Cherish

by Catherine Anderson

  Pete looked at Rebecca, long and hard. “I told you once that you gotta do what’s in your heart. If that’s what you feel is right, then all the talkin’ in the world ain’t gonna change your mind.”

  “You think I shouldn’t do it.”

  Pete shook his head. “I think it’s a mighty big risk. That’s all.”

  A mighty big risk. Those words haunted Race as he journeyed south. It seemed to him that each second that passed was measured by the continuous and rhythmic clop of Dusty’s hooves on the sun-baked earth of the grasslands south of Denver. The sun hung like a yellow orb in the blue sky, searing even in the cool, autumn weather. He wrapped Rebecca in quilts and held her cradled in his arms, her golden head resting on his shoulder, one hand curled lifelessly in her lap, her other arm dangling more times than not, as if she were dead.

  God knew she was as still as death. He wanted to urge Dusty into a trot, to drive the horse relentlessly forward to reach Santa Fe in time. Before his world died in his arms. Each day he broke camp before first light and rode, hour after endless hour. Then the sun would sink behind the mountains to the west and the moon would rise, bathing everything in silver, and still he rode, pushing the horse and himself beyond endurance. Clippety-clop, please, God. Clippety-clop, please God. That was his constant prayer, the only one he knew. Please, God.

  Doubts tormented him. Should he turn back? What if he wasn’t getting enough water down her? What if the broth he made each night when he stopped to rest wasn’t nourishment enough to sustain her? Maybe she would have gotten well back at the cabin, and by heading south, he’d consigned her to certain death. What if he got her to her people in Santa Fe, and they couldn’t help her? What if nothing could help her? What if this was all just a bitterly cruel lesson, to teach him he couldn’t always fight his own battles, that sometimes the only thing he could do was get on his knees?

  Sometimes he imagined he saw a spark of recognition in her beautiful blue eyes. His imagination? A desperate hope? He spent hours, riding along, his head bent, letting Dusty have rein, to stare into those endlessly deep, sightless blue eyes. He spoke to her. Softly, tearfully, cajolingly, angrily. Hour after hour, saying her name, pointing out things in front of them, remembering aloud the times they’d shared and telling her how dearly he cherished the memories.

  I love you, Rebecca Ann. Come back to me. Please, come back to me. If it’ll make you happy, darlin’, I’ll hang up my guns. We’ll live on the farm with your church folks. Would you like that? I can be a farmer. I’d make a damned good farmer. Don’t you think? Just don’t die on me, honey. Please, don’t die on me. I’ll never leave the lamps burnin’ again and embarrass you. And I won’t never build up the fire, either. I’ll do it the brethren way. I swear, I will. Do you hear me, Rebecca Ann? I’ll learn how to read, and I’ll get to be like your papa, a Bible scholar. Smart as a tack, that’s what. I’ll learn highfalutin words. I’ll get me horn-rimmed glasses and make love to you in a three-piece suit. I’ll do anything to make you happy. Just don’t go away from me like this, darlin’. Please, don’t leave me.

  Nothing. No answer. No flicker of life in her eyes. Sometimes he got so frantic, he wanted to shake her.

  Goddamn it, wake up! I’m your husband, and I’m orderin’ you to stop this. Say somethin’ to me. You can’t just crawl away inside of yourself and hide! That’s what you’re doin’, damn it! Hidin’ from life. Wherever you are, darlin’, you gotta come out. Stand up to it. Fight back, for God’s sake. You won’t be alone. I’ll be there, right beside you. I swear it. But you gotta make a stand. You can’t just curl up and die. You’re leavin’ me. Leavin’ me all alone. I’d never do it to you. Please, don’t do it to me. You think I’m strong. You think I’m never afraid. Well, think again. I’m not strong, and I’m scared to death! I can’t live without you. Do you hear me? If you won’t fight for yourself, then, damn it, love me enough to fight for me.

  At night after cooking and bottling the broth he poured down her each day, Race heated water to bathe her and put her in a fresh gown. Then he washed the soiled gown and the flannel pads he had to keep under her all day, hanging the lot near the fire to dry overnight. He slept with Rebecca in his arms, his body so exhausted that he ached, his heart stripped of hope, his mind clamoring with fear.

  Race Spencer had finally come up against an enemy he couldn’t defeat. Its name was Death.

  Broth. Water. Rebecca floated in the grayness. It was like being inside a blanket that had been sewn shut, so soft and nice. She wasn’t afraid of anything in there. Nobody could get her. She needed no one. And nothing could hurt. Rebecca. Race kept calling her name from a long way off, kept talking to her. She couldn’t see him. Couldn’t feel him. Sometimes he sounded so sad. So afraid. She wanted to tell him to come inside the gray blanket with her. No sadness, no fear. The only time anything felt sort of real was when she choked on the water and broth he kept forcing into her mouth.

  He talked to her. Sometimes she couldn’t make out the words. They were just a faraway sound that didn’t bother her. But every once in a while, they came closer and made a bit of sense. Come out of there. Come back to me. Fight for me. The words tugged at her, made her want to reach through and touch him. I love you, Rebecca Ann. Do you hear me, darlin’? I worship the ground you walk on. I cherish the air you breathe. I love you with my whole heart and soul. Fight for me. If you can’t for yourself, do it for me. When the words reached through to her, she could sometimes turn around and around inside the blanket until she found a little, tiny hole. If she moved close and peeked out, she could see him. Just his face. And only for a few seconds. Then the hole would start to shrink, growing smaller and smaller, until it was tinier than a pinprick.

  Race drew Dusty to a stop on a slight rise and stared down at the white farmhouses and outbuildings below. The houses were situated in a large circle around a common, the barns and outbuildings extending out onto the surrounding grassland from behind the dwellings. Race saw a few oxen in one fenced field, three horses in another. No other stock was visible. The people he saw outside wore all black garments, as drab and lifeless-looking as the farming community they were trying to start.

  Race remembered Rebecca telling him that the brethren couldn’t buy stock, crop seed, or farming implements until they had received the proceeds from the land sale in Pennsylvania. These folks had come here with only the money to erect their homes and farm buildings, with enough left over to survive the winter. Without the money in Race’s saddlebags, they would lose their shirts come spring.

  Well, their wait was over. He’d brought them their money. He’d also brought them his woman.

  Even if he hadn’t seen the black-garbed people moving about the community common, Race would have known he’d come to the right place by the farming community’s layout, the houses built in a perfect circle, each one exactly alike. It obviously wasn’t acceptable for a man to slap red paint on his barn or to build a bigger house than his neighbors had. One for all, all for one.

  A sinking sensation entered his stomach. He had to agree with the sheriff in Santa Fe. A bunch of real strange folks lived here. Race had gone into town first to get directions so he could find this place. He’d ended up getting a lot more from the sheriff than just that. An earful, more like. The Bible thumpers out this way, according to the sheriff, weren’t exactly neighborly. They stuck to themselves, and they didn’t want to be bothered. Real straitlaced people, the women covered chin to toe and painfully shy in manner, the men stern and unsmiling.

  Race would stay here if Rebecca got well. He would hang up his guns, and he’d eat dust, walking behind a plow from dawn to dark. He’d wear a sacklike suit and a funny-looking hat. He’d even try to grow a beard, though his Apache blood made his whiskers come in thinner than most with only a few stray hairs where others had sideburns. He’d pray and read from the Bible. He’d go to meetings. In short, he’d go to hell and back every day and twice on Sunday if it would make her happy.

 
; But that didn’t mean he was going to like it.

  Nudging Dusty’s flanks, Race started down the slope. As he rode near the farm, two men who worked together installing fence posts stopped to stare at him. Then a woman in the common caught sight of him and cupped a hand to her forehead to shade her eyes. After a moment, he saw her stiffen and take a faltering step forward. Race suspected the woman had recognized the girl he held cradled in his arms.

  The woman shouted something. A moment later, other black-clad figures began emerging from the houses to gather in the common. Race headed straight for them, praying with every breath he took that their familiar faces and voices would reach Rebecca and bring her out of the stupor.

  None of them offered to speak when Race drew up in front of them. Their faces all looked the same to him. The women all wore their hair in braided coronets atop their heads, as Rebecca did, except that they looked sturdy, drab, and plain, while she looked delicate, golden, and beautiful. The men seemed shapeless in their loose black suits. Their beards covered their faces to such a degree that Race was mostly aware of only their staring eyes.

  “My name is Race Spencer,” he informed them in a hoarse voice. “My wife is dyin’, and I’ve brought her home to you in hopes your love and prayers can save her.”

  Race swung his right leg over Dusty’s head and slid off the horse with Rebecca still clutched to his chest. He shifted his gaze from one unreadable face to the next, his eyes burning with tears. Why were they just standing there? She was dying, and all they could do was gape at him?

  “Her folks was all massacred. I’m the one who found her. She was in shock. She got better for a time, and durin’ that time, I took her to wife, thinkin’ I could keep her safe and make her happy. But the men who killed all her folks came back, and she went like this again. You gotta take her. Please. She’s in shock again. The doctor says she’s dyin’. And I can’t save her.” He found himself staring into a thin young man’s gray eyes. “Please, take her. Help her, if you can. Pray your words over her. Tell her she’s home.”

  The young man stepped forward and took Rebecca’s limp body into his arms. Her golden head lolled on his shoulder. Her blue eyes stared blankly from her pale face. Her arm dangled limply from her shoulder. Race gazed at her through a blur of tears, his own arms hanging like lead weights at his sides.

  He had gotten her here. She was still alive. Maybe these people who knew her and loved her would know what to do for her. He sure as hell didn’t.

  That was Race’s last thought. The next instant, he pitched forward in a dead faint.

  “Oh, mercy!” Sarah Miller cried. “Zachariah, help me!” She knelt by the unconscious man, reached to turn him over, and froze when she saw his sidearms. “Oh, dear heaven…” She glanced up at her husband. “Father, I believe this man is a gunslinger.”

  Zachariah knelt on the other side of the stranger. “Many men wear a gun, Mother. It doesn’t necessarily mean—”

  “He’s wearing two,” Sarah said softly. She glanced up at Henry Rusk, who was gazing down at the girl he held in his arms, his expression stricken. “God have mercy. What kind of man has our Rebecca gotten herself tied up with?”

  Nessa Patterson, a woman of considerable girth, hurried over to Henry, her hands fluttering as she checked Rebecca for injuries. “Whatever on earth is wrong with her? Oh, my, Henry. Take her to our place. She’s in a very bad way.”

  George Hess had just settled back with his boots propped on the corner of his desk to enjoy his afternoon brandy and an expensive Cuban cigar when a loud knock sounded on his closed study door.

  “Who is it?” he barked, displeased that someone would choose this moment to disturb him. If it was that stupid Mexican housekeeper he’d recently hired, he was going to fire her on the spot. The damned woman was about to drive him crazy.

  “It’s Gib,” a muffled, masculine voice replied.

  George sighed. “Come on in.”

  When Gib stepped through the doorway, George couldn’t help but note how incongruous the hired gun looked in the well-appointed room. Gleaming knotty pine, leather-bound books lining the shelves, expensive furnishings, and an imported Tibetan rug. In his filthy, stained buckskins, Gib looked as out of place in here as a turd on a fine china plate.

  George lifted his snifter. “May as well pour yourself a drink.”

  The slender hired gun stepped over to the mahogany sideboard, pulled the stopper on the brandy decanter, and sloshed a measure of liquor into a snifter. As Gib turned toward the chair in front of the desk, George ran his gaze over the younger man’s leather garments, barely able to control his sneer. The gunslinger looked like a cross between a vaquero and a redskin, the stench that came off him so sharp it stung George’s nostrils.

  Following George’s example, Gib threw up his legs to settle his dusty boots on the desk, his spur shanks scarring the polished oak. The hired gun’s arrogant disregard for his possessions made George’s blood boil, but the smile he pasted on his face revealed no trace of his anger. One of the problems with employing sidewinders was that you didn’t dare antagonize them for fear they might bite.

  “I thought you went to town for a little slap and tickle.” George meant that literally. In the year since he had hired Gib, he’d had to bail the man’s ass out of jail three times for beating whores. The little bastard couldn’t get his rocks off unless he hurt a woman first. “What happened. All the ladies run when they saw you coming?”

  Gib smiled and took a slug of brandy. The man was too unrefined to sip the stuff. George figured he could pour Gib a jigger of bull piss, and the son of a bitch would never know the difference.

  “We got us a problem,” Gib said. “Race Spencer just paid a visit to our local sheriff.”

  George had been about to take a puff from his cigar. He froze and swore under his breath. “Spencer? You sure? He’s in Colorado. Or so you said. What in the hell would he be doing here?”

  “I followed the man for a month. I reckon I know him when I see him. As for why he’s here, who knows?” Gib twisted in the chair to expel gas, the sound disgusting, the resultant stink even worse. “Had the little blond with him. Appeared to me she was ailin’ with something. Judging by the bulge of the man’s saddlebags, he brought the church folks their goddamned money.”

  “Christ!” George slapped his brandy glass onto the desk, slopping liquor onto the blotter. “I told you this would happen if you didn’t get that money. I goddamned told you, didn’t I?”

  Gib’s blue eyes went cold and threatening. “You dissatisfied with my work, boss man? I got plenty of job offers.”

  George gripped his chair arms with such force his knuckles ached. “I know you did the best you could. It’s just so damned infuriating. I sent sixteen men to take some money from a bunch of religious fanatics who wouldn’t piss on their own pant legs if they were afire, and only two of you came back. Empty-handed, I might add! Now you tell me Spencer is here with the damned money. Do you know what that means? Do you?”

  Gib’s eyes began to glitter. “Don’t raise your voice at me. I don’t take that kind of shit off nobody, old man. No matter how much you pay me.”

  George sat back, struggling to calm down. “I don’t mean to raise my voice. It’s simply that this will cause me no end of difficulty. I told you, under no circumstances did I want that goddamned money to reach Santa Fe. Now those Bible thumpers will be able to buy their mules and farming equipment. Unless I drive them out, they’ll plant crops come spring. And they will undoubtedly have enough capital left over to make their payment to the bank as well. If you had done your job, they would have gone broke and pulled out come spring instead of breaking ground. I could have gotten their land dirt cheap after they left, no one the wiser.”

  “Calm down. You’ll get your goddamned land. Then you’ll be the largest landholder and richest cattle rancher in this territory.”

  “If we make a mistake—just one—I could end up being the richest rancher ever to shake a
hoof for a hemp committee.”

  “No mistakes.” Gib smiled and shrugged. “We can burn the church folks out just like we did so many of the Mexicans. Make it look like a comanchero attack. It doesn’t have to be a situation that casts suspicion on you. A few unshod horses in with the shod. A little rapin’ and scalpin’ tossed in for looks. The law here will never think you were behind it. Hell, if that little blond doesn’t have somethin’ catching, maybe we’ll even steal her. Comancheroes do that, you know. She’d bring a fine price across the border.”

  “Not after you had your fun with her, she wouldn’t.”

  Gib laughed. “True. But she’d be a nice little reward for all my trouble.”

  George recalled the staggering sums of money he had paid this man and his ragtag bunch of hired guns to either drive out or murder the Mexicans who had recently owned parcels of land all around his ranch. “I pay you handsomely for your services.”

  “Yeah. But it’s all relative, right? You’ve gained a hell of a lot more than you’ve paid, old man. Thanks to me, you own tons of land you had no hope of buying otherwise. Land you had no moral right to take, and once it was abandoned, you got your hands on it for a fraction of its worth. Every dime you’ve ever paid me was money well spent, and you know it.”

  George huffed. “Don’t talk to me about moral rights. As if those Mexicans’ stupid land grants meant anything?”

  Gib chuckled. “I reckon they meant something to the Mexes. And there are a lot of folks who’d disagree with you. According to treaty, the Mexicans had every right to own that land.”

  “This is U.S. territory now, and I don’t give a shit how the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo reads. Why should I let a bunch of stinking greasers stand in the way of accomplishing my dreams?”