After the first eruption, Leo subsided. All his screaming cut off. The pain was manageable now. The madness was over.
And Alex felt the blood pouring from his nose and turned. Crawling on his hands and knees like a baby, he made it to the cliff alongside the trail, hung his head over the edge, and vomited.
The spitfire came up beside him and steadied him with a hand on his shoulders. Whispering gracious words, thanks, encouragement, Alex thought she’d have done the world a favor if she just shoved him over the edge.
Then, maybe, his nightmares would finally stop. The accumulated screams of agony would be quieted in his brain, the flashes of blood and gore, severed limbs, the dead and dying.
When it was over, he sank to his belly on the ground, his head still extended in midair as all the memories flooded back.
A cloth wiped his face. Damp. The spitfire had found water. Well, of course there’d have been a canteen or two on the stage.
He lay there, looking down, down, down.
The spitfire had her own soothing voice. He recognized it.
Then his eyes sharpened on the broken crags beneath him, and he saw that they hadn’t counted all the dead. A young woman lay down there, way off to his right. Her eyes, wide, locked right on him, looked into him as if she hated him for not saving her.
He had to get down there, help her somehow. Alex launched himself to his feet. His legs went out from under him.
The spitfire knocked him away from the ledge, flipped him on his back, and wrapped his hands in something that immobilized them. “Give me strength,” the woman muttered under her breath.
Why would she want even more strength than she already had? Near as Alex could make out, the woman could have subdued the entire unsettled West with one hand tied behind her back.
“What are you doing?” He found himself hog-tied as tightly as a calf set for branding.
She knelt beside him and glared down into his eyes. But her voice was sweet as sugar. “I still need you, so you’re not going down there.”
“I’ve got to save her.”
“She’s dead,” the spitfire hissed as if someone had splattered water on her red-hot temper. She took a quick look behind her, and Alex realized Mrs. Armitage, now cradling her husband’s head in her lap and cooing to him, was listening to every word they said.
Was that young woman at the bottom of the cliff the Armitages’ daughter? He couldn’t know, but a shouting match over the poor thing wouldn’t help anyone.
He quit struggling. “Untie me.”
“No.”
“No?” He wanted to launch his body at her, tackle her, but he didn’t.
“That’s right. No. You understand short words. That’s a good sign, but even half-wits understand that, so I’m still leaving you tied up.”
“You can’t just say no.”
“Can and did. You’re staying right here until I believe you’ve got yourself under control.”
Alex saw the stage driver kneeling beside someone else. Another victim. Alex hadn’t even gone to take a look at this one.
Yet.
He looked back at Miss Spitfire. He was on real thin ice … as if there’d ever be anything so cool as ice in this brutal, arid stretch of Texas. He decided to try and act sane … for a change.
“I—I know she’s—” He couldn’t say it.
“Dead.” The fire faded from her eyes, replaced by worry. “I’m sorry but the word you’re looking for is—dead.”
Alex flinched. “I’m not looking for that word.”
“You say you need to go down and help her, but it seemed to me like you were getting ready to throw yourself off a cliff. Considering the semi-lunatic behavior you’ve exhibited up until now, I suppose it’s possible you thought you could help her. But since there’s no path, nothing but a sheer drop, it amounted to killing yourself. I decided to act first and ask questions later. Not much good asking questions once you’d pitched yourself over the edge, now was there?”
He tasted the panic over seeing that girl down there, obviously another victim of this stagecoach accident. It was a terrible fall. Of course she was beyond help. He was looking for the word dead.
“You’re right. I wasn’t thinking clearly. All I could hear was her—” No sense removing all doubt from her mind that she was dealing with a crazy man. Alex had gotten lost in the gaping eyes and the woman’s hate for him because he failed her.
“She seemed to be begging for help. I heard it, too.”
He snapped back into the present and looked into the spitfire’s eyes. Blue eyes. Blue. So blue. His were as dark as his broken soul. Her voice, too. She had the gift of soothing with her voice. A caretaker’s voice. He shared that with her. Except he hadn’t shared his soothing voice with anyone for a long time.
And he hoped to never share it again.
Now she was soothing him. He wanted so desperately to believe that was possible, to calm the madness of his memories.
She’d called it right. He was a crazy man.
“I’d like for you to untie me. I need to check the other victims and make a sling for Leo’s arm.”
She studied him, weighing his demeanor, thinking, he knew, about that moment when he’d almost gone over that ledge. Then she produced a knife that gleamed in the late afternoon sun and slashed the leather straps on his arms. “I can use the help. We’re going to have to get that other stagecoach out of the way so we can drive on. It’s going to take all the strength we have. And then some.”
Alex sat up. The spitfire stood and extended her hand. He took it but did his best to stand on his own and not tax her strength, though she had so much.
When he was upright, he found himself far too close to those blue eyes and a craving was in him to hear her voice again, soothing him. “Thank you.”
“You’re a doctor.” She wound the strips of leather around her waist. She’d tied him up with her belt?
He hadn’t noticed it there before, but he didn’t notice much anymore. “No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. I don’t know anyone else who would use the terms you did. Humerus, clavicle, deltoideus—those are words only doctors and nurses know. And you handled that dislocated shoulder with too much skill to have picked up some tricks on the trail. You’ve had training. You’re a doctor.”
“If you can call four years sucked into the carnage of war training. If hacking off limbs with little more than a butcher knife, digging bullets out of the arms and legs of screaming men, and using a branding iron to cauterize a wound is training, then yes, I guess I’m a doctor.”
“It counted today. You helped that man.” Such kindness, such a beautiful tone.
He felt like he dared to admit some of what boiled inside. “I had to hurt him to help him.”
The spitfire used her eyes on him, as if she was hunting around inside his head, looking for—what? Some sign of intelligence probably.
“It figures you’d look at the help you gave that man and find a reason to hate yourself for healing him. It just figures.”
Alex knew he shouldn’t ask. He’d lived too long to ask. But she was so lovely, and her eyes were so blue, and she was talking and he wanted her to keep on. “Why does it figure?”
“Because, Alexander Buchanan”—
He saw it in her eyes and he’d asked, so he had it coming.
—“you are measuring up to be a complete idiot.”
And that was nothing less than the truth, his high grades in medical school notwithstanding.
“Now don’t make me tie you up again, because the next time, I swear, when I’m done with you, you’ll be taking a nap all the way to the next town.”
Alex turned to Leo, hoping for a bit more kindness from the man he’d put through torture a few minutes ago.
Four
Beth thought it was fair to say she had a God-given gift for compassion mixed with toughness.
But it’d been a long day.
Right now, she was within a hair�
�s breadth of showing her toughness with the back of her hand on her brand-new friend, Alex “The Skunk” Buchanan—guaranteed mental patient. She was slap out of compassion.
This wasn’t the first time Beth had noticed that in Texas they let mental patients roam free. Texans figured living in Texas cleared their heads or killed them, either one solving the problem.
Beth fetched her doctor’s bag out of the stagecoach and set to work on the wounded. The rest of the troop of injured were finally seen to. Alex seemed capable enough, but there was a mild thread of panic running under every word he spoke and every move he made. Alex expertly splinted one older man’s leg. Beth put Leo’s arm in a sling and bandaged Mrs. Armitage’s head. Camilla was working as hard as Beth and the stage driver.
The third victim, a youngish man dressed like he lived in the city, came around and, though battered, seemed to have no major injuries. He was addled enough to be no help though. And Beth could have used more help.
“What about the young woman?” Beth asked Mrs. Armitage after a final adjustment to the older man’s broken leg.
Mrs. Armitage’s jaw clenched and her eyes went to the ledge as if she felt guilty for not looking. “The one who fell to her death?”
Beth caught her arm. “You don’t need to see her. Did you know her name?”
“It was Celeste. Celeste Gray.”
Gray. Beth recognized the name of the man Mandy had just married. Not a common name but not that rare either. Was this young woman on her way to Mandy’s wedding? She could very well be. The cyclone that had torn out the bridge had come through several days ago.
Suddenly it was far more personal. That young woman down there might well be Mandy’s sister-in-law or perhaps a cousin. That made her Beth’s family, too. Beth had no idea what to do about it. No one could go down there to get her, but leaving her in the open was obscene. They’d dragged the bodies of the two dead men off to the side of the trail with plans to come back later for them. There’d be no burial on this stony ground. Maybe whoever came back could bring enough rope to go down for poor Celeste.
With a sharp shake of her head, Beth turned back to Mrs. Armitage. “We’ve got everyone as patched as we’re going to get them. We need to move.”
The stage driver, who called himself Whip, heard Beth and turned to study the wreckage and his own restless team.
“Can we get turned around and go back?” Beth asked.
“Nope, too narrow.”
“Then we either walk out of here or shove the wrecked coach off the ledge. It’s beyond repair, so setting it on its wheels would do no good.” Beth studied the terrain, her available help, and the weight of that broken-down stage.
“There’s a nice length of rope on the back of your stage, Whip. Go fetch it and unharness your team.” Beth went to the damaged stage and took every inch of rope and leather off it she could find.
“What’a’ya got in mind?” the driver asked.
“We’ll rig a pulley to that overhanging tree up there”—Beth pointed—”and use the horses’ strength to knock that stage the rest of the way off the trail.”
“No, wait!” Mrs. Armitage cried out.
Beth turned. The distraught woman was still bloody. They didn’t have enough water to spare to wash her clean. Under the blood her skin had gone deathly pale.
“What is it?”
“My husband’s satchel—it has money in it. I don’t know what we’ll do if we lose it. I have to get it out.”
“No.” Alex had moved away from the group once the doctoring was done and had been studiously looking down the trail with longing eyes as if tempted nearly beyond control to desert them all. “That stage is too close to the edge. No one’s going in there to get anything.”
“It’s wedged tight, Alex.” Beth regretted overruling him the first time he’d shown any spunk, but there was no reason they couldn’t give poor Camilla this bit of comfort. “I’ll get it.”
“No!” Alex strode toward Beth. “You won’t! No amount of money is worth your life.” He came close enough that his voice, dropping to a barely audible whisper, only reached her. “You only get one life, you understand? Don’t kid yourself that you’ll get lucky or be fast enough or smart enough to get in and out. It’s too big a risk.”
Beth tried to help him. She understood, at least somewhat, that he was traumatized, and she felt sympathy for him. But the stage wasn’t going to slide anywhere. “It’s going to take every ounce of strength every one of us and the horses have to pull it off those rocks and get it off the trail.” She rested her hand on his forearm and tried to soothe him. “I know life is precious, Alex. I would never put myself in danger for money. But there’s no danger. You’re overreacting.”
“I’m not.” His arm jerked away from her touch and he grabbed her wrist. “And you’re not doing it.”
Beth—short on compassion—was tempted to hog-tie him again. In fact, she was looking forward to it. In fact, she found herself looking forward to it so much she decided she couldn’t trust herself and held up. Rather than jerk away from him—and honesty forced her to admit she wasn’t all that sure she could break his iron hold—she leaned closer. “Get your hands off of me. I don’t know if you’re sane enough to know you’re about half-crazy, but your judgment is pathetic. I can’t trust a single thing you say. There is no risk, and if getting that woman’s things will put her mind at ease then I’m doing it. Now let go of me right now or I will make you regret you were ever born.”
Alex’s fingers tightened. Their eyes held. It wasn’t like before when Beth felt him sucking the energy from her. He was trying to dominate her with his will, his fierceness, his grip.
She almost smiled. It was kind of sweet, his trying that when he had to know he didn’t stand a chance. Crazy or not, he did have her best interests at heart. Still, she knew she’d slug him if he didn’t let go and do it fast. “I’m gonna count to three.”
Alex’s hand almost had a spasm, but at last he let go. “Fine!” He practically threw her arm away from him. “Risk your life, maybe die for a few dollars. That’s what most people would do. I expected better of you though. You seem like a woman with a shred or two of sense.”
Well, that hurt.
She glared at him then turned to the stage. “It’s wedged in that narrow part of the trail like a rock. It couldn’t begin to fall.”
Alex’s response was a noise so rude Beth barely kept her back to him. Averting her eyes from the two men pinned and dead beneath the coach, she called out, “I’m going to throw everything out. Gather what needs to be taken.”
Beth tried her very best to give Alex credit for worrying about her. But she’d already learned the poor guy worried about everything, so this was no great surprise.
Grimly, she climbed up the stage, which lay on its side. It was a shame it wasn’t teetering on the cliff’s edge. Then one good shove might have solved their problems. Instead it had slammed into a rocky outcropping on the downhill side and was wedged tight.
Gaining the top, which was in fact the side, she found the door ripped off and gone. Inside, a few satchels and bags were jumbled around. Any larger parcels and crates would have been strapped on the roof, and she’d noticed a few scattered here and there.
She lightly swung her body down into the tipped-over box. It was disorienting to be in the stage while it was on its side. She didn’t like the feeling of the whole world being tipped on its axis, so she quickly began tossing things out the door, making sure they went onto the trail rather than over the cliff.
Wedged under the seat lay a heavy reticule of black velvet. Maybe Mrs. Armitage’s purse?
Beth grabbed it just as an awful crack sounded from outside the stage. A crash of tumbling stones scared her as if she’d heard a gunshot.
The stage rolled toward the cliff.
Five
Sophie, I’m worried about Beth.” Clay McClellen clamped his hat on his head and stared down the trail out of town to the east.
/> “She’s late. And she’s going to want to see you, Mandy.” Sophie didn’t grab Mandy’s arm, but Mandy could tell her ma wanted to, badly. And it was all Mandy could do to not grab right back.
“Ma, we’ve gotta go.” Mandy hated it, but Sidney was right, they needed to hit the trail. They were already getting a late start. Yes, it was still blazing hot. But winter came early in the mountains. Pa knew it and admitted that every day lessened their chances of settling in well before winter came to the Colorado Rockies.
Mandy adjusted her Winchester 73 on her shoulder, so the rifle hung at an angle on her back, the muzzle pointing down by her right hip, the butt end of the gun pointing up by her left shoulder. She was barely aware of touching the rifle, and yet she never forgot it was there. She felt vulnerable without it and had rearmed herself immediately following her wedding ceremony.
Sidney didn’t like her rifle much. But apparently he liked her enough to put up with the ever-present firearm.
The Wild West was a lot tamer when a body had a steady hand and was a dead eye with a Winchester. And Mandy had both and she liked tame, even if she had to do the taming herself.
And now it looked like she was going somewhere even wilder than West Texas, if there was such a thing.
“Beth was hoping to be here on the afternoon stage. She’ll want to see you. Surely you can wait until tomorrow morning.”
Mandy threw her arms around her mother’s neck, mostly so Ma couldn’t see her face and know how scared she was of setting off across half the country in search of a new, better home. The home she had right now was as nice as any Mandy had ever dreamed of, so the idea didn’t hold much appeal. When she’d accepted Sidney’s proposal, she’d never reckoned on moving halfway across the country.
Sidney came close and slid his arm around Mandy’s waist and pulled her close. “We’ve got to go, Mrs. Gray.” He was on her left. Sidney had learned fast she didn’t like her shooting arm impeded. It gave her an itch between her shoulder blades.
Letting loose of her ma almost felt like tearing her own skin, but Mandy needed to leave her mother and her home and cleave unto her husband. The Bible was clear.
Sophie's Daughters Trilogy Page 3