Now and Forever

by Mary Connealy

  As he sat there, more than a little confused, he decided to stop thinking about big things like his fate and women and sin. Instead, he wondered how bad he was hurt.

  He was battered everywhere it seemed, but the worst was the back of his head. Feeling the back of his neck, he winced at a welt the size of a bald eagle egg. A cut ran the length of the knot, which would explain his notion that a grizz had sunk her teeth into his neck.

  Next assessment, he was hungry. A big part of why he felt so puny was his empty belly. He’d had breakfast before hitting the trail, but that’d been before sunup.

  He patted around and found his haversack still strapped on. He’d held on to the pack through thick and thin for years. It was still with him now. A few more quick searches of his person turned up the powder horn and knife crisscrossed on his chest. His holster was there, yet the gun was gone, as was the rifle he carried over his shoulder. Both knives in his boots were there and the one up his sleeve, as well. Though he was careful how he wrapped it, he figured the powder in his horn was ruined, so a gun wouldn’t’ve done him much good anyway. He found his whip lying between him and Shannon. He looped it and hung it back on his belt.

  He now felt a bit safer. Not much he couldn’t handle with four knives and a whip.

  Shannon moaned again.

  There was one thing he probably couldn’t handle: Shannon Wilde. A problem he couldn’t solve, no matter how well armed he was.

  Shaking his head, he pulled the waterlogged pack off and swung it around. With a smile, he thought of Ma giving him his yearly shave and haircut about two weeks ago. He ran a hand over his bristly cheeks and into the dark stubs of his hair, hardened against his head from the river water. Sunrise wasn’t his real ma, but he thought of her as such. The woman was no great barber. She’d done her usual hatchet job on him, but it didn’t matter really. He wouldn’t get another haircut or shave until next summer.

  He dug around in the pack and found things in decent shape. He often walked around in the rain and waded across waterways, sometimes deep enough to force him to swim, so he had the things that didn’t do well when they got wet packed in oilcloth.

  He unwrapped beef jerky, and the tough meat helped to ease the hunger in his belly. He found a tin cup and did some careful scooting around and managed to get to the water and quench his thirst. Every muscle hurt like that grizzly was still gnawing on him. A few places throbbed from the pain—his chest, left leg, and head especially.

  None of that stopped him.

  Once he stuck his head out, he looked up and up for what seemed like forever. He saw stars overhead, bright enough that he could see the sheer walls.

  He’d expected to find they’d gotten all the way to the end of this wild stretch of river, but they hadn’t. They’d washed into a cave. He had no idea how much farther they needed to float and how many more rapids and waterfalls lay between them and the end of the canyon. Tucker knew the very worst of the river was at the end, so whatever they’d come through, if the canyon walls were still high, there was a deadly stretch still ahead.

  Tucker took time right there and then to thank God for letting them get out of the river alive and to ask Him for a way out without having to go back into the water.

  The bit of sky he could see was too narrow for him to get any sense of where they were or how much of the night they had left, so he’d think about it when the sun came up.

  Filling his cup one last time, he pondered trying to wake Shannon to get her to drink but decided not to bother her. She’d probably swallowed enough while they’d been floating to survive the night.

  Easing himself back onto the rough stone floor, his head aching to beat all, he figured he’d lay awake until the sun rose, then go to work getting them out of here.

  He blinked, and when his eyes opened it was daylight and Shannon was sitting up, frowning down at him, looking like the bright blue in her eyes was going to turn into water and flood him with tears.

  Not much he hated more than a crying woman.

  “Tucker!” Shannon had been fighting tears, afraid she’d never see those eyes open again. “You’re awake!”

  He sat up slowly. She thought of how he’d bled yesterday.

  “How are you? I’ve been so worried. You’ve been unconscious all day yesterday and all night.” Shannon had to fight the urge to throw herself in his arms. But she was not going to do such a thing. Good heavens, she barely knew the man.

  Tucker drew one knee up and smiled. “Thank you for fretting over me, Miss Wilde. Did you get something to eat and drink?”

  Shannon gasped. “No! I’ve just been awake a few minutes. I’ve only had time to worry about you. We have food?”

  Tucker nodded. “My haversack came through the trip down the river.” He opened it and handed her some jerky. Then he picked up a cup she hadn’t even noticed, sitting beside him, filled with water.

  “Where did that come from?”

  “I woke up in the night and ate and had a drink. I thought about waking you, wondered if you’d be hungry, but I decided to let you sleep. It was so dark in here, there wasn’t much to be done. Now we can scout around and see if there’s a way out that doesn’t force us back in the river.”

  Shannon shuddered. “I’ve had all the floating I want, if we can possibly avoid it. How are you? Your head was bleeding.”

  “Well, it’s tender, but I’ve taken a whack on the head before. I’m not seeing two of anything and I kept my share of the jerky in my stomach last night, so I think I’ll be okay.” Tucker looked around the cave. Shannon really hadn’t studied the strange hole in the wall yet either—she’d been too busy worrying over Tucker.

  “It looks like a spring’s been eatin’ a hole in this canyon forever.” Tucker pointed at a stream that flowed out of a long tunnel. “The cave is big enough to stand up straight in. Maybe we can walk our way right outta here and hike back to Aspen Ridge. I reckon your family is mighty worried about you by now. And Ma reads sign well enough she can figure out I’m involved in this, so they’ll know we went over that cliff. Going into the river is a mighty bad thing. I’d like to put her mind at ease as soon as possible.”

  Shannon nodded, then climbed to her feet, careful not to look at Tucker for fear he’d offer to help her up and she’d let him touch her.

  She really didn’t know exactly how she was supposed to behave around him. Every joint and muscle in her body ached, but she did her best not to show it and got to her feet just as Tucker stood, gasped, and fell right back onto his backside.

  She had to look at him now. “What’s wrong?”

  Tucker was ashen under his dark tan, gripping his left leg with both hands, his teeth gritted. He shook his head, looking at his leg. “I hurt so bad all over, I didn’t realize—”

  He quit talking and let go of his leg, as if he had to force each finger to move, and reached for his pant cuff. Rolling it up, Shannon’s stomach swooped, and she wished she hadn’t eaten that jerky.

  He wore knee-high moccasins, laced up the side, and even with that his ankle was swollen so big the soft leather was cutting into the skin. In fact, if they weren’t real lucky it might’ve cut the blood off completely, and if that’d been going on all night, he could be in danger of losing his foot.

  Shannon dropped to her knees, glad for an excuse, since they were wobbly. It’s a good thing he was wearing the odd Indian shoes because she could loosen them fast. Even all the way open, the moccasin was still tight, but it was better.

  “I’ve had some training in doctoring during the war,” Shannon said. “If it’s broken, I can splint it. If I have to, I can hike out of here alone.” If there was a way out. “Then I’ll make you a crutch and—”

  “Shannon!”

  She looked straight into his shining blue eyes. Brighter than hers. “What?”

  “What do you mean ‘during the war’?”

  “During the Civil War. I got assigned to a doctor, I—”

  “I admit,” he said, c
utting her off, “I’ve spent most of my life a long way from people, but I’ve never heard that they let women get involved in a war.”

  “Well, they let me.”

  “And why would you do a blamed fool thing like that?”

  Shannon probably should protest being called a blamed fool, except she agreed with him. “Well, that is a long story, and not one that shows me to have a lot of sense, I’m afraid. We really don’t know each other very well, Matthew Tucker. Can we leave aside talking about ourselves until I get your foot taken care of?”

  Tucker flinched and looked at his swollen leg. “Probably a good idea.” He lay flat on the cave floor as if getting as far away from his foot as possible.

  Shannon finished loosening the laces as much as possible, gritted her teeth. He had a woolen sock under the moccasin. She tugged it away from Tucker’s leg. It had been pressed into his skin until his flesh was embedded with the pattern of wool.

  When she thought she had things as relaxed as she could, she said, “What I can see of your ankle is pure white. The circulation looks bad. The moccasin’s got to come off. I think I can pull it off. I’ll cut it if I have to, but that will hurt real bad. It’s tough leather and—”

  “Just do it.” Tucker didn’t seem interested in hearing her talk, while Shannon wanted to talk a long time, put off what she was going to do. The leather had no real heel. There was no way to get ahold of it. Yet it was too tight to leave on.

  Shannon swallowed hard, remembered amputating limbs back in the war to goad herself into doing what she could to prevent having to do that to Tucker. She made quick, brutal work of divesting Tucker of his moccasin.

  He curled so far forward he almost smacked his head into hers, but he never made a sound. A tough man. She was so impressed she wanted to hug him, which she absolutely did not do.

  Once the moccasin was free, he sank back to the floor with a hard gasp and just lay there, limp.

  She said in a voice surprisingly shaky, “Now your sock.”

  It might’ve been called growling, but Tucker just nodded around the low sound he was making as Shannon eased the sock off his poor foot. An ugly-looking bruise showed right above where his ankle joined to the foot.

  “It’s got to be broken, but it looks straight. I’d say it’s a simple fracture. If I can splint it, and you can keep your weight off it for a while, it’ll heal all right.” Saying it out loud helped her somehow.

  “How am I supposed to keep my weight off it when I need to hike out of this cave and walk across a mountain all the way back to Aspen Ridge?”

  A good question.

  “One thing at a time,” she replied. “That log over there, the one jammed into the cave opening, has some branches on it. I’ll see about using them to splint your leg. The tricky part will be getting to the branches without falling back in the river. Once your leg’s rigid, that should lessen the pain. And once I’m done with that, I can go explore. No sense worrying about hiking until we find out if there’s a trail to hike on. We may find ourselves back in that awful river before the day is out.”

  Shannon stood and found herself yanked right back to her knees. Tucker had a firm grip on her wrist and a grim expression on his face.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “Shannon, we can’t go back in the water.”

  “We may have to.”

  His grip wasn’t as tight, but he didn’t let go. Instead, he seemed to caress her arm, ran his thumb over her pulse. “The tail end of this river is the nastiest stretch of water known to mankind. I’ve never heard of a man coming through it alive.”

  “N-never?” She swallowed hard. Tucker had lived out here all his life and knew this land as well as anyone, except maybe Sunrise and the other Shoshone.

  “Never. Mountain men talk and they like to boast. The ones who’ve died didn’t go in on purpose. They all fell in by accident.”

  Or were thrown in by a blamed fool woman, Shannon thought.

  “If someone had made it, I’d have heard. And I’ve seen animals float through those rapids. They fell in somewhere upstream and then got killed coming through.”

  Shannon glanced at the log, then cleared her throat. “Well, I guess we’re going to do some exploring then.”

  Now she had a new worry—hanging on. She inched out on the log to reach for the nearest branches, terrified of falling into the river.

  As if she didn’t have enough to worry about already!

  4

  If you were wearing a skirt like a proper woman, you could tear strips off your pretty, lacy petticoat to bind up my leg.”

  “If I was wearing a skirt, I’d have drowned at the first falls.”

  “That’s true.” Tucker hated handing over his pack, but it was that or his shirt or pants, and he wasn’t giving her either of them. But they really might miss that pack later.

  “I’ve saved enough of the pack it can still carry things.” She gritted her teeth as she knotted the last strip of leather around the sticks she’d cut off the tree trunk.

  “You’ve really trained with a doctor, haven’t you?”

  “Yep.”

  Tucker studied his injured leg. “You did a good job. Thank you. Now let’s see about hiking out of here.” Tucker had to keep talking or he’d faint from the pain, although maybe fainting would have been better. He wouldn’t have minded sleeping through having his broken leg bound up. He wasn’t sure how he was going to climb around inside the cave and find a way out. But he’d figure a way somehow. He hadn’t survived in the mountains all his life by being a man who gave up easy.

  “You just stay put,” Shannon said. “I’m going to scout around a little.”

  “You sure as certain are not.”

  “I’m not going far, Tucker. I’m not even going far enough to leave your sight. The back of this cave looks like a tunnel that stretches into the mountain. If it does, I’ll come back and we’ll figure a way for you to come at least to the mouth of that tunnel. We are not getting separated. But there’s no sense you hopping along in one direction, then back in another. Let me find out which way we’re going first.”

  Shannon smiled, stood, and was jerked right back down on her knees. She frowned. “What now?”

  “Help me get turned around.” Tucker’s hand clamped like a vise on her wrist. “I want to be able to see you every second. A cave like this can be a mighty dangerous place. We should be tied together, but my whip’s not long enough.” Tucker got a little dizzy thinking of all that could happen in a cave. He’d climbed around in plenty of them and seen some real strange sights.

  Shannon nodded. “Whatever will put your mind at ease.” Her tone of voice was one that might be used with a child. She was humoring him. Well, good, so long as she did as she was told.

  “Let me help. I’ll lift your legs while you turn.”

  He really hadn’t ever been around a woman. Only Sunrise and her daughters, and they were all older. They’d tormented him like big sisters, so it’d been easy to think of them as such. He’d made a rule about women: never marry one.

  He’d seen Sunrise raise a crowd of young’uns mostly alone. Tucker liked her husband, Pierre Gaston, admired him and ran around with Pierre and Tucker’s own pa, though Pa had died before Tucker became a grown man. He liked the life these tough old mountain men lived and wanted it for himself.

  But that didn’t change the fact that Pierre left Sunrise behind to a hard, lonely life. She’d fed and clothed and even birthed all her young’uns almost completely alone. Pierre had spent most of the winter with her, which usually ended up bringing another child. Then he headed for the high-up hills come spring, summer, and fall. And there she’d be with a growing family, a baby on the way, and whatever work she had to do to keep things going.

  Tucker had loved Sunrise, and quiet as she was, he’d known it hurt her to be left over and over again. Mostly he’d known it because it had hurt him to be left by his pa, and it’d hurt worse because, kind as Sunrise wa
s, Tucker didn’t really belong to the Gaston family.

  Not only was a woman hurt by a mountain man’s life, his children were, too.

  Sunrise’s sons grew up and took to the mountains and trapping like their pa, and they’d taken wives and left them mostly alone to raise lonely kids. Sunrise’s daughters had lives mostly the same with their trapper husbands, who left them behind.

  Tucker didn’t want that life for a woman and children he cared about. And he wanted the mountain life he’d been born to. So he’d decided to steer clear of women altogether.

  And then when he’d gone over a cliff with Shannon Wilde, that’d settled the whole thing as far as he was concerned. He had a feeling things weren’t settled at all for Shannon. And a man needed to be able to stand up if he had a woman who needed chasing. So he was going to just put the whole notion of Shannon aside until his leg was better.

  But she needed to keep her hands off him for him to abide by his own decision. And her hands were all over him right now.

  Carefully she slid her arms under his legs and lifted. Doing his best to let the pain keep his mind off other things, Tucker pivoted on his backside while Shannon guided him around and eased his feet back to the floor. She really was gentle with him.

  She’d make a great mother to the children he’d no doubt leave her to mostly raise alone, poor sweet, pretty lady. He wasn’t looking forward to her finding out about that.

  She smiled, and dimples popped out on both her cheeks. “Now you watch me every second. I will be careful and won’t go out of your sight, I promise.”

  She spoke as though he were a small child, and not a very bright one.

  He’d prove to her soon enough that he was a fully grown man, and when he was done with her she’d never forget it.

  “Why do you think this cave is streaked with black?” she asked. “It’s not a normal sort of stone, is it?” Tucker watched as Shannon walked slowly across the uneven floor.

  The cave was about ten feet high, rising to something of a peak. It spread to about that same width. Just a narrow, lopsided triangle somehow carved into an endless wall of rock along the river. She was right—the cave was made up of black stone, as well as the usual gray.