White Stone would have loved to have gotten hold of that polished gun, but he’d been far more concerned with getting hold of the shining haired girl. He felt disdain for the dirty men who had let the five of them walk away so easily. After all, it had been a simple thing to take the shining girl just a few miles from where they’d left their wagons when she’d lingered at the stream they were crossing to bathe her swollen face with cool water.
He’d done it so quickly that the fancy man with the polished gun couldn’t even use it. Then White Stone knew the man wouldn’t leave the other three women to go after the one. White men were funny that way. Some of them valued women strangely.
The rain dripping down his face made the scratches there sting and he thought back angrily to the way the shining girl had fought him. She had left four long marks upon his face that still made him furious. What woman, no matter what hair, had the right to act that way to a brave? He’d made her realize her mistake then as he’d hauled her onto his horse, but still she’d fought like a golden wildcat. He’d had to almost knock her senseless to get her to finally settle down for him.
Feeling the rain run down the back of his neck, he looked up one more time and turned aside from trailing the shining girl and the golden warrior. The storm gods were against him on this night and he needed to see to the bullet hole in his side or he would be too sick to trail them when the skies finally dried. He would find them at the rising of the sun when the mud left a deep trail that would be simple to follow anyway.
Several times in the night, Lije added wood to the fire before lying back down beside the wounded girl. He was awake when she finally opened her eyes there in the firelight. He saw fear in them and he worried that if he moved or said anything he would frighten her, so he just laid there beside her and said nothing as she came awake, her eyes looking back into his.
Finally, she tried to move and he saw pain darken the blue in her eyes. He slowly sat up and knelt beside her to encourage her in her own Danish, “Move slowly so you don’t start bleeding again.”
Nodding, she continued to watch him silently as she struggled to sit up and then lay back down instead. Gingerly, she turned on her side with her hand under her cheek. Her blue eyes were big and quiet, with the fear there at the back fading as he watched. At length she said simply, “You came back.”
“Yes.”
Tears welled and she whispered, “Thank you.” After another minute of the tears, she whispered it again, “Thank you. I knew you would come.”
He didn’t know what to say to that and said nothing, just returned her look and after a moment, she closed her eyes and went back to sleep there beside the fire with the storm raging all around them.
It was still raining when the sun came up, so even though it got somewhat lighter, there was nothing in the sky but the heavy clouds and the lighter mist where the clouds rested right on the shoulders of the hillsides. Their makeshift shelter was enveloped in the mist and Lije kept the fire going, knowing that even if someone was close, they’d be more likely to smell the fire than see their smoke. Any scent would be attributed to last night’s wildfire.
The battered young woman across from him still slept, although whenever she tried to move in her sleep, she grimaced. As he quietly dug in his packs for food, she finally turned slightly. Almost immediately blood began to seep again from the bullet hole in her back through the flannel shirt he’d tried to wrap around her.
Setting the preparations for breakfast aside, he folded another bandage out of Lars’ spare neckerchief and then went to her and put pressure on the wound, hoping he could stop the bleeding without waking her. She groaned softly as he had to push to get the flow to stop.
Slowly rolling back toward him, she looked up at him with tired, beautiful eyes and he apologized, “Sorry. You started it bleeding again when you moved. Forgive me for hurting you.” She closed her eyes and nodded and his flannel shirt slipped off her shoulder.
He pulled it back up and apologized further, “And for undressing you. I’m so sorry. I had to find where you were bleeding.”
She nodded again and reached under her arm with her other hand to take over putting pressure on for him. “I understand. We must do our best under the circumstances. Thank you for everything. I am Brekka. Brekka Toft. I thank you for my life.” Her eyes became moist again and she closed them and whispered, “And I’m sure for much more. Thank you.”
He reached and put a gentle hand on her shoulder and then stood and went back to heating water over the fire. There wasn’t much in the saddlebags. Some jerky, dried fruit, and stale biscuits, but they wouldn’t starve. At least not today.
He made a broth of the water and jerky and then poured hot water over the dried apples and peaches to soften them up before coming back to her and asking. “Can you sit up at all? Or would you rather just stay reclined to eat? Are you hungry?”
Sighing, she said, “Starving.” She tried to roll and then lean up and he could see the pain in her face as he offered her a hand. She struggled to a sitting position. He brought both saddles and propped them behind her so she could lean against them and then handed her the broth and fruit. Leaning back hesitantly, with another sigh, she gave him a tight smile and said, “Thank you. It smells delicious.”
He shrugged. “It’s not much. We thought we’d be back home today, but we always carry some extra just in case.”
She took a bite and chewed it. “You’re Danish?”
“My parents emigrated, but they taught us all Danish as well as English with a little of everything else mixed in. What about you? How did you get out here into the middle of nowhere?”
She sighed and shook her head sadly. “I was a fool. A complete fool to come. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that until it was too late. Some friends of mine were coming to see this Utah territory and I came with them. For some reason, I felt so compelled, and then when I got out here, this country has been so . . . I’m not sure how to describe it, but it seems to call to me. Now I know I shouldn’t have come.”
She paused and then added bitterly, “I believed at the time that the man in charge of the trip was a friend. I had no idea then what Luther was up to. I’m still not sure. And I had no idea the kind of men he’d hired to guide us. Needless to say, we were unprepared to come out here safely.”
“Then there were others? Who were taken? Do you know where they are? Do we need to go in search of them as well?”
She paused to think and her brow wrinkled as she considered. “The other women got away, I believe. I was the only one taken. I’d stopped at a small stream and Ian had the other three to consider. He had to take care of them instead of coming after me when that savage grabbed me. I’ve been hoping and praying they made it to safety.” She paused again and her eyes filled with tears but she continued to eat and Lije waited to see if she would admit to what was so troubling.
She finally haltingly did, “I shot . . . I shot someone. He was one of the guides. He’d been watching me and . . . He was disgusting. Far dirtier than even the Indians. He was evil. You could literally feel it. That sounds so melodramatic, but he was. He shot Luther and then grabbed me and I took his own gun and shot him. I didn’t know what else to do. Will he die from being shot in the stomach?”
Lije felt his eyes widen and he had to ask, “Someone other than the Indians? You were accosted by a white man first?” She nodded silently and Lije nearly winced. Jehosephat, what had this girl been through?
Gently, he asked, “When was this?”
“Yesterday morning. Will he die?”
Feeling pity well through him for this girl, he chose to be vague because the gritty truth was that the man would probably die a slow horrible death. “It depends, but he might be fine. Where were you? Where had the Indians brought you from?”
She shook her head and then grimaced. “I have no idea. We were supposed to be going to see the red rock formations. At least that’s what I thought. I’m afraid the man who was taking us had a
nother agenda, although I’m not entirely sure what it was. He said something about it being a business trip. Something about the railroads.”
Lije studied her for a few moments, still wondering how a stunningly beautiful girl with an almost regal dignity ended up an Indian captive at the furthest edge of civilization. At length he asked, “How old are you, Miss Toft?”
She looked at him squarely. “Nineteen. Old enough to know better. Old enough that I should have listened to the warnings I was feeling about this last part of the journey, but I trusted my father’s judgment and he trusted Luther’s. That was a mistake on both of our parts.”
Lije shrugged, trying to ease her guilt. “We’ve all had lapses in judgment. As soon as we get you back to where you are safe, we’ll check on your friends and then look into what could be happening with the railroad. Unfortunately, we’re pretty isolated. I’m sure you’ve figured that out.”
Nodding sadly, she said, “Indeed. I have. How far are we from what you call safety?”
“Not far.” He looked around but could see nothing for the sheltered area and the storm. “Sixty, seventy miles. But it’s not the distance. It’s getting there undetected by that Indian and his friends. I’m sorry to have to admit this to you, but I don’t think he’s going to give up trying to find you just because we lost him last night. And the Utes are . . . ” He saw the fear in her eyes again and tried to soften what he thought she needed to be aware of. “They’re savvy. We need to be incredibly careful. This is a huge country, but when it comes right down to it, we have to be . . . Well, sixty miles could seem like a long way. Some of the Indians have been pretty angry for a couple of years now.”
She leaned her head back and closed her eyes and then said sadly, “We were assured that they were perfectly safe before we set out.”
“Am I right in assuming it was the evil guide who told you that?”
“Yes. That filthy leather clad Percival was the source for a good bit of our information. Luther should have known better.”
Lije sat up abruptly. “Percival? It was Clive Percival that you shot?”
She opened her pain filled blue eyes. “I don’t know if his given name was Clive. I tried to avoid him at all costs.”
Lije had to consider her in a different light all of the sudden. Clive Percival really was evil, and this country would be much better off without him. He shamelessly hoped that she had indeed killed him, but it took guts to face a man like Clive Percival. But then again, if Percival had tried to harm her, it was no wonder that she shot him.
Finally, he said, “Well, Miss Brekka Toft. Let’s just hope that in a few days, this will all seem to be long in the past for you and you can go back to your friends and live happily ever after like none of it even happened.”
She looked over at him steadily without saying anything and he wished he could figure out what she was thinking behind that regal bearing. Something told him that being accosted twice in one day by the vilest of humans was going to leave a scar that didn’t fade easily.
With breakfast eaten, he took her cup and then carefully helped her up and to the opening of the overhang where she went out alone for a few minutes as he cleaned up. When she came back in, all but hobbling with a grimace of pain, he was surprised when she asked after his shoulder instead of sitting right back down.
At first he was confused and glanced down to where she was pointing to his shoulder. He was surprised to see the whole shoulder of his shirt was covered with dark red dried blood and then he remembered the burn he’d felt during their headlong flight of the night before. He’d completely forgotten about it in the mix of things. Lifting his shirt away from his shoulder, he silently inspected the three inch long red slash where a bullet had grazed him. It was scabbed over and dry and looked fine, and he looked back up at her and shrugged. “I got a scratch last night. It’s nothing.” It was nothing, but that had definitely been a close one.
Going back to the blankets he’d spread out for her, she gingerly tried to get back down. He came over and offered her a hand that she took willingly and then leaned on heavily to get settled. He may have been brushing off his scratch, but she was doggedly trying not to complain when he could tell she was miserable.
She was beautiful even in his flannel shirt that practically drowned her over her split skirt, but having her own clothes back would probably be nice. He dug through his saddle bags for the needle he knew was there somewhere. He had only the coarsest of thread that he used to repair gear with, but he picked up the blouse to her riding habit anyway and began to try to pull the shreds of it back together. Mostly it had ripped at the seams and the fabric itself was still intact. As he worked, he glanced back up at her, wondering at just what she had been through to have an article that was obviously well made, be torn so violently.
She looked back at him without saying anything and then said, “Bring it to me. I’ll sew it back together. You’ve done enough for me without fixing my clothing as well.” He hesitated. She wasn’t up to this, but he gave it to her anyway.
She worked at it stubbornly for more than half an hour and then he heard her give a soft sigh. When he turned, she was fast asleep again. He’d known she was too injured to sew, but he had to respect her for trying.
Taking the blouse, he set it aside and brought another of his blankets and covered her with it, then went back to his own bed and stretched out. The rain was still pouring down and it had been a short and interrupted night. She was a really beautiful girl, even as hurt as she was.
He was fast asleep when he heard her cry out and immediately it brought him straight up. He looked around quickly to find what was near, but there was nothing. Then he realized she wasn’t awake. She was having a bad dream.
She turned her face from side to side and moaned and when he knelt beside her, he could hear her ragged breathing and practically see her heart race. Reaching for her, he gently rubbed her arm and spoke her name and in seconds, she jerked awake. She looked up at him in panic and then understood what was happening and closed her eyes against the tears that spilled over. He softly squeezed her arm one more time as she whispered an apology.
He only had one sister, but she’d been on his mind a lot the last fourteen hours. He could only imagine how an experience like what this girl had been through would affect a young woman, and his heart went out to her as he assured her she was safe.
In jerking, she had started the wound on her back from the bullet bleeding again and once more he pulled his flannel shirt up and held pressure to it, trying to stop the flow. This afternoon it was reddened and inflamed and he wished he had more supplies in his gear to care for it with. As he held pressure, he wondered again if he should be trying to take the bullet out. The thought of actually cutting into her skin made him sick.
The rain showed no signs of letting up and after he’d napped, he took an inventory of their supplies and decided to see about augmenting their food supply. They couldn’t stay here forever, but if they didn’t move, they wouldn’t make any tracks to be found in the wet ground of the mountains, and she wasn’t really in any shape to be moving around anyway.
With some rawhide string from his gear, he rigged up two snares where he thought there might be rabbits going through. Then he cut a length of wiry burr oak and several smaller willows and went back to their shelter and began to fashion a crude bow. They did need meat, but he wasn’t going to draw attention to where they were by using any guns to get it.
In addition, he hauled more wood back inside the shelter to begin to dry for their fires. Wet wood smoked terribly and it was going to be hard enough to hide the smoke from their fire once the rain finally stopped. It was mid August, but they were high in the mountains and he knew in the condition she was in, she needed warmth.
She needed a lot of things he couldn’t provide very well here on this mountain, but what she needed most was security. It had to rank over getting her out to someplace more comfortable while they tried to avoid being detected by
the Ute braves. Lije paused to wonder if Lars had made it home safely and hoped they weren’t worrying too much about him. At any rate, it didn’t matter. He was doing what had to be done and they would understand.
As the afternoon wore on, Lije began to worry about her. The pallid tone of her skin began to flush. When he touched her gently on the forehead, she woke up and smiled tiredly, but her head was hot under his palm. Sitting down beside her, he apologized as he pulled up the shirt to see that the skin around the bullet hole was now an angry red, and the hole itself was moist and oozing an ugly clear fluid.
He sighed and leaned back on his heels, trying to remember what the old Paiutes around Rock Creek used to treat wounds with. At his sigh, she turned her head to look up at him in stoic silence, and he put a big hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze and said. “It’s starting to fester, Miss Brekka. We’ve got to pack it with some herbs. I’m going to be gone for a little while to find them and bring more water from the stream. Just try to rest and I’ll be back.”
She nodded almost imperceptibly and then asked softly, “What’s your name?”
Feeling guilty, he told her, “Lije. Elijah Lauritzen. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I hadn’t said.”
Tiredly, she said, “Lije is a nice name. It’s strong. It fits you.” Then she hesitated a moment and asked, “What if you don’t come back, Lije?”
He could see the fear in her eyes and knew she needed to know that everything would be okay. “If I don’t come back, walk straight toward the setting sun and go down off the west side of this mountain. It’s steep, but you can do it. From the ridge you can see several townships. Any one of them would be able to help you.” He reached down and smoothed her shiny hair and then reassured her, “But I’m coming back, Brekka. I’m coming right back. I promise. I’m going to see you through this.”
Getting up, he walked toward the opening, and said over his shoulder, “Close your eyes and rest, Brekka and think about something nice. I’ll be right back with some herbs that will help that hole.”
Into the Wind_A Love Story Page 4