“I must,” she cried. “I canna sit here and watch ye die. Ye’ve never accepted this part of me.” She shot a look at Carson, wondering if he had accepted what he’d seen her do the other night. “This is who I am, what I am. If ye wish to turn away from me after, so be it, but I willna sit here and do nothing.”
“Carson,” Innes said with a groan. “Stop her. If ye love her, stop her. This could kill her.”
For the space of two heartbeats, Winter Fawn’s gaze met Carson’s. In her eyes he read a plea for help, for understanding and acceptance. And the determination to help her father no matter the risk to herself.
Fear sliced through him. He’d seen the cut on his own arm disappear as it appeared on hers, had seen her bleed while healing his wound. The hole in Innes’s gut looked small, but Carson had caught a glimpse of the man’s back before he fell. The bullet had gone all the way through and torn a chunk of flesh with it on its way out. This was far, far worse than a thin cut on the arm. He didn’t see how she could survive.
“Winter Fawn…”
She closed her eyes briefly and dipped her head. “If you won’t help me, at least do not hinder me. I willna let my father die without trying to save him.”
“Can you save him?”
She swallowed. “I dinna know.”
“Ye canna, lass. Believe me, I know.”
Carson took a deep breath. If he let her do this, he could lose her. She might die. If he carried her away and let her father die, he would lose her just as surely, and he would lose a part of himself. They could lose Innes either way.
“Damn. How can I help?”
Winter Fawn nearly sagged in relief. “I need to know if the bullet came out.”
“It did.”
“Then that hole will be larger. I should start there.”
Start? Carson swallowed. He helped her turn Innes onto his side. When she saw the size of the hole in his back, she paled. Her hands shook as she reached out to place them over the wound.
Almost at once she moaned, then cried out in pain. Deep lines etched themselves across her face. Her skin turned as white as milk. This was killing her.
He wanted to tear her hands from Innes and pull her away from the pain. But he could not. She had made her decision, and he respected her too much to take that away from her.
Even if it kills her?
He refused to dwell on that. He motioned for the old man next to him to keep Innes propped on his side and moved around until he knelt behind Winter Fawn. Blood seeped through the back of her dress at the same spot where the bullet had left Innes.
Carson wrapped his arms around her and pressed himself against her back. “You’re all right,” he whispered. “You’re doing fine, honey, just take your time. Find your way through the pain and you’ll be fine.” Please, God, let her be fine.
Eyes closed, Winter Fawn heard Carson’s voice as if from a great distance. The pain was greater than any she’d ever imagined. Her father’s pain.
But she was not alone with it. There was a warmth surrounding her almost equal to the healing warmth in her hands. It steadied her, eased her, helped her concentrate through the pain.
But there was so much pain. She could not stifle the groan that came from her throat and seemed to go on and on forever. Or was that her father’s groan? Their pain was so entwined that she couldn’t tell his from hers.
“Carson,” she managed
“I’m here.”
Yes. She could feel him all around her. “If…when I pass out…“
Carson moaned in protest and tightened his arms around her.
Her head began to swim. “Hold my hands to the wound after I pass out.”
“Shh. You’ll be fine.”
She felt herself fading, fading. Not yet! There’s too much more to heal. I must concentrate. “Promise me.”
“Yes,” he told her, his voice cracking. “I promise.”
Her concentration waned as the pain continued and mounted. The dizziness increased. She opened her eyes and saw only more blackness. Black pain surrounding her, filling her.
And then there was nothing.
Carson felt her go limp in his arms. With his heart tearing itself apart, he held her, not knowing if she was alive or dead. “God, please.” There were tears on his face when he buried it in her hair and kept his promise. He held her hands against her father’s wound.
Chapter Twenty-One
Once again Carson kept a vigil at Winter Fawn’s bedside. But this time it was harder, because this time she did not toss and turn while fighting for her life. This time she lay so still that he had to check every few minutes to assure himself that she still breathed. For four days she had lain without moving.
Her grandmother sat across from him, on Winter Fawn’s other side. The tribal medicine man knelt at Winter Fawn’s head, chanting and burning foul-smelling weeds, waving them in the close air of the tepee.
They had tried to make him leave. Language had been no barrier to their quick understanding that he would kill the next person who tried.
He closed his eyes again and offered up another prayer. He’d prayed a lot in the past few days.
She had asked for acceptance of who and what she was. Judging by his own reaction, and what he’d seen on the faces of the Arapaho after Innes was shot, he thought he understood why her father had wanted her gift kept a secret.
He hadn’t believed her. Even when he’d cut himself and she had healed him, he hadn’t believed. Not really.
By the way she’d said it that night when she’d asked for his acceptance, and the way she’d said it again four days ago to him and her father, Carson had come to understand that it was she who needed to accept the gift she’d been given. She who needed to learn to accept herself. She was a healing woman. But first, she was a woman, one with a big heart and more courage than any ten men combined. She had no idea how special she was, because no one had ever told her.
If he got the chance, Carson vowed to spend the rest of his days telling her. Telling her how special she was, how beautiful, how much he loved her.
Please, God, just give me the chance. Bring her back to me.
At first he didn’t notice the movement, it was so slight, but there it was again, a faint twitch of her fingers entwined with his. “Winter Fawn?”
Her chest heaved, then her eyelids fluttered open. “Carson?”
Her voice was so weak it was barely audible, but it was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. He squeezed her hand. “Welcome back.”
He looked terrible, she thought. His eyes were red, his hair mussed, and he hadn’t shaved in days. Just like…oh, no, had another snake bitten her? She glanced around, wondering what she was doing in her grandmother’s lodge, and why the medicine man was looming above her head.
Then she remembered. Crooked Oak. The council. The gunshot. “Da!”
“Shh, easy, honey, he’s fine.”
“He…is?”
“Well, he’s just now getting up and around, but you saved his life. And I hope you never have to do anything like that again,” he said with feeling. “I don’t think I could survive watching you nearly kill yourself that way.”
She lowered her gaze and swallowed, her heart breaking. “I’m sorry if you canna accept what I am.”
“Winter Fawn, look at me.”
She didn’t want to. She was afraid of what she might see in his eyes. But this might be the last time she saw his face, so she did as he asked.
“What you are,” he said slowly, “is the woman I love. A beautiful, very special woman with a very special gift. There isn’t any part of you, inside or out, that I don’t love. You should know that as soon as you’re recovered, I plan to offer your father twenty head of cattle for you. I happen to think he’ll accept. Will you be my wife, Winter Fawn MacDougall?”
Tears clogged her throat and streamed from her eyes. She would have thrown her arms around him, but she was too weak to move. “Carson Dulaney,” she whispered, “I would be honor
ed.” Then she smiled “But twenty cattle are too many. You only have to give him one.”
Epilogue
Snow held off until late November that year, and Carson was grateful. He’d had plenty of time to get the herd to market and help Innes build his own house upriver on his own homestead. Unless Carson missed his guess, the man wouldn’t be living there alone for long, not if Innes himself had anything to say about it.
But Carson figured Innes was going to have to wait, because there would be no blasting Gussy from her place in Carson’s home until after the baby was born.
He felt it move now beneath his hand as he stroked Winter Fawn’s abdomen.
“What are you smiling about?” she asked him.
It was a lazy Sunday morning. The sun was full up and they were still in bed. “I was just thinking about the baby, and he kicked me.”
“Beggin’ yer pardon,” she said, laying the burr on thick, “but ‘twas me he kicked.”
Carson smoothed his hand over the mound that was their child. “When’s the last time I told you I loved you?”
“Hours,” she said with a dramatic sigh. “A lifetime. I think you don’t care anymore, now that I’m fat.”
“I told you not to swallow those melon seeds.”
Winter Fawn laughed and swatted his shoulder. “But they were such good melons, were they not?”
“Aye,” he said, imitating her accent. “You’re quite the farmer.”
“Gardener,” she corrected. “But I think you were right, we should put in a few acres of corn next year.”
From out in the main room, they heard Megan giggle. “Bess is sweet on Hunter, Bess is sweet on Hunter,” she sang.
“Oh, you, shush!” came Bess’s cross reply.
“She is, you know,” Winter Fawn said.
“Sweet on Hunter?” Carson kissed his wife’s jaw. “I’ve noticed. But she’s not as far gone as he is. Yesterday I caught him grinning like an idiot when she went sashaying past the corral.”
“He does grin a lot around her,” Winter Fawn allowed. “But he grins as much at Megan, and Gussie, too.”
“Yeah, but this time there was a horse standing on his foot, and he didn’t even notice.”
They were quiet for a few minutes, Carson enjoying the luxury of lying in bed in the daylight with his wife. A pensive look crossed her face. “What are you thinking?”
She smiled sadly. “I was wishing that my grandmother could be here when the baby comes.”
The Southern Arapaho had gone to Medicine Lodge Creek. At Carson’s urging they had taken their own interpreter—Innes—and they had insisted, through Innes, on being dealt with as their own tribe, separate from the other tribes there. They had tried hard to get a reservation in Colorado, but the government would not give in. They had finally settled for land in Kansas, between the Arkansas and the Cimarron Rivers.
“Maybe your father can go visit, and sneak her off the reservation.”
Winter Fawn’s eyes lit. “Do you think so?”
He kissed her nose. “We’ll work on it.”
It wasn’t likely to happen, Winter Fawn thought, but it was nice to think of it. She didn’t often dwell on sad things. It was impossible to be sad for more than a moment since becoming Carson’s wife. He had completely accepted who and what she was without reservation. He was even helping her accept it, in her mind, and in her heart.
“When’s the last time I told you I loved you?” she asked with a warm smile.
“Hours.” He leaned up on one arm and brushed his lips over hers. “A life time.”
“I love you, Carson Dulaney.”
He kissed her then, fully, and with all the love in his heart. Carson Dulaney had found his peace, and it was in the woman who had healed his soul with her touch.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Susan Tichy of Hungry Gulch Books in Westcliffe, Colorado, for all her help on location research, and for walking me through the graveyard. Any errors are strictly mine.
And to the wonderful people at the Colorado Visitors Center in Trinidad, who are always waiting with smiles and maps and helpful information whenever I visit.
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