacred.

  “She will be mine,” Crooked Oak said tightly, fists clenched at his sides. “She will be mine.”

  Chapter Eight

  Winter Fawn woke deep in the night. At first she was startled to feel the heat at her side and a heavy weight draped across her. Then she realized.

  Carson.

  A slow sigh slipped from between her lips. This, then, was what it felt like to lie next to a man. She’d had no idea anything could be so wonderful. Being held in his arms on horseback had been pleasurable—as pleasurable as possible with her wounds plaguing her. But this, despite the wounds, was a feeling she would treasure for the rest of her life. Such warmth. Such comfort. Yet there was tension in her, too, from lying beside him. A tension she did not understand. If only they could stay like this, she and this stranger whose eyes seemed to hold her destiny, until she could fathom this tight, bewildering yearning that tried to edge out the comfort.

  But if they did not get away from Crooked Oak, she reminded herself, her white man’s destiny could prove to be tragically short.

  Again she thought, I’m slowing him down.

  She had tried to do something about that last night when they’d been trapped among the rocks. She had tried, and failed.

  Or had she failed? She had placed her hand on the front wound. Carson had said it looked good. It had not bled again, nor had any stitches pulled loose as they had in the back. Maybe…

  She would try again, on the wound at her back this time. She must be stronger. She must not slow Carson down. She must not be a burden to him as he fled for his life. It was not only his life at stake, but the lives of his sister and daughter, as well, for who would care for them without Carson?

  It might also mean Winter Fawn’s life, she admitted. She had told everyone that Crooked Oak would not harm her, but that wasn’t necessarily true. As her uncle, Two Feathers might be counted on to keep her safe. Maybe. Although he’d never been fond of her because of her father.

  But Crooked Oak had seen her freeing Carson from his bonds in camp. And today he had seen her clinging to Carson’s back as they rode away from the others.

  There was every possibility that he would want no more to do with her because she was helping Carson.

  That suited Winter Fawn just fine.

  But it also meant that her safety lay with Carson. And as long as she was such a burden to him, neither of them was safe.

  Yet even with so much at stake, she was afraid to try to heal her own wounds. This was not like the other times, like Carson’s head earlier, or Bess’s two nights ago, or her grandmother’s aching shoulders every winter. Those had been compulsions to her. She had been drawn by a force beyond herself to touch, to heal. This time, it would be deliberate.

  She remembered the first time, the rabbit. That, too, had been directed by some unknown force within her. She’d had no idea what was about to happen. She remembered what her father had said about it afterward as if it were yesterday.

  Never, ever, do anything like that again! Do ye hear me, lassie? Never!

  His voice echoed in her mind. That was the first time she’d ever seen her father truly enraged, and he’d been enraged at her. The memory still had the power to make her tremble. She had been
twelve that spring day when he had brought her the rabbits to skin and roast. Her mother had been dead barely a week, and Winter Fawn had become the woman of her father’s lodge. But not for much longer, she knew. She would go soon to live in the lodge of her mother’s mother, for it was not proper for a young woman, which Winter Fawn was soon to become, to live alone with a man, not even her own father.

  Knowing that this time next spring she would not be living with the father she adored, Winter Fawn had eagerly accepted the chore of skinning and gutting the rabbits. She had stroked the nearest one, thinking that she would use the soft fur to line the inside of her father’s moccasins before next winter. He always complained in winter that his feet were cold.

  Or perhaps she would save the furs until she had enough to line his coat.

  She stroked the rabbit’s side one more time, then clasped it by the head to bring it closer.

  Her palm, pressed against the rabbit’s head, began to tingle. At first it tickled, and she thought it was merely the fur, teasing her skin. But then there was heat, and the tingling grew sharper.

  She wanted to pull her hand away. The sensation running up her arm felt too much like that which she had felt on the hilltop just before the lighting struck and killed her mother.

  But she found she could not move her hand.

  Then a sense of pain, sharp and centered on her left temple, and fear, overwhelming fear, assailed her. Yet it was not her pain, not her fear, even though she felt them both strongly. They belonged to the rabbit.

  Winter Fawn had no understanding of how she knew such a thing, she simply knew. The rabbit was not dead. She could feel the wound where the rock from her father’s sling had struck its head. The same spot on her head was where the pain centered.