by BJ James
“No!” He tried to argue.
“I won’t leave you behind, Matthew.” Brushing loose tendrils of fever-dampened hair from his face, she tried to smile. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
His eyes fluttered as he tried to keep them open, but the effort was too great. He’d slipped into comatose sleep when she kissed his forehead and rose. One last check on his supplies and her own, and she had no reason to delay.
By her reckoning it was just past seven when she moved from the overhang in a slow jog. From a safe distance, she scanned her back trail for signs that could lead a clever Wolf to Matthew. There were none readily apparent, but time and a lucky guess could nullify her best effort.
Time was precious. Wasted time was her enemy.
“I’ll be back for you, Matthew.” She repeated the promise as she set out on her solitary quest.
* * *
An unmerciful sun was high, defeat and despair a heavy weight in her step, when she virtually stumbled over a well-worn trail. There were hoof marks in the dust. Shod hooves. A band of horses had passed this way often and not so long ago. On a hunch, she altered her course to follow where their path led. Just when she was sure she’d made a costly error, that she was destined to traverse this wasteland forever, the trail turned down into a hidden ravine carved by the waters of a raging river. For now, in the driest summer on record, that same river was a peaceful, meandering stream, the riverbed a lush oasis. Best of all, tucked close against the opposite wall, out of the path of all but the highest waterline, was a small shack fallen into disrepair.
A line shack, a relic from the early days of ranching, before trucks and planes and helicopters became the norm? A luckless miner’s claim? A squatter overpowered by the stronger landholder? Or a greenhorn farmer who’d watched his crops wash away in torrential floods, leaving disaster in its wake?
Whoever built it, for whatever reason, it was abandoned. It could be godsend or deathtrap. She couldn’t know until she took a closer look.
Taking the path of the horses, she’d only begun the little descent when she found the fresher tracks of a single horse. From her vantage, she searched every uncloistered inch of this natural fortress. “I know you’re here, horse. I’m going to find you, and when I go for Matthew, you’ll go with me.”
She found him in the narrow chasm of the north end of the ravine, grazing in grass that flanked a towering waterfall. He was big and rangy, a sturdy workhorse. Judging from the marks worn into his coat by saddle and bridle, part of a cowboy’s winter string. Able and hard used, then turned out on the range to rest. He started in surprise, twitching nervously as he caught sight of her, but he didn’t bolt. “Easy, boy,” she crooned. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
He backed away, rearing and dancing, his eyes rolling. Still he did not bolt.
Gathering all the forbearance at her command, Patience inched toward him, the soothing patter never ending. “Found yourself a nice, lonely place, boy? Are you the vanguard? Will the others be along later, or are you always solitary?”
She wasn’t sure what she said to him beyond that. Words didn’t matter, only the tone. She must have him, the trip to the ravine would be more direct than her fanning search, but Matthew would never make it. In the exigency of need, she moved carefully. Gradually the horse relaxed with her constant, lilting chant, and stepped a little toward her. As she offered a leaf plucked from a sycamore, he stretched his neck to nibble curiously at her hand. From then it was a simple matter to discover he liked to have his nose rubbed and his ears scratched. He was a pet. One of those rare, loyal creatures more in tune with his human than his kind.
As she scratched and stroked, he whickered softly. If he’d been a kitten, he would have purred. He nuzzled at her neck, she laughed and dodged away, but only to pet him again.
When she went to the shack, to put it into what order she could for Matthew, the horse was her shadow. He would have followed her into the cabin if the door hadn’t been set so low. “If you’ll wait, like a good boy, I shouldn’t be long.” When she assessed the little that was possible in the tumbled-down cabin, she sighed, amending, “I won’t be long at all. An hour at the most.”
She was wrong, failing to take into account her own degree of exhaustion. It was two hours before she rode bareback from the ravine with her canteen refilled, but her short supply of food depleted. Dread that she’d been gone from Matthew too long, was answered by a need in the horse to please her. The journey that had taken five hours of difficult hiking was accomplished more directly in two, as he picked his way among the rubble of fallen stone and dry earth with the sure-footed confidence of a mountain goat.
The day was waning, but twilight was hours away when she pulled the horse to a halt a little way from the shelter. Denying the urge to rush to him, she waited and listened, half expecting the Wolves would be there. But there was no sign of trouble. All was as she had left it. Quiet. Still.
Too quiet? Too still? Had his condition worsened?
“Matthew.” She was dismounted, running, bursting through clawing shrub to the shelter. His bed was empty. “Matthew?”
“Here.” With tottering steps he moved from the gloom far from his bed.
“What are you doing? You shouldn’t be moving around.” She was poised at the entrance, frozen in fear for him.
“I heard the horse,” he explained hoarsely.
It was then she saw the knife in his left hand, and the little strength with which he held it. In an instant of empathy she lived the horror of a vigorous man stripped of strength, waiting for an unrecognized enemy. Going to him, she took him in her arms, supporting him as much as holding him. She didn’t bother with apologies as she led him to his blanket, for she knew he would have none of them. “I’ve found a place where we can be safe for a while. Long enough for you to regain your stamina. There’s water and shelter.”
“And horses?”
“Just the one, for now.” She gathered supplies as she spoke. “We’ll need a little more than two hours riding double. It will be near dark before we make it, but the horse knows the way.”
Matthew didn’t contest her plan, he didn’t question. The simple act of moving from his bed had taken too much out of him to allow him to do more than sit and listen. But the deadly fatigue didn’t cloud the realization that she’d done well. Again.
When they were packed and mounted, with the horse standing tolerantly, Matthew murmured in her ear, “I’d like to meet the man who trained this horse.”
Her original plan for a travois with herself as beast of burden was discarded with the acquisition of the horse. They could travel faster and the way would be less jolting riding double. Patience was engrossed in lashing Matthew’s good wrist to her belt, if he fell, they would fall together. If she could, she would break his fall. When his comment registered, she replied grimly, “I’d like to kiss him.”
Before their trek was done, with darkness closing in at the end of a long day of summer, and with Matthew a deadweight at her back, she knew nothing would be thanks enough to the person responsible for this horse. Lucky, as she’d begun to think of him, stood firm in front of the forsaken hovel as she undertook the impossible task of releasing Matthew and dismounting, trying all the while to keep him astride the broad, bare back. In the end they tumbled together to the ground, Patience scarcely managing to cushion his body with her own.
He was deadweight again when she recovered the breath knocked from her in their fall and shuffled with him through the sagging door. Letting him crumple to a heap on the crude bed she’d cleaned and made for him, she started a small fire in the crumbling fireplace. Making him more comfortable and assuring herself that he was sleeping normally, she went to see to Lucky. The horse had been rubbed down with handfuls of foliage from nearby junipers, watered, and hobbled by a length of fabric torn from her spare shirt when she returned to the shack.
Faced with the dilemma of food, with her charge sleeping like the dead and every muscle
in her body bearing its own witness, she determined that rest was the sustenance needed most by Matthew and herself. Rolling into a blanket on the floor in front of the fire, she slept immediately and as deeply as he.
* * *
Matthew was lucid and ravenous, his hunger inflamed by the scent of stew bubbling in a pot over the fire. Shifting in bed, lifting his body on one arm when he found the other nearly useless, he inspected the cabin. He’d only vague recollections of the grueling trip into the ravine, and nothing of the cabin itself, yet he knew he’d been in this small room and in this bed for days. As if it were a dream, he recalled the tender embrace that held him when he thrashed in delirium, and the competent hands that bathed him in cooling water when his body was consumed by the inferno that raged inside him.
He remembered the rattler, coils loosening, its head lifting into an S-shaped loop, ready to strike. He remembered a woman with hair like flame working furiously over the oozing, burning wounds in his arm.
“Patience.”
There was no answer to his whispered call. He was alone. Throwing back the blanket that covered him, he stood, threatening to bang his head on the low ceiling as he rose to his full height. He was as naked and weak as a newborn babe. His mouth was dryer than the desert, and his arm a leaden weight. But he was alive, and thanks to Patience’s knowledge and care, in time he would have two vital arms.
Striding to a wooden bucket he found the water he needed. First he drank deeply, then splashed the cooling liquid on his face and head. Nothing had felt so good in all his life. Except Patience’s caring touch. Her kiss.
He wanted to see her, wanted to know what she was about. With water trickling over his shoulders and chest he looked for his clothing and found his leather trousers cleaned and hanging on a peg. He slipped into them, won a clumsy, weak-handed struggle to close the snap, and was pulling on his moccasins when the door opened and Patience stepped in.
“Matthew, you’re awake.” Her voice was warm in pleased surprise.
“Yes.” He was absorbed in her. She wore the leathers he’d given her, over one shoulder rested the tied carcasses of two Gambel’s quail. In her hand she held a bow and one arrow. “You’ve been hunting.”
Setting the weapon aside, she lifted the quail from her shoulder. “I thought you might be ready for more than broth made of the dried provisions from our packs.”
“You shot those?” He crossed to the bow, hefting it in his palm, appreciating its balance. “With this?”
“A lucky couple of shots.” She shrugged aside her expertise.
“Which brother taught you to shoot?”
“All of them had a hand in it. Each is an accomplished bow hunter.” She didn’t add that her father and mother were, as well. Or that only Valentina didn’t like the bow.
He strummed a thumb over the bowstring made of fishing line and estimated the tension at thirty pounds. “You made the bow.”
“The line was here. It isn’t the best of substitutes for a proper bowstring, but it serves.”
It did more than serve, he thought as he drank in the wild disheveled hair, the flush of her cheeks, the triumph of a successful hunt sparkling in her green eyes. She was so exquisitely alive, one could as easily believe she’d just left a lover’s arms. He yearned to be that lover, and wondered if he would be again. Steeling himself against willful desire, he set the bow aside. “Is there anything you haven’t been taught, or can’t do?”
Her laugh was low and melodious, prettier than he’d ever heard it. “Quite a lot, but I’ve been fortunate in that my family has tried its collective hand at a smattering of everything. What they’ve missed, they’re still aspiring toward.” She laughed again. “Our motto should be So Much To Do, So Little Time, But We’re Trying.”
“Time for adventure, time for travel,” he muttered. “When was there time for normal family things? When did you go to school?”
“We didn’t. We had no formal education. Wherever we went, whatever we were doing, Mother saw to the basics. She proved a gifted and inspiring teacher, and an uncompromising taskmaster. Beyond that the world was our classroom, our instructors the best it had to offer. As each of us found our own area of expertise—” she gestured to the bow “—we learned from each other.”
He moved closer, looking down at her, recalling how adept she’d been from the first, seeing how she adapted to living off the land and thrived. “Among your strengths and many talents, what is your field of expertise? What special thing do you bring to the family?”
“Special? Me?” Preoccupied with his question, she took the quail to the yard and absently began plucking feathers from them. Matthew lounged in the doorway, watching, waiting for her evaluation of her place in her family. After a while she looked up from her chore. “You’ve found me out. I suppose I could best be called jill-of-all-trades, but unlike Kieran, master of none. I bring very little to the family.”
He left the shade of the cabin to join her in the yard. “Could it be you bring the example of courage to the family? Courage to face your fears, and finally to be different?”
“Maybe,” she said thoughtfully. “Then again, maybe not.”
“I think your family would agree with me.”
“You’ve never met my family. You don’t know them.”
“I don’t need to know them in this.” Before she could say more he moved away toward the stream. “I’ll walk for a little now.”
“But not too far?” Worry lines formed between her brows.
“Not too far,” he agreed mildly. “My heart rate is regular now, there are no hemorrhages into the skin. The cuts at the wound and those you made later at the advancing edge of the edema are healing.” The precise account of his condition finished, he smiled. “There’s no reason a little exercise shouldn’t be beneficial. I promise not to go one step more than feels comfortable.”
“I’ll hold you to that promise.”
“I thought you might.” He smiled again and walked with a surprisingly steady gait over the uneven ground to the stream.
Patience studied him guardedly. He was amazingly better. Either the snake hadn’t injected a full measure of venom, or Matthew commanded incredible powers of recuperation. If she had to choose the source of his fortune, she would choose Matthew. Always Matthew.
When she was certain he would not push too hard, too fast, she turned her attention to the sky, her second greatest concern. She kept a constant watch. At the first sign of rain in the north, they would have to ride as if they raced the devil to beat the wall of water that would come raging through the narrow chasm. Staying in the ravine had been risky, but without its shelter would Matthew be as strong? Would he have survived?
“I can’t think of that.” Casting one more glance toward the stream, and another at a sky that held no threats, she returned to her task.
* * *
A week passed, Matthew grew stronger each day. His right arm would never be as strong again, but he was already working with his left, mastering new skills, compensating for the loss. Patience went about her chores with guilt heavy on her heart, but no mention was made of her paralytic fear of reptiles. No finger was ever pointed in blame.
As she hunted, she was rarely far from the entrance of their walled fortress, while Matthew ranged farther and farther in the opposite direction. Horses moved in and out of the area, displaying no concern for their presence, as they came to drink and graze. At first she was anxious about Lucky, but he showed no sign of wanting to run free. After days of observing, Matthew chose a handsome bay, cutting him from the herd with astonishing expertise. If he was hampered by his weakened arm, only one who knew him as well as Patience could see.
A second week passed. Matthew was restless and working harder to strengthen his right hand as he increased his left-handed dexterity. The more he worked, the greater Patience’s guilt, the more she stayed away from the shack. Soon she was coming in only for meals, or in time to huddle resolutely on the floor, wrapped in her bla
nket for the night. On the morning she woke in the narrow bed, while Matthew slept on the floor, she knew he’d settled an ongoing debate in his own incontrovertible way.
A second concern weighed heavily on her mind. If the Wolves still searched for them, as Matthew assured they would, then time and the odds were in the bikers’ favor. Sooner or later one of them would find the horse trail and the ravine as she had. When they sensed his weakness as ravening animals did, what would become of Matthew?
Guarding the entrance of the ravine became an obsession, until the night she stopped coming to her bed to sleep.
The moon was full, and from her vantage afforded a perfect view of the trail. She was curled inside the blanket she’d brought with her, warding off a night chill made more cutting by the contrasting heat of the day. Her eyes burned, and her stomach protested the meal she hadn’t been able to choke down. In her loneliness her body longed for the touch of the only man she would ever love.
She shivered in the chill and watched. The hand that shot out of the darkness, gripping her shoulder was hard and uncompromising. Not a lover’s hand. “Dammit, woman!” With the curse, a guttural voice demanded, “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”
Stifling a startled cry, Patience whirled around. Matthew crouched over her, a grim silhouette. “You startled me.” She grabbed at the blanket as it tumbled to the ground around her. “I didn’t know you were coming up from camp. I didn’t hear you.”
“You’re sure as hell going to know when I go back, because we’re going together.” Taking his hand from her shoulder, he scooped her from the ground. If there was weakness in either of the arms that held her, it was masked by anger.
“Matthew, don’t.” She pushed against him, trying to pull free. “I have to keep watch.”
“No,” he growled. “You don’t need to keep watch. No one does. When they come, we’ll have plenty of warning. Their bikes will announce them.”
“Not if they travel the last on foot, if they seal the mouth of the ravine!”
“Fine. Let them.” He was moving implacably down the trail, unhindered by darkness or his burden.