by Judith Pella
In the weeks after Micah’s shoot-out with the bandits, he had continued on as a ranger. He had no place else to go, and truth be told, he liked the work for the most part. He liked being needed and useful, although it irked him to no end when the men held him up as some kind of hero for that gunfight. It was worse when regular citizens did the same as tales of his feat spread.
At least in all that time he had yet to be in another gunfight. Mercifully, Hays had mostly used Micah as a courier to carry government dispatches to Washington-on-the-Brazos, the new capital of the republic since Austin had been abandoned during the invasion of 1842. Micah received extra pay for this and practically had the buckskin paid off. He made the payments by depositing them directly into Reid Maccallum”fs account at the bank. There was no need for any personal contact. No need at all.
Except where his heart was concerned. But he did not let himself think of that. If there had ever been a chance to win Lucie, he had destroyed it that night of the shoot-out. How could he have been so stupid? He’d been blinded, he supposed, by his own aching need. She’d been so right. It had nothing to do with love. Or so he told himself whenever a thought of Lucie would creep past his defenses and haunt his mind.
Bandits had been reported along Carrow Creek near the Nueces. And that’s where the four rangers were headed. Micah dreaded the prospect of encountering more bandits. He hadn’t killed Joaquin Viegas that last time, but he felt he was doomed to confront and kill the bandit sooner or later. In a life filled with irony and disaster, that would surely be the greatest of all.
Toward the end of the day the rangers made camp. Tom wanted to stop on high ground so they could have a better vantage, but the others convinced him to camp by the creek. It had been a blistering hot day for the end of May, and they wanted a swim.
Baker and Lowe stripped and were in the water while Micah was bringing the horses down to the creek to water them. Tom was up on the bank getting a fire going. A dozen Comanches were upon the rangers almost before they heard the war cries. Tom had grabbed his revolver and was firing, but an arrow struck him and he fell. The last Micah saw him, he was crawling toward the cover of a bush. Micah heard splashing in the water but did not have time to turn to see what Baker and Lowe were doing.
Snatching his revolver from his belt, he managed to get off a round and wound one of the Indians. Then an arrow penetrated his right arm, jolting his weapon from his hand. The arrow went out the other side, but the pain nearly took his breath away. He grabbed his pistol, also in his belt, then took a shot with his left hand that went wild. Another arrow struck him in the side, and while he managed to pull the arrow out through his back, the pain and sudden loss of blood brought him to his knees. He tried to see what had become of Tom, but he could not see his friend and could only hope he had managed to reach the cover of a nearby mesquite bush. Baker and Lowe were also nowhere to be seen.
Micah tried to reload his pistol, but his hand was shaking too much, and his powder horn fell to the ground. As he fumbled around for it, swaying on his knees, a final arrow struck him in the head, and he fell back into the dirt. He thought about finishing himself off before the Comanches got to him. He drew his Bowie knife and brought it to the vicinity of his heart, heedless of the obvious fact that at the moment he didn’t have enough strength to plunge it into his chest. But before he could make the attempt, blackness engulfed him.
When he came to, all was quiet except for some low voices not far away.
“Them Comanches are gonna come back. Let’s get out of here!” That was Lowe.
“We can’t just leave them,” Baker replied.
“They’re dead, I tell you!”
“But—”
“Lowe . . . Baker . . .” Micah rasped from where he lay. He tried to move to give some sign that he was still alive.
“You ain’t dead?” said Lowe.
Micah couldn’t tell if that was surprise or disappointment in the man’s voice.
“Tom?” Micah breathed, barely able to form words.
“Dead,” Baker said.
Micah’s vision was blurred by blood and pain, but he saw that Lowe and Baker were both dressed now and appeared fairly unscathed. They had probably managed to find cover during the battle.
“Those Indians will be back,” Lowe said. “We gotta go.”
“Horses . . . ?” Micah said.
“Only one left. The rest run off or the Indians got them.”
“We ain’t all gonna make it,” Baker added, and to his credit, he seemed miserable about it.
“Sinclair, I think you know you are a goner. If we try to take you, we’ll all get killed,” Lowe said. He looked more afraid for himself than concerned about Micah.
Micah didn’t blame him. It was just the practicality of the frontier. He was mortally wounded. He could feel the life drain from him as the blood flowed from his wounds. Words stuck in his throat, and he could only shake his head. Let them make of that what they wanted. He wasn’t going to beg for his life.
They carried him to the other side of the creek and left him with a rifle. They mounted the horse and rode off, but Micah did not watch them. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. He had cheated death way too often and knew his time had finally come.
When he didn’t die immediately, however, Micah knew he couldn’t just lie there and wait for it to happen. He crawled to the water’s edge and took a couple handfuls of mud and leaves and packed his wounds in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood.
About a half hour later, the Indians returned. Micah had covered himself with branches and other debris, and the Comanches either did not see him or did not think him worth the effort of even scalping. They rode away.
Though the day had been hot, the night was freezing, at least it felt so to Micah, whose blood loss left little to insulate him from the cold. He dozed off a couple of times but knew he could not sleep or he’d never wake. When dawn came he took the rifle and, using it as a crutch, rose and started walking.He hated the thought of leaving Tom’s body to the vultures, but he had no strength to do anything about it. Half the time he merely crawled, but he kept on the move without sleep or food except for a few mesquite beans and cactus apples. He was fortunate enough to encounter occasional watering holes to sustain him on the way.
Micah headed north. San Antonio was a hundred miles away, and he was certain he didn’t have a chance of ever getting that far. He had resigned himself to the fact that he would soon die. He just knew he could not lie still and wait for that to happen. He could only travel a few miles at a time, then usually collapsed before he could decide for himself when to stop. A couple of times he merely passed out.
He kept this up for four days. When he had the capacity to think, which wasn’t often, he wondered why he was doing this at all. He had no reason to go on. Lucie was lost to him. His friends were dead. Tom! Even Tom. The thought sliced through him worse than the pain of his wounds. Tom had been the only one left whom Micah cared about, and more to the point, the only one who Micah believed cared about him. Now there was no one. He was alone.
Why then was he struggling so to live?
Thankfully he blacked out once more, preventing further rumination. When he came to, the sun was beating down relentlessly upon him, and all he could think of was finding a drink of water. He crawled over miles of rocky earth and was so thoroughly scratched and cut, he appeared to be one large wound. He envisioned a swim in a cool, wet river, the water washing over every part of his scorched and bleeding body. He imagined the prickles of icy moisture getting into his mouth— cool, refreshing drops. He worked his thick, dry tongue over his lips but found only a cracked and swollen surface. No water.
Why wasn’t he dead?
They’re all dead. Jed, Tom. Uncle Haden. Mama . . .
Why not me? I killed them all.
“The wages of sin is death . . .”
Yes . . . I am a sinner . . . rotten . . . dirty . . .
“What do you want from me, boy!
I admit I killed your mother. I am everything you believe me to be. I am a rotten, dirty sinner! I am the worst reprobate . . . a hypocrite. I deserve your hatred. But I need help. . . .”
I won’t help you, Pa, but I can’t kill you either. I can’t . . . kill . . .
“Don’t be frightened, Micah. This is a good thing. You are not a killer in your heart.”
You are not a killer . . . Pa, you are not a killer.
Micah shut his eyes against the image of his father’s agonized face, as he always had. But behind his closed eyes that image would not fade. Instead, the face changed subtly into his own! Tears oozed from the eyes—his father’s tears, his own eyes. Or were they his own tears also? He could no longer tell.
“You’re going loco, Micah, plumb loco!” he rasped, shocked that any sound at all could come from his dry, constricted throat.
Using the rifle once more as a crutch, he distracted himself by trying to rise and walk. He took a couple of steps, but the world spun around, and he crumpled back to the ground.
“Die, you ornery critter!” he groaned.
But he dragged himself several feet more. He didn’t know why.
Another night passed. He still did not let himself sleep if he could help it. But sleeping and waking had become blurred. Dreams or reality, he could no longer tell. He spoke to his mother, and he thought he truly had finally died. But something told him his wounds would not hurt as they did if he were dead. His father’s face came often, but Micah shut it out when he could, yet too often he simply had no control over it.
The best times were when Lucie came to him. Sometimes he was able to forget that he had no right to dream of her. Sometimes he imagined they had a little farm and children and love, so much love.
On the sixth day, Micah found a watering hole. It was small and muddy, but he buried his face in it and drank as if it were a crisp mountain spring. Then he passed out.
He awoke to an odd sensation, like a feather gently brushing his face.
“Mama,” he murmured, not knowing why he thought of his mother just then except that the feather was soft and comforting.
His eyes were swollen and stuck shut with discharge so that he could barely open them. But he struggled to do so, because if he was finally dead, if this was the comfort he’d sought for so many years, he wanted to look upon it. He parted his eyelids just enough to see a vague image hovering over him. Not his mother, but he still figured he must be dreaming.
“Stew!”
The mule nudged Micah’s cheek with his nose.
“Ya ol’ churnhead,” Micah croaked. “Ya ain’t as worthless as I thought.”
Maybe it was a dream, but what did it matter? This was a dream to be grasped. Yet the struggle he had to mount the mule was proof it was real enough. He began to think it would have been easier to continue crawling on hands and knees. He passed out twice during the excruciating process, but each time that mule prodded him back to consciousness. Finally, making one concerted effort that nearly was the death of him, Micah straddled the animal. He tried to sit straight, but everything spun so horribly that he nearly fell off again. Leaning forward, he circled his arms around Stew’s neck and laid his head against the animal’s head. In that way, with occasional direction from Micah, the mule carried Micah back to San Antonio, less than a two-day ride. Incredibly, Micah had already traversed over fifty miles of the journey on foot.
When he came to the outskirts of the town, he tried to sit upright in the saddle. Some crazy pride made him not wish to ride into his town pitifully half dead. But the exercise was misplaced. The world spun, and Micah slipped from the saddle as the ground careened up to meet him.
“Pride goeth before a fall. . . .”
The words came to him as he hit the dirt.
CHAPTER
32
DEATH WAS MORE PLEASANT THAN Micah had imagined it would be, especially when he’d always been fairly certain he’d end up in hell. But here he was lying on something soft as a cloud, clean and white, too. Just as he’d imagined heaven to be.
He opened one eye, a little afraid at what he’d find. If this wasn’t heaven, if he wasn’t dead, then he’d have to keep on facing life, and he just didn’t feel strong enough to do that. But his vision was blurry, and he could not tell much with only one eye, so he opened the other. What he saw were the rough wood beams of a ceiling. There was a cobweb in one corner. He’d bet money there were no cobwebs in heaven. He tried to move, and the sharp pain from several different places in his body quickly proved his fears.
He was alive.
“Hey!” he called, but he could not get his voice to rise above a whisper.
In a moment the door, which the bed faced, opened, and he thought if he wasn’t dead he must still be dreaming, for the figure stepping into the room was garbed in checkered green calico and had hair like the night caught on fire.
“Lucie . . .” he breathed.
“You’re awake,” she said, her voice causing an ache inside him that had nothing to do with his wounds.
“What are you doing here?”
“I live here. This is my house.”
“Then . . . what am I doing here?”
She smiled and drew closer to the bed. He noticed now that she was holding a small basin and a towel. She set these on the bedside table.
“I had them bring you here,” she said. “The trip was risky from town, but Mr. Paschel had his hands full with so many down with fever. And he’s not a doctor. He’d given you up for dead. And . . .” She lowered her eyes to gaze directly into his.
Her expression was not one of revulsion, which he knew she had every right to feel after what he’d tried to do to her that night in the stable. A lump formed in his throat.
“I told him I would nurse you, and you would not die.”
“Why . . . ?”
Ignoring his question, she opened a drawer and removed a few items. “I was about to change your bandages. Let me just lift the blanket.”
“How long have I been here?” he asked, unable to recall anything since riding into San Antonio, clinging to Stew’s neck.
“You’ve been back for four days now and in my house for nearly all of it. I happened to be in town the day you got there, and that’s when I heard what had happened. Now let me get to work and clean your wounds. There’s still a chance of them festering, and you have been feverish, so you aren’t out of the woods yet.” She put her hands on her hips and directed a stern don’t-argue-with-me gaze at him.
“Why can’t Juana do it?” he asked, not sure he wanted Lucie doing that unpleasant job.
“Well, if you’d rather she care for you—”
“No!” he said quickly. He couldn’t believe he had nearly rejected her again. But what good could come of it? Nevertheless, he was simply too weak—and not just physically weak—to give up the prospect of her tender care. And he knew it would be tender despite who or what he was. “I . . . I haven’t said thank you yet . . . for taking me in. I expect I’d be dead now if you hadn’t.”
“We’re even, then.” She smiled.
Micah knew he was powerless against that smile, and he might have been afraid for both of them if he didn’t feel so downright good just then.
“Let me have a look at your wounds,” she added.
He lifted his arm from under the covers. It was quite weak, and he had difficulty moving it. He wondered if he’d ever be able to shoot again. He forgot all about that when Lucie took his arm and helped him. There was a bandage wrapped around the fleshy part of the upper arm where the arrow had penetrated. Lucie removed the ban.dage, swabbed some creamy concoction over the wound, then put on a new bandage. She did the same to his head. Luckily, the arrow hadn’t penetrated his skull, but it had made a deep gash four inches long over his left ear.
“Juana stitched up your head wound,” Lucie said. “I think she did a nice job. It’ll scar, but your hair will cover it eventually. Thank goodness you’ve got a hard head.”
&n
bsp; Then she lifted the lower part of the blanket to reveal his right side. Her mouth puckered in concentration as she worked. Her eyes were grave.
“Is it bad?” he asked.
“It’s getting a bit purulent. At least the arrow went all the way through and didn’t break off inside.”
“I pulled it through,” he said.
“Oh my!” Lucie’s eyes flickered to his face, then back to her work. “You have much courage, Micah. Not just because of the arrow, but in making that journey back to San Antonio.”
“I didn’t have much choice. It was either lie still and die or try to make it back,” he answered matter-of-factly, but inside he was pleased she still thought highly of him. “Lucie . . . is it true about Tom? Is he dead?”
She nodded, keeping eyes intent on her work. “I’m afraid so.”
“I’m beginning to think I’m just plain bad luck to anyone I get close to.”
“Don’t you even think such a thing!” she exclaimed, and in her emotion she pressed too hard on his wound.
“Ouch!”
“I’m sorry.” She paused a moment, then added, “Micah, people die and that’s that. I’m very sorry about Tom. He was a good man, but his death has nothing to do with you.”
Micah shrugged, not convinced. Desiring to change the subject he asked, “Do you know what happened to Baker and Lowe?”
“Who?”
“The fellows that left me for dead.”
“Oh, them!” her voice rose indignantly. “Captain Hays gave them a severe tongue-lashing. But if you ask me, it wasn’t enough.”
“I would have slowed them down, gotten them both killed. And me too.”
“But you didn’t die and neither did they.”
“Well, I ain’t gonna defend them. I thought about killing them both when I was crawling across the prairie.” He sighed. It was very hard to be angry at anyone with Lucie’s slim, soft hands caressing him. “Most anyone would have done the same.”