Fired Up

by Mary Connealy

  Vince eyed the children. “You holler if you think he needs help.”

  They exchanged a nervous glance and looked at Glynna. She shrugged and nodded. “Just watch him. Honestly you young’uns are as close to being doctors as I am.”

  Looking at the stack of crates being abandoned by the side of the road, she knew it wouldn’t break her heart if they got left there permanently.

  “Is he going to be all right? Do you want me to ride in with you?” Luke looked over the edge of the buckboard as Jonas climbed up to the wagon seat.

  “I hope he’s just fainted.” Vince clapped Luke on the back, then mounted up. “Most likely he’ll come around when he’s ready. Doubt there’s much you can do. Ruthy’s most likely fretting by now, so go on home.”

  Nodding, Luke said, “When you come back for the crates, holler at the house. I can help you load up. In the meantime I’m going to get my men busy opening that pass. No wagon is coming through for a while, but I’ll clear a passable trail right away if I have to hack it out with a hammer and chisel. I may need dynamite to break up some of the larger boulders.”

  “What do you think caused the avalanche?” Glynna looked at the bombarded trail. In all the madness they hadn’t talked much about the rockslide.

  “I dunno. I reckon one boulder broke loose and started the whole thing going.” Luke studied the top of the bluff. “How’d it come down all along that canyon neck, though? It seems to have swept the whole length of it clean. Almost like it started in more than one place.”

  Vince reined his horse away from the rockslide. “I’ll be out to pick up those crates and help you clear the gap tomorrow.”

  Glynna swung up on her horse. “Be careful going back through it, Luke. The avalanche may have knocked more stones loose that are just looking for an excuse to come rolling down.”

  “I won’t linger, that’s for sure. But it looks mostly clear up there. I hope we won’t have to worry about rockslides anymore. Strange that it happened right while you were riding through it. That was a long shot.” Luke tugged the front of his hat and turned to cross the mess of rocks and get himself home.

  Jonas threw off the brake, slapped the reins, and the buckboard rolled forward with a clatter. Vince rode alongside Glynna, just feet from the back end of the wagon, until she noticed her children. Janet’s little brow was furrowed with worry as she looked between Glynna and Vince. Paul scowled.

  “Think those young’uns can burn me to the ground with their eyes?” Vince asked quietly.

  “They’re certainly trying.” Glynna gave Vince a worried glance. “I’m sorry. They’ve been through so much.”

  “Haven’t we all, Mrs. Greer. Haven’t we all. Why don’t you lead this little parade? It’ll ease their minds. I’d do it, but I want to keep an eye on Dare.”

  Glynna should probably stay and Vince go. The children would appreciate it. They didn’t like letting her out of their sight. But she knew Vince would never leave Dare. She gave her horse a kick and took the lead.

  Dare shook awake when his head bounced off a rock.

  His first thought was war. He remembered how he’d felt when there’d been cannon fire. Like the very ground was bouncing around.

  Then he woke up a little more. No, not cannonballs, boulders. He worked his way through a barrage of pain and remembered the avalanche that had done a mighty good imitation of the Confederate army overrunning Dare’s Union lines.

  His back was on fire.

  His head throbbed.

  He felt like a mountain had come down on top of him.

  Which it had.

  He needed a doctor, but too bad for him, for there wasn’t one within a hundred miles, or maybe two hundred. It might as well be the other side of the earth because none were anywhere close to hand when Dare needed one.

  Doctors were rare in north Texas, for a fact, especially in Indian Territory, which was where Broken Wheel was situated. That was why the townsfolk put up with Dare’s uncertain treatment. It was him or nothing. Yet nothing might be a better choice.

  Forcing his eyes open, he saw little Janet frowning down at him, worried, sweet. Looking sideways, he found that grouchy son of Glynna’s. The boy acted like every man who came near his mother needed to die.

  Or be buried in an avalanche.

  “Where are we? Are we getting close to town?” He wished for his bed. His head wasn’t resting on a rock; it was on a board, which wasn’t much better. He preferred something softer than wood under his head.

  Paul gave Dare only sullen silence.

  Janet shrugged.

  “We’re almost there.” Jonas’s voice drew Dare’s attention farther forward and up. Just moving his eyeballs almost made his head fall off from the pain.

  “Glynna took a needle to my back, right?” Dare was only talking to Jonas now, as he didn’t think he was going to get much from the youngsters. “How did it look when she was done?”

  “It was an improvement over an open wound. And face it, Dare, your back is already ugly. It didn’t much matter if she made her stitches pretty or not.”

  “For a parson, you’ve got a mean streak.”

  Jonas looked over his shoulder and smiled, but the humor didn’t reach his eyes. “I think we all oughta pick up and move to someplace that lies flat like the world oughta do. I think we oughta try Kansas. I bet there hasn’t been an avalanche in that state since the first mosquito hatched.”

  “We got the bleeding stopped. You’ll be fine if you don’t get an infection.” Vince was riding right behind the wagon.

  Raising his aching head to look at his friend, Dare said, “We need to—”

  “Don’t turn your head to look at me.” Vince’s voice had that tone he could use, the one that could make General Robert E. Lee himself back down. The Regulators hadn’t been officers, though there had been a battlefield promotion a time or two that ended up being rescinded. But Vince would’ve made a fine officer if he had a lick of ambition. In fact, Vince had the raw material, the brains, and a willingness to work hard that went with a man who achieved a lot. And yet he’d become a lawyer by reading law books, then came to this far-removed corner of the world and proceeded to be mostly idle.

  Dare too could give an order if he was in the mood, but he rarely was. He preferred to do things himself.

  Since it hurt to move anyway, Dare laid his face back down on the board that kept whacking at him. “Why?”

  “Because the left side of your face is scraped raw. If you look at me and rest that side of your face on the wagon box, you’ll be regretting it for a long time to come.”

  “Kansas doesn’t sound so bad. It’s nice in Indiana too, where I come from. No rockslides in Indiana. The summers don’t try to roast you like a chicken. Lots of thick grass and tall trees that make house building and wood for the fire easy to come by. You think Luke would mind if we left him and Texas far behind?”

  Vince rode up beside the wagon so he came into Dare’s view. “Luke’s mighty attached to that ranch of his. I think we’re stuck together here in Texas.”

  “Stay still, Dare.” Jonas could give an order now and then, too. “I know it goes against the grain, but could you do it just this once and give yourself a chance to heal?”

  “Right now, staying still is about all I’m capable of. I’m gonna close my eyes for a bit. I’m not passing out.” Talking hurt. So did thinking. So did breathing. Since breathing was unstoppable, he cut everything else out.

  “Here’s town, just ahead.” Jonas nodded forward. “You spent most of the trip unconscious. Aren’t you supposed to stay awake after a head injury?”

  “I don’t know.” Dare didn’t bother to look. He’d seen Broken Wheel before.

  “I thought you were a doctor,” Paul said. “Aren’t you supposed to know things like that?”

  “I am indeed.” Dare wished everyone would just quit talking. He was finding out that listening hurt, too.

  “We’ll get you settled, and I’ll stay with
you awhile.” Vince was more than willing. He lived in a small upper room above his law office, while Dare had a house with a spare bedroom.

  “I’ll take my turn,” Jonas said.

  Hoofbeats almost made Dare look, but the pain stopped him. “I’ll come in and cook and clean for you, Dare.”

  Glynna. Her pretty golden hair coated with dirt. Her golden eyes red-rimmed and gritty. The side of her face bleeding. The same side as he’d gotten scraped raw. He needed to doctor her.

  “I’ve got carbolic acid in my office. We need to swab our wounds with it.”

  “What’s that?” Glynna shook her head violently and wrinkled her nose. “Acid eats things away, doesn’t it?”

  “This is something real new I read about and ordered. I had it shipped all the way from England. It’s supposed to stave off infection.” Dare lifted his head, and his stomach lurched so dramatically he lowered it again. “I want some on my back for sure. Stitches can get infected easily.” He wondered if his face looked as bad as hers.

  She was sitting up, riding, while he was lying flat on his face. Even so, she needed a few days to heal. “You’re not going to be able to run your diner tomorrow. You’ll bleed into the food. Even starving cowpokes’ll balk at that.”

  A tiny sigh caused his eyelids to open. He glanced at the children. They both looked strangely relieved. Dare wondered why they didn’t want their ma running a diner.

  Chapter 3

  When she woke up the next morning, Glynna hurt so bad it was like she’d taken a beating.

  She knew what that felt like.

  Just as well she’d put off opening her diner yet again. This time she had a good reason, but there’d been plenty of lesser reasons, all conjured up by her children. They just wouldn’t cooperate and were forever coming up with delaying tactics.

  They must want her to themselves for a while longer. The diner, with its rooms upstairs, had come to her free. Abandoned and with no one to buy it from, she just moved in. Kindling kept showing up at her back door, along with haunches of antelope and bags of potatoes and buckets of milk. There was something new there nearly every morning. She’d gotten flour and sugar and just anything she might need to live. No idea who was leaving it, but she suspected it wasn’t one man but in fact several of them. Every one of the men in town had taken the opportunity to greet her and tip their hats.

  Dare Riker had even given her a stack of clothes. He said they’d been left in his home by whoever moved out, or maybe by several families who’d moved away from Broken Wheel and hadn’t been able to haul everything.

  He’d brought clothes in many sizes for her and the children, as well as some furniture and assorted other things, and he’d done it all as if she were doing him a favor to take it. Considering there were a fair number of women’s and children’s clothes, perhaps he was telling the truth.

  Between the food and the firewood and the clothes and all the things left behind by the former owner of the diner, Glynna and the children wanted for nothing. So there was no rush opening the place. It appeared she could live there forever for free.

  Still, she should open the diner and stop depending on the kindness of others—and she would, just as soon as she stopped hurting.

  She dressed with excruciating slowness and thought of poor, battered Dare. Maybe she should cook a meal and take it over to him.

  The children were nowhere to be seen, so she headed downstairs. Paul was reading one of the Leatherstocking Tales to Janny. Glynna remembered when she was a child, her father had held her on his lap and read that very book to her, and then later she’d read it to Paul. Now Paul was reading it to Janny. The books were the one thing Glynna was glad to have from Flint’s house. They belonged to her. Not Flint, and not her first husband, Reggie. Neither of those two nitwits had done much reading.

  Paul closed the book. “How are you, Ma?”

  “I’m feeling like a mountain slid down on my head yesterday.” She smiled and found that it was a true smile. Despite the avalanche, she thought maybe her family was going to be all right. She wondered if she ached too badly to hold Janny on her lap, with Paul close beside her. She would love the normalcy of reading a book to her children.

  A sharp rap on the door stopped her from spending any great stretch of time being optimistic.

  She walked to the door of the diner, ready to shoo away whatever man came asking if she was open yet, which happened several times a day. Hungry men came to her front door, food and kindling came to the back. Life was taking on a rhythm.

  She saw through the window that it was Dare. Standing upright. His face scraped, but otherwise the scoundrel looked just fine, while she’d barely been able to crawl out of bed.

  Glynna felt like a weakling by comparison and straightened her shoulders as she reached for the doorknob to let him in.

  Paul was at her side, glowering, before she got the door open.

  Dare’s eyes slid from Glynna to Paul and back. “How are you this morning?”

  “I’m getting by. I’ve no need of a doctor, but thank you for inquiring. What in the world are you doing up and about? I thought you were going to rest for a few days.”

  “May I come in?” He shoved his right hand in his pocket. “I find myself in a strange situation this morning, and I think your family can help.”

  Glynna stepped back to let him in.

  For a second, Paul didn’t. There was a hostile silence, but finally her son gave way. Dare came in and firmly closed the door behind him with his right hand. His left was held close to his body, mostly unmoving.

  He was acting very strangely, even for constantly moving Dare. Maybe the blow on the head had done some damage to his reason.

  “Janny, you come over and hear this, too,” Dare said. Frowning, he waited until Janny came up and the four of them formed a tight circle. “I’ve got a problem.” Dare looked between all of them, smoothing his mustache almost as if he were trying to cover his mouth and hold the words inside. “Um . . . can you all keep a secret?”

  Glynna nodded. “We lived with a man who terrorized us for a year and none of the men who worked for him ever knew. I won’t even start on my first husband. Yes, we can all keep secrets. All too well.”

  “Right,” Dare said. “Fair enough. Well, I’m not sure if I’m right about this, but I think I am, so . . .” His voice faded to silence and he shoved his right hand back in his pocket, then bounced one knee.

  “Has something happened?” Glynna had never seen Dare act so uncertain. “Something awful?”

  “Not awful, no. Um . . . the thing is . . . Vince and Jonas are riding out to help Luke clear out that narrow trail today. I’m going, too.”

  “Dr. Riker,” Glynna snapped. “That is just pure foolishness. You aren’t in any condition to—”

  “Stop.” It was an order, as if he thought she were a private in his ranks and he, of course, the general. “That’s not what I came about. I know I’m not going to be much help today. I’m afraid I’ll tear out my stitches if I do any bending and lifting.”

  Glynna heaved a sigh of relief. “Then why are you going?”

  Dare shrugged his left shoulder, and the smallest possible flinch of pain crossed his face. He didn’t move that side of his body again. Glynna realized that although the man was up and about and he couldn’t quite keep from fidgeting, he wasn’t moving like usual. He stood rigidly erect, and while his right arm and either leg moved, he kept his left arm and his back still. She was sorry for him, yet it made her feel a bit better about her own miserable condition.

  “I feel foolish saying this, because I might be wrong, but I want you all to come out to the S Bar S with us.”

  “We’re not going back to that place, ever,” Paul said. The boy clenched his teeth, as hostile and stubborn as always.

  “I know that’s how you all feel, son.”

  “Don’t call me son.” Paul stepped back a bit to make the circle less closed.

  Raising his right hand as if in
surrender, Dare said, “My problem is, I need Ruthy to not help us today, and I can’t think of a way to stop her.”

  Furrowing her brow, Glynna said, “Why don’t you want Ruthy’s help? She’s the best worker on that whole ranch.”

  Dare smiled. “That’s the honest truth, Mrs. . . . uh . . . ma’am.” His smile shrank.

  Glynna had asked him not to use the name Greer and it was rather familiar of him to call her Glynna.

  “Anyway, the thing is . . .” A very faint blush appeared on Dare’s cheeks, which in no way went with anything she knew about this overactive, confident man. What could make him blush? “The thing is, I think Ruthy . . . that is Mrs. Stone . . .” Dare’s eyes slid between all three of them again. “I expect that . . . just from my knowledge of doctoring . . . there might be a . . . a . . . that is . . . the Stone household may be . . . w-welcoming a young’un before long.”

  Glynna gasped. She might’ve blushed herself a bit. In truth, the same thing had crossed her mind when Ruthy had rejected a cup of coffee for no reason. Paul’s belligerence faded. Janny even perked up and looked interested.

  “Mrs. Stone is going to have a baby?” Janny smiled. One of the first genuine smiles Glynna had seen on her daughter’s face since they’d come to live with Flint Greer.

  “See, that’s the trouble.” Dare ran his hand deep into his unruly dark blond hair. “I don’t think she’s found out yet.”

  “What?” Glynna couldn’t make sense out of that statement.

  “I thought, from a few things I observed yesterday, that she might be with . . . with child.” Dare blushed. The man looked like the conversation was causing him considerable embarrassment. “But I don’t think she knows it yet.”

  Glynna couldn’t really blame him. He worked with few women and now he spoke of his friend’s wife in a most personal way.

  Now that he’d gotten the personal part out, he began talking faster, as if he could leave it behind. “I know Ruthy well enough to be sure she’ll be right beside us today, hoisting stones. I don’t think she should. I don’t feel quite right suggesting her condition to her before she’s figured it out herself. But I don’t know what to say to stop her from spending the day working like a man digging a tunnel for the railroad. I thought if you folks could come along, it would force her to take you into the house and act as a hostess—maybe she’d do it for me. Because I’m wounded. I was going to just go along and try that, but something tells me she’d just send me inside with orders to lie down, and then keep right on working. Then I thought maybe if your family came too, she’d almost have to stay with you. Paul, if you’d prefer, you can stay with the men and dig. I suspect I’ll be doing little or nothing, but you could help if you’ve a mind to.”