Winter Fire

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Really? Do you think they grow in dirty pots? Is that why I had to wash out the pot and start today’s supper in the middle of last night?”

  Conner’s mouth flattened.

  Sarah regretted her sharp words the instant they were out of her mouth. Sighing, she wondered how parents managed to keep their tempers at all. One moment Conner acted as responsibly as any fully grown man. The next moment he was worse than a two-year-old.

  Yet she desperately needed to be able to count on him.

  That’s hardly fair to Conner, Sarah reminded herself. He’s only a boy.

  “Sorry,” she said. “You were up half the night on watch.”

  Saying nothing, he scraped the last of the beans onto a plate. He knew he was in the wrong. He should have started the beans even if he was cross-eyed from lack of sleep. He had just plain forgotten.

  “I won’t forget again,” he muttered.

  “It’s all right.”

  “No, it ain’t.”

  “Isn’t,” she said automatically.

  “Isn’t. Hell’s fire, what difference does it make? I’m not going to no—any—fancy Eastern school!”

  “Yes, you are. Just as soon as I find that treasure.”

  “We’ll all be dead as last year’s flowers before that happens. Besides, I don’t want to go.”

  “I’ll find the silver,” she said. “You’ll go.”

  Conner heard the stubbornness in his sister’s voice and changed the subject. Every time they talked about his lack of formal schooling, they argued. The older he got, the fiercer the arguments became.

  He didn’t want to hurt his sister, but he had no intention of going back East and leaving her to fend for herself. She would never admit that she needed him, but she did.

  He stalked out into the night to wash the pot in the creek.

  The vague whisper of goat hair being spun into yarn filled the silence. Sarah worked quickly and deftly, and tried not to think about the future.

  It was impossible.

  Conner is growing up too fast.

  Though she would have died sooner than admit it, she was frightened that she wouldn’t find the Spanish silver in time to save her young brother from the rootless life lived by too many Western men.

  And now I have those Culpeppers and Moody’s gang to worry about.

  She bit her bottom lip and kept on spinning without a pause.

  I’ll spend so much time looking over my shoulder that my only chance of finding the silver will be to trip over it on my way to the privy.

  Next time I’m out I’ll try the land north and west of the ranch. The outlaws don’t go there much. No reason to. In most of the canyons there’s no water, no forage, no hunting.

  No silver, either. Not yet.

  But there will be.

  There has to be.

  Despite her bleak thoughts, her fingers never stopped working. Conner’s wrists were hanging out of the last jacket Lola had woven for him. There was no money to buy another.

  Spinning and weaving, spinning and weaving, she thought. Lord, I wish all of life was so simple.

  She knew it wasn’t. On the other hand, spinning and weaving at least accomplished something. All that treasure hunting had done was to wear out her moccasins as fast as Ute could make them.

  Conner came back inside, bringing a gust of cold air with him. Though there was no snow yet, the land itself was icy at night.

  Without a word, he put some beans to soak. Then he curled up on his pallet near the fire. He was asleep between one breath and the next.

  With a small sigh, Sarah stretched her back and ran her fingers through her freshly washed hair. The scent of wild roses drifted up from her fingers. She had taken advantage of her brother’s absence earlier to have a thorough bath, something she did so often that Ute swore she was going to sprout scales and fins.

  Her waist-length hair was cool and still faintly damp to the touch.

  Not dry enough to braid yet, she decided. I might as well just stay awake until it’s time to change the bandages and coax Case into drinking some more water.

  She picked up her spinning again and settled in for more quiet hours of spinning, caring for Case, and fretting about Conner’s future.

  When fever released Case from its grip, a rhythmic kind of whispering was the first thing he heard. Most men in his situation would have opened their eyes to find out where they were, or moved, or made a sound.

  He gave not one sign that he had awakened.

  His senses told him that he wasn’t alone. Since the only person he trusted was clear over in the Ruby Mountains of Nevada, the fact that there was someone nearby meant danger.

  Hidden beneath blankets, his left hand moved, searching for the weapon that was never far from him even while he slept.

  The six-gun was there.

  And he was naked.

  Very carefully his fingers closed around the gun. Secretly he gathered himself to fight.

  Despite his iron self-control, the sudden stab of pain in his right leg when he moved it almost tore a cry from him. Memories followed the lightning stroke of agony. Some were as sharp as the pain itself. Some were dreamlike in their softness.

  The fight at Spanish Church was one of the sharp memories.

  Did Ab Culpepper track me down?

  As soon as the thought came, Case dismissed it.

  If Ab had found me, I wouldn’t be waking up at all, and I sure as sin wouldn’t have a gun in my hand.

  I was wounded, he remembered painfully. I tied myself to Cricket, spurred him into a run, and…

  Memory ended in a swirl of agony and darkness.

  He listened intently, but heard no sound that told him Cricket was grazing nearby. All he could hear was a soft, somehow reassuring sound, like whispering breaths.

  But it wasn’t breathing. Not quite.

  Spinning, he realized suddenly. Someone is sitting close to me and spinning yarn.

  Other memories came, the scent of roses and warmth, gentle hands soothing him, water easing between his lips to cool the fiery thirst that was consuming him, a woman’s long hair outlined by lantern light.

  Sarah?

  Fragments of the past cascaded over Case like colored glass, sharp-edged and beautiful at once.

  Gray eyes and hair the color of cinnamon.

  She tastes even sweeter than she smells.

  I never should have kissed her.

  Dumbest thing I ever did.

  Really dumb.

  Cautiously he opened his eyes just enough to see without revealing that he was awake.

  Sarah was sitting within arm’s reach. Her hands moved in deft, soothing rhythms as she spun yarn from a pile of black wool. Her hair fell over her shoulders in silky, cinnamon waves that cried out to be stroked by a man’s hand. Her eyes reflected the luminous gold of lantern light.

  She was watching him.

  “How do you feel?” she asked softly.

  “Dumb.”

  She didn’t ask why. She was afraid she already knew.

  The kiss.

  Even the memory of that sweet, searing caress was enough to make her fingers tremble.

  “No need to berate yourself,” she said matter-of-factly. “You’re not the first man to get shot.”

  Or the first one to kiss a girl, Case thought.

  Well, at least she’s a widow. She won’t mistake a man’s hunger for a promise of now and ever after.

  “How bad is it?” he asked.

  “Your wounds?”

  He nodded.

  “One bullet went between the inside of your right arm and your chest.”

  As she spoke, she bent over and touched his right shoulder gently.

  “You were shot twice in the right thigh,” she continued.

  “Infection?” he asked, his voice emotionless.

  She set aside her spinning. “You can see for yourself. It’s time to change the dressings.”

  He watched intently while she went about t
he simple tasks of gathering clean rags, warm water, and a jar of something pungent he couldn’t identify.

  “Do you want anything for pain?” Sarah asked. “Ute has some homemade whiskey that—”

  “No,” Case said. “I want a clear head.”

  She wasn’t surprised. Though pale, obviously in pain, and not able to stand, he had an animal alertness that was unmistakable.

  He was a man used to living with danger.

  Ute had been the same way when he first came to Lost River ranch.

  Often, he still was.

  “How did I end up here?” Case asked.

  “Ute found you.”

  Calmly she peeled the bedcovers down to his waist. As she bent forward and began unwrapping the bandage on his arm, her hair slid in a soft cascade across his chest.

  Cool, yet it burned him like naked flame. His breath hissed in and his heartbeat doubled.

  “Sorry,” Sarah said, lifting her hands instantly. “Are you sure you don’t want something for the pain?”

  “Yes,” he said through set teeth.

  Her eyelids flinched but she said nothing. She simply got on with the task of unwrapping the rest of the bandage on his arm. Delicately her fingertips brushed the area around the furrow left by the bullet.

  Again his breath hissed in.

  She frowned. “Is it that tender?”

  “No.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes,” he said, jaw clenched.

  She gave him a wary look. Then she went back to her tender tracing of the skin around the shallow wound.

  This time Case didn’t make a sound, despite the heat in his blood that had been summoned by a simple, impersonal touch.

  Never should have kissed her, he told himself savagely. Dumb. I haven’t wanted a woman like this since…

  His thoughts scattered.

  He hadn’t ever wanted a woman the way he wanted Sarah Kennedy.

  For a few more seconds the gentle, delicious torment of her touch continued. Then she withdrew.

  “The skin around the wound is cool,” she said. “No infection, but you’ll have a scar.”

  “It won’t be the first.”

  “Or the last,” she said, thinking of the wounds on his thigh. “Since you’re awake now, I won’t wrap your arm again. It will heal faster in the air.”

  Case watched her face while she pulled the blankets up over his bare chest. Then she shocked him by flipping the covers off his legs all the way to his navel.

  “Judas priest!”

  One-handed, he raked the covers back over himself.

  Sarah was too surprised to stop him.

  “Sis?” Conner called drowsily.

  “Go back to sleep,” she said. “It’s just Case thrashing around.”

  “You need me to hold him while you change the bandages again?”

  She raised her cinnamon eyebrows at Case in silent question.

  “Do I?” she mouthed.

  His eyes widened. He had just figured out that there wasn’t one inch of him that Sarah Kennedy hadn’t already seen.

  Dead naked.

  Red burned on his cheekbones above his weeks’-old beard. He took his hands away from the covers.

  “I can handle it, Conner,” Sarah said neutrally. “Go back to sleep. You have to relieve Ute in a few hours.”

  Her brother made a muffled sound, rolled over, and slid back into the sleep his growing body craved.

  “Get me a loincloth,” Case said flatly.

  Without a word she stood up, went to a basket in the corner, and shook out the last shirt that Conner had outgrown and worn to shreds in the process. The remaining fabric had been destined for the rag rug she was making. If it took a detour on the way, no harm would be done.

  “Will this do?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  He held out his right hand. Plainly he intended to put the cloth on himself.

  “If you move around,” she said, “you could open the wounds again. Let me wrap—”

  “No,” he interrupted curtly.

  One look at his face was enough to tell Sarah that he meant it. She could hand over the cloth or she could fight him.

  “Don’t be foolish,” she said crisply. “I raised Conner, I was married, and I nursed Ute back to health when he was in worse shape than you. I’m not going to faint at the sight of—of your—that is—”

  To Sarah’s horror, a blush climbed her cheeks. Abruptly she threw the cloth at him and turned her back.

  “Go ahead,” she said through her teeth. “But if you open up those wounds, don’t come crying to me about how it hurts.”

  “The day I cry is the day the sun will set in the east.”

  She didn’t doubt it. He wasn’t an emotional kind of man. While she took a rawhide thong from around her wrist and tied back her long hair, she thought about the grim set of his face.

  “What about laughing?” Sarah asked without thinking.

  “What about it?”

  “Do you?”

  “Laugh?” Case asked.

  “Yes.”

  “When I find something funny.”

  “When was the last time?” she retorted.

  He grunted in pain when he lifted his hips to finish wrapping the loincloth around himself.

  “Well?” she persisted.

  “Can’t remember. Why?”

  “How about smiling?”

  “What is this, a catechism?” he asked. “You expected to find Robin Goodfellow shot full of holes and making jokes to entertain you?”

  Sarah laughed softly.

  “Robin Goodfellow,” she said. “Lord, I haven’t thought of Shakespeare for a long time. Did you like A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”

  “Once.”

  “But not now?”

  “Since the war, Hamlet is more to my taste.”

  There was something in Case’s tone that made chills course over Sarah’s skin.

  “Vengeance,” she said.

  “I’m ready,” he said, tying the cloth in place. “You can do whatever you’ve been doing to my leg.”

  As she turned around, he lay back on the pallet. She saw immediately that he had started undoing the bandage on his thigh but hadn’t finished the job.

  Clearly, the simple act of wrapping the loincloth around himself had almost been beyond his strength. His face was pale above his black beard. A sheen of sweat stood on his forehead. His mouth was drawn into a line so narrow it was almost invisible.

  “You should have let me do it,” Sarah said. “You need your strength for healing.”

  “Either change the damned bandage or don’t. It’s all the same to me.”

  If his voice hadn’t been thinned by pain, she would have kept on scolding him as though he were her younger brother.

  “We don’t laugh,” she muttered as she knelt by his side, “we don’t cry, we don’t smile. But we do have a temper, don’t we?”

  With difficulty, he bit back a scalding reply.

  He was surprised by the effort it took simply to hold his tongue. He, who had vowed to feel nothing at all after Ted and Emily’s death.

  Not even anger.

  Must be the fever, Case thought grimly.

  But he was afraid it was the rose-scented, sharp-tongued angel of mercy who was kneeling by his side.

  He gritted his teeth and endured the gentle, searing touch of Sarah’s hands while she unwrapped the bandage on his thigh. More than once he felt the brush of her shirt against his naked legs as she worked.

  Twice he was certain that he felt the satin weight of her breasts.

  Pain should have kept him from becoming aroused. It didn’t. The loincloth he had just tied around himself was rapidly losing the contest between modesty and blunt male hunger.

  “Hell’s fire,” he hissed.

  Sarah flinched. Every time she unwrapped the bandage one turn, she was forced to brush against his crotch. The bulge that had grown beneath the loincloth was intimidat
ing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m trying to be careful.”

  “Stop being so fairy-fingered. Just get it over with.”

  She bit her tongue and finished unwrapping the bandage. She didn’t even protest when he levered himself up on his elbows to look at the wounds.

  One wound was scabbed over and healing well. The other was a red, puckered hole in his upper thigh. Poultice glistened on his skin like dark rain.

  “Am I carrying lead?” he asked.

  She gave a sideways, hidden look at the loincloth.

  Fully loaded in all chambers, from what I can see.

  Her thought came with a combination of alarm and something else, something odd that she couldn’t put a name to.

  “Er, no,” she said. “I cut out the bullet on the other side. It missed the bone.”

  “Thought so. It didn’t knock me down. Threw off my aim, though.”

  “Not by much. Ute said you were the only one to walk away.”

  “There’s plenty more Culpeppers where those two came from.”

  Case sat up enough to feel the back of his thigh. Neatly knotted stitches greeted his fingertips. He bent over the open wound on top of his thigh and breathed in deeply.

  Waves of pain slammed through him with each heartbeat, but he didn’t straighten until he was satisfied. There was no sign of infection in the wound. No smell of it, either.

  Thank God, he thought.

  While death itself held no particular terror for him, there were some ways of dying he would just as soon avoid. From what he had seen in the Civil War, gangrene was a worse way to die than being gut-shot.

  With a rough sound he lay back, breathing hard.

  “Good doctoring,” he said hoarsely. “Thank you.”

  “You can thank me by not pulling out the stitches or reopening wounds by thrashing around.”

  “I’ll work on it.”

  “You do that,” she muttered.

  Despite her tart tone, her hands were very gentle as she spread the healing poultice on a fresh bandage and wrapped it around the open wound. The pallor of his skin worried her, as did the raggedness of his breathing.

  “Are you all right?” she whispered.

  “Fine as frog hair.”

  “I’ve always wondered just how fine that was.”

  “Finer than silk,” Case said through his teeth, “but not so fine as your hair.”

  Sarah gave him a startled look. His eyes were closed. Obviously he was fighting not to reveal the pain he was in.